Not Taking the Baitنموونە

What would Eve’s story have become if she hadn’t listened to the voice of the enemy persuading her to experience something different?

To want something more than what she had?

To experience something that wasn’t intended for her?

We can speculate the obvious about how our lives would be different, but how would her story have been different had she not given in to the first bait of Satan, coveting?

I want to take you back to a moment that you may be familiar with in biblical history. Instead of looking at the event, I want you to consider the person. Eve was the first and only woman to live in and experience a world without the sins of jealousy, envy, or comparison. The only voice she’d ever heard whisper into her ear was her husband, Adam, because God had not yet spoken directly to her.

Then along came Satan, a new voice. He knew about God's command to Adam, and he knew God's voice. It was a voice he despised from the Creator he hated. In fact, it was the same voice that expelled him from heaven for believing that he could make himself “like the Most-High” (Isaiah 14:14 KJV). Coveting. Satan was the original creator of this bait and believed it would be useful in convincing the very creature that was made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) to fall.

Satan took the bait that caused his destruction and presented it to Eve, as seen in Genesis 3:4-5 (ESV):

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

But what happens next is the catalyst that leads to compromise:

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. (Genesis 3:6 ESV)

She saw a delight that she desired. The oldest and most effective trick in the book for historical and modern-day believers:

See

Delight

Desire

The word coveting in the Hebrew and Greek means to desire, to lust, or to long for. Those three words (see, delight, desire) are subtle signs that coveting may be on the horizon in our hearts, and when they are not surrendered to God, they can become spiritual trip hazards.

So what does this mean for us?

We will explore that answer tomorrow. For now, I invite you to begin to pray that God will reveal to you over the next couple of days any areas of covetousness that Satan has presented to you.