Podcast Episode 6: Two Temptations, Part 2

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But the serpent said to the woman, “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.”
-Genesis 3:4-5

For those of you who were with us last time, we are taking a look at the Fall in Genesis 3, where Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempts Eve to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Satan uses two approaches, and we already looked at the first, where he tries to place doubt that God even said what He said.

This time, He will use a much more subtle approach: he will question the meaning of God’s straightforward command.

He was refuted when he suggested that God did not make the command at all. Eve rightfully puts him in his place then. But that does not stop him. He says, in essence, “Oh, you’re right. God did say that. I remember now. But that’s not what He really meant. See, you have to take what He says in cultural context. It doesn’t come across that way in the original Hebrew. There’s no way you can take God’s command for that time and place and apply it to the modern world! See, God is putting us on a trajectory where one day we would be able to eat from the Tree. when He said ‘eat,’ God was really referring to an old Hebrew tradition of cutting fruit in half before you eat it, but it’s perfectly okay to eat it whole. Or maybe God said, ‘do not eat,’ but if you don’t chew it, it’s not really eating.”

I’m exaggerating, of course, but it’s to make a point. The Church today is filled with interpretation. We use all sorts of excuses to ignore the very clear Word of God. We try to claim that passages are cultural, as though the Holy Spirit meant the Word to only apply to certain people in a certain place and time. We pretend certain words do not mean other words, such as taking the phrase “sexual immorality” to mean that fornication is perfectly okay, because the word “fornication” was not specifically used. We try to say that God meant for us to evolve beyond certain passages, so that the words of His only begotten Son aren’t important anymore. We try to take the Grace of God and say we don’t have to worry about the rest of it. We make new laws and ignore old ones. We have pet passages and skip the others. We take things out of context and make doctrine out of it.

And every bit of it comes from the devil.

Every bit.

It’s the old lie: God didn’t really mean what He said. Well, I tell you the truth, “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

I’m going to tell you something else. It’s better that way. It’s better that we can trust the Word of God. It’s better because we’re not worthy of Him. We know it. If you think otherwise, then I urge you to take a look at your life, at the greed, lust, undue anger, selfishness, and ambition. Look at the motives of your heart, and tell me that you don’t need to fear a just God.

But we can trust the Word of God, and that Word tells us that Jesus paid the price for our sin when He died on the Cross. He died for us, so we might live. And the Bible also tells us that if we repent and believe in Jesus, that we will be forgiven.

There may be parts of the Bible you don’t like. I would ask you to try to understand them fully instead of dismissing them. Study them. See, because if we discard of the Bible, then we have thrown away our only chance at life, because it is the Bible that teaches us about Jesus.