•To assess from Genesis the events and actions of the players at the ‘Fall’ of man.

•The Master Chef’s creation was challenged by the serpent’s question: ‘Has God really said…?’ The serpent follows with a more direct and emphatic statement by stating God will not do what He said.

•The serpent is more than a serpent; he is a real being that is cunning and evil, tempting the first man and woman by suggesting they could be like God, knowing good and evil, without God and without serious consequences from disobeying the Creator’s command.

•The man and the woman take action: they listen to the serpent, observe the qualities of the forbidden tree, conclude they can gain wisdom from it without God but become like Him, and finally eat in turn.

•The change in the first two people is immediate, and their response to God’s appearance is classic in human behavior when caught doing something disobedient: they hide from Him.

1.THE CHANGE. A tragedy has begun, and the first verse of Chapter 3 shows the change because something challenges the truthfulness of what God says. His record begins with a surprise: a talking serpent but also a creature with a distinct trait—he was crafty. God explains that the level of craftiness was beyond that of any other animal. The serpent had excellent language capability. Because of the facts laid out, we also know that he is already in the garden of God’s making. We do not know how much time has elapsed from the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. It was probably not long. Eve had not conceived. So, who is the creature? For the information to be complete, one must go to other scriptures like Job 1, Luke 10:18, John 8:44, Revelation 12:2-9, and 20:2. Additional research can include a review of Isaiah 14:12-19 and [Research note: who was the serpent?] The ground work has been laid by the enemy of God and our souls to approach Adam and Eve. He starts with Eve by posing a simple but profound question that quietly challenges God’s direction: ‘Did God really mean what He said?’

2.A NOTE ABOUT EVIL. For those who may be completely unfamiliar with the Bible, God provides critical information in scriptures, like those cited above, regarding evil. God addresses evil in several ways but one of the key understandings of evil is the existence of spiritual beings with evil power. It is unfortunate that the media provides a typically incorrect picture of this, so it might be helpful to avoid thinking in terms of movies, video, and the like. Rather, the biblical view of evil involves a definite spiritual being (Lucifer or Satan), but there are also spiritual beings (demons) that follow him. The motivation that brought their situation about will sound familiar: they wanted to be like God. This is not much different from Adam and Eve wanting to know good and evil for themselves without God. The events, the sin of Adam and Eve as well as the rebellion in heaven by spiritual beings, occur near the beginning. This may bring a question: why did God do this? It is more correct to ask the question a different way: why did God make people able to decide whether to follow God or not? Perhaps part of the answer is that real love involves having the freedom to reject love. If you thought that your child was programmed to love you and had no choice in the matter, would that be real love on your part? In God’s wisdom and perfection, He made Adam and Eve able to choose to rely on God or not. In everyday life, we bear the consequences of our decisions and choices, just as Adam and Eve bore the consequences of their actions in the garden. The effects are far reaching, as we will study later.

3.If you examine your list of events, notice the conversation that occurs between this enemy and Eve. The enemy wastes no time, because his questioning if God really means what He says now goes a step further. Now he says if she eats of the fruit of the only tree that God said not to eat, she will surely NOT die. God explains in Genesis 3:6 and following that Eve already has a root problem: she wanted wisdom on her own terms and to be like God. It is not long before Eve and Adam both eat, because both want the same thing. After eating the forbidden fruit their eyes are opened because something has changed on the inside. God, knowing what has occurred, comes to ask a question. He already knows the answer. You can read God’s plain report about what Adam said, which is also what we typically do when we have done wrong because of our disobedience: we pass the blame to someone else. But, the damage has been done. Both have sinned; their hearts have changed and their knowledge of good and evil has changed. However, the cost of their actions is high. They are physically alive, but now they are also spiritually dead, in keeping with God’s sure promise that eating of the tree will cause death. God’s warning in the literal Hebrew was, “Dying, you shall surely die.” And they began to die physically on that very day; physical death became inevitable for them and all their descendants. The wall between God and man cannot be penetrated by what man does, and the person responsible for the wall is man himself. Since that time ungodly men have tried to hide from God, which is just what Adam and Eve tried to do as they hid among the trees. Hiding did not work then; it still does not work when we try to hide from God.