BROTHER'S KEEPER

SCRIPTURES

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not, Am I my brother's keeper? 

— Genesis 4:9

WORD OF GOD

The whole problem between Cain and Abel centered around their offerings to God. You might say it was the first religious conflict. Both boys knew they were to present offerings in their worship to God. Abel's offering, the first of his flock, was accepted by God. Cain brought an offering from the fruit of the ground - ground that had been cursed when Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden. God rejected it. God told Cain that if he would make an appropriate sacrifice, it would be approved and accepted. The bottom line is that Cain had a fit of jealousy. He didn't want to offer a sacrifice God's way; he wanted to offer it his way. This is all Abel's fault, he probably thought, he's been everybody's favorite since the day he was born. I'm going to clean the little sheep-shearer's plow."Do you know what that means?" He asked. "Well," I replied, "Cain is asking, 'Am I responsible for my brother?'" "Should you be?" He asked. I thought it over for a moment and said, "I don't think so." "Didn't I cut covenant with you and all mankind? Why wouldn't you be responsible for them?" Since then, we should learned that the fate of the world depends on our answer to that question. And we will each have to answer it. We'll answer it by our actions in this life, and we'll answer it face-to-face at the judgment. For the body of Christ to function the way God intended it to function; if you hurt, I should hurt too. Have you ever wondered why churches fight churches? Because they haven't answered the question, or they gave the wrong answer. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in this together. There are times when people stumble while trying to be a blessing. For example, you might see someone who looks sad, and you want to help them. So you say, "The Lord will help you and bless you." While that's true, God will help and bless the person, if He didn't tell you that and the person thinks they've had a word from God, you're on dangerous ground. Don't imply that God has given you a word for them if He hasn't. People will base their whole life on a word of knowledge or a prophecy, and if it doesn't work they lose their faith in God. Their last state is worse than the first. Recently, a man asked me why I didn't call up a person in a wheelchair during a service. My answer was simple. God didn't tell me to call him up. If there isn't a special anointing for him, it would be foolish to call him up. During another altar call, I asked someone to remove a man from the prayer line. "Brother Jesse, that doesn't sound like you were being your brother's keeper." Actually, I was. The Lord had told me to call for people who were having heart trouble. Occasionally, like in the case of this man, someone thinks, I'm not having heart trouble, but I want to be prayed for so I'm going up there anyway. When they do that in direct disobedience to the instructions from God, it shuts down the anointing. If I hadn't moved that man off the stage, none of his brothers would have gone home with healed, whole hearts.

by Pastor Antony Francis