In this episode, a new character emerges, a serpent with the tempting offer to make the two humans more like God and less like gardeners. What will they decide and what does it teach us about how we should relate to God?
If you can’t see podcast player, click here.
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, I always use the ESV, the English Standard Version, unless I say otherwise)
This week’s broadcast is called “The Rake or the Snake” because that’s the choice that Eve and Adam are faced with—will they choose to remain faithful servants in the Garden of God, content to have God be greater than they are, or will they chuck their rakes into the trash heap and listen to the Serpent instead? It’s the same question we face throughout our own lives and so we have a lot to learn from what they did, and didn’t, do. So, we’re moving from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3 today. Congratulations, we graduated from another chapter!
Trivia question, what’s the very first recorded conversation about God in the Bible? That doesn’t mean God talking—it means people talking about God! Well, shockingly the first time God is talked about in the Bible is when the Serpent asks Eve a loaded question. What is a loaded question? That’s an idiom that means a question that isn’t really a question. If I ask you, “Have you always been a thief?” And you answer no, I can say, “Oh, so when did you start being a thief?” And you can say, “I’ve never been a thief!” You see, the way I worded the question made it sound like you are a thief now and I am asking you if you have always been one. The question is a loaded one because of the way I asked the question, “Have you always been a thief?” I was making it sound like you are a thief now when I have no reason to expect that you like to steal things. That’s called an assumption. It’s not a nice thing to do. Well, our new character in the Garden story, the Serpent, is going to ask Eve a loaded question, one that makes some terrible assumptions about God that will cause both Eve and Adam to doubt His love and care for them. That’s how loaded questions work—they are sneaky, evil traps designed in such a way that no matter how you answer, you will probably end up looking bad. Unless, of course, you are a thief and have always been a thief and you are proud of it! Well, in that case, I have to admit that you also look bad but, in that case, you deserve it!
So, let’s introduce our newest character in the Bible. First, we have God and He is the only character in Genesis 1. Then we have Adam, and Eve in Genesis 2. In the first line of Genesis 3, we meet our new character—let’s see what the Bible says about it…
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
So, what do we know about the Serpent? First of all, he was created by God (I don’t actually know if the serpent was a guy but we’re going to call him that because then we have “he” as the Serpent and “she” as Eve while they were talking. It will make it easier). And the Serpent is a “beast of the field.” And he is the craftiest animal that God ever created. Now, we might think that being crafty is automatically negative but the Hebrew word, arum, is sometimes good and sometimes bad—so that doesn’t tell us anything at all about our mysterious new character. In fact, we usually see it used in the Proverbs that tell us about what makes a man wise—which is a good thing. And we might think he is an okay dude, but then he opens his mouth:
“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Now, a real question searches for information. This is not a request for information. The Serpent is phrasing the question like, “I heard that God told you that you can’t eat from any of the trees, is that true?” A better question, a more honest question is “So, what did God tell you about eating the fruit of the trees in the Garden? Can you eat from all of them or only some or from none of them?” One of the best things you can learn to do in this life is to learn how to ask honest questions that aren’t traps. Ask questions to find things out—not to trick people. The first conversation in the Bible is a nasty trick and we don’t want to be like that Serpent. Of course, we know that God only said there was one tree that Adam and Eve couldn’t eat the fruit of, and that was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But the Serpent was making it sound like God wasn’t allowing them to have any fruit at all—that immediately put God in a negative light, meaning it made Him look suspicious and bad. Of course, Eve wasn’t there when God gave the command—only Adam was there and so when she replied, she only knew what Adam told her.
“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.’”
Hmmm…was this what God told Adam? Let’s go back and take a look.
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of 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.”
Uh oh. That’s not quite the same thing, is it! Eve said she wasn’t even supposed to touch it or she would die. Now, what we don’t know—because the story doesn’t say—is whether or not she made that part up or if Adam actually told her that. Sometimes we do that, don’t we? And kids talking to their brothers and sisters sometimes do that. If mom told me not to touch the cookies or I would go to bed without supper, and one of my brothers came in, I might say, “Mom said no touching the cookies or we would get grounded for two weeks.” It isn’t honest but I might think it is a good idea because my brothers might gladly eat a cookie if it got them out of a dinner they didn’t want—and so that might not be punishment enough to keep them from eating the cookies. So, I might add a lie because I don’t trust them not to touch the cookies. Losing my dinner was good enough for me because I generally was a rule-follower who wanted to please people, just ask anyone. But something else might be the answer. Maybe Eve realized that God was being attacked and made to look ungenerous. Maybe Eve wanted to make it look like God wasn’t allowing them to eat that fruit not because He was unfair but because he was protecting them. Either way—neither Adam nor Eve was being malicious, or mean, no matter what the real story was. But, once there was a lie, it gave the Serpent all the room he needed to create doubt in their minds. Even a little lie can make big problems so it’s better to tell the truth.
But about that—I am not talking about opinions, okay? If your third Aunt Tilly on your cousin Marlon’s side comes to a party wearing an atrocious hat that makes it look like a peacock had a baby with a wolverine right on top of her head, and she asks you how she looks—just don’t feel the need to be honest about how you feel. Be kind, okay? She wouldn’t be wearing that hat if she didn’t like it. We don’t always have to let everyone know how we feel about everything and especially when it is hurtful. Let her enjoy her ugly hat because in her eyes, it is beautiful and she feels beautiful when she wears it. You don’t have to say you like it, you can just say, “Wow, that is the most amazing hat I have ever seen!” Let her assume you like it. You’ll live longer.
So anyway, Eve told a tiny little lie—either her lie or Adam’s lie, we don’t know—and the Serpent jumped on it immediately! “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Oh man, things just got really bad. This sneaky Serpent is telling the truth, but he is telling it in a way that is causing Eve to doubt God’s intentions toward her and Adam. And by intentions, I mean, the Serpent is causing Eve to doubt in God’s good plans for them. Even though He has done nothing but wonderful things for them, Eve is now starting to wonder if God is really all He’s cracked up to be or if He is just a big faker holding them back from having this knowledge of what is right and wrong. Now she’s wondering if God is really helping them or hurting them. Now, let’s stop right there. If you aren’t sure if someone is wanting to do good things or bad things for you, what do you need to do? You should ask someone older who you trust. If someone tells you something bad about a friend, what do you do? Do you just believe it? Of course not, because sometimes people are liars. So, you go and talk to your friend. What you should never do, not in your whole life, is just believe what people say without checking things out for yourself, without having evidence, or proof of what they are saying. In this case, Eve (and Adam was there too, which we will see) should have remembered God’s character—what He was like. They should have remembered how generous He was in placing them in such a beautiful place with every tree that was good for food. They should have remembered that He only said no to one thing, which means He was very reasonable and not at all unfair. They should have remembered that He created them and they were not His equals so they could trust Him because He knows more than they do and has no reason to lie. But they didn’t do any of that. And that was a big mistake. They listened to the wrong person–I mean, critter. And I am going to tell you that in your lives a lot of people are going to tell you a lot of things about God but you should only believe the things that line up with who the Bible says He is. The whole Bible and not just random verses taken out of context. I am sure you don’t like it when someone lies about you or twists your words to make them mean something bad.
What the Serpent is telling her is a terrible temptation. “God doesn’t want you to have this because then you will be like Him and be able to decide what is good and what is bad for yourselves.” And you probably know what that temptation is like. How many times have you listened to your family’s rules and thought, “These rules are stupid, I should be able to do whatever I want and decide for myself what is right and wrong!” I did that when I was a kid too but what Adam and Eve didn’t understand that it isn’t enough to be able to make your own decisions. You need to have experience and wisdom too in order to know which decisions are going to work out good and which decisions are going to lead to disaster. No matter how smart you are, if you don’t have wisdom and experience, it just isn’t enough. So, what is she going to do? And what didn’t Adam do?
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.
Oh no. Say it ain’t so! So, Eve listened to the Serpent and decided that God was pulling the wool over their eyes, tricking them, and that the fruit would give her the independence she wanted, and she wouldn’t have to depend on God anymore to tell her what she could and could not do. I don’t know how long it took her to make the decision, but I know one thing—Adam was right there with her and he was the person who heard the commandment straight from God and not only didn’t He try to talk her out of it, but once he saw she didn’t die—he ate some too. So, what do you think happened? Did it make them happy? Eve sure thought it would make her happy. After all, she saw it was good for eating and it looked good and she sure knew she wanted to know what God knows. So, now she should be happy—they should both be happy. But it’s never that easy.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Well, that doesn’t sound much like taking a victory lap or having a graduation party. They aren’t dead but all of a sudden, for the first time in their lives maybe, they are terribly embarrassed. So, they took the biggest plant leaves they could find, fig leaves, and somehow stitched them together, maybe with twigs, to make some clothes for themselves. Now, if you get out a ruler later, one of the fig leaves from the trees that grow in Mesopotamia, where the Garden was, can be as big as 10” wide and 7” long. That’s really big—almost as big as a sheet of paper. But I also have to tell you about something called phytophotodermatitis. You see, humans have a natural allergic reaction to the sap and leaves of some fig trees. And this stuff is right next to their skin and so they probably didn’t go too long before they started getting super itchy and red, and swollen and irritated. Not only that, but the leaves are hairy underneath. So, nothing about this was even remotely positive. And next week, we are going to find out that being naked made them afraid enough to hide from God. They weren’t afraid of God, they were afraid because they were naked. But that’s where we will stop for now because we have to talk about one-way decisions.
One-way decisions are those things we decide to do that we can never take back. Life isn’t a game where we can yell, “Do over!” if it isn’t going the way we want. There are things we see that we can never unsee. There are things we do that can never be taken back. There are things we can say that other people will never forget. Adam and Eve made that kind of decision when they decided to trust that Serpent, who had given them nothing, instead of God, who had given them everything. But people do that kind of thing all the time. They might gossip about a close friend and lose that friend. They might steal something or cheat on a test and get caught—and people will never trust them again. They might tell a lie about someone else so that they won’t get in trouble for something they did. And kids might make adult decisions that change their lives forever without really understanding the consequences. And adults do these same things. We can all say we are sorry, but we can’t ever go back to who we were and to how people thought about us before we did those things. We can’t force a person to trust us or to not feel hurt and betrayed. Even if they forgive us, everything has changed. So, we have to always be very careful to always be honest and loving. When we do something wrong, we need to admit it and not hurt someone else trying to get away with it. We always need to stop and ask, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” because sometimes the worst thing does happen. Even if we are sure that it won’t. Part of being young is never believing the worst can happen but part of being a grown up is knowing that the worst happens quite a lot when we are doing things we shouldn’t be doing.
When Jesus, God’s Creative Word, came to earth as a human being and began His ministry, the Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted. He hadn’t eaten for forty days or nights and let me tell you from personal experience that when you have gone that long without eating that, at the very end, it is hard to be reasonable. And when He was the weakest is when Satan came to Him and started tempting Him not to do things according to God’s plans. The plans that were made about how to save humans from all the consequences of what Adam and Eve started when they listened to the Serpent instead of God. Because one sin leads to another and another and another. Maybe you’ve done something in your life and to try to fix it you did something even worse and then it got easier and easier to do bad things. That’s how sin is but because of what Jesus did for us, we can stop and do right again, even though there are still consequences.
But Satan didn’t want Jesus to do His job. Satan didn’t want Jesus to win the war against him so he tempted him three times. First, he said, “If you are really God’s Son, turn these stones into bread.” Oh man, if you hadn’t eaten for forty days how good would a loaf of bread look to you??? Then Satan took Jesus to the highest point on the porch of the Temple, about 150 ft high. That’s half the length of a football field! Satan told Jesus to jump down and prove who He was because if He truly was the Messiah, the angels would catch Him. And then Satan showed Him all the Kingdoms of the earth, stretching on forever, and said that if Jesus would follow him instead of God, that Jesus could be king of them all. That last temptation sounds very familiar—it sounds a lot like what the Serpent said to Adam and Eve. “Trust me instead of God and I will see to it that you have everything you want.” But no one has ever loved and trusted God like Jesus the Son and so every time Satan tempted Him, Jesus quoted Scripture to Him and said NO. We need to learn to say no too because Satan always tries to give us the stuff we want and the stuff we think we deserve. And when he says it, it sounds like a really good idea but never is.
But that wasn’t the last time that Jesus was tempted to take the easy path! When Peter finally figured out that Jesus was the Messiah, and then Jesus told Peter that the job of the Messiah wasn’t to destroy the Romans but to be rejected and to be humiliated and to die a painful death, Peter had a fit and rebuked Jesus. That means that Peter told him off bigtime, like your parents do when you’ve really crossed the line. Except Peter rebuking the Son of God is like you rebuking the principal of your school or the President or Prime Minister of your country—only a million times worse. It’s just not going to work—you don’t get to tell Jesus that He is wrong. And Peter was tempting Jesus not to die for our sins. He wanted Jesus to be King the way David was king, and to take an army and go fight their enemies—so that Peter and the others could be rich and powerful too. If Jesus died in that terrible, horrible way, that meant that Peter and the others would die too and so Peter told Him that just wasn’t the right way to do things. But it wasn’t like Jesus was looking forward to dying that way—but it had to be done. We’ll talk about that in a few weeks or so.
In the Garden of Gethsemene, on the night He was arrested, He was also tempted not to go through with God’s plan to save us all on the Cross. He knew it was going to be terrible and that He was going to suffer more than anyone had ever suffered in the history of the whole world. But His love for us was so great that He didn’t give in to temptation. He didn’t take the easy route or the selfish route or the route that would make Him the kind of King everyone wanted Him to be right then and there.
On the Cross, He could have called down thousands of angels to save Him. Who could have blamed Him? But again, He was committed to doing things God’s way—no matter what. If Jesus, with all His power to cast out demons and heal the sick and cleanse lepers and cure the blind and deaf and make paralyzed people walk—and even raise the dead three times—could resist temptation, then so can we. Our decisions aren’t nearly as important as His were. In the book of Hebrews, Jesus is called our Heavenly High Priest who understands us because He was tempted just like we are. He understands how hard it is to resist doing the wrong thing. He understands how easy it is to choose to do the wrong thing. Because of that, when we are tempted, He is always the first one we should go to in prayer. Do you remember what prayer is? Prayer is talking to God. Adam and Eve could have talked to God when they had questions and when they really wanted that fruit. I guarantee you that God would have helped them because that’s what He does. He helps us.
Jesus was perfectly faithful to His Father, and because of that, all authority and power in Heaven and on earth has been handed over to Him. He earned the right to be King over the whole earth. He didn’t make Adam and Eve’s mistake and, not only that, He fixed their mistake. Next week, we’re going to see what happens next. And it isn’t good!
I love you. I am praying for you. I pray you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.