Arrogance and the Snake

Vices & Villains, Part One

David R. Collins

June 15, 2025

Genesis 3:1–7

Matthew 4:1–11

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Today, we’re starting a new series called Vices and Villains. We’ll be looking at the seven deadly sins, and also seven villains from the Bible that exemplify them.

There’s something so intriguing about a villain, isn’t there? They hold our attention in a way that a hero just can’t. Maybe because there’s only a couple of ways to be good, but so many ways to be bad.

Evil isn’t always monstrous. It’s often subtle. Almost reasonable. Villains don’t usually see themselves as villains. They think they’re the hero. They think their actions are justified and necessary.

“I did what I had to do.”

“I was protecting what really mattered”

Pharaoh would have said something like that. We’ll look at him next week. He probably didn’t see himself as cruel, but as protecting the order and stability of his kingdom. Or look at King Saul. He started out pretty good, but then became obsessed with control, and it drove him crazy.

God knew what he was talking about when he told Samuel that kings were a terrible idea.

Usually, what turns people into villains isn’t a love of evil…it’s fear, or hurt, or anger. That’s why we’re matching each villain up with the vice that led to their downfall. We’re looking at the seven deadly sins and seven deadly villains that exemplify them, or exploit them, or were exploited by them.

So I hope we don’t just see people we all know in these stories (though we really will). I hope we will see ourselves…who we could become through the stories we tell ourselves, the ways we justify doing wrong, the ways we compromise our integrity.

But it won’t be all naval-gazing. We don’t have the luxury to just focus on not becoming the villains ourselves. We have to defeat them. God will defeat them, just like he did with all the bad guys and bullies in these stories. But God never defeats them by becoming like them.

We'll be looking at:

• Wrath and Pharaoh

• Lust and Jezebel

• Sloth and Pilate

• Envy and King Saul

• Greed and Judas

• Gluttony and Haman

Arrogance and the Snake

And today we’re going to start out with the first villain and the primary vice. We’re going to look at the snake in the garden, the tempter, old Red Legs, and the chief way that he nudges people into becoming the bad guy…through arrogance.

Arrogance is not a new problem for the human race. Throughout church history, great thinkers like St. Augustine, have said that beginning of all sin, the one that leads to all the others. Not because it’s the loudest or most obvious, but because it’s the root.

Arrogance is the disordered love of self…when we put ourselves above the truth, above others, above God. It’s not just thinking too much of ourselves. It’s that we always think of ourselves first. We tend to bend everything to fit around our own desires. We stop asking what’s right and start asking what’s useful.

Arrogance is sneaky like that. It doesn’t announce itself. It slips in quietly and sounds like common sense. And that’s exactly how the first temptation plays out. The serpent doesn’t tempt Eve with evil… he tempts her with what sounds like wisdom.

It doesn’t shout. Not at first. It just nudges. Just enough to make us think maybe we deserve a little more. Maybe God’s holding out on us. Maybe the rules don’t quite apply in this case. And that’s where it starts.

Let’s look at Genesis 3.

Genesis 3:1-7

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The snake doesn’t start with a demand or a denial. He starts with confusion…with a question that sounds innocent enough, but is designed to muddy the water. The first move is to misrepresent the opposition. Create a straw man that’s easy to tear down, and makes your mark feel good about themselves for being able to do so.

“Did God say you can’t eat from any tree?” Of course not. Eve knows that. And the snake knows that she knows that. So when she corrects him, and feels smart for doing it, that’s all part of the trap. Seduction doesn’t work without willing participation.

The snake doesn’t force anything—he just opens the door, and sets Eve up to feel smart. He misquotes God, and she steps in to correct him.

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,

And it feels like she’s winning the argument. Like she’s defending God.

But even that response shows how the shift has already begun. Because that’s how arrogance creeps in. Not with rebellion, but with certainty. With the sense that we’ve got a better grasp on the situation.

Arrogance doesn’t feel like sin. It feels like clarity. It feels like control. We don’t need to hate God to disobey him. We just need to think we know better.

But listen closely to what she says next.

3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ ”

Now that’s not quite what God said. Something’s been added. Just a few extra words—“nor shall you touch it”—but that little addition matters. Because it shows how the story is already starting to slide. It’s not just the serpent twisting things. Eve’s beginning to do it too. Not out of malice, or even intentionally. But once you start trusting your own understanding more than God’s word, it’s easy to fill in the blanks.

When people say, “Well I always heard” or “It was my understanding” they’re almost always wrong, aren't they? Especially with religious beliefs. We might as well just not have the Bible for how little we know what it really says.

If your theology is fuzzy, it’s easier to manipulate you. That was certainly the case with Eve.

4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die,

Right away, that is. You’ll die later. But unless the consequences are immediate and severe, people have a hard time connecting the cause to the effect. And by that time, it will be too late.

5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

There’s the hook. You will be like God. That’s the essential temptation of arrogance. Not to reject God, but to share the authority. To trust our own instincts and feelings of certainty over God’s instruction.

Now notice too that God never said they would be like God, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

God said the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he never said that eating from it would give them that knowledge, or make them like him. That’s something the serpent adds. He took something mysterious and turned it into a commodity. Something they could own and benefit from, that God was keeping from them.

It may have just been that they weren’t ready for it yet. That God would give it to them in time, but their arrogance robbed them of that chance.

Because look at what does happen. When they take the bait…when they eat and their eyes are opened….it doesn’t lead to clarity. It doesn’t make them more like God. It just makes them self-conscious.

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

They didn’t suddenly understand good and evil in some grand cosmic sense. They just realized they were naked. They got anxious and embarrassed. They learned how to be fussy about how it all related to them.

The snake always over promises and under delivers. He appeals to our egos, to our arrogance, to our grievances and feelings of unfairness. He stirs up that sense that we’ve been wronged, that we’re being kept from something we deserve. That God is holding out, or others are getting ahead, and the rules are stacked against us. And when we act on that…when we reach for what we think we’re owed…we don’t become enlightened. Everything just gets worse.

Instead of being like God, we end up hiding from him. Instead of liberation, we end up wearing fig leaves. That’s always the irony of sin: we think we’re gaining something, but we’re just covering up the parts of us that were already made in God’s image.

It's Happening All Around Us

And that same lie, that same whisper of arrogance, is still working its way through the world. Still twisting hearts. Still dressing itself up as wisdom or justice or faithfulness. But it’s louder now. It’s out in the open.

It’s really easy to see it in others, right? Especially right now. They’re not being very subtle about it.

Arrogance convinces us that we’re the only ones who matter…that any challenge to our comfort or power is a threat. And once that belief takes root, there’s no limit to how far it will go.

It starts subtly. With indifference. With hardness of heart. Just look at how the most vulnerable in our communities are treated, especially immigrants. ICE raids tear families apart in the middle of the night. Children are zip-tied and brought into courtrooms alone. People fleeing danger are treated like criminals for crossing an invisible line in search of a new life through hard work.

But scripture couldn’t be clearer. Again and again, God says: Do not mistreat or oppress the foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Love the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land. That isn’t a footnote, it’s a bedrock belief of our faith. We are supposed to remember our own vulnerability, our own story, and let that memory soften us. Let it make us merciful.

But when arrogance takes over…when we decide our comfort matters more than their survival…we stop listening to God. We start listening to other voices. And those voices are getting louder. They’re not just saying the quiet part out loud, they’re screaming it.

They roughed up a Senator on camera this week. Our governor told people it was okay to run down protestors with their cars because standing in a street was “impinging on their rights.” But it didn’t stop us yesterday.

And then in Minnesota, a state representative was assassinated, along with her husband, in their home, by a man, a pastor allegedly, who dressed like a cop and believed it was his right to kill them, and try to kill another lawmaker and her husband. He didn’t see them as people, not as neighbors, but as enemies to be eliminated.

That’s where arrogance leads. First to the belief that violence is justified, and then ultimately to the belief that God is somehow on your side as you break his most basic command: Do not murder.

Satan Is Real?

I don’t usually talk about Satan, right? Maybe I thought I was too sophisticated for that kind of thing. But I’m starting to believe he might be real. And he has a hold on these people. Not in some cartoonish way, but in the soul-twisting way he always has. He doesn’t need to sneak in either. He is broadcasting his message 24 hours a day, on tv, and the radio, and podcasts and in the doomscroll. Satan doesn’t need anyone to love evil—he just needs them to believe that it’s good. That it’s justified. That they’re righteous even as they harm others.

It’s simple to do, apparently. All he needs to do is tell people what they want to hear. The snake gets people to step over a line that they kind of wanted to cross any way. And then it’s that much easier to get them to cross the next one and the next one.

So what’s the alternative?

Jesus Says No

Sometimes I wonder what might’ve happened if Adam and Eve had just said no. If they’d trusted God’s words instead of their own feelings of entitlement. We don’t get to see that version of the story…but we do get to see what it looks like when someone does say no. That’s what happens with Jesus.

In Matthew 4, at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the snake shows up and tries to do to him what he did to Adam and Eve.

Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

Look at how Jesus does it in comparison. He doesn’t take the bait at all. So often we think that if someone argues with us, that we are obligated to respond on their terms. To prove ourselves? To defend our worth? But Jesus doesn’t do that at all. He doesn’t say, “I could turn these stones into bread if I wanted to…” He simply trusts that he doesn’t need to prove anything.

It’s the opposite of what happened in the garden. Eve got drawn into a conversation she never needed to have. She tried to correct the serpent, to reason with him, and show that she knew what God said. But in doing that, she gave the snake control. Some people are just better at arguing than others, but that doesn’t make them right.

Jesus refuses to argue. He just answers with truth. Not a clever retort, but the words of scripture, exactly as they were given.

It sounds like he is speaking to himself more than to the tempter.

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
    and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Needless to say, the snakes can quote scripture too. But they almost never get it right. Because faith is never about proving that God is on your side. The devil is trying to convince Jesus that a big display is the same thing as real faith. That if he really trusted God, he’d make a big scene: throw himself down, let the angels catch him, so the whole city can watch in awe.

It’s like the kind of religion that wears a big golden cross around the neck while being cruel to strangers. That uses God’s name to build a platform, advance an agenda, and silence the opposition. But Jesus knows better.

And again, he doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say, “Well, actually, you’ve got that Psalm all wrong.”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

Because some people, especially when they are acting in bad faith, are just not worth the effort it takes to engage with them. Jesus never engages with the tempter. He doesn’t want or need to hear where he’s coming from.

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,‘Worship the Lord your God,
 and serve only him.’ ” 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

That last temptation must have been the hardest one for Jesus to resist, because it sure is the hardest one for the rest of us to say no to. It’s the temptation to power and money. And it has built in the ready made excuse that it’s all for the greater good.

We tell ourselves we’re doing it for others. That if we were in control, things would be better. As if the world just needs more of us, and less of God.

But that’s arrogance. Arrogance that believes we know best. That our instincts are better than God’s instructions. That we can reach the right destination, even if we take a wrong turn to get there.

But Jesus says no. Partly because he knows the devil’s offer is a con. The kingdoms of the world were never his to give. And the means he’s offering: power, shortcuts, dominance…will never lead to the healing the world needs.

Jesus already had a plan. One rooted in love, not control. In trust, not certainty. One that wouldn’t crush his enemies, but redeem them. One that wouldn’t win by force, but by sacrifice.

Because you can’t heal the world by conquering it.

You can’t bring peace by overpowering others.

You can’t serve God and still try to be God at the same time.

So Jesus says no.

No to the lie that the ends can justify the means.

No to the shortcut.

No to the flattery that says he deserves more.

No to the offer that asks him to kneel to anything less than God.

And now it’s our turn to say no.

No to the serpent in our own hearts…that voice that tells us we’re always right, always justified, always the exception.

No to the serpent in others…that tries to drag us into petty fights, manipulates truth, and calls arrogance strength.

No to the serpent in the world…that wraps oppression in the cross, and calls the pursuit of power God’s will.

We don’t fight the way they fight. We don’t conquer the way they conquer.

We stay grounded.

We stay faithful.

Because we know who we are.

We are not the kings of the world. Jesus is the only true king and

we’re servants of his kingdom.

We’ve already been given our orders:

Love God. Love your neighbor. Tell the truth. Do what’s right.

Even when it’s slow.

Even when it’s hard.

Even when the serpent hisses, “There’s a faster way.”

We say no.