Lesson 2 – The “C” of Compassion: Adam and Eve
Sailing the 7 C’s Series
LESSON OVERVIEW
Key Point: Sin ruins lives.
Bible Story: Adam and Eve
Bible Reference: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-24
Challenge Verse: “I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word.” Psalm 119:101
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ITEMS NEEDED
1 bundle of yarn
Construction Paper, a hole punch, and clothes hangers (or something else that hangs) with which to make a Bible Verse mobile.
Fish Cards (the same as last week)
Bible Verse Poster
BEFORE CLASS
– Put up the Bible Verse Poster for today.
– Set out any items you need for today’s lesson
– Pray for each student by name.
AS STUDENTS ENTER
– Greet each student by name as they enter.
– Give each student an attendance sticker for the attendance chart, and feel free to add guest names to the chart. This will give them a sense of belonging.
– Be sure to smile.
OPENING ACTIVITY
Use the Play-Do from last week for the following activity.
Instruct the students to create a person using Play-Do. Give them several minutes to do this and call them to the circle when you are ready to begin the lesson. Be sure to tell the students that they won’t get to take their people home.
Ask the students—Who can tell me about the person you made? (Let a few students answer.)
(IMPORTANT: After each time a student tells you about their person, say, “That’s good.”
Ask the students—Each time you told me about your person, what did I say? (That’s good.)
SAY: After God made Adam and Eve in His image, he saw that everything He had made was good. The same is true for you. When God made you, He did good.
Control Tool
Anytime you say, “What did God do, when He made you?,” students should say back, “God did good!”
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
Choose 1 volunteer—To give you his Play-Do Person.
ASK: Does your person have a name?
What grade is he in?
What does he like to eat?
Does he play any sports?
SAY: He looks great!
Then “ruin” him. Squish him in your hand, or pluck off his legs and stick them to his head, etc.
SAY: God made you special, but sin ruins all the good for which God made you. Today we’re going to take a look at when sin first came in.
Instruct all your students to “ruin” their creations and on the count of three to take them back to their containers and then return to the circle.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
Ask the students—How did you feel when I ruined [student’s name]’s creation? How did you feel when you ruined your own creation?
Ask the students—How do you think God feels when a person ruins his life?
Ask the students—How do you think people ruin their lives? (Sin ruins people’s lives— when they disobeying God and don’t follow Jesus.)
BIBLE STORY, part 1
Choose 1 volunteer—To be Adam. (Give him the Adam sign.)
SAY: God made Adam in His own image.
Ask the students—What does it mean that God made people in his image?
SAY: After God made Adam from the dust of the earth, he breathed life into him. God gave Adam a spirit. Animals don’t have spirits, but people do—just like God has a spirit. Since Adam was made in God’s image, it must have been like looking in a mirror. Adam was like God. He had perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace and he was connected to God in a perfect friendship, but all this happened before sin came in.
Ask the students—Who knows what God did next? (No, He didn’t make Eve. Instead, he called all the animals to Adam and Adam named them. Have your Adam volunteer name a few of the students in your class with animal names.)
SAY: But none of the animals were a suitable helper for Adam, so God caused him to fall into a deep sleep. (Have you volunteer act this out.) Then God took a rib from his side and from it, God made the first woman, and Adam named her Eve.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
Choose a volunteer—To point out where Genesis is on the Bible Book chart. Tell them the story of Adam and Eve is found at the beginning of Genesis and that Genesis means “beginning.” So it’s the beginning of the beginning. Show them what section of the Old Testament it is in and reinforce to them that it is the first book (the “beginning”) of the Bible.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
SAY: God did good when He made Adam and Eve but soon something terrible happened, but first we’re going to have a Bible drill.
Ready… Genesis 2:15-17…Go!
Read the verses.
Ask the students—Why would God put a tree in the Garden only to instruct them not to eat from it? (People aren’t truly free to follow God until they have a choice not to follow Him. God didn’t make us to be robots but to have a free choice, but to be free to make a choice doesn’t mean that you’re free from the consequences [the results] of that choice.)
TREASURE VERSE
SAY: God wanted Adam and Eve to choose to follow and obey Him. We’ll come back to our story in a minute, but first I want you to take a look at our verse for today. So get your Bibles ready for another Bible Drill.
Ready… Psalm 119:101…Go!
SAY: Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible and the entire chapter is about loving God’s law and following His word.
SAY: The next time you’re tempted to do something wrong—STOP!
SAY: After everything I say, you say “Stop!”
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to tell a lie—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to steal something—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to disobey your mom or dad—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to say a bad word—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to watch things on TV you know you shouldn’t—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to listen to your friends talk bad about somebody—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to say something mean—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to cheat on a test—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to disobey your teacher even though you know you won’t be caught—Students: Stop!
Leader: The next time you’re tempted to sin—Students: Stop!
TREASURE VERSE ACTIVITY
Help the children draw and cut out six outlines of a foot. Then instruct your students to write the following on them:
Foot #1— I have
Foot #2— kept
Foot #3— my feet
Foot #4— from every
Foot #5— evil path
Foot #6— Psalm 119:101
Finally, help your students to punch a hole in each “foot,” cut a piece of yarn and tie it from each foot to the clothes hanger.
SAY: When they see your Bible Verse Mobile move, remember to always move away from doing wrong and move to follow Jesus. God did good when He made you and God made you to do good things and to enjoy the good things that come when you follow Him.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
BIBLE STORY, part 2
SAY: Adam and Eve walked with God and talked with God and had a perfect relationship with God, but listen to what happened.
Assign the following parts:
When they hear the word serpent, everyone makes a hissing sound.
When the girls hear the word woman or Eve, the girls say, “Go Eve!”
When the boys hear the word woman or Eve, the girls say, “No Eve!”
Read the following from Genesis 3:1-7
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God”…When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye…she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened.
SAY: And so Adam and Eve disobeyed God.
Ask the students—When their eyes were opened, what did they realize? (They realized they didn’t have any clothes on. They felt shame and guilt and tried to cover themselves with fig leaves.)
Ask the students—What do you think happened next? (They heard God walking in the garden.)
Ask the students—What do you think they did? Run to Him and apologize or hide? (They hid.)
Ask the students—What do you think God called out? (“Where are you?”)
Ask the students—Don’t you think God knew where they were? Then why did He ask? (He wanted them to step forward and confess their sins in the same way He wants us to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness when we do wrong things.)
SAY: We’re going to finish the story in a minute, but first let’s play a game.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
LESSON ACTIVITY
Trading Places—Part 1
Have the children sit in a circle facing towards the middle. Then have them scoot their chairs back so that they are about a chair’s width apart. Number the children one through four all the way around the circle. (Number from one to three for smaller classes or you can join up with another class.)
Pick a child to be “it” in the center of the circle and remove his chair and any other extra chairs from the circle. Tell the students that you are going to call a number and if you call their number, they have to switch places with someone else. If it’s not their number, then they remain seated. While they are trying to trade places, “it” is going to try to get one of their chairs. Whoever doesn’t get a chair is left in the middle of the circle. Then you will call another number and this child will try to get a chair and someone else will be in the middle. Play for several minutes, then add in the next variation.
Trading Places—Part 2
After playing for several minutes as described above, add a twist. When a student is left in the middle of the circle because he didn’t get a chair in time, ask him to make up an excuse or blame someone else for your not finding a new spot.
The students can make very ridiculous excuses or give silly reasons. For example, “Bobby was making faces at me.” Or, “Because I’m pigeon-toed.” Or, “Because my shoes are hard to run in.”
Discussion
Gather kids in your lesson circle.
Ask the students—Can you think of a time when someone did something wrong and he made an excuse or blamed someone else?
Take a few responses. Then give an example from your own life.
SAY: Today we’re going to see how Adam and Eve made excuses and blamed others. Then we’ll see a promise God made in which we can “trade places” and receive forgiveness for the bad things we do.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
BIBLE STORY, part 3
Ask the students—Who do you think Adam blamed for his sin? (He said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Adam blamed Eve.)
Ask the students—Who do you think Eve blamed for her sin? (She said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate it.” Eve blamed serpent. That’s kind of like saying, “The devil made me do it,” which is impossible because only you can make the choice for you.)
SAY: The next time you do something wrong, don’t blame others or try to hide your mistake. Instead, confess your sins and ask God to forgive you.
Ask the students—Does anyone know what happened because of their sin? (All three were punished: (1) The ground was cursed because of Adam. It would no longer just produce good things. He would have to work hard to make things grow. (2) Eve was given great pain in child birth. (3) The serpent was cursed above all the wild animals and was made to crawl on its belly. And on top of all this, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Because they had sinned, they were no longer allowed to walk and talk with God as they had, and the day would also come when they would physically die because of their sin.
SAY: And God made a promise concerning serpent (which represents the devil) and this is the first prophecy about Jesus, that He would be the Savior of the world. God said, “He [a descendant of the woman] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Ask the students—Does anybody know what God did next? (It might surprise you, but He killed an animal. This is the first time anything ever died—You see, sin always brings pain and death. Then God took the animal’s fur and make a covering for Adam and Eve so that they wouldn’t be ashamed. Thousands of years later Jesus would be born in a stable. He would die to make a permanent way to “cover” our sins so that if we give our lives to Him, He will forgive our sins and make us new again. When you are “saved,” you are re-made in Christ’s image, just like Adam was originally created to be in God’s image.)
Ask the students—Does anybody know what compassion is? (It’s a deep love. That’s what God has for you—a love so strong and deep that it is impossible imagine. God showed compassion for Adam and Eve and He still shows that same compassion for us today.)
LESSON ACTIVITY
Have your class stand in a circle. Take the paper chain you’ve been making the past few weeks. Wrap it around your students. Have them slips their hands inside the loops or twist them around their arms, but tell them to be careful not to break it.
SAY: Just like you are tied up in this chain, sin is a bondage and a trap that will always bring pain and death. But the problem is, you can’t set yourself free from sin. Only Jesus can set you free. On the count of three, say, “Only Jesus can set me free from sin.” Practice once. Then tell them after they say it to break the chain.
Have them throw the paper chain away and return to the circle.
Control Tool
Leader: What did God do, when He made you? / Students: God did good!
SAY: We ruined the chain we made. Don’t let sin ruin the life God has made for you. Only Jesus can wipe your sins away. That’s why He died and rose again, to make a way to take your sins away and to make a way to heaven. If you ever have any questions about this, please feel free to talk to any of your teachers. We would love to tell you about how much Jesus cares for you and how you can know for sure that you’ll go to heaven someday.
PRAYER TIME & WRAP UP
Cast Your Cares
SAY: Speaking of how much God cares for you, last week we looked up a verse about casting your cares on God..
Ask the students—Who remembers what book it was found in? (1 Peter 5:7)
Ask the students—Who remembers why it says we can cast our cares on God? (Let’s look it up…Have a Bible Drill…Ready…1 Peter 5:7…Go! Or, if time is short, simply tell them that they can cast their cares on God, “because He cares for them.”)
Let each student write their “cares” or prayer requests on a fish cut-out. You can write them in the space provided below. Then let them take turns throwing (or “casting”) them into the fish net. Then pray for their requests.
List Prayer Requests Here
Be sure to pray specifically for each request above.
EXTRA TIME
Use any extra time to:
– Help your students memorize the verse for today
– Practice extra Bible Drills
– Make any announcements that need to be made
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