The Plan

DEVOTION

GENESIS

THE PLAN

Gen 4:25-26

25 Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him." 26 Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.

NIV

How did Eve know, except through divine revelation, that Seth replaced Abel? In the Hebrew interlinear text it uses the word for seed which has been translated child or son. But seed is a more accurate rendition.

John 7:42

42 Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?

KJV 

Although the NIV uses descendant, most all other translations use seed to refer to Christ coming from the seed of David, and David was from the seed of Abraham and he was from the seed of Noah who was from the seed of Seth. Of course there were more in the line between these men and Christ, but the point is that God was preparing the line from which Christ would come into the world. Jesus did not arrive in a natural way, nor was the line of descendants by happenstance. In fact the promise God made to Abraham was simply a renewal of his plan from the very beginning God determined the line or from who the seed would be to produce the Son of God. This means God knew all along that he would have to redeem his creation because of their sin. He would have to justify his own judgment on sin. Man cannot do it, only God can satisfy his own need for justice. So he informed Eve that she had a son who would replace Abel, who must have been the original seed or line Christ was to come through. Now we see it was Satan who tempted Cain with this bad attitude. Satan was aware the seed of Abel was to produce the Christ and he made every effort to extinguish it. That is his technic and he continues to employ that today in our lives. He wants to extinguish the effects of Jesus Christ in our lives. When he tempts us and we fall prey to that temptation he jumps on the guilt and shame bandwagon. He wants us to feel belittled and unworthy of being saved. But we can know that God will always provide a way. Although Cain killed Abel, God determined to replace him with Seth and through him our redemption came. Satan will try to steal that from us, he will attempt to kill our faith, kill our trust, and kill our very being, as he has always done. That is what he did to Adam and Eve in the first place by tempting the woman. Had they eaten from the tree of life instead of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would have lived forever. In effect, Satan through temptation, got them killed. He must have thought he thwarted the plan of God, but no so. Then understanding that God was going to use the line of Abel to bring forth a way to redeem his creation, he tempted Cain so much that he killed Abel and again, Satan must have thought he gave God a big setback, crushing his plans. But not so, for he told Eve that Seth would replace Abel and the rest is history. So we have to know that once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and have the redemptive power of Christ at work in us, Satan is about attempting to thwart that plan, that effect in our lives. Although we might, at times, fail to see those moments and fall prey we never lose sight of the divine purpose in our lives, which is our redemption or salvation through Jesus Christ. Yet Satan even attempts to distract us trying to get us to think works or good deeds are needed to be saved, or that we are saved through baptism, rather than by faith in Christ. We need to see that as God always had a plan by which he was going to redeem us, he also has a plan for our lives. We have learned that before and we continue to maintain that idea throughout our struggles in this life. His divine influence upon our lives is sufficient.

2 Cor 12:9

 "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

NIV

It is true, that we are weak, we fail at times, if fact many times, but then if we think we are strong, and able to never fail, we deceive ourselves, or that is another trick of Satan to get us to think we can be strong, that it is our strength which gets us to be “Good enough”.  Some would look down on our failures, making us feel even worse, and that we should be stronger and overcome every adversity in our own ability, or even because of our faith. Yet the fact remains we are weak, we are not strong enough. Although we are weak and we fail, his grace, his divine influence upon us is sufficient and it is his power that is made perfect in our weakness. That is the work that Jesus did on the cross which covers it all. What he has done is perfect and Satan cannot change that. God has always had that plan. He revealed it to Eve and he reveals his plan to us. We only need to live by his plan.