We return to Genesis Chapter 3 in our series in origins. I didn’t know when I started out how long we’d be into this series, but I’m certainly enjoying every bit of it, as we look at the origin of those things which are absolutely critical to any kind of true world view. We have dealt with creation; seen how God created the entire universe in six days, six solar days, an evening and a morning; and we are now studying the fall of man. The third chapter of Genesis in many ways is the most defining chapter in the Bible because it explains why things are the way they are today: Why there is what there is in the world; why there is decay; why there is disease; why there is dysfunction; why there is disintegration; why there is ultimately death and judgment. Those things plague our entire universe, and they all come out of the event recorded in Genesis Chapter 3, the fall of man and his universe. And as it is true of Genesis 1 and 2 that you have God’s own account of creation, here again, you have God’s own account of the fall. This is God’s history.
Yes, it is true that Moses was the human instrument who wrote this history, but it was all inspired by the spirit of God. As the New Testament tells us, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Holy men of God, including Moses, were moved by the Holy Spirit as they penned the scripture. And this is God’s inspired history on the fall. It explains why things are the way they are in the world. It establishes the dilemma of sin, the presence of all those things I mentioned; decay, disease, dysfunction, disintegration, death and judgment. It also establishes for us the need for restoration, the need for re-creation and the need for regeneration and salvation. All of this is built on Genesis Chapter 3.
Now, what happens in Genesis Chapter 3 is that Adam and Eve, who up to this point are sinless and living in a perfect environment in which death does not exist, and disintegration doesn’t exist and disease doesn’t exist, and dysfunction doesn’t exist and decay doesn’t exist; none of those things exist. It’s a perfect world, perfect in every sense. It is complete in terms of its creation, and it is flawless and without any decay or anything that disintegrates. It is the perfect, Edenic creation of God. And they live in it without sin, enjoying all the wonders of God’s creation. But at some point — we don’t know exactly how much time elapsed from the sixth day of creation on — we don’t know how long from the time they were created until they sinned; it was certainly before they gave birth to children — somewhere in there, this occurred. And there is really no way to know precisely when it happened. But we can know how it happened. What you have here in Genesis 3 is not legend, it’s not myth, it’s not a fairy tale, it’s not a tradition passed down from generation to generation. It is the written and inspired word of God. And it explains to us exactly why things are the way they are, and how sin came into our world and how it began to affect our world.
Now again, the first seven verses give us the account. And as we flow through these verses, we identify certain features that become the hooks to hang our thoughts on. First is the solicitor, the solicitor. That is Satan introduced to us in Verse 1. “The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” And here we are introduced to the solicitor, the one who solicits sin, the one who he is the tempter. This is a real reptile, as we’ve already learned, because he’s compared to other beasts of the field. This is not a supernatural creature. This isn’t a figment of imagination in the mind of Eve, as Jewish scholars have always believed; that there never really was a serpent, that was just something going on in the mind of Eve. But it clearly indicates this was a serpent. This was a “nachash”; this was some kind of reptile. The synonym to that is the word “tanin,” used as a synonym in some places and translated “dragon.” And Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20 Verse 2 describe Satan as a “serpent” and a “dragon,” some kind of reptile. And in this case an upright reptile, coming up and holding a conversation with Eve. More intelligent, more crafty — the word “crafty” means intelligent or wise — than any other animal, because this animal was merely an instrument for Satan. Satan was talking through the animal and, therefore, the animal had supernatural wisdom; not in its own animal life, but because it was an instrument of a supernatural creature, namely, Satan. Satan, as you remember, fell. He was Lucifer, “son of the morning,” probably the praise leader of heaven. And he decided he wanted to be like God. He wanted to be like the most high God. And so God threw him out of heaven, along with a third of the other holy angels. And they constitute Satan and his demons.
So when cast out of heaven, he then goes down to earth and attempts to bring the rebellion into the perfection of the earth. He comes as the primary solicitor of evil. He still is behind evil in our world. Obviously, we are all sinful, and so evil is in us. But he is still the main solicitor. He is still — not that he comes individually to everybody and solicits like he did Eve — but he has developed a world system. He has developed a world cosmos, a world order, that becomes the source by which he tempts. Through many avenues in the world, temptation comes at people. He is still the primary solicitor of evil. Since the time his own rebellion was quashed in heaven by God and he was thrown out, he has become the number one adversary of God, and the number one adversary of man. And so he continues even today, and will always be until he is cast into the lake of fire, the primary solicitor of evil. So we saw the solicitor.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
