Psalm 119:91 Never-Ending Story

Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you.

Psalm 119:91

When "Adam made love to his wife Eve," says Genesis 4:1, "she became pregnant." That natural, loving act produced a biological result, because that was God's design for procreation.

When men and women today join together in that same emotional and physical act, children are the result, because God's design hasn't changed.

The first children, Cain and Abel, were farmers. Cain planted seeds in the ground, which germinated and produced food-bearing plants, because God had set up the rules for how plants would grow. Abel tended flocks, which procreated according to the same basic biological imperatives that had produced Cain and Abel.

Families on farms just a few miles from me are still engaged in the yearly cycles of planting and harvesting, raising and butchering, knowing that the same basic rules of farming will still hold true.

When Cain's offering failed to bring the same positive response from God, "his face was downcast." God set him straight about the way he had designed human psychology:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. (Genesis 4:7)

The principle is clear: Right actions produce right feelings. Wrong actions produce wrong feelings. It doesn't work the other way around. Peter repeats that principle in I Peter 3:10-12. "Whoever would love life and see good days must..."; and then he lists some of the things a person must do if they're going to love life and see good days. It doesn't work to wait until you feel good before doing good, because God designed human psychology to work the other way around. And it still works that way today.

When Cain failed to control his own psychological and emotional reactions according to God's design, he attacked and killed his brother. God punished him for this act, establishing a law against murder, based on God's righteous character. This prohibition was repeated throughout biblical history and still stands today, because God is still the God who is over everything.

Biology still serves the God who invented biology. Agriculture has always functioned in service to the God who created and sustains all of nature.

Our mental, emotional, and spiritual psychology were designed to serve God, because he created us in His image.

And the laws of right and wrong and justice and mercy are the same today as they have always been because the only laws that stand the test of time are the ones that serve God and his rightousness rather than serving the whims of man.