BIBLE STUDY FOR TEXAS: Eden was both a garden and a battleground

November 20, 2000

Get more information about Bible Study for Texas here.

December 3 Lesson

Eden was both a garden and a battleground
___Genesis 3:1-13
___¹Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
___²The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
___⁴"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. ⁵"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
___⁶When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
___⁸Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"
___¹⁰He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
___¹¹And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
___¹²The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
___¹³Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"

___By Joe Blair
___I made sure the doors were locked last night, because potential evil is outside and I want to keep evil out. Generally, people do not have to be convinced of the potentiality for evil or its presence. We do lock our doors; we secure varieties of insurance to protect us from the bad. We see the hurt and suffering caused by evil all over the world as well as just down the street or next door or in our own places. But evil was not present in the beginning, nor did God intend for evil to be the experience of humanity.
___God made creation good, which included human beings (Genesis 1:31). A good creation meant among other things that everything was in harmony. Human beings were in harmony with God, with themselves, with creation and within themselves. The Garden of Eden shows the peace and fulfillment of human beings within this harmony.
___God created Adam and Eve in his image (Genesis 1: 26-27), which meant they could have fellowship with each other, with creation and with God. God also shared his sovereignty with Adam and Eve, with human beings, by allowing them to have dominion within creation (1:26). Since dominion was given, Adam and Eve also had the power to decide, to make choices.
___The power to decide is what made Adam and Eve, and all human beings to follow, human. Otherwise, they, and we, would be programmed computer chips without the potential to relate to anything about them in meaningful ways, including relationship with God. Because Adam and Eve could decide, the potential existed that they could decide against God. Therefore, while God began them in a context of wonderful harmony, they had the potential to continue the harmony or to disrupt the harmony.
___
___Wrong is possible
___The "serpent" appears. The serpent can really function only so long as an audience is available. The serpent is "crafty" (Genesis 3:1); he is a deceiver. However, the serpent has no power over Eve or Adam; his deception is only possible because they allow themselves to be deceived. Eve gives an audience to the potentiality of evil as she chooses to have conversation with the serpent.
___The serpent begins with a question that seems innocent enough: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?'" (3:1). Of course God did not say that, for they could eat of any tree except one--the tree in the "middle of the garden" (3:3-4; see 2:15-16). This question really introduces the possibility of human questioning of God. We realize how easy it is for Eve to begin rationalizing in her mind. Why did God say we could eat of every tree but this one? After all, all the trees in the garden are good, so what is wrong with this one? The prohibition doesn't make sense.
___We are aware of the process. We question the moral reality of God ourselves, justifying the desire to act on or apart from God's will. For example, as regards stealing, we may soliloquize with ourselves, "Is it really right for that person to have so much and for me to have so little?" Or as regards gossip, "Is it really right for that person to talk badly about me without my talking badly about that person?" We use questions to question the righteous obedience for which God calls, so that we can build different answers than God's. We can build up such answers that we have a whole set of rationalizations for a whole range of actions. Soon we are at the point that we no longer question our actions, about gossip for example, because our answers justifying it have become so well ingrained that we just act out the conclusions already reached. Only the gospel can confront us and free us from our fallacies.
___Eve recognizes the potential wrong inherent in the question of the serpent, for she repeats quickly the instruction of God (2:16-17) as a defense, but she does not dismiss the serpent. She chooses to participate in a continuing dialogue with evil. She continues to give audience to the temptation to do what is against God's will.
___We are aware of this human response as well. We have the power to dismiss temptation immediately, or we may continue to entertain the temptation. To continue to entertain temptation means we already are beginning to open the door and allow evil in, for now we are at the stage of searching for ways to justify doing what the temptation offers.
___How do we resist temptation? The best way to do so is to focus upon a good option in place of the evil. We do not stop overeating or eating unhealthily by concentrating on the food we would like to have; rather, we concentrate on the health we want to have. Eve had the statement of God in her mind and verbalized it--she was not to eat the fruit of that tree, but the fruit of all the other trees were available to her. She could have concentrated on those. God provides abundant good upon which we can concentrate in place of the evil.
___Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Part of the meaning of this statement may be put this way: "If you really want righteousness as much as you have real hunger for food and real thirst for water, you will have it. If you do not, you will not." Do we do a lot of pretending that we want righteousness, pretending that the evil is greater than we are, and thus has overcome us? Eve is in control to this point, but in her process of embracing the wrong, she takes another step toward evil.
___She chooses to listen to the temptation more. No, the serpent says, "You will not die" (3:4), as Eve and Adam had been told. By telling her she would not die, the tempter invites her to set herself over against God. What a subtle temptation to self-centeredness. Could she exist independently of God and his will? She could make the decision about the trees. She could act in sovereignty over everything. Why, she could become a god herself.
___The tree with its fruit was there for Adam and Eve to give them freedom to choose the way of God or to choose another way. Going against God was a possibility, or there would be no freedom of choice. Separating oneself from God, however, was to embrace an existence of death outside the garden.
___Wrong done
___For Eve, the fruit of that tree became more important than God's will. The temptation is very much like the temptation which came to Jesus when Satan urged him to turn the stones into bread: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). Jesus was very hungry, and bread must have seemed so right. But the tempter asked him to deny his humanness by making bread out of stones. Jesus knew that was wrong. What God said was more important than bread, as famished as he was, so he refused. Eve needed that kind of commitment, but she did not embrace what God said and make it a reality in her life. She embraced the temptation and turned it into actuality.
___Of course, Adam did the same. Both of them had their eyes opened, which means they now could see that they had set themselves as independent moral agents over against God. Their failure is magnified in their realization that they are "naked" (3:7). They cover themselves in order to hide from themselves and from each other. The harmony of relationship within themselves and with each other has been disrupted. The wholeness and harmony of relationship that they have known now becomes impossible.
___God confronts
___Sinfulness always drives us into hiding, as it did Adam and Eve. We cannot hide from God, and in some way he always confronts us. God asked Adam: "Where are you?" (3:9). God knew where Adam was; the sense of the question may be stated in this way, "Adam, do you realize what you have done? Look where you are now." Therefore, Adam and Eve's shameful state of being does not belong in God's picture, so they attempted to hide from disruption of relationship they introduced. They made a world, a life that could not be a part of the garden. They knew somehow that everything had changed, and they wanted to hide themselves from the consequences of their action.
___The next attempted action to escape their sin was to shift responsibility for their wrongdoing. Adam blames both the woman and God (3:12). God's blame according to Adam was in the fact that God gave him the woman. Eve blamed the serpent (3:13). Of course, they are responsible, and as we read the rest of the story of Chapter 3, we see that God made them accept responsibility.
___Most of us know about blame shifting, or excuse making, in order to escape responsibility. One of the highest forms of excuse making is, "The devil made me do it." But evil has no power over us as to our wills except the power we give to evil. The woman did not have power over the man, and the serpent did not have power over the woman. We are responsible for our own choices and actions. Others contribute and impact us, but we cannot blame others for what we will to do. The man and the woman are equally responsible in this failure.
___Joe Blair is a professor of Christianity and chair of department of Christianity and Philosophy at Houston Baptist University

For thought and discussion
___ God is good. What does goodness mean, since everything God made in the beginning was good? What examples of God's goodness would you give? Did Adam and Eve have ample goodness to turn to instead of turning to the evil? Would you say the reasons for doing good were stronger than the reasons for doing evil? If so, does not the very fact that Adam and Eve did wrong anyway indicate how strong is the human desire to be gods of our lives?
___ Which is stronger, good or evil? Do human beings have power to overcome evil? How does God relate to overcoming evil? What are some examples you can give of God having overcome evil decisively in someone who was willing for God to do so?
___ Describe Adam and Eve's attempts to hide and shift blame. What are examples of shifting the responsibilities for one's actions to someone else? What are some ways in which people hide from God?
___ God forgives. What does that mean? How does forgiveness work? What is the impact of forgiveness? Do you think that the fact God sought Adam and Eve after their sin indicates God wanted to continue relationship from his side although they separated themselves to them? Was this an act of forgiveness?

Get printer-friendly version of this story

Send this story to a friend

Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!