It's not my fault

DEVOTION

GENESIS

IT’S NOT MY FAULT

Gen 3:10-13

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." 11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

NIV

It’s not my fault. The first emotion we are told about in the beginning is pleasure. God saw that it was good, and very good. He was pleased with all that he had made. God experienced pleasure with his creation, with the man and the woman who he had created. But the first emotion we are told the man experienced is fear, fear of God. Certainly Adam had walked in the cool of the day with the Lord God many times before without any fear whatsoever, but since he disobeyed him and ate from the tree he was not supposed to, he now felt fear. Fear brings other problems along with it. So when they hid because they were afraid of what God would say or do when he found out what they had done, God called to them and he had to answer. But his answer was a result of his fear, and his lack of personal responsibility. “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." It’s not my fault, in fact, God it is yours. You gave me that woman and she is the reason I ate it. Adam blamed God for his sin. If you would have just left me alone and not had taken that rib from me and made this woman, I would have been alright. We can just imagine that was the thought process of Adam. But nevertheless he put the blame on someone else, it was not his fault. Then when God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?” she too explains it was not her fault either, it was the serpents fault. If you have not created the serpent, or thrown him out of heaven, or allowed him to be in the garden in the first place, none of this would have happened, so she actually blamed God as well. We can hear that kind of thinking in her answer. Do we do that? When we fail God, do we blame someone else? Do we actually give control of our emotions and our responses or actions to another person? If we blame someone else for our failures then that is exactly what we are doing. Adam failed to obey God, it was not the woman’s fault. The woman failed to obey God, it was not the serpent’s fault. Of course the serpent, that ancient serpent, the devil, is extremely crafty. We are going to see God meter out justice to the serpent because of what he did. But he is also going to hand out some discipline to both Adam and the woman. But it is true that God allowed the serpent into the garden in the first place. He could have kept him away from Adam and the woman. God could keep all temptation away from us as well, but it seems he does not do that. Instead he tells us what our response to temptation should be.

James 4:7-10

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

NIV

We know the woman did not have the letter James wrote to quote in her mind as she was being tempted, but she had the direct command of God to not eat from that tree. This would have meant God intended and expected her, just as he does us, to resist the devil, resist his crafty schemes, his temptations and as a result he will flee. If the woman would have just told that sly serpent that he was wrong, that God is right, and we are not allowed to eat from this tree, and that is that, so I will not do it, the devil would have left her alone, knowing he had lost his chance. But that was not the case and she allowed him to deceive her and then she brought her mate into her failure. Do we do that? When we fail God, do we first blame others, then we bring them down with us? Do we, in our efforts to shift the blame to another, cause them to become either defensive or aggressive, fighting back, not taking the blame, but accusing us of worse than what we actually did? A battle ensues and we both feel and say things we regret later. The devil has won the day, but not the war. As we will see, he was able to tempt the woman so she would fail God, and as a result have to leave the garden and for thousands of years all of mankind would be without that paradise. But God has provided a way back in, Jesus. We would think we know better. We have all the scripture, we have this story, and we have all the truths of God explaining everything to us. We would think we should not ever give any credence to any of the temptations the devil brings to our mind. Yet it seems we do. It is that ancient war that battles within all of us. The things we want to do, we do not, and the things we do not want to do, we do. How can we win this battle? We even have the help of the Holy Spirit. Will we ever learn? The simple fact is, in this life, we will never attain perfection. We can try, we can make every effort to live a life that is pleasing to God, but the truth is we are going to make a few mistakes along the way. Is that an excuse, no! We cannot blame our failure in the fact we are but human. That would be in essence blaming God, because he made us this way, or blaming that woman and Adam for starting it all. No, the blame is all on us, each failure is ours, and ours alone. We choose to ignore the truth. We choose, or decide to give in to a temptation. Thank God, we are covered by the blood of Jesus. If it were not for the choice we made to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we would be in a very bad place, expelled from the paradise of God. Our names would be blotted out of the book of life. But, praise God, we are in Christ, we have been redeemed, we have been justified and sanctified by God himself. Although we should not simply go on yielding to every temptation, we have forgiveness when we do, if we seek it. But the one thing we always need to be aware of is not ever to tell God, “it’s not my fault”