Sentence on the Serpent in Eden
. HE Lord God said unto the serpent.” Under
the serpent form Satan beguiled the woman, and under that form he was condemned. He is a serpent still. He can go about among the weak and defenceless as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; but he is most at home as the embodiment of craft. The serpent was most szdt/e,and so is the Evil-one most cunning. You think you understand the ways of Satan; but you are mistaken. You have been tempted by him these thirty years, and you believe your experience can unravel all his plots. Ah, he has been engaged in the work of tempting men for nearly six thousand years; and he is not only much older, but he is far more acute and more sagacious than you are. His ways are not easily found out; and though we are not ignorant of his devices, we know not which device he will next use. If we have successfully escaped his nets for forty years, the skilful fowler may even yet entangle us. We have need each day to cry, “Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.” John writes of him in the Revelation as “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” He is more cunning than the wisest: how soon he entangled Solomon! He is stronger than the strongest: how fatally he overthrew Samson! Ay, and men after God’s own heart, like David, have been led into most grievous sins by his seductions. We do not know where he now lurks, or from what quarter he will next shoot his arrows; but we may rest assured that he is always plotting mischief against the people of God, and he is working subtilely to effect their pollution. We may wisely enter into Paul’s anxiety when he wrote to the Corinthians, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” From the evil machinations of the subtle one, may the Lord deliver us!
A serpent is very zmsznuating. It can enter where another creature could not. Ever so small an opening makes room for a serpent, and it winds itself in without noise. Satan is very insinuating; and as he entered Paradise, so can he penetrate into the most secret and sacred places. He creeps into the church, watch though we may. He creeps into houses, though sanctified by devotion. Have you never found him intruding into your closet during your prayer? There may seem to be no loophole, and yet there he is, where he was least expected. Has he not wound himself into your families? Has he not crept into your hearts? How can we keep him out? We watch against his attacks from without; but, behold, he has found a lodging-place within! Subtle and insinuating is Satan: he isa serpent indeed!
And how vexomous! What poison one fang of the old serpent will throw into our moral system! Look around, and see how many have been poisoned with the desire for strong drink, with lust, with avarice, with pride, with anger, with unbelief. Fiery serpents are among us, and many die of their venom. If we tolerate the least sin, it is a burning drop in the veins of the soul. One touch of the fangs of this serpent will work immeasurable sorrow, even if the soul be saved from death. It is only the power of God that keeps us from being destroyed by this viper. Had he his will, he is a spirit so malignant that no heir of heaven would survive. O God, keep Thine own! Deliver us from the Evil-one!
In all probability the reptile called the serpent was a nobler creature before the Fall than now. The words, so far as they literally concern the serpent, threaten that a change would be wrought in him. It has been a sort of speculative opinion that the creature either had wings, or was able to move without creeping upon the earth as it now does. Of that we know nothing; but assuredly the serpent is a hated thing, with which manhood is at war, and its form and habit typify all that is mean and cunning. There is nothing noble, nothing brave, nothing true about the idea of a serpent. Satan was among the first-born of the morning, a swift and shining servant of God; but he transgressed against his Sovereign and fell, and now he is nothing but a serpent — malignant, base, cunning, and untrue. He is fitly figured by “the wily snake.” “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John viii. 44). He goes out to deceive the nations (Rev. xx. 8). He works signs and lying wonders (2 Thess. ii. 9). He lays snares, and takes men captive (2 Tim. ii. 26). Keep before your minds the form of a serpent, and remember that after this manner Satan will attack you. Only let me soften your fears with the sight of ai 30 Sentence on the
another serpent: the serpent of brass lifted upon a pole brought life to those whom evil serpents had injured. It seems to me a wonder of condescending grace that our Lord Jesus could allow Himself to be symbolized by a form which had been assumed by the great enemy of souls. Yes, there was the brazen serpent lifted high upon a pole, and they that looked, though bitten by fiery serpents, lived. Even thus is Jesus on the cross the sure remedy for sin of every kind. Look out with all your eyes of caution for the old serpent, the devil; but at the same time look up with all your eyes of faith to Him who was made a curse for us that we might live.
“The Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed”; and the curse was made emphatic and superlative. He with whom we have to contend has the curse of God upon him even now. God has blessed His people, but He has cursed their great enemy. The curse of God blights and blasts, even as in the case of the fruitless fig-tree, which, beneath the sentence of the Lord Jesus, withered away. The curse of God has fallen upon that foul spirit who represents evil: it could not justly be otherwise. This is his shame and your strength. The next time you are fighting with Apollyon, here is a keen shaft to hurlathim. Tell him he is accursed of God; and what has he to do with those whom the Lord has blessed? He whom God blesses is blessed, but he whom God curses is cursed indeed. Upon all the power of sin and error — yea, upon Satan himself, who is the ringleader in evil things, the curse of God abideth; and this is prophetic of their overthrow. The truth shall conquer, holiness shall overcome. Falsehood and wrong bear the brand of Cain upon their brow, and they shall wither from the root.
Satan was cursed with reference to us. Our fall has brought him no gain, but an increase of divine displeasure, of disappointment, and envy. He was under God’s wrath before, but now the Lord saith concerning him, “Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.’ Though there cometh pain and groaning upon all the lower creation through man’s sin, there shall come upon the old serpent a far more exceeding measure of the curse, because he has dared to lead into revolt the race of man. Who will willingly be the slave of a tyrant whom the Lord has cursed?
Not only Satan, but every form of sin, is under the curse. The tempter would make you think that some shapes of sin are blessed; but this is false. All sin has a curse attached to it. Keep far from it. Is it false doctrine? It is accursed. Is it living in wantonness and carnal pleasure? It is accursed. Touch it not. You cannot do wrong without defiling yourself with that which God has cursed. You may imagine that you will gain many good things by yielding a little to sin; but this is a lie of the adversary: evil is loss and ruin. The curse which God pronounced on the serpent is pronounced on the whole of his seed, and everything that is impure, untruthful and unholy lies under the ban of God.
Note THE REMARKABLE PROSTRATION which fell upon the serpent: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” So does the serpent move, and so doth evil labour to make progress. Satan moves always as a fallen one: not with the dignity of holiness, but grovelling low.
God has put upon his every movement the indication that he is no longer great and wise. The movements of the prince of darkness are base and sensual: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” His seed also take to the same posture in going. I have seen the foes of the truth contending against the faith of God, and I have marked their policies, their plots, and their plans; and I have said to myself, “Verily, it is written, Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” whens engaged in evi designs have no other way of going, but with tricks, devices, concealments, double meanings,/ When men deny the Scriptures and the truth of Gdd, they always go to work in an underhand, mean, and serpentine style: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” Ifguilty man begins to plot for his own advantage, scheme for his own glory, and aim at perverting the truth, you will notice that he never takes a bold, open, manly stand, but he dodges, he conceals, he twists and shifts: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” Sin isa mean and despicable thing. The greatest potentate of evil was here doomed to cringe and crawl, and his seed have never forgotten their father’s posture.
All the objects of the powers of evil are grovelling. What do they seek after? When men forsake the way of holiness, they rush after polluted and idle amusements. What is there in the world’s pleasure which is ennobling? Still is carnal mirth a grovelling thing: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” A professing man gives up the separated way, and enters upon modern society, and he no longer walks with God. What is his general course? Within a short time we find him careless of all religion, and tolerant of licentiousness. It is ever so: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go.” If you give way to evil, you shall go down, down, down, till your god is your belly, and you glory in your shame. If a man would be great, let him serve God. Ifa man would rise to the angels, ay, rise to God, let him obey the command of his Maker. But if he wishes to degrade himself below the adder, which “glides obscure through bush and brake,” his easy method is to follow Satan, and rebel against the Most High.
“And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Satan is now to live a defeated life, for such is the force of the expression, “His enemies shall lick the dust.” It signifies that they are utterly defeated. So Satan all his life long exists as a conquered and chained enemy: his power is broken, and he knows it well. He is defeated as to the whole of his great scheme, and he is to be defeated in the details of it all the days of his life. When he met our Lord in the wilderness, he crept upon his belly with serpentine temptations; but our Lord by His holiness made him eat dust! How often was he in our Lord’s lifetime made to feel that his conqueror had come! He cringed before Him, and implored that he might not be tormented before his time. When he saw the Lord Jesus upon the cross, having planned, as he thought, to crush Him by death, he began to dread defeat. When he heard Him cry, “It is finished,” and felt His iron heel upon his head, he knew, to his eternal horror, that he had only fashioned for the Christ an opportunity of redeeming mankind. What a mouthful of dust he had to eat in that day! None more wretched in the universe than Satan, whose works the bleeding Saviour had destroyed. It was a day of bitter defeat for the enemy when our Lord rose from
the dead. The old serpent had watched the pale corpse; but when he saw it live, and when the angel rolled away the stone, and Jesus, the Christ, came forth to die no more, I warrant you the serpent ate the dust that day. And when the apostles stood forth — men whom Satan despised, humble fishermen — and the Holy Ghost came down upon them; again it was fulfilled, “Dust shalt thou eat.” When the nations were converted, and the idols were broken, and the truth mightily prevailed, then did Satan remember the words, “Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.’ He has more humiliation yet to come. Arise, and preach Christ and win souls, and the great enemy of souls shall find his power diminished, and his name abhorred, and again he shall lick the dust.