Children’s Sermon

Genesis 3:1-7

A Reason for Rules

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Genesis 3:1-7

A Reason for Rules

By Lois Parker Edstrom

Our story today comes from Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Some of you may be familiar with this story––how God created the first man and woman and placed them in a beautiful garden. It was lovely there and they had all they would ever need to be well- fed, happy and safe.

God gave them one rule. He asked that they not touch or eat the fruit from one particular tree which grew the middle of the garden. We do not fully understand why God did this as even now God’s ways are mysterious to us.

In the story, a snake asked the woman what God had told her about eating fruit from the trees and the woman told the snake that they could eat fruit from any tree except one special tree in the middle of the garden.

The snake told the woman to pay no attention to that. “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…,” (3:5) said the snake.

The woman saw that the tree was beautiful, the fruit was good, and she wanted to be wise like God so she ate the fruit and gave some to her husband. When the two disobeyed God everything changed and they knew they had made a bad choice.

Doesn’t that story cause you to think of how we make choices today? Most of us have what we need to be well-fed, happy and safe. The Bible, God’s word, gives us rules to help us have a good life. It is usually when we think we are smarter than God and follow our own rules that we get into trouble.

We all know right from wrong. Even little kids know they shouldn’t take something that doesn’t belong to them. Imagine a little child in a store. The child knows that you don’t take a candy bar without paying for it, but it looks so pretty in its wrapper and the child can almost taste the sweetness inside. The child doesn’t have any money so he or she thinks, what else can I do? I’ll just take the candy bar. Doesn’t that sound like the crafty snake talking? Bad choice!!

We are certainly smarter than that snake. Study God’s word, pray, be strong, and use God’s rules to make good choices.

Scripture quotations from the World English Bible

Copyright 2012, Richard Niell Donovan