Messianic Viewpoint

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: Why are we tested since we have salvation? The simple reason behind it is that God wants to make us better by trials. Many believers are coming and saying, "Why am I tested? Why am I going through so many difficult trials?"

Guest (Female): We often ask God, "Is it fair? Is it fair what you are allowing me to go through?" This is something that Cain complained about to God. It's not fair that you will make me go through life this way. There was no remorse, no push to pray. In fact, we might be tested for the very purpose that it brings us to pray.

Why is prayer so important? A recent survey indicated that 84 percent of believers did better, that is, they resisted temptation when they prayed. But what about praying beforehand? Prayer can prepare us for those unannounced tests. How did Yeshua himself overcome his greatest test? By praying in Gethsemane, by praying in advance. Prayer prepares.

Look at the disciples on the night of Yeshua's arrest. They boasted who's the best. They fell asleep in the garden. But strength was granted to Yeshua who prayed. We are given a simple but life-saving command. Yeshua said, "Pray that you might not enter into temptation."

So as we draw close and intimate with God on the one hand, we need to run from the devil on the other. And Yeshua sets the example of how to pray. We seek the Father's will to be done and not our own. As well, we are to pray believing we need to pray. The disciples weren't aware of how much they needed to pray. Let's never allow our pride or human reasoning to downplay the power of prayer as it prepares us to tackle temptation.

Welcome to Shalom Ariel, and welcome to our continuing study in the Book of Genesis with Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon. Be blessed as you listen in, and Shalom.

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: This is where the testing, the confrontation part is. The Garden of Eden was also the garden of temptation. It is there that Adam and Eve disobeyed God. It was there where we will learn of the serpent's schemes, which have not changed since.

And why did God put this tree there? He could have created Adam and Eve in heaven. Everything could have been so nice and well. And by now, we would have been enjoying ourselves. But if we were created in heaven, it would not have been the same. Man would not be the same. It was necessary.

If God chose to put man, Adam and Eve, in the garden of temptation before offering heaven, it must be that he wanted to share heaven with a being that could think and choose, with one with whom he was endowed with a free will. It would have been so much easier for God to make man in his image and likeness, a man like a robot. But it would not have been the same.

The Garden of Eden was a necessary place for testing man and woman. It is there that man saw that he is incapable of reaching heaven by himself. It is there that he saw his failure. And it is there that he saw the Messiah. He saw his redemption. Salvation was given to him. The whole history of the fall and redemption played right there.

And let me ask you: was it an apple tree? Well, maybe. Who knows? Some rabbis think that it was a fig tree because after the fall, Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. Logical. Other rabbis say it was a vine because no other fruit causes so much misery and destruction.

But it is not the fruit that is important. This is why we don't know what fruit it was. It was not the fruit that made Adam and Eve sin. The fruit only confirmed that they were indeed prone to sin. And because of this, they could not get to heaven right away.

Sin began way before Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Adam and Eve must have looked at this tree for a long time before the serpent found the right time to attack them. The forbidden thing lured them and they opted to satisfy their costly curiosity. It was all a question of disobedience and making the wrong choice. Eve forgot the word of God.

Another name for this garden could be the garden of choice. Just like this one choice everyone must make before he enters his eternal place. Even for the believer, once sealed for heaven, we are constantly called to make choices between good and evil. This is the nature of our world. Our lives here on earth cause us to constantly make choices and God is looking.

Today we tend to accuse Adam for all our sins, just like we accuse the Jews for the death of the Messiah. Eve and Adam committed the first sin, and we committed the following ones. And sin is really a choice. No one actually forces anybody to sin. When you sin, it's because you decided to sin.

It is the same type of choice all men are confronted with. The ultimate one is the choice of believing in God, the choice of believing his word and his son. At the beginning of the century, two young Russian Jews were invited to a service in a little congregation in New York City.

One of them, Abraham Silverstein, accepted the invitation. He heard the gospel, accepted Yeshua as his savior, and became a prominent missionary to the Jews and author of many books. In fact, in one of his books, he wrote so beautifully of the names of God.

The other young man, Leon Trotsky, chose the opposite direction. He refused to enter the congregation. He returned to Russia and dedicated his life to atheistic communism. Ultimately, Leon Trotsky fell into disfavor with the party, fled from Russia to Mexico, and was murdered in 1940. Here are two men who were face-to-face with the choice of following God or rejecting him. One lived; the other died.

Let us remember that God has no army to pass around to grab us by the neck and to tell us where to go and what to do. When God created man, he made man superior to all creatures. He made us thinking beings so that you choose if you want or don't want to be with God for eternity.

But is it fair for believers today to be tried and tested so often? Why are we tested since we have salvation? The simple reason behind it is that God wants to make us better by trials. Many believers are coming and saying, "Why am I tested? Why am I going through so many difficult trials?"

God tested Israel over and over. Do you remember we read in the Book of Judges that the nation was invaded by cruel enemies just to test her? So that, it says in the Book of Judges, through them I may test Israel. He wanted to know if they were good enough. It's okay that God knows everything, but he wants to know how we fare in testing.

For the believer today, we are told that the testing of our faith makes us better and better. We read in 1 Peter 1:6-7: "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ," who actually is coming at any time now.

Like Adam, we also have our own garden of temptation, of testing, of choice. But all this is for the betterment, our betterment. It is to make us better and even more to prepare us for the afterlife in heaven. When we think of testing or the trials of life, think of a sponge.

You can take a sponge, fill it up with water, and put it on the table. If you push down with your finger, even slightly, what runs out on the table? Water. We immediately know what fills the interior pocket of the sponge. The same is true for ourselves. We can tell what fills us on the inside by what comes out under pressure.

God wants to know. Testing and trials indicate to us that God wants the best for you. It's a blessing when a believer is tested. That means God is looking. And while trials and testing are the negative side of Eden, there's a positive side to it. There's another tree.

Did you notice the Tree of Life, which seems to have stood right next to the other tree? This tree is the tree of hope. This one is the tree from heaven standing there as to constantly remind us of the benefits of a right choice. The Tree of Life is the tree of immortality. It is the tree of life with God in eternity.

In the Bible, it is symbolically used for what is good, what is godly. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, Proverbs says. A gentle tongue is a tree of life, it says also. And more than this, Yeshua promises the believer who overcomes to eat of the tree.

See what he says in Revelation 2:7: "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of paradise." The Tree of Life is given to believers who are actually the overcomers.

And it is right in the midst of the paradise of God in heaven waiting for us, as Revelation 22 says. Revelation 22 tells us how paradise is. I don't think I want to go to Eden. Satan was there. There was sin. It's a trial. I want to go to this place that is described in Revelation 22, where God actually lives on and on.

So all believers will eat of this fruit once we are brought to the eternal abode. This is to assure us that we will be with God forever in a holy state. So when temptation or trials come our way, remember this beautiful Tree of Life. It is there right next to it.

And it is in verse 17 that the story is interrupted and goes right into the creation of the woman. The woman was not there when God gave the command to Adam. This will prove significant when we consider the role of Adam in the fall. He surely did not exercise his role of leadership, his role of teacher, his role of head of the home.

Let us read the account of the creation of the woman. With her, all the creation is achieved. Verses 18 to 20, only three verses: "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.' Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him." Our translation reads, and the Lord said, "It is not good that man should be alone."

If I was a single person, I would feel bad reading this verse. But the word for man is Adam. And perhaps we can read the verse: it is not good for Adam that he should be alone. It was not good for Adam to be alone, single among all these animals with no other human beings there.

And he could not fulfill the commandment to replenish the earth by himself. And so a woman is given to him. This could not be said of all men, I believe. The Bible teaches elsewhere that it is fine for a man if he's not married. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:8, "But I say to the unmarried and to the widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am."

So there are times when it is fine for men to be alone. Yeshua himself says in Matthew 19:12, "For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it." So I would rather read Genesis 2:18 as, "It is not good for that man to be alone."

Guest (Female): Don't go away; we'll be right back with the second half of our program coming up just after this message. As we wind up for the second part of our program today, we would like to remind our listeners how blessed and privileged we feel to be part of your radio day.

We pray that the messages you hear will instruct you, edify you, and encourage you to love the Lord more and follow him into obedience in even greater ways. We are all changed by the challenges and transformed by the trials of life. And as we walk them together, we keep looking up to him who is mighty to break down the walls of Jericho that stand before us and to hand over to us the spiritual victories in life.

Yeshua has broken down the greatest barrier, the greatest wall that has separated us from God the Father. Thank you, listeners, for joining us in prayer and in financial support for this ministry. If you have it on your heart to give to this ministry, then you can by logging onto our congregation website at bethariel.ca. That is B-E-T-H-A-R-I-E-L.ca.

And if God leads you to contribute from the treasures that God has blessed you with for the continuation of this radio ministry, Shalom, Shalom as we begin part two of today's program.

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: When God made the woman and presented her to Adam, do you know that we have the first wedding? The first marriage? God created marriage right there and then. He created her to be with Adam and to be fruitful. It was a marriage, a wedding day. And a marriage is a covenant. It is a promise. It is a gift from God.

Guest (Female): In our lifetime, we receive many kinds of gifts: on our birthdays, at holidays, and on special occasions. Of course, our commitment to faith is a very special occasion. And on that day of our spiritual rebirth, we also receive gifts, spiritual gifts for the enabling of the body of Messiah.

And if we are married, we have also received a gift from God: the gift of marriage. Wow, so many gifts. And are we handling them as we should? All of these gifts, spiritual gifts, the gift of marriage, can work together.

When we consider our spiritual gifts, let's remember our spouse as well. And particularly us as women out there, let's remember that part of the divine decree of marriage is that we serve our husbands. Is our spiritual gift in any way conflicting in our marriage or conflicting with our husband's gifts?

Are we placing our spiritual gift in alignment with his, seeing that he will be enabled as much as possible through our contributing to the body of Messiah? Marriage is not a human invention; it is an institution from God.

Spiritual gifts are not human talents, per se; they are given in order to enable the spiritual growth and welfare of the body. Help us, Lord, teach us to use these gifts and appreciate them so that we may bear gifts to others. Welcome to Shalom Ariel, and welcome to our continuing study in the Book of Genesis with Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon. Be blessed as you listen in, and Shalom.

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: According to a study, it is better to marry than to stay single, men said. That was the finding of a study done a few years ago. About 66 percent of men actually agree to this statement: it is better to get married than to go through life single, compared to 51 percent of the women.

In the same verse 18, we read that the woman should be a servant to man. Is this what it says? It seems that many have read it this way. At least this is what the history of woman in the world often indicates. Even the history of the church indicates that.

The verse says, "I will make him a helper comparable to him." When you need someone to help, it's because you can't make it by yourself. The word in Hebrew is even stronger. It is used in a sense to rescue, to save. It is used of military assistance.

Above all these things, it is used of God helping Israel and the individual. We see this work compounded with the name of God in proper names, just like Azarel, "God has helped"; Israel, "my God is my help"; or Azarial, "the Lord has helped."

This word then does not convey an inferior being. The creation of the woman was a blessed thing for man. Husbands, have you realized this? Have you realized the value and riches you can find in your wives? I want to read what a wife named Karen B. Mains once wrote about her husband. It is so fitting with the word *ezer*, help.

She says, "I am responsible to keep my husband from being alone in this terrible lonely world. A wife is a hedge against the alienation that comes from being human. She's a sanctuary when the battles with pains and criticism. Few people care about a man's dream, hopes, fears. Society tell him he's out of sync. His friends like real love and intimacy."

Since being expelled from Eden, man vaguely remembers and longs for the fellowship and completeness only Christ himself can supply. When the Christian man reaches heaven, he will rest and be filled. These are such beautiful words. These are right words.

And our three verses, verses 18 to 20, also tell us that Adam named all the animals. Whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. That, by the way, is so impressive. We once had a dog and it took the whole family a few days just to come up with one name, a name nobody agreed with, only one.

This shows us the great abilities that Adam had before the fall. He was made in the image and likeness of God, and we must have lost a lot of this likeness and image today. One other question: what language was Adam speaking?

It seems that he was speaking Hebrew. Not because Moses wrote Genesis in Hebrew, but because the names are all in Hebrew. Take, for instance, the name of Adam. It comes from the Hebrew word *adamah*, which is ground. The name is Hebrew, and today Adam is known in other languages as Adam.

They know him by his Hebrew name. Whether it is Arabic, Turkish, Russian, German, French, it is always something like Adam. In fact, all the names from Adam to Noah are all Hebrew until you reach the Tower of Babel. They change to Aramaic.

So it was not a question of translation; it was, I believe, an original language. Biblical Hebrew must have been the language God spoke to the first man. Now it is now that we come to see how God created a woman.

By the way, more space is given to the creation of the woman than any other creation. One verse for man, four verses for woman. It's not, as some have said, that women are complicated. That's not biblical. I don't think so.

We do not have time to go over all this creation, but let us begin by reading three verses, verses 21 to 23. It says, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place.

Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam says, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.'"

Here we see the first anesthesia in the history of the world. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep right on Adam. And the first operation: he operated on him, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in his place, and he made a woman.

Why did God do it this way? Why did he choose to put man into a deep sleep and then he created a woman? There's something great here. Consider the word deep sleep in the Hebrew, one word, *tardemah*. This word is quite rare.

It only occurs seven times in the Hebrew scriptures. And the only other time it occurs in Genesis is when God put Abraham into a deep sleep, same word, to confirm God's covenant with him. This we find in Genesis 15.

At the time to confirm a covenant, some animals were cut in half and the two covenanters would both walk in between, indicating that if they break this covenant, the same thing would happen to them; they would be cut in half.

With Abraham, God alone walked because the covenant with Abraham and with Israel was unilateral. That is unconditional, like our salvation. But how can we link this with Adam? When God made the woman and presented her to Adam, do you know that we have the first wedding? The first marriage?

God created marriage right there and then. He created her to be with Adam and to be fruitful. It was a marriage, a wedding day. And a marriage is a covenant. It is a promise. It is a gift from God to man, like the Book of Proverbs says.

As Abraham was put into a deep sleep and awakened to this unbreakable covenant, so was Adam put into a deep sleep and awakened to this new covenant of marriage. And in verse 24, it speaks of this union and treats it like a marriage.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." This is used two other times in the Gospels and once in the letters in the context of marriage. And this is what a wedding is in the Bible: a covenant.

Malachi 2:14, God says that your wife is the wife of your covenant, your wife of your promise. You said it. Here in Genesis, right at the creation, God stamps the marriage as being so important. Marriage was created by God at almost the same time as the heavens and the earth.

It is as big and even bigger. And as God gave this great gift of the promise to Israel, so did he present Eve to Adam, like a father who presents a gift to his son. This is how it's written in verse 22: "And he brought her to the man."

And Adam's reaction was very strong. This is recorded in verse 23. But let me tell you what he says textually. He repeats the word three times—the word *zot*, "this." When Adam saw the woman, he says, and Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

This shall be called woman, because this was taken out of man." He was excited. Now we better understand perhaps why he put him to sleep before. Imagine he was awake during the creation, somebody said.

I will conclude by reminding ourselves that woman was created from the rib of a man. The word rib, by the way, in the Hebrew means the side, anywhere in the side. Any part of the side, but nothing from the upper or lower part.

Because man and woman are created equal. None can pretend preeminence over the other, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:12. He says it so beautifully. He says as a woman came from man, and so man also comes from a woman, but all things are from God.

One from the other. Woman came from man and afterward every man was born of a woman. They are equal. They are also different. In fact, there is a marked difference. Let me conclude with this: some statistics. According to some studies, men and women don't necessarily want to discuss the same subject.

The leading discussion subject for men was news, news events (71 percent), followed by work (68 percent). Women, on the other hand, talk about food, about health. It's okay. Men were far more likely to have talked about sports, right?

Women more likely to have discussed personal problems, right? Because man is man; he doesn't talk about his personal problems. And who makes the decisions at home? A USA Today survey asked 4,500 men and women.

The answer: first, women are responsible for deciding what's for dinner and then preparing it, managing the household budget, raising the children. Men and women share the responsibility for deciding where to go on vacation, how much to spend on major purchases, and so on.

However, men are especially responsible for deciding what to watch on television. Now I understand why when Sharon and I are watching the news on TV, I must hold the TV selector. Otherwise, I am not comfortable at all.

But again, men and women are created equal—different, but equal. Let's bow our head in prayer. We thank you, Lord. We thank you, Heavenly Father, for again all that you have left for us in your word so that we might go and find you there. Find truth, precious truth that you've written yourself.

Heavenly Father, I pray that the word we've read today will bless our heart, will bless the people here. Heavenly Father, bless each and every one. Bless each and every one, especially those who are going through trials, through difficult period of time.

But you are with them. You are with them. This is your promise, we know, that when we're going through a difficult time, you are with us like a tree of life. Heavenly Father, help us to see you and to already eat from this tree, as we pray in Yeshua's name. Amen. May the Lord bless you.

Guest (Female): Shalom Ariel is a daily radio program emphasizing the Jewish perspective of scripture. God is not through dealing with Israel, nor will he renege any of the promises he has made to her.

Our teacher for this program, Jacques Isaac Gabizon, is a Messianic Jewish believer and Messianic leader at Beth Ariel congregation right here in Montreal. If you've been encouraged by the messages, we'd love to hear from you.

Give us a call at 1-888-685-5902, or you may write us at info@bethariel.ca all one word.ca. You are also welcome to join us for our Saturday morning services. We are located at 6297 Monkland Avenue, corner of Madison in NDG.

The message is given in English, but we do offer simultaneous translation into French and Russian. Services begin at 11:00 AM. We have Shabbat school for children of all ages up to and including teens. You may also download audio messages from our website at bethariel.ca and enjoy other in-depth teaching from Jacques Isaac.

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