Welcome again to Things Unseen.

This week we're thinking about what Christians have long referred to as the fall,

the events described in Genesis chapter 3.

As a young Christian, I grew up not knowing one Bible

commentary from another, and I confess that the first one-volume commentary I bought when I was

in my mid-teens, I bought because it was cheap. And I didn't know it was full of old-fashioned

liberalism until I took it home and then discovered

that it viewed the events of Genesis chapter 3 as what they called etological myths.

That is, for example, a story made up to explain why snakes slither rather than walk.

But the truth is that if Genesis doesn't record actual historical events, the rest of the Bible begins to fall to pieces, including the teaching

of Jesus and the apostles. So, for example, while Genesis 3, verse 21 doesn't give us details of the divine

tailoring by which God made garments of skins for Adam and Eve after they had sinned,

it does tell us that these events really took place in our world. So what we read in the early chapters of Genesis is a record of once and for all events, just

as once and for all as the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection.

But that said, at the same time it's clear that there are important patterns in what happened in the Garden of Eden.

And Scripture teaches us that there's a pattern of disobigence and its consequences here that Christ had to come to reverse in order to save and restore us and the world.

And the New Testament records and explains how he did that.

So while Genesis 3 records specific events in the temptation of Adam and Eve, I think we're right to see a pattern here of the way in which Satan continues to tempt us as God's people.

We saw one element of that.

Yesterday, he uses God's best gifts to tempt us to make bad choices.

No wonder Genesis 3 calls the serpent the craftiest beast of the field.

Today I want to draw attention to a statement Paul makes in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 11.

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