This week, we begin a new six-week series “Villains in the Bible” (using resources from Church Anew) by looking at the serpent, the villain of the creation story in Genesis 3. The serpent distorts God’s gifts into withholding, inviting us to focus on what we don’t have, rather than on the abundance God has given us. But God calls us trust, not fear. To abundance, not scarcity. In baptism, we are claimed by God as beloved. God is the source of our life and freedom.
Today’s Scripture readings are Genesis 3:1-7, Psalm 119:105-112, and John 3:13-21. I quote twice in this sermon from Pastor Derek Tronsgard’s sermon prompts commentary included in the Church Anew resources. A portion of this sermon is also adapted from my own March 17, 2021 midweek Lenten sermon on the Lord’s Prayer line “Lead Us Not Into Temptation.”
Here’s the sermon podcast audio and the livestream from Christ the King, which also includes the baptism of Callan Kornetzke.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Raise your hand if you watch something on tv at least once a week. Keep your hand up if more than half of what you watch is through a streaming service. Pretty much all we watch in our house is Sesame Street, Bluey, and old sitcoms, and all of it is streaming.
The only thing we watch on an actual TV channel is Packers games, which means I go from pretty much no commercials to seeing dozens of ads in one afternoon. And the way ads often work is by trying to convince you that you’re lacking something.
You thought you were happy with your tortilla chips, but now we have this new flavor and you’re missing out. If you don’t see this new show, you’re missing out—everybody’s going to be talking about it. If you buy this product, you’ll be a better parent, you’ll have time to live your best life.
Right now, so many of the ads are political, trying to get you to feel threatened, trying to convince you that this person is going to make your life better, protect you from those other people.
Advertising is often not about the product itself; it’s about convincing you that you are incomplete, that something is lacking. And it works! And it’s exactly what the serpent in the garden of Eden does with Adam and Eve in today’s Bible story.
As I mentioned, we’re starting a series today on “Villains in the Bible.” A few months ago our VBS theme was “Do Something Superheroes” and we looked at some kid heroes in the Bible, so this is kind of the flip side to that. We often look at the “heroes of faith” in the Bible, but we sometimes gloss over the villains.
But the idea of this series is that there’s a lot we can learn from the villains as well. If we learn what evil looks like, if we start to see what the villains are trying to accomplish and how they’re working, then we’ll be better equipped to respond to those tactics today, in our modern world. There are similar patterns of sin and brokenness in the world around us, and even in ourselves.
The villains hold up a mirror to us, helping us see where we’ve started down the wrong path, and when we recognize sin, we can repent of it. We can turn around. We can turn toward God.
So we’re starting today with this serpent, the very first villain in the Bible, way back in the opening chapters of Genesis. This might be a familiar story for you, but let me set the scene.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We heard that story a couple weeks ago, when we celebrated the feast of creation.
God makes the world out of nothing. God makes the sun and the moon, the plants and the animals, birds, fish, everything in the world, including humankind, a man named Adam, whose name means man, or humankind.
God looks at the world and declares that it is good. It’s paradise. It’s perfect. Everything is exactly the way God intended it to be. Humans are in right relationship with God, knowing God as their creator. It’s easy to love God, because what other option is there? Well, God seems to think, there ought to be some sort of option.
We have a stuffed animal dog toy in our house that sings when you squeeze its hand, and one of the lines is, “You’re my very best friend!” At some point I hope my kids learn the stuffed animal is not really his best friend. It has no free will, no choice in what it says. It can only do what it’s programmed to do.
That’s not what God wants. God’s not interested in robots; God wants to give humans a choice. So God puts the man and later the woman in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it, and—this is Genesis 2:16-17—“the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
God gives a choice. There’s only one commandment, so you’d think it’d be pretty easy to obey, but there’s a choice. Humankind can choose to disobey God.
The rest of chapter two has to do with God giving the man a partner, a woman who will be named Eve which means “living one” or “source of life” and then in chapter three, the first villain enters the scene.
We often think of this villain as Satan, the devil, but Genesis doesn’t actually say that. The villain is one of the creatures, a serpent, a snake. The serpent in the story twists God’s words, twists God’s gift of freedom into imprisonment. “Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?”
As Pastor Derek Tronsgard says, “In Hebrew, the serpent is called “‘arum’ which means crafty, shrewd, or clever. It’s not called a monster. It’s not called evil. Its power isn’t in force or violence but in its ability to plant seeds of doubt in God’s goodness and the feeling of lack.”
And the way this villain works is by convincing the people they’re missing something. God had told them they could eat from any tree, but the serpent immediately focuses on the one prohibited tree, the forbidden fruit. “Imagine if you just had this one more thing, then life would be good.”
In the middle of paradise, surrounded by more than you could ever possibly need, the serpent’s voice says, “Look at what you’re lacking. You are incomplete. You don’t have what they have.”
That voice is still at work in our world today. It’s so easy to focus on what we don’t have, to ignore all the good around us, all the good God has done for us, and fixate on wanting more. And this isn’t just a personal sin; it’s the brokenness in so many of the systems around us in our society.
The temptation is not just to focus on what you’re missing—the 10 commandments word for that is coveting, right? Wanting what your neighbor has?—the temptation is then to go get it from them. To put yourself first, ahead of others, by pushing them down.
Tronsgard writes,
“The logic that convinces one person they are lacking becomes, over centuries, the ideology that convinces one group of people to think that they are more and another group to think they are less…slavery does not happen because slaveholders genuinely lack labor…exploitation does not happen because the powerful genuinely lack enough.
It happens because the Serpent’s logic has convinced them that they do — that their security, their identity, their survival depends on taking it from someone else. It’s no wonder that this is the first sin in the Bible.”
In the story, Adam and Eve give into the serpent’s temptation and eat the forbidden fruit. Rather than trusting God, they try to find life on their own terms. But instead of it making them “like God,” their disobedience leaves them feeling naked and alone.
As Genesis 3 continues, they hide from God, but God comes looking for them. God even makes them clothes to wear, which is another act of grace and abundance, and although as a consequence for their disobedience, they have to leave the garden of Eden, God goes with them.
God does not abandon them.
When you are tempted by that voice telling you what’s lacking, telling you to put yourself first, telling you that if you give to your neighbor, there might not be enough for you, recognize the logic of the serpent. Don’t give in to that villain whispering that you’re not enough, that everyone else has something you’re missing.
And then remember what God has already given you. Challenge that voice with trust in the good news of the Gospel. God’s word is the lamp to our feet, and a light for our path, as our Psalm says.
God’s voice, not the serpent’s.
The answer is recognizing what Jesus has done for us. God’s own Son, given for you. The answer is the promise declared in baptism, that God accepts you as you are, washes you clean, and gives you life. That’s the promise we’re proclaiming to Callan this morning: Eternal life comes from God as a gift.
Listen to the words of our baptismal song: “We are people created, chosen by God. Then we’re washed, ever gently, in mercy and love. Sin has power no more. Jesus opened the door to a fountain bringing healing, and wholeness and more.” (Baptized and Set Free, ELW #453, by Cathy Skogen-Soldner)
Hear the good news of the Gospel: You are made in the image of God; you don’t have to prove you are enough.
In Jesus’ name, be set free from the pressure to be more, the demand to find some piece that’s missing.
You are not condemned; you are loved by God and given eternal life. You belong to God. Amen