SEEKING GOD'S FAVOR

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.”

Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering but on Cain and his offering He did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you but you must master it."

Genesis 4:1-7

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

After leaving Eden, we see at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 4 where Adam and Eve gave birth to creation’s first children, Cain and Abel. The scriptures don’t tell us much about the two boy’s childhood but we do know that they grow up adopting different vocations for we read where “Abel kept flocks while Cain worked the soil."

Initially, all seems great within this first family but things change when the sons bring an offering before God. Within our passage, we learn that "Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord” while “Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock." The bottom line here is that Abel brought his best before the Lord while Cain did not. This is why Abel gained God’s favor while Cain didn’t.

This issue, the younger brother Abel gaining God’s approval over the older Cain, sparked humanity’s first case of sibling rivalry. We read where Cain became “downcast” and “very angry” because of this, an attitude that got God’s attention as He tried to provide counsel to Cain.

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you but you must master it."

God knew Cain’s heart and the dangerous direction it was heading and so He attempted to stop the older brother from acting on his emotions but He doesn’t sugar-coat anything. Cain could have brought his best just as Abel did but he chose not to. He didn’t do what was right to begin with and this was the root cause of not being accepted by his Lord.

Then further, to double down on the first wrong, now Cain’s heart was filled with sadness and rage. Sin was indeed “crouching at” his “door” and soon, he will give into it and “murder his brother” as the sinfulness of the first parents is passed onto their children.

So what do we learn through this?

In Abel and Cain, we see the best and worse in human nature.

In Abel, we see obedience and respect toward God and how it gains His favor.

In Cain, we see how sin can enter in and take us to place far away from God’s will for us, a place where we will find God’s disfavor, a place where we might even decide to take the life of another.

The good news for us today is that we don’t have to repeat the failures of the past. This is the importance found in regular Bible study for as we look at these accounts, we can receive direction from our Lord as to how we are to live in His presence and His sight.

In order for us to live properly in the present, it’s important to go back to the very beginning, back to the basics as the old saying goes, where we’ll find that the choices we face are very fundamental in nature, choices between doing right or wrong. In order to always choose right, gaining God’s favor, we only need to turn to Him for His guidance, knowing He will never lead us off the path of righteousness. For when we do, we will find the one true way to master the sin that is ever crouching at our door.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.