Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 7

Chapter Seven—War and Peace

The Israelites were finally ready to enter into the promised land. Joshua was the new leader and he led the military battles as the people went in and conquered their enemies. Joshua followed the LORD and that is really important because it means that while Joshua was alive, the LORD was the commander-in-chief of their armies. As long as they followed him, they were blessed. Some other people were blessed along the way, too. 

Remember Rahab? She was the prostitute who hid the 12 spies. She had heard about God and how he protected his people. Rahab needed protection too, and she wanted to part of that group. When it was time to go into Jericho, the LORD told Joshua to have all the men march around the city once each day for six days. On the 7th day, they were to march around the city 7 times with the priests blowing trumpets. After the seventh time, the priests blew a long blast on the ram’s horn (a kind of trumpet) and all the people shouted and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. 

The march around Jericho

There are some things you need to know about this. The Jews had a mathematical system called gematria. Each number had a special meaning and it could also be used to turn letters into numbers, so that words could have special meaning too. The number 7 means “complete.” You will see this number all over the Bible and you can see that it means complete. There were 7 days of creation. There were 7 priests with 7 trumpets marching for 7 days around Jericho. And in the book of Revelation, there 7s everywhere. 

Trumpets also mean something special. A trumpet always gives a warning. In the case of Jericho, the trumpets were warning the inhabitants of Jericho that God was about to judge them.  During the time of the prophets, the prophets voices were called trumpets because they were warning God’s people about coming judgment. And in the New Testament, the gospel is sometimes called a trumpet. The gospel is good news for those who believe, but to those who do not, it is a trumpet of judgment. 

After the Israelites conquered Jericho, they went and conquered all their enemies for as long as Joshua was alive. They entered the Promised Land and each tribe received their inheritance. Maybe now that they reached the Promised Land, God would send the One who would restore Eden! It has been a really long time since God made that promise to Adam and Eve. And what better place to restore Eden than the Promised Land? It was beautiful—flowing with milk  and honey. Surely it would happen soon!

After Joshua died, I would like to say the people lived happily ever after, but they did not. The people followed God for a little while, but then they forgot about him. When they forgot about him, they started to become disobedient and very very sinful, and then God would send their enemies to punish them. Then they would finally remember God. DUH! They cried out to him for deliverance, but do think God should give them deliverance after all the bad things they did? They did not deserve deliverance, but God delivered them anyway! 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS!

IT’S SCANDALOUS!

IT’S…GRACE.

God sent them judges who would fight their enemies and rule over them. The judges were their heroes. But when the judges died, their heroes were gone. God was waiting for them to ask him to be their hero, BUT THEY NEVER DID. 

One of the last of the judges was Samuel. You might remember that his mother Hannah could not have children and she went to Shiloh to pray for a child. God finally gave her a little boy and do you know what she did? She gave him back to God!

Hannah brings Samuel to the temple

When Samuel was just a boy, God called him to speak his words first to Eli the priest and later to all the people of Israel. He was a prophet and he would also be the one who anointed the kings. 

God called Samuel in the night

A time came when the Israelites asked God for a king who would rule over them and go out to battle with them. God could have been their king, but they wanted men. So if God was ever going to be their king, he would have to become a man. 

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 6

Chapter Six — A Wedding in the Desert

The Israelites were finally out of Egypt! They were praising God and singing a song that Moses wrote, about God being their rock. Little did they know that they were on probation. Being on probation means that somebody gives you a test to see whether you will pass or fail. God was testing the people. 

God wanted the people to ask him for water to drink, but they grumbled instead. Fail! 

Then he wanted them to ask for food, but they grumbled instead. Fail! 

Do you think they passed any tests God gave them? Doesn’t look that way. But then God did something that was completely unheard of. He made a marriage contract with them in the desert! He wanted to marry Israel kind of like when a man marries a woman. He actually calls Israel a woman in lots of places in the Bible. 

God wanted Israel to be his treasured possession, so he created legal documents with laws and decrees just like a lawyer, and he called it a covenant. God was not one of those lawyers that we make jokes about who are just trying to get rich from poor people who can’t defend themselves. God was the kind of lawyer who wanted to make his bride rich even though she had a bad reputation. 

Did you get that? These were bad people who failed their tests when they were on probation and God wanted to make them rich! 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS!

IT’S SCANDALOUS!

IT’S…GRACE.

God gave Israel ten commandments that he wanted them to obey. They had to worship only him and could not make any images of other gods. They also had to be very careful with God’s name because his name is holy. They had to set aside one day a week for worship. They had to obey and honor their parents. They were not allowed to murder or be unfaithful to their wife or husband or steal from other people or tell lies about them or be envious of what other people had. 

The Ten Commandments

Do you think the Israelites would obey all these commandments? 

God also gave them plans for building a tabernacle where God would live. He wanted to be close to his people and dwell with them just he did in the Garden of Eden. So the tabernacle was patterned after Eden. It was just a copy of the dwelling place of God in heaven. How cool is that? The priests had special clothes to wear made of gold and blue and purple and scarlet yarn. They wore an ephod that had stones in it for knowing God’s will and a breastplate that had 12 beautiful stones in it representing the 12 tribes. They must have looked like kings! So God really was making them rich. 

Aaron becomes a priest

God told the Israelites that if they obeyed him, he would bless them, but if they disobeyed him, he would curse them. And if they continued to disobey him there would be severe consequences. Like a divorce! Divorce is very sad and it makes people feel bad for a very long time. In the book of Leviticus God tells them how bad it will be: he says four times, “I will punish you sevenfold for your sins. Four times sevenfold. Whoa! That is like four sets of seven plagues—way more plagues than the Egyptians got. And there is a whole book in the Bible that describes what those plagues will be…but I digress. 

Well, the Israelites failed their probation and God said they could not go to the promised land. They had to wander in the desert for forty years until all the adults were dead, and then only their children could go in. And Caleb. And Joshua.  Because they were the only ones who were faithful to God. 

There is a whole book in the Bible that tells about the Israelites forty years of wandering in the desert and the name of the book used to be In the Wilderness. But somewhere along the line, someone changed the name of that book to Numbers. Probably a math teacher did that. You know how they are. 

One time when the Israelites sinned, serpents came out all over them and bit them. YIKES! God told Moses to to make a bronze serpent and put it up on a pole so that when the people looked at it, they would be healed. 

Did you know that even today the medical profession uses serpents as a symbol for healing? Here is what it looks like:

Some day, God's own son would hang on a cross and all who look on him and believe in him will be saved. 

Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible and the people used these books to homeschool their children. The books of Exodus and Leviticus especially had subjects like math and finances and figuring out interest as well as subjects on social relationships, business, medicine and of course, law. The priests also had to act as doctors for the Israelites, so that’s why they needed medical instructions. God pretty much thought of everything. 

Homeschool

You would think after following God for about 120 years, that Moses would for sure get to enter the promised land, but there is a story there too. The Israelites had just driven Moses to distraction—you have probably done that to your parents, so you know what I am talking about. Anyway,  Moses got really upset and he struck the rock with his rod. Now this may not seem like a big deal to you, but in the Old Testament, God stands on the rock and is identified with it. If you remember, Moses called God “the rock” in the song he wrote. So when Moses struck the rock with his rod, it was the same as if he struck God with his rod. YIKES! So God told Moses he could not enter the promised land. You would think that all the good Moses did in his life would outweigh the bad, but you would be wrong. 

If you have any ideas in your head about how the good in your life outweighs the bad, get rid of those ideas now! God doesn’t weigh your good deeds against the bad. God is holy and he cannot tolerate any sin. You will not get into heaven by doing good things. But even if you are really bad—and you are—if you put your faith in Jesus, he will save you. He will take you to the promised land. I know.

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS!

IT’S SCANDALOUS!

IT’S…GRACE.

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 5

Chapter Five— Escape from Egypt

Last time we saw that God saved Jacob’s family by bringing them all to Egypt to get food during the famine. But then they all died and their great grandchildren became slaves to the Egyptians! They were slaves for 400 years. That is a very long time. It is about 10 generations, so some of them were the great great great great great great great great grandkids of the original Israelite families who settled there. During that time, most of them began to worship other gods. The Egyptians didn’t have just one god for everything. Instead they had gods for all kinds of things—like river gods and land gods and even insect gods! Hahaha!

The Israelites grew from about 70 people to almost 2 million people and the Egyptians were beginning to be afraid of them because they were getting stronger and stronger. The ruler of the land was known as Pharaoh but he was not the same Pharaoh who knew Joseph. He didn’t know anything about Joseph which means he probably got an F in history. Anyway, he was not friends with the Israelites and he did not want them to be strong, so he decided to kill the baby boys, but he let the girls live. It wasn’t because he was partial to girls, but he knew that the boys could become soldiers and learn how to fight someday so he wanted to get rid of them. 

In those days, women did not go the hospital to have babies, but women who were called midwives came to deliver the babies at home. The Israelite midwives feared God so they refused to kill the baby boys.  So then Egyptian soldiers would go from house to house checking for baby boys. Moses was born at this time, but his parents hid him—not in the closet, because they knew the soldiers would look there first—but in the river! No soldier was going to go into the river looking for a baby. But Moses’ mom and sister knew that the princess used to bathe there, and they knew she would feel sorry for the baby. When the princess found the baby she asked if she could raise him herself. So when Moses was old enough for pre-school, he left his mom and dad and lived in the palace and went to school there. God wanted Moses to get an Egyptian education and be raised like a prince so he could one day become the prince of God’s people—kind of like Joseph did.

 Moses in the Nile

That didn’t happen right away. In fact Moses was 80 years old before he came to set God’s people free. After God spoke to him from the burning bush, Moses joined up with his brother Aaron and they confronted another mean Pharaoh and told him to let God’s people go. 

The burning bush

The Pharaoh wouldn’t listen so finally God said, “That’s enough!” God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him that God would do bad things to him if he didn’t obey. Pharaoh refused to listen so God began to attack the gods of Egypt. Remember how Egypt had all kinds of gods for everything? Well, God starting attacking them one by one so all of the Egyptians would know who the real God was. Here’s how it worked:

1. Hapi was the god of the Nile River which was the source of life for all of Egypt. God made all  of Hapi’s water turn to blood. 
2. Heqt was the toad goddess who was thought to be the ruler of the land. But God sent frogs that made it seem like she couldn’t control her own area. 
3. Geb was the idol of earth and vegetation and the plague of gnats really got in his face!
4. Khepfi was the god of insect life. Can you believe insects have their own god? What next? Well, God sent swarms of flies that Khepfi could not control. 
5. Apis and Hathor were the bull-god and cow-goddess of Egypt, and the 5th plague affected the livestock of Egypt. 
6. Thoth, also known as Imhotep, was the god of healing. The Egyptians sometimes burned human sacrifices to him and scattered the ashes to petition his favor when they were sick. But this time when Moses scattered the ashes, the people became covered with boils, so Imhotep was powerless to save them. 
7. Nut was the goddess of the sky and she would bless the crops. But God brought hail that destroyed all the crops. 
8. Anubis was the god of the fields and God brought a plague of locusts to destroy everything in the fields that hadn’t already been destroyed by the hail. 
9. Re was the sun god and believed to be the father of the Pharaohs. But God brought darkness on the land of Egypt and there nothing Re could do about it. 
10. The last god of all to be destroyed was Pharaoh himself. He thought he was a god, but he could not keep his own son from dying when God killed all the first-born in the land. 

The people of Israel did not die because they put lamb’s blood on the top and sides of their doors so the killing angel of death passed over their houses and let them live. God told them to do this which might seem like kind of a silly thing to do. But God wanted them to look ahead to another Lamb who would come some day and save his people forever.

After this, Pharaoh let the people go and they left immediately. When they got to the Red Sea, they couldn’t get across and the mean Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after them. They were caught between the army and the sea with nowhere to go! But God parted the sea for them and they got across during the night on dry land. The Egyptians thought they could get across too, so they started out but then their chariot wheels got stuck, and God let go of the wall of water and all the Egyptians drowned in the sea. 

So God saved his people again. Not because they deserved it. Remember that they were idol worshippers too. They were no better than the Egyptians. But they found grace because God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he would make them a great nation and all the nations on earth would be blessed through them. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, a person would come from this nation who would one day restore Eden. I bet you forgot about that! But God didn’t forget… 

Evidence of God's Grace to Me:

Playing Dress Up

 Lipstick Malfunction

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 4

Chapter Four—A Dreamer Becomes a Prince

One of Jacob’s sons was a young man by the name of Joseph. His mother was Rachel—the pretty wife that Jacob loved best. Jacob loved Joseph more than his other sons and he gave him a robe of many colors—the kind of robe that a prince would wear. It was not the kind of thing that a shepherd would wear. Shepherds were always doing dirty work and rescuing lambs from lions and bears and getting all muddy and bloody. It would not do at all for them to wear a fancy schmancy robe. So obviously Joseph was not a shepherd like his brothers. He got to stay at home and live off the wealth of his dad and do easy stuff like run errands. How do you think his brothers felt about that?

Well his brothers did not like that one bit! And then Joseph made things even worse. He had two dreams. The dreams were actually kind of silly and didn’t make sense, but God gave Joseph the ability to interpret dreams and he told his brothers that a day would come when they would see that he really was a prince and they would bow down to him! Now they were really mad. It was bad enough that their father dressed him like a prince, but this was really going to his head. They decided to do something that would take him down a peg. 

One day “Prince Joseph” was sent on an errand by his father. He was supposed to find his brothers. At first he couldn’t find them, but eventually he did. They saw him coming from a distance—they knew it was him because nobody had a robe like that! They knew this was their chance to get rid of him. Some of them wanted to kill him, but they couldn’t agree so they threw him into a pit. One of his brothers wanted to rescue him later when no one was looking, but while he was gone, the other brothers took off his robe and sold him to some people who were on their way to Egypt. 

Joseph Sold Into Slavery

Imagine how Joseph must have felt. He was only 17 years old and he was taken to a foreign country where he would not know the language and he would never see his father and brothers again. In Egypt he became a slave and worked for a man named Potiphar. 

Meanwhile his brothers had to go back home. They decided to trick their father and tell him lies about Joseph. They tore up Joseph’s robe and dragged it through blood and mud and let their father believe he was eaten by wild animals. His father Jacob was never the same after that. He was in so much pain that it hurt other people just to see him or be around him. 

Joseph worked hard in Egypt and he learned the language in no time at all. He was a very handsome boy and Potiphar’s wife thought he was really hot. She tried to make him fall in love with her too, but he kept telling her to stay away. Finally she told her husband that Jacob tried some hanky panky with her and that made Potiphar upset. He was more upset with his wife than with Joseph, because he trusted Joseph, but he had to punish Joseph to save face. So Joseph was thrown in prison for something he didn’t even do! How fair is that? 

Joseph and Potiphar's Wife

While Joseph was in prison, he used that gift that God had given him a long time ago—when he was just a teenager. Do you remember what it was? He had the ability to interpret dreams. So he interpreted dreams for other prisoners. After a while they got out, but Joseph was still in prison. Then one day, the King had a dream and nobody could interpret it. That’s when one of the other prisoners remembered Joseph. He told the King about Joseph and sure enough, Joseph interpreted the King’s dreams. The King was so impressed that he made Joseph the ruler over all of Egypt! So Joseph became a Prince after all. He got another new robe and this time it was for real. He got a ring too and he could make laws for the people. 

After a while God sent a famine that affected the whole world. But Joseph had been storing up grain in Egypt because he knew that God was going to do this. So everyone in the world had to come to Egypt to buy grain. They had to buy it from Joseph. Do you think maybe Joseph might be the savior of the world who would restore Eden? 

He was not the one, but he was a picture of the one who would one day come. But Joseph did save some people. Do you know who they were? They were his own brothers! They were getting very hungry down in Canaan and so Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain. When they got there Joseph recognized them but they did not recognize him. Joseph tested them to see if they were sorry for what they had done. He gave them grain but kept one brother back until they returned with his youngest brother Benjamin. When he finally told them who he was, they were really scared. They thought he might try to get even. 

Joseph greets his brothers

But Joseph was kind to them and he asked them to go back to Canaan and get his father and all their families and come live in Egypt where there was plenty of food. So they all came up and lived in the land of Egypt to be near Joseph and they all lived happily ever after. Well, not really. Eventually they all died and their great grandchildren became slaves in Egypt. But even that was grace.

Evidence of God's Grace to Me:

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 3

Chapter Three — Beyond Babel

Now that people had scattered all over the earth, there were civilizations everywhere. One big city was Ur. It was a city where people worshipped all kinds of other gods. It was the city that Abraham lived in. God asked Abraham to move away from his family and the city he was living in. God wanted to separate him from all the pagan influences that he knew so well. God wanted Abraham to get to know Him and love him. He made lots of promises to Abraham. He promised to make Abraham a great nation, to make him famous, and make him a blessing to all the families on earth. God made these promises before Abraham did anything at all. So Abraham believed God and left his family and his hometown. He took his wife Sarai—later called Sarah—with him. God told them their descendants would be so many that they would outnumber the stars in the sky! 

In order to have descendants, you need to make babies, so Abraham and Sarah tried to make babies, but none came. Year after year after year they tried to have a baby until finally they were way to old to become parents. Imagine your great grandfather and great grandmother having a baby! 

Everybody knows that old people like that can’t have children and even if they did, they would not have the energy to raise them. Eventually, Abraham and Sarah gave up on the idea of Sarah having a baby. But GOD DID NOT GIVE UP! You see, God was waiting to perform a miracle. When Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, they had a baby and named him Isaac. “Isaac” means laughter. Hahahahaha! Maybe Isaac would be THE ONE who would restore Eden. Do you think? 

When Isaac was about 12 years old, God came to Abraham and told him to go high up on a mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac. When you sacrifice something, it means you have to give it up forever. In the Old Testament, people sacrificed animals. They would take the animal and kill it and drain out all its blood and then burn it on an altar. It was a horrible bloody mess. Many times they had to sacrifice lambs and sometimes the children had become very fond of those lambs—kind of like today when children are fond of their pets. But they had to watch their daddies kill the lambs and then burn them. God said if the people would do this, he would forgive their sins. Someday God was going to send another Lamb who would die in place of the people and they would never have to kill another lamb again. When the people sacrificed their lambs, they were showing that they believed in God’s promise. 

But now God asked Abraham to kill his own son! This was terrible, but not unheard of in that day. Back then pagan people who did not worship the true God would sacrifice their children to idols. The idol gods were evil and the people tried to win their favor by killing their children to prove that they loved their gods more than their own kids. The truth is—they were just afraid of the idol gods. The true God is good and he was not going to let Abraham kill his son. He was just giving him a test to see if he loved God more than his son. Just as Abraham was about to kill Isaac, an angel stopped him dead in his tracks! He said it was just a test and Abraham passed! God spared Isaac because of his grace. 

Abraham and Isaac

Do you think you could pass a test like that? 

Do you love God more than everybody else? 

Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac

When Isaac grew up he married Rebekah.

Rebekah at the well

The Bible says that Isaac told some big lies because he did not trust God to protect them. So he wouldn’t be the one to restore Eden. But Isaac and Rebekah had two babies at the same time! Surely one of them might be "the one". The twins were named Esau and Jacob. Esau despised God and Jacob turned out to be a liar and a deceiver. But God loved Jacob anyway and after a very long time when Jacob was middle-aged he finally came to trust in God’s promises. When that happened, God changed his name to Israel. Did you notice that Jacob did not deserve God’s love any more than Esau did? Jacob the liar was loved by God IN SPITE OF his sins. 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS! 

IT’S SCANDALOUS! 

IT’S…GRACE.

Jacob had two wives and two concubines. His two wives were Leah and Rachel and he loved Rachel but didn’t care much for Leah. Leah had lots of baby boys and one little girl, but Rachel only had two boys and she died when the youngest boy was born. The concubines belonged to Leah and Rachel and they were slaves. They each gave Jacob some baby boys too. In all there were 12 boys and one girl. These 12 boys later married and had families and when the families grew and grew they became the 12 tribes of Israel. 

Evidence of God's Grace to Me:

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 2

Chapter Two — Flood!

More and more people were born and pretty soon the earth was filling up with them. But there was nobody who was good and finally things got so bad that God felt sorry He had made any of them. He would have just destroyed them all, but then he would have broken his promise to Adam and Eve, and God cannot break his promises. So he chose one man—a man named Noah. Not because Noah was good. Noah did not deserve to be saved any more than the others, but God gave grace to Noah. He told Noah that he was going to destroy the world with a flood and that if he wanted to save his family he needed to build an ark. Noah had no idea what a flood was, but he took this pretty seriously. He and his sons built the ark while all their neighbors laughed and made fun of them. That didn’t bother Noah—well it did, but he kept working anyway. 

Noah preaching to people

Have you ever been in a town where a new museum or theater is built and when it finally opens up, the people all get in line to buy tickets so they can get inside? Well, when the ark was finished, there was a line waiting to get inside too. But there were no people in the line. Instead, all the animals were lining up two by two to get into the ark! Can you even imagine how silly that looked to all of Noah’s neighbors? “Honey, look—there are two lions going into Noah’s new house! Hahaha!” “Whoa—there are two hippos too!” On and on. If those neighbors lived today, they would be taking hundreds of pictures and posting them on Facebook and YouTube. Fortunately there was no carpet in the ark, so Mrs. Noah didn’t have to worry about you-know-what happening on the carpet. Eventually all the animals got safely into the ark. 

Animals come to the ark

When Noah and his family and all the animals were safely on the ark, God came and closed the door himself. He did that to keep everybody else out. When God closes a door, nobody can open it. Then it began to rain. That had never happened before and the people didn’t know what to think. It rained hard. Water started coming into everybody’s houses and people were standing on the chairs and tables. But the water rose higher and now everybody wanted to get on the ark. People were yelling and crying and trying to save themselves and their children and their babies and their pets, but there was nobody to help them. All of the adults and children and dogs and cats and horses and all the other animals died that day. All except Noah and his family, because they found God’s grace and God promised never to destroy the world with a flood again.

After the flood, the earth began to fill up with people again. I would like to tell you that this time it was different and that the people were all basically good. But that would be a lie. The people did not want to obey God. They wanted to build their own empire without God so they built the tower of Babel so it could reach up to the heavens. This time God did not destroy them, but he made them speak different languages so they couldn’t understand each other. That must have been really irritating. Imagine someone was telling you a story and then all of a sudden they blad pewped tyou hwred  rgbns wkljh bgnuid blah blah blah. See what I mean? It made the people so upset that they moved away from each other and settled in places with the people they could understand. They did not realize that God was giving them grace. 

People began to build cities and civilizations and nobody was looking for the one who would restore Eden anymore because nobody cared. They all wanted to build their own idea of Eden. They didn’t care if God was there or not. Nobody worshipped God anymore. They worshipped the sun and moon and stars and even things they made with their own hands. They did not want a God who could tell them what to do. So they did whatever they wanted. 

God could have ignored it, couldn’t he? NO! A thousand times NO! God could not ignore it because he had made a promise to Adam and Eve. He promised that someday one of their descendants would come to restore Eden and that God would live with man again. So God started all over again with one man. Maybe that's where people got the idea that the third time's a charm?  Well it wasn't a charm--it was God's plan all along. God chose Abram whom he later called Abraham to be the father of all those who would believe in his promise. Abraham would not be “the one” because he was drawn by God out of pagan lifestyle. He was an idol-worshipper before he followed God. Abraham did not do anything to earn God’s favor. It was God who gave him grace and helped him to believe. 

Evidence of God's Grace to Me:

Fifty Shades of Grace Chapter 1

Chapter One—How it all started

Do you know why we all sin? 

A long long time ago before God even created the world, he had a plan to create people. He knew who each one of us would be and planned out every single detail of every one of our days. He wanted us for himself so we could love him and act like him. But he also would give us a will that could decide not to love him and act like him. 

When God created the world, it was all perfect. He planted a garden and called it Eden. The sunrises and sunsets were beautiful every day. The dogs didn’t bite anybody and neither did the mosquitos. The water in the rivers was clean enough to drink. The days were warm and the nights were cool. There were flowers everywhere and lots of bushes and trees and plants that gave food for people. 

God told the people—Adam and Eve—that they could eat anything they wanted except the fruit from one tree in the garden called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

The lions and tigers and bears were all friendly and some people think that maybe the animals could talk. Well, one of them could talk for sure. He was the most amazing creature. One day he went right up to Adam and Eve and struck up a conversation with them! Adam wasn’t a big talker so he let Eve do most of the talking while he pretended not to listen. 

The amazing creature told Eve a bunch of bold-faced lies. If he were here today, the Washington Post would give him four Pinocchios for all the lies he told. Nobody had ever lied to Eve before so she she didn’t suspect a thing. She believed everything this creature told her. The creature told her that God was keeping things from her. He said that God did not want Eve to be all that she could be and that she would not die if she ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In fact, he said Eve could become just like God if she ate the fruit. 

Now you would think that a tree that was bad for you would have a sign on it that said POISON with maybe a picture of a skull and crossbones. 

But this tree looked very good and the fruit looked really yummy and juicy. So Eve ate some. Then she said, “Hey Adam! I just ate some of this and nothing happened!” So Adam ate some too. They did NOT keel over dead in that instant, but they realized that something inside them died. The something that made them happy and carefree and joyful was gone. In its place was that horrible feeling you get in your tummy when you know you did something really bad and your mom or dad is about to find out. They were afraid, so they hid from God and tried to cover up their bodies with leaves. 

Later that day God came looking for them. He said, “Adam, Adam…where are you?” Imagine how Adam felt now. All this time Adam and God had been the best of friends. God had made everything so beautiful just for him and gave him good food and a pretty place to live and lots of animals to play with and even a wife. And now Adam chose to obey the serpent rather than God. Sin had come into the garden and now Adam and Eve were infected with it. The worst part is that now all their children would be sinners too. 

God had to kick them out of the garden and they had to work much harder for everything. They could not live in God’s presence anymore. Imagine if you did something naughty and your mom and dad kicked you out of your house and said you couldn’t live with them anymore. You would have to get your food out of garbage cans and sleep outside even if it was raining or cold. That’s what it was like for Adam and Eve. They felt utterly hopeless and I bet they cried a lot.  But God said that some day one of Eve’s children would come and restore Eden again and God would let them back in and dwell there with his people forever. God did not have to restore Eden. But he decided to give good things to people who did not deserve it at all. 

IT’S OUTRAGEOUS!

IT’S SCANDALOUS!

IT’S…GRACE.

My Garden of Eden

A while later Adam and Eve had a baby and they named him Cain. They thought he might be the one who would do everything right and restore Eden. But he was not the one. He was an evil man who killed his own brother Abel. Later, they had another son and called him Seth. Years and years and years went by and finally Adam and Eve died. All that time they were hoping to see the one who would save them, but he didn’t come. Whom do you think it might be?

Evidence of God's Grace to Me: