Genesis 50:19-20 ..."Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
The saving of many lives is what the Bible was all about. An account was given so that we may know history, that we may know God and so that we would come to know Jesus and have relationship with him. So many times throughout the Bible we see an evil act that God is able to turn for good and bring about change in people--not only change, but a change of the heart and a turning to God. Tonight Lance and I are presenting Genesis 4--Cain and Abel. And we are presenting it like we have heard it taught to us and how we can best relate. Growing up I learned the story of Cain. He was a terrible man. He killed his brother. I was taught that I shouldn't kill, especially not my brother! But that's all that I really learned from all of those days in Sunday school. But there is so much more to the story. We see Eve putting her hope in her son, thinking this is the answer that the world needs. She thinks this is Jesus. We see Cain commit a grievous act which he remains un-repentive of for quite some time. But then we see in the end of the chapter that people began to call on the name of the Lord. This is what God wants. He wants us to turn to Him, to call to him, to want to be in relationship with Him. And this comes from the horrendous act that Cain committed.
So this is my challenge for the group tonight; that we may see ourselves in Cain, that we may see what Satan has meant for harm in our own lives but God has used for good and lastly that we may be able to apply some real life application of the story of Cain and Abel. After all, this would truly be the purpose of the history lesson. It does us no good to read the story, to know the story yet be unable to apply the story. I challenge them to be able to see that separate from God, we are all like Cain, we are all like Eve and later on, we are all like Lamech.
In reading and preparing, I was able to reflect on our own experiences and see exactly how we related to these people in Genesis 4. First, I will begin with Eve. Oh that Eve! In the last chapter Eve had just been punished. She had received the penalty for disobeying God but God had given her the hope of redemption. In chapter 3, we received our first Gospel and we see where God has used the opportunity to take something that Satan has done that was meant for evil and destruction and turn it into something good. He gives us the promise of Jesus. I’m going to stop here for a moment because this literally gives me goose bumps. Satan says, I can deceive your woman and cause your man to openly disobey and God replies, “I’ve got a plan.” God doesn’t erase creation, start over or just give up on us all together. No, he says, “I’ve got Jesus and He will overcome.” Okay, okay…now back to Eve. So Eve knows that through her a son will be born who will reverse all that she has done. A son will come that will correct her mistakes. She thinks Cain is Jesus. We see her boast in what she has done. Little does she know that her son will turn out to be a pre-meditated cold blooded killer who not just kills but who kills his own brother.
Here is my reflection of me being Eve. First, I overstep my husband and like Eve, I try to overstep God. This was what she had done in chapter 3 and what she was doing here in chapter 4. Just the other day, Lance and I were simply walking through the store and I felt like he was taking the long way out and moving too slow so I took a right instead of following him. Immediately after, I was hit with the simple conviction that I wasn’t letting my husband lead. Now I know that it sounds ridiculous to many of you and that this may seem very trivial but Lance has a well-hated job in this town. There aren’t many people who respect what he does and plenty of people who, if given the chance, would love to harm him or his family or any other officer or officer’s family on the police force. And we had talked about that before. Simple things, like if he tells me to stay put then I need to stay put or if he tells me to stay with him then I need to stay with him. And this isn’t because he’s chauvinistic and he gets to tell me what to do because God says so but because he cares about me, he loves me and much like God, he wants me to be safe. Then of course, as a mom, I am much like Eve. We mothers all put so much on our children to do great things. Did I think that Gideon would save the world? No. But did I think he would do great things in the name of God? Yes. That’s one reason we gave him the name of Gideon (mighty warrior of God). I don’t think that it is necessarily wrong to think the latter but we must be careful to realize that no human can save us—only Jesus can save us. But I had great plans for him. Swimming lessons at 6 months, private Christian school, music lessons, sports, and college. But God had something better. He knew the days ahead and he had plans to turn something bad into something good. He knew that he could do miraculous things through the tragic loss of our son. So, my point here is that separate from God, we are all Eve. We women try to overstep our husbands, overstep our God and we place too much emphasis on our own doing and what our children can do and not on what God can do.
Then we move on to Cain and Abel. I won’t get into it too much but I want you to realize that Cain came to worship with jealousy and unbelief in his heart. He was jealous of Abel. So God rejected his offering which made Cain that much more mad. And God tried warning him. He tried to get Cain to repent. Even after Cain had killed Abel, God came to him seeking for repentance but Cain refused…until later. And like so many, we fight jealousy. We fight addiction and lust and self-righteousness. We, like Cain, come with sin in our lives. The past six months haven’t been easy, that’s no secret. I have fought with my own jealousy and my own anger and bitterness. There have been times when I have seen a mother holding her 4 month old baby and I was jealous because I only got to hold and enjoy mine until he was 3 months and not a day more. At three months exactly, he was ripped from our arms and for two days following we went through turmoil seeing our baby lifeless, beginning to swell and just “not there” anymore. For those next two days, we prayed relentlessly for God’s mercy and his healing, only to get a healing that we hadn’t expected. And I have wrestled with the bitterness when I see a mother who doesn’t even enjoy their child, when I see someone who doesn’t appreciate what they have, when I see someone take for granted the blessing that God chose to give them. I wrestled with resentment and anger during the past 6 months when a test would come back negative and then I would hear of a new mother expecting her baby after not even “trying” at all. It was hard to see drug addicts and child abusers and child molesters be blessed with children when we were stripped of the one we were given and waiting on God to bless us with another. But during those times, I would be convicted and I would turn back to God and seek Him more and fall even further into relationship with him. But separate from him, I would be a bitter, angry, unbelieving, jealous person much like Cain.
I believe that Cain repented because he goes on to be blessed and I believe that he began to spread the word of God in his thriving metropolis. Some may argue with that view. Like I said, we were taught to see Cain as bad, as dirty, as evil. But I think if we read on and see what God says, how Cain responds and then the blessings that Cain receives then we may see Cain in another light. We also, may be able to see ourselves in Cain.
In the end of Genesis we see that Eve gives birth to Seth and this time she gives credit where credit is due. She acknowledges that God has granted her another son. She realizes God did this. Unlike in the beginning of the chapter where she states, “with the help of God” this time she gets it right. God did this. I was merely the vessel that He chose to use. This child is God’s and He made my son. She finally gets it. And that’s what we get when we turn to God. Then at the very end we are told “people began to call on the name of the Lord.” That’s what it’s all about people. We die to self. We recognize that we are merely vessels. We realize that these are not our hands, not our minds, not our money, not our house, not my job, not my child but that it all belongs to God. And we seek him constantly for guidance and we thank Him for what he has done. We have faith in His plan and in His Son. We lean on God and not our own understanding.
And lastly I want to say and probably repeat that God has done amazing things through our experience with Gideon in our lives and in those who knew his story. Our relationship is closer than it has ever been. Now God is granting us another child that should be here May 8th—if it is God’s will. We are excited and encouraged to see what God will let us “borrow”. We pray that our hearts stay turned to Him and He remains our focus.
