old testament | Jesse Joyner

What Cain and Jesus Share

Stained-Glass-Panel-the-Birth-of-Cain-and-Abel — A stained glass depiction of the births of Cain and Abel. Germany, late 14th Century.

What?! You’re comparing Cain, the first murderer, to Jesus? How dare you!

Follow me here. I was writing a paper about ministry with children and I suddenly discovered in the Cain and Abel story something I had never seen before…

You probably already knew that Cain was the first child to be born (remember, Adam and Eve were created). But what Eve said upon his birth is pretty remarkable. She said something that leads us to conclude that Cain and Jesus were both gifts of God’s grace, each in a unique way.

Here’s the excerpt from my paper….

When we look at Scripture, the first children in the Bible were Cain and Abel. Their parents, Adam and Eve, had already been banished from the Garden of Eden due to their disobedience and sin towards God (Gen 3:16-24). In this new reality of paradise lost, Adam and Eve conceived their first child, Cain. Despite having a broken relationship with God, Eve proclaims, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man” (Gen 4:1; italics mine). These are the first post-Edenic words spoken in Scripture, which I believe speaks to the significance of ministry with children. In this newly fallen world, our predecessor Eve viewed children as a gift from God. Even Cain’s name in Hebrew is a wordplay intended to sound like the word for “to bring forth” (Coppes 1980, 797-798). This means that God’s first gift of grace following our sin was a child. We turned from God, and the way he extended an offer of grace was through a baby.

Does that sound familiar? Thousands of years later, despite our sin, God gifted us all with the baby Jesus Christ as the ultimate gift of His grace.

This establishes the point that children are both a gift from God as well a means of God’s grace to adults (and other children, for that matter). Most adults in this world and in the church community understand that children are a gift, but how often do we view them as channels through which God extends His grace? When we view children in this way, we realize that as adults, we need children as much as they need us.

Citation:

Coppes, Leonard J. “Cain.” Theological wordbook of the old testament. Vol 2. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke eds. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980.

Children’s Ministry Lesson: The Ten Plagues

I have taught Children’s Church lessons for over a decade and I think yesterday’s lesson on the ten plagues was one of my favorite lessons to ever teach.

Please don’t think that I love dark and dismal things like plagues. They really are pretty negative. Biblically speaking, they were real judgements carried out on lots of people, ultimately leading to death for many.

Thankfully, we are separated by centuries from these ten plagues described in the book of Exodus. That is enough separation of time for me to feel free to use some creative object lessons to help kids remember the story and ultimately – the main point (which has to do with Jesus Christ).

So we had a little fun in re-telling the story. Here’s what I did with each of the plagues to help the kids learn and remember them:

Blood (the Nile turned to blood): I lined the kids up behind a trash can. They each came up with a popsicle stick and a small cup of water. They then dipped the stick (representing Aaron’s staff) into a bottle of red food coloring and transferred the stick to the water. And whahlah: the water turns to blood. We did it right over the trash can so they could throw it all away immediately since red food coloring tends to make some serious stains (like blood 🙂
Frogs – I juggled some stuffed frogs and then threw them at the kids. If you don’t know how to juggle, that’s fine. You can just toss stuffed animal frogs at them!
Gnats – I sprinkled pepper on a child’s arm.
Flies – I brought out my fly swatter and pretended to swat all the flies around me.
Livestock – I juggled some stuffed animals (cow, sheep, horse) and then threw them at the kids. Feel free to skip the juggling part again.
Boils – I put dozens of stickers all over the skin of a volunteer kid (face, arms, neck, etc.).
Hail – I threw marshmallows at the kids: first small ones, then jumbo ones; this was by far their favorite plague.
Locusts – no object lesson here, I just told the story (I guess I needed an object lesson break 🙂
Darkness – I gave all the kids blindfolds and they blindfolded themselves; then I gave them simple commands like waving their hands in front of their faces; from that we discussed how difficult life can be when you can’t see anything (and pitch darkness over a whole city can cause a great deal of havoc).
Firstborn/Passover – I painted some red paint on a piece of wood and spoke about the angel of darkness passing over the homes of the people with the lamb’s blood over their doorstep; I also had all the kids lay down and pretend like they were sleeping – then we pretended it was morning and all the first-born children had to stay down while the others could wake up; it was a good visual of how some kids made it and others did not; I also gave them some unleavened bread to eat.

This then led to the most important part of all – the fact that Jesus is the Lamb of God. And his blood was shed so that we can be set free (as Moses and the Israelites were set free after the Passover). I explained to the kids that I do not think it was a coincidence that Jesus died on the cross at the end of Passover week the year he died. That was the week that Jewish people celebrated the exodus into the wilderness and the angel “passing over” any homes with the lamb’s blood. So also should we have the lamb’s blood (i.e. a relationship with Jesus Christ) and that is the only way we believe we can be free from the judgement of God due to sin.

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Could You Turn Down 15 Million Bucks?

Delilah was a sell-out to the Philistines. Like Judas, she accepted money in exchange for betraying someone very close to her. But I recently discovered a detail that blows my mind about the story of Samson.

The Philistines offered Delilah the equivalent of 15 MILLION dollars in today’s money (see the IVP OT Bible Background Commentary by Walton, Matthews, and Chavalas).

Delilah assured the Philistines she would find out the elusive secret to Samson’s strength. After three failed attempts, Delilah finally nagged Samson to death and he gave in and told her that his long hair brought him strength.

This is what’s known as a king’s ransom. Israel had no kings, so the judges were the top rulers (Samson ruled Israel as judge for 20 years). The Philistines were willing to pay top dollar to wipe out their destructive enemy.

Of course, she cut his hair, he lost his strength, the Philistines hauled him away, and made him a slave with his eyes gouged out. But then his hair grew back and he took down their temple during a big party, taking out a couple thousand Philistines along with himself. We never find out what happened to Delilah nor whether she was even paid for her services.

So we give Delilah a bad reputation. And though I’m not justifying her actions, I wonder, could I have turned down 15 million dollars? Could you?

We give people in the Bible a hard time for their decisions, but they were humans just as much as you and I are humans.