John Bevere - How the Enemy Deceives Us
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How does this serpent get her to turn on God in this perfect environment? Because if we can understand how the serpent gets her to turn on God in this perfect environment, we can understand how he can get us to turn on God in a corrupt environment. So I started praying. I said, "God, you've got to show me what really happened here." So let's look at it. God creates the heavens and the earth; He doesn't create a garden; He plants a garden. I've been in some of the most beautiful gardens in the world, and let me tell you something: men and women can make gardens, but can you imagine what God's garden looked like? So He creates this man and says to him, "You can eat from any tree in the garden."
Now that's His generosity. Now, the reason most people don't see that as generous is that they think there are just two trees in the garden. Horticulturists tell us that there are over 2,500 different fruit-bearing trees known on the earth. I have to believe there's at least one of each of those trees represented in that garden. So you know God's saying to him, "Hey Adam, you can freely eat from 2,499 trees." That's His generosity. Okay, now let me ask you something: Did you wake up this morning? Did you have covers on you? Did you have a roof over your head the last couple of weeks to protect you from the rain? Did you eat food? Did you drink clean water? Did you come here to church tonight and meet with some friends?
I mean, I could go on for the rest of the night about all the great things that He's given us. That's His generosity. But then God says, "I don't want people that are forced to have a relationship with Me; I want people that can choose to have a relationship with Me." You understand what I'm saying? I mean, I look at Jensen; Lisa and I love Jensen, and shice, you know what? Nobody pays Jensen to be my friend. Nobody forces him to be my friend. God's the same way; He doesn't want people that feel like they have to be robots here. So God says, "You can freely eat from every tree except for the tree that's in the midst of the garden, the one that gives the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat that one; the day you eat it, you die."
Now we don't know what happened next or how long the next event took, but eventually, after bringing all the animals to Adam, he names 1.25 million species of animals and remembers what he named each one without Google. I mean, some people think Adam and Eve were dummies—oh my gosh, no; everything's firing in these guys! But there's not a helper suitable. So God puts him to sleep, takes a rib out, creates Eve, brings Eve to Adam, and Adam goes, "Whoa, man!" And that's how woman got her name. And if you believe that, you believe the Pope is Jewish too. We've called her "woe man" ever since.
Now, we don't know if the next event happened three years later, a hundred years later, or a thousand years later, but the serpent targets her, and there is a reason for his targeting her. Okay, I'm going to show you in a minute. Now the first thing is: I believe animals talked in the garden. Okay, why? Because he wasn't shocked by a talking snake. And secondly, a few generations later, when Balaam's donkey talked, he didn't faint because probably oral tradition said animals talked in the garden. So the snake approaches Eve, and he's got a four-step plan to turn her against God.
Step number one: the first thing he says to her is, "So you can't eat from every tree, can you?" What has he just done with that statement? He has just gotten her eyes off the 2,499 she can freely eat from and onto the one tree that's forbidden. This is exactly what he wants to do with you: he wants to get your eyes off of everything God has given you and onto the one or two things that you feel are being restrained from you.