Finding the Love of Your Life

or. Becoming like the one whom you would want to love for the rest of your life!

Finding the Love of Your Life: Part I

Context: Cain murders Abel, and is charged by God.
He is not killed but cursed and protected by God.

We have much to learn from this narrative:
* As Adam and Eve were cursed, they discovered that blessings accompanied those curses. We, too, will find that the hard things God sends our way are also accompanied by grace. Which of your difficult circumstances might be accompanied by blessing?
* As Cain held back the best of his crop, he put the lie to his offering of dedication. So we, too, are measured by our condition of heart, not merely by the merit of our behaviours.
* We are self-centred, as was Cain; being self-centred is not satisfying, we have a god-shaped vacuum that we cannot fill. We want and need the approval, the blessing of…
Someone who is important to me.
Someone who knows me.

We cannot find the approval, the blessing that we need from another human.

INTRODUCTION:
The top three questions I have been asked:
What’s God will for my life?
Should I marry this person?
Where did Cain find his wife?

Outline:
Gen. 4:17 Cain had marital relations with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was building a city, and he named the city after his son Enoch.

I. Cain found a woman to marry and produce children.
a. Interesting genealogy: his grandsons were the first metalsmiths, instrument-makers, etc., as well as being disreputable.
Lesson: everyone contributes.
b. Interesting question: Where did Cain’s wife come from?
i. No explanation is given in Scripture; that’s the right answer.
ii. Perhaps she was his sister: Whoa, what about incest?
a. Not mentioned here as incestuous.
b. Earliest prohibition called incest as that between parent and child.
c. Marriage between siblings was only forbidden in the Mosaic Law (Lev. 18, 20), centuries later, in dramatic contrast with the Egyptian practice among the Pharoahs.
IVP Hard Sayings of the Bible:
First, if the human race was propagated from a single pair, as we believe the evidence indicates, such closely related marriages were unavoidable. The demand for some other way of getting the race started is an unfair expectation.
In the second place, the notion of incest must be probed more closely. At first the sin of incest was connected with sexual relationships between parents and children. Only afterward was the notion of incest extended to sibling relationships.
By Moses’ time there were laws governing all forms of incest (Lev 18:7–17; 20:11–12, 14, 17, 20–21; Deut 22:30; 27:20, 22, 23). These laws clearly state that sexual relations or marriage is forbidden with a mother, father, stepmother, sister, brother, half brother, half sister, granddaughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, aunt, uncle or brother’s wife.
The Bible, in the meantime, notes that Abraham married his half sister (Gen 20:12). Therefore, the phenomenon is not unknown in Scripture. Prior to Moses’ time, incest in many of the forms later proscribed were not thought to be wrong. Thus, even Moses’ own father, Amram, married an aunt, his father’s sister, Jochebed (Ex 6:20). In Egypt, the routine marriage of brothers and sisters among the Pharaohs all the way up to the second century made the Mosaic law all the more a radical break with their Egyptian past.
The genetic reasons for forbidding incest were not always an issue. Close inbreeding in ancient times was without serious or any genetic damage. Today, the risk of genetic damage is extremely high. Since the genetic possibilities of Adam and Eve were very good, there were no biological reasons for restricting marriages to the degree that it became necessary to do later.

iii. She was created for Cain by God, as He had created Adam and Eve.
iv. For those Christians who accept evolution, Cain’s wife may have been one of many other humanoids, evolving toward full human form, as had Adam & Eve; of course, that raises more problems than it solves.
1. If Adam and Eve were the product of evolution, what made them distinct from the other hominids of the day?
2. If Adam and Eve were the first to evolve from a lower hominid, how did they find one another?
3. If this is what happened, then does that not require us to understand the Garden of Eden as only a metaphorical place? After all, why wouldn’t there be other such species, slightly lower, perhaps, who might find their way into the Garden?

II. Cain found a wife, though he was ill prepared to be a husband.
a. Remember that Cain had wrestled with God over his banishment.
i. Cain murdered his brother out of jealousy:
1. Cain had had the blessing of his Mum, Abel was named ‘Whatever.’
2. Cain was distressed by God’s rejection of his offering, compared to Abel’s.
3. God blessed Abel’s, not Cain’s.
4. That left Cain in blessing-deficit!
i. He’d had his mum’s.
ii. He missed God’s.
b. Cain now attempts to gain the blessing of God by taking a wife and producing offspring. The most obvious way to exhibit divine blessing was to “be fruitful and multiply.”
i. Cain found a wife and they multiplied.
ii. But the blessing was more precise than that:
1. Multiply AFTER YOUR KIND.
2. In Adam & Eve’s case, that would have meant godly offspring.
3. In Cain’s case, he reproduced himself biologically and morally, not a good thing.
4. Cain missed the point; sharing the external sign of obedience was not the same as the internal matter of obedience.
III. Cain has placed himself at the centre of his universe, rather than God.
a. He still needs the blessing of God.
b. He doesn’t know how to find it.
When sin entered the world, we became self-centred. Being self-centred does not satisfy the emptiness that we have.
c. Cain sought the blessing appropriate to the firstborn.
IV. What is the blessing of the firstborn? A blessing is not merely words!
i. Someone Important loves you.
ii. Someone Significant knows you.
iii. Someone Essential delights in you.
iv. Someone Central enjoys you.
v. Someone Powerful who embraces you.

Transition: There is nothing and there is no one who can make us whole and healthy besides God himself.
God uses friends, family, and partners to move us forward, to bring us happiness, but when we put one of them in that empty place in our souls, we make them an idol.

Isaac desired a wife, a wife he could not find. Finding a mate is a great thing.
Isaac’s brokenness was made plain by his helplessness in that quest. God directed his father’s servant to successfully find Rebekkah.

Gen. 2: It is not good for a man to be alone.

Prov. 18:22 He who finds a wife finds what is good
and receives favor from the LORD.

Jacob desired a wife; when he met Rachel, the fulfillment of his dreams seemed near.
Unfortunately, Jacob was seeking something more profound than merely a mate. He was seeking blessing, the sort of blessing that we all long for, but that can come only from God himself.
In Jacob’s case, God used his father-in-law, Laban, to highlight Jacob’s own brokenness. Jacob, who had deceived his own father to gain his father’s blessing, discovered that the blessing he had stolen was empty.
He is now deceived by his faith-in-law, who gave him Leah instead of Rachel.

Both of these characters were hungry for approval and blessing.
Both were looking for a mate to make them feel loved, secure, and significant., etc., all things that a first-born should know and experience.

Both were blessed by God, but they did not fully enjoy that blessing.

CONCLUSION
What about us? Many of us are looking for this blessing, this approval, this embrace, from a friend, a mate, a parent.
We are like Fievel: We are certain that there is someone OUT THERE, beneath the pale moonlight, THINKING OF ME and loving me tonight.

The only place you can find this blessing, this approval, this embrace is from God himself, no mere human can do this for you or to you. There is an experiential element to our salvation…

Rom. 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Rom. 8:16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.
This is our birthright. You can ask God for this confirmation.

When we come to faith in him, the scripture says that his spirit baptizes us into Christ.

When you come to that point, where you have set aside this self-centred quest, then you can say with the Psalmist…

Psa. 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
Psa. 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

That is wholeness, that is how healing feels.
That is the
Someone Important who loves you.
Someone Significant who knows you.
Someone Essential who delights in you.
Someone Central who enjoys you.
Someone Powerful who embraces you.

We go to the firstborn of all creation, we become part of his family. His family is the only one that consists of all firstborn children.

Heb. 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,
Heb. 12:23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect,
Heb. 12:24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

The only way we can be a part of this church of the firstborn is to have our names written in heaven by the Firstborn of many brothers and sisters, Jesus himself.
Col. 1:15 ¶ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Application:
1. If you never received this blessing from your family, know that most of us who did have functional families still missed out on this most intimate of blessings, this deepest sort of approval that comes only from God himself.
2. If you are married, you have probably made the mistake of looking for blessing, soul-affirmation from your mate; back off, drop the demands. Acknowledge to them now that it’s not his or her fault that you are yet unfulfilled.
3. If you are not married, don’t think that this longing is wrong, God did make you for himself; singleness is okay since Jesus.
4. If you expect to marry, don’t be discouraged at your progress; a close friend, a life-mate can help you on your journey, you don’t have to be perfect in order to marry.
We will address that more next week.

So, who IS the Love of your life???
Speak in your heart of hearts, now to…
Someone Important who loves you.
Someone Significant who knows you.
Someone Essential who delights in you.
Someone Central who enjoys you.
Someone Powerful who embraces you.