Recovery Devotional 278 Exile of the Earth

JMD Devotional 278 Genesis 4:7-14 Exile of the Earth

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you, but you must master it. And Cain said to his brother, Let us go out to the field. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And [the Lord] said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground. And now you are cursed by reason of the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's [shed] blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth [in perpetual exile, a degraded outcast]. Then Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, You have driven me out this day from the face of the land, and from Your face I will be hidden; and I will be a fugitive and a vagabond and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.

It is ironic that the sin of Cain, the first farmer, exiled him from very earth he loved. Sin always kills something you love; sin always leads to death. Since God is Holy, sin separates us from Himself, the source of all life. In the short-term, it is the death of our conscience, then the death of our relationships and reputation, eventually to the death of our physical bodies and finally the death of our soul. Sin is incurable and always fatal; God’s extreme remedy is rebirth, regeneration, a new spirit, soul and body. We get new spiritual life when we accept Christ as our Savior and Lord, our soul (mind, will and emotions) are transformed over the course of this life in our pursuit of holiness and sanctification and we are promised a new incorruptible body when we meet Jesus in the sky. Death works on multiple levels, so salvation must ultimately bring restoration to all of them for God will settle for nothing less than wholeness and perfection. We can try in vain to lengthen our days through medicine, and restore relationships through counseling but the area that most needs to be addressed is our primary relationship with Him.

Dear God,

I cannot go back and undo the past; I have experienced spiritual death, and at one time all my relationships lay in ruin and my world nearly imploded. The harder I tried to ‘fix things’ the worse they became. I praise You, because when I exhausted all of my futile remedies and all my idols were exposed as frauds, You rescued me. I surely did not deserve Your mercy; but I am so grateful for it! Only divine power could turn such a train wreck of a life around; only a skillful surgeon could heal a retched heart. You are worthy of worship because You alone can make all things new. And the best is yet to come…

Amen

All (but*) quotes are from The Amplified Bible, published by

the Lockman Foundation. (AMP)

Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation

*New International Version (NIV)

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

**Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. (Eugene Peterson's easy-to-read, contemporary Scripture translation)

I originally produced these blogs between 2006 and 2007, which were then published in my book, JMD Recovery Devotionals. In 2010, I am sending these out to a few people as I review them and see if my point of view has changed.

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