Eve

Galatians 4:4-5 2 Corinthians 11:14 Genesis 3:14-15

by Dave Wilkinson

November 30, 1997

All parents have dreams for their children -- that they will turn out a certain way or that they will do a certain job. We all know that it's important for parents not to try to live their children's lives. But dreams and hopes for children are natural and normal. They have been a part of family life since the very dawn of time. In fact, no parent has ever had higher expectations for a child than Eve when she gave birth to Cain. And few parents have had their dream more cruelly crushed.

You remember the story of how God placed the Man and Woman in the Garden of Eden. God tells our first parents that they may eat of all the trees of the Garden except one tree -- identified as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What is this tree? Well it is a good tree.

God looked at everything he made and saw that it was good. God has not made a bad tree. Nor is it an inherently mind expanding tree. It is not a psychedelic tree, a crack tree, or a cocaine tree. It is simply a tree. All this tree is is an arena for choice.

God could just as well have said, "don't cross this stream" or "don't climb this mountain." But God doesn’t choose a mountain or stream. He chooses a tree. The tree is the first law. The tree is there, it is available, and it is forbidden. Adam and Eve have the freedom to obey God or not to obey him. They are not puppets.

But their freedom cannot be lived out in a moral vacuum. If free obedience is a possibility, it needs a way by which it can be expressed. So God gives the tree, the opportunity, and the law. To obey and not eat is good. To disobey and eat is evil. The tree, therefore, becomes the first arena for obedience.

Now suddenly in Genesis we come upon a creature whose existence has not even been hinted at until now. And we discover, as we read about him, that he is an evil being whose temptation of Adam and Eve brings evil on the human race.

We have all seen pictures in which Eve is standing demurely in the bushes while overhead a snake is slithering down out of a tree to tempt her to eat the forbidden "apple." But despite our pictures, Genesis does not say that Eve was tempted by a talking snake.

The Bible does say that the being who tempted Eve ate dust because of God’s judgment. It slunk away either literally or symbolically, into the bushes. That was its doom. But when the creature first speaks to Eve there is no reason to think that this is any other than an upright creature, not totally dissimilar to Adam and Eve themselves.

The Hebrew word here in Genesis is "nachash" which means literally "to shine," or in the noun form here, a "shining one." Later, perhaps because of this passage, the noun became applied to snakes. It makes sense. Snakes crawl on their bellies, eat dust, and shine in the sun.

But Eve wasn't tempted by a talking snake. She was tempted by Satan at his shining and most impressive best -- just as Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians speaks of Satan as "an angel of

light." It is not a snake that tempts Eve but a glorious and persuasive being -- the "nachash," the shining one. As we read it this way, an entirely different picture emerges: "now the shining one was more subtle than any wild creature that the Lord God had made."

Satan comes to Eve and asks a seemingly innocent question: "Eve, I heard something on the grape vine and I want to check it out. Isn't it true that God has forbidden you to eat from the trees of the Garden?"

A seemingly innocent question - -a point of information really--but one calculated to raise some doubts in Eve's mind about whom God is. "I hear that God is a killjoy Eve -- that He doesn't want you to have any fun. Is that true?"

The tempter begins with suggestion rather than argument. He doesn't start by dangling the temptations of the forbidden fruit. He starts by undermining the integrity of God in Eve's mind -- by making the law of God seem unreasonable. It smuggles in the assumption that God’s word is subject to Eve's judgment.

To a certain extent Eve resists. She says "we're allowed to eat from the trees of the garden." But then notice how she continues: "but God has forbidden us to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden." Earlier the tree is identified as in the midst of the Garden but Eve places it exactly -- "it's right in the middle where we have to walk past it every day. It does seem unfair for God to put it right in the middle like that. He could have at least stuck it out of sight in the corner of the Garden where we wouldn't have a constant reminder that there's something we can't do."

So Eve agrees that God is being unfair. And to prove it to herself she adds onto the prohibition to make it seem even more unfair -- "we aren't allowed to eat the fruit of the tree. In fact, God won’t even let us touch it." Now God never said anything about not touching the tree. But Eve decides that it sounds good so she tacks it on.

And then Eve changes the penalty. God told Adam. "You will surely die." Eve changes it to "we may die."

Eve's words "we may die" give the Tempter the opening he has been seeking: "You will not surely die!" he says. "For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Notice the direction of the attack. "What God is doing to you, Eve, is trying to keep you from enjoying a good thing. God doesn’t want you to eat because you will be like Him. As it is you only see things very poorly but if you eat, your eyes will be open." The two lies of the tempter are the two lies characteristic of every temptation: "it will do you no harm" and "you are cheating yourself out of something good if you don't do it."

In a way, there is a half truth here. Satan's approach has often taken that form ever since. It is true that Eve is indeed going to learn something. If she chooses to disobey and to rebel, she will have what she couldn't have otherwise - -an experiential knowledge of evil and its results. So in a way Satan is telling her the truth. But what a useless, horrible knowledge! It is the knowledge of the child whose mother says, "don't go near the fire, because if you do you will get hurt. You will catch fire and be burned." But the little child goes on in disobedience, falls into the fire and spends the next three weeks in agony. Now the child has learned something that it wouldn't have known experientially if it had listened to the warning given by its mother. But what a horrible and useless knowledge!

So Eve eats. Adam eats. And God confronts them in the garden. Adam takes it like a man. He blames his wife. Eve blames the shining one. And then God speaks the curse ---the curse first on Satan. He is condemned to futility -- to ultimate defeat--symbolized by the eating of dust. And the road to this ultimate defeat is contained in the very next verse, Genesis 3:15, one of the most marvelous verses in scripture:

Read Genesis 3:15

First God says that there will be enmity between Satan and Eve. What God is saying is that the fall, while serious, is not bottomless.

Remember that Satan's sin consisted in trying to replace God as the chief being in the universe and in trying to gather the worship of the creatures about himself rather than about God. His attempt proved unsuccessful. Now he appears on earth to attempt to do among the new race of human beings what he failed to do earlier with the angels. The temptation of Eve and Adam had in mind, first, seducing our parents away from the worship of God and, second, winning their allegiance and worship for himself. He succeeded in the first objective. He did break the fellowship of the Man and the Woman with God. But he does not succeed in his second objective, for God announces here that He is putting enmity between Satan and the woman.

It is significant that these words are spoken to Satan. For the new thing here is not Satan's hatred of Eve. Satan hated Eve from the moment of her creation, even when he was pretending to be her friend. The new thing was to be Eve's (and Adam's and all their true offspring's) hatred of Satan.

This is the first stage in dust eating for Satan. Then comes part two. Satan had expected God to carry out total judgement on the Man and the Woman. But instead God talks about the future.

For God continues and says: "and I will put enmity between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you on the head, and you will bruise him on the heel." This is the second stage in dust eating. The woman will have "seed" and the "seed' will somehow mean Satan's downfall.

Note that the word "seed" of the woman is singular. That’s crucial in this text. He's one person. Who is this "seed" of the woman who crushes Satan? Jesus Christ. Here in the Garden Adam and Eve receives the very first promise of his coming. This verse, Genesis 3:15, is called the proto evangelion -- the first gospel -- the very first promise of the coming of Jesus Christ that we celebrate this Christmas season. During this Advent season we will look at several Old Testament prophecies of the coming of Jesus. But here is where it starts -- at the dawn of history.

We know from the Gospels how the bruising of the Lord Jesus Christ took place. It happened at the cross as Satan finally succeeded, so it seemed, at striking back at God. It was bruising with a vengeance. It included the hatred of the religious leaders, the mocking of the crowds, the beatings, and eventually the crucifixion with its great agony. And yet, it was only a bruising, not a defeat, for on the third day Jesus rose from the tomb triumphantly -- and crushed Satan's head forever. That's the gospel as it begins to unfold way back in Genesis 3.

Now, in Genesis 3:20 we see Adam and Eve begin to respond to God’s promise. It begins with an act of faith. Adam names his wife Eve because she is to be the mother of all who will live.

The name Adam gives his wife demonstrates his trust in God’s promise of a future despite their sin. Eve will have offspring. Since she has not yet given birth, it means that she will not die physically, at least not yet. And since she has not yet conceived it means that Adam will not die yet either.

There is also the nature of one who is to come. He will be a deliverer. He will crush the head of Satan. This is their hope. God has said that Eve will produce one who in some way will be a deliverer. So when Adam names his wife Eve it is an act of faith, by which he testifies to his belief that God will keep his promise and that the deliverer will come.

When Eve becomes pregnant, the event is wonderful beyond description. Neither the Man nor Woman have ever seen a pregnancy or birth before. So the wonder of birth is increased many times in their experience. Not only is there to be new life. It is to be the promised life, the one who should destroy the work of Satan and restore people to paradise again. That is their expectation.

How do we know that this is what they believe? We find it in Genesis 4:1 where Eve names her newborn son. She names him Cain. Cain comes from "quanah" -"acquired." Eve is saying, "I’ve got him!"

Got who? We find the answer in the rest of the verse. Eve says: "I’ve gotten a man, the lord." Some translations incorrectly fill the blanks in this verse. Note the italic marks on the printed scripture. It's not part of the original text. They make it read: "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord". But that's not what Eve says. She says "I’ve gotten a man, the Lord -- the promised deliverer."

That's the way Martin Luther translates it and he's right.

You see, Eve looks at her newborn son and sees the fulfillment of God’s promise. She thinks she had given birth to the redeemer. So she names him Cain, "I’ve got him."

As I said at the beginning of the sermon, no parent has ever had higher expectations for a child than Eve when she gave birth to Cain. She thought he roll was the one later given to Marr. And few parents have had their dreams more cruelly disappointed.

Their faith was right. They recognized that God had made a great promise. Only the identity was mistaken. For they did not know that they actually held in their arms a little murderer and that the tragic history of the human race, written in blood, had begun -- a history that has risen to a crescendo in our own Twentieth Century.

The identity was mistaken. But isn't it wonderful that within hours of our first sin, God gave the first promise of a Savior.

The coming of Jesus wasn't an afterthought. The cross of Jesus wasn't an afterthought. The resurrection of Jesus and his triumph over evil wasn't an afterthought. It was God’s plan and God’s promise from the beginning.

Now certainly God’s timing was not Eve's timing. But, as Paul writes in Galatians 4:4-5: "when the time was right, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law so he might redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons." Jesus Christ, the redeemer, the deliverer first promised to Adam and Eve has come to bring the light of joy to our lives.

So now we can celebrate the good news of Christmas with the words spoken at the end of the first pregnancy in history. And this time the identity of our deliverer is sure -- not a murderer but the Master -- not a slayer but the Savior. Jesus Christ. We do have Him -- the Lord.