The Failure of Adam and the Victory of Jesus

Jack Handey, known for his odd sense of humor frequently expressed in an old Saturday Night Live segment titled "Deep Thoughts," wrote an equally odd book entitled Fuzzy Memories. In it Handey relates the story of a bully who demanded his lunch money every day when he was a child. Because Handey was smaller than the bully, he simply gave the bully his money.

"Then I decided to fight back," Handey says. "I started taking karate lessons, but the instructor wanted $5 a lesson. That was a lot of money. I found that it was cheaper to pay the bully, so I gave up karate."

Unfortunately, many Christians have the same attitude about Satan and the temptations that come their way. It's easier to pay the bully than to learn how to fight him.

Source: Greg Laurie, Lies We Tell Ourselves (Regal, 2006), pp. 99–100; as quoted in the July 19 entry of Men of Integrity (July/August 2009)

p / Serpent and fruit

Lies the serpent feeds us:

God’s plan for our lives isn’t for our benefit; it holds us back from something enjoyable, something eye-opening, something good.

++God isn’t all that concerned about obedience or disobedience.

++We can play the part of gods ourselves, determining what is good and evil, right and wrong. It’s all about what we find satisfying.

The fruit met a need, the need of hunger: “the tree was good for food”

++The fruit was attractive: “it was a delight to the eyes”

++The fruit would expand horizons—we’ll know more than we did, we’ll have had a particular experience we won’t have without it: “the tree was to be desired to make one wise”

c / And man’s ancient folly is in thinking he can understand God better from his freely assumed standpoint and from his notion of God than he can if he would subject himself to his Word. “Wherever man attacks the concrete Word of God with the weapon of a principle or an idea of God, there he has become the lord of God” (Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 68).

Von Rad, G. (1972). Genesis: A Commentary (P. Ackroyd, J. Barr, B. W. Anderson, & J. L. Mays, Eds.; J. H. Marks, Trans.; Revised Edition, p. 88). The Westminster Press.

c / Every temptation that comes to me is packaged as a good. (Eugene Peterson)

Source: Eugene Peterson in Leadership, Vol. 9, no. 2.

/ We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in its true colors, saying, "I am your deadly enemy, and I want to ruin you forever in hell." Oh no! Sin comes to us like Judas, with a kiss; like Joab, with outstretched hand and flattering words. The forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve; yet it cast her out of Eden. Walking idly on his palace roof seemed harmless enough to David; yet it ended in adultery and murder.

Sin rarely seems [like] sin at first beginnings. Let us then watch and pray, lest we fall into temptation.

—J. C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, England (1800s)

Everyman

We know God’s way

++We have chosen our own way over God’s way

++We have lost our innocence in a hundred ways, great and small

++We are lost without one who can restore us to God

The New Man

p / Jesus in the desert

/ We can follow the path of the old humanity, which got it wrong and drove us from God’s presence, or we can follow the path of the new humanity—Jesus, who inaugurates a new humanity through his complete obedience and who draws us into communion with with the Trinity

c / We see in the contrasting temptation narratives Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Paradise Lost

Paradise Restored

“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Lk 3.22); “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread” (Lk 4.3).

++“If you will worship me, [the kingdoms of the world] will all be yours” (Lk 4.7).

++“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down...” (Lk 4.9-11).

“It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

++“It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

++“It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

We have followed Adam and Eve, and by doing so, we’ve lost a lot.

++By following Jesus, we may share his victory over temptation and gain even more than we’ve lost.

p / Bible and apples

For eight years Sally had been the Romero family pet. When they got her, she was only one foot long. But Sally grew until eventually she reached eleven-and-a-half feet and weighed eighty pounds. Then Sally, a Burmese python, turned on 15-year-old Derek, strangling the teenager until he died of suffocation. Associated Press Online quoted the police as saying that the snake was "quite aggressive, hissing, and reacting" when they arrived to investigate. Sins that seem little and harmless will grow. Tolerate or ignore sin, and it will eventually lead to death (James 1:15).

Source: Bruce E. Truman, Mt. Olivet, Kentucky. Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 4.