KIDS OF THE KINGDOM // LESSON 3 // GOD CALLS US
Memory Verse: Romans 3:23
Man’s Fall and God’s Redemption Story
1. REVIEW
- In the last clips, we talked about God's creation of humans! Let’s review a couple of questions from the previous clips.
- What did God use to form the first man? Dust from the ground!
- How did God put life into Adam? By breathing into his nostrils!
- What 3 parts make up a human? Body, soul, and spirit
- Why did God make people? Because He is full of love!
- What was special about humans compared to animals and plants and the rest of the world? He created man in His own image! He wanted humans to be like Him!
- During this episode, we are going to talk about the beautiful mercy of God
- Mercy is kindly forgiving someone when they actually deserve to be punished. For example, if I stole a candy bar from the grocery store and got caught, the owner of the store could send me to jail. If he didn't send me to jail, he would be showing me mercy!
- God is full of mercy, and it’s one of the reasons it’s possible to be so close to Him!
- How does God show us mercy? Well, to answer that, we have to talk about sin!
2. MEMORY VERSE
- Today’s memory verse will give you a clue about the story we are going to explore.
- Our memory verse is found in Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
- While this sounds like bad news (and in the moment it was), this verse actually shows us that God has a whole plan to bring us back to the glory that we fell from! I’m getting ahead of myself, though! Let’s get back to Adam and Eve.
- Fallen short of the glory of God… Wait a second! Weren't we just in glory land with God? God just made Adam and Eve and gave them a beautiful home in the garden! Here, they were totally connected to God and living the life God designed for them.
- How in the WORLD did they sin and fall short of the glory that God had gifted them?
- Let's say our memory verse one more time before we unpack this story… Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
3. GOD’S ENEMY, SATAN
- To understand how humans fell short from God’s glorious life for us, we have to learn about God’s enemy, Satan.
- Before we talk about Satan, it's important to remember that God is stronger than Satan! Satan is evil and God is good, but that does not mean that they are equally powerful. God is in control of Satan, and Satan can't do anything that God cant stop or heal!
- Let’s look at the story of Satan in God’s Word . We were just in the Garden, but let’s go back to before the Garden even existed! In heaven, one of the places God dwells , God created many angels. Long before the world existed, there was a beautiful angel named Lucifer. The Bible tells us that he was the highest of all angels. He was wise, covered with precious stones, and he was in heaven worshiping God.
- Lucifer became proud and wanted to be greater than God. He may have even wanted the angels to worship Him instead of worshiping God!
- This is the first time that we see a created being choosing the wrong path! God made Lucifer for God’s glory, but Lucifer started choosing the path of life without God instead of life with God! Spoiler alert: This never goes well.
- In heaven, everything is pure, good, and right.
- When Lucifer decided he wanted His own way, he chose sin instead of life with God. Sin cant exist in heaven, so God had to take him out of heaven.
- When Jesus (God the Son) was on earth, He explained that He saw Lucifer fall from heaven like lightning (LUKE 10.18). At that time, Lucifer (the ex-angel) had his name changed to Satan (which means enemy). 23
- Ok– Recap! Lucifer, the beautiful angel, got jealous of God. He chose life without God because he wanted to be God. God took him out of heaven. His name was changed to Satan.
- Okay– we got the backstory down. Let’s bring it back to the Garden. When Satan saw the beautiful world and how happy Adam and Eve were as they spent time with God in the Garden, he got so jealous he couldn't stand it. He decided to move the conflict down to earth 3, and he decided to use an animal in the garden for his evil schemes.
- Do you have any idea what animal he decided to become? Watch the next clip to find out!
4. GOD’S COMMANDS TO ADAM
- At this point, there was no sin in the world. No one did anything wrong and no one ever got hurt. Adam and Eve lived knowing how good God is, and there was nothing between them and God! They spent their days enjoying the beautiful earth, loving one another, and feeling the closeness of God in the Garden.
- In the middle of this beautiful Garden, there were 2 special trees.
- Tree 1 was called the “Tree of Life”
- Tree 2 was called the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”
- God told them that they could eat from any tree in the Garden except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil!
- “You are not to eat from this tree. The day you do, you will die”.
- Adam and Eve both understood what God had instructed them to do and not to do. All they had to do was keep choosing life with God instead of choosing the one tree they couldn't eat from.
- Some people ask “If the Garden was perfect, why was there an off-limits tree?” God gives His children a choice– He doesn't want robots, He wants real, alive love! And to be able to have real love, there needs to be a choice on the table! God always sets us up to choose Him, but it’s up to us to make the decision!
5. EVE’S TEMPTATION
- One day, a serpent came to visit Eve. This wasn't any normal serpent– Satan was talking to Eve through the serpent!
- The Serpent asked Eve “did God really say you couldn't eat from every tree in the Garden?”
- Eve answered “We may eat from the fruit of trees in the Garden, but God did say ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree in the middle of the Garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’”.
- Wait a second! Did Eve quote God correctly? Let’s look at Genesis 2 again
- “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
- No! She changed what God said by adding to it. While this might not seem like a big deal, it’s important that we don’t change God’s Word as He speaks to us. Instead of trying to change His Words and make Him different than He is, trust Him!
- Satan then told Eve that God was lying to her– “You will not surely die… you will be like God, knowing good and evil”, he said.
- Satan made it seem like God was holding good things back from Eve.
- Satan tries to do this with all of us– you know, convince us that God is'nt actually interested in our good. When God asks me to stop doing something, Satan tries to make it seem like God and I are on different teams. In reality, God is instructing me to protect me and make me like His Son, Jesus!
- Satan also tries to convince Eve that she needed to be as powerful as God.
- While we are made in the image of God, we are not made to be as powerful as He is! We are made to be Fathered and cared for by Him, not equal to Him.
- Instead of trusting her relationship with God and what He said to her, Eve listened to Satan and began to doubt God. She looked at the fruit and saw that it looked good. She thought about how interesting it would be to know about good and evil like God did. Then, she put out her hand, took the fruit, and ate it. She chose life without God instead of life with God. This was the moment sin SIN entered the story.
6. ADAM’S SIN
- And the sin just kept spreading! Sin never just affects the person doing it– it affects other people around them too. While people might think their sin is a secret from other people, it always impacts others.
- We see this with Adam! After Eve ate the fruit, she gave some to Adam. Instead of protecting Eve and his relationship with God, Adam chose the fruit instead of life with God.
- This was a huge mistake! Instead of asking God for help after their mistake, Adam and Eve decided to look at themselves, judge themselves as “naked” (which they decided was a bad thing), and hide in fig leaves to try to clean up their own mess.
- We see that God wasn't afraid of their mistake– He showed up for their normal walk in the cool of the day. When He saw that they didn't show up, God called out to them, “Where are you?”
- Adam answered God, “When I heard you in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid”
- We see by this response that Adam was looking at his own sin instead of looking to God’s goodness for help.
- It’s important to notice that God never asked them to hide or cover themselves up! When we make a mistake and fall short of the life God offers us, God simply wants us to come to Him with it. He doesn't expect us to handle it on our own. He wants to help us and Father us through difficult things.
- God asked Adam “who told you that you were naked? Have you been eating the fruit I told you not to eat?”
- Because Adam was now a sinner, he blamed Eve for his mistake instead of being honest with God. And when God asked Eve the same question, she blamed the serpent.
7. GOD FATHER’S THEM THROUGH THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN
- When we go outside of what God designs for us, there are consequences. These consequences don't happen because God is mean to us, but because anything outside of God does not bring us life.
- The first thing God deals with is the serpent.
- God said to the serpent “because you have done this you are cursed above all cattle and every living thing. You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life”.
- And that happened! Snakes do move by crawling on their bellies, and snakes are hated more than most animals!
- God then deals with Satan
- God said to Satan “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.” Enmity means a conflict or war; this means there would be a battle between Satan and those who trust God, as well as between Satan and Jesus! This battle is still happening today, but Jesus (God the Son) has already won the victory for us! We’ll talk about how He did that another time.
- Next, God looks at Eve.
- God explains to Eve that she will have much pain when she gives birth to children. He also tells her “your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you”.
- And finally, God addresses Adam.
- God told Adam that because he listened to his wife and ate the fruit that was off-limits, he would have to work hard all the days of his life. For the first time, thorns and thistles would grow along with the fruits and vegetables, making it more difficult to harvest their food.
- God had warned Adam and Eve that “When you eat of the tree, you will surely die”.
- When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, their spirits died. Sin had come between their hearts and God’s heart.
- Physical death (sickness and aging) began working its way through their bodies. It took 930 years for Adam’s body to physically die!
- God took them out of the garden of eden.
- While this might seem mean, it’s actually God’s being sweet and merciful! It would have been so sad if they’d stayed stuck with their sin forever. They had to leave the Garden for God to start writing His redemption story!
8. GOD SHOWS HIS MERCY
- God’s up heart for Adam and Eve didn't change even though they disobeyed Him! He still loved them so much and cared for them so deeply. Here are three special ways that God cared for them after they disobeyed Him
- 1) God made them clothes of skin: Right after their mistake, God killed an animal and used its skin to cover up the shame that they agreed with.
- Shame always makes us feel like we need to hide, but God is always willing to heal us and cover our messes with the blood of Jesus.
- 2) God promised a Savior: In verse 15, we read the first promise of the coming savior. God said “He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.
- This promise said that Satan would try to defeat this Savior, named Jesus. This is what Satan tried to do by killing Jesus on the cross, but Jesus proved that He was so much stronger than Satan by overcoming death!!!
- We will get into more of that later!
- 3) God protected them: God sent them out of the Garden so that He could write a story that would reunite them to God again! He sent them away from the Garden and placed a cherubim (special angel) in front of tree at the entrance of the garden to guard the Tree of Life.
- What is your favorite way that God cared for Adam and Eve after they sinned?
- The clothing, the promise, or the protection of taking them out of the garden?
9. CONCLUSION
- Because of Adam’s sin, he could not be close to the perfection of God. God could no longer dwell with Adam or Eve inside their spirits . Sin was like a wall blocking Adam from God. Everyone born in this world is like Adam, with an empty space inside that God wants to fill up!
- How can God possibly live inside of us when we are sinners? Jesus, God’s the son, made this possible for us! He obeyed God by dying on the cross 1 and rising from the dead so that we could be righteous (which is a fancy word for right with God!). He did all of this so that we could be one with God again!
- HOW can we have this life with God?
- First, we believe 2 things. 1) We are sinners and need God 2) Jesus is the only Son of God who died so we could be One with God again
- Second, we must do 2 things: 1) confess to Him that we need help 2) open up our hearts to Jesus as our Savior!
- When we do this, God washes our hearts and lives clean, and the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us!!
- He gives us everlasting life!
- This is what Jesus calls being born again, and this leads us into Abundant Life with God forever!!!
- Once we receive Jesus, we are right with God forever! The Holy Spirit will love us, lead us, teach us, and discipline us to make us more like Jesus in this lifetime, but we will never stop being His sons and daughters! When you receive Jesus, you have peace with God forever!!!
- Do you feel like you have this peace with God? If you don’t, all you have to do is let Him into your heart– He has already sent Jesus to make a way for you, and Jesus is knocking on your heart!
10. DECLARATIONS
It’s important to declare out loud what is true about God! It helps our heart come into line with what our minds understand!
Say these things to God from your heart with me!
- God, knowing Your word, treasuring Your Word, and storing Your Word in my heart keeps me from sinning against You.
- God, even though Satan tries to keep me from doing life with You, You are stronger than him! You have defeated Satan and given me power to resist the enemy.
- God, I want to choose life with You instead of choosing life without You. Will you help me follow you?
- God, You love to Father me through things! You don't leave me, even when I make sinful, selfish mistakes. You lead me through them!
Is there anything in your heart that makes you want to hide from God like Adam and Eve did? If there is, don't be afraid of God! He loves you, and He wants to heal your heart and give You his strength. Take a moment, ask God to search your heart for anything hidden, and share what God is bringing to you with someone you trust. You weren't made to do this alone!
We are including Sara's notes for complete transparency for parents.
