Genesis Four: If Only We'd Trust Him

Many decades ago, when Nancy and I lived in Missouri, we met Sallee. She was such a sweet-spirited child of God, and we enjoyed our friendship. Not long before we met, she’d been diagnosed with cancer. I remember when I visited her in the hospital, the nauseating odor of death saturated every square foot of her room. The tumor had grown so large in her abdomen, it looked like a soccer ball. As soon as I opened her door and smelled her death, I wanted to turn around and step back into the hospital corridor. But I knew that would embarrass her, so I pulled a chair to her bedside and visited for a while.

 

Everyone familiar with the Scriptures knows that cancer, along with every other disease known to humanity, is a result of sin’s entrance into the human race. Please note this:  I AM NOT saying people contract cancer because of their sins. I AM NOT saying that. That would be like presuming like the Lord’s Twelve presumed when they asked Jesus about the man born blind: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” ³ Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

 

In the Garden of Eden – as will be true in the final Garden described for us in the prophets and in Revelation – there was no sin and therefore there was no disease, or death, or pain, or sorrow. That’s why we read in Isaiah’s prophecy of the final Garden: “Your eyes will see the King in His beauty; They will behold a far-distant land . . . ²⁴ And no resident will say, “I am sick”; The people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.” (Isaiah 33:17, 24)

 

But that future Garden is still to come. The Genesis Garden was then – and we still live in its aftermath. And although Sallee’s body was being slowly eaten by that cancer, she had HOPE, because she knew her Savior would soon call her home. She knew in that place God would give her a new body which would be nothing like the one in this life. Sallee believed the promise God made through the prophet Jeremiah (29:11): “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”

Hope. If I can get anything across during this message is that God has given us HOPE. And the REASON for our hope is directly traceable to the Garden of Paradise – because God sent Adam and Eve away from it.

 

Last week I speculated that the reason Cain killed his brother had at its root his anger at God for having banished his parents from the garden. The ripple effect of their sins took root in Cain’s heart and eventually moved him to murder. I also believe that the root of his ANGER was a disbelief in God's trustworthiness, a disbelief that God REALLY wanted the best not only for his parents, but for him and the rest of the family. Cain lived under demonic disbelief because he chose to look only at what was seen and not at what was unseen.

Have you known people like that? Of course you have; People who suffer tragedy and scream at heaven - “WHY?” before they turn away from Him. Have you met people who lose loved ones to accident, or illnesses, or murders, and on and on and on. And Satan whispers in their ears – “See? What kind of a God of love is this One to whom you’ve given your life?”

 

Israel’s history – as well as the history of the Church – is replete with such examples. Not long after God rescued the nation from Egyptian slavery, they grumbled and said (Deuteronomy 1:27) ‘Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us.” And at the other end of Israel’s Old Testament history, when God told them He loved them, they replied (Malachi 1:2) “How have you loved us?”

 

We need not give further examples of people turning from God in either the New Testament or the Church era. The point should be pretty clear by now – and that point is this: We ALL have a little – or a lot – of Cain inside us, quick to find fault with God, to blame God for whatever it is we don’t like, choosing to see with mortal eyes and not with eyes of faith which tell us  God is GOOD, regardless of how things look in the natural.

So, let me repeat what I said a minute ago because it helps to make the point I need to make in this message: I believe Cain’s murderous attitude toward Abel had at its root his anger at God. And hear this as well: The root of that anger was his refusal to believe what God did in that Garden was for everyone’s eternal welfare. When Cain focused on the banishment of his parents from Paradise and on his own labor in the fields, he could not recognize the wondrous love of God in the realm of the unseen.

I don’t believe God banished Adam and Eve from that Garden Paradise because He was angry with them. He banished them because of His inexplicable love and protection.

 

How is that? For the answer, let’s now look at today’s text in that third chapter of Genesis. We pick up the story after sin entered the human race and God was about to banish our parents from the garden: 

 

(Genesis 3:21ff) The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²² Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— ²³ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴ So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”

 

Like Sallee’s cancer, the stench of the sin which began in the garden has by now surely saturated every square inch of God's creation. No wonder St Paul tells us: (Romans 8:22-23) “²² For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. ²³ And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”

 

It doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to recognize that sin ALWAYS gives birth to more sin. God tells us through St James (1:14-15) “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”

 

Just think for a moment what heaven would be like if God had not sent our first parents away. Moses tells us: “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” If they’d eaten from the Tree of Life, they – AND WE who are their progeny – would live FOREVER in a hopeless, sin-suffused state.

 

Like an incurable gangrenous cancer, Salle and all of humanity – that includes you and me – could never know the unspeakable joy of an eternal intimacy with our holy God. And this promise of Revelation could NEVER come to pass. Listen to some of what St John saw waiting for the Christian – and only the Christian (Revelation 22:3ff):

 

There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.”

 

Which brings me to this additional point of my message: Oh, Holy Spirit, help us to trust God to ALWAYS do what is right for us – even when things seem to be going all wrong. Even when we do not understand what is happening in and around us. Even when we don’t LIKE what is happening in and around us.

 

Cain would NOT have been angry if he had trusted God to do right, even if he didn’t understand or LIKE what God had done – either to their parents or in the reception of his offerings. This point is exquisitely applicable to you and to me in 2024 because our anger blinds us to God's goodness.

 

Christian, please hear this: Faith that pleases God is all about trusting our Father – who Himself IS love – and who can NEVER do anything that is wrong, unjust, spiteful, or capricious. Surely that is likely one reason Scripture tells us from one end of the Book to the other, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (See Hebrews 11:6)

It was their unswerving trust in a trustworthy God that brought approval to those heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. It was their Romans 8:28 faith – unshakable confidence that God causes ALL THINGS to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

It was their Romans 8:28 faith that propelled those men and women forward with God – even those who “were tortured . . . ³⁷ They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated ³⁸ . . . wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.” (Hebrews 11:35ff)

The biblical writer goes on to finish commending those ordinary men and women this way: ³⁹ And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰ because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.

Did you catch that? I hope you did. Those whom God approved because of their faith DID NOT, in their lifetimes, received what He had promised them.

That is such an extraordinary statement, isn’t it? Like Job’s attitude centuries earlier, they also held fast to their faith, proclaiming in essence: “Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him.”

Oh, how I would love faith like that. And there was a time when I was SURE I had that kind of faith. For the better part of 45 YEARS, I silently prided myself, sort of like Peter prided himself, that I had a rock-solid faith.

And then Nancy had her hemorrhagic stroke in 2019 while we were visiting Florida. Some of you here today remember that time.

And in an instant my confidence in God collapsed. I still remember weeping out loud as I drove the interstate toward my friend’s home where I would spend the night. I’d just left Nancy at the Rehabilitation hospital for the evening, and I was begging God to help my unbelief.

I desperately wanted to trust Him with Nancy. And I was so ashamed of myself that I was not doing so in the same way I’d always urged others to trust Him when they struggled with devastating life-events.

I’ve told this story before. Some of you might remember it. I tell it again because it is so germane to my point. Suddenly God broke into my thoughts. I will never forget the two questions He asked me while I was driving. The first was this: “Richard, what do you know about Me?”

His question was so abrupt, it stopped my tears. I thought about the question for a few moments and then I said: “Lord, I know you cause all things, even nightmarish things, to work together for good. I also know You will never let me be tested above what I am able to bear. And I know you never leave me, never forsake me, that you are always with me, even in my nightmares.”

 

I was about to continue my litany of the things I knew about God when He interrupted me with this follow-on question: “Why do you know those things are true?”

 

I didn’t need to think about my response to that question. I answered, “Because the Bible tells me so.” And then the Holy Spirit suddenly connected the dots for me. All of my questions and my doubts and fears and uncertainties, they all find their answers in what I know to be true about God because God said those things are true of Himself and of His relationship with me through Christ Jesus.

 

Don’t misunderstand me, please. I do not mean to suggest God always heals or reunites or fixes everything that is broken. He clearly does not always fix it. But OH! How much better my experience would have been during those many months in 2019 after Nancy’s stroke if I’d been able to place myself, my wife, and our circumstances into the hands of our most loving Father – and leave them there.

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer” – and LEAVE them there.

 

So, let me try to summarize what I have tried to say in this message: Cain didn’t trust God's goodness. If he HAD, he would not have done what he did to his brother. But this message is not only about Cain. It’s about me. And you. And I suggest that our lack of complete, all-embracing, and undiluted faith and confidence in God's PERSONAL love for us is what always leads us to seek our own way, and not His. Our lack of confidence in His trustworthiness is the ROOT of all our disquiet and frustrations and fears.

 

Let me repeat that for emphasis: Our lack of confidence in His trustworthiness is the ROOT of all our disquiet and frustrations and fears.

 

So, Christian – whatever are your circumstances today – what do YOU know to be true?  And just as important, why do you know it to be true? 

 

If what you know about God and His relationship with you is NOT based on His infallible and eternal truth found throughout His holy Bible, if what you know about Him is not rooted and nurtured in God’s eternal truth, then your life – as is mine – is in grave danger of collapsing around you when life’s storms ravage across your life-journey like a three-mile-wide tornado.

 

Calvary reveals so many things about our God that we could spend a lifetime unpacking them, and still hardly be at the beginning. But this one thing floats to the top of my consciousness when I look at Calvary’s hill: God is so much more merciful to us than we can ever comprehend this side of eternity. When we are faithless, He remains faithful to His covenantal promise to us; He remains faithful to His unconditional promises to us. When we deserve nothing less than judgment, He instead wraps His arms around us and draws us close to His chest.

 

It is not possible to please God if we do not trust Him. Cain needed more than anything else to trust God's goodness, even as he worked the fields by the sweat of his forehead and the blisters on his hands. And I needed to better trust God's goodness even as Nancy was lying in an ICU bed surrounded by tubes and wires and high-tech machines.

 

And perhaps some of you might also need to better trust God's goodness as you struggle every day – every day – with things that seem on the surface to give you reason to question His never-failing, never-diminishing love and care and protection for you.

 

And we should also know this: Such confidence in God despite the tornados is supernaturally sourced. It is not anything anyone can gin up on our own. We might as well try to change the time the sun rises in the morning. But it IS something our supernatural God wants to give those who ask for it, to those who seek for it, to those who keep knocking on His door for it.

 

Will you join me then to keep asking for it, keep seeking for it, keep knocking for it? He tells us throughout Scripture as He told Jeremiah: (33:3)  ‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’