We find in the fourth chapter that God introduced children. Cain was born into the family of Adam and Eve. “She conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord” (vs. 1). The name Cain means acquired. How many dear Christian parents have looked upon their firstborn and said, “How wonderful, we have gotten a child from the Lord.” Another has said, “Whatever Eve’s own condition as believing the promise, what she says at the birth of Cain was the expression of the thought that the fulfillment of promise was in nature, which could not be. Sin was there and death, and the judgment of the hope of promise connected with nature had come in. ‘I have gotten a man from Jehovah’ was faith in promise, but the expectation of the accomplishment of promise was in nature. And Cain had to go out from the presence of Jehovah.”
When Eve had the second-born child, it tells us, “She again bare his brother Abel” (vs. 2). The name Abel simply means vanity. There is a real message here. If we look upon the children whom the Lord has put into our families as something simply that we have gotten from the Lord, we are not looking upon them in the way God intends us to. Cain, the first man born into this world, ended up as a murderer. He killed his own brother. Did Adam and Eve have any responsibility for what Cain did to Abel? Indeed they did. I have no doubt that Adam and Eve realized, as they saw the body of their dead son, just what the enormous consequences were of losing the garden. Adam allowed into the garden that which he was supposed to guard against, and it resulted in this tragedy of seeing Abel dead and Cain going out from the presence of the Lord.
This should speak to our hearts, particularly to those of us who have young children. We should not allow anything to come into our homes that is going to stop that flowing of the river that God intends to be in the home, or that is going to cost us our garden. Adam was responsible, as the head of his home, to guard it. In his children he reaped the consequences of his failure to exercise that responsibility.