Dear Friends,
“Try it! You’ll like it!” That’s what Satan said to Eve in the garden. She listened to him and you know the sad rest of the story. And he’s still using that old line, only in a more sophisticated way as today’s devotional points out. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 3:1-19 (ESV)

  1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

  He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

  8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

  14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

  “Because you have done this,
  cursed are you above all livestock
  and above all beasts of the field;
  on your belly you shall go,
  and dust you shall eat
  all the days of your life.
  15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
  and between your offspring and her offspring;
  he shall bruise your head,
  and you shall bruise his heel.”
  16 To the woman he said,

  “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
  in pain you shall bring forth children.
  Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
  but he shall rule over you.”
  17 And to Adam he said,

  “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
  and have eaten of the tree
  of which I commanded you,
  ‘You shall not eat of it,’
  cursed is the ground because of you;
  in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
  18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
  and you shall eat the plants of the field.
  19 By the sweat of your face
  you shall eat bread,
  till you return to the ground,
  for out of it you were taken;
  for you are dust,
  and to dust you shall return.”

“Why does one plus one equal two? …The sovereign God made it so. What keeps the laws of physics regular so that we can live and think and operate in this universe? Because the sovereign God is a God of order, not of chance or chaos. Sinful man, not God, is the spring of chaos. …Though the Bible is primarily a textbook on spiritual matters, this does not mean that it has nothing at all to say about scientific matters. In fact…biblical principles of science take precedence over the so-called scientific method, that is empirical experimentation…. You may remember that Satan first tempted Eve by saying the empirical experimentation took precedence over special revelation, and that to live in this world she must prove the fact to be true by empirically experimenting with the data available to her. Or, in more familiar terminology, Satan said that God had lied and that she should eat the forbidden fruit and find out for herself the facts outside of God’s Word. Thus, Calvinism stresses that even science is subject to the Bible… Why? Because God is God and is to be trusted as our sovereign.” [Curt Daniel, “The Practical Application of Calvinism,” in David N. Steele, Curtis C. Thomas, S. Lance Quinn, The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, and Documented second edition, (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004), p. 190]