Did God See What Was Done to You? Listener Questions | Daily Devotional & Bible Study

God Saw What Was Done to You: Listener Questions

Today is one of our Q&A episodes, where we take a pause from the Bible study so you have time to catch up and I can work through questions that have come in.

Two questions in this one. The first asks why people with religious roles so often fail to live obediently, which is a pattern running straight through Scripture. The second is harder and I want to handle it gently: why did God protect Cain after what he did, and why do some people lose their freedom because of somebody else's choices?

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Does being close to religion mean you're obedient to God?

Sarah put it in a phrase I keep thinking about: religious proximity does not equal religious obedience.

That's been a theme in Scripture from the very beginning. Adam and Eve were in perfect communion with God. They walked with Him daily. And still, because God gave us free will, proximity didn't produce obedience.

There isn't a day that goes by without someone in a religious role falling into sin. We hear about it constantly. You may have experienced church hurt yourself at the hands of a leader or a pastor. That's the reality of the fall, and it's the story written all through the pages of Scripture.

We've been watching it in Luke. The Roman political system had corrupted the religious leadership of the day, which is the whole backdrop behind the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the religious establishment Jesus keeps encountering. Having a religious role never meant being obedient to God.

What it comes down to is the difference between going to church and knowing Jesus. Some people go to church and then go home and harm their families the rest of the week. Some go hoping it absolves them of what they're doing elsewhere. A great deal of harm has been done in the name of religion. Proximity is not an indication of where the heart is.

And God's remedy for that, over and over in Scripture, is sending Jesus. We can know about Jesus without actually knowing Him, and those are two different things.

My hope for this show, and for the books and the trips and everything else we do, is that you would know Him for yourself. That doesn't mean you'll always get it right. We aren't perfect, which is exactly why we need Him. But being disobedient, feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit, confessing, and being restored to right relationship through Jesus is the whole rhythm of the Christian life.

Why did God protect Cain?

This question came in from someone working through the Genesis series, and it's one a lot of people carry, usually in different forms. At the heart of it is often a wound. If you've ever been hurt by somebody else's choices, you know the ache in it. Why does the person who caused the harm seem to get mercy while the person who was hurt has no say at all?

Let's look at what actually happens in Genesis 4.

Cain kills his brother in a field. Then God comes to him and says, what have you done, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Before God says one word about punishment, He makes it clear that He heard Abel. Abel never got a voice in that field. God gave him one. The first murder victim in Scripture is not forgotten.

Then comes the sentence, and it has layers. Cain is driven from the land, the ground won't produce for him, and he becomes a restless wanderer. He panics and says whoever finds him will kill him. And God puts a mark on him so that no one will.

Here's the detail worth knowing. The Hebrew word for mark is ot, which means sign. It's the same word used for the rainbow after the flood and for the blood on the doorposts at Passover. It isn't a brand of shame. It's a sign of protection.

Why would God protect him?

Two things are happening.

In the ancient world there were no courts and no police. Justice was handled by family members, and it usually meant revenge. And revenge did not stop at one life. Entire families were wiped out in the name of it. You can watch it start just a few verses later with Lamech, Cain's descendant, who brags about killing a man for wounding him and says if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven. That's what vengeance does when it's left in human hands. The seed of it grows.

So God's protection of Cain puts a limit on the violence before it consumes the whole human family.

And look what Jesus does with that number later. He takes Lamech's seventy-seven and turns it into how many times we forgive. The way of Jesus is forgiveness. There's still justice, but it belongs to God rather than to us.

Protecting Cain is not the same as excusing Cain. He lived with real consequences the rest of his life. The ground didn't work for him, and at that time that was survival. But God also didn't give up on him.

Remember, we're not reading these stories to study the people. We're reading them to see the character and nature of God. Here we see mercy and justice together. That's hard to hold at once, especially when you're the one who was hurt.

Why do some people lose their freedom because of someone else's choices?

God doesn't hand out free will to some and withhold it from others. Every person bears God's image and every person has a will. But we live in a broken world where our choices land on other people. Freedom means the choice to love, and it also means the choice to harm. When someone abuses or wounds or betrays another person, the one who was hurt didn't choose that. Their safety was taken. Their innocence was taken. God calls that evil.

I struggled with this myself for a long time. Years ago in seminary I was working through some childhood trauma with my spiritual director. In my mind, I got saved at fifteen, so I had somehow concluded that anything that happened before that was my own fault for being sinful, or that God hadn't shown up in my life yet.

What my spiritual director said to me then is what I've said to many of you since: the evil that was done to me grieved God too.

He grieves what is done to us. That's part of why He sent His Son.

There's a theological piece here worth naming. We live in what's called the already and the not yet. Jesus has already come, lived a sinless life, completed the work on the cross, defeated death, ascended, and sent the Holy Spirit. But this world is not yet fully redeemed. Until He returns, it isn't finished. So we live in a broken place, and those things break God's heart.

Where is God in what happened?

Scripture keeps showing us a God who moves toward the one who was harmed.

Think of Hagar. She was used and mistreated and left alone in the desert, and she named God El Roi, the God who sees me.

One of my favorite verses to share with people who are hurting is Psalm 34:18, that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. He knows you will experience heartbreak. This is not the world He designed, and it's why He sent Jesus to redeem and restore it. We're just not there yet.

He also promises justice. Romans 12 tells us vengeance belongs to the Lord, which means nothing done in the dark is overlooked.

And then there's Hebrews 12, which says the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Abel's blood cried out for justice. The blood of Jesus speaks healing and forgiveness and restoration. Jesus was the innocent one harmed by other people's choices, and He allowed it so that nothing done to you would be the end of your story.

If you're carrying something that was done to you, I want you to know that God saw it. He grieves it. And He has not stopped working toward your healing.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Why we do Q&A episodes, and what SpeakPipe is for
• 01:20 Sarah's question on religious proximity
• 02:07 Why proximity never guaranteed obedience
• 03:32 What we've seen in Luke about corrupted leadership
• 04:01 Going to church versus knowing Jesus
• 04:30 Knowing about Jesus is not knowing Jesus
• 06:15 A question from the Genesis series
• 07:13 The ache underneath the question
• 07:44 God heard Abel first
• 08:31 What the word for mark actually means
• 08:58 Why revenge could not be left to people
• 09:46 Lamech, and what Jesus does with that number
• 10:16 Protection is not the same as excuse
• 11:21 Everyone has free will, and choices land on others
• 12:20 What my spiritual director told me
• 13:08 God grieves what was done to you
• 13:32 The already and the not yet
• 14:29 Hagar and the God who sees
• 15:30 Vengeance belongs to the Lord
• 15:36 A better word than the blood of Abel
• 16:25 He saw it, and He is still working
• 16:47 Prayer

Frequently asked questions

What is SpeakPipe for?
Prayer requests and questions about the show or past episodes. It isn't a place for complaints or for counseling.

What does the mark on Cain mean?
The Hebrew word is ot, meaning sign. It's the same word used for the rainbow and the Passover blood, and here it functions as protection rather than shame.

Do I need to listen to the series in order?
No. The content is evergreen and people listen in whatever order works for them.

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