One of the great unanswered questions of the Bible is “what if Adam and Eve had just admitted what they did and said they were sorry?” Of course, we will never know for sure but the Bible tells us exactly what to do when we sin. We have to get right with God by going to Him and admitting it.
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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.
One of the great unanswered questions of the Bible is “what if Adam and Eve had just taken the blame, admitted what they did and said they were sorry?” Of course, we will never know for sure, but the Bible tells us exactly what to do when we sin. We have to get right with God by going to Him and admitting it. And so, this is the most important thing I have taught you up to this point. Taking responsibility for what we do, being honest when we are wrong, saying we’re sorry, doing whatever it takes not to make that same mistake again—that isn’t only important in our relationship with God, but with our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends, the people we work and go to school with—and one day when and if you get married. People who can’t admit they are wrong are going to be failures at everything that matters most. People won’t trust them or respect them and they will end up with no friends and divorced and fired from jobs. Nobody wants that, but that’s the price of not repenting, which we will talk about later. I don’t want the person I just described to be you and so today we are going to talk about the easiest person to admit we are wrong to—and that’s Jesus, our Savior.
Why is Jesus the easiest person to admit that to? Well, because He loves us perfectly and He already knows everything we have done wrong. In fact, He knows the stuff we have done wrong that we don’t even know is wrong yet! What? Am I saying that you are doing stuff wrong in your life right now that you don’t even know about? Absolutely! We all do until we learn and then we understand and have to do better—but that is something that happens naturally as you grow up, become more mature, and read your Bibles. As for right now, only Jesus knows everything about us. So, we can’t fool him.
Over the last three weeks, we’ve talked a lot about what Adam and Eve did, and what they didn’t do. They sinned a really huge sin. Most of our sins are not nearly as big. Most of us will never talk face to face with God and then disobey a direct order. That’s fairly unique. Adam did it, and so did Moses. And the consequences were severe—Adam was kicked out of the Garden and Moses was told that he could never enter into the promised Land. What did Adam do? He disobeyed a direct order from God not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In a way, he decided that God was lying about the consequences and he decided to trust the serpent instead. Adam made the serpent his god when he did that—I actually talk about that a lot more in my curriculum book, Context for Kids Volume 4: Image-bearing, Idolatry and the New Creation so I am not going to talk about that a lot here—too complicated for a half hour radio show. Moses was told to speak to a rock in order to bring water out of it but Moses was so angry at his people that he smacked the rock twice with his staff. That brought shame to God.
So, that’s what Adam and Eve did, but what didn’t they do? They never admitted that they were 150% dead wrong, with hot wrong sauce on top. They couldn’t have been more wrong if they had made plans on how to be as wrong as possible. No, they didn’t kill anyone but they were only given one commandment. Not ten commandments, not six hundred and thirteen commandments—just one. And it wasn’t a hard commandment. It was the easiest commandment that anyone had ever been given in the history of the world. No work involved. Just say no. But that’s how temptation is, right? When we think that something we can’t do is something that we should be able to do, we just go nuts if we don’t have something called self-control and trust. What is trust? Trust is when we believe that what someone is telling us is true and good. We believe that they know better than we do and that what they are telling us will be good for us in the long run. I know that the people who love you will tell you to be very careful about whom you decide to trust. As we saw with the snake in the Garden, just because someone sounds convincing, or like they know what they are talking about, or want what is best for us, doesn’t mean that they aren’t really wanting to make trouble for us. Reading our Bibles and talking to God about everything will help us become wiser about whom we listen to and whom we avoid. What about self-control? Self-control is learning to say no to ourselves. I am still working on that one! When we want to do something we know is wrong, we have to learn to say no. When we are about to make a one-way decision that can’t be undone, we have to learn to say no until we understand the consequences. When we really want something but aren’t sure if it is good or not, we wait until we do know for sure. When we want to eat a whole pie with ice-cream for breakfast—that’s always just a mistake and if we do it then we deserve the belly ache!
But I am going to tell you right now that everyone you have ever known has made this mistake of doing the wrong thing. And we all have to learn to handle it the right way. You are going to do some awful things in your life but I am a whole lot more concerned about how you handle yourself after you do those things than about what those things are. There isn’t just about anything that God won’t forgive you for. In the Bible, we see Him forgiving the worst kinds of sins you can think of as long as the people come to Him and take responsibility and repent. So then, what is repentance? Repentance is more than just regretting what we have done because we don’t like the consequences—like, Adam and Eve hated being kicked out of the Garden. Repentance means that we see what we did wrong, we know that it is wrong, and we start making changes so that we will stop doing it. God knows that we all start out being slaves to the sinful natures of Adam and Eve. Remember how I told you that their sin was like if someone dumped toxic waste into the water we all have to drink from and it poisoned us? Well, we can’t help being poisoned but God expects us to come to Him because He has the cure—and the cure is Jesus. We will talk more about that next week.
This week, I want to talk about how we come to God with our sins and mistakes. And this is the same no matter what the sin is. This is the same for gang members and drug dealers and murderers and thieves and people who look at terrible things on the internet and bullies and people who disobey their parents and who lie or who cheat on tests—everyone and every sin! Everyone can come to God and be forgiven and changed. But how?
I want to tell you the story of King David, the man God chose to be King of Israel. The Bible calls him a man after God’s own heart. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that his heart was always right and he was perfect and never did anything rotten? Not at all. As a matter of fact, there came a time when David grew very powerful and wanted something that wasn’t his. He hurt someone to get it, and then when he was in danger of getting caught, he murdered someone. That’s right, the man who wrote all those wonderful songs of praise to God—for a while he lived a very wicked life. In a very real way, he walked away from God and focused on being very selfish. He forgot who he was and who God is. He was only thinking of himself and the things he thought would make him happy. Remember how I told you that you don’t always know when you are doing wrong? Well, the story of David tells us that even God’s choice for King, the man who was usually so faithful to God, could sink into horrible sins and do evil things to other people. A lot of times, we want something so bad that we start convincing ourselves that it’s really okay, that we deserve it, and that God won’t mind. I am betting the grown-ups in your life can all tell you about times when they did that. I sure can. But David was so sure of himself that he acted like he even forgot what he had done—even though everyone around him knew. But he was the king and now they knew that he would murder and worse to get whatever it was he wanted. How can you trust someone like that? You can’t! God had to do something to change all that. And we might ask—how on earth did David, who said he loved God so much, get that far out of control? Glad you asked.
You see, when we sin and try to hide it from God or pretend that what we did isn’t so bad, it puts a wedge between ourselves and God. Usually, when we do wrong or want to do wrong, we know that it is bad right away but we like to push those thoughts aside and pretend like we didn’t really hear them. And everyone has done this before—well, everyone except for Jesus. Pretending like we didn’t hear those thoughts is the first step toward grieving the Holy Spirit—or pushing the Spirit of God so far out of our lives that we refuse to listen and the Spirit stops talking to us until we are willing to listen. Once we aren’t listening anymore, and the Spirit stops talking to us, all of a sudden, things that used to seem wrong to us seem less and less wrong. And we do something a little worse, and a little worse, and all of a sudden we are doing terrible things that seem okay to us now. David never fully recovered from the bad that he did because although he admitted that he had done terrible things to God, once the prophet Nathan tricked him into seeing his sins, he still didn’t take full responsibility for them. You see, we can’t just stop at admitting we were wrong to God. That’s just the first step in repentance. We also need to admit to the people we hurt that we were wrong and we have to do whatever we can to make things right again. Because David didn’t do that, later when bad things happened with his children, he didn’t do anything to stop it. Well, that’s not entirely true, but what he did do was all wrong. And it all started with refusing to listen to God’s Spirit and then refusing to really repent of what he did to all the people he had hurt. That’s why we need to listen to God, and to repent as soon as possible when we don’t, and to go all the way to get it right—no matter how embarrassed we are. Getting repentance wrong leads to disaster!
Getting repentance right is hardest at first, but as we allow God to work on our hearts, it gets easier. It never gets easy, because we naturally hate admitting when we are wrong and hate admitting to people that we aren’t perfect—but it does get easier. And the best thing is that as we get better at repenting, a lot of times we won’t want to sin in the first place because we know how much it can hurt our pride to admit that we sinned. Sometimes, I want to be mean and I think, “Oh man, if I do this God will make me fess up and apologize. I really don’t want to have to apologize to this person so I will just mind my manners.” I will never forget the time I was really out of line and snarky with someone I hated, and God made me apologize to them. UGH. That was the worst. So now I am more careful. Not perfect but more careful. If I am in a bad mood or scared or confused or sick or in pain, sometimes I will still step way over the line. And I will have to admit that I was wrong, and out of line (even if they were poking at me, I was still wrong to react badly) and ask them to forgive me. Sometimes they weren’t poking me, and I tell them why I responded that way, so that they know that they aren’t the problem—I was the problem. If your dog has ever been hurting really bad and nipped you when you tried to pet it, then you know that sometimes we just react without thinking. But, if that happens, you know that your dog usually comes to you later with their tail between their legs, very ashamed of themselves and wanting forgiveness. We need to be more like dogs, and we need to be as understanding with people who lash out when they are having a bad day the same way we forgive our pets. Just FYI, cats will never apologize or feel guilty, not ever. Get used to it.
And repenting to God, saying sorry and asking for help so that we don’t do it again, is just like any other conversation we have with Him. Conversations with God always need to be honest. We don’t gain anything by lying to Him because we cannot fool Him. He knows us better than we know ourselves—and He loves us anyway. Go figure!
Just this week (I wrote this all the way back at the end of January), I was having a lot of stress and I really messed up with two people who have always been good to me. I treated them like they were my enemies! At first, I felt like they were in the wrong and I was totally justified—and this is why it is important to always be talking to God about everything. I laid in bed that night and, after I had calmed down, I asked what I should have asked before I ever treated them like that. I said, “God, am I wrong? Was I overreacting? I am so upset right now that I can’t even think straight. I don’t think I was wrong but I am worried because right now I am angry and I can feel that I don’t want to be wrong. If I am right then why am I trying so hard to convince myself that I was justified?—that I had a good reason?” Then I thought to myself, “I’ve been really sick and I have felt bad all day. I know sometimes when I am sick I don’t think as clearly as I need to before talking to people. Maybe I am not thinking clearly enough to really be so sure that I am right.” So, went back to praying, “Lord, I think there’s a really good possibility that I treated these people like enemies because I wasn’t understanding things correctly. I think maybe I sinned against them—really badly—but I still feel too confused to know for sure. I want to be right but I am willing for You to tell me that I am wrong and if I am wrong, I want to tell them that I was wrong. I don’t want them thinking that they were the problem if it was all me. And Father, even if I was right about what was going on, I am pretty sure that the way I handled it was wrong. I wasn’t kind and gentle and loving even though I told myself I was at the time. I was very impatient and pretty sure I was jumping to conclusions. I don’t know if my conclusions were right or wrong but I think I was wrong in how I responded. I need you to teach me and show me the truth.”
Well, by morning, I knew that in one case, I was dead on 100% wrong. I had overreacted. In the other case, I am not sure I was wrong about what I thought was happening but I am 100% sure that how I handled it was totally out of line. So, I went to the people and I took all the responsibility and told them I was wrong. I told them I was out of sorts and I shouldn’t have been talking to anyone because I know how I get sometimes. I asked them to forgive me and I didn’t blame them at all. I didn’t say, “Well, if you hadn’t been such a big jerk…” or anything like that to make myself look less wrong. Repentance for my sins and mistakes means that I only talk about what I did wrong. It doesn’t matter if they were wrong too. That’s for God to tell them one way or the other.
Do you remember what Adam and Eve did wrong? When they were asked about their sins, they didn’t admit what they had done until after they blamed someone else—until they made their own sin look smaller. We can’t ever do that. It’s a terrible temptation, to try and make someone else’s sin look bigger but God can’t help us when all we want to do is play the blame game. God can help us when we take full responsibility for our own actions and don’t make any excuses and don’t blame anyone else. In my case, God helped me see what I was too angry to see at first. God helped me go to those people and admit that I was totally wrong. God helped me to humble myself before them and to not blame them. I had no reason to blame them because I am 100% responsible for me and only for me. I can’t control anyone else and no one else can control me. I make my own bad decisions, thank you very much.
And I do know that sometimes people poke at us and sometimes they are mean. But you know what? That’s never going to change. What has to change is us and how we handle things. Are we going to become the kinds of people who fess up to our sins and admit we aren’t perfect and help the people we have hurt? Or are we going to keep going on pretending like everyone else is the real problem and push God’s love and forgiveness and mercy farther and farther away. That’s the choice we make every single day. A big part of living as Christians is learning to make the right choice more and more and, when we don’t, learning to ask God for help in changing us.
I want to tell you another story before we end this week’s lesson. It’s a story of someone who did something terrible and then completely repented. Perhaps you know the main character in my story—his name is Peter. Actually, his real name was Simon and he became one of Jesus’s top three disciples. Jesus gave him the name Peter later. Now, Peter was very excited about everything. A lot of times, Peter didn’t think before he said things or did things. Peter bragged a lot and Peter was very ambitious, meaning he wanted to be very important in the Kingdom of God but never quite understood how different God’s Kingdom is from the Roman Empire. He didn’t understand that, in God’s Kingdom, you don’t chop people’s ears off with a sword. He didn’t understand that he wouldn’t be a very rich and powerful person in the world. He thought that Jesus needed to be the kind of King who became a king by defeating His enemies on the battlefield. He had no idea that Jesus would become King by dying for our sins—but we’ll talk about that next week. But most of all, Peter was sure that no matter what, he would never turn his back on Jesus no matter how bad things got—even if all the other disciples turned tail and ran for the hills. He said he never would.
Of course, whenever we are bragging that we won’t do this or that—it usually means that we haven’t had the chance to do it and because we really don’t know how bad it’s going to get! Bragging about challenges we have never faced is like telling people what it feels like to walk on the moon when we have never done it. It’s just a terrible idea.
But Peter was so sure of himself and when the time came for him to admit to being one of Jesus’s disciples, the night Jesus was arrested and beaten, Peter said three times that not only wasn’t he a disciple, but he didn’t even know Jesus and then he called down curses on himself in order to prove it. And Jesus had warned him that he would do it before the first shout of the Temple Crier in the morning but Peter didn’t believe Him. But as soon as Peter started calling down curses on himself, he heard the shout and realized that he had sinned terribly against Jesus. All his bragging was a lie—and bragging usually is a lie, just FYI. We don’t generally brag about stuff that people can see is true. Well, Peter went away knowing what he had done and he was broken-hearted. He didn’t make any excuses. He knew he was 1000% wrong. He was scared and so he lied and did what he said he would never do. He denied Jesus in every way. But what could he do? Jesus had been arrested and it wasn’t like Peter could rescue him. Peter couldn’t say sorry right then. I think that Peter did a lot of praying that day and especially as Jesus was taken away to be crucified. I imagine that few people in this world have ever felt more guilty or like more of a failure than Peter did.
But that’s also why, when Peter heard that the tomb was empty, he ran so fast that he was the first one there—even though no one else believed what the women were saying. Peter was so sorry but once he knew that Jesus was alive, he was a completely changed person. Peter never ran away again. Peter went on to serve God in the most amazing ways because Jesus showed Peter that our sins aren’t the end of the story—sometimes they are the beginning of a bigger and better story if we allow them to change us for the better. And it all starts with talking to God about everything and anything and being willing to listen to whatever He has to say, no matter what.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.