Why would Jesus call some of the most ardent God followers of his day snakes? Or say that they were children of their father--the devil? Was this something that only Jesus could see and say, or something that could only be said or applied in His day? If not, what might we be missing about how He saw the story, His role in it, and our place in it?
Why would Jesus call some of the most ardent God followers of his day snakes? Or say that they were children of their father--the devil? Was this something that only Jesus could see and say, or something that could only be said or applied in His day? If not, what might we be missing about how He saw the story, His role in it, and our place in it?
Welcome back to The Willing Fool. I'm your host and lead fool, Paul Tremble. And today we're going to continue the conversation from the last episode. We focused on this promise, this statement by God in the early chapters of Genesis, that there's going to be some sort of animosity, ongoing tension between the seed.
The offspring, the children of this snake and the seed, the offspring, the children of Eve, that would be standing in for humanity. So that's a fascinating idea. We're going to continue to unpack it. And I don't want you to think that I am going off the rails and proposing this. And so what I want to do today, this episode, is just walk you through some of the scriptures that might be viewed in light of that thought.
And see if it makes sense as a whole. See if it seems to fit and make a cohesive picture. If not, of course, as always, you're free to just dismiss this idea as ridiculous. And, no harm, no foul. But, if it is irrelevant, then you may have gained something like a new lens. Through which to look at the scripture, and those can be very, very, very valuable, especially if you've gotten into a rutt and you can only see things from one point of view.
And maybe that point of view is not the only one or even the best one. So that's the motive. Anyway, so we, yes, we mentioned this, this curse. this promise of animosity between the seed of the snake and the seed of the woman. You might think, well, okay, seed of the snake, you know, if, if in fact the snake is representing this spiritual being, is that just other spiritual beings that have gone awry?
And for the sake of this discussion, we want to consider the possibility that it can include Not just spiritual beings, but people who follow the path of the snake, who follow in the snake's footsteps in some way or another. And of course, the snake in this scenario was, calling into question the motive and intent of God.
It was certainly fostering a lack of trust or a guardedness against God. And it wasn't working on... And within God's agenda, but also, if any of our theorizing and speculating was right about the possible motive for that, maybe the snake didn't like humans too much, or think too highly of humans, or think that they were worthy of the...
special position that they were granted, the proximity to God, the actual access to the Divine Council or the location of the Divine Council. And so, if all that sounds unfamiliar, you might want to go back and re re listen to episode 3, but if you're with me, then we'll just go on from there. So, immediately after these scenes, in chapter 4, you've got the scene with Cain and Abel, which is well known, probably whether you know the Bible very well or not.
And so, one brother murdering another brother, obviously a lot different act than the taking of the fruit and eating it, though we might lump both into the category of sin. This one, you know, is a direct impact on, another person. It's about as bad as you can imagine. It's murder from some sort of motivation.
It seems like jealousy, doesn't say that, but that's kind of what you might pick up reading between the lines. And so you might ask, well, is Cain, is Cain the first example of someone in this seed of the snake category that's, that's intention with the seed of Eve? In that case, it's within a single family.
And of course, talking about biblical characters, it might feel very far removed emotionally and like. Okay, I can talk about this freely with no real, impact on me emotionally, but, but just imagine for a second that we're talking about someone that you know and love. We're talking about you, or a family member, or a close friend, and you wouldn't want to call someone, a seed of the snake.
There's a, I think a good, healthy, reticence, reluctance that we might have to saying, man, You're just, you're a snake like person. You have followed the path of the snake, and you're his children. You're his offspring. Nobody, well, I don't say nobody, most of us don't really want to conclude that or admit or say that about another person, and maybe rightfully so.
We want to look at people as highly as we possibly can. We want to give the benefit of the doubt. We want to be gracious as people. And yet, here's this idea that might not, might not go away so easily. And if you look at Cain and his actions, it might be the first person about whom you could say, uh, is this person following the path of the snake?
So, we'll come back to that in a second, but if you go on, in my mind, it gets very, very fascinating, to read more accounts in Genesis even, and see some of the scenes that seem to be paralleling. The scene in the garden and so what I'm gonna read to you is chapter 12 This is Abram before he becomes Abraham and Sarai before she becomes Sarah and Abram's been called at this point he has gone to Egypt To avoid a famine says there was a famine in the land So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe when he was about to enter Egypt He said to his wife Sarai.
Look, I know what a beautiful woman you are when the Egyptians see you They will say this is his wife. They will kill me but let you live. Please say you're my sister So it will go well for me because of you and my life will be spared on your account When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, so the woman was taken to Pharaoh's household.
He treated Abram well because of her, and Abram acquired flocks and herds, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels. Goes on from there. Obviously, aside from the very foreign, ancient Near Eastern context that we don't really understand very well, here's just some things within the text itself that stand out in light of what we've been talking about.
So you've got Abram, he's been promised by God that there's a plan, God's working, God's doing something, and God seems to be like in control, He's gonna take care of it. But Abram's in this famine situation, and that's no joke. And he's afraid, and he is trying to make his way and ensure his survival and that of his wife in Egypt.
And so, he says to Sarai, hey, pretend to be my sister so they will treat us well on your behalf because of your attractiveness, because of your beauty. They saw she was beautiful. And here's where it gets so interesting. They saw her, praised her to Pharaoh, the woman was taken to Pharaoh's household. So here's three things I heard.
Saw the woman was beautiful, saw her and took her in this kind of inappropriate scenario where she should have been off limits, but was taken even though she was off limits. Why? Because she was a beautiful, looked good. And this should sound familiar because it's almost exactly the same language that's used.
In the garden with the fruit, it says, then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who's with her and he ate it. Seeing something is beautiful.
Taking it. And, in this case, giving it to someone else. So here in this scenario you have, a slightly rearranged replay of Genesis 3. And, in this case, Sarai is playing the role of the fruit, forbidden fruit. And people are seeing and taking her. So, Pharaoh is doing the role of Eve, in this case. And, what does that leave Abram?
Abram's the one sending the message, Hey, look at this. This is beautiful. You should, it should be off limits, in parentheses. But why don't you go ahead and take it anyway? Abram is playing the role of the snake. Now we know, zooming out, we can see the totality of Abram's life. And in general, he played the role of trusting God.
But in this scenario, Abram is falling voluntarily into The role of the snake later on only a few chapters later. You have a similar thing where they're not having a child as they expect even though God's promised it and once again, they're going to Abram and Sarah gonna take Matters into their own hands.
So Abram's wife Sarah took Hagar her Egyptian slave and gave her To her husband Abram as a wife for him so Abram takes Hagar again should be off limits and gave her to her husband, Abram. This is a similar language and similar scene to Eve taking the fruit and giving it to Adam when it should have been off limits.
And if you notice, in both of these cases, what results is horrendous. It's tragedy in both cases. It's, things that eventually, that shouldn't. There's a plague in Egypt, and of course the whole thing with Hagar. Explodes into a generations long, essentially, inter family strife or war. So the curse eventuates from these situations that replay the scene with the snake.
And in both cases, it's not a snake playing the role of snake. It's people, it's humans playing the role of snake. Well, I want to circle back to that cane idea because, I'll be honest, I didn't just come up with that theory sort of out of thin air. In 1st John 3, this instance is, or Cain himself is referenced, and the context is people are being described as children, or literally seed, the word seed, of God, or children or seed of the devil.
We should love one another, 1st John 3, unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil. And his brothers were righteous. It says here, plainly, that Cain was of the evil one. Does that mean he was a supernatural evil being? No. He was a human.
And by virtue of his choices, he was, or became, a child of the evil one. An offspring, or seed, of the snake. Who was, in tension with, in conflict with, the seed of evil. The seed of his mother, the seed of humanity, the seed of Eve, the living. Perfect example. And maybe the first outstanding example. This theme actually doesn't quit here, though.
It continues on in different forms. In Luke 3, you have religious people flocking to John the Baptist. He says, you brood of vipers. Vipers. Snakes. You bunch of snakes. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Matthew 23, Jesus says something similar, to the religious folks, the God followers who were coming to Him.
He says, you're, you're a brood of vipers. You snakes, this idea of being a snake person, an offspring of a snake. The snake is there in Jesus's mouth there in John the Baptist mouth, and John eight is, he's having a, a little inter-religious person conflict. He says, you guys are children of the devil. You say you're children of your father Abraham, but you're, you're children of the devil, your offspring of the evil one.
And so this thought is there. of being a seed of the snake as a, as a person. And for me, I think one of the things that it just makes me stop and think is how different that is than how we think in the church. Uh, and I think, self included, I, again, I'm, I'm very reluctant to, like, heartily put on this lens and go around looking for snake people.
It's not my desire. And yet, there is, in my mind as well, a spiritual reality to this, this possibility that people can be snake like, can be, in effect, children of the snake, uh, snake people. And you might think, well, okay, sure, but that's the bad guys, right? Like, the people who don't have any faith, just people wantonly killing people.
I'm not sure. Like, it would definitely include that group, for sure. I don't think the people in Matthew 23, or John 8, that were arguing with Jesus, and who had the law and the temple and the Sabbath, I don't think that they thought that they were people of the snake. I think they thought, we're people who are following God.
We're gonna make sure. That others follow God as well, we're going to, we're going to make sure people know what the rules are. We're going to make sure that they get enforced. And if people don't, we're going to make sure that they know that they're on the outside. This is, that's kind of the MO of, I think a lot of the people that Jesus applied this language to, and I don't know, I just, there's gotta be a reality there that is meaningful in some way, or I don't think Jesus would have said that.
I don't think that. This language would be applied by people like John the Baptist, or in the book of John. And I just have to continue to think, what's behind that then? In Revelation 20, there is a passage that addresses the snake, the ancient serpent as it's called. And I want to read it to you.
Actually, I'm going to read Revelation 12. There is a similar passage in Revelation 20, but in Revelation 12, the snake is referenced and identified. And notice what it says about, about him. Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels also fought, but he could not prevail and there was no place for them in heaven any longer.
So the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah have now come because the accusers of our brothers has been thrown out.
The accuser of our brothers has been thrown out. The one who accuses them before our God, day and night. So here you have referenced the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan. And I should mention that throughout the entirety of the scriptures, These images weren't always put together in exactly this way, so it looks a little different at different stages in history and at different stages of the scripture.
But here, all those images are put together. And this figure being referenced, how is he described? He's the accuser of our brothers, the one who accuses them. And I'm going to attempt to tie these things we've been talking about in the last few episodes together because In Genesis 1 through 3, again, I mentioned that I think for most people growing up Bible believing or church going or both The import of that is how bad man is, how unworthy, how sinful, how we've got this sin problem we need to deal with and I don't, I don't want to minimize the large element of truth there But if that's all we can see in Genesis 1 through 3 and we miss, we miss the high calling, the incredible desire of God to have people, humans, proximate, high access, high intimacy in the inner workings, in, in the divine counsel, and the extremely high vocation and view that God has of humanity, then the emotional resonance of that is simply of unworthiness, of dirtiness, of, of sinfulness, without the couching really good stuff that's what you would hope.
a God would see in you, what you would hope a parent would see in you, anyone that knows you and sees you and believes the best about you would believe in you. You see the negative, but you don't see the couching positive that it should be nested within. And as well as you might not catch that here's this spiritual being who maybe he doesn't agree with God.
Maybe he doesn't think that humans are up for this. He doesn't think that they deserve a seat at the inner table, the inner chamber. The seat of power, the divine council, why, why would you let them in there? They're not worthy. Look at them. Look what they're doing. Look at who they are. Look at their flaws.
Look at their weaknesses. You think they, you think they are up for this? You think they deserve this?
Actually, the word Satan or Satan does not start off as a proper name. I mean, I think eventually it sort of gets used that way in scripture. But. But originally it's just a, it's just a word that means accuser or opposer, adversary. Think of it as like a, a prosecuting attorney in a courtroom scene. It's the person who's dead set to convict you and show why you deserve something bad, something, some punishment.
Well, that's the role that a person, a being labeled the Satan, the adversary, the opposer, plays in Job. When... God is parading Job and saying, look at him. He's righteous. He's, he's everything I hoped a person would be. And the accuser, who I'm not saying is the Satan, in terms of this kind of lead figure of the divine realm.
His job is to say, well, are you sure God, like, is he really that good? I mean, isn't it just because he blessed him and what if you take all that away? He's probably going to just turn on you. There's this adversarial role. There's like a defense attorney and God's in the role of defense attorney and there's this prosecuting attorney and the accuser rightfully is in that role.
And it's hard to ignore sort of the relational, emotional components of this. What character seems to characterize the Satan as he comes to be understood is this sort of lead, evil, divine realm figure that's opposing God. One of the things that characterizes him is he doesn't really think much of people.
He doesn't believe in them. I mean, I'm sure he believes they exist and that they have sin, but that's, that's, I think kind of where it goes. Like that's who we are. We're, we're just people. Full of flaws and undeserving, kind of unworthy and twisted.
Now the crazy thing is, that I think is often at the center of what is called the good news in church.
I realize that's a pretty harsh, stunning thing to say, but I don't, I'm going to stand by it. I've heard this a lot. And I felt the emotional resonance and I've seen it register in other people.
And it could be very easy for the thing that the, the Satan really believes
and characterizes him
to be mistakenly substituted for the thrust of the message of the scriptures, which is that God has said that we are. Effectively worthy. Are we worthy in ourselves? Of course not. So I know, I know even saying that it's going to make people cringe to say we're worthy. But we're not worthy, but God, but God treats us like we're worthy.
So we're worthy because he treats us like we're worthy. That's how it works. And if we don't communicate that, if we don't understand and communicate that, then I don't think that we're understanding, communicating the reality. About who God is and about what the story is the whole story continues to be God is going to and will impact us in a future episode, but God is gonna work this out So his original desire and plan to have people humans within his tight inner circle the divine counsel helping him to rule Part of who he is and what he's doing He's still gonna work that out Because he still wants that and believes that and thinks that it's possible and is going to make sure that it happens.
And I think sometimes in our, our desire to, honor God, we actually betray that message and instead what we're believing and communicating is something closer aligned to what the Satan is all about.
Again, that's a crazy thing to say, but if you think that that might be true, then you start to look at Matthew 23, and John 8, and Luke 3, and these passages where Jesus is calling the most religious people of His day, those sent to make sure that God gets honored, to make sure that God gets His due, to make sure that people understand that they are bad and God is good and they better be better, or else, why Jesus might call them...
Brood of Vipers.
Sons of the Devil.
Seems like kind of a big deal.
I'm not sure how often we think about how that might be true now. Like, how might those same dynamics play out now. But I, I, I think we should. I don't think we can afford not to consider it. And to think deeply about These scriptures in totality, the mosaic, the picture that they paint, not just isolated scriptures, but the totality, the whole thing.
Zoom in, zoom out, look at the whole thing. Does it, does it cohere? Does the picture cohere together? I
think it's a good place to end for today.
Next episode, I want to, I want to continue to actually trace through this plot and this view of the plot and these characters. Through more scriptures, so that you can hopefully see and hear how, this is not just like an isolated passage here or there or some kind of random marginal theme or motif.
It's not that. It's very interwoven into the story itself and into how we might view God and how God is viewing us and therefore how we should view ourself and our role in that story. I mean, that's what. That's what reading and studying the Bible is literally all about. So, it's worth our time. It's worth our effort.
It's worth our energy. So that's what we're going to do the next episode. Thank you so much for spending this time with us and see you next time.