Pastor Tim Patoka
God’s Zoo: Clever Serpent
June 13, 2021
The Serpent Tempts and Falls Genesis 3:1-19 1) The Serpent Tempts Us to Fall into Sin 2) The Serpent has Fallen into Defeat Just about everybody has some instinctual reaction to snakes. Most of us are afraid of snakes or at least get spooked by them. I remember one cold morning when my wife and I found a snake in our garage. Thankfully it was too sluggish to pose any serious threat, but that didn’t stop us from being extra careful as we swept its coiling self outside. Even in the safe confines of a zoo’s reptile house, it’s not unusual to see people skip over and hurry through the snake section. But not everyone instinctually reacts this way to snakes. There are some who have them as pets or work with them for a living. Some who hold sankes up in high regard because of the symbolism people attach to them. Christians too have an instinctual reaction to snakes, but it’s not solely for the reasons I’ve already mentioned. Rather, it uniquely comes from our verses this morning in Genesis chapter 3. As we talk about these verses, we don’t consider them a parable, figurative story, or imaginary tale. We’re talking about actual history that happened exactly as God describes in his own Word. And in this supernatural account, we find Satan taking the form of a serpent who tempts the first two humans, Adam and Eve, to sin against God. It is this serpent we’ll be looking at today and the role he played in two kinds of falls. First is the fall into sin that he continues to tempt us with today. And second is his own fall into everlasting defeat when he got his serpent head crushed by Eve’s promised seed. 1) The Serpent Tempts Us to Fall into Sin Last week, we learned about how God created every kind of animal on days 5 and 6 of Creation. But he did more than create animals. God in fact made everything there is in our universe, including a specific tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After God created Adam and Eve, he told them this, “You may freely eat from every tree in the garden, 17but you shall not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day that you eat from it, you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16-17 EHV) Adam and Eve had 1 clear way to show their love for God, only 1 command to follow – don’t eat from the forbidden tree. It was sometime later that Satan entered the picture in the form of a talking snake. As we earlier read, Satan starts off with a seemingly innocent question to Eve clarifying what exactly God had said Adam and Eve could and couldn’t do. Without repeating it all, we see how Satan then cleverly uses half-truths and outright lies so that Adam and Eve would question God’s truthfulness and loving intention behind his command to not eat the forbidden fruit. By the time Satan was done, he had entirely deceived Eve’s mind, heart, and will. Her mind understood the 1
Pastor Tim Patoka
God’s Zoo: Clever Serpent
June 13, 2021
logical benefit of this forbidden fruit to fill her stomach. Her heart was drawn to its appeal to the eyes much like a kid in a candy shop. Her will desired to be wise like God knowing good and evil. And Adam was no better who was not only there the entire time, but was quick to eat the forbidden fruit that Eve offered him. When we look at Adam and Eve’s sin today, we can be a bit critical of them. Adam and Eve were talking with a snake. Shouldn’t that have been a red flag? Adam and Eve just had 1 thing they couldn’t do. Was it really that hard to avoid that 1 forbidden tree? They should have known better! While the Bible places the guilt squarely on Adam and secondly on Eve for this sin, let’s not forget the role that Satan the serpent played. It was him who tempted Adam and Eve to fall into sin in the first place. And he is very clever with his half-truths and outright lies to deceive people’s minds, hearts, and wills so they sin against God. I see how Satan cleverly tempts people today to fall into sin as one of your pastors. In our youth ministry, I see how Satan tempts children to disobey their parents and others in authority. In our campus ministry, I see how Satan tempts college-aged adults to enjoy the blessings of marriage and certain substances before it’s allowed. And he does this with the same tried and true tactics he used in the Garden of Eden. A clever use of half-truths and outright lies to deceive our mind’s intellect, our heart’s emotions, and our will’s desire so that we willingly sin against God with only ourselves to blame. Satan doesn’t just do this with children or collegeaged adults. He does this in our own lives and those we know. Because the sad truth is that Satan is often just as successful today as he was with Adam and Eve when tempting people to fall into sin. And when we do, we feel sin’s effects. Adam and Eve certainly did after that bit into that forbidden fruit. With eyes wide open, they knew good and evil from experience and on the wrong side of the equation. Because of sin, they now felt shame at their nakedness and covered themselves up as soon as possible. They felt fear of God’s righteous punishment as evidenced with their purposeful hiding during the cool of the day. They refused to repent of their sins when they played the blame game. As Adam and Eve would learn, sin will only bring us sorrow and suffering in the end, not satisfaction. We too feel these effects when we fall into sin. We know good and evil from experience and on the wrong side of the equation. We have felt shame for the sins we’ve committed and what we’ve become. How mortified would you be in certain stories of your past or parts of your personality came to public light? Because of our sins, we fear God’s righteous judgment that we surely deserve. How difficult is it for the people you invite to worship with you to come because they’re afraid of the whose house it is? We refuse to repent of our sins because we’d rather play the blame game. How often have we acted like immature children who say, “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t my fault! It was theirs!”? 2
Pastor Tim Patoka
God’s Zoo: Clever Serpent
June 13, 2021
The more we fall for Satan’s temptations, the further we fall into sin and away from God. That’s exactly what Satan the serpent wanted for Adam and Eve. That’s exactly what he wants for us today. And that has been his sole agenda these past 6,000 – 10,000 years that our created world has been around. 2) The Serpent has Fallen into Defeat Genesis chapter 3 paints for us a dark and dismal picture. For not only do we see how Adam and Eve broke God’s created world, we learn the root cause of all the sorrow and suffering we see today. But what is remarkable is what God does despite the situation. Instead of lashing out in anger against Adam and Eve, abandoning them to their own devices, or abolishing the world and starting all over, he gives us hope. In speaking to Satan the serpent the LORD God says, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush his heel.” (Genesis 3:15 EHV) Although Satan may have won the day in the Garden of Eden, he wouldn’t always. For the day was coming when Eve’s promised offspring would crush his serpent head and mark his unreturnable fall into everlasting defeat. God would bring that promised fall to fulfillment thousands of years later in his Son, Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus comes from Eve on his mother’s side because of his genealogy tree in Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3. We know that Jesus and Satan were hostile enemies as seen throughout his public time on earth. And Satan would leave his mark on Jesus’ figurative heel by inciting the people’s hearts against to strike him, smite him, and afflict him in body and soul. But Jesus would win the war by crushing Satan’s figurative head by dying a perfect, sacrificial death on the cross and confirming its significance with his resurrection from the dead. The LORD God’s promise to Adam and Eve has been fulfilled, just as he said. Because our Savior has crushed Satan’s serpent head, we are free from sin’s effects. Our sinful shame before God is taken away and remembered no more. Our fear of God’s righteous punishment is misplaced because God has already punished his Son in our place. Our refusal to repent is logically done away with because we know what is at the other end – Jesus and his gift of forgiveness. Satan has fallen into everlasting defeat from which he can’t ever climb out of. Let us rejoice in that! But that doesn’t mean Satan is no longer a threat. Even though his eternal fate has been sealed, he remains in this world tempting us to fall into sin so that we may fall down with him for eternity. That’s why God has given a number of disciplinary measures in our world today so we may keep our eyes on the one crushed Satan’s serpent head.
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Pastor Tim Patoka
God’s Zoo: Clever Serpent
June 13, 2021
Whenever we see a snake slithering on the ground and eating dust, we remember how he ended up there – by successfully tempting Adam and Eve to sin against God with the tried and true tactics he successfully uses against us. Whenever there is pain in childbirth, husbands and wives misusing the headship principle that God established during perfection, and toilsome work just to eke out life’s bare necessities, we remember that sin will only bring sorrow and suffering in the long run, not satisfaction. Whenever a person passes away and returns to the dust they once were, we remember that only our Savior Jesus Christ can free us from death with his gift of forgiveness and promise of eternal life. Conclusion Almost all people have some sort of instinctual reaction to snakes. But for Christians, our uniquely comes from Genesis chapter 3 because of the role that Satan the serpent had in 2 kinds of falls. He first tempts us to fall into sin. As Satan cleverly used half-truths and outright lies to deceive Adam and Eve’s mind, heart, and will to sin against God, so he tempts us with the same tried and true tactics. When we fall for his temptations, we suffer from sin’s effects of shame of what we’ve done and become, fear of God’s righteous punishment, and refusal to repent of our wrongs. And the sad truth is that the more we fall into sin, the further we fall away from our God as Satan has always wanted for all Eve’s offspring. Yet Satan has not won the day. Rather, he has secondly fallen into everlasting defeat. In the midst of Genesis 3’s dark and dismal picture, we see how God gives us hope with the promise of Satan’s crushed serpent head. Jesus fulfilled that promise with his genealogy, life, death, and resurrection. And this fulfilled promise frees us from sin’s sad effects. No more shame before God. No more fear of his righteous punishment. No more reasons to hold off repentance. Though Satan has fallen into everlasting defeat, he still poses a danger to us with his clever temptations. When he comes after us in non-threatening and unassuming forms, we should do what Adam and Eve failed to do when Satan the serpent started talking – run away and practice stranger danger! Because Satan knows better than to approach us as a talking serpent, we need to beef up our knowledge of what God actually says in his Word and be on the constant lookout so we can better identify him when he comes. Know that Satan is out there, patiently waiting to cleverly use his tried and true tactics against you as he did with Adam and Eve. When we fall into sin because of his temptations (because it’s sadly going to happen), let us go back to Jesus and receive his forgiveness which frees us from all of sin’s sad effects. When we see or feel God’s disciplinary measures in our lives today, let us heed God’s intention behind him to keep our eyes on our Savior who crushed Satan’s head once and for all. Amen.
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