The Beautiful Garden Home

TEXT: Genesis 2:8-25; 3:1-24

ONCE a long, long, time ago, God made this big world that we live in. He made it, and said it was good. God liked it.
Now God wanted to plant a beautiful Garden in His world. He did not want just a flower garden or a garden with carrots, and peas and lettuce and things like that. He wanted a beautiful, beautiful Garden with big trees with all kinds of good fruit on them.

So God made the most beautiful Garden that ever was made. We can picture all kinds of pretty flowers in it, blue ones, red ones, yellow ones. Every color and every kind of flower was in that Garden.
He put in it all kinds of trees: pear trees, peach trees, apple trees. Oh, we cannot even tell how many kinds of trees grew there. Beautiful birds sang in the trees. Perhaps big butterflies flew here and there and little animals played in the bushes.
There was a river in the Garden, too. It watered the plants, and the little animals could get a drink from it. No one has ever seen such a beautiful Garden as God’s Garden was.

God wanted someone to live in the Garden so He made a man and gave him a name. God named His man, Adam. God did not want Adam to be lonesome so He made a woman, too, so Adam would have someone to talk to. Adam called her Eve.
Adam and Eve lived in this pretty Garden. They did not have to work to keep the weeds out, because there were no weeds then. God did not make anything bad in the Garden. The roses did not have any sticker thorns in that first Garden. Adam and Eve did not have to buy food. They found what they wanted right there in God’s Garden of Eden and ate it.

Now Adam and Eve could have all they wanted to eat of everything in that Garden of Eden except the fruit of one tree. Just one tree in that great, big beautiful Garden God wanted them to leave alone! They had so many trees that they did not need to eat from this one.

Adam and Eve listened to God. They knew God said, “No.” This “No” tree was right in the middle of the Garden.

God even was so good to Adam He let him name every little and big animal. Just think of that! All the animals He had made for the Garden.

All the animals were friends in that first Garden. The lion did not hurt anyone. He was just like a big kitten. He liked to be petted and played with. The tiger did not want to hurt any of the little animals. Tigers liked to play with rabbits and squirrels. All the animals played in the Garden and had a happy time. Everything was so beautiful, and Adam and Eve and all the animals were so happy.

God would talk right out loud to Adam and Eve. They did not pray like we do now to talk to God, when they lived in God’s Garden. God talked to them right out loud, like your daddy does to you. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the evening. There never was anything in the Garden to make Adam and Eve, or any of the little or big animals, cry. They were always so happy.

There was a snake in the Garden that could talk and it was talking to Eve one day. This snake was trying to get Eve to do something real naughty. They talked something like this: The snake said, “Eve, God does not let you eat the fruit of all the trees in the Garden, does He?” Eve said, “We may eat all the fruit we want from the trees except from that one tree in the middle of the Garden. That tree belongs to God. He does not want us to eat fruit from it. God said that was His tree and we must not eat of it or we will die.”

Just think, God had made this great big, big, big garden with so many, many, many things in it for Adam and Eve, and all God wanted was one tree. Just one tree, and Adam and Eve could have all the rest.

The snake said to Eve, “Oh, you will not die if you eat the fruit on that tree. You will be real smart and know everything. You will be as smart as God, if you eat of God’s fruit tree. God knows you will be as smart as He is, that is why He said, `No’ about that one tree.”

Eve looked at God’s “No” tree. It was a pretty tree. The fruit did look good. She would like to see how it tasted. She would like to be as wise as God. Eve reached right up and picked some of the fruit of that tree and took a bite. That snake was bad to tell Eve to do that, but Eve should not have listened to him.

Eve liked the taste of the fruit so she gave some to Adam and he did not obey God, either. He ate the fruit off God’s “No” tree, too.

That evening they heard God walking in the garden and calling to them. They had been naughty and they hid. They had listened to the snake and had not obeyed God.
They kept very still. They did not want God to find them, but no one can hide from God: Adam, Eve, you, I or any one. God always knows where we are and what we are doing all the time. He knew where Adam and Eve were. He knew what they had done.

Adam and Eve were ashamed to come to God like we feel ashamed to come to our mother or daddy when we have done something they told us not to do. God asked them if they had eaten of the fruit of which He told them not to eat. They said they had. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the snake. It is easy to say someone else made us do something wrong. We do not have to be naughty because someone else tries to get us to do some naughty thing. We can say “No, I will be good.”

God said that because Adam and Eve did not mind Him, they could not live in God’s holy Garden of Eden any more. They would just have to get out and work hard to get food. God put them out of the Garden and even put angels at the gate so they could not get back in, ever again.

Adam and Eve did a terrible sin when they disobeyed God. That is why we have sin, why we get sick, why the animals fight with each other, why all the bad things happen — because the first man and woman God made did not obey Him. Now every little baby is born with sin seeds in his heart. We have to pray, and Jesus will take out the sin seeds so they will not grow.

We must be careful not to do wrong things. If we do we almost always cause someone else to be bad, too. God does not like that. That is what Adam and Eve did.