People Disobeyed God Bible Lesson for Kids

This is a Bible lesson about Adam and Eve’s sin. It can be taught as a stand-alone lesson, as the final lesson of a series on creation, or as the first lesson of a series of lessons on Noah. The other lessons on creation are 1) God Made the World, 2) God Made the Plants, 3) God Made the Animals, and 4) God Made People. The other lessons on Noah and the ark are 2) God Called Noah, 3) God Sent a Great Flood, 4) God Made a Promise to Noah, and 5) The Tower of Babel. This is an important lesson to explain how sin entered the world (creation) or why God had to judge the world by a flood (Noah). 

Lesson Title: People Disobeyed God

Bible Text: Genesis 3:1-7

Learning Objective: To help children understand that people disobeyed God because they didn’t trust that He would provide what is good. 

The Lead

Choose a free, printable activity from the list of related Bible activities that will be good to open the lesson. As children complete the activity, explain that today’s lesson is from Genesis 3 and is about when people first disobeyed God. Use the chosen activity to introduce the Bible story.

Read the story from the Bible or invite a child to read the story aloud. Depending on the age and maturity of your kids, you may want simply to tell the story in your own words.

The Lesson

Select an appropriate number of printable activities from the list of related Bible activities and use them to engage your kids in the story. As they work on the activities, emphasize the following truths:

• The creation story had repeatedly noted that creation was good. God had already shown He would provide what was good for people. 
• God provided good things for us because He loves us. We can trust Him to love us and care for us.
• God had forbidden Adam and Eve from eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but Satan tempted them to doubt God’s goodness and trust the tree instead.
• We also sin when we doubt God’s goodness and trust in something other than God. We sin when we think we know better than God what is good for us.

The Landing

Help children understand that God can be trusted to provide what is good. When we doubt God’s goodness we will be tempted to disobey God and trust other things to meet our needs. 

As the teacher, be aware that the first lesson in the creation series focused on God’s greatness and worthiness. The second lesson was focused on God’s goodness toward us as demonstrated by His provision of food for us. The third lesson focuses on God’s goodness toward us, but it also begins to reveal that people were created special and are different from all other aspects of creation. The fourth lesson revealed HOW we are unique and special. This lessons shows how people sinned (and still sin) because they didn’t or don’t trust God. This lesson has been included with creation because the story of creation (Genesis 1-2) was designed to demonstrate God’s goodness toward people while the story of Adam and Eve’s sin shows they didn’t trust God’s goodness. If you’re studying this lesson as part of the series on Noah, then this lesson will help establish an understand as to WHY it was necessary for God to bring judgment on the world.