Vital Men Devotions

“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 rule over it.’” Genesis 4:6-7

Those are really good questions to work through.

• Why are you angry?
• Why is your face downcast?
• Why are you not accepted?
• Could it be that you are not doing what is right?
• Could sin be crouching at your door?

The quick of the story is the offering by Abel was accepted by God but Cain’s offering was rejected. But that is not the entire story. Notice that God did not walk away after this. He actually went to Cain and tried to reason with him. I believe there are some golden nuggets for us to chew on in these two verses.

1. God saw Cain.

The Lord approached Cain and talked to him. I wonder how many times we knowingly disobey what God has set out for us and then we hide from God because we believe he doesn’t want to see us. But notice God didn’t come and bring wrath; He came to talk about it.

2. He could make a change.

Next we see that there was a right way and a wrong way to do the offering. Without going into all of the different ideas of what that could be, the big idea is that Cain didn’t make his offering in the right way, and God said to him, “You know how to fix this; you need to make the offering the right way.” The right way was not outside of Cain’s means. I believe that is true for us. The right way is not out of our means just out of our desire. Then we give ourselves permission to go the wrong way because we convince ourselves that we cannot change, but God has empowered us to make the change to obedience, and it is within our means to do so.

3. Warned him

Finally we see the Lord laying out a warning. The option was Cain’s and God in a sense is pleading with Cain to get a hold of the situation.

I believe most of our anger, sin, and disappointment in life is our own doing. We want control without consequences. We want to be the master. God sees us in those situations and reminds us of the way we should go. The path that leads to life. So there we are in the middle of two options; the right way and the wrong way. If we are to master sin, we must first be mastered by Him who mastered it. We must belong to  that Master (God).
- marty