What Envy Does to Faith and Joy

Join us as we dig into Cain and Abel as a story about what happens when resentment grows unchecked, and correction feels like an attack. We also wrestle with God’s justice and God’s mercy side by side, and why that gives real hope for families and faith under strain. 

Transcript

Why Cain And Abel Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Luther thought that uh Eve thought that Cain was going to be the seed who was gonna be this the their savior. It's one way of interpreting, but even if not, this child was simply the evidence that, okay, yeah, this whole seed thing is happening. God's keeping his promise. And then everything with with with Cain, like, God could have said, oh, okay, they're murdering each other now. Okay, that's it. He didn't do that. Uh he didn't even do that with Cain. We can look at that and just say, okay, as bad as the world is, or as bad as I recognize I am when I'm being honest with myself, God is still there with all of his mercy, mixed with his justice. And he's not done with me yet, he's not done with us yet, he still has a plan for me and for this world, and particularly for his church in it. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potritz, and I'm here with pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson. And today we're gonna talk about the story of Cain and Abel and um and and how this relates to uh life challenges or life and family uh topics that we talk about. There's quite a lot in the story of Cain and Abel too. And I think, you know, for me, being um a lifelong Christian, it's one of those stories too that I'm I totally remember hearing Cain and Abel in Sunday school and just like thinking, like, oh, great, you know, like this is the just sibling rivalry. And, you know, it hits me again too as I get older and teaching Sunday school and seeing kids. And um it's one of those stories too that like we it it it's in pretty much every Bible story book, and I mean we don't really we don't shy away from it at all with children, too. And so it's just a very interesting story, and I'm I'm really excited, looking forward to talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

And it convinced me not to hit any of my brothers with a rock.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

That very familiarity is one of the reasons why we need to pay attention to it, is because you know, there's so much that we think that we know, or you know, oh, I learned that already. And that's always the case with everything in the Bible, but there's so much it's like, oh, wow, I I I didn't look at it that way before, or oh, I I knew that, but I never really thought about what it meant, you know. And I I think our listeners will will find some value in in in this second book today.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, and even in preparation for this podcast, too, I was rereading the account, and yeah, there was just some things that hit me uh a certain way even uh today in in doing that. Um so yeah, I'd love to start, Jeff, um, with you reading the account for us, and uh we'll get everybody up to speed here.

Reading The Cain And Abel Account

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Okay. Well, I'm reading from the EHV, the Evangelical Heritage Version, but uh it's not that much different from uh whatever version you might prefer. So we begin. The man, that is, Adam, was intimate with Eve, his wife. She conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, I have gotten a man with the Lord. She also gave birth to Cain's brother, Abel. Abel tended sheep, but Cain worked the ground. As time passed, one day Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the soil. Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord looked favorably on Abel and his offering, but he did not look favorably on Cain and his offering. Cain was very angry, and his face showed it. The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? Why do you have that angry look on your face? If you do good, will you not be lifted up? If you do not do good, sin is crouching at the door. It has a strong desire for you, but you must rule over it. Cain said to Abel, his brother, Let's go into the field. When they were in the field, Cain attacked Abel, his brother, and killed him. The Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? He said, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the soil. Now you are cursed and sent away from the soil, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the soil, it will no longer give its strength to you. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is too great for me to bear. Look, today you have driven me away from the soil. I will be hidden from your face, and I will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. The Lord said to him, No, if anyone kills Cain, he will face sevenfold revenge. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that anyone who found him would not strike him down.

God’s Warning Before The Fall

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

One of the things that hit me when I reread it too was the warning that God gives to Cain before he does anything to Abel. And this is, I believe, after the sacrifice. Um and uh yeah, I mean, I think that just really hit me as whoa, you know, they're like he gives them this warning and then it there's something that still happens. Just kind of interested in in your thoughts with with that warning and um and just it in that account.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

We should welcome exposure of our sin. We should be happy when someone, whether it's God or beloved one or even a stranger, comes to us and says, Hey, you're about to do something that you shouldn't do here. We should welcome that as, oh, thank you for warning me. I I I I I honestly was slipping. And and even if I didn't think I was, the fact that you saw this, that's that's valuable to me. Thank you. I will now do better. I will guard against this. We should work to keep sin from mastering or ruling over us. But we all have a sinful nature, and that sinful nature instead hears any kind of attempt at correction or encouragement in the right direction as as an attack, as uh something that's uh disrespectful or or whatever. And that that makes it so difficult to hear that. And Cain, well, it it looks like the sin was already mastering him. In the fact that he didn't uh didn't respond as he should.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

You know, when we began, Jeff had you know warned us that because the story is so familiar that we tend to think that you know we know the part so well that we we're not gonna get much out of it. It's kind of like when you show up at church on that Sunday and that's the text that the patch pastor's preaching on. And so you just bring out a pad of paper and start making out your grocery list, you know. And um when you talk about you've ever sat next to me in church, Bob? Yeah, I'm I'm the one who kept telling you that's how you spell Oreo. Yeah. Oreo cookies. A warning, uh I got to thinking uh when it whenever I a question like this uh comes up, I I start to parse the words and I look at the word warning and I think of any warning that we ever get uh is not a single thing. You know, there's a there's a trajectory or um you know, like for example, if if uh you are told that uh warning the uh the power lines are active or live, you know, or um when my my grandparents used to have a farm and they would have an electric fence around and they had to post signs that would warn you that it's an electric fence. Okay, well that warning meant more than you're gonna get zapped if you touch the line. There's all sorts of consequences that come with getting zapped, and they could be serious consequences. And I've always had a heart defect. You know, I was I was born with a congenital heart defect. The consequences could have been more for me than for others. And and I think that when you when you look at warnings in Scripture, first of all, remembering that they come with God's greatest intent, fondest best intent for you to give you the warning. And secondly, don't be so dopey as to think it's just like you might get into trouble for that. It's far deeper and and it has consequences that oftentimes get beyond your control.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah, it's worth remembering also that our our rejection of such you know correction or warnings, it it's it's usually based in a sense of you don't know what you're talking about. And okay, maybe there's going to be some value to that if it's somebody who doesn't know you too well saying something to you. But I mean, Cain telling God, you don't know what you're talking about when you're giving me this warning. We see other things here that are just like, Cain, you didn't think this through, did you? Like later in the story when when he's uh trying to say, I don't know where Abel is. Didn't Adam and Eve probably tell the story about how in the Garden of Eden they tried hiding from God, but God knew it all along anyway. Apparently he still seemed to think that he could uh pull one over on God with uh um you know saying, No, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

And and I do think that that's a critical element of the story is uh you get the impression, you know, that that this wasn't an event. This is something that happened over time. So over time, Cain Cain had developed this attitude, uh, an attitude of resentment, an attitude of God doesn't deserve my best, my focus, my admiration. So I you know, after a while you kind of get away with it. So then you get a warning, but you say, Well, you're you're at least your your inner self says, I got away with it in the past, I'll get away with it now. And uh but instead it f in this case it festers and it has disastrous results.

Sibling Rivalry And Misdirected Anger

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah. And you know, I also want to kind of bring out this topic too of just the sibling rivalry uh element too. And uh it's very interesting to me. I I think, you know, seeing a story like this, we kind of get that that top-down view, like where we can see it all play out and be like, oh, come on, Kane, like how could you do that and and that type of thing. But I mean, for many of us, we have siblings. And when you're in it, I mean, it it's tough to really get along. There is, I I don't know why, but like there is just that built-in jealousy towards like seeing, you know, a a sibling get something that you think that you deserve, or maybe it's vying for your parents' attention or affection. And, you know, I I mean I can think of myself in in those situations too. I can also see it, uh, especially like as a parent, watching my children go through that too. I guess like just what can we learn from that sibling dynamic with Cain and Abel? And also, you know, like what I mean, what what what can we learn from that?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Well, I mean, think of it you know, say kids who are pretty small, but you know, they're in the family. And um Johnny gets really resentful of uh Fred. Uh not very common name, I guess, but these days, but anyway. Give it time. Give it time. And Noah Fred. You know, but what's um what's the likely the real thing that that causes the resentment? It's how Johnny perceives that mom and dad are treating Fred in a way that's unfair, that's unequal, or something like that. So Johnny's real problem is with mom and dad. It's not with with Fred. And that's the same dynamic that we see happening here with with Cain and Abel. Abel hasn't done anything to Cain.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

But Cain is resentful because God is looking favorably upon on Abel and his sacrifice, and not looking favorably on Cain and his sacrifice. So instead of blaming God, he blames Abel for it, and that's why he's resentful. And so what happens? God issues the warning. Well, Cain apparently says, Well, I'll show him, and he takes it out on the one that he resents instead of the one that he's actually angry with. And this fits. The problem was Cain's relationship with God. The problem was not with his relationship with Abel. I mean, that was a symptom of it. You mentioned it at the very beginning, you talked about Sunday school and children's Bible storybooks. And when our son was still, I don't know, probably two or three or whatever, we get, I think my mom gave us a Bible storybook or something like that. And I only got like two stories in before I said, wait a second. Because in the interest of making the story intelligible for uh for children, they said that um God was happy with Abel because he sacrificed, you know, sheep, and God was unhappy with with Cain because he sh sacrificed grain. Which is nowhere in here. You know, that's just false. The problem we're told in in Hebrews, by faith Abel offered a better sacrifice to God than Cain. And uh in 1 John it says, Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and and murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own works were evil while those his of his brother were righteous. So the problem was inside Cain.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

But getting back to the original question that this is about it's it's something that manifests itself in sibling resentment and rivalry, but really the resentment is directed, I'll say Godward, whether it's at God's representatives in your parent, you know who are your parents, or at God Himself.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

I mean, this is every parent's nightmare is the moment God starts giving you children, how do you raise them in the way of the Lord? And you think of rules and you think of habits and patterns and so forth. But you you're fighting two powerful forces. One powerful force is the inner inclination to do evil. And that is there in all of us. And one of the questions ours, you know, when you're holding uh in the delivery room, you're holding your daughter or son for the first time, every inclination of that child's heart is evil. And you don't know how that will manifest. So you're you're fighting that. Then the other thing to fight is how by that stage, you know, living 20 some 20 plus years of trying to dodge around the evil inclination of my heart, how has it manifest itself in such a way that I have completely ignored or forgotten God's mandate that everything I'm supposed to be doing in life is to be to his glory and to his honor? So then you're so you're you're working with a corrupt deck. You're not fully equipped to raise your children on the way they should go, and you're fighting their evil inclination, you're dealing with the consequences of your evil inclination, and somehow God being the object of all glory gives way to a lot of painstaking efforts to create the perfect Noah's Ark nursery and you know, picking out the perfect godparents and planning the right baptism, and even the spiritual things that we do get kind of shrouded in in a little bit of a false wrapping paper. So what happens here is you've got what Jeff's saying, you know, is that Cain, Cain's problem was uh a dysfunction with his father, his heavenly father. And rather than tackling that and resolving that, you look to take it out and you take it out on the tangible. And we all do that. That's kind of like frustrations and anger. You tend to take it out on the tangible and because all the other ways don't seem to be working. Yeah.

Justice And Mercy With Cain

SPEAKER_01 16:40

So when I look at a account in scripture, I I have been, you know, kind of in the practice now of just kind of asking myself, okay, like what does this tell me about God? And I think, you know, in this count account, we see God carry out justice, and then we also see him showing an act of mercy towards Cain. Can you expand a little bit on both of those, the justice that we see and also the mercy we see in in this account?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

It's surprising to us in a way, because I think we we would expect God to order Cain's death. To do it himself, because the the principle laid out later, you know, is is that that's the penalty for murder. Maybe there's a sense of mercy because since murder had never been committed before, there wasn't the knowledge of of what the consequence should be. But it is interesting that Cain seems to understand that that's to be expected because he's saying, you know, and interesting irony here is that he's the he's the one who introduced murder to the world. And now he's the one who's saying, Well, anybody who sees me is gonna kill me if they find me. It's like, oh, where where would they have gotten that idea, Cain? Um, maybe from you. But he seems to recognize that there is an eye-for-an-eye sense of vengeance or justice involved there. But God is surprisingly merciful here, and his mercy really should always be surprising to us. He says, No, no, you're not gonna die that way. I am gonna make sure that I'm gonna put this sign, we have no idea what this sign was, so that anybody who comes at you recognizes that no, no, this is not somebody I I should be raising a hand up against. So he's telling Cain, you're gonna live, but you are still going to bear consequences for what you've done. You're gonna have to live apart from everyone. When God is merciful, that doesn't mean that justice is not done. So he was still being just in the way that he chose to punish here. But uh it was not what we expected, and much better than what Cain deserved.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

The fact that he knew, that Cain knew that there was going to be that eye for an eye, tooth-for-tooth mentality out there with the other people that and again, you know, chronology-wise, you don't know where this is in the very beginning, you know, how many how many years after their birth, how many siblings and and grandsiblings and all that kind of stuff going on uh are involved, but there's obviously other people, and he recognizes that, and and I know this is a topic for another podcast someday, but I've I've often wondered, you know, the um when Gentiles uh uh do by nature things required by the law. You see that here. You see that there's there's something on the on the heart of Cain that recognizes that there's a consequence. And so we spend eons trying to to blunt or mute that knowledge, but it still surfaces and uh he recognizes that. But I too, I d I share the concern or the surprise that God, because it's only what um five chapters. Well, we're in Genesis 4, uh Genesis 9 is where he says, if you shed man by man shall your blood be shed. Clearly that's there. But but uh what's also clear is that he's already articulated something that Cain was aw aware of. And that's the justice of God. And yet God is always permitted to show mercy. Now, of course, people are always gonna go, well, why mercy in that case? Is this a an anti-death penalty proclamation and so forth? Well, no, Genesis 9.6 tells you otherwise. But the point is that God does say, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and for reasons that aren't fully revealed for us. Cain was given this very unusual sentence and an unusual mark. We don't know what the mark was, if it was a physical mark or just a knowledge. I don't know how many people were around at this time. Uh if this is the first murder, and I believe it is, I would imagine there's some notoriety that goes with that, so people would know who he is. But I like the idea that you accept the justice of God as being perfectly right and you accept the mercy of God as something totally undeserved, but something that you deeply appreciate because we're all the beneficiaries of mercy, because we know that if justice were fully carried out for us, what it would look like.

Where Is Your Brother Today

SPEAKER_01 21:14

After the murder occurs, uh God says to Cain, Where is your brother? And I think that's an interesting question, right? Because obviously God knows, but he asks Cain that to probably get Cain to respond to. And kind of wanted to talk about that question in the context of of this account, but also just what that question, like, where is your brother? Um, like how that echoes our responsibilities towards siblings, parents, and children as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

I guess the main thing I get from it is we're not as independent as we like to think we are. We like to think we're, you know, we're our Naturally inclined because of our sinful nature to think that it's just me. I'm responsible for me, and uh everyone else should serve me. I'm the center of the universe. God's question here is is is like his his question, you know, a chapter earlier to Adam in the in the garden. Adam, where are you? Yeah, it's it's not like God didn't know. You know, he he's it's it's a meant to draw out a confession. Sadly that didn't happen here. But it's emphasizing to Cain. What you have done to your brother is the exact opposite of what should should be. You should be concerned about your brother. You should be his keeper, not in the sense that you control him or, you know, you but in in the sense that you want what's best for him and that you look out for him in in those senses. You have a responsibility to other people just as they have a responsibility to you. And Cain, in doing what you have done, you have completely shattered that responsibility. And uh that should be a somewhat harsh reminder to us that, yeah, I am not me. I am not the center of the universe. There are people God has placed in my life so that um they can bless me, and there are people that God has placed in my life so that I can bless them. And sometimes those are all the same people, but we're not independent in that sense.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

I live by the adage that all scripture is written for our learning so that there's a point to it. I even I even mentioned that when you're going through numbers and you're you're seeing numbers. There's a point to it, and sometimes we don't see it. And we look at that one, am I my brother's keeper as a rhetorical question? That of course the answer is yes. Uh also, where is your brother? I I was thinking uh in the New Testament when Jesus was up in Caesarea Philippi and said to the disciples, uh, Who do people say I am? And then of course you get to the end of that uh dialogue, and he he he knew who people were saying he was and had and he knew when to say that Peter was correct uh when he said it. So there's always, you know, when it's written for our learning that there are sometimes life is full of rhetorical questions. And sometimes the rhetorical questions are meant to remind you of something wonderfully obvious that you have so obliviously ignored. And when I go when I go back to a topic we talked about initially here, and that is just sibling rivalry. I I feel in many ways, I feel much closer to my uh I have three younger brothers, I feel much closer to them now as adults than I think I felt to them when we were kids growing up. Uh and and I don't know if it's the absence makes the heart grow fonder or what, but and and I I'm presuming that Cain and Abel were adults when this happened. Because they were shepherding, they were harvesting, and so forth. And so sometimes you've got a situation here where forgetting that you are your brother's keeper when you were a child, if you don't snap out of it and get out of it, you're gonna start thinking that way when you're adults. And and I I don't know, Jeff, maybe in your in your parish work you've encountered this, but on occasion you'll find members who will say, Yep, I I haven't talked to my brother in in 25 years, and I have no intention to, and it's a sibling rivalry, it's uh it's a bitterness, it's a hatred. Whatever it is, it doesn't belong. And again, you know, you you have this rhetorical question that that says you where's your brother? You know, for you to say I don't care would be wrong. And for you to ask, Am I my brother's keeper is to ignore the reality that the answer's always been yes. You just have ignored it. It gets back to the heart of the problem, and that is uh we gotta get people to look inside of themselves. Uh the story of of Cain and Abel was of a systemic issue going on inside of Cain and it reflected in his relationship with God and it manifested itself in its relationship with Abel.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah.

How Envy Kills Gratitude And Joy

SPEAKER_01 25:59

I always like tell my kids too that you can't you you can't control other people, right? If somebody does something to you or what happens, but you control how you handle it. And um and that's a real easy thing to say, but sometimes it almost feels like when you're in the doctor's office and they hit your knee and you just do the reflex right away. Sometimes even just our um our reaction to like envy or jealousy just seems to come so instantaneous with certain people, maybe, or or just like how certain people just get under your skin and it just seems so I don't know, like just just you can't like I I'm like I I don't know why I always snap at this person when they say something to me, and then somebody else can say something to me, and I'm totally fine. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

It's it's the painful question. How do you get past yeah? And that is, I mean, that's hard. I think I wrestle with that all the time. I mean, how many tim you know, I mean, w we run a a a Christ-centered Bible-based podcast. We supposedly should know better, and yet how many times don't you catch yourself doing stuff or saying stuff or thinking stuff you know you shouldn't be, and yet you do it anyways.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

You know, that's I mean, right, Paul? The good I want to do, I don't do, and the evil I want to do, I keep doing. I think too, you know, I when I see the account of Cain, we see that that jealousy and that enviousness that he has towards his brother. Um, and then we also see that bitterness that comes out with that too. And one of the things that just wanted to ask too about like how that envious bitterness, jealousy distorts our ability to see God's gifts in our own life. And uh, and I mean, we see that a little bit with with this account, but um just also like in general, too, how those things like bitterness, being envy, um how those do take away from our ability to see all that God's done.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Well, kind of looking at it uh from the opposite direction, just I think it helps. You know, we we talk about pe people who see life through rose-colored glasses, the idea being that they've just got this positive outlook, and so they always see the best and they never see what's wrong. Well, the opposite is true as well, that when you're filled with bitterness and resentment and envy, everywhere you look, you see more reasons to be bitter and resentful and envious. You don't see the good because you've trained yourself not to see the good. It's similar even with something like depression. You are so far down you you you can't see reason for hope or for happiness or or whatever. You're just kind of stuck. Unfortunately, you know, things like resentment, when you're stuck in that, it can lead to much worse things as as a result, because not being able to see the good from God means you're missing out on so much. Because you know, what you don't see, you don't appreciate, and what you don't appreciate, you you don't trust, you don't rely on, you you don't find any joy in that. And God wants us to have joy. He saved us from our sins so we could have all that. And yeah, what what a sad thing it is when through our own choices, the way we see things just means that we rule out joy without even really considering it.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Aaron Ross Powell All of us are indelibly formed by experiences from the past. When I have sat down and talked to people who were victims of abuse, they tend to be distrustful of for example, if it was uh clergy abuse, then they are distrustful of clergy. If it's uh abuse from a camp counselor, then they're distrustful of a camp counselor. In other words, it it creates a bias. It colors and not rose-colored, it colors the way that they see life and it affects things. And so and we experience this, you know, just in the b in bioethics, you experience this a lot where people will talk about um uh di different things. Like for example, uh I I remember a uh a woman who had had breast cancer and went through a terrible time, was deeply sick and everything, and it created this deep uh resentment towards the doctor, it created a resentment towards the uh the medication and everything like that. So when her granddaughter announces that she had been diagnosed with a lump, she immediately said, No, no, d don't go I mean, just get pain management, don't do any of the treatments and and everything like that. And and of course the bias that it uh occurred, even if she felt it was justly earned, you know, in other words, she genuinely was deeply sick and she uh genuinely went through a horrible experience and everything like that. It it ruins objectivity because you begin to see everybody like that. And so um there is something to be said about growing up. There were things, you know, when when I I jokingly said I learned I, you know, you don't hit your brother with a rock right now. Um my my brothers and I, we we rough house a lot, and you know, have mercy when mom and dad would would be gone, you know. And you had four young boys who then decided that somebody needed to be taught a lesson, you know, and so there were probably three who decided that. Three who decided there was usually a minority vote that wasn't heard. But but the thing is, is like uh you know, I know that the brother that I picked on the the most when we were younger is is now the one I'm closest with. And and I don't know how much of that is penance or what, but but you know, part of it is that on a very practical level, how do you master resentment? How do you get out of it? You know, first of all, I think you gotta remember that it's a process, not an event. You're not going to just all of a sudden tomorrow decide, I'm just gonna overlook it all. It doesn't work that way. It is a process. And so you work your way towards

God Is Not Done With Us

SPEAKER_02 31:58

it.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Well, this has been a great discussion here on Cain and Abel. Um, any final thoughts on this topic?

SPEAKER_02 32:06

There's more to the story of Cain and Abel than just the kind of the bumper sticker lines we take away that oh, I am my brother's keeper. Well, there's a lot more at work there. There's you know, resentment, you know, how do you manage resentment? How do you how did it get there in the first place? How do you get rid of it? I think that's there. And then understanding in the story of Cain and Abel that it was a vertical problem before it was a horizontal problem. Cain's problem was with his heavenly father, and because that was intended to, it manifested itself in a very ugly way in the murder of his um sibling.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah. And I think I see too like, you know, God God gives a warning, knowing what's gonna happen, and then it happens, and then he calls out Cain, who uh again kind of biffs the conversation there, and then God still shows mercy to him. And uh, I mean, to me, just to see God working like that, I mean, it gives hope like for us too, who are constantly gonna go through things and do things wrong. And I just see God's love and mercy in that.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Picking up on that, I guess one final thought I'd add is that this whole story shows us God's not done with us yet. The joy that must have been with the birth of Cain. Oh, God is still letting us do this whole fill the earth and and prosper thing. He's not saying, you two are it, I'm done with with you. The joy of that, of God's promise being fulfilled. And you know, Luther thought that uh Eve thought that Cain was going to be the seed who was gonna be this the their savior. It's one way of interpreting, but even if not, this child was simply the evidence that, okay, yeah, this whole seed thing is happening. God's keeping his promise. And then everything with with Cain, it's like, you know, God could have said, Oh, okay, they're murdering each other now. Okay, that's it. He didn't do that. Uh, he didn't even do that with Cain. And so, you know, we can look at that and just say, okay, as bad as the world is, or as bad as I recognize I am when I'm being honest with myself, God is still there with all of his mercy, mixed with his justice, and he's not done with me yet. He's not done with us yet. He still has a plan for me and for this world, and particularly for his church in it. And when the end is done, when he's finally finished, well, we'll know.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Yeah. Well, thank you both for the the discussion today. And we thank all of our listeners for joining us. And if you have any questions on this topic or any of our other topics too, please reach out to us at lifechallenges.us. And again, we thank you so much for listening to this uh podcast. Um, it is made possible because of you. And yeah, we'll see you back next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast of Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us, or email us at podcast at ChristianLiferesources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLiferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.