Backrules
Expository Sermon on Genesis 1 and 3
May 2, 2026
©2026 by Maylan Schurch
To watch the entire YouTube broadcast of this sermon, click this link, or scroll down to read the transcript:
Please open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 1.
This morning I’m going to introduce you to something I don’t think a lot of us think about much. I know that I don’t. But if we don’t think about it – or if we don’t get a bit of practice in thinking about it – I think it could be easy for us to be spiritually confused. I’ve seen it happen.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about presuppositions, or a shorter way of saying it would be “backrules.”
What’s a “backrule”? Actually, it’s a word I like to use so I didn’t have to say the five-syllable “presupposition” all the time. A backrule is actually a sports term, but I’m repurposing it to mean “presupposition” in this sermon. The online Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says that a “presupposition” is “an assumption made in advance : a preliminary supposition.”
Okay, but what’s the big deal?
Well, you and I are constantly living our lives by presuppositions, or backrules. Let me show you what I mean. As you drove to church today, and you came up to a traffic light, you were probably not that worried. If the light was red, you braked to a stop, because one of the traffic light backrules is, “When your light is red, the drivers from either side have the green light, and they can cross in front of you.” And if your light is green, the backrule is “When your light is green, the light for the crosstraffic is red, and while you need to keep alert just in case, they will be stopped, and you can go ahead.”
So those are a couple of traffic-light backrules. Here’s a little quiz: If something went wrong with the traffic lights, and they’re flashing red in all directions, what’s the backrule? “Treat it as a four-way stop.”
Do you see the point about backrules? They’re assumptions we make, and we take them so much for granted that we rarely have to think about them.
Another example: Is there anybody in this sanctuary for the first time this Sabbath? Raise your hand. Before you sat down in your pew, were you concerned that it was tightly bolted together? Probably not. Why not? Because you believed several subconscious backrules, or presuppositions. One of them could be, “Several other people are sitting in these pews, so I’ll probably be able to safely sit in one too.” Another backrule might be, “Churches who want people to attend are going to make sure their pews are solid.” Or maybe even, “Churches have their pews made by pew-construction companies, and in order to stay in business, these companies must make sure their pews are safe, or they will get sued.”
Those backrules are pretty dependable. They’re normally so dependable that we don’t even need to bring them to mind.
So why am I bringing them up this morning? Because as I’m sure you know, there are bad or false backrules which can lead you into danger. Back in November 1978, a preacher named Jim Jones convinced hundreds of people who followed his teachings that they should commit mass suicide in Guyana. Since his own dysfunctional childhood, Jones was someone who had adopted many evil backrules, and lived his own life according to them, and he died in that same suicide event.
Nowadays, every day, people are tricked by scammers, and many times robbed of their money, because of backrules they haven’t carefully thought through.
And in politics, a lot of people have come to believe in some backrules not because of careful reasoning, but because somebody earnestly, or sincerely, or loudly, or angrily repeated them over and over.
But that’s not why I’m bringing up presuppositions, backrules, this morning. The reason is that it was dangerously incorrect backrules that brought down the human race. And these planet-destroying backrules happened because of the deliberate deception of a fallen angel.
And I believe as we go back and look at this story with fresh eyes, we’ll be reminded about how important it is to think clearly about our faith.
This morning we’re going to look at three sets of backrules – God’s, Satan’s, and Eve’s.
Genesis 1:1 [NKJV]: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
You see, most presuppositions, most backrules, fall into one of three categories: fact, value and policy. Fact deals with whether a backrule is true or false. Value deals with whether a backrule is good or bad. And policy deals with what we should do with that backrule.
In Genesis 1:1, God’s first backrule is one about fact. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So God’s first backrule is that He created everything. That’s a fact. You hear fewer and fewer people these days saying, “Oh, hey, everything we see came from a vast explosion in the distant past.” You just don’t hear people claiming that much any more. A lot of people probably believe it, but I don’t think it’s so easy anymore to ignore all the nature-complexity that indicates a Designer.
By the way, if you’d like a daily five-minute tutorial on the wonders which God has created, I would invite you to check out the Daily Photo Parable on our church website. You simply go to our website, BellevueAdventist.org, and scroll down on the homepage until you see “Daily Photo Parable,” and click on it.
If you’ve checked out this feature before, you have discovered that these daily blogs are written by people sitting in the pews with you. These are people you know.
Right now I would like to ask our Daily Photo Parable bloggers, when I call your name, to just stand up where you are, and stay standing until all of us have been called.
Chuck Davis is our Monday blogger. He’s a mountain-climber and lover of nature, and he presents us every week with photos of places you and I might never see in person.
Robert Howson does our Tuesday blog. Robert’s photos are mostly about birds, and again, these are largely exotic birds which he has seen in other countries.
Darren Milam does the Wednesday Photo Parables, and he uses nature seems to show God’s deep love for us and for the rest of his creation.
Russell Jurgensen, sometimes with the photo assistance of Amber, has the Thursday slot, and he is someone who keeps his eyes open for nature scenes or other interesting things closer to home. Russell often poses deep-level questions to us.
I do the Thursday and Friday blogs, and Shelley Schurch does the ones for Sunday. Shelley’s photo parables often draw on her childhood memories.
Thanks to all of you for your faithful work, week by week!
When you go to the site, the current blog will be the one you see first, but you can always scroll down and see the blogs for the entire week, and you can scroll down further to see others.
If you look at today’s Daily Photo Parable entry, you will see my photo of a little bug called Armadillidium vulgare. It’s sometimes called common pill-bug, common pill woodlouse, roly-poly, potato bug, slater, doodle bug, or carpenter.
In the blog, I give the Wikipedia link which tells you many wonderful things about this little bug. And the more I read about that bug, the more I realize how wonderfully it is made – and of course how it has to struggle in a predatory environment which God did not design for it.
Back to Genesis 1. God’s first backrule is that it was He who created the heavens and the earth. Notice His second backrule.
Verse 10: And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
God created the heavens and the earth, and created them good.
Now down to the last part of verse 18.
Verse 18: . . . And God saw that it was good.
And He says it again in verse 21.
Verse 21: So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And finally, verse 31.
Verse 31: Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. . . .
So, these are God’s two backrules: “I created everything,” He says, “and it is very good.” Fact and value.
And now we are going to see how important those backrules are. Because we’re going to watch as God’s most powerful enemy uses bad backrules to try to sabotage God’s plans.
This happens in Genesis 3.
Genesis 3:1: Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
First of all, who is the serpent? Revelation 12:9 says that at one point heaven went to war, and “ . . . the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
So here is the deceiver, in the Garden of Eden, speaking through the mouth of a snake. Watch carefully how he creates and uses backrules.
Genesis 3:1: Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Before I looked at this verse again this week, I hadn’t really realized how much this verse bristles with bad backrules.
Just take that first phrase: “Has God indeed said . . .” Other Bible versions say, “Did God really say . . .” or “Did God actually say . . .”
Notice what’s happening here? Before Satan actually gets to what he’s accusing God of saying, he is telegraphing that what God says is incredibly unbelievable. Satan’s backrule, or the first of them, says “You may not realize it, but God says crazy things. God says things which are so unbelievable that you can’t really trust your ears.” And of course that’s a dangerous presupposition to spread around about God.
And notice what Satan accuses God of saying:
Verse 1: Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
Now Satan has added another backrule. He implies that not only does God say crazy and unbelievable things, but God is cruel. And God certainly would be cruel if He really was forbidding His human children permission to eat any of the Garden’s delicious fruit. And that is the idea, the presupposition, the backrule, that Satan is trying to plant in Eve’s mind. God is crazy, and cruel.
We probably need to keep ourselves pretty humble about loftily advising Eve on what she should have done at this point. We were not on the ground with her. She probably should have just backed away at this point. But she evidently wants to set the record straight about God, and maybe wants to try to guide this mysterious talking serpent toward the true facts. She didn’t realize that arguing with the devil doesn’t get you anywhere. Later, during Jesus’ wilderness temptations, the Savior would demonstrate how to meet the devil’s temptations – with well-aimed and appropriate Bible verses. And when Jesus spoke to Satan at that point, He just repeated Scripture and nothing else. And each time, Satan felt the power of the word of God.
But Eve feels that she must set this talking reptile straight. So rather than backing away, she talks to him.
Verses 2 – 3: And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
So far, Satan has planted two backrules in Eve’s mind: God says crazy and unbelievable things, and God is cruel. Now he plants a third backrule:
Verse 4: Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
“God says crazy and unbelievable things,” Satan hisses. “And God is cruel. And do you know what else? God is a liar.”
And before Eve can gather her wits about her, Satan keeps piling on the backrules, the presuppositions he wants Eve to use.
Verse 5: For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“God says crazy and unbelievable things,” Satan says. “And God is cruel. God is a liar. And you know what else? God is selfish.”
In other words, God doesn’t want to share. God doesn’t want our eyes to be opened to wonderful things He grasps to Himself.
Isn’t it bone-chilling to hear Satan accusing God of not wanting us to become like Him? In Isaiah 14, we can read just what Satan himself had already said in his heart about his own ambitions: ““How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’” (Isaiah 14:12 – 14)
Back in Genesis 3, Satan is done speaking. If you’ve ever been in sales, you probably learned that there is a time to speak – a time to talk about the virtues of your product – and then there is a time to be silent, and to allow the customer to reason himself or herself into the purchase.
And I am very sure that Satan has been watching Eve carefully. Remember, this is the angel who has deceived a third of his fellow angels into rebelling against their Creator. Satan knows all the arguments, and knows which of them will fit our particular personalities. He is so deceptive that even Jesus refused to respond to Satan with anything but Scripture.
There’s no Bible evidence that Satan can actually read minds. But he is a close observer of humanity. Even parents come to know their children so well that they can pretty much predict what they will do.
When I was a little kid, and did something bad, my dad knew exactly how to reach my heart. Dad didn’t spank me. He didn’t snarl at me. He didn’t grow cold and aloof and stop talking to me. Instead, dad would just say thoughtfully, in a grieving voice, “Maylan, what did your mom and I do to raise you so wrong? What happened?”
In dad knew very well that this point, tears would come to my eyes, and my heart would start to hurt, because I sensed his sorrow. And I don’t think Dad was faking that approach. Dad wanted his children saved in the kingdom of God. He worried about our hearts.
But now let’s watch how Eve responds. She’s going to form some backrules too.
Verse 6: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
Notice the backrules with which Eve has decided to approach this challenge?
I think that Eve’s main backrule could go something like this: “Even though God has spoken very clearly, I still reserve the right to do my own research.”
So she parked God’s words on the shelf while she tried to study the situation out for herself. She maybe poked at that fruit, maybe squeezed it until its juice leaked out, maybe she sniffed that juice, and couldn’t tell any difference between that juice and the juice of a grape.
And she looked at the fruit, and it looked nice. It wasn’t a menacing-appearing fruit in the least. And when she thought about the serpent’s words that this fruit would give her wisdom, rather than cause her death, she made her decision.
So here you and I are, this morning, having heard this story again. What are some takeaways?
First, we need to remember how good God and His creation are, especially in their original form.
Second, we need to make sure that our chief presupposition, our chief backrule, is to listen carefully to the words of God in the Bible. One of the verses Jesus used to do battle with the devil was a quote from Deuteronomy 8:3 – “man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.”
So when in the Bible we find some words God spoke, whether one of the Ten Commandments, or whether through the mouth of His Son Jesus, or His prophets, or the Psalms, we need to make those words our backrules, and take them seriously, and live by them.
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