Faith must be confessed. Faith must act. Faith must be tested.
The opposite of faith is unbelief. Unbelief was the root of man’s fall.
We need to see the situation in which Adam and Eve were placed at creation. God had prepared a beautiful place for them, a place of delight, full provision, great joy. The place was called the Garden of Eden.
And from time to time, God came to the garden and fellowshipped with his children, Adam and Eve. But God did not remain permanently present in the garden as a person. When He was not there in person, He was still represented to Adam and Eve by the word that He had left with them.
This is important that we see God’s permanent representative in the lives of Adam and Eve right from the beginning was His word.
That represented Him, that conveyed His mind to them, that represented his authority to them. Their attitude toward the word was the same as their attitude toward God.
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.
This word that God left with Adam had three parts or sections to it.
The first was permission. from any tree you may eat.
The second was prohibition, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.
The third was warning, in the day that you eat, you shall surely die. So, it was a word with three parts, permission, prohibition, and warning.
Now if Adam and Eve believed and obeyed God’s word, they were totally secure. No evil could come to them. No harm of any kind. Every need was fully and abundantly met and guaranteed.
So, the enemy of their souls, the serpent, had to plan his approach in such a way that ultimately, he alienated them from obedience to God’s word.
And he went about it in a very subtle way. The scripture states that he was the subtlest or the craftiest of all the creatures. We notice 3 points about the serpent’s approach. His craftiness.
First, he didn’t go to Adam. but he went to Eve. The scripture calls the woman the weaker vessel.
Secondly, he sought to undermine the authority and the credibility of God’s word.
Thirdly, to do this, he began merely by questioning, not immediately denying the word of God.
Genesis 3: Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. 3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ 4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
As soon as Eve entertained the serpent’s question, I believe she was defeated. The moment she entertained the question; she was in no condition to reject the denial that followed.
We cannot afford to entertain Satan’s questions of the Word of God.
God’s Word in our lives represents God, and we can no more entertain a question of God’s Word than we can entertain a question of God Himself.
As soon as Eve entertained the question, the serpent followed it by a direct denial. God had said, you shall surely die. The serpent said, you surely shall not die.
Thirdly, He alienated Adam and Eve from their personal relationship with God, and he did it in a very subtle way. He suggested, without saying it, that God was a kind of arbitrary ruler who kept Adam and Eve imprisoned in this beautiful garden and did not allow them real liberty or did not permit them to gain full development of their own potential as persons.
He did it this way. He said, God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened. And you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
The implication is God doesn’t want you to be equal to Him. He doesn’t trust you to know good and evil. He wants to keep you in a condition of inferiority.
But people so intelligent and so outstanding as yourselves really shouldn’t endure this situation of inferiority in which this arbitrary despot seeks to keep you. And there’s a way out of it. Just listen to me.
So, you’ll see that really, by implication, Satan was questioning the goodness of God. He was suggesting that God was unfair and arbitrary, a kind of ruler who really couldn’t be trusted.
Primarily faith is in God and his goodness. And once we lose faith in God and his goodness, sooner or later we’re going to lose faith in his word.
And so that was how the serpent went about it.
Genesis 3; 6 Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So, she took some of its fruit and ate it.
I want to pick out a particular point in that tremendously significant. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. We don’t need to read further.
The key word there is saw. When the woman saw
2 Corinthians 5:7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. Faith and sight are opposites.
Up to that moment, Adam and Eve had walked by faith. Faith in the word of God that they could not see that they could not apprehend with their physical senses, but their faith in God’s invisible word had protected them from the serpant. But at that moment, Eve descended from one level to another. She came down from the faith level in the invisible word of God. She came down to the sense level and she believed what her senses showed her.
When the woman saw, that word saw there is so critical, it indicates the changeover from living by faith to living by sight.
The tree had certain specific appeals for her senses. Once she was open to them, by coming down from the faith realm, it appealed to three things in Eve.
It was good for food,
it was a delight to the eyes,
and desirable to make one wise.
Now these are the three basic forms of temptation that recur all through human experience.
They’re referred to in 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 and 16, where John says this, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
Notice the three dominant influences of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
Those were the three elements of that tree that appealed to Eve.
It was good for food, that was the lust of the flesh.
It was a delight to the eyes, that was the lust of the eyes.
And it was desirable to make one wise, that’s the boastful pride of life.
You see, the ultimate motivation which Satan injected into Adam and Eve was the desire to be independent of God.
And that’s the basic motivation of sin. Wherever the desire to achieve independence of God makes itself present and comes into operation, the result will be sin and rebellion against God. It can be very subtle.
Outwardly, there was nothing wrong in the temptation. You shall be like God. What could be better than to be like God?
But in essence, it appealed to a desire in them not to have to depend on God any longer, but to be independent, to be autocratic, to handle their own lives. And that’s the very essence of sin.
Now faith is the antidote, because faith brings us back into dependence on God, true faith.
Faith reaffirms God’s goodness and faith reaffirms the reliability of God’s word above our senses.
The 3 things that the fall brought about are rectified by faith.
Faith brings us back into dependence on God, faith reaffirms God’s goodness, and faith reaffirms the reliability of God’s word above our senses.
That is why faith is the antidote to the fall. What was lost through the fall is recovered when we return to God in faith. Faith is the only basis for righteous living.