Powerpoint Pictures: Bora Bora Islands; New York; Brazilian Rainforest; Swiss Alps

There are lots of things I can do with a balloon.  I can use it to make a sword or a hat.  I can also use it to make an animal [make a balloon dog].  Imagine I blew on this balloon dog and it came to life like the toys in Toy Story.  That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?

God made everything – light, sky, land, plants, sun, moon, stars, fish, birds, animals – so that this world would be a perfect home for people to live in.  He did it all by speaking.  But when it came to making the first human being, God did it slightly differently.  He took some mud, shaped it into a man, like I turned the balloon into a dog.  He then breathed into the man the breath of life, and unlike me blowing on the balloon dog, this man came to life.

God then placed the man (Adam) in a beautiful garden to live.  This was the best place to live on the whole earth.  If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?  Bora Bora Islands?  New York?  Rainforest in Brazil?  Swiss Alps?

Would you go to the Middle East, to places like Iraq or Israel?  Why not?  They are places that are dry, dusty, hot, deserty, and where there is fighting.  Yet that was the place where God placed Adam because once the Middle East was called Eden and in it was a beautiful garden.

In the garden there were good things to see, good things to eat, and good things to do.  Adam had the job of looking after the garden.  But it was a big job to do, so to help Adam do this, God made a wife called Eve.  Together they could enjoy and take care of this wonderful home God had made for them.

In this garden there was one rule.  God gave them one good rule to obey, to make living in the garden really enjoyable.  “And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”” (Genesis 2:18-19).

But will they obey this rule?