Other Voices: Genesis 3:1-8

“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44, NASB).

God is speaking in the world today. At the same time there are other voices speaking. We have to choose which voice we will listen to. The voice that we listen to determines the decisions that we make. The decisions that we make determines what kind of person we become and the path that we travel in life. As Christians we must be aware that God speaks to us to give us life. At the same time the devil speaks to bring destruction and death. It is our Christian duty to listen to the voice of God and to tune out other voices that have the potential to keep us from hearing what the Lord is saying to us. Let me give an example from my life as a little boy growing up in the small town of Columbia, Tennessee.

Columbia, Tennessee is about forty-five miles south of Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee is approximately 272 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio. In Nashville there was radio station WLAC with a frequency of 1510 kHz. It was a strong station that could be heard in twenty-six states. On a clear night I could occasionally hear it as far away as Boston, Massachusetts. In Cincinnati, Ohio WCKY broadcast with a frequency of 1530 kHz. Although Cincinnati was further from Nashville than Cincinnati often one could hear the sound of WCKY over WLAC. So, whenever I wanted to listen to music on WLAC I had to learn to focus my attention on WLAC and tune out WCKY. Unfortunately, there were times when I could not hear WLAC because of the sound of WCKY.

God is speaking, but sometimes we focus our attention on other voices instead of the voice of God. Sometimes the other voices are so loud that we cannot hear the voice of God. Thus, Christians must learn to distinguish between the voice of God and the many other loud voices that are speaking in the world in which we live. Here are two examples. God says that all life is important to Him. There are some that support abortion on the grounds that the fetus is less important than the happiness of the mother. Those that support abortion may not have heard the words of God to Jeremiah. “‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations’” (Jer. 1:5, NASB). Did you hear that? A life is important to God before birth. In the book of Judges, the Lord appears to a woman who was barren. The angel of the Lord gives the woman instructions on how she was to take care of her body because of God’s purpose for the child yet to be born (Judges 13:3-5). The woman obeyed the voice of the Lord, and she gave birth to a son Samson, one of the judges that fought the Philistines, Israel’s greatest foe.

The greatest foe of Christians today is the many voices that are speaking very loudly in the world in which we live. The devil is the source of all the lies that we hear from the voices that do not speak God’s truth. We can learn this by reading about the first woman who had heard the voice of the Lord God. Then she hears the voice of the Satan—the adversary of the Lord God. When we read and study this encounter between the serpent and the woman, we can learn the danger of believing the other voices over the voice of the Lord God (Gen. 3:1-8).

In Genesis 2 we learn what the Lord said to the man. “Then the LORD GOD took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it” (2:15). The Lord puts the man in the place that the man needs to be to do what the Lord wants him to do. The Lord gives the man commands about what he should eat and not eat because there are consequences for the man’s choices (2:16-17). God creates the woman to be a helper for the man and they are one flesh (2:24). Everything is going along as God planned until the serpent speaks and the woman listens to the voice of the serpent. Where does the other voice come from? What is his purpose? What is his strategy?

Our first question is “where does the other voice come from?” The voice comes from the devil that appears as a harmless serpent. The devil’s appearance as a serpent gives the impression that He is harmless. He has no arms and legs that give him the ability to hurt anyone. However, there is a clue to his danger. The man and the woman had been placed in a garden. On the other hand, the serpent is described as one that comes from the field. Before the serpent enters the garden the man and the woman hear the voice of God only.

The serpent has a purpose for entering the garden and speaking to the woman. The serpent enters the garden to destroy God’s image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). The voices that we hear in the world that do not come from the mouth of God are voices designed to separate us from our Lord who is our God. In this story we learn the reason for the first commandment: “You shall have no other God beside (before) me. Although the bible tells us about prophets, the prophet never speaks his own words. The prophets have no personal agendas. Prophets speak only the words that the Lord gives them to say. Thus, the words of the prophets are God’s words that give life to those that obey Him.

The serpent has a strategy. He plans to deceive the woman because if the serpent can deceive the woman, the woman will convince the man to also choose the voice of the serpent over the voice of the Lord. This is not about women being weaker than men as the world speaks of weakness. Rather, this is about who will hear his voice, and who will listen to his words. It’s about the serpent twisting the words of the Lord God and speaking to the one that is less grounded in the words of the Lord. It is through the ones that focus on the serpent’s word that the voice of the serpent is heard. Instead of us judging the value of women let us analyze the strategy of the serpent.

When we read Genesis 3:16-17, we can see that the serpent does not say to the woman the words that the Lord God had said to the man. “‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die’” (NASB). Notice that the serpent does not say what the Lord God had said. Notice that the serpent did not speak to the one that the Lord had spoken to. The serpent says to the woman: “‘Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” God specifies one tree, but the serpent includes all trees. Further, the woman adds, “You shall not eat from it or touch it” (v. 3), indicating her misunderstanding of the command of the Lord God.

The serpent is said to be “more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD GOD had made” (v.1). The serpent is cunning. He has the ability to deceive by telling the woman lies about what the Lord God had said and God’s reason for saying what He said. God’s command was given so that the man could chose life. The serpent, on the other hand said that God did not want the woman to be like Him. If she ate the fruit she too would become a god. We are being told this lie today. We are told that we are a god to ourselves.

The point is simply this. There are many voices in the world. There is the voice of God, and there are other voices. The other voices do not come from God. We must learn the voice of God. We must focus on God’s words and tune out the many loud voices in the world that twist the word of Go so as to deceive us. Even when we cannot hear the voice of God because of the loudness of the other voices we must not heed the words of these loud voices. If we listen to the other voices we will become separated from God, unable to live in the garden that He has given to us.