When the serpent tempts the woman in Genesis 3, he doesn’t start off with a question, but with a statement—with a statement he knows is false, and that he knows she knows is false. This is because if he were to ask her a question, she would have to think in order to answer it, and while he wants her to talk to him, he doesn’t want her to think; he wants her to react without thinking, and his opening false statement gets him the reaction he wants.
You see, the serpent wants the woman to talk about God without talking to God. Specifically, he wants her to talk about God to him, so that he can sow doubt and distrust in her ear; but if it ever occurred to her to bring God into that conversation, to allow God to respond to the snake’s lies, then the game would be up, and all his efforts to breed distrust would go for nothing. So he wants her to react without thinking too hard about it, so that he can keep her in that mode of talking about God without actually asking God to join the conversation—which is always a bad mode for us as believers to be in.
(Adapted from “The End of the Beginning”)
Wow, Rob, sometimes your posts really poke me in the arm and say "psst…" lol.
What a great message here.
Thanks much.