Reading Your Opponent’s Plays - The One Year Unlocking the Bible Devotional

The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the LORD God had made.   Genesis 3:1

A good football team will spend hours studying their opponents’ plays so that they can defend against them. When Satan came into the Garden of Eden to do battle with Adam and Eve, he used the most deceptive plays in his playbook.

Satan’s first play was to pose a question to Eve: “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1). God had given one simple instruction, and Satan’s first action was to question it. If Satan could undermine the clarity of God’s Word and generate enough confusion about it, it would be easier to disregard.

God made it clear that sin would result in death (see Genesis 2:17), but Satan suggested in his second play that the consequences of sin have been exaggerated: “You won’t die!” (3:4). It’s as if he said, “Eve, come on. You can’t seriously believe you will die from eating one piece of fruit! God loves you. He won’t allow anything bad to happen to you.”

Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, but Satan suggested in his third play that the man and the woman could actually be God: “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Again, it’s as if Satan was saying, “Why is God telling you what to do? You can decide what’s good and evil for yourself!” Satan knows how much we like that suggestion. Humans are made in the image of God, but we are not content with that. We want to be God.

Now that you know Satan’s primary tactics, it is not difficult to organize a defense. Start by taking the Word of God seriously and refusing to twist its meaning. Next, settle in your heart that sin always brings consequences. When God speaks about judgment, he is not making idle threats. Finally, let God be God. What he has declared “good” is good, and what he has declared “evil” is evil. These are the basic building blocks of any successful defense against the enemy.

For further reading, see Genesis 3