Sibling Rivalries and a Whole lot of Water (Gen. 4-7)

Doug and his brother fighting...

My sister and I never got along when we were younger and to this day there still is a little rivalry left in us to become our parents favorite. We use to fight over everything in hopes that one of us could be better then the other. When we would lose a particular battle for greatness in our parents eyes we would throw a ridiculous tantrum. Our parents would then help teach were we went wrong and remind us that there would never be one favorite child and they were proud of both of us. Through reading today I was comforted to realize that this childish behavior has happened since the begging of time and I wasn't the only one guilty of this childish behavior.

In chapter four we see a sibling battle between Cain and Abel as they try to find favor with the Lord. God has always asked that we give to Him 10% of our first fruits. Not the left overs or a little bit. Abel understood this and did just that bringing the best of his flocks to the Lord. Cain on the other hand brought the Lord mediocre portions of his flock at best. Because Abel did what God asked, the Lord found favor upon him. He was disappointed with Cain and  and began to use this moment to teach him an important lesson about tithing.


^"6 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ 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.” 

As any good father would do, God made it very clear to Cain where he went wrong and corrected his actions to make him a better follower and son. This wasn't what Cain wanted to here and he wanted to get rid of the competition. He lured Abel out to the field and in his reckless childish tantrum he attacked and killed his brother.

How often do we over react to correction in our lives as Cain did? Often times our feelings get hurt when we do something wrong, clouding our thinking, causing us to miss the point of the correction. I encourage you to do all that you can to remove the emotion of anger and sadness when being corrected by parents, authority figures and most importantly God. We must realize that all of these people are not trying to hurt us but help us become a better person and follower of Christ. This is a difficult thing to deal with and it may be hard but to get better we must continue to take correction humbly and be grateful that we have people in our lives willing to help us get become better people and Christ followers. Don't pull a Cain!


As Genesis goes on we see the beginnings of the story of Noah, his ark and the flood. At this point God has looked down on to the earth and is not happy with what he sees. In the midst of all of the chaos God did find a faithful son, Noah. God commanded Noah to make an ark and fill it it with pairs of every animal, his family and every type of food that was available for them to eat. God then told Noah,


^"11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. ¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³ So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. ¹⁴ So make yourself an ark of cypress^[c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. <sup>15"

This is where we will pick up tomorrow...</sup>