Isaiah 6:5 “So I said: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’”

Probably the number one question that most people would like to ask God, if they ever had the chance in their lifetime to ask Him directly, would be this: Why Lord, did you let the serpent into the Garden?

It is obvious that when the Lord revealed Himself to Isaiah, that question was probably the last thing on Isaiah’s mind, but yet the very nature of Isaiah’s condition, which caused him to say: woe is me, was due to the fact that the serpent was in the Garden to begin with, messing around and tempting Eve to get her and Adam into trouble.

Which leads me to ask this question: Was there a necessity for the serpent to be in the Garden?

Sound reasoning will tell us that there was. It had to be! Why else would a good God allow it to be there?

Let me explain what I call sound reasoning:

Matthew 10:29 “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.”

We know that God is the Almighty, and that nothing happens, that happens, without His will or knowledge. So, then we must conclude that there was a reason for the serpent to be there in the Garden, which brings us to our original question of why, what was the reason?

I believe the answer to be, the phrase that I chose for the title of this lesson: The Human Experience.

Let’s follow logic: Why would a God that has everything create something new? Or we could ask it another way: Why would a God that has everything create something different?

If you think about it, we humans do not even exist in the same dimension that God dwells in. God lives in an infinite eternity that is spiritual. We live in a physical reality, a realm that is passing away.

As a matter of fact, we humans are a different breed from anything that God had ever created in the past, and as such, we were placed in a totally different environment that any of the other intelligent creatures that preceded us were ever placed.

What makes us different than any of the angelic creatures that preceded us, is our humanity, or what I call the human experience.

What is the human experience?

Genesis 3:5 “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.”

You see, I believe that only God has the capacity to know evil without ever being touched or tempted by it. Even creatures that God created with great wisdom, like Lucifer, fell when enticed by the knowledge of evil itself, unlike God who can never be tempted by it.

1 John 1:5 “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”

God is totally and completely pure, inside and out, and the only reason that He knows evil is because as God He knows everything.

James 1:13 “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.”

Did you get what the last two Scriptures are telling us? Its subtle, but in order for us to get it we have to look at it from the perspective of the human experience. Let us take a closer look at our last Scripture first.

For God cannot be tempted by evil.

Matthew 4:1 “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

Isn’t Jesus God? Of course He is! Is not the devil evil? Of course he is!

So why was evil trying to do something that he is not allowed to do, like tempting God? The only reason that the devil was allowed to try and tempt Jesus, who is the Son of God, was the locality, the physical realm where the human experience is one of good and evil constantly.

Let us look at our other Scripture that reveals to us the nature of God.

In Him is no darkness at all.

Matthew 27:45-46 “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘E’li, E’li, la-ma’ sa-bach’-tha-ni?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’”

Here also we see how Jesus the Son of God is engulfed by darkness to the point that He becomes separated from God Himself who is light.

So that darkness, which is separation from God, as well as temptation by evil itself, are both human experiences that no other spiritual creatures can ever experience and survive without falling.

No human can experience temptation and separation from God either and survive it, were it not for Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, who experienced temptation and separation from God in His physical body on our behalf without failing. And by the power of His holiness was able to overcome both, temptation and separation from God, and still raise up from the dead.

So that what we see in the human experience is a process. We can call that process the gathering of information that takes place during our lifelong experience while here in this physical realm.

So, back to our original question, why was the serpent in the Garden?

Not only did James say that God cannot be tempted by evil, but he added that God Himself does not tempt anyone.

If there is a flaw, and I’ll use that word loosely, with the spiritual creatures that God created first, the angels, is that they dwell in the same eternity that God dwells, so that when the third of the creatures that were tempted fell, their nature was changed immediately and forever, for they were cast into the realm of darkness, and at once became separated from God and unredeemable.

And not only that, the angels who remained faithful to God still lack the ability to know evil experientially, for if they personally experienced evil, they themselves would be lost forever as we were.

I believe, the human race was created to overcome what the angelic creatures could not, to be like God in the sense of knowing good and evil and yet, not losing ourselves by being separated from God forever through the experience.

By our experiencing the horrors of evil contrasted with the goodness of God, we would once and for all choose to renounce any and all knowledge of evil by recognizing that God and only God is good.

All the holy angels know about the goodness of God, for they experience it daily as they cry out before Him day and night, Holy, Holy, Holy!

But only humans can truly understand about the goodness of God within the contrast of good when compared against the utter darkness of evil that we have had to suffer and endure.

Our physical bodies will one day die and return to the dust of the earth from where they were taken, but the experience, the information that was gathered while we were alive in our physical bodies is never lost.

So, what happens to the information that was gathered through our human experience while we were here alive in the earth with our physical bodies?

2 Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

All the information that was gathered while in our human experience journey, has to be edited and formatted, made suitable for the new physical eternity that we will be a part of forever once we get our new eternal physical bodies.

John 3:19 “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Not all humans will make it into eternal bliss with God, just like not all of the angels made it, but those of us who make it will have our abilities to fall into evil removed from us forever.

Our experiences with the horrors of evil will make us a lot more appreciative of the goodness of God, and having our abilities to sin removed from us once and for all at the judgment seat of Christ, will be a greater cause for us to give God heart felt praise.

Had there been no temptation in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve, the human race would still be in the age of innocence, as mere infants who could never understand the true Majesty of our Loving Father, the great compassion of our God and Savior, and the true love that He has freely demonstrated toward us, His creation, who will one day will be truly able to appreciate Him in the fullness of all His goodness.

Revelation 7:9-10 “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the lamb!’”