📖 Verse of the Day
“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 rule over it.” – Genesis 4:7
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Adam and Eve start having children, including Cain and his brother Abel. Eve knew she was directly responsible for the pain she experienced in childbirth (Genesis 3:16), but she still gives God credit for helping her to bear Cain.

Cain and Abel grow up and choose different professions: Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil, both apparently maintaining a relationship with God.

When both bring offerings to God, He shows favor on Abel and his offering of the fat of one of his slaughtered lambs.

God does not, however, show favor on Cain or his offering of the fruit of the crops from the fields he has been working. This might have been due to a poor attitude on the part of Cain. For whatever reason, God does not find his efforts pleasing.

Cain becomes angry, and envious of his brother Abel. God asked Cain why he felt so much anger and God rejected his offering. God had shown favor on his brother Abel and his offering, which seems to have enraged Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain.

God now speaks a wise warning to Cain. Can will not heed it, but it is a warning for us as well.
God asks Cain to adjust his understanding of what is good to God’s understanding of goodness.

If Cain does well by God’s standard, God will accept him. In other words, there is no reason for Cain to be angry about God’s rejection. The cure for that rejection is obedience: if Cain does what is right, God will accept him.

If Cain insists on setting his own standards for what is acceptable, sin “is crouching at the door.” That poetic phrase captures the nature of our rebellion against God. Sin desires to own us, and our refusal to let God set the standard for right and wrong in our lives is the fast track to sin.

God acknowledges the reality of human nature. We are locked in a battle with sin’s desire for us (or our desire to sin). God tells Cain he is responsible to win that battle, to rule over his sin. In the same way God tells us to be alert, and not to sin, as it is in our nature.

God confronts sin in us too by his Spirit, by his word and in our consciences. We must be sensitive to God in order to overcome sin in our lives.

God also tells us stay away from sin, by doing what is right and pleasing to him. Our God gave his son, Jesus who took away all our sins and sacrificed his life for us. His life showed us how to defeat sin and rule over it, and he will help all of us to defeat sin and rule over it.

So let’s be obedient to God by doing his will and Christ will help us to achieve God’s will. Let’s be vigilant to not listen to the whispers of devil who crouches at your door with the fruit of sin.Let’s rule over all our sins by believing in the name of our LORD Jesus. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen

A lost sheep found out by Jesus 🐑✝