And Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is too great to bear!
“Behold, Thou hast driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Thy face I shall be hidden, and I shall be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and it will come about that whoever finds me will kill me.”
So the LORD said to him, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, lest anyone finding him should slay him.
Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden (Genesis 4:13-16).
When the Lord told Cain how he could be delivered from depression he did not listen. When we do not heed the Lord, it will usually result in our falling even further into sin, just as it did with Cain. Cain still could have turned to the Lord, humbled himself, and repented, and he would have received help. The Lord warned him that he had to master the sin, but he continued down the path of letting his sin master him.
It is interesting that, even then, Cain understood the law of sowing and reaping, which Paul explained in Galatians 6:7: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he
will also reap.” He knew that because he had murdered his brother, he was in danger of being murdered
himself. This is a law that is as sure as the law of gravity. Therefore, if we want to receive grace, we should learn to sow grace every chance that we get. If we want to receive mercy, we should learn to sow mercy every chance we get. If we do good, we will reap good. If we do evil, we will reap the same.
When reading about Cain’s fear of being murdered, one might think, “Who is going to murder him?” Adam and Eve lived nearly one thousand years. They did begin to fulfill their commission to multiply and fill the earth, having many other sons and daughters. Obviously, there was already a population on the earth by the time Cain slew Abel. They were obviously close relatives to Cain, but he was still afraid of them. He had slain his own brother, so he knew that a brother could slay him. This was accurate enough, because all men ultimately derive their name from the same family, but that has never kept them from attacking one another.
Even so, the Lord had mercy on Cain. He gave him a mark that would serve to protect him. Throughout the history of God’s dealings with mankind, He has been quick to show unmerited grace and mercy to us. His grace and mercy is even enough for Him to negate the law of sowing and reaping. Throughout the Scriptures, we have many examples of the Lord causing crop failures from the evil seeds men have sown. However, we also have examples of swift judgment for those who have hardened their hearts and presumed upon His grace and mercy.
The worst result of Cain’s sin of murdering his brother was that he “went out from the presence
of the Lord.” When fighting occurs between brethren in churches, or between churches, this is often the
ultimate result. Many will end up actually departing from the Lord. That is why from the very beginning, one of the enemy’s primary strategies has been to get brothers to fight with each other. He is called “the
accuser of our brethren” (see Revelation 12:10), because one of his most effective weapons against us
is to get us accusing one another.
Cain somehow thought that Abel was the reason for his rejection. The rejection of Cain’s offering had nothing to do with Abel’s offering. The answer to Cain’s problem had nothing to do with Abel, but with himself. However, from the beginning, blaming someone else for our own problems has been one of the primary deceptions that has kept men from the grace of God. It has also led to the most destructive wars in history, and it has led to the most destructive wars between churches in history.
First, the enemy will try to get us to be jealous of others. Then he will get us to accuse them of being the reason for our own problems. That is why nations that are having serious difficulties become so dangerous. It often seems much easier to blame someone else and attack them instead of dealing with our own problems. People will tend to rally around us if we can portray a common enemy that is causing our problems. Churches and people can become dangerous when they start having serious problems. If you see them starting to attack and blame others, it is time to depart. We must not continue to get caught in this trap of the enemy, which is the seemingly cheap escape from dealing with our own shortcomings. It will lead us to needlessly wounding others. Even worse than that, it will also lead us to “departing from the presence of the Lord.”
Day 45- They Called Upon the Lord
And Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for, she said, “God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel; for Cain killed him.”
And to Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD (Genesis 4:25-26).
After the original transgression in the Garden, the corruption of mankind continued on a downward spiral. The Lord created man to be free, and He would let man go his own way. Yet, in His unfathomable compassion, He continued to bless them and help them as much as He could. The Lord knew the end from the beginning, and from the beginning He planned and prepared for man’s ultimate redemption and restoration from his sin.
All of God’s ways are so much higher than man’s that we will be spending eternity learning about Him. He stretched out the galaxies like a curtain, with billions upon billions of stars in each one. He set the earth in such a tiny slice of orbit that if we deviated just the equivalent of one-eighth of an inch over a one hundred-mile distance we would either freeze or fry. He set the earth on a tilting axis so that the seasons would change, alternately melting the ice so that it would not wobble out of its orbit. Then He set the moon and other planets in their appointed orbits so that their gravitational pulls would perfectly stabilize the earth. If any of these things changed, the earth would quickly drift out of its orbit and all life would perish. Scientists have conceded that if the power of all of the computers in the world were added together, they could not compute the odds that all of this just happened by accident. When we begin adding the extraordinary balance of nature needed on the planet to sustain life, we know that the mind of God is far, far beyond our ability to comprehend. When we look at the heavens, the whole earth is but a speck of dust, like a single grain of sand to the oceans. King David wondered:
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
what is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him? (Psalm 8:3-4)
God not only considers man, but He has chosen to dwell with man. For some incomprehensible reason, He loves us. He even loved us enough to empty Himself and become one of us for our salvation. As much as He can without violating the freedom that He gave us, He fixes our mistakes and blesses us even though most of the time we do not even know it. Eve may have been deceived by the serpent, but she realized that it was the Lord who gave her another son.
After Enosh was born, we are told that it was then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. The Hebrew word for “call” that is used here is qara, which indicates more than just calling out to Him. It also implies that they began “proclaiming,” or “acknowledging,” the Lord. This is the beginning of our return to the light. To not see God in creation is a profound delusion, a darkness so deep that it is an intellectual black hole. A black hole is a term used for anomalies in space that have such a gravitational pull that even light cannot escape them. Men have in our times fallen into such intellectual depravity that they cannot acknowledge God, even though the scientific evidence that He exists is so overwhelming. Even so, from the beginning, there has always been some who would proclaim Him.