Here, we see that Satan contradicts the Lord more than once. God recompenses him for this in verses 14-15. We’ll get to it in a short or long while (whichever my work week permits in the seven days following Saturday — there’s still no schedule yet due to busyness), but to see this scene in one of the first chapters in the Bible is one heck of a plot twist. The premise of the entire chapter and what God says to us is fairly straightforward from our standpoint, but Eve had no idea what on earth the devil was plotting against her and Adam that day. Neither of them should have given in to him. But I don’t want to talk about anyone’s sin right now. Yet I will say this: what a lot of churches say you deserve, what many unchurched people (Christian or otherwise) say you deserve, and what God says you deserve are all three different things, and to an extent, their theology can actually contradict each other. Personally, I don’t believe that God says any one person has never deserved a chance to know Him. That’s impossible. For Jesus’ sacrifice on His cross makes it possible for anyone to accept Him. I know I won’t add to it, nor will I take away from it. I think this is biblical to believe.
To give you some background information on how Satan became so crafty, the story is simple: he was created as Lucifer, but literally deified himself and got his followers to abandon the Holy One and rebel against Him (Isaiah 14:12-14). There are other Scriptures that explain this in other ways, but so far, the only three others I know of are Ezekiel 28:12-19, Luke 10:18, and 1 John 3:8. And since he has succeeded in tempting Eve to eat the fruit so that Adam would do the same, all of us have been enslaved to him, until Jesus died and rose again. Yet not everyone knows about this, nor is everyone saved, seeing that hate and idol worship is huge in this world still, even in the tail end of 2018. And sadly, not everyone has a human preach Jesus to them in this life. Thank God that He makes up for it by trying to get others to recognize Jesus by good teachings, though (Romans 2:14-15). And I know what you’re thinking, “It’s a pretty weird teaching to believe,” but you know how some people are with overtly blasphemous things like the idea that God didn’t create someone for salvation or that condemnation was set for them before time began. They’re those types of people who do many hateful and godless things and say nothing but problematic statements (for the words out of the mouth is the abundance of the heart; see Matthew 12:34), and if they don’t get their way even in the slightest forms or ways, they throw a fit and manipulate many to accept them. Sometimes they can lie about being friendly to you. They do this to everyone. Don’t entrust yourself to them.
At least, though, the food in the garden was good, and I’m sure God was willing to grow more. Even with this terrible incident (verses 6-8), He made more vegetation happen. But death was included by means of Satan’s power. Funny how the tree of knowledge of good and evil was forbidden to everyone. I think God wanted them to love Him without them getting worried about what can happen. But do you think Adam and Eve would have succeeded in staying in Eden (see verses 22-24) if Satan hadn’t gotten to them at all? I don’t really think they would’ve sinned, to be honest. People have told me that even without Satan, Adam and Eve were still capable of disobedience due to the free will that God had gifted them with, and that people don’t need Satan to be enslaved on every occasion, in essence, but they didn’t want to disobey Him… or at least, Eve never wanted that. Satan tricked her, didn’t he? (See 1 Timothy 2:14.) I don’t know what Adam was thinking. But we’ll get into the ideas of men and women in the next post!
P.S. I forgot to mention that this five-verse passage is found in page 2 of both the NKJV and NASB Bibles I have, and is also found in page 4 of both the VOICE and Amplified Bible (Classic Edition) translations I had bought about three years apart.
Ron And His Stories 