Six Tests Out of Eden

Why are we here on the earth? We see from the Bible that one of the great purposes God created mankind was to test their hearts and minds. Whether a person knows it or not, it still will happen. Notice in Proverbs 15, verse 3, this is in the Good News Bible version, it says, The Lord sees what happens everywhere. He is watching us, whether we do good or evil. So that shows us that God is aware of what's happening on the earth, not just for those that are doing good, but for those that are doing evil. In Proverbs 17, verse 3, it says, It says, That's the way you purify these metals. But the Lord tests the hearts. He examines, He tests our attitudes, our mind.

One other scripture, Jeremiah 17, 10, says, I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit or the result of his doings. So to test in the Bible means an attempt to prove the quality or character of someone, whether the person is genuine or not. God tested Abraham. Notice in Genesis 22, verse 1, He wanted to know what Abraham truly believed, what was his character truly like. In Genesis 22, verse 1, it says, And this was a very hard test because he said, But then, when he was about to do so, it says in verse 11, So he said, And he said, And then going on to verse 16, And have not withheld your son, your only son, blessing, I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as of the sand, which is on the seashore, and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. So we see the testing going on here on this earth. And of course, it wasn't just Abraham. Also, the Israelites were tested. Notice in Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 2, God told the Israelites, So this testing actually began in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. God planted two trees that would form a test of obedience or disobedience. The tree of knowledge of good and evil was off limits to the couple. God said, Of all the trees, this one, don't touch it, don't take the fruit of it. But they were free to taste all the delicious fruit from the rest of the trees. How many were there? Dozens? Hundreds? We don't know. But we know there are plenty of fruit trees on the earth. And in the Garden of Eden, there must have been an enormous amount. Now, they could have tasted all kinds of fruits. And they just would have said, Well, this one is the only one we shouldn't because God prohibited it. And so it wasn't like God was depriving them. I'm sure there were pears and pineapples and all the delicious fruit in the world there. There was just one tree, and God was testing them. Whether they would obey Him or not.

But under Satan's influence, the focus became only on that prohibited tree. Satan made them sure to say, Oh, look, this tree you can't take. Look how God is unfair. And look, this is the tree that would be very delicious to try the fruit of. And here they had probably hundreds of trees that they could have tasted and enjoyed without tasting that one in particular. But Satan deceived them, and so both ate of that prohibited tree. The consequences were devastating to mankind. But that would not be the last test either for Adam and Eve or their descendants. Once they started living in a fallen world, because where they would live now would not be in this paradise, but it would be in a fallen world where animals would become violent, where you had thorns, you had all kinds of poisonous plants and all kinds of poisonous insects and all kinds of things. This is the world that Adam and Eve's descendants were born in.

In fact, none of the children of Adam and Eve ever knew the garden of Eden. They started out in a fallen world. And God would continue testing mankind, but now in that fallen world. Of course, God set up an exit strategy for those not called by God in this life. So a lot of people, God sees what they do, but He is not judging them spiritually.

They are not in that same judgment as those that come to the knowledge of the truth. They would one day know the real path of truth. But I want to focus on the six tests out of Eden that Adam and Eve's descendants would go through. Because from that time of the children, even Adam and Eve, there would be these six major tests. As long as we live in this life, there are six major tests that God is putting us through. I really didn't know which ones they were until I came into the church. When I was 17 years old, I came to the knowledge of the truth. And there were these six great truths that I realized I would be tested, I would be evaluated. God would hold me responsible because I did come to that understanding of the truth. My life totally changed when I knew about these things, because I knew I would be responsible for them. So what are these six tests out of Eden that every human being, I don't care whether you're in Africa, in India, in China, over something like 1.3 billion Chinese, they are also being watched by God and being tested according to their knowledge and understanding. But the first great test, I call it the test of time.

In other words, what we will do with the time that God gives us on this earth, the test of time. Our lives are like an hour glass with all the grains as the days of our lives, and each little grain drops can be recovered.

What are we going to do with those days? God gave us the gift of time, and it would be ours to use as we wish.

But then God asked through the Bible, Will you make time for me in your life? Will you take me into account or not? Will your time be just doing your own way, or will you take my way into account? You can go about and use it in a selfish way if you want. Nobody's going to force you into following me. If you choose to take me into account, to consider me, then you're going to have faith or trust in me and my word. If you take me into account, if you consider me, it means that you have to trust me, and you have to believe that I exist and that I want a relationship with you.

So, how would you go about using your time and including God? The answer which God gives in the Bible is putting me first in your life. Not putting anything else before me, not parents nor any other human being. You will worship me above all other things.

As Matthew 22, verses 35-40 say, Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang, or depend, all the law and the prophets. They all proceed from those two great principles. So the first three of the Ten Commandments of God deal with God as the Father and the Son. That's who we are to have fellowship with. 1 John 1, verse 3 says that our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ. That's how we have a relationship with both of them. So it's a daily test. Are we going to give God some of our time? To draw closer to Him, to follow Him, and obey Him? Obedience is necessary to please God.

It's that daily walking with God and giving God quality time. Not just blurting out senseless words and repetitive words, but truly have a deep, heartfelt conversation with God.

So that's the first test. And of course, mankind has as much time as everyone else that has been born. But how many know that that's something that God is testing us on? Because we're not going to have any angel knock at our door and say, you know, God wants to have a relationship with you. He'd like for you to talk with Him today. There's not going to be any angel to do that. That has to be done by faith, by reading God's Word and being convinced that is what God wants us to do.

The second great test is the test of work. The test of work.

In other words, what you do working with the sweat of your brow during your life. It's a time we spend earning our keep. And a lot of our time is going to consist of work.

One-third of our lives will consist of sleeping. One-third will consist of working or studying. If you're a student first, you go through about 12 years of study. Then maybe college and some go on. I had a daughter that had like 22 years worth of studying before she finished. So it can go long, but it's still a type of work.

And you have a third of sleep, a third of the time working or studying, and then a third of the time is free time. And God also asks, will you consider me or not in your work? Will you just become a workaholic and just work day in, day out? I remember Cottie's father once mentioning that before he knew the church, he worked seven days a week. He had a small shop, mechanical shop, fixing things. And it was just every day. There was no day of rest. Of course, you had to make quite a bit because there wasn't much income. So basically, he spent the seven days working away until he became member of the church. He's a deacon now in the Santiago, Chile church. Wonderful example. And he said, thanks to the church, I learned to rest on the Sabbath day. That's the only thing that stopped me from working. And he really appreciated that day to worship God, learn His ways. And so we talked about the first three commandments of the ten have to do with God. Putting Him first, not making images of Him, physical images, and also not taking His name in vain. But the fourth commandment also deals with God, but it has to do with our work and our relationship. Notice what it says in the fourth commandment, Exodus 20, verses 8-10. God says, remember this Sabbath day. Don't ever forget it, because people do.

To keep it holy, to make it special, make it a day separate. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. As what God said, you have six days you can occupy in your work and all the things you have. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. Notice it's not man's day, it is God's day. In it you shall do no work. So here it's almost like talking about the fruit of the tree, of the knowledge of good and evil. He said there, do not take of it. Here He's saying, do not work on that day. It's like taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan's tree. At least Satan knew that man would sin if he took of it. And so he goes on to say, you nor your son nor your daughters, etc. Those that are in your family, in your home. And of course, this test about work includes the Holy Days, which are annual Sabbaths, once a year. God said that this is also a day of rest. It's a Sabbath day of rest.

And so he also tests man. Are you going to respect that day? Again, we're not going to have an angel punishing people if they start working on the Sabbath day. Wouldn't it be convenient? Just have millions of angels. And anybody that starts working, boy, angel comes down, grabs them by the neck. You're not going to do this. But that's not the way God works. He invites people to include him. And just like we should include him in our time, so also include him as far as our work is concerned. To honor the Sabbath and the Holy Days.

So we come to the third test. I call this test the test of money. They say money makes the world go round.

And you're going to earn a lot of money during your lifetime.

What will we do with our possessions? God asks, will you remember me when you are paid? When you earn money?

In Proverbs 3 verses 9 and 10 it says, Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. It is a test God puts us through. He knows money can be very attractive, very powerful. A lot of people make it into a type of a God or an idol. And so God says, are you going to remember me or not? In Malachi chapter 3 verses 8 through 11.

Let's read that real quickly in Malachi chapter 3. Start in verse 8.

It asks, will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me, but you say, in what way have we robbed you? God answers, in tithes and offerings. You are cursed with the curse, for you have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this. So, just like there were storehouses there, where the temple was, where the Levites worked, preached the Word, so we have a work to do now. So there may be food in my house, that God provides what's necessary to carry out His will through people's giving.

And God says, and try me now, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out, for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.

And so, just remember, tithe is money that is not ours, to respect that principle, based on an honor system. Again, an angel isn't going to come and say, oh well, I came to collect God's tithes. No, it's between you and God. And we need to learn to honor God, especially while you are young, to set the habit.

You can never out-give God, and you will reap blessings forevermore.

We come to the fourth test, the test of food, what we eat.

We will spend a lot of our time eating and drinking. And God asks, will you take me in consideration or not, about what you eat? You can eat or drink what you want, or what I tell you is good for you. I include not just food, because drink, in the sense of alcoholic drinks, God says, yes, we can drink it, but in moderation.

And so, if you don't do it in moderation, if you let wine or beer or other type of alcoholic beverages, if they start controlling you, you're not obeying God. Because God tells us drunkenness is a sin, and it's habit-forming, it's very dangerous. And so, again, God says, are you going to include me in the way you eat and you drink or not? Some foods, God tells us, are not for us. They are designed for other animals to eat. These foods are not poisonous, because other creatures that eat them would get sick. And so, just because it doesn't kill you, doesn't mean it's good for you.

So God asks, will you trust me on this, or just follow the crowd in the world? In Deuteronomy 14, verses 2 through 4, God explains, and He set apart the food that is good for us, that will keep us healthy and strong. He says, For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

You shall not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals which you may eat. And then God lists those clean and unclean animals, in other words, those that are permitted by God and which are prohibited by God. In Leviticus chapter 20, God tells us that, yes, other nations, they're doing their own thing, but God is testing to see if we're going to do it His way or not.

Leviticus chapter 20, verse 22. It says, You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my judgments, and perform them, these are the laws of God, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out, and you shall not walk in the statutes or the laws of the nation which I am casting out before you. But they commit all these things, and therefore I abhor them.

God is not pleased with them. But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore distinguish between clean animals and unclean. And you shall not make yourselves a bottom of the bowl by beast, or by bird, or by any kind of living thing that creeps on the ground, which I have separated you as unclean.

And you shall be holy to me, for I am the Lord, am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine. So God says that this is part of following God, giving him our time when we eat. Take him into consideration, eating the animals that he has qualified as good and healthy for us. Commenting on Leviticus 11-15, the Expositor's Bible commentary states about these health laws. It says in general, it can be said that these biblical laws protected Israel from bad diet, dangerous vermin, which are pests, and communicable diseases.

Only in recent days have better laws of health been possible with the advance of medicine. These were rule of thumb laws that God gave in his wisdom to a people who could not know the reason for the provision. They didn't understand why God would give them. He couldn't give them all the scientific and biological reasons. They wouldn't understand them. The Hebrew people were not only to avoid eating unclean animals, they were not to touch the dead carcasses. Thus, the laws automatically helped control vermin, or these pests.

Common unclean animals would be spiders, flies, bugs, rats, and mice. A dead rat in a Hebrew home was not overlooked. It was carefully taken out and buried, because he said these are unclean. Many of these are carriers of bubonic plague and many other things. Other people, they just didn't care. Sometimes they would even eat those. But God said, no, these are pests. You are to get rid of them. A dead rat in a Hebrew house was not to be overlooked.

It was carefully taken out and buried. In an effort to avoid such health problems, the Hebrew housewife, the Israelite, we can call it, housewife, would normally keep a clean house, because she would get rid of all of these dead animals and insects and make sure that they weren't around.

These laws were wonderfully fashioned by God for the general health of the nation. Why, we even have one where if a person had a communicable disease or an infectious disease, in Leviticus 13, verse 45, it tells us that we were to wear masks to cover the bottom part of our face, like leprosy, which was a contagious disease, especially once the person contracted and had the disease in them, that any type of spit that came out of their mouths, it could contaminate others.

So God says there that you will cover your mouth and nose, just like today we're doing because of COVID-19. So again, that number four was the test of food. Number five, the test of truth. The test of truth. In other words, what we believe in. God wants to know if we will faithfully follow these truths or not.

I remember as I came across these truths as a very young man, and asking myself, if I adopt these teachings, if I adopt these beliefs, my life will never be the same. I'm going to have my parents on top of me. They're going to be very unhappy. But if I look at that mirror, I want to look at a person who had the courage to put God first and put his laws first and his way of life by faith.

I had faith in God more than I had in my parents. And so it's a test of truth. Are we going to discard those truths or be loyal to them? To be faithful to God and to have fellowship with those like-minded people that share these truths. Even Christ, when they came and they said, your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, and he was inside with his disciples.

And he said, who is my mother and who are my brothers and sisters? And then he asked, he said, you are the ones, because they were not believing what Jesus was teaching. And so he put his disciples above his mother and his siblings. In Matthew 4, verse 4, it tells us, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So we should pursue the goal of living according to the principles of God's word. That's the test of truth. Christ said, John 17, 17, thy word is truth. That's where we find the truth, not in any of man's writings or ideas or teachings. No, it's the Bible that has the truth. In 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, it tells us the importance of loving the truth, of being faithful to the end.

Notice in 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 9, It talks about the coming in time, verse 9, the coming of the lawless one. This is a person that goes against God's laws. The lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.

And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion. He will permit this, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. So, this is another test that divides people.

We have identified 20 fundamental truths in the Bible. They are foundational teachings. Bill Wozner touched on many of those in his message. And they are the right and proper way of worshipping God. There is a wrong way of worshipping God. Maybe the person's sincere. Maybe the person is doing their best with what they have. But it's still not the right way of worshipping God. There's a proper and there's an improper way. And going the way of truth is the only proper way to worship God. As it says there in John 4, in spirit and in truth.

And so then, we come to the final test, which is the hardest of all. The test of our thoughts.

God asks, will you take me into account in your thoughts or just keep them all to yourself? We're always thinking different things throughout the day. God wants us to also take him into account. Notice in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 3. Verse 3, it says, Well, that's a hard one. Believe me. Try to harness the thoughts to the obedience of Christ in conformity with his teachings is one of the hardest challenges we have. And yet, that is something that God looks at. He sees who is doing that, harnessing, taking those thoughts to Christ, repenting and renewing their minds with good things. As it tells us in Philippians chapter 4 verse 8.

Paul says, Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report. If there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.

Good example of a person thinking as God would like him to. Throughout his life, he wasn't perfect. He sinned at times. But David did try to remember God in all that he did. He composed the Psalms, the great majority of them. He meditated on God's laws. And he praised God as he saw all the beauty in nature. Never got tired of looking at a flower and seeing the design that God created, looking at the heavens and all the mighty works that you see there. Our solar system, the constellations, everything is so carefully designed. There is order in the universe. Why, there's even a comet that man did not know existed until the beginning of this year when one of the telescopes detected this comet, which is now appearing toward the end of sunset.

And this comet comes, it has such a huge orbit that it says it takes 70,000 years to, is it 70 or 7? I have to correct. I think it's 7,000 years for it to just make it circle around and come across the earth. So, just the wonders of how big this universe is. These comets, they're still orderly. Halley's comet, every 70 or so years, it just makes its course here around the earth. Can you imagine, to calculate, to have the gravitational pull, to be able to keep a comet that far away?

It goes all way beyond the solar system, and then it rounds up and it comes back faithfully. We got to see Halley's comet. I'm sure most did. You only get to see that about once in a lifetime. So, we are also being tested. Are we going to include God in our thoughts? So, in conclusion, will we take God into account in these seven areas where we are tested or not? If we follow God in these six ways and these tests, we successfully follow them.

It will make such a huge difference in our lives. Malachi chapter 3. Malachi chapter 3, starting in verse 13. It tells us it's typical of some people that will complain that following God doesn't work. They see a lot of wicked people getting away with it, apparently. So, God put this in Scripture. Malachi 3 verse 13, it says, Your words have been harsh against me, says the Lord, yet you say, What have we spoken against you?

You have said, It is useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept His ordinance or His laws and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts, in other words, humbling ourselves? So now we call the proud blessed. They see people that are proud, haughty, and they receive material blessings for those who do wickedness, are raised up. They even tempt God and go free. Don't get punished, as a person thinks. Then those who feared the Lord, those who follow God faithfully, spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them. So a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name.

In other words, God remembers all these things that a person does for His name toward His people to serve Him. God says, verse 17, They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, on the day that I make them my jewels. Doesn't mean He's going to do it now, but He says, one day you will see the difference, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves them. You'll have an abundance of mercy. And then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve. Yes, there's going to be a time.

These tests will show what kind of character we have, what we're trying to do with God. And when Jesus Christ returns, He says that He brings His reward with Him. Revelation 22, verses 10 through 14 tells us He brings His reward with Him. It says, yes, we are being tested. And what a great privilege it is to understand this and faithfully follow God. When Christ returns, you will receive the biggest prize of the universe, eternal life in the kingdom of God, with rewards forevermore. Then you will see that all the sacrifices were well worth it.