Eve – A Woman Deceived

There is much that can be said concerning Eve (and Adam) but here considered here is Eve’s deception and one or two thoughts about that.  The overriding thought throughout what follows is really just this – the importance of knowing God’s word for ourselves.

Intro

The Genesis account of the making of the woman from Adam is so well known that really only a brief overview is necessary.  If you would like to read some background information on Eve you can either read the first two chapters of Genesis or specifically Genesis (‘Gen’) 1:26-28 and Gen 2:7-25.  We see from these passages that:

• Eve, though made from Adam was like Adam made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27).
• Her role was to be a “helper comparable” or “help meet” for Adam (Gen 2:18) in order to fulfil God’s purpose through them together (Gen 1:28). She was necessary – not an afterthought!
• She was named by Adam as Eve (Chavah in Hebrew) meaning life or life-giver (Gen 3:20). This is with a little ‘l’ (as opposed to capital ‘L’) since we know there is only One who gives true life, which is God.  Eve, the prototype for all women was, however, the only legitimate means of ‘man’ (generically speaking) being born into the world.  She was called Eve as she would become the means through which God’s commandment to be fruitful and multiply would be fulfilled.
• It is interesting to note that she did not exist when God made Adam, Adam was asleep when Eve was made and it was God Himself who brought Eve to Adam (wondering whether or not that might be a helpful point to those considering marriage or already married?).

 

The Deception

Let’s consider now what went wrong and how Satan struck.

Reading: Genesis Chapter 3 (The Fall).

 

From this passage we can note some elements and the pattern of the deception:

• The devil didn’t appear as himself, as he really is (Gen 3:1; Revelation 12:9 -the serpent revealed as Satan; 2 Corinthians 11:14 – Satan transforming into an angel of light);
• Satan deliberately targeted the woman for deception being the weaker vessel (1 Timothy 2:14);
• Satan questions God’s word (Gen 3:1). Spiritual deception always begins by either blatantly or subtly questioning what God has said;
• We see that the point of the question is to plant doubt in order to prepare the ground for a complete contradiction of God’s instructions, God’s commandments, and God’s warnings – ( 3:4);
• Satan then “corrects” Eve’s understanding (i.e. puts across his own “reasoning” and, based on that false reasoning, his conclusion) and so plausibly that this intelligent, well balanced woman believes it!  Why not?  From verse 6 she believes that it is good for food, pleasant to the eyes, desirable to make her wise.  How appealing it all sounds!  No doubt it was as a loving wife that she brought some to her husband – and the rest is history as they say.
• As far as Satan is concerned it looks like checkmate!
• He then leaves them to face the consequences alone. Where is Satan when the Lord God comes walking in the garden where Adam & Eve now feeling afraid are hiding themselves from His presence? Nowhere.

The terrible consequences of what began with Eve’s deception and led to Adam’s  disobedience to the commandment the Lord God had directly given him continue to unfold around us to this day.

 

The Warning to us as Believers

Let’s consider Eve before ‘The Fall’ for a moment.  She had everything today’s woman could ever want:

• The perfect husband;
• The perfect looks – perfect skin, hair, nails, everything;
• The perfect health;
• The perfect food;
• The perfect home;
• She had no competition!
• She really could say that she was God’s gift to man – and not have to pretend she was just kidding afterwards!
• She could honestly say she was a good thing! I’m sure every married woman must have been tempted to pull out Proverbs 18:22 at least once, but Eve really was! Everything God made was very good (Gen. 1:31);
• She was perfectly balanced emotionally and mentally;
• God had given her a good mind;
• Above all that, she and her husband enjoyed unique fellowship with God;

So, what happened?

Satan and his first and mostly deadly “weapon of mass destruction” ‘the triple D’ bomb aka DOUBT, DISBELIEF AND DISOBEDIENCE of God’s Word, all wrapped up in DECEPTION.  Eve, the intelligent, well balanced woman, was talking to the devil and did not know it at the time!

Deception has already happened to every one of us – every single person who has walked in darkness has been and is deceived and didn’t know it until God brought His light in Jesus Christ.  As believers in Lord Yeshua we can – and sometimes still do – fall for deception,  but praise God we don’t have to remain in it.

There are key things we can learn from Eve’s experience and her unwise choices to consider prayerfully in our own quiet time with Lord Yeshua, taking care to listen and obey what His Holy Spirit reveals to us.

 

Eve’s Legacy

1. Deception avoidance 101: Know the Bible

I am often surprised about the numbers of professing believers who give more time to books about the Bible than the Bible itself!  If there was ever a time that every person – man, woman and child – needed to know what God has said and does say, it is now.  The Bible records what has been, what is and what is to come and is key for our preparation for what is coming.

Consider – it is not bread but the word of God by which we truly live being now born again of the Spirit of God (Matthew 4:4; 1 Peter 1:22-23).  Lack of food – physical starvation – will eventually kill your body but, in the words of Tozer, “it can’t touch your soul”.  Without God’s word, people perish.  Without giving heed to God’s word, we are in danger of being deceived and of drifting away from our hope in Christ/Messiah (consider Hebrews 2:1).

There are many answers that can be given to the question of why God’s word is so important,  but in a nutshell it is simply this: everything depends upon it.  This is so spiritually and naturally (see e.g. Hebrews 1:1-2; 11:3; Ephesians 2:19-20; 2 Peter 3:5 etc).

We can and really must:

• get to know the God of the Bible through His word and in doing so get to know the promises of God and the condition and/or premise upon which they are based and stand on them ourselves. Let us not look to or for “cheerleaders” to lead us to personally study the Bible;
• study the warnings concerning false prophets and the perverting of God’s word (see Jeremiah 23 for example, especially verses 27-30) that revelation may come as to how vital the word of God is;
• remember that the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) is of great importance and should be read together with the Greek Scriptures (New Testament) but let us also consider the priority which belongs to the New Testament, as the writer of Hebrews makes clear for us at Hebrews 1:1-2 (note also 1 Thessalonians 2:13 – an affirmation of the Epistles being the word of God).

2. Knowing the Bible is not enough!

Notwithstanding the above, just knowing the Bible alone is not enough since it can end up being just knowledge for the sake of knowledge (head knowledge).

There is knowledge (gnosis) and there is full knowledge (‘epignosis’) meaning correct and precise knowledge of things ethical and divine.  An example of the meaning of this is at Romans 10:2 – Israel having zeal for God but not ‘according to knowledge’.  We can see by this that although Israel knew of God they did not know God – i.e. have correct and precise knowledge – in the way which can only be properly revealed through Messiah.  Paul again refers to full knowledge in his prayer for the Ephesians followers of Yeshua ‘that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Ephesians 1:17).  This shows us that the “full knowledge” we need (e.g. the discernment and understanding and knowing of God) comes from the Holy Spirit through prayer and as we seek to listen to His voice and fellowship with Him around His word in our quiet times with the Lord and then walk in it in obedience.  This is also so through the teaching and preaching of God’s word.

Understanding is wonderful but without application it is, again, knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  As 2 Peter 1:5-8 tells us, this leads to spiritual barrenness therefore we must apply the word and apply it correctly.

Knowledge by itself, without doing anything with it or doing what you are supposed to with it, will never produce wisdom because we will remain unskilled in handling the word of God as needs arise.   As we learn to correctly apply what we read, full knowledge comes through the Holy Spirit of God in us  and continues to be added to us as the Spirit works freely in and through us to the glory of God.  Otherwise knowledge will just puff us up – at that pride in itself will sooner or later show us that it is not being applied!

A further important reason why it is not enough to just know the Bible is that Satan knows  the Scriptures – and probably better than you and me!  Let’s not be deceived here.  What did he say to Eve? (See Gen 3:1).   It shows that when God gave the warning and commandment to Adam, Satan was listening!  He knew what God’s word was to Adam.  Look at the account of just three of the ways recorded of his temptation of Yeshua in the wilderness (see Luke 4:1-13).  Note the methods he used to try to achieve his objective – both questioning and using the Scriptures!  Yet, note also how the Lord met every temptation Satan threw at Him – through full knowledge of the word of God, the right Scriptures for each temptation as it were.  You may say, ‘yes – well Yeshua was God’.  Well said. But consider, He was also fully Man and since God cannot be tempted it must be that it was the Man Yeshua that Satan was tempting. This passage demonstrates the importance of the wisdom that comes from the Holy Spirit – i.e. understanding and knowing how to correctly apply the word of God in a given situation.

We also need to guard against attempts to complicate what is simple (see 2 Corinthians 11:3).  This is where deception can often come in, particularly where there is the over-spiritualization of simple truths. This is also true in pseudo-spiritual interpretations of things which people could not possibly know since of those things the Bible is silent.  The message of the gospel is simple and the message of the Bible was not directed at learned men but men and women of faith.

Personally, this why I am wary of, amongst other things, [of] “how to” conferences and [the running after of e.g.] “deliverance meetings”[,] when you have access to the Deliverer Himself – Jesus Christ;  “healing meetings”[,] when you have access to the Healer Himself – Jesus Christ; and even bible colleges – where fees are charged to finance the study of the word of God (!) when God Himself has instituted His own “bible college” [,] as it were, the Church[,] with teachers that He has anointed to teach.  This is just my own view though so could count for a hill of bean really.

Even where men fail to be obedient to the will of God by teaching the whole counsel of the Word of God, correctly divided, we each have the Holy Spirit in us and with us as followers of the Messiah and in Him children of the living God.  We also each have, in this country, free access to the  Bible and knowledge enough to know that individually, through faith in Yeshua we have access before the Throne of grace to seek God’s help in time of need.  We can ask for wisdom and if asked in faith God Himself will send us wisdom when we need it and how we need it so that we increase in our understanding of His will and His way.

3. Know your weaknesses

We may not know all we are, and we may not know all we are capable of given the right set of circumstances, but we have enough to go on to know where some of our weaknesses are!  The others will no doubt make themselves known as we go on with the Lord, in the process of sanctification.  At 1 Corinthians 10:12 we have recorded a warning given through Paul for anyone who thinks they stand strong to take heed lest they fall!  This was written against the backdrop of pointing to the example of the children of Israel, as Moses led them through the wilderness.  They witnessed great signs and wonders of God and yet most of them fell – God was not pleased with them (1 Corinthians 10:5).  Let us consider Eve again.  We have seen above that, before The Fall, she had everything she could possibly want and was an intelligent well-balanced woman.  She was without sin at this point, though evidently having the capability of choosing sin.  Look at the deception again at Genesis 3:6.  Consider, what God had warned would kill her, the enemy deceived her into believing was “good for food….pleasant to the eyes….desirable to make one wise…”   Look what caused her to disbelieve the word of God.  It is good for us as we read the Bible to consider very carefully, where revealed, what it is that causes people to disbelieve and disobey the word of God.  Take a moment to read 1 John 2:16, and consider it,  listening out for the voice of the Holy Spirit.  These things will be what trips us up too!

Here is another important point for us as we look at Eve: to not deceive ourselves into thinking that you and I or any other believer in Lord Yeshua, no matter how godly they appear to be, is not capable of choosing to sin. Let’s undeceive ourselves right now by recognising that the enemy can deceive us, but he cannot force us to act on that deception.  We are the only ones who can choose to sin against God – whether consciously or subconsciously.  There will not be one person that will ever have the excuse before God that they had to knowingly sin – no matter how we try to excuse what is sin.

4. Know His grace

The above paragraph is a strong defence against modern psychobabble that DOES still get into the Church.  This seeks either to blatantly blame other people for our own sin and/or try to effectively “comfort” what is sin by excusing the behaviour and mis-applying love and grace.  There may even be the attempt to cover it over with more sin such as inverted pride – e.g. self-chastisement, “I’m-not-much-but-I’m-all-I-think-about attitude” etc.  May we any of us in that deception quickly recognise and come out it and/or resist it.  Yes, we are under grace and in the love of God, and that is what we must walk in towards others as commanded.  However, consider this as we go around dispensing “grace” and seeking “to walk in love”: – How does God feel about sin?  What did it cost God to take away our sin?   How then do we regard the precious Blood by the way we regard sin?  Consider in your own quiet time that which is written at Hebrews 10:28-29.  This is not condemn (as you will see if you continue reading the rest of the chapter to verse 39) and certainly not for us to have any sense of self-righteousness just because we may not be able to call any particular sin to mind right at this moment (yet!).  This is for the sake of correcting our vision that grace may be truly grace, both for others as well as ourselves if caught in the unhappy situation of sin.  We can never truly appreciate grace until we understand sin as sin truly is and our real plight under sin – then is grace seen as amazing and awesome grace as it truly is.

5. Know the times!

Consider 2 Timothy 3-4:4 and in particular chapter 4:3-4.  In recognising the times we are in – and the times yet to come – one of the things we really need to guard against is isolation.  Let’s take a final brief look at Eve.  Who was with her when she fell for the devil’s deception?  Genesis 3:1-7 does seem to suggest that she was alone.  It is important that in these days of growing deception we are plugged into biblical fellowship with other Spirt-born, Bible believing, Spirit-filled believers who are seeking to live in obedience to the Word of God in holiness and righteousness to the glory of God.

May God give us wisdom that we may not be deceived.

 

 

 

 

With grateful thanks to Mrs Lynne Preston for editing.