94. Cain's Epic Fail: Genesis 4

G', day, Dave here.

Welcome to Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

Have you ever done something wrong and then tried to hide it?

Maybe you made your brother or sister cry and then tried to calm them down so the grown ups wouldn't hear.

You don't want to get in trouble.

Or maybe you went hunting for Christmas presents that were meant to be a surprise and when you found them, you covered them back up and made it look like you were never there.

Or maybe you snuck up at night and ate some food from the fridge that didn't belong to you but never owned up to it.

When we do the wrong thing, we're acting like we're in charge.

I want to do it, so I'm going to do it.

And it doesn't matter what anyone else, including God, says.

That's called sin.

And we usually get pretty embarrassed if we're found out, and so we try to hide it.

In today's story, there's a man who tries to hide his sin and he finds out just how silly that is.

I wonder if there could be a better way to deal with our sin.

Hmm.

How about we find out?

Get ready for our next episode of Stories of a Faithful God for Kids.

What a disaster.

The very first humans ever given life by God decided they could have life without God.

They thought they could do better than God in ruling the world.

They thought they didn't have to believe God when he said they'd die if they ate from one particular tree.

But they were wrong.

Now they've been sent out of the garden God made to live in a world that's been cursed.

Thankfully, God is still very kind and he's going to let humans continue.

Remember, even though the woman is going to have pain when she gives birth to children, she's still going to give birth.

So in Genesis 4:1 we read Adam had intimate relations with his wife, Eve.

She became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.

Now, some people might say, ooh, that's lucky, you're pregnant.

But there's no such thing as luck.

Eve knows exactly why she's had a son.

She says, with the Lord's help, I have given birth to a man.

It's God who gives life.

Eve knows that the Lord God has given her this wonderful gift, even though she'd sinned.

Afterwards, God gives her another son named Abel.

When the boys grow up, they're both farmers, but different sorts of farmers.

Abel looks after animals and Cain grows crops.

Now one day, Abel, both the brothers decide to give an offering to God, a way of saying thanks to God for the good things he's given them.

Cain offers God some of the food that's grown out of the ground on his farm, and Abel offers some of the best meat from his animals.

They both make their offerings, but they each get a very different response from God.

Verse 4 says the Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but God did not accept Cain and his gift.

Now be very careful here.

God's response has nothing to do with the types of food the men offered.

It's not that meat is better than vegetables.

You can't use this Bible verse to say I don't have to eat my vegetables because God didn't accept Cain's offering.

That would be wrong and really annoying.

No, the issue is why each man wants to give something to God a lot later in the Bible, in Hebrews 11:4, we're told it was by faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.

Faith is trust.

Abel trusted God.

He loved God and knew God was good.

Cain didn't trust God and you can see that in how he reacts.

If he trusted God, he might say, oh please forgive me God and help me to do better next time.

Buuut that isn't what he does.

Instead, he gets really angry and grumpy.

Won't accept my offering.

Do you ever become grumpy when you don't get what you want?

When you're grumpy, it's really easy to make things even worse because you're thinking more about yourself than anyone else.

Thankfully for Cain, God kindly reminds him to do what's good and says that he'll be really happy with him.

Then he also reminds Cain that he's in real danger of doing something seriously bad.

God says to Cain in verse six, why are you angry?

Why do you look so unhappy?

If you do good, I will accept you.

But if you do not do good, sin is ready to attack you.

Sin wants you, but you must rule over it.

You see, the more you sin, the more you want to sin.

It's like it wants to trap you and grab you.

And because Cain is so selfishly grumpy, it makes it really easy for him to sin more.

Unfortunately, Cain doesn't listen to God's kind warning.

He lets sin win.

He takes Abel out into a field where he thinks no one's watching, and there he attacks and kills his brother.

How horribly sad.

Humans only just started sinning and already one's become a murderer.

If only he'd listened to God.

Later on, God asks Cain, where is your brother Abel?

It's not that God doesn't know.

It's a bit like when Adam hid in the garden after they ate the fruit and God asked him, where are you?

God's giving one chance to explain what's happened.

But Cain doesn't take the chance.

Instead, he again tries to hide what he's done.

In verse nine, he answers, I don't know.

Is it my job to take care of my brother?

Remember, when you've started sinning, it's very easy to keep sinning.

So the grumpy killer is now lying straight to God, trying to hide his evil.

But nothing can be hidden from God.

God sees and knows everything.

So the Lord God says to cain in verse 10, what have you done?

Your brother's blood is on the ground.

That blood is like a voice that tells me what happened.

How silly Cain's been to try and hide from God.

Just like his parents tried to hide from God in the garden.

And now, just like them, he has to face the consequences.

Cain's made his living by planting crops as a farmer, but now that's all about to change.

God says in verse 11, now you will be cursed in your work with the ground.

It is the same ground where your brother's blood fell.

Your hands killed him.

You will work the ground, but it will not grow good crops for you anymore.

You will wander around on the earth.

Now you might be thinking, oh, well, he can just buy food from the shops and maybe get a job selling fridges.

But remember, there are no shops, there are no real jobs.

He'll just have to find food growing wild as he wanders around.

If he tries to grow something himself, it won't work because God's cursed him.

And it's not like he can just hang out with other people who grow things.

One, because there aren't many people yet, and two, because everyone will know that he's the wandering killer, and they will not be very keen to be friends.

In fact, in verse 13, Cain says to the Lord, this punishment is more than I can stand.

Look, you forced me to stop working the ground and now I must hide from you.

I will wander around on the earth and anyone who meets me can kill me.

Isn't it funny that the thing he's most worried about is that now he'll have to hide from God?

He can't be around God anymore.

He knows that that means he'll be in danger and so people will try to kill him.

He didn't want to listen to God before when God warned him about the danger of sin.

But now he's scared of leaving God, which he has to do because he sinned.

God could just stop talking there and send him away.

But really kindly God says something else, something unexpected.

Even though Cain doesn't deserve his kindness, God still shows him kindness anyway.

In verse 15, we're told, then the Lord said to Cain, no, if anyone kills you, I will punish that person seven times more.

Then the Lord put a mark on Cain.

It was a warning to anyone who met him, not to kill him.

Then Cain went away from the Lord.

Cain lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Nod in the Bible language means wandering.

He had to go off wandering.

Most importantly, he had to go away from the Lord, away from God, who's so kind and so loving, who can protect him and provide for him.

All because instead of listening to God, he decided to sin.

And then he tried to hide his sin.

It can be embarrassing when we sin, can't it?

We much prefer to cover it up and hope no one notices.

But that doesn't help the situation.

In fact, it only makes it worse.

It's especially silly to try and hide from God because God sees and knows everything.

So if we feel grumpy and selfish when it's really easy to sin, what should we do?

We should pray and ask God for help.

God's awesomely powerful.

He can help us calm down and he can help us do what's right.

It doesn't have to be a fancy 10 minute prayer.

It can just be God, please help.

I've prayed that lots of times.

When you do sin though, don't try and cover it up.

Remember, God's really, really, really kind and he says if you don't try to cover it up, but actually tell him what we've done.

The fancy word for that is confess.

When you confess and ask for forgiveness and help to do better, he loves that.

In The Bible, in 1 John, chapter 1, verse 9, it says this.

If we say that we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins.

We can trust God.

He does what is right.

He will make us clean from all the wrongs we have done.

It's such a good promise.

God isn't someone to hide from.

He's someone who we go to and ask for forgiveness and help to do better.

Back near the start of the world, Adam and Eve's children start having families of their own.

One family wants to trust God and another family becomes really evil.

But that's a story for next.

Hi again everyone.

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Bye for now.