There was a time when the whole of the revelation given by God to man, containing "all things pertaining to life and godliness," consisted of two sentences. This time was right after the creation of man, and the place was the Garden of Eden.
In Genesis 2:16-17 God gave Adam a commandment:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die.
Now this is not the only thing God ever said to Adam and Eve in the garden. God gave specific instructions to them regarding specific situations, as when He brought the animals to Adam for him to name. God supplied needs for them when they didn¹t even know they had needs, as when God provided a wife for Adam and a husband for Eve. Most important, God enjoyed fellowship with Adam and Eve. God had lots to talk about with His children, I¹m sure. But this commandment was different. This was the only instruction given to them by God regarding how to maintain the perfect relationship they enjoyed with God. For them, at this time, this one commandment contained "all things that pertain to life and godliness."
The instruction God gave them was not burdensome. There was a whole garden of fruit trees available to them, whose contents were hand-picked by God Himself. They had no shortage of food. They had no lack of variety. They had no unmet needs. In short, they had no reason to disobey God.
So long as they were left to themselves, they obeyed God faithfully. But with the coming of the serpent into the garden, everything changed.
There was a time when the whole of the revelation given by God to man consisted of two sentences. Doesn¹t that sound strange to your ears? Surely that was not sufficient! Surely such a scant amount of revelation could not meet the needs of these two brand-new human beings. Yet in those two sentences God had given them everything they needed in order to walk victoriously before Him.
He did not give them anything difficult to understand. He did not give them a lesson in theology. He did not reveal to them the secrets of the spiritual realm. He did not talk to them about faith, about love, about walking in the spirit. (In truth, these things were all that they knew, all they had ever experienced, but they didn¹t know this, and God didn¹t reveal it to them.) Instead, He revealed to them something that seemed petty, but included everything they needed to know in order to come out on top in the trial He knew was coming up. He gave them the correct answer to the upcoming test, in advance.
What He did not reveal to them might seem astounding to us. He did not reveal to them the existence of the devil. They had never encountered their adversary before that fateful day in the garden. He did not explain to them what a lie was. They had never heard one before the serpent told them one. But what God did tell them was simple to understand, and it was enough: Don¹t eat the fruit of that tree. That was all they needed to know.
The whole of God¹s instructions to man in two sentences? How preposterous! How can the greatness of the knowledge of God fit into a "box" of two sentences? Surely there must be more!
But that was all God gave them. And it was enough to give them victory. It was true light, in a situation that was about to become very dark very quick. They could depend on this light, because they knew where it had come from.
But that's not how it looks to us, is it? Imagine them, thinking they actually knew something about how God does and doesn't work, or about God's will for their lives, when all they had was two lousy sentences from God! It almost seems like a miracle that the serpent
But the new light they found was in reality darkness. And the light they gave away in exchange was the light of God's Word. They traded away that which was priceless for that which was worthless.
When the serpent came to the woman, he wanted to talk about God's Word! You would have thought that just the opposite would have been the case, that he would have talked about anything but God's Word. But it was the serpent who brought up the subject in the first place!
That should serve as a warning to us. The devil is not afraid to talk about the Bible. In fact, he's right at home with the subject. More sobering still, he was not afraid to talk about the Bible with Jesus. In one of the temptations in the wilderness, the devil took Jesus to "church" and quoted (or misquoted) the Bible to him! It was only when Jesus used God's Word as a sword that the devil had problems with it.
The devices Satan used in deceiving the woman in the garden are still in use by him today
1. Satan mishandled God's Word.
Genesis 3:1.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
His words made it clear that he knew good and well what God had said to the man and his wife, but he asked the woman anyway. He began by misquoting the Word of God, and allowing the woman to "correct" him.
Genesis 3:2-3.
And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
2. Satan lied.
Genesis 3:4.
And the serpent said to the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
God had said that if they ate of this tree, they would die. Satan said that if they ate of it, they would not die. Satan's word and God's Word were 180 degrees apart. Both could not be true. Eve had to make a choice.
The decision Eve made is a product of what I call "Eve's School of Biblical Interpretation." In a nutshell, this school of thought teaches that even though something is 180 degrees different from what God has said in His Word, it might still be right and deserves a listen. That "school" is still popular today.
God expects us to hold fast to what He has told us, regardless of what evidence pops up to prove to us that the contrary is true. This, in a nutshell, is trusting God.
Many times a lie can look like the truth
3. Satan offered a deeper knowledge of God than could be found in the Word God had already revealed to man.
Genesis 3:5.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.
Satan continued by offering the woman a glimpse into the mind of God, independent of God's Word. This is heady stuff, coming as it did from an angelic being, the wisest and most beautiful created by God.
What we should note, though, is that what this angel revealed about God did not agree with what God's Word said. God had said that the fruit of this tree was the way to death. Satan said that it was the way to wisdom. Moreover, he revealed to her that God knew this was the case, and still He had forbidden them to eat of this fruit.
4. Satan created a market for his product.
Adam and Eve had no unmet needs in the garden. This did not deter Satan. He did what any good advertising executive would do: he manufactured a need.
The need he focused on was wisdom. He pointed out to the woman that she didn't have wisdom, and told her that the way to get it was to eat of the very tree God had told them not to eat of. Satan's goal was to drive a wedge between her will and God's will, by creating a desire for something in her.
Wisdom is something we all need. God Himself points out our need for wisdom in Proverbs. We are told:
Proverbs 4:7
Wisdom [is] the principal thing; [therefore] get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
Yet we are also told in Proverbs 9:10,
The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy [is] understanding.
What does this mean? It means that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GODLY WISDOM THAT DOES NOT HAVE AS ITS FOUNDATION OBEDIENCE TO THE REVEALED WORD OF GOD!
There is a wisdom that is independent of the Word of God, but that wisdom is not godly wisdom.
James 3:15.
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but [is] earthly, sensual, devilish.
Satan convinced the woman that she lacked and needed wisdom, that God was deliberately withholding this wisdom from her by keeping her from the one thing that could give it to her.
5. Satan told the woman that God was holding out on her.
Satan told the woman that even though "God knew" that when she ate of the fruit her eyes would be opened, God had forbidden this fruit to her. This meant that God did not have her best interests at heart. If she did not look out for herself, no one would.
If God did not have her best interest at heart, then God could not be trusted. If that were the case, then the wisest thing to do would be to disregard God's Word as soon as it got in the way of her getting what she wanted. If she could not trust God to give her genuinely good counsel, then her needs would have to take priority over God's Word.
6. Satan offered the woman a "promotion."
Satan declared that once she ate of the tree, she would become like God, knowing good and evil. Once she had her own wisdom, she would no longer be dependent on God's wisdom. For the first time in her life, she would be free from God. She would be, in effect, her own "god."
Satan's lies had an immediate and powerful effect on the woman: they caused her to look at the world in an entirely new light. Things looked completely different now that she was no longer looking with the light of God's Word, but with the light of this new revelation instead. Doors opened that had once been closed. Possibilities that she had never considered before presented themselves for her approval. What had once appeared to be rebellion against God's clear commandment now seemed to be only a necessary step in the natural process of growth. Before, she had been bound by the constraints of God's Word. Now she was free to do whatever she wanted to do.
Genesis 3:6.
And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of its fruit, and ate, and gave also to her husband with her; and he ate.
She had never realized before that this tree produced beautiful, tasty-looking fruit. She had also never realized before that the fruit of this tree was all that stood between her and wisdom. As a result of this new insight she had received, she did the unthinkable: she re-evaluated God's Word by comparing it with what she had been taught independent of God's Word. In her estimation, God's Word came up short. Full of good intentions, she rejected the revelation God had given her regarding this situation, and acted in accordance with the new light she had received.
Eve did not wait for God to give her what He wanted her to have; instead, she reached out and took what she wanted to have, even though God had forbidden it to her.
Once she had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Eve was transformed into a teacher. Before, Adam had shared with her the light he had received from God. Now, Eve shared with him the new light she had received from "the angel of light," also known as the serpent. Eve reached out to Adam and ministered to him the "new gospel" she had received. It is interesting that the serpent didn't have to persuade her to do this; she thought of it all by herself! She was not content to sit alone in her disobedience toward God; she craved companionship in her rebellion. She reached out in love toward the one she loved, and corrupted him as well as herself.
God had given her the one weapon she would need to be victorious against the serpent: the truth of His Word. That Word, those two brief sentences, cut through the thick fog of words spouted out by the serpent to deceive her, and laid bare the key issue involved: obedience to God. She traded in the old, slightly used truth of God's Word, and received in its place a shiny new lie. She had the light of God's Word; she exchanged it for darkness masquerading as light. She had a warning from God of impending danger; she exchanged it for a positive promise of greater blessing, which turned out to be a lie.
Genesis 3:7
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made for themselves aprons.
It was only after they had acted on this new light that their eyes were opened, and they could see the new light for the darkness that it was. Far from becoming like God, they had lost their godliness. In place of innocence, they discovered shame.
There was a time when the whole of the revelation given by God to man consisted of two sentences. Doesn't that sound ridiculous on the surface? How could the wisdom of God possibly be compressed into two brief sentences? Yet those two sentences summed up the way of life; stepping outside of them, even to obtain something as noble as wisdom, proved to be the way of death.
Have we grown any wiser than Eve? Will we hold fast to the revealed Word of God, no matter what? Or will we trade it in for something "better"?