Sin was now in the Garden but so was the Tree of Life. Sometimes God has to take us away from His blessings for our own good when we will misuse them. Also, sometimes the consequences of our sins can be far worse than we ever thought when that temptation seemed so worth it. But some things just can never be undone.
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, I use the ESV for my Bible quotes unless I say otherwise)
Well, Adam and Eve listened to the Serpent and then they shifted blame so, (1) we will never know what life would have been like without sin in the world and (2) we will never know what would have happened if they had just fessed up to what they did and, oh, I don’t know, apologized…which we should always do when we have done wrong. I am going to tell you a secret—people don’t like being lied to and especially when they know what you did and you won’t just admit it. Here’s another secret—people respect it when you admit what you’ve done and take responsibility with no excuses. Here’s why—because everyone messes up and does wrong, but you can trust the people who admit it a whole lot more than you can trust the people who don’t. I believe, with my whole heart, that God would have forgiven them. They would still have consequences because, after all, they know they are naked now and they do not like it. It makes them feel embarrassed—there are always consequences when we do wrong—but maybe a lot of what happens in today’s lesson wouldn’t have had to happen at all. First, let’s take a look at what happened to the Serpent. Remember, the Serpent was smart enough not to say anything or to make excuses. He was caught in his own actions.
14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
First of all, God tells the Serpent that he will actually be cursed by being hated by and an enemy of all other animals and people. That’s what it means when God told the Serpent that he would be “cursed above all livestock and wild animals.” We know that the animals aren’t cursed! Only the snakes. And what does it mean that he will crawl on his belly? A lot of people have, in the past, taken that to mean that snakes used to have arms and legs like every other animal but this is a case where archaeology really helped us discover the meaning of something in the Bible! In the ancient world and especially in Egypt, a snake on the ground was a harmless snake—or a defeated snake. Have you ever seen a cobra? I will link a video of one in the transcript on my website. Cobras belong to the viper family, and vipers are poisonous snakes. But a poisonous snake can’t bite you when it has its head on the ground; it has to raise it up high to bite.
Archeologists have found spells in tombs for forcing snakes to put their heads down so they can’t bite. Try to imagine a rattlesnake, or a cobra, or a black adder trying to bite you with its chin on the ground—it couldn’t!! So this was a fancy way of God telling the Serpent that he was going to be destroyed. God also told him he would eat dust for the rest of his life. But that doesn’t mean he was really going to survive on dust—it was another way of saying that his life was going to be pretty miserable. And, this is the exciting part, God made a promise that someday, one of Eve’s descendants would crush his head and destroy him once and for all. We’ll talk about that later! But I want you to notice that the serpent is cursed, that’s super important.
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
First of all, I want you to notice that although the Serpent was cursed, Eve wasn’t cursed and Adam won’t be cursed either. That’s important. There is a big difference between being cursed, which means being punished, and having consequences—like if you lie to people or steal from them, they won’t trust you anymore. That’s not a punishment. A punishment is going to jail. Do you see how different they are? God cursed the Serpent, punished him, but right here He is telling Adam and Eve what’s going to happen to them because they did this terrible thing in trusting the Serpent and doing what God told them not to do. Just like the Serpent’s curses, Eve’s consequences sound strange in English too, really hard to understand. Childbearing is going to be much more painful—which means it was already going to hurt like the dickens. I mean, how was anyone going to get a baby out of the mommy without a lot of pain, right? But in Hebrew, which is the language this was originally written in, it means something more like being a mom is going to be very emotionally painful sometimes. When we get to Adam and Eve’s kids and what happened to them in the next chapter, we will see that very thing happen. Outside the Garden where things are hard, and away from the presence of God, some terrible things are going to happen in families. So, the pain was multiplied—not just the pain of having a baby and your moms can tell you that hurts a lot but is totally worth it but mostly because their children are born into a sinful world, and so being a mom will be very difficult and sometimes heartbreaking. Sometimes babies die before they are born. Sometimes children can die before their parents do, which is terrible and not the way it is supposed to be. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Being part of a family was always supposed to be wonderful.
Eve’s other consequence was that although she was going to love her husband very much, he wasn’t going to treat her like an equal anymore. Adam was going to start bossing her around. Eve would want her husband to love and cherish her, but he would want the opposite. In the ancient world, that’s how families were. They didn’t think that women were as good as men. In fact, even at the beginning of the last century, some scientists claimed that women weren’t as evolved as men—that they were actually inferior creations, which is not what God showed Adam. It wasn’t like it was in the beginning anymore. And it was a very different world than it is now. Women couldn’t get jobs or go to school or anything. In most cultures in the ancient world, men could even kill their wives if they wanted, or divorce them just because they found someone prettier—men had all the power and too many men used that power to hurt their wives. Thank goodness for Jesus who taught us a better way—who let women sit at His feet as students, and in the first century churches, there were women who were apostles and teachers and deacons.
17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Adam doesn’t get cursed either. But his consequences are worse because his sin was worse. God doesn’t tell Eve what she did wrong but He sure tells Adam. He tells Adam that his consequences are coming to him because he listened to his wife instead of God. Remember, Eve wasn’t there when God told Adam not to eat of that tree. At least some of Eve was doing was doubting what Adam said—not a direct order from the mouth of God. Adam had no excuses (but to be fair, Eve didn’t have much of an excuse, just more of one than Adam but they were both absolutely 100% wrong). Adam heard it straight from God’s mouth but when he saw that Eve didn’t die, he ate the fruit. He didn’t trust what he heard with his own ears. In his actions, he was calling God a liar.
Adam’s consequence is that, when they are kicked out of the Garden, they won’t have it so easy anymore. The ground outside the Garden isn’t cultivated or well-watered; we learned that at the beginning of Genesis 2. There are wild plants there—thorns and thistles and weeds. God Himself planted the Garden in Eden so Adam and Eve didn’t have to do the backbreaking work of getting it started. Outside the Garden, they would have to pull up rocks, and plow and plant and maybe dig irrigation ditches. In the ancient world, if it didn’t rain at the right time, people would go hungry. They couldn’t have the fruit of all the trees anymore, juicy and sweet—now they would eat crops they had to plant and grow themselves over and over again every single year. It would never be easy—that’s what it means when God says that Adam will eat by the sweat of his face, until he dies. God will never let them back into the Garden, not ever!
And God reminds Adam of something he probably wasn’t thinking about when he took the fruit from Eve and ate it. God reminds Adam that he was not created to live forever, and so he will die someday—just not in the way he assumed when he saw that the fruit wasn’t deadly to Eve. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” This wasn’t a consequence only for Adam, but for them both.
Now, did Adam and Eve—at any point in this—take responsibility and say they were sorry? Nope. In fact, the first thing Adam does is to put Eve in her place. Do you remember when God told Adam to name all the animals? Remember how I taught you that in the ancient world, that’s how one person took authority (showed he was the boss of) another person? By naming all the animals, before Eve was ever there, Adam was showing that he was superior to the animals. And, of course, we were created superior to the animals, so that was right to do. But God had Adam do that as part of showing him that he wasn’t superior to Eve—that Eve was not an animal, that she was different. She was the same bone and flesh as he was—not the bone and flesh of animals. She was the equal companion to him that he needed—not a tool or a pet like an animal. God told Adam to name the animals because in Genesis 1, He gave humans dominion over the animals, to rule over all of them wisely and kindly. But He never told Adam it was okay to do that to Eve. God told Eve that Adam would rule over her, but He never told Adam to rule over her. Remember, these were consequences and not punishment. He was telling them what was going to happen, not what He wanted to happen. God had never wanted any of this to happen.
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
This really sounds very romantic and sweet when you don’t know the context—how this would have sounded to the Israelites in the desert listening to Moses. Now, does that mean that when parents name their kids, that they think of them as animals? Not at all, that’s not what this is saying, but people used to give their children names that meant something—something about how they wanted that child to turn out or something special about their life. All of the twelve sons of Jacob had names that were important and told the story of their lives. But children don’t get to decide what their names are because they are too young and can’t even talk, so parents do it for them. Eve was old enough to choose her own name, but Adam gave her one instead.
21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
This shows us how wonderful God is and how He doesn’t totally abandon us when we do wrong—and even when we don’t say we’re sorry for doing it. He could have left them in those itchy fig leaves that would always be wilting and would need to be replaced. But instead, He made them nice clothes from animal skins, out of leather—clothes that would protect them from the heat of the sun and from the cold at night. Think about when you are really mad at someone because they did something very awful to you and kick them out of your house—do you give them such a nice present? Probably not. Good thing God is not like us!
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
Remember when I told you that “being made from dust” was a way of telling the audience that people weren’t created to live forever? And remember when we learned about the Two Trees and I said they had to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Life if they wanted to live forever? Well, here’s the proof. God says that there is a big problem now—Adam and Eve now know good and evil, which means they can decide for themselves what is good and bad. Problem is, they don’t know enough or trust God enough or love Him enough to make the right choices. What they are going to have, and what we have today, are a whole lot of opinions about what is good and bad. Sometimes we make the right choice but a lot of times we choose the bad thing and think it is good! We’re going to see that all through the Bible where people say, “I want this” or “I want to do this” and so they take it, or they do it and it ends up being the entirely wrong choice and hurting other people. The problem with people is that when they get angry, sometimes they want to kill other people. When they get greedy, they will steal from other people. Sometimes they will lie to get what they want. When they get irritated or impatient or jealous, they might hit or call names or gossip about someone and ruin their reputation. Humans are capable of doing terrible things when our hearts are not set on loving God and loving one another—that’s what Jesus called the two greatest commandments because if we really love God and love other people, we will never do anything wrong to them. We will always help and not hurt. We won’t be bossy or mean or dishonest or greedy or bullies.
24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
And so this is the sad end of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were forced to leave because God couldn’t allow them to contaminate His Garden with their sin now that they had their own opinions about what was good and bad. God knew that they weren’t going to listen to Him the way He needed them to. If He allowed them to stay and eat from the Tree of Life, not only would they continue to sin, but they wouldn’t ever die. Their sins would just get worse and worse. And worse, they would have kids who would be sinning in the Garden too—imagine how long is would be before the place was a madhouse? Imagine the bickering and fighting! Paradise would be–well, pretty awful.
And God placed a special being at the entrance to His Garden with a flaming sword, so let’s talk about what Cherubim are. First of all, Cherubim aren’t angels. Lots of times people think they are but angels look like humans—and all the angels in the Bible look like men, actually. But Cherubim–if you ever saw one, I can guarantee you would pee your pants. Cherubim were guardians of the presence of God. Cherubim have four different faces and the rest of their body looks like it is part human and part bull. In Ezekiel chapter ten, they are described as having the face of a cherub (and in another place it says that is the face of an ox, like a bull with horns), a human face, a lion’s face, and an eagle’s face. They also had four wings and human hands under the wings. Their bodies were covered with eyes and they had hooves. Now, you tell me that you wouldn’t be flipping out. And these things have flaming swords in their hands. Ain’t nobody thinking about sneaking back into the Garden no matter how bad it gets. And every direction you faced them, they were facing you. There’s no getting behind one of these things. Plus, with how hard it is outside the Garden, they didn’t want to live forever anymore anyway. And if you guys want to try drawing some of these, the description is in Ezekiel chapters one and ten and if you send me pictures, I will put them up on my website for people to see. So, if you do that, be sure to include your first name and your age. You can scan and email them to me at thebestoftimesisnow@yahoo.com
I want to go back and talk about the curse against the Serpent because it is very, very important.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
History would be very different if God hadn’t promised that someday, what happened in the Garden would be made right again. God promised, right there and even before He kicked them out of the Garden, that someday, one of Eve’s descendants would destroy what the Serpent did. But what exactly did the Serpent do? Well, before Adam and Eve were tempted to disobey God, God was their one and only King. He was the only one they listened to. They had absolute faith and trust in Him. He had their allegiance. What is allegiance? Allegiance is a kind of loyalty, when you completely devote yourself to serving someone else’s goals and commands. When you had a king in the ancient world, for example, you had to do whatever the king told you to do. Well, God is our King. He’s our one and only King and we can never chose to obey anyone instead of Him or else we will be making someone else more important in our lives than God, saying they are more trustworthy. Well, that doesn’t make any sense. How can it? No one makes more sense than God and no one is more powerful or good or loving or trustworthy. So, we can’t put anyone above Him or even beside Him in importance. Even one of the Ten Commandments says just that, “You shall have no other gods before me.” In fact, it’s part of the very first commandment. We owe all of our loyalty and obedience to God.
But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they weren’t just disobeying—they were believing the Serpent instead of God. They were giving the Serpent their allegiance, their loyalty and trust, by believing him and living by what he said instead. In a way, they made the Serpent their new king instead of God. They allowed the Serpent to tell them which fruit was good to eat. When they ate that fruit, it was because they trusted the Serpent. That was a terrible mistake—a terrible sin. In a very real way, they rejected God as their God and King and made the Serpent their king instead. What could he do for them? Nothing! They gave everything up and gained nothing because they didn’t trust God!
But God made a plan to change all that. God doesn’t give up on us. God created human beings to be with Him. He has never given up on that plan but things had to change. Adam and Eve became sinful and now had minds of their own to decide what they thought was best. One day, God would fix that by sending His Son Jesus to say no to the Devil when the Devil tempted Him. Adam and Eve said yes and sinned and followed the Serpent. Jesus said no and didn’t sin and kept on following God. Because of that, Jesus was later able to destroy the Devil’s power over us. So, we are now commanded to follow Jesus instead of God’s enemy. No one will ever follow God as perfectly as Jesus did, but when we give Jesus our allegiance, we are saying that He is the perfect example and the only human on earth worthy of 100% of our obedience and loyalty. So we read His Word, and pray and do things His way and as we do that, we become more and more like Him in our hearts, and obeying God becomes much easier. When we act like Adam and Eve, deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong, then obeying God becomes harder and harder.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray that you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.