First Sunday in Lent: Old Testament, Genesis 3:1-21                       

Genesis 3:1-21

I wonder if you ever feel like you’re just exposed to too many voices. On any subject. Competing sound bites, emails, podcasts, etc. bring to the fore the idea that perhaps I’m just exposed to too much information. Well I feel it. I find myself retreating these days to great music, the Bible, humor and quiet when I can. It isn’t that I have stopped learning or exposing myself to new ideas. It’s just that I have a core of voices that I return to again and again. ”WARNING: Increased clatter causes brain splatter.” There’s a tee shirt in the making.

Our first parents ran early on into the trouble of hearing too much input. And there weren't many sources. Think God-Yahweh their Creator- and the serpent. No doubt what they heard from these two sources informed Adam and Eve’s early conversations. And what filled their minds, just like ours, spilled out into their speech. Verse 17 in our chapter reads in part, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree …” Christians today just like mom and dad #1 made choices about what would be best and here the head of the household made a blunder of cosmic proportions. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife.” Now, it’s not that God is opposed to good marital communication. But there is a proper order.

Adam chose the voice of Eve over the voice of the Lord. And whenever father Adam (or any of us) chooses to listen to the voice of a competitor over the voice of our God, the result isn’t pretty. Just look at what came of that conversation. So there’s a good lesson here. Take in multiple voices if you must. But listen first and last to The Voice. The only one that truly counts.