Then God made clothes for Adam and Eve.Yep, that’s it. That’s all it says. Now, I realize that the purpose of a children’s Bible is to simplify but the most important part of the story is missing! God’s plan for redemption is missing! (I find this is often the case and the reason this study came to be in the first place.) So let’s get to the really juicy part. This is the part that has kept me going and I can’t wait to study it with you. Read Genesis 3:21.
The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.Are you thinking, “Huh?” Maybe you already know where we’re going with this but if you don’t, be encouraged that my first thought was, “Huh?” But look closely and think about the following questions.
Who made the garments?
What were the garments made of?
Where do you think the skin came from?
What had to happen to the animal in order to use its skin for covering?
Are you starting to get a picture here? They had attempted to cover themselves in verse 7 and apparently, their covering was insufficient. We talked about that in a blog post you can read here. So this time, the LORD God made the garments himself. These garments were made of skin, the skin of animals. In order for an animal’s skin to be used, the animal had to die. Something had to DIE.
Remember, death came into the world as a result of sin. There had been NO death up to this point. Adam had named every living creature himself. I don’t know how he felt about these creatures but I do know he had never seen one of them die. He had never seen one of them killed. He had never seen one of them sacrificed. Sacrificed to cover his shame no less. It was his fault that one of God’s creatures (and He doesn’t tell us which one) was sacrificed and died.
So here at the end of our study, let me take you back to the beginning. The whole Bible is about Jesus. The whole Bible is about God and His plan of redemption. The story is revealed progressively and our very first glimpse of what Jesus would do is right there “in the beginning”. For our sin to be covered, blood had to be shed. God himself provided the covering for Adam and Eve through the shedding of blood for the first time ever. This is a picture of what God would do to cover the sin of all mankind through his son Jesus Christ. Isn’t that awesome?!
I recommend that you read all of Hebrews 9 if you really want to get a picture of God’s plan for redemption fulfilled in Christ Jesus as the perfect sacrifice. But for now I want to leave you with a verse in Hebrews that sums up so well what we have covered in this study. We have looked at what we were created to do…serve! We’ve studied the path to sin which led to the worst imaginable consequences, death and separation from God. And finally we learned that even as God dealt us the consequences, he spoke of the freedom he would provide from those consequences through his own son, Jesus Christ. Read Hebrews 9:14 and really let it sink in.
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
And just in case you wondered, one day we will have access to the tree of life again. Revelation 22:14 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.”
Ahhhhhhh! I LOVE IT! The first book of the Bible speaks of the tree of life and so does the last! I hope you’ve heard from the Lord with me. I have so enjoyed digging into the history of Adam and Eve with you. And when I say “history” I mean His Story. I hope you have seen that these aren’t just children’s stories. Every bit of the Bible is for all God’s children and we will continue to discover together that every page has his son, Jesus, on it.
I welcome your suggestions on which children's Bible study to break down next. Let me know what you think!
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