God Tests Man - Part Two

GOD TESTS MAN - Part Two

 

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The first test that God gave to men was in the Garden of Eden. God created the first man, Adam, perfect, without any sin in his heart. He had no old nature, such as you and I have. Eve was also perfect. The Garden home must have been a very happy one, with no sin to disturb it.

God put man to the first test there in the Garden. He gave him just one commandment, and man was to keep that commandment perfectly. That sounds very easy, does it not? And yet man failed. The command was that he must not eat of the fruit of one of the trees in the Garden—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He might eat the fruit of all the other trees, but that one he must not taste. All went happily until Satan came in a beautiful form, to tempt the woman. He told her lies about God—saying that the reason He would not let them eat that fruit was because He knew it would make them as wise as He was. God had said that in the day that they disobeyed, they would surely die. But Satan said they would not surely die. The woman yielded, and ate the fruit. Soon after the man followed her example. In that moment they had failed in the first test. They showed that even with no sin in their hearts to begin with, they could not be good, and obey God perfectly.

 

In each one of these tests we want to see five things: 1. Man’s condition at the beginning of the test. 2. The test. 3. The failure. 4. The judgment. 5. God’s way of salvation.

 

In the first test man’s condition was innocence. He had no sin in him. So we call the first test the test of innocence. The test itself was what? Perfect obedience to God’s one command. The failure was disobedience, doing the very thing God told them not to do. The judgment is described in Genesis 3:16-19, 23. Man could no longer stay in the beautiful garden, where God would come and talk with him. He had to go outside, where there were thorns and thistles and pain and sorrow and work that was hard and tiresome.

 

But the most important thing to see is the way of salvation. We can see it in two ways. The first is in Genesis 3:15, where God spoke to the devil. In that verse He spoke of the seed of the woman. Galatians 3:16 tells who the seed of Abraham is—Christ. The seed of the woman is the same. It means the Son of the woman. You know our Lord Jesus was not the son of any man, but He was the Son of a woman, Mary. God said to Satan that this Seed of the Woman would bruise his head, but that he, Satan, should bruise His heel. That is exactly what happened on the cross. Christ was hurt by the powers of Satan, but at the same moment, He crushed Satan forever. This verse, Genesis 3:15 is the first promise in the Bible of the coming Saviour. It was only through Him that Adam and Eve could be forgiven for their sin. The second way we see how they were saved is in the picture in Genesis 3:21. There God killed an animal, shedding its blood, and clothed guilty man and woman with the skins. This was a picture of how Christ would shed His blood in order that we might be forgiven. Salvation is always the same, you see—by the shed blood of the Saviour.

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