Our Old Testament reading is from Genesis chapter 3. And just as you're getting there, as we get back into Genesis, we want to remember what the Lord through Moses is doing for Israel in the wilderness. He's laying the foundation for their identity, their mission. This is a theology for pilgrims on the way to the promised land. And as now as we're in chapter 3, we're going to learn of the origin of evil, the fall, Satan's tactics, we'll see the effects of the fall, and we'll see God's amazing grace as he promises a savior. So hear the word of God from Genesis chapter three, verses one through seven, as the Lord, through his spirit, continues to train us up and equip us as pilgrims on the way to glory. Genesis chapter three. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. I invite you now to turn to Matthew chapter 4 for our New Testament reading. You can find that on page 809 of your Pew Bibles. And we know by now that there is always some kind of relationship between the Old Testament reading and the New Testament reading. Here Christ our Savior is tempted by the evil one in a similar way that Adam and Eve were tempted, yet Christ is victorious as he skillfully wields the sword of the Word of God to defeat the serpent. So, Matthew chapter 4, verses 1 through 11, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Well, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray and ask him to bless his time as we reflect on his word. Spirit of God, we would ask that you would pour out upon us wisdom and understanding, and that being taught by you in the Holy Scriptures, that our hearts and our minds may be opened to receive all that leads to salvation, eternal life, to holiness and service. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. Thank you for that amen. Good example for the rest of us. Now, it's been a month or so, maybe five or six weeks since we've been in Genesis, so I want to start with a little recap of chapters one and two as we come to this new section in Genesis chapter three. In Genesis one and two, we have the account of Almighty God creating heaven and earth and all its beauty and all its glory, and He did this in order to prepare a place for the crown of His creation for Adam and for Eve, and He made Adam and Eve in His own image. He blessed them with His presence. They lived in His holy place. They have perfect fellowship with God and with one another, and they have a purpose. They are God's servants. And Adam's called to guard and keep the garden, this garden temple, safe from evil. And together, Adam and Eve are called to rule in truth and justice as they seek to expand this garden kingdom of God over the ends of all the earth. So Adam and Eve, they're in paradise, in perfect fellowship with God and with each other, and they have a purpose for everything that they do. There's no sin, there's no frustration, there's no selfishness, no pain, and no suffering. One commentator describes their blessed situation saying, all of life was devotion. Loving God was as natural as breathing and as effortless. But we know it didn't stay that way. We know that something happened that would change everything. And we know this story and we know what that something is. The devil tempts Eve and Adam, who was with her, to place themselves over the Word of God. instead of remaining under the Word of God. And as a result, they sin, they fall, and Adam and all of humanity is now guilty and polluted and under the curse and wrath of God. We're going to spend a couple weeks reflecting on this passage. This week we're going to reflect on the story really as it comes to us, and we'll spend a lot of time looking at how Eve is tempted. And you can see the title of the sermon is Eve's Sin. Well, just spoiler alert, so we don't think that we're picking on Eve here. Adam is fully complicit in all of Eve's sin here, and he sins in even a worse way, but we're going to look at those things next week. We're going to focus on Eve this morning, and our goal is to kind of get maybe a fresh look at what does sin sound like? When we're being tempted, what kinds of thoughts and things are going on in our own mind and in our own hearts? What are the favorite tactics of the enemy, of the evil one? How is he tempting Adam and Eve, especially Eve, to sin here? And as we do this, we're doing this because we want to be equipped to do battle against the world, the devil, and our own flesh. So we have two points. They're posed as questions this morning. Number one, what does temptation and sin look and sound like? And number two, what hope do we have against such a powerful enemy? So verse 1, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? So here we are in the holy place of God, the Garden of Eden, and it's invaded by a talking serpent. Now some will stop right here and say, look, serpents don't talk. At least they're not supposed to. So that means this is not historical. This is just a myth. This is not real. It's just a nice story. Well, just briefly, and we'll keep coming back to the historicity of this account, I want to point out before we go on to what the serpent said, is that the writers of the New Testament viewed this account as historical, meaning they believed this is what really happened. Because in Romans 5, Paul speaks of sin entering the world through one man, Adam, and as a result of his disobedience of his one transgression, Death came for Adam and spread to the rest of humanity after him." So Paul views this as historical. Again, in 2 Corinthians 11.3, Paul refers to this event, and he has no problem with the talking snake. He says, but I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And then in 1 Timothy chapter 2, Paul refers to the fall as a historical event as well. So what we see here in the serpent, this talking serpent in the garden, is what we see is that great and evil dragon in Revelation who makes war against the church and who is crushed by our Savior. See, the whole Bible is understood through the eyes of faith. And as Christians, we believe what's written here to be historical. There was a real first Adam who sinned, just as there is a real second Adam who saved. They both must be historical and true or we have no salvation. And again, we'll talk about this a little bit more over the coming weeks, but know this is a historical account and the serpent is doing something that serpents shouldn't do. He looks at Eve, it seems, and says, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? He probably asks Eve and not directly to Adam because Eve wasn't created yet when God gave Adam His command. In Genesis chapter 2, Adam heard it firsthand. You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. So she would have heard this command, these instructions from Adam as he exercises his office of prophet. And so Satan picks up on what he thinks, and perhaps, perhaps this could be a weak link because she didn't actually hear what God said. She heard it from her husband. And so it's as if he's just slithering through the garden one day. Minding his own business just in every day, just a talking and curious serpent. And the kind of the mood of this is friendly. It's like as if he says, hey there, friend. I was just slithering along and I heard you and Adam talking. And I'm just curious, did God actually say that you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? I mean, that's what I heard. I wouldn't want to accidentally eat something from a tree I'm not supposed to. I mean, is this the command here? Well, as soon as Eve replies, we know the battle is lost because she allows the evil one to set the field of play, set the battlefield, the conditions of the conversation, and the way the serpent poses this question is designed to cause her to question and ultimately to fall. She responds in verses two and three, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. Well, on the surface, it sounds like a pretty good paraphrase of God's command of what God said. She actually seems to start out pretty well in verse 2, but then as she goes on, we notice three problems. First, God never said they couldn't touch the fruit of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil. So, she's making God's command more restrictive than the one that was given. She's putting boundaries about it. It sounds very Pharisee-like, what we're used to in the Gospels. And second, the penalty sounds just a bit different here. Instead of saying the consequences, you shall surely die, and as we've pointed out in Hebrew, surely die really says die, die, and she just says, lest you die. Well, that's a little different. You shall surely die, or you shall die, die, you shall really die, or lest you die. In other words, if I touch it, I understand the result to be death. It's nuanced, but this is a less certain answer. Calvin goes as far to see here as saying, well, perhaps you will die. And the third problem with her reply is that it also minimizes or downplays the blessings of God in the garden. She says, we may eat, but God said you may eat freely. So she seems to be focusing more on the rule rather than the blessing. So in three ways, her paraphrase falls short of God's Word and His command to Adam. So Satan sees this as his window of opportunity. He sees this window wide open. And in verses 4 and 5, we read, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Now, if Eve was listening carefully to the serpent, she would know that the serpent really did know the command of God because he got closer to what God said than she did. He mentioned, you will surely not die. That's closer to what God said. Eve should have noticed this. And going on, we can almost hear the sense of what the serpent is saying here to Eve. You shall not surely die. That's nonsense. Who would die from eating a piece of fruit? Come on, I will tell you what's really behind God's command here. God knows that when It says, when you shall eat, not if. When, not if, you eat, you're going to gain more knowledge. You're going to be like God, or like a God, and you're going to be a lot wiser than you are right now. You see, God doesn't want good things for you. He wants to keep you from attaining your full potential with these restrictions. See, the evil one invites Eve then to sit over God's Word as judge instead of submitting to it. It's as if he says, come on Eve, decide for yourself. It's beneath your dignity to simply hear the Word of God and trust and obey. I need to understand it first. You should really be deciding for your own what is best for you. You were meant for more than this baby stuff. Throw off the shackles that God has placed on you and become what you were made to be. And that sounds like a modern movie script, doesn't it? But we see what happens next in verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. So Eve must be thinking something like, you know what, you're right, I don't need someone else setting my boundaries. I don't need someone else making my decisions for me that I'm perfectly capable of making myself. Satan had successfully tempted Eve to reject her God-ordained and given reality to reject her limitations as a creature and to assume the role of creator and judge. And she decides then to examine this tree and its fruit more closely. I'm going to make my own decision on whether or not I should eat this fruit apart from God's Word. And she looks at this fruit and she sees that the fruit was good to eat. And she lusted after this fruit to fill her stomach. She saw with her own eyes that this fruit looked amazing, perfectly juicy and ripe, and it caused her desire it and to want it. And finally, somehow she was able to determine from looking at it, yes, this would be a very, very healthy piece of fruit, not just healthy, but it's going to magically make me more wise. We see the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride all at work here. In this moment, Eve makes herself wiser than God and decides to take it and to eat it. And then she gave some to the silent moron who was with her. Not that we could have done any better or would have. And we'll get to Adam's role next week. But as she did this, tragedy struck immediately. The effects were immediate. Verse seven, and the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loincloths. So their eyes were opened and they were aware of something that they weren't aware of before. They were naked and a sense of shame filled their heart and they couldn't stand to just be there in each other's presence, to be exposed and vulnerable anymore. Comfort, security and trust was now broken between them. Their perfect and wonderful union was alienated, and then their feeble attempts at some of the first versions of clothing from plants, of hemp clothing, it would not be enough to cover their shame. And this was only the beginning of the consequences to come. they didn't realize that they had just plunged themselves and all of humanity into sin and death and caused all to be born from that time forward to be under the curse and wrath of God. And we're going to circle back to these consequences in the week to come. But as we reflect on this tragic event, this evil event, what we see is that Satan proved to be too smart, too cunning, too powerful for Adam and Eve to overcome. And paradise is lost. And Adam and Eve, we think of them created in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, they had every advantage, and yet they blew it. Well, this causes us to wonder, well, if Adam and Eve before the fall created in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness in the presence of God, if they couldn't resist the devil, then what hope is there for me? For we're now sinners by birth and by choice, and our hearts are dead. Every thought apart from Christ is polluted. What hope do I have against such a powerful enemy? Well, temptation can be overwhelming and we know that we often fall short and give in. But as Christians, we know where our help comes from. Our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Our help comes to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And soon after the fall, God gives a promise of hope and salvation. And we're gonna unfold that promise as we go through Genesis. But for now, we want to spend just a few minutes looking at some of the fulfillment of that promise of hope, of victory in Jesus as we look once again at our New Testament reading and reflect on how Jesus gives us hope and victory over the evil one. Adam, Eve failed. Christ is victorious. Satan tempted Eve, if you remember, we can say with three ways with this fruit. First, the fruit was good for food. It was the lust of the flesh, had to do with appetite and the stomach. Second, the fruit was a delight to the eyes. She lusted after what she saw. And third, Eve believed the lie of the serpent, who's the father of lies and the first murderer. And she decided that the fruit was desirable to make her wise. This is the lust of pride as she put her own judgment above the judgment of God and His Word. Well, in Matthew 4, the evil one tempts Jesus in similar ways and even combines all of them into one evil and what he hopes is an attractive cocktail of sin and temptation that he tries to get Christ to consume. First, we remember Jesus had not eaten in 40 days, and He's hungry. He's weak. He's not in a holy place and having all His needs met. He's been fasting 40 days. He's been in the wilderness. And the devil tempts Him with some bread, lust of the flesh. The evil one says, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. And Jesus answered him with the word, reciting, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Well, second, the evil one tempts Jesus to prove his authority and power and command over the angels. This is a pride temptation. Show us who you really are. The devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you. And on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. He just like in the garden now says, okay, Jesus wants to quote the word of God back to me. I can play that game. I did it once before. The devil, he's trying to twist and pervert and use the word of God to cause Jesus to stumble. But Jesus would skillfully use the word of God again to fight against Satan. And he said, again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And then third, the evil one tempts Jesus with the lust of sight, of riches, as he shows him the glory of earthly treasure, and promises, Jesus, you can have these things if you'll just bow down and worship me. And finally, Jesus has had enough, and he says, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. At every turn, the Lord Jesus wields the weapon of the Word of God. He trusts in the promises of God, and He fights off the evil one, and He's victorious over each temptation. And where Adam and Eve failed, Jesus is victorious and shows His almighty power to defeat the devil. And for all who trust in Jesus Christ, this is our hope. This is our comfort. This is our confidence. But if you do not trust in Jesus Christ, you're dead in your sins and trespasses. You're a sinner by birth and by choice still. You're on the side of sin, of loss, of misery. But keep listening, because if you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ, you can share in Christ's victory with all the saints. and saints have gone. Our comfort is that the devil has been defeated by our Savior. He was defeated by him here in the wilderness, and he was defeated by Jesus once and for all as Christ was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again from the dead. And we sing many hymns that speak of this victory. One of my favorites that comes to mind is Up From the Grave He Arose. It's a song of Christ's victory over Satan. Low in the grave he lay, waiting the coming day. Vainly they watch his bed, vainly they seal the dead. Death cannot keep his prey, he tore the bars away. And the refrain, up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph over his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain, and he lives forever with his saints to reign. He arose, he arose, hallelujah, Christ arose. This is our comfort. The serpent has been defeated and now Christ is ours and we're united to Him in His death and in His resurrection. And we are more than conquerors in and through Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen. The Spirit of Christ, the victorious Spirit of Christ, now dwells in us, giving us power to conquer temptation when before we could not. Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 10, 13, and everyone should memorize this verse. No temptation has overtaken you except that which is common to man. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. One of the ways that the Spirit keeps this promise to us is he uses the Word of God, equips us with the Word to make us wise and to direct our steps so that we can overcome temptation. The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, is part of the armor that Paul commands us to put on and to use in Ephesians 6. And as before we get to the end here, what we want to do is circle back a little bit, think of what we saw in our passage. We want to work just a little bit on our sword skills, our sword play here. We want to think back to that conversation between Eve and the serpent. And we can use the Word of God that equips us to see the devil's tactics. And as Eve was going, you probably started to recognize some of those thought patterns and heart things. You started recognizing what sinful thoughts and wandering hearts look like. We want to examine these, point some of them out so we can be on alert. So here's five quick observations that can help us to win more battles against temptation. First, we notice that the devil chose the playing field. He chose the place and the location of the battle. And he used a serpent to begin a conversation meant to destroy Adam and Eve. We cannot let the evil one set the question, set the circumstances. We cannot fight on his playing field under his terms. This means we must be careful about what we take in with our eyes and with our ears. The evil one is always trying to rephrase the question to his advantage. He's trying to get us to adopt his perspective and to start with his presuppositions which are perverted. and then to reason from there. Well, how do we recognize that? Well, we must constantly root our thoughts in the Word of God and ground them in the truth, as we sang of in Psalm 1. So when the evil one is trying to get us to come play on his playing field, on his battlefield, we're quicker to recognize that from the beginning. Second, we see that Eve, she either doesn't know God's Word very well, or she changes it a bit as she misquotes it. We must continue to know the Word of God. We must continue to work on memorizing Scripture. We must continue to know the truths that are in here. And one tool that we use in our church to help us remember biblical truth and to get that scaffolding in our mind and to get it in there is to use our catechisms. You remember the proverb, I'm sure you do, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But we should have something in our homes like this, a catechism question a day keeps the devil away. Or perhaps a catechism question a day keeps the world, the flesh, and the devil at bay. Let me know which one you think is more catchy. I did this at home and I went too fast. I'll just say them again just for fun. A catechism question a day keeps the devil away. A catechism question a day keeps the world, the flesh, and the devil at bay. at bay, like the ship in the harbor. Okay, just helping some of you out over there. All right. So we must know the Word of God who has teached these truths to our children so they're prepared to fight against evil so that they are quick to be able to recognize the devil's lies. Third, Eve adds to the Word of God. God's Word is sufficient for all things in doctrine and in life. We must not add to it. Fourth, she focuses on the rules. rather than the blessings. She overemphasizes the rules. When it comes to God's commands, we should also focus on the blessings of obedience. We should think of God's commands as an I get to and a privilege that we're enabled by the Holy Spirit now to obey. We should not think of God's commands as keeping us from joy, but as guarding us from harm. And then fifth and finally, she entertains several lies of the evil one, lies that cause her to think in the way of sin. So when we start to think in these ways, we need to stop and realize we're on the wrong road. Someone other than God wants better things for you. That's a lie. You have enough smarts and skills and ability to make judgments and rules for yourself. You don't need God. It's like saying when you're kids, I don't need those training wheels anymore, mom or dad. You can take off those training wheels. And if you did take them off, they went and just bought it and just ate it right away. They weren't ready. Overestimating your own abilities. You are the master of your own destiny. No one tells you who or what you are. God's… and obeying God's Word, that's holding you back from enjoying something. That's keeping you from your full potential. You're not just a creature, just a mere creature. You are meant for more than this. You should sit over the Word of God, not just trust and obey. That's for simpletons. That's for babies. And some of us might say, well, I don't do that. I do come under the Word of God. Well, I can tell you from experience as a young Christian learning a few things about theology, what did that do for me at the time? Well, I started to sit over the Word of God and started to evaluate every sermon. That guy didn't preach Christ. That wasn't a good illustration. Why didn't he say this? And started to critique the sermons that I heard. If we find ourselves critiquing sermons, Critiquing them instead of sitting under them and listening. Look, this might not be the best sermon I've ever heard. It might be downright boring. There might actually be some things wrong with it. But this is the Word of God and there's something in here for me that God wants me to hear. That's what sitting under the Word sounds like. To go and be critical and to sit over and to evaluate sermons. That's sitting over the Word of God. Let us sit under God's Word. And there's one more lie. Trust yourself. Trust in your own abilities. Don't believe God's narrative about this reality. Interpret and make your own and be true to yourself. These are the kinds of things, the kinds of thoughts that Satan's interaction with Eve that we're bringing up in her mind. And when we go to some of these places There should be warning sirens going off in our minds and we must wake up and remember that sin is dangerous and it is crouching at our door. That the evil one is a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. We must be on guard. This age is a dangerous age. This is a dangerous place and it is filled with evil. So we must be prepared to fight against it. Oftentimes, perhaps most of the time, we do feel like failures because we lose many battles against sin. But even as we lose battles, we must not despair, for our Savior has already destroyed the works of the serpent. 1 John 3 reminds us. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. And the Lord Jesus is continuing to destroy the works of the devil and all evil, even that evil that's still left over in our own hearts. As we finish our time together this morning, may we take away three things from these observations from our passage. First, may we be quicker to recognize what sin sounds like and looks like so we can forsake it and flee from it faster, providing God will provide that way of escape. Second, may we have the humility and the wisdom to submit to the Word of God in all things, in all things. Even when our heart tells us something else, let us seek to come under the authority of the Word of God. And third, may we give more praise and glory to Christ for slaying the serpent for us. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we come before you and we read of this tragic, awful story where paradise is lost and it's ruined. Yet, Lord, we know that it's regained in Jesus Christ and that where Adam and Eve failed, Christ is the victor, the victor forever and ever, and that His victory is our victory. Lord, when we stumble, when we fall, when we give in to temptation, let us remember this, let us be encouraged by it, and strengthen us to do battle against the evil one. Lord, help us to become skilled wielding the sword of the Word of God. In Jesus' name, amen.