Genesis 3:1-19 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
God’s Zoo Summer Worship Series Sunday, June 13, 2021 “Clever Serpent”
Last week as we began our summer worship series, we visited God’s Zoo. We visited the start of it all, the Grand Opening, the very beginning. And we heard God himself describe everything that he had made, including all of the animals: the flying animals and the water animals and the livestock and the wild animals and the creeping animals…he described all of it as very good. He created people as well, something different and greater and above the animals that he had made, and they were very good as well. But the zoo when it opened seemed very different from any zoo that we could go visit today, and the animals as they were created seem to bear little resemblance to what we see today. And, perhaps to an even greater degree, the people that God created have changed in drastic ways from the way that we find them in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. And all of those changes can be summarized this way: things are no longer very good. Things are no longer perfect. Things are no longer following the pattern that God established in the way that all creatures relate to each other and to their Creator. And that’s what today’s visit to God’s Zoo is all about. It is a key account in salvation history, a key account in all of world history. If you don’t understand this event, the world will not make sense to you. It cannot. This is the account of Genesis chapter 3. Maybe, like me, you can think of visits to the zoo where you stood in front of an enclosure and you tried really hard to figure out what exactly you were looking for. Was the animal hiding back in a den out of site? Was it so camouflaged that you just couldn’t see it? Was it out for a visit to the zookeeper or veterinarian? You nearly push your face up against the glass in order to see what unique features are in the animal there. At other times, you don’t even have to look at the sign. The giant elephant or tall giraffe is right there in the open where you can see it and study it. Today’s animal is not nearly as large as those, but he sure sticks out. He’s not hiding from our view. In fact, the very first Hebrew word of Genesis chapter 3 tells us who we are dealing with. That word means, “and the serpent” or “now the serpent.” This is the character in the account— keep in mind that this is a true story—this is the character who gets the spotlight. This is where we focus our attention. It is even unusual, different from the way that Hebrew is normally written. The most frequent way for a Hebrew sentence to start is with the verb, the action word. Not Genesis chapter 3. We turn the page on God’s creating everything very good, and all the emphasis, all the focus goes to the serpent. And this serpent is very clever. Other translations have told us that he is crafty or cunning. He is shrewd. All of these words capture at least to an extent that Hebrew adjective. And already we have to wonder whether there is something more to this serpent than being simply a serpent. We don’t expect any of the animals to be crafty or shrewd or clever. We expect them to simply do as animals do. And one thing that animals don’t do our clever serpent does: he talks. Just in case we had still been confused, this is no ordinary serpent. This is a serpent and more than a serpent. He is a serpent in whose form the devil, Satan, the enemy of God, presents himself. God doesn’t have Moses record all of those details here in Genesis, but he does share those details with us in the rest of Scripture. And what does this clever, devilish serpent do in the account before us? We’ll consider really three parts: he brings temptation, he is successful, and he is cursed. The temptation comes when the serpent approaches the woman, Eve, and starts by saying, “Has God really said.” “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The answer was no. God had given Adam and Eve many fruit-bearing trees throughout the garden from which they could eat their fill. And Eve said as much to the serpent as she answered. She rightly explained that there was only one tree that had a different command. There was one, special tree in the middle of the garden. The fruit from that tree was off limits. It came with that command, and it came with the warning that those who would disobey the command would face death.