“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6.)
Is God good? In essence, that is what Satan wants to know when he asks Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat from ANY tree in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1 – emphasis mine). Now of course, God did not say that at all! What He said was almost the complete opposite. He said they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan can be well reversed in the Scripture when it suits his purpose to be (see Matthew 4:5-7/Psalm 91:11-12). He phrases the question the way he does because he wants Eve to doubt God’s goodness. He is, in effect, asking her, “Is God good”?
Eve answers in the affirmative, repeating what Adam had told her. Satan will work with whatever he is given, so he takes the one restriction (given in love), and tries once again to cause Eve to doubt God’s goodness. “You will surely not 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” (3:4-5). Once again, he is asking, “Is God good?” This time Eve succumbs, Adam follows and the rest is history.
“Is God good?” Satan confronts us with the same question today. In the center of our lives there is our own tree of trust. Will we trust what God says about good and evil, or do we need to find out for ourselves? Is what God commands really for our own good, really in our best interests?
Satan whispers, “No,” as the lie is told, the merchandise is shoplifted, the marriage vows are broken. “No,” he says as people choose moral autonomy, sexual rebellion, and materialism over obeying God. “No, God is not good!”
The tragic truth of the matter is that we have all listened to him more often than we care to remember. Like Adam and Eve, we have taken our bite. We have tasted the passing pleasures of sin and found that what was sweet in our mouth was bitter in our stomach. We have failed at our tree of trust.
But this failure does not have to be final. Click here for more.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 