Episode Details

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1 NLT)

Shortly before he died, the comedian W. C. Fields was spotted flipping through the pages of a Bible. When someone asked what he was doing, Fields replied, “Looking for loopholes.”

In the same way, I think the devil has been acquainting himself with the Bible for a long time, looking for loopholes. In the Garden of Eden, he misrepresented what God had said to fit his agenda. The devil took God’s words to Adam, which invited Adam to eat from every tree in the Garden—with one exception—and twisted them into a prohibition designed to cast doubt on God’s goodness.

The devil said to Eve, in effect, “If God really loved you, He would let you eat from any tree you want. But because He said that you can’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He clearly doesn’t love you.”

The actual verse goes like this: “The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1 NLT).

You’ll notice that the devil’s first recorded words to Eve—indeed, his first recorded words in the entire Bible—end with a question mark: “Did God really say . . . ?” They are designed to cast doubt on God’s love. The devil was quoting God, but he completely twisted what God said.

He did the same thing when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. “Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, “He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone”’” (Matthew 4:5–6 NLT). The devil was quoting Psalm 91:11–12, though he left out not just part of the original text, but also the context of the passage.

Notice that with Eve, he questioned God’s Word. He didn’t deny that God had spoken. He simply questioned whether God had really said what Eve thought He had said. That’s what the devil will do with God’s Word. He will misquote it. He will mischaracterize it. He will distort it. And he will plant seeds of doubt in our minds so that we question it.

The way to counter his strategies is found in Psalm 119:11: “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (NLT). The better we know God’s Word, the more deeply we embed it in our lives, the harder it is for our enemy to use it against us.

Reflection question: What would hiding God’s Word in your heart look like in your life? Discuss Today's Devo in Harvest Discipleship!

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