Jesse Tree (December 2) - Children's Version

Day 2:  Fall (Genesis 2:4 – 3:24)

God created a perfect world in six days – and filled it with so many blessings!  The warmth of the sun, plants to eat, interesting animals of all kinds, love, marriage, and family – what more could we want?  What could possibly go wrong?  

It would have been easy to follow God’s commands:  be fruitful and increase in number, rule over the earth, and just one more:

“Do not eat from the tree of knowledge in the garden,” God warned, “because if you do you will surely die.”  

The penalty for disobeying one of God’s commands was death, but he wasn’t asking much.  All they had to do was obey God and trust him, and they had everything they could ever ask for – life in paradise! 

But… a slithery, tricky little snake had other ideas.  “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?”   

Hmm…  all of a sudden it didn’t sound quite as fair.  Why wouldn’t God want me to have it?  Eve thought.  What’s he trying to keep from me?  But then she remembered, “God said we CAN eat from almost all of them…well, except one…only one.” 

Maybe she felt good about coming to God’s defense, but she also  felt the temptation growing inside her…so she added to God’s command to try to keep herself a little further from breaking it: “We can’t even touch it,” she says, “because if we do we will surely die.” 

But did God say she couldn’t touch it?  God NEVER said that!  In fact, she could have touched it all she wanted.  But, by changing God’s law, she began to lose sight of his true command…now it was just a little further away in her mind than it was before.  Yes, she remembered.  She could touch it.  So she picked it up.  Oh, it looked so good.  “You will not surely die” said the snake. 

Hmmm… wondered Eve.  What does this snake know that I don’t?  Is God lying to me? 

“If you eat it,” continued the snake, “your eyes will be opened – you will see things you’ve never seen before – and you with know BOTH good and evil!” 

Oh, finally it made sense!  God WAS keeping something from her – there were things she didn’t know…what were they? How bad could it be to want to know more?  She wanted to know – so she sunk her teeth into the fruit and invited Adam to have some too.  After they’d both had their fill suddenly they realized that the world looked a little different…felt a little different.  They looked at each other in horror. 

Are we?  Yes, we are…naked! They both thought to themselves.  Oh, my, they were so embarrassed, and they tried to wrap some giant leaves around themselves quickly.  Then suddenly they heard God, who had walked with them in the garden every day before coming closer.  Oh no, they thought!  What will God think?  And they bolted behind a tree to hide from the God who made all, sees all, KNOWS all. 

Rather than tell the truth about what happened and ask God’s forgiveness, they tried to hide it.  They tried to make it sound not so bad.  They made excuses.  Each pointed the finger at someone else, but blame didn’t fix anything.  It wasn’t honest, and God knew. 

And so they had called upon themselves the curse of breaking God’s commands.

Men would have to work much harder now.  It would be more difficult to care for creation.

Adam was now a little broken, too.  A broken man working a broken land.  It would be much more difficult for him to provide the things his wife and family needed.

Life for women would be much harder, too.  They would find it more difficult to experience the blessing of children, and husbands and wives would struggle to love each other perfectly.  They would become selfish in their desires.  They would try to control each other.  They would have unfair expectations of each other.  Sometimes they would fight.

That snake, he didn’t get off too easy either.  He would have to slither on the ground for the rest of his life eating dust. 

But tenderly hidden in this curse on the snake was a promise for the people that God created to love:  one day a child of Eve would come who would crush the serpent and break the power of sin once and for all. 

Then, before they were forced to leave the garden paradise, God himself sacrificed an animal to make for them clothes that would cover the shame they felt – permanent clothes that would cloak them better than the plants could.  This was the first sacrifice. 

Remember, every sin causes death, and so this animal died instead of them.  But they died in a way, too, because they could not live every day of their life with God anymore.  They were separated from him.  They were detached from the source of life Himself.  And one day their bodies would die, too, like that animal that gave up its life to cover over the shame of their sin.  But for now, they were thankful for God’s mercy, for the breath in their lungs, and for the grace that he showed them as they walked away from the perfect home God had made for them… 

They left it behind forever and walked into a now unknown and broken world.

Can you taste it?  The bitterness of sin?  The sourness of death? 

And who hasn’t sinned?  Who of us doesn’t deserve the same fate as that animal? 

Every day of life is a gift because it is not what we deserve.  And right now at Christmas we are waiting with Adam and Eve for the child of Eve to come and save the world.   

The God-child, Jesus Christ. 

Our sin demands a death.  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come and save us!

How long, O Lord, until you will send us your Son to save us?