Hey friends, I'm Rachel Grohl and I'm your host for the Hearing Jesus podcast, where I help you to know God and to make him known.

Hi, Rachel, I am reading with you through the Bible and I am at the Canaan Abel story. And even though I understand that Kane had free will,

and he killed his brother, Abel, why does the Lord protect Kane after he murdered Abel? But Abel is

done. He's dead. So in the world, people can choose to do

bad things to other people, but the other people don't get their free will. It's, in a sense,

taken away by others choices.

Thank you so much for sending in this question.

I think this is something that a lot of people wrestle with.

And just a reminder, friends, if you have a question from me, you can go to the link in the

show notes and send me.

It's called a speak pipe.

It's essentially a voicemail where I can

respond to you or answer it on the show. And so this question comes to us about the story of

Kane and Abel, which was part of our Genesis series in Genesis chapter four. It comes right

after the story of Adam and Eve. And so for those of you that don't remember, Adam and Eve had two sons,

Cain, who was working the ground as a farmer, and Abel, who was a shepherd. And so when it came time

to bring an offering to God, they brought offerings from their respective fields. And so Abel brought the best portions. He brought all the firstborn

of his sheep, his flock. Kane also brought an offering and he of course did it from the fruit of the

ground, but the difference was the way he brought that offering. It was the heart behind it.

So Abel gave an offering that was the very

best he had to offer, but Kane gave something, just not his best. And so essentially what happened

is Kane reserved his best for himself instead of giving it to God. So God looked with favor on Abel's offering because it was a

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