C.A.C SUNDAY SCHOOL MANUAL FOR FEBRUARY 13, UNIT ONE, LESSON TWO 2022 : TOPIC – GOD’S GRACE AROUND MAN’S FALL
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CHRIST APOSTOLIC CHURCH WORLDWIDE
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
(KINGDOM OF GOD FAMILY)
THEME: GROW IN THE GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LORD
JANUARY – JUNE, 2022
UNIT ONE: THE GRACE OF OUR LORD
FEBRUARY 13, 2022
LESSON TWO
GOD’S GRACE AROUND MAN’S FALL
DIVISION II.
II. IN AND AFTER THE FALL (3:7,14-24)
The love of God is unconditional – He is Love. It is His nature, His person. Thus, even in the midst of man’s misdemeanour, God would not deny His graciousness unto man. But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).
A. MAKES GOD MERCIFUL TO THE UNDESERVING MAN (vv. 7,14-19,21)
Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunic of skill, and clothed them (v. 21).
i. Man’s rebellion (3:1-8; cf. 2:16-17) should have angered God to utterly destroy him, and create another one, given God’s justice (cf. Ezk. 18:20a; Hab. 1:13; Rom. 6:23). But grace and mercy prevailed (cf. Jas. 2:13).
ii. vv. 14, 15: Yes, God is never happy with sin, yet, His inexplicable eternal love for man, made Him to temper justice with mercy. His attitude to the irredeemably fallen devil differs from how he punished man.
iii. v. 14: God cursed the ancient rebellious Serpent in an irredeemably merciless way. He permanently sealed the devil’s destiny.
iv. vv. 16-19: Note the tone of God’s words to Adam and Eve. He didn’t curse them; He only cursed things around them to punitively inflict pains in them for their disobedience (cf. Prov. 16:5).
v. Refreshingly, God allowed man to be redeemable, instead of being destructively replaced — God’s love, grace and mercy in action! The more you stay outside of God, the more you deny yourself of His grace.
vi. vv. 7, 21: Only a debased mind like the depraved Adam’s would have thought of covering their nakedness with sewn fig leaves. How well and for how long would it take them? — stupidity. This was a revelation of a life without the KNOWLEDGE of God (cf. Rom. 1:28-32).
vii. God should have allowed them to continue with their foolishness, to teach them more senses. His intervention was just too undeserving — tunics of skill in place of fig leaves (v. 21). Grace in action!
viii.We cannot hide from the Omnipresent (Psa. 139:7). He created us, and watches over us. However, we have the choice to either submit to Him to lead us in the path of righteousness (Psa. 23:3b), or we choose to love the world (2 Cor. 6:10; 2 Tim. 4:10), and perish with it. God forbid.
B. BRINGS REDEMPTION TO THE UNDESERVING MAN (vv. 15, 21-24)
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (v. 15).
i. v. 15: Against all expectations, even as God was pronouncing judgment, sealing Satan’s doom, He was also asserting man’s redemption. Hallelujah!
ii. God is never caught unawares. The tone and timeliness of this declaration suggests that the Omniscient God already had this provision in place. He knew man could (not ‘would’) fall, being a free moral agent, and had eternally provided for man’s redemption (Rev. 13:8b).
iii. What a wonderfully loving, gracious and merciful God! How would anyone, even God, make such a lofty provision for an undeserving person? ONLY GRACE answers it (cf. Jn. 15:13; Rom. 5:6-8).
iv. v. 15: It it too wonderful to accept the fact that God would choose to come through the same ‘woman’ who had served as the conduit for man’s fall, to finish the ancient Serpent. God’s grace in action! He could have chosen any other route, but…
v. v. 21: God gave them the tunics of skill to ultimately typify the involvement of the redemption, He would later come to finally perfect for man, through Christ’s precious blood (Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:22).
vi. vv. 22-24: Only the spiritual rash and ignorant would see God’s move, here, as wickedness/vendetta. God’s grace and mercy actually saved man from being eternally irredeemable by taking …also of the tree of life, eating, and living forever (v. 22b)!
vii. The Omniscient God has all things in control, both good and bad. The fall of man didn’t deter Him from manifesting His Person/Nature—Love—even though He was not pleased with man’s rebellion. He chose not to erase man’s future because of His past failure. What a gracious God!
LESSONS DERIVED
1. When man fell, God didn’t destroy him; MERCY prevailed. God instantly rolled out His eternal redemptive plan for the undeserving man.
2. He who avails himself of God’s grace and mercy in Christ Jesus practically experiences the power of His GRACE!
QUESTIONS
1. The grace of God has always been there for man, even before eternity and man’s eventually fall. Discuss.
2. Account for why God didn’t utterly destroy man despite the latter’s painful disobedience in Eden. Any hope for our generation?
SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
ANSWER TO QUESTION 1
i. God’s grace gave man the privilege of being specially created in God’s image.
ii. Man, though the last of God’s creatures, obtained grace to chosen to have dominion over all other creatures.
iii. God’s eternal redemptive plan was to finish the ancient serpent, the devil. Thus, He tempered justice with mercy, when man fell through the instrumentality of the devil.
iv. Knowing fully well that man could err, God had eternally provided for man’s redemption (Rev. 13:8).
v. The wonderful positioning of man in the garden of bliss where he could neither ask for, nor contribute meaningfully to it, is an expression of God’s unmerited favour. God had prepared this, long before man came into existence, thus making it solely dependent on God’s grace.
vi. Nothing, including the devil, can stop God’s ultimate plan from coming to pass. God revealed Himself as the merciful, omnipotent and omniscient over ALL.
ANSWER TO QUESTION 2
i. God’s inexplicable eternal love, grace and mercy at work in, and for man. Our God is love, hence His compassion for the man He had created.
ii. God knew man could fall. So, God had eternally made provision for man’s redemption.
iii. It was ‘man’ (born of the woman) that God used as a channel to destroy the work of the ancient serpent. Jesus is that Seed who fulfilled the prophecy in Genesis 3:15.
iv. Our God is just and fair in all He does. He does things according to His pleasure.
v. His mercy endures forever.
vi. If man had been destroyed, all other creatures would have had no relevance.
vii. In all, grace, manifested in the compassion/mercy of God, account for why God didn’t utterly destroy man when he fell in Eden.
Any hope for this generation?
i. Yes, there is hope.
ii. Grace is made available to all men through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23).
iii. For God so love the world that he gave His only begotten Son… (Jn. 3:16).
iv. Jesus has been made propitiation for our sins. Thus, no need to bear the unnecessary burden of sin and shame (cf. Matt. 11:28-29).
v. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead caused us to be born again to a living hope (1 Pet. 1:3-6).
vi. God has a good plan for all of us (Jer. 29:11).
vii. Christ is the hope for this generation (Eph. 1:11-14; Col. 1:24-29).
LIFE APPRECIATION
It was once said of a boy who mistakenly killed their grandma’s duck while he was playing with his younger brother. The younger threatened to report to the grandma, and this made the boy to negotiate with his brother to stop the report, which he thought would attract serious punishment. The younger brother demanded that the older be taking care of his own chores, while he (the younger) would be taking the benefits of the older, food inclusive. The fear of been punished by the grandma kept the boy in ‘chains’ until one day. The younger had threatened as usual, but the older told him to tell the grandma. Meanwhile, not too long before then, the older had gone to their grandma, telling her how he killed the duck. Surprisingly, the grandma said she saw him when he killed the animal, and that she had forgiven him after it happened. She was just waiting for him to come and confess. So, the next time the younger went to the grandma, she told him she knew everything, including how he had tormented the brother.
The grace settled everything regarding our redemption even, before man fell. Why should you continue to allow the fear and threat of the devil to keep keeping you down because of your past? Jesus paid it all. It is finished.
CONCLUSION
All the glory belongs to God for the knowledge derived from this lesson. The lesson has re-established in our consciousness the grace of God unto the undeserving man at creation, and His eternal provision for man’s redemption before, in, and after the Fall. Man fell disappointingly but God’s love, grace and mercy raised him unreservedly. God’s love is inexplicable and boundless. A man’s downfall is not the end of his life, if he choose to lean on God’s grace.
DEVOTIONAL BIBLE READINGS FOR WEEK TWO
Mon. 7: God Graciously Gives Man Work (Gen. 2:15)
Tue. 8: God Purposefully Gives Man Law (Gen. 2:16,17).
Wed. 9: God Always Projects For Man’s Good (Gen. 2:18-20)
Thur. 10: God Graciously Gives Man A Helper (Gen. 2:21-22)
Fri. 11: God Gives Man The Best Gift (Gen. 2:23)
Sat. 12: GOD Gives Man A Perfect Home (Gen. 2:24-25)