"The serpent that talks to Eve is not a snake like the pictures you get in children's books. This is his character; He's the Adversary and he comes to Eve to deceive her.
"He's already had his opportunity; he was perfect until iniquity was found in him, Ezekiel says. The self-seeking, self-conniving. He wants to dethrone God," explained Richard Jordan in this past Sunday's morning service.
Genesis 3:5: [5] For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
"In Ezekiel, when Lucifer fell, he immediately went out and sought to gain followers. He's looking for people to join his team. He's not a self-giver; he's a self-seeker. He wants to exalt himself. 'Get rid of God.' Worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.
Verse 6: [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 the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
"The dude's right there with her, watching this stuff and he sees her take that fruit and watches her die spiritually. Adam's got a choice at that moment. He can value his desire for her or he can trust God and take her for him to solve the problem and what Adam does . . .
"I've thought about this--why wouldn't Adam just go eat the Tree of Life? Adam looked at it and said, 'I don't really need that tree.' There's no appeal for him in that: 'I've already got life; why do I need that?'
"You see, Adam thinks of himself as being completely self-sufficient, so now here's this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 'I can have something I don't have,' and he becomes infested with this self-seeking.
"His affections for Eve captured his attention. My personal thought about that is, he sees Eve die . . . The only creature God made that He didn't give clothes too naturally was man and woman. He clothed them with garments of light.
"The Coat of Many Colors was what they were clothed with, and Adam watched his wife go dark; watched that garment fade away.
"He watched death come to her, and he loved her--he loved himself, he loved the possession of her more than he loved God. When he took that fruit he took it willingly, knowing that he was rejecting God for the affection of his wife and he took and he sinned.
"The more you focus on a thing, the more it gets a hold of you and you become its captive. He's just focusing on Eve because that's the other part of him.
Genesis 3: [9] And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
[10] And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.[11] And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
"Death has come; separation has come, and God said, 'Who told thee thou was naked? Verse 12: [12] And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
"That's blame-shifting, but notice he's not blaming the woman; it's the woman you gave me. 'It's really your fault, Lord.' 'She gave me of the tree and I did eat; I'm not guilty.'
"You see him scheming and striving and asserting. He's all pro-himself. He doesn't say, 'I made a mistake; I need to fix it.' He's, 'I did nothing wrong.' They sew fig leaves. Operation Fig Leaf: 'I can fix it.' Or I shift the blame to someone else, or I go hide and maybe He won't find it. All these schemes.
"If you look at Genesis 4 when they have the boys, you know the story about Cain and Abel. They come to worship and it doesn't go so good for Cain because he brings the fruit of his own . . . Adam literally passed on his rebellious, self-seeking attitude to his son.
[5] But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
[6] And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
[7] If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
"He said, 'Cain, if you just did what you ought to have done as the elder son and lead the family, Abel would be submissive to you, but you didn't do that.' The next verse Cain takes his brother out and kills him. That self-seeking, self-serving attitude is just passed on to Adam's kids."
Here's an old post and will have a new article tomorrow:
Perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube ad for MasterClass on “The Genesis Story.” It begins with Justin Jackson, professor of English at Hillsdale College, saying, “So, the fun thing with the serpent is how does a serpent talk?” upon which you can hear laughter from the class.
He proceeds, “But not only that, why is the serpent’s punishment to crawl on its belly when that’s what it does? If you don’t know how to read biblical poetry, if you don’t know the formal qualities of parallelism and expansion, you are missing out on one third of the Hebrew bible. Whatever theological background you have, you’re going to have your own hypothesis, that is to say, your own plot and narrative. What the literary reading allows you to do is to find new details that work within that overall plot or narrative.”
Here’s a free study online found in Shorewood’s media archives: “Satan is the serpent; that’s a description of his character, the essence of his being. We use the illustration, ‘Behold the lamb of God.’ Well, Jesus is the lamb of God, but He’s not a four-legged ‘Baa, baa’ wool-bearing lamb. He has the character; He functions in the role of a lamb of God.
“Well, Satan has a character. He is that seven-headed dragon, that old serpent the devil, so on and so on. When he stood in front of Eve he didn’t stand there as a big old slithering fork-tongued snake. He transformed himself into an angel of light. He stood there as a beautiful, handsome Errol Flynn kind of guy, or whoever it is you think’s good-looking."
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