Temptation as bait that hook you into a relationship with sin
You will never understand temptation unless you understand how Eve was tempted in the Garden of Eden. The devil is a fool as he always uses the same strategy to tempt people to move away from the love of God. Indeed, when the devil tempts you, he will use the same strategy he used to tempt Eve. He might use different words to do so, but the strategy will always be the same.
The devil will tempt you so that you may undermine God and His word. This is exactly what the serpent did when he tempted Eve.
Why does the word of God call the devil the serpent? You need to understand what it as an angel and how angels manifest their presence to humans. Angels are spiritual beings, and because of this, it is difficult for a human eye to see them. There are different categories of angels and they manifest their presence differently. Some angels manifest their presence as human whilst others manifest their presence as beast or animals, and some as birds. Surely, some angels manifest their presence as humans with animal or bird’s features.
Satan was once an angel who was loved by God, but he was chased away from heaven when he wanted to be God. The word of God is not mistaken when it calls the devil a serpent because the devil manifests his presence as a serpent. Indeed, the devil is very cunning, he might disguise his appearance by manifesting his presence as an animal or a bird, but he is a snake by nature. His spiritual nature is a nature of a serpent, and he has all the qualities of a serpent. He can camouflage his physical appearance, but he remains a serpent. And because of this, the kingdom of darkness is the kingdom of snakes. All the soldiers of the devil, whether they are demons or devil workers are all snakes, because they have the nature of their father who is the greatest snakes in his kingdom.
The devil is very cunning, as he will encourage us to debate or argue about spiritual matters we understand little about. A man’s mind is very weak and blank with regard to spiritual matters. Apart from the word of God, we do not have any spiritual knowledge at all. Our minds do not understand spiritual issues, and as a result of this, we are not in a position to debate or argue about spiritual matters we understand little about.
When the devil encourages you to debate or argue about spiritual matters you understand little about, he knows that you are already defeated because whatever you might say would come from ignorance. We cannot stand alone without the help of God and His word, for the word of God is intended to give us the knowledge of spiritual matters in a language that we could all understand.
The word of God gives us the power to understand what we would ordinarily not understand. When we argue a spiritual matter in line with the word of God, we are standing on the strength of God, because we would talk about what God knows, which is the truth. Our strength is the power and wisdom of God, and owing to this, we are not supposed to have views of our own with regard to spiritual matters.
Our independent views on spiritual matters are dead views, as they come from the foolishness of our human mind. A human mind does not know spiritual matters, and when we really on our human mind, we rely on what is foolish and dead.
When the serpent appeared on the scene in the Garden of Eden, his intention was to shift man from the influence of God, by appealing to man to use his mind instead of relying on the wisdom of God. The serpent succeeded to tempt man away from the heart of God, by making man view spiritual matter independently from God.
Every time we express our own views independently of the word of God, we are already defeated. If we want to stand against any temptation from the devil, we must express the views of God on all matter that concerns us. This is the strength that we have in God, it is the strength we receive from depending on His word. His word is our eyes, ears, and wisdom.
We must only desire to know what is revealed by the word of God because this is a very safe road for us. Any spiritual issue that has not been revealed by the word of God is meant to steal you away from God. Surely, every knowledge that does not come from the word of God comes from the devil, and that knowledge is not knowledge at all, it is deception which is supposed to destroy the relationship you have with God.
When the devil tempts you, he will use a five-pronged strategy to achieve his goal of moving you from the influence of God. Every move of temptation is targeted at the word of God because the devil knows the best way of stealing you away from God is to make you undermine His word. This is what the word of God commanded Adam and Eve to do and not to do:
“The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.
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’ ” (Genesis 3:2-3).
From the above, it is clear what God instructed man to do in the Garden of Eden. It is also very clear from Eve’s confession that she knew exactly what God expected them to do. The devil launched an attack against that clear message of God, and this is how he went about it:
“Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’? ” (Genesis 3:1, HCBS).
This question from the devil was not an innocent question as it was an assault against the authority of God. The devil was actually saying, ‘What authority does God have over you?’ The first strategy that the serpent uses to attack you would be to attack the authority of God over your life.
What was Eve supposed to do when she was confronted with a question from the serpent? She was not supposed to answer that question. The appropriate response was supposed to be, ‘Who are you and where do you come from?’
You must never discuss or argue about spiritual matters without knowing who you are discussing with, and what is their intention of discussing with you. When you know the true identity of a person and the motives of his views or questions, you would not discuss in ignorance. When the person reveals his true colours, you will know their intention, and because of this, that person will never fool you or hook you into a spiritual terrain of the devil.
Eve did not see the bait that the devil cast her way. She did not see the trap of the devil because she did not know the identity of the devil. She only saw a snake and thought the snake was asking an innocent question. And because Eve did not know the identity and the intentions of the serpent, she engaged with it on a spiritual matter she understood little about.
The Lord commanded man not to eat from the tree that was in the midst of the garden, and he did not reveal the reasons for this. The Lord knew the reason He was warning them not to eat of that tree. Eve was supposed to be content with what God has revealed to them, and she was supposed to stick to the revelations from the word of God.
The serpent is shrewd, he wanted her reason for not eating the fruit of that tree because he knew that Eve was ignorant of spiritual matters. The devil was pulling Eve to the unfamiliar spiritual territory, and he knew that once he succeeded to pull her into that spiritual space, Eve would be easily defeated.
God’s word or His commandments are spiritual because they talk about spiritual matters our minds understand little about. Our minds do not have the capacity to understand the spiritual issues outside the help of the word of God. Assuredly, the word of God is the only thing that gives us insight into all the spiritual matters we do not understand. We depend on the word of God to understand things we would not ordinarily understand. In this regard, the word of God is our assurance of the truth, as it reveals the true wisdom of God to us.
When we try to engage with the things that God did not reveal in His word, we are allowing the devil to pollute our mind with deception. The devil was an angel and he knows spiritual matters that none of us knows. He knows the word of God and its power over his deceptive ways. The serpent knows that his weapon against us is to shift us from the protection of the word of God. When we do not rely on the word of God, we are sheep waiting to be slaughtered by the devil.
The second strategy of the devil is to drive us to speak and believe things that the word of God did not reveal to us. When we believe what the word of God has not revealed, we believe a lie. The serpent will always try to make us look away from what the word of God teaches. He introduces false teachings that contradict the word of God so that he could keep us away from the truth, which is only contained in the word of God.
Every child of God must at all times be vigilant to the vices of the devil because the serpent is trying to steal us from the heart of God. We must discern everything that we come across, lest we succumb to its evil intentions of destroying us.
When the serpent questioned Eve about the forbidden tree and the commandments of God to them, he already knew that Eve was already cornered. Eve was spiritually blind and she was foolish to engage with a deceiver who knows the word of God perfectly. Satan knows the word of God and not only does he know it, he knows its power over his lies. This was Eve’s answer to the serpent?
“We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. 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’ ” (Genesis 3:2-3).
Eve was talking to an enemy without knowing it, and due to this, her guards were lowered. She was too relaxed to bother about the identity of the devil and she paid a hefty price for that. And the devil seized the opportunity to hook her into his dirty corner. The answer that Eve gave him was an opportunity to sway her from the word of God, and this is how the devil went about it:
“No! You will not die,” the serpent said to the woman” (Genesis 3:4).
Satan gave her the opinion she did not ask for, but the devil nonetheless gave it as it was the weapon that he was using to steal her away from God. The response from the serpent was a false assurance which assured her that it was safe to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. The devil was actually saying, ‘God is lying, this is not the truth, in a moment, I will reveal the truth to you.’
The third strategy that the serpent uses to steal us from the heart of God is to give us false assurances that are meant to encourage us to undermine the word of God. There is no one who can give false assurance than Satan. Every false assurance he gives to you is meant to give you a false sense of security. He would give you an assurance that you will not die or be disappointed if you undermine the word of God, but the opposite will happen. Every false assurance would in due time prove false, and if you have fallen for his lies, you might realise when things are very bad that you were duped by the serpent.
The devil is the greatest liar, but God is the truth, the way, and the light. The devil will more often than not rubbish the word of God as false because he wants to undermine it. By labelling the word of God as false or irrelevant, the devil wants to encourage us to break it. The greatest weapon that the serpent uses against us is to encourage us to undermine God by undermining His word.
The devil cannot destroy us without first deceiving us to believe a lie. In this regard, he will tempt us to disbelieve God and to believe in his lies. Every move of the devil is meant to deceive us about the truth. To do so, the devil would make us question everything God says in His word.
Satan will always encourage us to question God, by giving us a false sense of pride and wisdom. He makes us think that we have a mind that can think about spiritual matters outside the revelation of the word of God. Surely, the serpent has fooled many people by making them think that their social status and academic achievements, in particular, give them permission to engage in spiritual matters they understand little about. What is unknown to them is that there is no academic degree that could reveal spiritual matters. But the devil will hide this truth to them and make them take shelter in their own achievement and social status.
When he gives us a false sense of pride and ability to think about spiritual matters, he elevates us to the level of God, because it is only God who knows the absolute truth about all spiritual matters. It is only God who knows the truth and the way.
Clearly, when the serpent was giving the false counsel, ‘No! You will not die,’ he was encouraging them to undermine the word of God. In this regard, he was encouraging them to touch what they were not supposed to touch. Not only was he encouraging them to touch the fruit of the forbidden tree, he was also encouraging them to go ahead and eat it.
The fourth and fifth strategies he uses against us are to encourage you to touch and eat what you are not supposed to touch and eat. The devil knows the correlation between many related things. He knows the correlation between our eyes and heart, and between our hearts and actions.
Your eyes make you think about something. And when you like what you have been thinking about, your mind would encourage you to touch it so that you may confirm what your mind has revealed to you. When you touch and find it fit for your body or mind, you will take a bite. If it tastes good, you would want to take as many bites as you could take.
The devil is very cunning indeed, he did not say to Eve, ‘Eat the fruit of the forbidden tree,’ There was no need for him to do so, as he was using the power of suggesting to say exactly this.
By saying, ‘No! You will not die,’ the devil was effectively saying, ‘Go ahead and touch it, you will see that it is not poisonous. Whilst touching it, take a bite and taste how delicious it is. The fruit of this tree not only taste good, they contain a secret which God does not want you to know. Once you eat the forbidden fruit, you shall have the power and wisdom of God. God knows that the fruit of this tree will elevate you to His level. He is hiding the truth from you, and it is only me who is telling you the truth out of the goodness of my heart. If you really want to be like God, take a bite. I know these things, I know you will not die from eating the fruit of this wonderful tree, take a bite.’
Many people have fallen into sin because they have seen and touch things they were not supposed to see or touch. Many a times, when the devil wants you to commit sin, he will encourage you to look at things you are not supposed to look at. He knows that if you can look at them long enough, you will want to touch them. And once you touch them, you will want to take a bite in order to determine how they taste. Once you take the first bite, he will encourage you to take as many bites as you could take.
Once you take a bite of sin, you are likely to be hooked into that sin forever. It is for this reason that the word of God warns us to play away from sin. Once you taste one sin, you will want to do it over and over again. At this point, it will be difficult for you to go back to the heart of God, for sin would have blinded you completely.
Indeed, the devil succeeded to tempt man away from the heart of God. The devil did this by encouraging man to break the commandments of God. He did not only do this, he gave a false assurance, ‘You will not die.’
Another question that is worth exploring is what happened to man after he ate of the forbidden fruit? Did he die after eating the fruit of the forbidden tree? The answer to this question is yes and no. Man died and he did not die. This is exactly what the devil was looking for, the devil is a master of confusion and deception. To understand the matter properly, we need to look at what God meant when he said:
“And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
The commandment of God said, ‘on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.’ What did God mean by this statement as we are also told in the fifth chapter of Genesis that Adam lived for 930 years?
“So Adam’s life lasted 930 years; then he died” (Genesis 5:5).
It is clear from the above that after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, they continue to live for many years. After Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, I could hear the devil saying ‘look at you, you are still alive, aren’t you. See, God is the liar and I am the only one who was telling the truth. You must believe everything that comes from me and doubt anything that comes from your God.’
On the surface, it looks like the serpent was right and God was wrong. A human mind will regard the serpent as truthful because of what appears on the surface. Unfortunately, for the human mind, God was correct and the serpent was false. Not only was the devil wrong, he knew that he had deceived Eve to believe a lie.
The word of God is deep and spiritual, and it reveals spiritual matters. When we view what happen in the Garden of Eden, we must not focus on the surface, we need to consider the deep spiritual truths of what really happened. For us to consider spiritual issues of the word of God, we need to ask ourselves what God meant when He said:
“On the day you eat from it, you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
God was not speaking about the physical death, He was referring to a spiritual death. What is a spiritual death? It is to be chased away from the heart of God and to live outside the presence of God.
Man lives in the heart of God because of the relationship he has with God and His word. When man rejects the word of God, He rejects God and as a result of this, God will also terminate the spiritual relationship He has with him. When the Lord terminates this spiritual relationship with man, man will die even though he may bodily be alive.
The true life is a spiritual life because a spirit lives for eternity. When man lives in the heart of God, he will live with God in eternity, but when he rejects God and His word, he will surely die. This is what the Lord meant when He said, ‘In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.’
Anything that is immersed in the glory of God is holy and because it is holy it is the light. All the things that are the light are alive since the light of God is the source of life. Whoever is not covered with the glory of God is dead as they exist outside the light of God. Whatever that is not covered by the light of God abides in darkness. Darkness is death and all the things that abide in darkness are controlled by the devil who is the source of death. Jesus gives life, but the devil sucks the life from the creation of the Lord.
As soon as both Eve and Adam ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, God cast them out from His heart or from His presence, and as a result of that, they both experienced spiritual death. They were naked, without the cover of the glory of God.
What is interesting is that the devil experienced the same spiritual death he was encouraging Adam and Eve to go through. Satan was an angel who wanted to be above God and because of that, he was cast out from heaven. He encouraged Eve to desire to be like God so that God could chase her away from His heart. His advice was solely meant to destroy Eve and her husband, Adam, by condemning them to a life of pain and suffering. There is no life outside the glory of God as the Lord’s presence gives life to anything that it covers.
“Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels also fought, but he could not prevail, and there was no place for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was thrown out — the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12: 7-9).
When the serpent gave the false assurance that Eve would not die from eating the forbidden fruit, he knew very well that Eve and Adam were going to be rejected from the heart of God. This is exactly what he wanted, he wanted them to experience the same pain he went through when he was cast out of heaven. He wanted companions who would stay with him outside the heart of God.
Eve did not understand the spiritual consequences of rejecting the commandments of God. She thought God meant they would die bodily if they ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Eve and Adam did not only die spiritually, but they were both chased away from the Garden of Eden. The Lord also condemned them into a life of difficulty, and due to that, Eve experienced terrible childbearing pains, and Adam had to work very hard for his food.
The LORD God said, “Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3: 22-24, ESV)
Before they were both cast out of the Garden of Eden, their will was perfectly aligned to the will of God, and the glory of the Father was covering them all the time. But after they fell out of the heart of God, they began to have a will that operated outside the will of the Father.
The glory of the Lord that covered them was also taken away, and owing to that, they began to be carnal. Their human nature began to control their lives hence they discovered that they were naked. They were naked all the time without realising it. It was only when the spiritual presence of the Lord departed from them that they began to see what they could not see before.
The departed glory of the Lord made them see what they could not see. In this regard, they began to have a notion of right and wrong, which was a new thing to them. Formerly, everything was perfect because they lived within the perfect will of the Father, but now that the presence of the Lord has departed from them, they began to see things in black and white, wrong from right.