Genesis 4 – 7
Sin entered and shortly thereafter Adam and Eve’s two son’s became a story for the first homicide. Abel and Cain made their offerings to God, who was pleased with Abel’s but not Cain’s. God talked with Cain in verse 6 and 7 saying:
6 The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
This is a simple question of obedience to God. See from the beginning of man, we have been trying to please God without being able to control our hearts. In this instance God and Cain are trying to work out a heart issue. He is pointing out what was wrong to Cain as far as his intentions. See Abel took time to pick the best from his flock, where Cain just grabbed the required amounts. Where Abel was following God’s relationship with love, Cain was just going through the motions.
How many of us do that today? I know I do more than I care to admit with this “Thought” each morning. Many times it’s just the “formula” but not the relationship. I listen to “worship” music, but do other work during the songs. I pray, but just words and not heart felt requests to a living God. I read the words and sometimes write something that may touch someone, but really don’t live what I read.
Many times I am living the life of Cain. I lose focus on the relationship with God and do what I feel is required. When I get this way, like Cain, sin is crouching at my door. Fortunately I don’t get jealous and want to kill my “brother”, but I do drift and mostly let my mind go where it shouldn’t. It’s a funny thing, when you have been exposed to the church long enough you can do all the right things and appear to others like a saint, where in reality the mind has gone way past what God ever wanted.
The story of Cain and Abel is short, but oh so powerful in its content. Our relationship with God is far beyond doing the right things for “brownie points!” We can never work our way into heaven; it’s a gift from God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. For us to really understand what this means is far beyond what man can ever comprehend. A story illustrates this (cannot verify the authenticity, but it’s an awesome illustration):
There is an old story about a man by the name of John Griffith, who lived in Oklahoma in 1929. He had lost all he had in the stock market crash. He moved to Mississippi where he took a job as bridge operator for a railroad trestle. In 1937 he was involved in a horrible accident. One day his 8 year-old son, Greg, spent the day with his Dad at work. The boy poked around the office and asked dozens of questions – just like little boys do. The bridge was over a river and whenever a ship came John had to open the bridge to allow the ships to pass. The day the boy was there with his father a ship was coming so John opened up the draw bridge. After a moment or two he realized his son wasn’t in the office and as he looked around, to his horror, John saw his son climbing around on the gears of the draw bridge. He hurried outside to rescue his son but just then he heard a fast approaching passenger train, the Memphis Express, filled with 400 people. He yelled to his son, but the noise of the now clearing ship and the oncoming train made it impossible for the boy to hear him. All of a sudden John Griffith realized his horrible dilemma. If he took the time to rescue his son the train would crash killing all aboard, but if he closed the bridge, the boy we be crushed in the gears. John would sacrifice his son. He made the horrible decision, pulled the lever and closed the bridge. It is said, as the train went by John could see the faces of the passengers, some reading, some even waving, all of them oblivious to the sacrifice that had just been made for them.
This story illustrates the sacrifice God made for us with Jesus!
As you are finishing out the reading, it goes quickly from the first homicide to the flood that wipes a depraved world off the map to reset the world once again. When I read this story and know where man ends up, I often wonder if there is a solution to sin in this world. No matter how much we do every man falls short, often very publically. We need to rely on the relationship and not the works as Abel did before he was killed.