Listen!

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: Listen!-------------------------------- Date: 3/25/01
Keywords: "blood" "cry" "curse" "listen" "restless"

Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation.

Passage: Genesis 4:10-12*

10. The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

11. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

12. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."

Questions

1. What did God urge Cain to do, that Cain had not been doing?

 

2. What was Cain's main occupation?

 

3. How did Cain's curse relate to his life's work?

 

Practical help

Cain was a farmer. The God-ordained consequences of his sin crashed in on him in a big way. His pride and joy, the fruit of his labor, would no longer come so easily. The field, in which he murdered his brother, would no more give of itself freely the way it once did.

We can draw a corollary to sexual sin and pornography addiction. Every person has a God-given need and desire to have intimate, sexual and emotional relationships with another. If we are faithful to that urge, we will see it blossom fruitfully in a committed, loving marriage relationship with a life partner. If we pervert that drive by selfishly pursuing ways to get personal gratification without the risk of vulnerability and openness in relationship, then it will turn on us. Our family relationships, the very thing we were built for, will no longer freely yield pleasure and satisfaction and rest, because of the overhanging guilt and deception, and the hiddenness and lies.

This story urges us to stop and listen, to open our eyes and ears to the truth of the blackness and sin that has gripped our own hearts.


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Copyright 2001 by eXXit
*
Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.