Audio The weather has been so unusual lately that strange things are happening. I stepped out my front door earlier this week and had a nice surprise – a snake in my front yard! Thankfully, it was a good snake, and by that I mean a dead snake! I’d venture to say that most people have never been bitten by a snake, and very few of us probably even know someone who has been bitten by a snake, but we don’t like them. There’s always one or two folks we know who like snakes, maybe who have them as pets, but we tend to think they are a bit strange, don’t we? Call it a prejudice if you will, I think perhaps it is more of a long-standing grudge. They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and one of the first impressions that humanity had of a serpent did not go so well. Chapter 3 of Genesis is an essential text of Scripture. W. H. Griffith-Thomas, the great Anglican preacher who died almost a century ago, said of this chapter, “This chapter is the pivot on which the whole Bible turns.”[1] He said, “if we take it away the rest of Scripture becomes meaningless. With the exception of the fact of Creation, we have here the record of the most important and far-reaching event in the world’s history—the entrance of sin.”[2] We find here in this passage of Scripture the foundation for answering many of life’s hard questions. Why is our nature so bent toward rebellion? Why do our relationships take a wrong turn so often? Why is our work so often feel unsatisfying and futile? Why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? Why do people die? The answers to all those questions and more begin to unfold from this very page of the Bible. It is the account of the ruin of humanity and the first announcement of humanity’s rescue. We have been ruined by sin, and the rescue comes from God in the act of redemption. And so in this passage, we will see the deceptive origin of sin, the devastating effects of it, and the divine response to it. I. The deceptive origin of sin (vv1-6) It is of interest that nowhere in this passage do we find specific mention of the devil or Satan. The adversary in Genesis 3 is simply introduced as “the serpent.” But it does not take long for us to realize that this is not just a generic garden variety snake. Remember that everything the Lord created in this world was called “good” when He made it, and nothing has happened thus far in the text to change that. This “good” creation included all the earth dwelling creatures: “cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth” (1:24-25). Additionally, of all that God created, only one living thing was blessed with the gift of speech: humanity. It is an aspect of being created in the image of God. God is a speaking God, and His image-bearers have the ability to speak to Him and to one another. But along comes this serpent, who has the ability to speak. That tells us that this is no ordinary snake. Verse 1 says that the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. I do not understand this to mean that snakes, in general, are more crafty than all the other animals. Instead, it seems that this particular serpent is in view. This one, the one who slithers in and speaks to Eve, is more crafty than any of the earth dwelling creatures that the Lord created. This particular serpent is set apart as unique and distinct from the rest of creation. And when it speaks, what the serpent says indicates that it is not part of God’s good creation in this world. Its origins are elsewhere. We have the privilege of the rest of Scripture to help us identify that this serpent is actually a manifestation of the devil, Satan. How Satan came to possess or occupy the physical body of this serpent is not disclosed to us, but the testimony of Scripture is clear and unambiguous. In Revelation 12:9, we read about “the great dragon, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan.” Who is Satan and where did he come from? Again, the passage before