Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Danger of Self-Dependence | Torah | Genesis 3

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here to grow in your faith this year. Are you controlling? Do you find yourself needing to take matters into your own hands? Are you tempted to trust yourself more than God? In today's episode, Tanya shares how the temptation of control and independence led to the first sin in Genesis 3. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast Passages: Genesis 3 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. We're exploring stories from the first books of the Bible. Right now, we're in Genesis. Hey, listeners, I'm excited to tell you about a new way to connect with 10-minute Bible talks in the new year. When you sign up for our brand-new 10-minute Bible Talks email newsletter, you're going to get a blessedly short email once a week.

and it's going to have guides on spiritual disciplines, inspiring challenges for you to grow, it's going to give you more background on the passages we cover, and there'll even be quick studies of Hebrew and Greek words. It will be the one email that asks nothing from you but gives you something instead. Each week will be a little different, and you're going to love the variety. So stop what you're doing, click the link in the show notes, and join us in your inbox. Now, let's hop into today's episode. Sometimes we do desperate things because we forget we have other options.

Right now, we need to buy a different car for our son, our senior, and because of the chip shortage, there are very few used cars out there. So when we drive around and look at car lots, the cars are so spaced out, about one per every five to ten parking spaces. We can easily forget that we have the option not to buy a car right now, because it feels like we're going to miss out if we don't buy one of the few that are on the lot. And then let's say we do find a car in the very limited selection. When we talk to the car salesman, we're going to give away all of our negotiating power

if we think that car is our only option. To keep ourselves out of this place, we keep saying, we have the option to not buy a car right now. I was thinking about this while I read the story of Adam and Eve in the garden with the serpent from Genesis chapter 3. God has just created the most wonderful, lavish place for man kind to live and reign. And within just a few verses, Eve goes from describing the abundance God has given her to thinking and acting like following the serpent is her only option.

The trick of the enemy is to weasel us into a place of desperation, because we think our options have been limited by God. The enemy wants us to believe God is withholding something good from us. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent wasn't trying to expand Eve's options, even though that's what he claimed. He was trying to trick Eve into believing God was limiting her options and her freedom. Listen to how it goes in Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree, that is a

the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die. 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. As we listen to that exchange, we hear the serpent changing Eve's perspective

from a place of abundance to a place of desperation. Instead of looking at all the trees around her that were full of good fruits, he lasered her in on the only tree she couldn't have. She bought into the lie that eating from the one tree was the only way for her to truly survive and have everything she needed or wanted. When we believe God is withholding something good from us, we start running down a dead-in path of desperation, where the only option is to be our own God. We don't realize while we're following that path that God has warned us not to take,

that we're actually trading in everything good God gives us for an empty promise. Or maybe we do realize it, but we choose to ignore it for pleasure and glory. When Eve took the fruit and gave it to Adam, their eyes were opened and they were afraid. They feared that they'd been rejected and abandoned by God. So they started by killing an animal, something they were designed to name and rule over, so they would have clothing to hide themselves. And then they hid from God, even though he was calling out to them. The enemy is always present, always trying to get us to buy into this same lie,

that there's something better for us than the intimate relationship of being with God and the peaceful freedom of living in submission to God. And when we follow the lie, we might gain pleasure and freedom for a little while, but we become people who live in fear of rejection and abandonment. Let me give you an example. As God's created one, he is given you responsibility and work. Maybe you're a student, maybe you're a stay-at-home parent, maybe you're a project manager, whatever it is, God has given you the work and the gifting, most likely, or you wouldn't be there, to do it. You operate out of a place of abundance.

But you forget this because the deadline is approaching or the test is coming or the house is about to fall apart and you feel like all the responsibility is on your shoulders. No one else understands but you. You are the only one who can get everything done. Your survival, your success, your future rests on you. So you take and eat the fruit of self-dependence that takes you out of the peace and harmony of God. When Eve took the fruit and gave it to Adam so they could have their eyes opened and be like God, they traded the intimacy and peace of a relationship with God

for the shame and alienation of life. apart from God. This could have been the end of the story. But in God's grace, it was a new beginning. God provided the skin of an animal to cover their nakedness, and God laid the foundations of his promise that one day, a king would be born who would not sin when he was tempted. And this king would take their punishment to the cross, to bring them back into eternal relationship with their creator. Where are we tempted to lean into self-dependence? When are we tempted to exchange God's promise of abundance for a desire to have control over our future? Ask God to help you.

You have no idea the ways he will use his word, his people, and your circumstances to answer your prayer. Thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the TMBT newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week and it will challenge you to grow, give you interesting backgrounds on today's passage, plus a whole lot more. Click the link in our show notes to sign up and deepen your journey with Jesus.