You Must Rule Over It (Genesis 4:7)

 


Friday, January 17, 2025


Psalms 40

Genesis 3:20-4:16

John 7:14-24


You Must Rule Over It (Genesis 4:7)


One of the most striking things about these opening chapters of the Bible is that God’s grace and mercy just pour out. At every turn, humans do something wrong, and God responds by doing something good. The account of Abel’s murder at the hand of his brother Cain has a twofold mercy. God’s grace spills out double.


The first is when Cain makes his initial error. He did not do what God wanted, and God told him so. Understandably, but inexcusably, Cain was angry, and his face fell. There are things we want to do for God, but God doesn’t want us to – should we be angry that he doesn’t want what he doesn’t want? And here is the first mercy: God lifts up Cain and gives his some wise life advice. “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” - if you do what God wants, won’t it be wonderful? “And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door” – be careful of being stubborn, because sin is ready to take advantage of it. “Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” – be in control of your passions and desires, do not let them control you.


In our daily lives, but particularly in our worship (because our worship is the highest expression of our daily life with God), we must “do well”; we must offer sacrifices pleasing to God; we must give God what he wants, not what we want. And if we don’t, we have to be careful about how our emotions direct our response, because sin is ready to pounce and manipulate those emotions into even greater sin. This is what befell Cain, when he allowed his anger to grow, murdering his brother and lying to God.


Yet even if we have allowed our misstep with God to turn into sin and death, there is the second mercy – God ends the cycle of sin. “If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”


God gave Cain the advice on how to end the cycle of sin. And God practised what he preached, when he ended that cycle which Cain could not. In Jesus, the cycle of sin has been ultimately ended: he has taken the punishment we deserve, and by faith in his blood, we are given the riches of heaven.


What cycle of sin is happening in your life? How will you take God’s advice to Cain and apply it to your own situation?


God of mercy, write your instructions on my heart, so that I may be free of the cycle of sin and live in the freedom of the love you have given me in Jesus.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Lord Was Moved (2 Chronicles 33:13)

Image
  Wednesday, August 28, 2024 Psalms 143; 146 2 Chronicles 33:1-20 Romans 15:14-21 Observance: Augustine of Hippo, bishop and teacher (d. 430) The Lord Was Moved (2 Chronicles 33:13) In our passage from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle is making a small break in his preaching to tell his audience that he is not telling them anything they do not already know. This is perfectly understandable if we recognise that this letter is a sort of fundraising appeal for his missionary work: the apostle wants to get on and start planting the gospel in places where Christ is not known, and so he gives the church in Rome a run-down on what his theology is, so that they will feel comfortable in supporting him financially. The fact that we have this fundraising appeal as part of inspired scripture can teach us something important: God wants us to keep being reminded of certain eternal truths. Reading through the story of King Manasseh can feel a bit same...
Read more

I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God.

  Friday, September 8, 2023 Psalms 20; 21 1 Kings 5 Acts 25:13-27 Observance: Birth of Mary, Mother of the Lord I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God. How big do you dream? Try this experiment on yourself: next time you are walking down the street, observe where your eye level sits. Do you watch your feet move around the cracks in the footpath? Do you do that trick where you stare blankly into the middle distance, so as to avoid making eye contact with passers-by? How do you think that relates to your spiritual aims, and the requests you make of God? Solomon dreamt big. He knew perfectly well that the God of his nation was also the God of the entire universe. No house would be entirely suitable, nor appropriate. But by golly he was going to give it a red-hot go. And just look at how much work he put into it: an entire nation of people were hired to provide the best timber on the planet. His own nation too was put to work, either a...
Read more

Marvellous? (Zechariah 8:6)

Image
  Wednesday, October 16, 2024 Psalm 105:1-22 Zechariah 7:1-8:8 1 Peter 1:18-2:3 Observance: Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, bishops and martyrs (d. 1555) Marvellous? (Zechariah 8:6) There are several phrases that, when we see them in the Bible, should make us sit up and pay attention. Anything to do with the “Day of the Lord” is one of them; another is when God speaks about when “they shall be my people and I shall be their God”. This second phrase, which, because of its frequency, risks becoming bland to our hearts, is so tremendously deep and rich in what it speaks of, is nothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ. We remember way back in Genesis that God would walk through the Garden of Eden in the cool of the afternoon and speak with Adam and Eve about their day. One can imagine the scene: an enchanted place, a place with no evil, our first parents probably bouncing along, joyfully telling their loving Maker about all the wonderful things the...
Read more