93. The Snake, the Fruit, and a Whole Lot of Trouble: Genesis 3

G' Day and welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Dave here, a big shout out to Savannah, who's 8 years old and lives in Oregon in the USA.

G', day, Savannah.

Your dad tells me you've listened to hours of the podcast while sitting in the car.

I am so glad you're enjoying the show.

Savannah sent me in her colouring from the last episode, which is now on the episode page@faithfulgod.net, everyone else listening.

I'd love to hear from you.

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Do you know what sin is?

How would you describe sin if someone asked you, tell me what sin is, what would you say?

How about you take 20 seconds to tell the people around you what you think sin is?

So what is sin?

Is it when someone says, you've been a very naughty boy?

Is it when you eat all the chocolate cakes and no one else can have any?

Is it when you make a smell and blame it on someone else?

The Bible says we all sin, every single one of us.

Often, though, people don't realise just how sad or how bad sin is.

People often make excuses about their sin.

Oh, it's not my fault.

My sister made me do it.

People make it sound like it's not that important, but really, it's the saddest and baddest thing in the whole wide world.

And we're about to find out what it is.

Get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God.

For K, The world was perfect.

There was no sickness, there was no sadness, there was no badness.

Everything was very good.

The reason the world was so good was because God had made it so good.

He'd made the world with love and care and perfection.

But the goodness is about to be broken.

There's an animal, a snake.

And Genesis 3:1 says, now the snake was the most clever of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.

It can be good to be clever.

Unfortunately, though, this snake is going to use his cleverness for something very bad.

He says to the woman who God made, Did God really say that you must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden?

He's trying to say, God's a bit mean and nasty, isn't he?

But God never actually said that.

He said they could eat from any of the trees in the garden, apart from the one that'll kill them.

God's been really generous and given them heaps.

The woman answers the snake.

And her answer sounds okay.

But if you listen carefully, there are some important things she gets wrong.

In verse two, she says we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden.

But God told us, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden.

You must not even touch it or you will die.

Hmm, Is that right?

It's right that they can eat lots of different fruit, but.

But she says they can't eat fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden.

If you listened carefully in the last episode though, you will remember that there are actually two trees in the middle of the garden.

One gives life forever, the other one brings death.

God said, don't eat from the one that'll make you die.

But he did let them eat from the tree of life.

God's been super kind.

She seems to have forgotten that.

Though God also never said that they can't touch the tree that brings death, she's adding words to what God said, which makes him sound a little bit mean.

Now the snake tells a straight out lie.

He says in verse four, you will not die.

God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree, you'll learn about good and evil.

Then you'll be like God.

Remember, the tree is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And so it sounds like he's telling the truth when he says if you eat from it, you'll learn about good and evil, just like God.

Except the tree isn't just about knowing what's right and wrong.

It's about who gets to decide what's right and wrong.

God's the one who gets to decide what's right and wrong.

It's his world.

He made it, he owns it.

And he gets to make the rules.

Thankfully, he's so good.

He's made such a good world.

He's given so much to the humans.

He's even made them to be like God.

He's made them in his image.

But as much as God's given them, this snake is saying, oh, he hasn't really given you the best thing, has he?

He hasn't let you decide what's right and wrong, good and evil.

But if you eat from that tree, it won't be up to God anymore.

It'll be up to you.

You'll be in charge.

You'll be like God.

You won't need God anymore.

Now the woman has a choice.

She can trust what God said, that if she eats the fruit, she'll die.

Or she can trust what the snake says.

That she won't die.

She might not know much about this snake, but she certainly knows great things about God.

She knows how good he's been in making the world.

She knows how generous he's been in giving humans the job of ruling the world under Him.

She knows how kind he's been in giving them all this different fruit to eat, including fruit from the Tree of Life.

Unfortunately, she doesn't think about any of that.

Instead, she just thinks about the fruit she's not supposed to eat.

Verse 6 says the woman saw that the tree was beautiful.

She saw that its fruit was good to eat and that it would make her wise.

Hmm.

Wisdom is a good thing, but you get real wisdom from God and the wise.

God said, don't eat from this tree.

She doesn't want to listen to God, though.

She wants to decide things for herself, we're told.

So she took some of its fruit and ate it.

She also gave some of the fruit to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hang on a second.

Her husband's with her?

He's been with her this whole time.

Why hasn't he stopped her?

Why didn't he tell the snake to go away?

Why didn't he teach them what God had really said?

It's because in the end, he wants to decide for himself as well.

He doesn't want God to be in charge.

He wants to be in charge.

And so they both eat.

What a disaster.

As soon as they eat, they both realise something.

They realise they're both naked.

It's not that they didn't know they didn't have clothes on before, it's just that now they're scared about it.

They want to protect themselves from each other.

They want to cover up.

Before, they had a perfectly happy marriage.

Now they can't trust each other to cover up.

They make some really pathetic clothes out of fig leaves.

Fig leaves are quite big, so if you ever have to use leaves for clothes, fig leaves are good ones to choose.

But there's a reason why no one normally uses leaves.

They make pretty hopeless clothes.

Then they hear something.

It's God walking through the garden in the cool part of the day.

If they wanted to hide their bodies from each other, they definitely want to hide from God.

Have you ever hidden when you know you've done something wrong or tried to cover it up so no one will find out?

That's what these guys are doing.

But you can't hide anything from God.

In verse nine, the Lord God calls out to the man, where are you it's that embarrassing moment where they know where you're hiding and you know that they know where you're hiding, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So the man calls back, I heard you walking in the garden.

I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

Saying he's afraid because he's naked is basically admitting what he's done.

Before he ate the fruit, he had nothing to be afraid of.

God says in verse 11, who told you that you were naked?

Did you eat fruit from that tree?

I commanded you not to eat from that tree.

Now the blame game starts.

The people don't want to accept that they've done the wrong thing, so they blame others.

The man says, you gave this woman to me.

She gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.

That sounds like he's blaming the woman.

Even more than that, though, he's blaming God, as though it was really bad for God to put the woman there.

But that's not how the man felt in the last chapter when he first saw the woman.

He was super excited because it was really good for God to make the woman.

The problem isn't God.

The problem is the man.

God turns to the woman and asks in verse 13, what have you done?

She answers, the snake tricked me, so I ate the fruit.

Do you see what she's saying?

It's not really my fault.

It's the snake's.

He tricked me.

Except she should have known that what the snake was saying was wrong.

The truth is, she let herself be tricked because she wanted to be like God.

Well, God doesn't bother asking the snake who he's going to blame.

The snake's just an animal.

He wasn't made in God's image.

So God doesn't talk to him in the same way.

Instead, God curses him.

In verse 14, God says to the snake, because you did this, a curse will be put on you.

You will be cursed more than any tame animal or wild animal.

You will crawl on your stomach and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

I will make you and the woman enemies to each other.

Your descendants and her descendants will be enemies.

Her child will crush your head and you will bite his heel.

Hmm.

Who is this child of the woman who will crush the snake's head?

That sounds really great.

There's someone coming who'll defeat and destroy this snake.

But it also sounds really sad because as he crushes the snake's head, the snake will bite his heel from some snakes that can kill you.

So who could this be?

That God's talking about.

Hmm, we'll come back to that next.

God talks to the woman.

For the woman, there's something really, really good she was made to do.

And thankfully she's going to be allowed to keep doing it.

God's being very kind.

Buuuuut now this very good thing is going to be hard and painful.

The very good thing is giving birth to children.

God says, I will cause you to have much trouble when you are pregnant.

And when you give birth to children, you will have great pain.

It's amazing that even though humans sin, God still lets us do good and wonderful things.

It's just that those things are broken and harder.

It's the same for the man and woman's marriage.

God tells the woman that she'll want to be the boss of her husband, but he'll boss her around in unkind ways.

How sad.

When they trusted God, their marriage was perfect.

Now marriage, even though it's really good, is also really hard.

The man will have the same sort of problem.

Not with giving birth, that would be weird.

But all the good work he was made to do, he'll still get to do it.

But now it's going to be hard.

God says to the man in verse 17, you listened to what your wife said and you ate fruit from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from.

So I will put a curse on the ground.

You will have to work very hard for food.

In pain, you will eat its food all the days of your life.

The ground will produce thorns and weeds for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

As well as work being hard, something else will happen that God said would happen if they ate the fruit.

Because God never lies.

He always tells the truth.

And he told them if they eat the fruit, they'll die.

In verse 19, God says, you will sweat and work hard for your food.

Later you will return to the ground.

This is because you were taken from the ground.

You are dust.

And when you die, you will return to the dust.

Do you remember how the man was made?

God made him out of the dust, then breathed life into him.

So what happens when you say, I want to have life, but without God?

Well, without God we have no life.

And without life, humans are just dust.

Wonderfully, God is still kind to the humans.

He shows his kindness by allowing them to keep having children, allowing more life to come into the world.

And so the man gives his wife the name Eve, which means life or living.

Verse 20 says, this is because she's the mother of everyone.

Who ever lived.

So for every single one of us, for every human on the planet, we've all come from exactly the same woman.

We've all come from Eve.

She's our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great and lots more greats.

Grandmother.

God also kindly makes new clothes for them, much better than their leaves.

He gives them clothes made out of animal skin, but they are still going to die.

In verse 22, we're told.

Then the Lord God said, look, the man has become like one of us.

He knows good and evil.

And now we must keep him from eating some of the fruit from the Tree of Life.

If he does, he will live forever.

So the Lord God forced the man out of the Garden of Eden.

He had to work the ground he was taken from.

God forced the man out of the garden.

Then God put angels on the east side of the garden.

He also put a sword of fire there.

It flashed around in every direction.

This kept people from getting to the Tree of Life.

So what is sin?

Sin is when we act like God's not in charge, we're in charge.

God doesn't decide what's right and wrong.

I decide what's right and wrong.

God says to listen to and obey your parents.

But when you ignore your parents or try and force them to do what you want, you're saying, I get to decide what's best, not God.

God says to love others.

But when we speak unkindly about someone at school, we're saying, I get to decide what words to use, not God.

And it's such a shame because God is so good.

He's in charge and everything he says and does is best.

It's so sad that we all sin.

It's so sad that we all treat ourselves as better than God.

It's so sad that that means we all deserve to die.

Which is why Jesus is so amazing.

Jesus is the one who came to crush the snake.

He didn't deserve to die because he never sinned.

Instead, he took our sin on himself and died our death.

The snake, or sometimes we call him the devil or Satan.

It was like he bit Jesus heel and killed him.

But actually, Jesus won the victory and rose back to life.

Now anyone who trusts Jesus, even if we die for a bit, he'll raise us to life.

When he comes again, he'll take us to his new creation, a place even better than the Garden of Eden.

We'll be with God forever and we'll never sin again.

And you know what's there in this new creation?

The Tree of life.

We'll have life forever with God back near the start of the world though, the people have only just started sinning and it's going to get really bad really quickly.

But that's a story for next time.

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Bye for now.