Temptation as Old as the Garden

In this episode, Christy Dragotta explores the Biblical story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, emphasizing the importance of abiding in God's Spirit rather than relying on human knowledge and law. She discusses how the pursuit of knowledge can lead us away from God's truth and highlights the need for faith, humility, and dependence on the Holy Spirit for discernment.

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Hey friends, I am so glad you're with me today. We are diving right into something that is as old as time itself. Back to the garden, right? Where Adam and Eve were, and there grew these beautiful trees that were pleasing to the eye and good to the taste. And then there was this one tree, and it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And so I'm going to take us all the way back to the garden, and we're just going to spend some time unpacking something that I think we don't pay enough attention to. And that is our relentless pursuit of the knowledge of good and evil. And it's not uncommon to hear that Christians are judgy, right? Like people will lump us in a category and say, Well, you're a Christian, so you're a judgy person. You must judge people. You're not tolerant, all these things. And the Bible has a lot to say about all of those things. But today I want to specifically focus on what did Satan tempt Eve with in the garden? And he he tempted Eve and Adam. He just knew the best way to get to Adam was through Eve. And they were right there together and they both ate the fruit. Let me just read the actual scripture where it talks about this because I think it's really important when we're going to be talking about the word that we actually go to the word that is written. And it says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. Which, as far as we're concerned, God never said you must not touch it. He just said, Don't eat from it. And he says back to her, You will surely not die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. And so it was desirable for wisdom. And we think, you know, when Solomon was given, the Lord came to him and said, You can ask for anything you want, and I will grant it to you. And Solomon asked for wisdom, which is a beautiful thing. It is exhorted many times in Scripture to seek wisdom. And Jesus is himself the embodiment of wisdom. And so in seeking wisdom, we are seeking Jesus, or it can be said, in seeking Jesus, we will be seeking wisdom. But this is different because it was knowledge of good and evil specifically. And as I think about that, that's the ability to judge what we consider good from what we consider evil. And I say we because if you go to different cultures all over the world, you are going to find that there are some things in other cultures that you would consider good, that they consider evil, and there will be things in our culture that we consider evil, in other cultures they would consider good. And so, where is the standard for good and the evil? And when we ate of that tree, right, because we all would have done it, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. And so we can't just say, Well, that was Eve, I would have done something different. No, I probably would have been deceived as well, and I would have eaten it because the temptation is you're gonna be like God, you're gonna know good from bad. And it even says the very first thing that Adam and Eve say to God when he comes, he comes searching for them. He doesn't just leave them wandering alone, hiding. He comes calling for them. Hey, where are you guys? And they come out and they're like, Hey, well, we were. Let me just read, let me read what it says. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man, Where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid. And listen to what God says. Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? And then they go on to the blame game there. But the question that it's so Adam comes and he says, We were afraid. And why are they afraid? Because now they know, they know that it is good to be clothed and evil to be naked. That's what their minds told them. And so they were trying to cover up something they called evil. But God had called it good. And if he had wanted them to be wearing clothes, if if that truly was evil, he would have clothed them. He wouldn't let them just run around being evil little creatures, right? He would have clothed them, he gave them everything they needed then for life and godliness, just as the scriptures tell us, now we have everything we need for life and godliness. But what we do is we depend on our own knowledge, we depend on our own interpretation of good and evil. And this has caused us a lot of grief. And there's only one standard. Jesus even says, You call me good, but there is one who is good, and that's the Father. The Father is good. Now we know that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, but he even points out there's just one that's good, and it's not you, and it's not me, it's the Father. And so as I'm looking at this, I'm just thinking how often we slip back into like we can't quit dying from the knowledge of good and evil. It elicits fear in us all the time. That's the first thing it produced in Adam and Eve: shame and fear. They went and hid because they were ashamed and they were afraid. And they knew God, they walked with him personally in the garden. So if the tempter can come in and convince them that God is holding out on them, and that if they would just do what he said not to do, they would be smart like God. Why do we think that he can't tempt us to do the same thing? I grew up and I'm really grateful for the way I grew up in Bible churches that rooted me down in the word, knowing the word, good theology, a breaking down of the specific words to their Greek root or their Hebrew root. I've had a very good upbringing in the word, and I'm so thankful for it. I will never not be grateful for it. But I've also been taught so often in the law, in trying to discern what is good from what is evil. And we see this with the Pharisees. We see when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, they called it evil. God called it good. They knew the word of God better than anyone else in their time, in their day. They had it memorized. The Pharisees had the whole first five books memorized, committed to memory. Do you know how often you would have to read those first five books to commit them to memory? How often you would have to say them and what you would have to do to know that amount of scripture. And if scripture itself was the only thing necessary for salvation, Satan would be saved because he knows more scripture than you and I do. My exhortation is not that the Bible isn't important. The Bible is full of life. It in itself has everything we need to learn about God and his commands for us, but also his love to us. It is the story of relationship from beginning to end, the story of a savior who wants to come and rescue us from the death that started way back in Eden. And so, as I look at the word, I love it and I don't minimize it, but I do want to really highlight for you that if we say, if you know the word backwards and forward, you will know good and evil the way God does. We have slipped into a deception because the Pharisees knew this word better than I know the word, and yet they did not recognize the Messiah when he came. They did not recognize a movement of God. They called what is good evil, and they called some things that were evil good. All of those laws that they created that made sense to a man's mind that were actually against the heart of the law that was there, which is to love God first and love others as you love yourself. And so we can miss it. We can know the word of God, we can study diligently the word of God and still miss it. I wanted to read, there's a book that is called There Were Two Trees in the Garden by Rick Joyner. And I've just put a couple of bookmarks here where something that he said had impacted me. And it says, it has been the primary strategy of Satan through the ages to tempt man to grasp for himself what the Lord ultimately intends to give him anyway. And so as we look at this, we know in eternity, as we go into heaven and into eternity, the Lord is going to share more and more and more. Our earthly minds can't comprehend all of the things in the heavenly realms. We have a finite body and a finite mind while we're here on earth, but we have an eternal soul, and that soul is going to go to heaven and continue to be instructed by the Lord. We are going to continue to learn, we are going to continue to experience life with God in exciting and fresh ways, and without cohabitating with sin and fear and all of the things that this death, when it entered the world, brought to us. Okay? That's so good. The Lord has riches unending to give us. And I'm not just talking about gold and things like that. I'm talking about the things that fill your soul, the soul longings that you have that you can't fill with Netflix and alcohol and drugs and friends and parties and knowledge. You can't fill the depth of ache in your soul with anything that we have here except for Jesus. It is where the Holy Spirit will come in and fill up those longings. But in heaven, those longings will be fully realized. Whereas here on the earth, we haven't fully realized them yet because we're not fully sanctified. Our sanctification is a process from the time that we receive Christ all the way until we go to be with him in glory. And so another part that that is in the book that I love, he says, only those who love their calling more than they love comfort and acceptance can stand. Satan is forever inducing us to relax and flow with the tide, to avoid persecution and misunderstanding. And so if that's true, there's a tempting there to just go with the flow, let's not be misunderstood, let's be comfortable, let's be accepted. That's approval in the eyes of man. And so if you don't love who you are in Christ, your identity, who he has called you to be, who he has made you to be more than you love the approval of man and comfort, you won't stand when it comes time to stand because you will cave under the pressures of the opinions of men who are all still looking at good and evil with their own measurements. And I'm not saying everybody is looking at good and evil with their own measurements. I know the Bible does tell us things that are evil and things that are good, but again, the Bible told the Pharisees those things, and not only did they look at the law, they looked at 600 and however many more, what 613 laws that they added on from what they got from those scriptures. And it was too heavy, it was too much. And so only the spirit, this is another thing from this book, There were two trees in the garden. Only the spirit can beget that, beget that which is spirit. This is so important. He does not call us for our strengths, he calls us for our weaknesses. Just as our Lord emptied himself to become a servant, he looks for those who will have no confidence in the flesh and will become vessels for his spirit. And it's so true that he says that it is in our weakness that he will be strong, and that he did not call those who were strong, but he called the weak, those who were foolish. That's who he uses. And so if he's using you in powerful ways, rejoice that you are weak and you are foolish. And he said, You're exactly who I want. That's great news for me. It's great news for all of us. And so we don't have to have an elite mind full of knowledge to be used by the Lord. We don't have to have a preacher to help us discern the voice of the Lord. It says that we are his sheep, and the sheep know the shepherd's voice, that we understand his voice. So I'm not going to address it in this episode, but in another episode, we're going to talk about hearing the voice of God. Really for yourself, being able to discern the voice of God so that you don't have to keep wondering what is God's will for your life, being tossed back and forth like a wave in a storm. You can be sure what God is calling you to do. And so listen to this, it's so beautiful. If we are walking in the light, we will allow truth to remain at the point of divine tension between the extremes, and will refrain from making a formula, principle, or inflexible doctrine out of it. It is the fruit of the tree of knowledge that demands our carrying the paradoxes in Scripture to their logical conclusions. The paradoxes are there to force us to seek the Lord for his mind and wisdom. This leads us to our walking by the Spirit instead of principles or laws. By resisting the compulsion to make formulas and allowing truth to rest at the point of tension between the extremes, we begin to partake of the tree of life. Christianity is not just following a set of rules, it is walking with God. It is abiding. And it's it's so true that we have to resist the compulsion to make formulas because our minds naturally try to go to easy street, to easy mode, three-step process, five-step prayer. Our minds are looking for the seven steps to freedom. It's just what we do as humans. We are looking for processes, laws. Give me a checklist and I'll just do it. Except for that, we we don't. We don't even keep up with our checklist. How many times have you started down a path of trying to do quiet time every day? And by day five, you're like, I give up. I haven't been able to do this. Every single day I have something else come up that stands in the way of this quiet time or that interrupts my quiet time. Or how many times have you started your new year's resolutions and you get going in January, you're so excited, and by March, you're like, What resolutions? I don't even remember what they are anymore. Or I've given up on them because life is just too much right now, right? Even if we have the checklist, the perfect checklist, we cannot adhere to that perfectly. Our natural inclination is to go to lists and formulas, and he's saying, dump your list, dump your formula, and walk with me. Come with me, disciples, through this field of grain. And though it is the Sabbath, we are going to pick the heads of grain to eat because we're hungry, and it's not the law that we are to obey about not working on the Sabbath. We are going to flow freely with the Spirit of God, and we are hungry, and He has provided nourishment. Let's eat here. We get so caught up in rules and traditions that we completely forget to abide. And it's in the abiding, that walking in the Spirit, that there is freedom and there is life. And so today I just kind of wanted to break it down for you. Take time this week to go back and study in Genesis where it talks about the trees in the garden. See where we were tempted to lean on our own understanding. What is that scripture? And do not lean on your own understanding, but in all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Other versions say, and he will direct your paths. When we rely on God, which is what he's asking us from the very beginning, he's saying, Come here, come here, I know the way. Let me show you the way. Abide in me, sit with me, stay with me, commune with me, and I will show you. That's what he's saying. But we want the formula because then we can just do it by ourselves. If you knew, you would just you would separate from me, you would just go off and try to do it on your own, apart from me. And apart from me, you can do nothing. So we have to abide. And in that abiding, when we aren't even trying to tell ourselves what right and wrong are, as we listen to the spirit, don't you believe that the spirit will correct you where you are in error? Haven't you felt that warm conviction that comes over you when he says, Oh, you shouldn't have said that. You need to go apologize right now for what you said. Ask them to forgive you for what you said, it wasn't okay. Haven't you felt that correction? And sometimes it's a gentle correction, and sometimes it is a okay, listen up. He does that a lot with my kids when I'm so frustrated with something that one of my children has done, and I want to just say, if you would just listen to me, and he he says, Do you hear that? If you would just listen to me, it's such a correction and it's a beautiful correction, sometimes gentle, sometimes not, but that's abiding in the spirit. He loves you. Don't you know and believe he will show you when you are in error? And that's the beautiful thing about walking in the spirit, but we want it to be by sight, not by faith. And it says, without faith, it's impossible to please God. The Pharisees had the word of God committed to memory, they recited it to their children, they taught it to one another, and even knowing all of that scripture, they were unable to please God because they had no faith. So that's my exhortation to you this week. Get in the word, really sit with the Lord about what that looks like in your own life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Are you pursuing knowledge because you need to be the smartest one in the room? Because you have an incessant need to know more than everybody around you, because that degree or that diploma is somehow going to define that you know what you're talking about. The voice of the enemy is going to be on the other side of that diploma, too. And he's still gonna be telling you. You don't know what you're talking about. There is no degree that is going to define your identity ever. And now I don't mean that everybody that's pursuing degrees is doing that out of that motive. I'm just wanting to call to your attention: do you have an incessant need for knowledge because you have an incessant need to be right? And if you do, take that before the Lord. But for some of you, He's gifted you, right? He's gifted you with that longing for knowledge to understand that curiosity. I'm very curious. And I really heard him say the other day, I love that about you. I love all of your questions. I'm curious. Now, when I start trusting in my knowledge over what he says, now I have a problem. But if you're just curious and you are seeking, you're thirsty because you want to teach others what you're learning, that can be a beautiful thing. But sometimes we don't even know the whole motive in our heart. Sometimes we think the motive is one thing until he reveals to us when somebody makes us feel like even though we have this beautiful degree and it's got lots of letters after it, we're not as important as they are, we're not as smart as they are. When somebody makes you feel like that and it hurts you and it surprises you, it's because you are rooting your identity in all of those letters after your name. And your identity is only found in who Christ calls you. He has named you, he has given you a name, and if you don't know it, it's going to be a confusing world for you. And you're going to continually put your identity into the hands of men who did not create you and who don't know you at those deep levels. So they have no authority and no right to name you. Yet you're labeling yourself under the names that the world is giving you. So we'll talk about that, like I said, in another episode. I look forward to that. It's part of what I want to get honest with you about, help bring freedom into your life about who you are and what God has created inside of you that he wants to share with the world. But for now, just think on these things today. Think about where you need to give up your wisdom, worldly wisdom, for his knowledge, his wisdom, and the abiding in him where he can lead you into all truth. The Spirit will lead you into all truth. I pray that the rest of your week is a blessing to you as you abide in the Lord and as you seek out ways to trade his wisdom for your wisdom. So thanks for being with me today, and I really look forward to seeing you next week. Bye guys.