Welcome to the Love in Context podcast, an unscripted conversation with Ben and Spence.
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Welcome to Love in Context with Ben and Spence.
It's an unscripted conversation.
Sorry, I had to.
Had to.
Okay.
Let's try this again.
Hey, welcome to Love in Context, episode three, an unscripted conversation with Ben and Spence.
Hey, we're going to be in Genesis three and four.
So if you have your Bible with you, open up to that.
If you do not have your Bible with you, you can pause it, go get your Bible, that new
thing called technology, man.
You can pause it and then come back to this episode.
I know.
Right.
I know.
By the way, just like neither here nor there, this morning, Pastor Nick and our church,
we're hanging out in the sound booth while Pastor Clint is preaching, and I will reach
over and I found the oldest iPhone in the world sitting on that thing.
I was like, what is this?
He's like, it belongs to the church.
I was like, we need to get rid of this because I'm pretty sure it doesn't work anymore.
Right?
It was pretty funny.
I don't think carriers will support a first gen iPhone.
Yeah, I don't think so.
Well, then he pulls out the iPod, the iPod, the old big brick, right?
Which is a phenomenal thing in its day.
But I was like, no.
No.
I was like, why do you even have that?
It's not compatible with anything.
I'm going to buy you an iPod and load it with garbage music.
You would.
All right.
So here we are.
Genesis chapter three.
Last week, we kept trying to get here.
Right?
So now we're here.
And we're probably going to reference back to this a lot, but more than that, we're probably
going to reference back to Genesis one and two because they're more important.
Yeah.
You're going to be like, what do you mean it's more important?
It's more important that you understand the original intention from God than what we made
a mess of.
Yeah.
Nice.
So Genesis chapter three.
So I have some interesting thoughts.
So I'll get crack in here.
Sound good?
Yeah.
Sounds good.
You're giggling to yourself because you're like, man, Ben's going to talk all the time.
No, no.
That's not what I'm giggling to myself because I'm giggling to myself because I'm like, we
did a whole episode last week.
And then like, there's still the part that's fighting me is like, oh yeah, we're starting
the story.
I'm like, no, we're not.
Like, yeah, no, we're not starting.
We're not starting our story.
We already started in chapter one with God's original design.
Right?
So we read this story and I think it's interesting.
Even in your Bibles, the subtitles is going to say the fall.
Right?
Because and I don't necessarily think that's bad, but here's the thing.
If I'm going back, once again, this is Moses and Sinai explaining this to the Israelites.
Who is this God?
Yeah.
And so he talks about this idea of creation and we're created for a purpose and we're
created to live in rest and male and female together, we make the image of God and we're
called to fill the earth, subdue it and really further God's reign in the world.
And then you stop.
My next question as a Israelite is why isn't life that way then?
Right?
That's the natural question.
Yeah.
Well, and we asked that question today about things in life, right?
Right.
And I think that it's helpful for us to look at this story as an answer to that question.
Right?
That we're going to understand and this story doesn't necessarily, yes, it talks about original
sin, but it also talks about what sin is and we're going to get to that.
But first off, I want to point out a bone that I have to pick with many, many people
who interpret this passage.
Is that fair?
Yeah.
Okay.
So Genesis chapter three, how does that start?
Can you read like the first verse for me?
Yeah.
And I read out a new Living Translation.
So if you want to write to me about that, go ahead.
He's NLT, I'm NIV.
Yeah.
But you know, we both read ASAP.
Right?
Exactly.
So it says, the serpent was the shrewdest, hold on a second.
It says what?
The serpent.
Are you sure that doesn't say the devil?
It does not say the devil.
It says the serpent.
Okay.
Well, all right, keep reading.
So it says the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals.
Hold on a second.
Did it just say that the serpent is a wild animal?
Yeah.
The Bible was specific that it's the serpent and that it's a wild animal.
Not only that, that it was the shrewdest of the wild animals that the Lord God had made.
Interesting.
So who is the serpent?
Now there is, I'm talking about this kind of tongue and cheek and if you grew up in
the church, you're going to understand what I'm talking about.
But we immediately go and we talk about that this is Satan in the garden.
Now I don't think that that's necessarily a bad application long term.
But where are you getting that in the text that's been written so far?
Yeah.
I think what you're going to see and we're going to talk about a lot of remas and a lot
of callback and a lot of allusion to the scripture and frequently in scripture, you're going
to have people refer to Satan like a serpent.
Okay.
But when you do that, what you're actually doing is you're saying, hey, do you remember
the serpent in the garden?
What she did, who he was?
Yeah.
What Satan is doing like that now.
Yeah.
And where we get this reference of the serpent is actually comes from Revelation where they
make that tie in together.
But the people who would have been reading this back in the day when this was originally
written would not have had Revelation.
Right.
So if you were a Jew coming out of Israel and you heard the story or read that the serpent
was the shrewdest of all the wild animals that the Lord had made, you actually don't
have the connection that that's Satan.
Yeah.
Now you might have a question when he says the serpent said to the woman and you're like,
hold on a second, snakes don't talk.
Right.
Which on a very broad level and once again, we're going to recommend multiple times, especially
through Torah, check out the Baywatch podcast, check out the Bible project, check out Rabbi
David Forman's material.
He's got some great stuff here.
Right?
This snake, this serpent is very crafty.
It's the craftiest on the planet.
Yeah.
It talks.
It reasons.
Says, to God really say reasons, makes reasonable arguments.
And apparently it walks or flies, one of the two.
Yeah.
Now, some of you are wondering why I say walks or flies.
You can't be cursed to do something you already do.
Yeah.
Right.
The curses show up later and we're actually going to talk about that.
So this snake for whatever purpose is an animal, but it can walk and talk and reason.
And apparently Adam and Eve aren't surprised when it talks to them.
So then what you should be asking in the story, what is the difference between this snake
and man?
Yeah.
That's a great question to ask.
One thing I would just add real quick is if you're like, okay, well, did it walk or did
it fly?
What did it do?
It doesn't matter.
Right.
Like it doesn't matter.
That's not the point.
The point is that the text is not trying to tell us the details of whether it had four
legs, six legs, eight legs or wings or whatnot.
Right.
It is telling us that it is the beast of the field.
And there's a clear illusion that for all intents and purposes, the things that we would
say make humans human is also characteristic in the snake.
Yeah.
Right.
So what is the difference?
Which I believe is actually going to be really important when we talk about the nature of
set.
Yeah.
And when you're talking about what is the difference, like how many people listening
to this podcast have ever asked the question like, hey, God, if you're real or hey, was
that really God's voice that said that?
Or hey, was that really God speaking to that other person?
God, I need some confirmation on that.
Right.
That's actually has striking similarities to how the serpent talks.
So she says, I'm not supposed to eat from the fruit and I'm not supposed to touch it
because otherwise we're going to die.
Because God did say, if you did this fruit on that day, you will surely die.
Okay.
He can say this.
Now, serpent is says, you will not certainly die for God knows that when you eat it, your
eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil.
Okay.
Here's the problem.
What do they, what are they already made in the image of?
God.
Okay.
So have they been given a commandment of what to do?
Yeah.
Have they been given a commandment of what not to do?
Yeah.
Okay.
So they're going to be like God knowing both good and evil.
So they already have that, right?
They're already made in the image of God.
They already know what they're supposed to do.
Be fruitful and multiply.
Subdue the earth and fill it and rule it.
Right.
According to the image of God.
Yeah.
And they're not supposed to eat of this tree.
Like they know what to do and what not to do.
So they're already like God knowing both good and evil.
So the serpent is saying, you're going to get something you already have, which by the
way, can we just comment?
That's most sin.
Yeah.
Right.
So you're trying to get something you already have.
Yeah.
And you're going to make a big mess on the way to get it.
Okay.
All right.
So you're going to be like God knowing both good and evil.
Now here's the thing that I find very interesting.
When the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, both
things that were described earlier in Genesis, but also desirable for gaining wisdom.
She took it and she ate it.
We skip over that, right?
Desirable for gaining wisdom.
Yeah.
Okay.
What wisdom is she actually getting that God hasn't given her?
Nothing.
But she says, God, you are holding out on me and I'm going to take and I'm going to
receive because I know better than you.
You have a four year old.
You ever, you ever, she ever think I want another cupcake and you're like, no, you've
had three.
Yeah, that's a pretty regular occurrence of like, I mean, cupcakes are a great analogy.
We don't really have cupcakes in our house that often, but like it's a pretty regular
occurrence of like, no, of like the other day I made her fried rice for lunch.
And she was like, I don't want fried rice.
I was like, well, what do you want?
She's like, I want the sugary cereal.
And I was like, well, no, we're going to do fried rice.
My four year old's a little stubborn.
And so she was like, no, I'm going to wait you out.
So we waited out till dinner and then she's like in tears, hungry because I was like,
well, you still have your fried rice.
And she's like, no, I just want more sugar.
Right.
So when I read this, I don't view this actually as an issue of them needing more.
Like they had every scene.
Right.
But they thought God was holding out on them and you just don't want me to have sugary
cereal.
But here's the thing you know about sugary cereal.
You know that diabetes is a problem in America.
Yeah.
Obesity is a problem in America.
Yeah.
And like also let's just, you know, since we talked about it in episode one, like things
like COVID, influenza, colds, all those different things you're more susceptible to when you
have a poor diet.
And you're like, I want you to be raised to be healthy and not get sick.
Yeah.
You know this.
You're not holding out.
No.
And, and you know, I'm obviously every analogy falls apart.
Like you're not never going to give her sugary cereal.
No.
But you know when she needs it and when she doesn't.
I mean, almost like you're a good father.
Yeah.
We have sugary cereal.
We have ice cream in our house, stuff like that, but we don't just eat that.
So what happens when she's able to get that sugary cereal and she eats a whole box?
Oh, she doesn't feel good.
She doesn't feel good.
And sometimes you end up with some extra stuff on the floor.
Well the other day she actually, she's to the point where she can get her own cereal
and write and like do all that stuff.
So the other day I was doing some work on my computer and she snuck like three bowls
of sugary cereal.
And then she comes up to me, she's like, my stomach hurts.
And then when I found out what happened, I was like, yeah, no wonder your stomach hurts.
Right?
Right.
But you, so like coming back to Genesis, you have this happening here where you had man
and woman in the garden with God.
They had everything they needed.
Made in the image of God.
They're in fellowship with God.
Things were perfect.
They know good.
They know evil.
They know what they're supposed to do.
Yeah.
The deceit wasn't okay.
This food looks good.
Yeah.
They already knew the food looked good.
Yeah, they knew it looked good.
The deceit was, hey, God's holding out on you.
Right.
Which by the way, can we just take a step back and say, the tragedy isn't that Adam
and Eve happened.
It's that it happens every day in our lives.
I know.
Every day we get up and we say, God, you're holding out on me.
So I'm going to take for myself.
Yep.
How many marriages do you know that are ruined because a guy, a gal, whatever it is, they
say, I don't believe that this is enough.
I need to go and get for myself.
Right.
Men thinking with parts of their body, women lacking the fellowship that they desperately
need in a mate.
Right.
This isn't enough.
I'm going to go get for myself.
Yeah.
And then everything falls apart.
Yeah.
Because that's the nature of sin is God, you don't know what you're doing.
Yeah.
Now, which brings me to the point.
And like I said, we have a couple of things that I think is really interesting here.
This thing is called the tree of good and evil, right?
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The problem is the tree can't give you the knowledge of good and evil because they already
have it.
Right?
Yeah.
Now, by the way, this is Ben's thought experiment.
Please don't take this as doctrine.
Okay.
But what is interesting about this thing, the word that is used for knowledge is also
used in the book of Exodus for creative artistic expression, the ability to create, right?
And they are making the tabernacle.
Now, if you take that idea and you take it back to the book of Genesis and you have this
idea of what is knowledge, it's the ability to interpret for yourself what is good and
what is evil.
Yeah.
This tree gives you the ability to interpret for yourself what is good and what is evil.
Now, the problem is the world is meant to work a certain way.
And as soon as you step out of line with that, death happens.
Yeah.
So, that happens.
Brokenness happens because God created an ecosystem that works according to His will.
And when you step outside of that, He's not going to stop you.
So this is the interesting thing.
People are like, well, God brings punishment.
I was like, no, you step out of God's plan and punishment is just the natural consequence.
It's like when you get a virus on your computer.
The manufacturer didn't put a virus on there.
You downloaded it and then it messed everything up.
So what God wants to do through Jesus Christ is He wants to reformat your hard drive and
put in some firewalls.
Amen.
Right.
And let's just touch on that idea of punishment for a second.
Right.
So, all right, I'm going to get some emails for this.
This is going to be great.
The punishment-
I shouldn't say that.
We haven't actually gotten any.
Of course, we haven't posted anything yet.
A little out of you guys know, we record in multiple episodes before we actually post.
Yeah.
But this idea of punishment that God is punishing us because of what we did.
Right.
You actually don't find that in chapter three.
Nope.
And so people will be like, well, the wages of sin, I hear it now, the wages of sin are
death.
I was like, okay, yes.
Right.
Wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.
And in chapter three, even though the wages of sin are death, it doesn't say that God
initiated punishment on his children for that.
Right.
And you actually read through it and you have God who is saying, he's like, okay, where
are you?
They're like, oh, well, we're hiding because we're naked.
And he's like, well, who told you you were naked?
Right.
And then they fess up-
I told you that what I made you was enough.
Yeah.
Then they fess up to this, right?
Then they fess up and Adam throws Eve under the bus and Eve is like, and okay.
But-
Right.
It's a good thing they absorb that knowledge, right?
Right?
Because here you have God.
He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, who told you this?
Like, who told you this?
Who said that you weren't enough?
Right?
Who said that you needed to be better?
Right.
And can we pause here because I'm just about sick of men and the way they treat women,
by the way.
Adam is as much or more to blame.
Period.
Okay.
Yeah.
They did not have the fruit, take a bite of it, then wander around the garden for 15 minutes
to find Adam.
Right.
Adam was standing there with her when this went down.
Did I ever point out to you?
I think I pointed out to you at one point, but I want to read this to you and see if
you see what I see.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good and for food and pleasing to the
eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked and they
sowed fig leaves.
Okay.
When were their eyes opened?
After Eve ate?
After both of them.
After both of them ate.
Interesting.
Because together there's the image of God.
Right.
You know, I'm also reminded of something Jesus said about love covering a multitude of sins.
Yeah.
And just as a thought experiment, I don't want to see any emails on this.
What if Eve had taken a bite of Adam and said, no, that's not what God wants for us.
Put it down.
Right?
We could speculate on what could happen, but it's just not in the text.
I can tell you what happens in marriages today.
When one person is ready to take a bite of an apple and throw everything away and the
other one looks at them and says, no, you put that apple down and you come back.
I don't have to speculate.
I know what happens.
Forgiveness, restoration, redemption.
That's what happens when one person has the courage to put the apple down and not eat.
Mm-hmm.
Man.
It's like I got a little bit deeper there than I meant to go.
That's all right, man.
That was good.
Yeah.
All right.
So this idea, right?
So, man, what's going on?
This woman you sent here, she brought me this apple and she was like, go eat.
That's the BLT, Ben's Living Translation.
Right.
Yeah.
It's a tasty translation.
So God says to the woman, he says, what have you done?
She's like, well, the serpent deceived me.
So God said to the serpent, and can I read this because you and I have talked about my
beef here and I want you to tell me what's missing.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed her, you above
all livestock and all wild animals, you'll crawl on your belly and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
He will crush your head and you will strike a seal.
To the woman, he said, I will make your pains in childbirth birthing very severe with painful
labor.
You will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.
To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which
I commanded you, you must not eat from it.
Cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil.
You will eat from it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plant of the fields.
Okay.
What's missing in there?
What's missing is the curse that's been placed on man and woman.
Right.
There's right now, we're going to get emails.
I can literally hear the typing happening in the future.
Okay.
I said, I want to read this to you.
He says, cursed are you above all livestock.
He's talking to the serpent.
Then he turns to the woman.
He says, I will make your pains in child birthing very severe.
Now I've never given birth.
It looks not great.
Right.
So maybe you look at that as a curse.
I was like, but there is a word that's missing.
Cursed are you with child birthing, pain and child birthing.
Yeah.
Then he says to Adam, he says, cursed is the ground, the ground because of you.
You're going to work through thorn and thistles and eventually you're going to return to it.
The serpent is cursed and the ground is cursed because of Adam.
But for all intents and purposes, they left the word curse off of women's childbirth.
One of the things that my wife has talked to me about and was very true for me being
in the room is I've never felt closer to God than I was during childbirth.
When you're actually giving life, creating life.
I know life in the womb and all that, but your life is actually being realized.
That moment, there was this moment that I identified and I saw the world just for a
second through God's eyes.
It's the feeling that I get when I put my hands in something to work and I work and
I work and I work and I work and I finally see my project accomplished.
I sit there and just for a second, I see it through eternity.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It connects me to God, my work, my work for humanity, my work for God, my work for the
community, whatever it is.
It connects me to who God is.
Now it's about what's easy rather than what connects you to the world.
Which, holy cow, let's talk about America.
Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm laughing over here a little bit right now because I'm just laughing because in America,
we're like, okay, how can we, especially right now, we're like, okay, how can we make the
most money while putting in the smallest amount of work?
How can we do all these things and make it so we don't have to worry about anything,
but we also don't have to work because we want it all?
The American dream is no longer to have a nice job, have a nice house, have a nice family.
It's to be able to do nothing and still get paid for it.
You look through the design of creation, we're designed to work.
We're designed to have a job.
Right.
There's actually-
It's literally built into our DNA.
When we don't work, there's actually been some studies.
I don't have them in front of me, but you can Google them and look.
There's actually been some studies that have shown that idleness leads to depression.
Yeah, I believe it.
We're designed to work.
We're designed to be moving.
We're designed to be active.
We're not designed to sit still and do nothing.
Couple of things to consider here.
The reason I bring this up is what is the nature of sin?
We believe God's holding out on us and we believe that we can define good and evil better
by ourselves.
Yeah.
Guys, that boils every sin down.
Yeah, that's everything, everything about it.
Everything is fundamentally broken in humanity prior to Jesus coming in that respect, in
that we start to define good and evil on our own terms.
Now, there are people who continue to define good and evil by God's terms, but as a whole,
humanity starts to finding good and evil for themselves.
By the way, you should hear that today.
If it feels good, it's good for you.
Yeah.
Some of the hardest people to talk to about Jesus are the people who are like, man, I'm
so happy for you.
Like I'm glad you like that.
I'm glad that works for you.
Right.
Those are the hardest people to talk to about Jesus because it's like you don't actually
see your own depravity and you don't see that you're in need.
I'm being very careful with this because it's very easy to go down that slope of like, oh,
we're all just wretches.
You look at Genesis 3, there wasn't actually a curse placed on man or woman.
You could argue that sharpening pain in pregnancy was a curse.
You could argue that, but it doesn't actually say that.
What is God's response to that?
God's response right after that is, is it said, okay, then the man, Adam, named his
wife Eve because she would be the mother of all who live.
We talked about that last week a little bit.
The Lord made clothes from animal skins for Adam and his wife.
You have God who said, okay, I see what you did.
I know what you did.
I see that you have stepped out, but here, I see that this nakedness is shaming you,
but here, let's cover that up.
Adam and Eve did not make their own clothes.
And can we just talk about the grace of God in that moment too?
Because he did say on this day, you will surely die.
And then what doesn't happen?
They don't die.
Now I think that you can make a strong argument for like in some respects, they absolutely
did die.
Something fundamentally changed.
Who they were was no longer there.
They were a broken image of God.
But God has grace in them every single day that they continue to walk the earth.
And that does not make God a liar.
Let's be really clear on that.
Just because God said, okay, on this day, you'll surely die.
And then they did it.
And they didn't die.
That doesn't make him a liar.
What that makes God is grace-filled.
Makes him loving.
Makes him compassionate.
Yeah, it makes him loving.
It makes him grace-filled.
And then it makes you wonder why Jesus said phrases like, okay, love the Lord with everything
you have and love your neighbor as yourself.
And this sums up the entirety of the law.
Right.
By the way, we're going to reiterate this like thousands of times.
If you think the Old Testament is about an angry old God and that the New Testament is
all fluffy Jesus, I'm sorely misunderstanding because Jesus says, man, I am here to represent
the Father as clearly as possible.
So I want to talk about that really quick here because you're talking about him clothing
them.
He says, then man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil, able to determine
for himself what is good, what is evil.
Yeah.
Right.
He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat
it and live forever.
Now, we hear that and we're like, well, why not?
Because you're broken.
We don't want you to get stuck this way.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, I thought this was really interesting because we're talking about work and childbirth
about bringing us back to Eden, right?
Listen to this.
So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground.
Yeah.
From which he had been taken.
The Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to what?
Work the ground.
Why?
Something about working the ground brings you back to God.
Right?
And I'm not talking about literally working the ground.
Like maybe, maybe.
There is actually some interesting scientific things about actually putting your hands on
earth.
Yeah.
Right?
There totally is.
We're not going to dive too much into that.
And if you're like, well, why is that the case?
Why is working the ground something that draws us closer to God?
I don't know.
Like I don't fully know the answer, like specifically working the ground.
But what I can tell you is that we were designed to have a job.
Yeah.
And if we don't have a job.
And that job actually leads to fulfillment.
Yeah.
It actually connects us to our identity, which is what we're missing.
And I also think there's a thing about finding God in the midst of the work.
Right?
One of the songs that I really like, you know that song Waymaker?
Yeah.
Even when I can't see it, he's working.
Even when I can't feel it, he's working.
And I think that's the invitation is for us to go and join him in there.
Now, I think the temptation you could say, well, you know, he never stopped, he never
stopped working, that's the next part of the words.
Okay.
God also knows how to rest.
He knows how to party.
It's going to be all over Leviticus and Numbers.
We're not going to get into that yet.
Yeah.
But he also knows when to put his nose to the plow and plow up the fields.
You know what I mean?
So I wanted to come back to the tree of life a little bit, because it says that after Adam
and Eve sinned, they were banished from the garden.
And there was a cherubim who was actually placed to protect the tree of life so that we want
to eat of that again.
The idea of that is we often view that, I've heard this taught as like, man, this is punishment
so that you can't return to the way God had things before.
It's like, no, we would actually be stuck eternally in our damaged selves.
And when I realized that God right there.
And so it's actually the grace of God to say, hey, I don't want you to be like this forever,
but I am going to give you an allotment of time so you can see how much I love you.
Right.
So if we put this in context of where are they hearing the story at Sinai again, right?
What are they about to receive?
Ten commandments, right?
Ten commandments, and they're about to receive the law, and they're about to enter covenant
with God and walk forward.
And what is this covenant really designed to do?
Bring them closer to God.
He says it in chapter 12 of Genesis, he says it to Abraham, he says, I'm going to bless
you so that all nations will be blessed.
The intention of God with the people of Abraham is to bless all nations.
And he's going to take a people and go into covenant with them.
And through them, the entire world is going to find salvation because he's going to put
them on display and draw people back to himself.
Spoiler alert, totally happens.
Yeah, it does totally.
Take some awkward turns, but it totally happens.
Yeah, there's definitely times where we're like, humans really just did that thing in
the Bible, but it totally happens.
All right.
So that is that's the story of sin, right?
Because if I'm asking why isn't the world this way, it's like because we wanted to define
good and evil on our own terms.
And if I'm Israel listening to that, I'm like, yeah, I get that.
Yeah.
And I mean, think of that in the context of Israel in captivity in Egypt, right?
They essentially have felt like they've been abandoned from God for about 400 years.
And so there was probably a lot of time where people did define what they thought was good,
what they thought was wrong, and you can actually see hints of that in Exodus 1 and 2, especially
when Moses kills the other Egyptian guard and runs away.
Like there's some of that conversation there actually hints that there was some own self-definition
of right and wrong.
And so you have that going on.
Right, not to mention the Egyptians find it to be right to enslave the Israelites.
Yeah.
Right?
They have to fight good and evil on their own terms.
Yeah.
And so you have some of that going on and you have actually Israelites who are actually
stepping more in line with what the Egyptians believe, which is only natural because they've
been there for so long.
Right.
So you have this idea of like, where does sin come from?
Like why are we this way?
And then we get this interesting story that comes after this.
And I want to point out to this because we're talking about Christian existence.
So we've talked about sin.
What is sin?
It's when we try to find good and evil on our own terms rather than finding the truth
of Christ.
Right?
Yeah.
So then the next question or next statement that happens in with Cain and Abel, the next
section with Cain and Abel deals with this idea of sacrifice and this idea of honoring
God and worship.
Right?
But there's some interesting bits in here that I find push against our theological ideas
really hard.
So she gave birth to Cain who's the older and Abel who's the younger.
So Abel kept flocks means he had animals and Cain worked the ground.
Now he worked the soil.
So theoretically, what should that do?
Draw him closer to God.
Grab him closer to God.
And yet who's closest to God?
Abel.
Interesting.
Okay.
In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruit of the soil as an offering to the
Lord and Abel also brought an offering fat portions from some of the firstborn of his
flock.
Text is pretty interesting there.
It doesn't clearly say that Cain kind of phoned it in, but he kind of phoned it in.
Right?
I think that's a reasonable assertion from that text.
God looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look
with favor.
So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.
Okay.
So people said that God rejected Cain's sacrifice.
It actually doesn't say that.
You know, said he didn't look on it with favor.
Yeah.
You know, you hear what I'm saying?
He didn't, it doesn't say God rejected his sacrifice.
It says he didn't look on it with favor.
Yeah.
Didn't say that he didn't receive it.
Just didn't look on it with favor.
It doesn't even mean that he didn't appreciate it.
He just didn't look on it with favor.
Yeah.
People are like, why are you saying this over and over, Ben?
You need to hear that.
Yeah.
Like there are things that you do when you give a sacrifice to God that he looks on with
favor.
Yeah.
Because it's something extraordinary.
So when your son does something that you're like, okay, that wasn't great.
Do you completely reject your son?
No, I'm like, good job, buddy.
Yeah.
Right?
Even though it wasn't like something that'd be favorable to you.
Yeah.
So now here is, here is, here's, so Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.
Totally see my four year old now.
Thank you so much for that.
You know, 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 don't do what is right, don't worry.
Cause 3000 years from now, I'm going to send my son into the world to die and you'll find
redemption through him.
So where in this passage does that say it's referring to Cain's offering?
Good point.
So if you, if you heard what I said, I didn't actually quote the Bible there.
And I hope I, you know what I did quote?
A lot of our theology.
Yeah.
Okay.
So some of you are already, I can hear you typing.
I'm not talking about the original sin isn't a real thing.
Okay.
Please don't hear that.
God says this to Cain.
This is post fall living in the world, Adam and Eve.
Now sin has entered the world, right?
They're defining good and evil in their own terms.
And God says 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.
Yeah.
Man, that, that takes a sucker punch to our theology.
It does because we are taught that we can't.
Correct.
I mean, we're taught that, okay, we can't have a dominion power over sin.
And I would argue that the Bible doesn't agree.
Yeah.
The Bible does not agree.
Now I hear all of you typing right away.
Then what about Jesus?
What about Jesus?
We would love to have a conversation about that, but we're not having it today.
We're getting there.
Cause it, cause Jesus sacrifice his death, burial and resurrection is fundamental.
It is necessary.
It is the pivotal crucial apex point of the Christian existence with God.
It is very important.
Maybe I'm going to actually argue and I'm going to say that what I, what the Bible teaches
about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is actually more important than what
you think.
Yeah.
It is more important than what you think about why Jesus had to come live, be, be Kurt killed,
buried and raised from the dead.
It is so important, but it doesn't change the fact that God says your sin, you can conquer
it if you want to.
I I've heard this said, man, it's, it's an Isaiah.
People always quote it.
They, they like to throw Romans and Isaiah together.
They say, um, all of our righteousness is as filthy rags for the wages of sin is death
and the gift of God is eternal life.
When you say it together, it sounds like one passage, right?
But it's not, do you know, I only found out like two years ago, it's not one passage because
I've heard it quoted together so many times.
I was like, where does Paul say this together?
Sure.
That he doesn't know he doesn't.
And in Isaiah, they're dealing with guys that are doing the sacrifices, doing this system
and their life looks nothing like what a priest should look like.
Yeah.
They're doing these activities with the image of spirituality, but they're dead inside.
That doesn't apply to them.
Nope, doesn't apply at all.
And God says, man, everything you're doing, it is worthless because you don't actually
want to be different.
Yeah.
You don't actually want to tell my good story.
You just want the blessings without being part of the family.
Yeah.
And God says to us, sin is waiting at your doorway to devour you.
You can conquer it.
Now I would argue that our fundamentally changed nature, we choose not to.
Yeah.
We come in flawed and we choose not to over and over again, but we do meet a guy in chapter
12 who through faith, pleases God.
Yeah.
And so jumping back to the sacrifice here from Cain and Abel, so a lot of times we're
like, okay, we interpret this through the lens of the sacrificial system and Leviticus.
Leviticus hasn't been written yet.
Keep that in mind.
Yeah.
This hasn't been written yet.
So what you have is you have people who are being like, okay, I recognize something's
broken and I'm going to offer something to God.
Right.
Because he genuinely is there for God, the other one doing it because he's going through
the motions.
Right.
That's what you have going on right now.
And I tongue in cheek just a minute ago said, oh yeah, that doesn't relate to the church.
I was like, it totally relates to the church today.
Like they're totally related to people who claim to follow Jesus.
How many of us are obeying the moral law?
Because we don't want God to zap us with lightning.
Yeah.
Rather than we do these things because we know it touches God's heart.
Right.
Because God loves us.
And he's loving.
And more specifically, we love God too.
Yeah.
We do things.
And by the way, sometimes you're going to have things that God wants you to do that
you don't want to do.
I don't particularly like washing the dishes, but I do it.
Yeah.
Because I love my wife.
Right.
And all of you who don't wash the dishes don't love your wife.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
Like each person has to figure out with their family what they're going to do.
Right?
You're partners.
You're not one person over another.
But I do things not because I like them, but because I love the person.
And in the love for the person, a lot of times I find that I like what I'm doing.
Yeah.
A good example, Tara and I.
Okay.
Some of you don't know who I am, and that's okay.
I don't like hiking.
I really don't.
Like I like getting to destinations and sitting down.
Ben's being very nice about this right now.
He does not like hiking.
I do not like hiking.
But you know who does?
My wife.
Man, she loves hiking.
And I don't do it as much as I should.
But when we go for a hike, it's because I want her to be able to enjoy something.
Right?
Yeah.
Now, you know what I do like doing?
Playing video games.
Yeah, so much.
I'm such a nerd.
Right?
And you know what Tara does?
She plays games with me.
Yeah.
Not because she particularly has some great love for video games, but because she loves
me.
Yeah.
Man, that's what it is.
Sorry, we got off a little bit on there, but man, that's part of the unscripted, man.
Yeah, that's how it goes.
And so when you're reading through these passages and stuff like that, so often I've heard Chapter
4 interpreted as a like, oh, doom and gloom type chapter of like, this is when the first
murder was committed.
Right.
And that bad interpretation is just an incomplete one.
Yeah.
Because oftentimes I hear the story of Cain and Abel and how Cain murdered Abel.
Yeah.
And they start off with that and I'm like, bro, that's the second half of the story.
Yeah.
Like the first half is that I actually were going through the motions to offer something
to God.
One person was doing it with genuine heart, one was not.
And then God, here's the interesting thing.
Who did God go talk to after the sacrifices?
Right.
Or the offerings?
Who did God go talk to Cain?
He goes and talks to the one who was doing it half-heartedly.
Right.
If that doesn't echo Jesus, I don't know what does.
So we've been talking about the field.
And so I just want to point out a couple of things here that I think are interesting.
So now Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field.
Yeah.
The field is important, guys.
This is the place where they're supposed to work and actually connect with God, right?
While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
Yeah.
And so once again, a place where you're supposed to be connecting with God, work that you're
called to do, actually reconnect you, actually goes the opposite way and you redefine again.
And I think that we're seeing a perpetual continuation of sin.
And by the way, if you don't see the connection between this story and Adam and Eve, there
are connections all over the place.
Foreman's book, Beasts that Crashed the Door, really good.
Check it out.
Right.
It's all over this place.
So I think this is interesting though.
So God then comes to Cain.
He's like, what did you do?
The blood is literally crying out from the ground.
Right.
Crying out from the ground of what?
The field.
Interesting.
What's the thing about the ground again?
Like you work it and it connects you with God?
Yeah.
And blood is crying out from the field?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Just throw that out there.
He now says to Cain, who is a guy who's been working the field, you will be a restless
wanderer on the earth.
You're never going to be able to settle down.
So interesting thing.
You ever shepherded?
Some, not a lot.
So in shepherding, you tend to take sheep around, you know, crops, not crops, it's
herds.
You take them around.
You actually go around places with them.
You might even say that you're a wild wandering nomad.
Yeah.
Which, what did, remind me, what did Abel do again?
He's a shepherd.
He actually tells Cain to go and be a restless wanderer.
Cain's like, man, I can't do this.
Somebody's going to find me.
They're going to kill me.
He's like, nope, they're not going to kill you.
If they kill you, they're going to get seven times worse what you get.
Right.
So he's supposed to be a wanderer.
But what does Cain actually do?
He goes and he founds a city.
Yeah.
So I'm not, you know, I'm not like a architect here, but I think cities are kind of permanent
places.
Right.
So he's not actually being a restless wanderer.
And then his generation after generation after generation, they don't get better, they get
worse.
God told Cain to go and be a wanderer.
Yeah.
And he stays still.
And seven generations later, we get a guy by the name of Lamech who says that he's 70
times seven times worse than Cain.
Maybe God knows what he's doing.
And maybe we've been interpreting God through an angry lens when Jesus tells us to interpret
it through love God and love other people.
God's goal in everything he's doing with people is to redeem them.
All of them.
Yeah.
Period.
Right.
It's so good.
So in the ties from this story over to life of Jesus stories like there's actually ties
from this story over to stories of the prodigal son.
There's ties back to Adam and Eve.
Like this story is vitally important to understand.
Right.
It's not like a lot of times we kind of skip over and we're like, okay, well Cain killed
Abel moral of the story that.
Yeah.
Don't hate people in the head with a rock.
Yeah.
By the way, it doesn't say that.
It doesn't say that.
Anyone don't.
People don't know because you we don't know God died.
We don't.
There's no medical report to very blood that fell into the ground.
That's what we know.
But there's so many ties throughout all the scripture on this.
Yeah.
Right.
And so you want.
You want to be really careful with this story and you're understanding of it.
You want to understand that Cain even though his offering wasn't pleasing to God.
He is going to have.
Hardly God met with him.
Right.
God meets a minute and he gives him a solution.
Yeah.
You want to understand that God didn't necessarily curse Cain.
He fell on his step-sons.
Yeah.
And then he also gives him an ability
to actually walk in his brother's shoes.
And not only that, he says, what if somebody kills me?
He's like, nope, nobody's going to kill you,
because I'm going to put a mark on you
that nobody can touch you.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, where was this god of anger and frustration?
Yeah.
Right?
It's fire.
Side note, jump ahead to Exodus.
And when there's a spot in there where God's talking to Moses
and God is angry with Moses because Moses is like,
I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.
And what does God do in his anger?
He sends someone to help.
Yeah.
It's almost like there's a theme throughout the Bible
that God is always trying to help people make
the right choice and move them along in the right direction.
Yeah.
And now, you don't have to agree with our interpretation
of that.
That's OK.
I've done a lot of reading on these chapters in Genesis,
and I think there's a lot that we did not talk about.
I do, like I said, recommend checking out
some of these other podcasts, some of these other teachings.
Get some people who get into the contextual Hebrew,
because it's important.
But if we're talking about what are our takeaways from this,
so what would you say our first takeaway from these two
stories is?
So the thing I would say on this story is, first off,
just stop viewing God as a judgmental God in the story.
That's how I was taught the story as a kid.
Right.
Like you did a sin, and boom, you are judged.
Right?
That is not what's going on here.
God's actually being so loving and so graceful
in this moment.
Do you see the love of God?
And when you choose to define sin on your own terms,
do you see the love of God in the middle of that?
Just beckoning you and creating a way for you to come back.
Yeah.
And a God who refuses to let you permanently
make yourself that way.
Yeah.
Right?
And then the next thing is, when you come before God
and you're offering sacrifice, worship, whatever
you want to call it, right?
Because we're not in Levitical system yet,
so please stop jumping ahead to Leviticus.
Right here, God meets.
He looks with Pharaoh and Abel, and he meets with Cain.
Yeah.
And he says, man, you have the ability to be better than this.
And if I'm reading between the lines what God says,
and he's looking at Cain, he's like, I believe in you.
Yeah.
And I'm just going to ask the question,
does this foreshadow up toward Jesus?
He's like, hey, love your enemy.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Hmm.
So we're in the Gospel of John right now.
Yeah.
And I just had this crazy thought.
OK?
I want you to think about the beast that's
crouching at the door.
Right?
He looks to Cain and he says, why is your face?
Why are you angry?
Why is your face downcast?
If you do what is good, won't you be accepted?
But if you don't do what is good, sin is at your door,
crouching, waiting to devour you, but you must conquer it.
Right?
Knowing what Cain is going to go out and do.
Right?
And knowing that he's going to create a way for Cain
to once again find redemption, and knowing that Cain is still
not going to follow that.
Yeah.
OK?
Now jump ahead to the Gospel of John,
and Jesus is at the table.
And he says, all of you are chosen by me,
but one of you is going to betray me.
And they're like, who's that?
You know?
He says, one that dip in, and I give him the bread.
And he gives it to Judas Iscariot.
Right?
And he looks at him and he says,
go do what you're going to do.
Man, I hear echoes of, sin is waiting at your door,
waiting to devour you, but you must conquer it.
It's almost like it's the same guy making
the same kind of statement.
To another son he knows is going to make a mistake.
Yeah.
You know, the craziest thing to me is Jesus never
chastises Judas.
No, he doesn't, for he never does.
Now disciples get really mad out of shape about it.
You know who never says anything about it?
Jesus.
He actually has much more to say about Peter
than he does about Judas.
That's another episode.
That is such another episode.
Man, so just know that God is looking
for you to connect with him.
And he's going to find a way to get you back
into his household one way or the other.
And that is one of the things you have to understand
about who God is.
Like if we're talking about Torah,
and the things we need to understand about God is that,
we create sin when we try to define good and evil
on our own terms.
And that if you just come back, you can actually
conquer that and come back to what God is calling you to be.
Yeah.
But our fundamental nature change won't let us.
And so, Jesus.
Yep.
Right?
Yeah.
And yeah, so with this story, like I see a loving God.
Loving God.
I see a loving and grace-filled God
who is meeting with a person who halfheartedly
wants to be with God, who's just going through the motions.
And God's like, hey, why do you feel this way?
Right?
Couple interesting side notes on this.
It doesn't say how they knew Abel's gift was.
Doesn't fully say that.
So there's a little bit of an implication on us being like,
heart committed to God, heart half committed.
There's a little bit of an implication there.
The other thing that's interesting
that I just wanted to point out was that Cain replied
to the Lord, this is in verse 13.
He says, my punishment is too great to bear.
OK?
So we look at that.
And I've always interpreted that through the lens of, OK,
God put this punishment on him and it was too great for him
to bear, right?
But God didn't.
God, yeah, put the punishment on it.
But you look at the ramifications
of what Cain was asked to do.
He was asked to live life like his brother lived lives.
Right?
How does his brother live life?
Pleasing to God.
Right.
In a way that pleased God.
Feels like there's an invitation there.
Yeah.
Wander the earth.
Come on.
By the way, I also don't feel like God says
that anything has changed.
No.
If you do what is right, won't you be accepted?
Mm-hmm.
That invitation is still there.
Yeah.
That invitation is still there.
And it's all throughout the Old Testament.
Guys, it's there over and over and over again
because the father so loved, he gave.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, man, I think we got to close it there.
That's good.
Thank you so much for listening today.
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