Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
I don’t know what your to-do list is today, but have you ever had a day where you had a list of things you were going to do that was hijacked in the first five minutes of the day? Maybe you thought, “I’m going to be a doer today. I’m going to do this list of things today,” and with the first conversation of the day that was changed. There is an emergency, problem, or someone says, “I’ve got a quick question,” which never really is quick.
The fact is that we respect doers. We like people who don’t just speak or think, but are people of action. Think about our history, our country, or the universe and you see what doers have done. Yet, even with those whom we consider to be doers, so much of what they do in any given day is not of their doing. It is not of their own initiative. It is responding.
The Bill Rice Ranch is the result, humanly, of God’s working through Bill and Cathy Rice, who were doers. But even that was a response to a tragedy they had in their lives. So, say you are a doer and you have things you want to do today but someone hijacks your day. Well, that is just pure mathematics because you may have fifteen things to do today, but you are working around thirty-five people who all have fifteen things they want to do today. What I am getting at is that your life is largely defined not by what you do, but by how you respond, and, specifically in Genesis 3, the story of your life is the story of how you respond to God.
Genesis 3:1 says, “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made.” What follows is the devil in the form of a serpent tempting and deceiving Eve and then Adam, which brings about the Fall. You find the importance of our response to God. Now, I could say, “Your life is defined by how you respond to the devil.” That is true, but that is a sub question. I could say, “The story of your life is how God responds to you.” That is true, but that is always consistent. What is not consistent and what will shape your life today is how you respond to God.
Let me give you three specifics. First, notice the difference between obedience to God and subtlety. The Bible says the devil came in the form of a subtle creature. A devil who can fool you need not fight you. The devil has had generations of experience with humans. He knows more about us than we know about ourselves. So, if the devil can fool you, he does not need to fight you. That is just a basic law of war. War is a matter of trickery. Today, how you respond to God matters. When it comes to obedience, are you going to be obedient to God or are you going to fall for subtlety?
A second specific would be gratitude versus temptation. There is so much that Adam and Eve could have been grateful for, yet God had forbidden one tree. The Bible says of Eve in verse 6, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good… she took…did eat… and gave.” That is the way things go when it comes to temptation. Adam and Eve hid with fig leaves, which sounds really simple and silly to us, but we are no better when we think we can hide from God. So, the story of your life is the story of how you respond to God. Think about temptation versus gratitude, or realizing the provision God has given.
The last thing is confession versus shifting blame. In verse 12 God confronts Adam and Adam said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” He didn’t even call her Eve. He had named her, but she was just “the woman you gave.” He is shifting blame from himself to his wife, and then it seems he is actually blaming God Himself, “the woman you gave.”
We can do that with God. We might say, “God, I wouldn’t be doing this if You didn’t give me these desires.” The devil can create nothing good. He can just counterfeit what God has created. Every good and perfect gift comes from God, and God has given us richly all things to enjoy. So, the devil will whack you over the back of the head with the very desires God has put within you. The difference is that God gives what is good and the devil gives the sting at the end because of rebellion against God.
Ultimately, if you look at verse 14 and following, you find God’s mercy for people like Adam and Eve and people like us. Today, I hope you are a doer with priorities and plans, and although you don’t choose the problems you have today, you do have the power to choose how you are going to respond. The story of your life is of how you respond to God.