Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. It’s my great joy and privilege to be leading us through Genesis Chapter 4 today, if you want to grab your Bibles and turn there. We’re calling our study of Genesis, “In the Beginning” because it is a book whose title even means “beginning.” It is the story of beginnings and it begins with the beginner of the beginnings.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,”
Genesis 1:1
and that big, huge, broad wide angle lens sort of description of where everything came from starts to answer some of the big questions that we have in life. Where did everything come from? Does life have any meaning? Is there any real order to the universe? Is human life significant in any way or in any different way from the rest of life or is this all just one big cosmic accident? The answers to those kinds of questions really, really are important.
Last week, Pastor Tommy led us through Genesis Chapter 3, which starts to answer another big question: What has gone wrong in the world? We’re going to pick up in Chapter 4 with a little bit more of a sequel, I guess I would call it, to Chapter 3, where it gets a little more specific with how that unfolds, a problem that was exposed in Chapter 3 now begins to unfold a little bit. Lots of firsts though, lots of beginnings. I’ll try to point them out as we go through the text. It breaks nicely into three sections. We’ll read verses one through fifteen first and we’ll pick up the middle section and then close it out.
Verse 1: “Now, the man had relations with his wife Eve,” and so here we have the first instance of human sexuality as an experience, “and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.” Now, we have the first conception, pregnancy and delivery of a baby. Can you imagine without a hospital, no OB-GYNs, nobody giving you a sort of a pre-birth class to go through? You’re just Adam and Eve and you’re out there all by yourself with the gorillas and the antelopes and the giraffe and the tiger and all that sort of thing. Now, you’re pregnant and you have a baby.
I’m supposing that Adam was there, involved in every little bit of the delivery and may have cut the umbilical cord to Cain. Who knows? But “she conceived and gave birth to Cain and she said, her reply in all of this was, ‘I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord.’” Now, of course, it’s probably not the way some of you all would’ve said it today if you were having a baby, but here she is and the first child to be born, not made, but born physically like this in the entire history of the world, Cain comes forth and that’s awesome.
Verse 2 speeds right along and they have a second child: “Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Again, the storyline is moving pretty quick. Adam and Eve having not one child, but now they’ve had two and now those two children are no longer in diapers and being rocked like this, but they’re out one in the field and he’s tending to the crops. The other one is caring for the flocks or out with the herds of cattle, that sort of thing.
“It came about,” verse 3 says, “in the course of time,” and so that gives you an idea, there’s a lot of time passing here, “Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.” You can see where these two guys, if they just get together, it’s like meat and vegetables. One guy working and one guy working in the other and they’re both now experiencing something together that for the first time in the Bible is mentioned and that’s they’re going to offer something to the Lord. They’re returning some kind of thanksgiving or some ritual of thanksgiving anyway.
For each of them, it’s coming from their labors and the work that they do, but there’s something that you’re going to see that’s just a little bit different between the two of them, a distinction will be drawn. “The Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.” Now, there’s been a lot of ink spilt on this. Why did God accept or receive Abel’s offering but not Cain’s? Why did he have regard for Abel’s offering but not for Cains? Most of that is drawn in the direction of speculations. It’s not really here in the text. It doesn’t tell us why. It just tells us that God had regard for one but not for the other. What the story goes on to tell us after that, I think, gives us a clue as to why that happened. Let’s take a look a little bit further into this whole thing, if you will.
“Cain,” verse 5b, “Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.” First mention of anger in the Bible, first indication of anybody despairing or upset or moody like this. This is pretty interesting as we go through these first few chapters to see all of these firsts. Here is the first one, now, Cain is very upset about this and the way that God has responded, probably more upset at the way God’s responded to Abel’s offering than the way God responded to Cain, his own offering.
“The Lord said to Cain,” verse 6, “‘Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen?’” I’ll remind you that all of God’s questions are rhetorical. He already knows the answer. He just wants us to think it through and come to the conclusion as we think it through and learn something. God also says, “‘If you do well,” verse 7, “‘will not your countenance be lifted up? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you and you must master it.’”
Not only is God asking questions of Cain, and those are good questions for God to ask Cain, they’re good questions for us to ask ourselves, too. Why are you angry? Why am I angry? Why is my countenance downcast? Just to stop for a moment because feelings can just swirl and swirl and swirl like a tornado and run away with us and leave a horrible path of destruction in their wake. But to stop and ask the question, and that if you pause for just a second, he says in verse 7, and you’re wise about it, “it will go well for you, your countenance will be lifted up.” But if not, “sin is crouching at the door.”
In other words, sin isn’t just sort of an option out there. It’s actually right up in our hearts. Here, we see—because last week it was the serpent speaking to the woman, Eve, and distorting God’s word and causing her to doubt God’s promises in God’s word—that now, it’s not something outside. It’s speaking to Cain. There’s actually his own ego involved and ego, if it stands for anything, it stands for edging God out. God has come to Cain, asked these questions to get him to think a little bit, why are you angry? Why are you downcast? Why is your countenance down like this?
Think about it. The way you respond is important because if you respond one way, your countenance will be lifted up. If you respond another way, sin is crouching right around the corner. It’s like a predatorial animal, some kind of an animal that’s a predator waiting to pounce on you and draw you in and devour you—that’s basically what it is. There’s fair warning that God has given to Cain here. How’s he going to respond?
Verse 8: “Cain told Abel, his brother…” Does that mean he told Abel his brother what God said, or does that mean he told what God said in terms of the offering of wisdom and the questions that he asked, or did he just tell Abel in some way to shame him or make him feel bad about the fact that God had accepted Abel’s offering but hadn’t accepted Cain’s? He’s brooding and he’s mad and I can see the two of them kind of going out into the field and having a chat or whatever. That’s exactly what it says right here, “And it happened that when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.”
Here, we have the first violent act in the Bible and the first murder and its brother against brother in the context of worship. There was an opportunity for learning. There was an opportunity for gaining wisdom, but it was rejected, turned away and sin was crouching at the door. Indeed, it came true that Cain fell to the sin and to his anger and he kills his brother. We have brother on brother violence here. This is just so sad.
Well, verse 9 says, “The Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?'” This is probably hours later. Cain has come back in from the field, probably buried the body out there. He came back in from the field and here’s the Lord speaking to him again and God asking another question that he already knows the answer to because he’s God: “Where’s your brother Abel?” He wants Cain to think about that. Where’s your brother?
Here is what Cain says, “I do not know.” Well, that my friends is a boldface lie. How do I know that? Because Cain killed Abel. He knows where the body is. He left the body in the field and wherever it is that he left the body where he killed him, that’s where Abel is. “Where’s your brother?” “I do not know.” He says, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He gets a little bit arrogant, a little bit sort of snarky here, too. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” ‘It’s not my job to take care of him.’ We’ve been saying that same kind of thing for a long time, haven’t we? About others, that it’s not my job to take care of him, and yet I think we learn something really good here. ‘It’s not my job to take 100% care of everybody on the planet.’ That’s true. That’s true. I could not do that. I do not have capacity for that, but it is my job to care for my brothers and my sisters, whether they be in my family or not. We read throughout the Bible that it’s our job to care for the poor. It’s our job to care for others. It’s our job to care for those who come to us and ask for help.
In other words, we have responsibilities. That’s so important for us. We don’t just isolate ourselves and start hoarding stuff ourselves, but we’re always saying, “How does God want to use me in his mission in the world?” Great question that has obviously become quite famous. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That’s true. That’s a very famous question, but the answer that we get is determined based on where we turn to, to look for the answer.
I love this, verse 10, “Then God said, ‘What have you done?’” Again, he knows what Cain’s done. He just wants to give Cain a chance to confess. “‘The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.’” God says, “‘And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened his mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate it,’” remember, Cain’s the guy that worked out in the fields, okay? “‘When you cultivate the ground, it’ll no longer yield its strength to you.’” In other words, this isn’t going to be easy anymore working in the field. “You will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” Wow.
This is basically God’s judgment on Cain for what he’s done in this murder of his own brother, his younger brother. This is God not being harsh at all. This is not in any way disproportionate to the crime that’s committed. This is God saying your work, your labor in the field that you’re so proud of, that’s what you brought me as an offering but you probably brought it to me thinking, again, if we’re looking at the giver more than we are the gift itself, what we find in Cain is somebody who just seems to be checking boxes and he has a lust for autonomy. We’re going to see that in just a second as well.
God says, ‘Now, your work is going to become tougher,’ and “when you cultivate the ground, it’ll no longer yield its strength” or ‘the reward or it won’t be easy for you to till the ground,’ and “you’ll be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth.” Verse 13, “Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is too great to bear.’” Here he kind of kicks into, man, it sounds like very modern response to me. I mean, in the modern world in which we live right now, there’s a lot of people that don’t think anything’s wrong unless you get caught. Then, if you get caught, the consequences for what you did should be minimal, and maybe there shouldn’t be any at all, that kind of thing. Here is the father of all of that kind of thinking, Cain saying, “My punishment is too great to bear.” It’s going to be hard plowing that field and trying to get that crop to grow. My little brother’s dead and that’s just amazing that he could go there in verse 13.
Verse 14: “‘Behold, you’ve driven me this day from the face of the ground and from your face. I shall be hidden and I will become a fugitive and a wanderer.’” That’s what God told him he would be. Yeah. “‘You’ll become a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth” and “‘it will come about that whoever finds me will kill me.’”
Fear has led to paranoia. ‘There’s going to be people wanting to kill me.’ Evidently, there are other people in the world at this time. These folks we’ll see later in Genesis, they live for hundreds of years. It is likely as we read in Chapter 5, next week, verse 4 or 5 or 6, that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. There’ll be other people out there and they’ll be having children as well.
Cain is nervous. He’s fearful. He’s angry not only about his offering being rejected, but he’s upset because the punishment is too great. Then, he’s paranoid that people are going to want to kill him. What does God do? What is God’s response to the first murderer? What is God’s response to the first person that just goes ritualistic with his religious offering and his heart isn’t really in it? What is God’s response?
Wow, this is interesting, verse 15: “So the Lord said to him, ‘Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.’ The Lord appointed a sign for Cain,” or a mark, some of your translations will say, “lest anyone finding him should slay him.” It’s interesting, isn’t it? Here’s God in an act of amazing grace toward the first murderer, the first sort of ritualistic religious guy, the first one who’s complaining about the consequences for his own evil act. On and on goes the list of what had gone wrong in Cain’s heart.
Again, note, it springs up out of his heart. This isn’t about a serpent luring Eve from outside, luring Eve and Adam into some sin. No. This is about something coming up from inside that has been passed down from their parents, this spiritual inheritance, if you will, of original sin, as we call it. Verse 15, is God being gracious in saying, ‘Cain, I know you’re afraid. I know you’re angry. I know you’re upset. Look at the violence you’ve done and you’re not going to… There will be consequences.’ Which points to another timeless truth, I think.
God can forgive our sins and yet there remain temporal consequences in this world for us. I think a lot of us think that when we go to God and ask for forgiveness that he should also remove all of the consequences for our foolishness and our sin that we have committed and chosen to go against his will. That’s just not the case. We see that right here. Cain is going to go out, but he’s going to go out with God watching over him, with God having set a sign or a mark on him. A lot of ink has been spilled on that and speculating—what was that mark, a tattoo, a birth mark, an animal walking alongside him? What was that all about?
I just don’t think we know the answer to that question and it’s okay with me that we don’t know. Somehow or another, all of those people would have known and it would be a sign that would communicate something to them. Don’t mess with Cain. He still has the Lord’s hand on him in some way, even if it’s just in a common grace kind of a way.
Verse 16: “Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and he settled in the Land of Nod, (N-O-D), East of Eden.” Where’s the Land of Nod? I haven’t got a clue. Although, I think I’ve seen hints of it on Sundays when we’ve gathered for worship and people have gone there and nodded off in the middle of a sermon.
By the way, just so that you know, I’m not picking on anybody. When I’m having trouble sleeping at night, sometimes what I do, little secret, I put on one of my old sermons and it helps me nod off. There you go.
He goes to the Land of Nod, which we don’t know where it is, East of Eden. Verse 17: “And Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived and she gave birth to Enoch and he built a city and called the name of the City ‘Enoch’ after the name of his son.”
“To Enoch,” verse 18 says, “was born Irad, to Irad. He became the father of Mehujael. Mehujael became the father of Methushael and Methushael became the father of Lamech.” I know you guys are just getting really excited about hearing all these names, aren’t you, and especially watching to see how I struggle with trying to pronounce some of them. It’s fascinating. Don’t have time to do it right now, but it’s really fascinating.
If you have time, go back into one of your study Bibles or go online to bible.org or the Gospel Coalition site and see if you can’t find the meaning of some of these names. What you’ll just see is this spiritual declension in the meaning of each of their names. They get further and further away from God. It’s quite an interesting study. I leave that up to you.
Lamech five or so generations down from Cain now—although, I think they’re all still alive—”Lamech took to himself two wives.” Now, there’s a distorting of the original creation design for marriage, which was the male and the female, a man leaves his mother and his father, cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh. There’s a complementarity. There’s the potential of procreation there and that complementarity just simply means they’re not the same.
Now, what we have here is a sort of further twist of the whole thing away from the original creation design and this guy Lamech takes two wives. We have the first instance of polygamy here in the Bible. “The name of the one was Adah, the name of the other was Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.” You start to see culture making and work and industry and that sort of thing coming into play here as well.
At one and the same time, while we got all of this sort of sin and spiritual declension happening, we also have the sort of progress of humanity in terms of culture making, that sort of thing. “To Adah was born Jabal, he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal, (it’s J-A-B-A-L and J-U-B-A-L, Jubal); he was the father of all of those who play the lyre and the harp.” Do you get that? He plays the lyre and the pipe, I’m sorry, it says here (the lyre and the pipe) stringed instruments and wind instruments. This is the first mention of music in the Bible.
The Bible overflows with music. As a matter of fact, there’s a big book in the middle of your Bibles called Psalms. It’s 150 songs and often, it’ll say to be accompanied on this instrument or that instrument or to be sung to the tune of this song previously written or whatever. It’s a lot of the songs where the songs the ancient Jews used to read as they worship the Lord, but here’s the father of music right here in verse 21. His name, Jubal. I love that.
Verse 22: “As for Zillah,” that’s the other daughter of Lamech, “she also gave birth to Tubalcain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron.” And so, metallurgy. See? Again, there’s lots of things happening here in terms of culture making. “The sister of Tubalcain was Naamah. Lamech…” Now, this is a little look into Lamech’s heart: “He said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, ‘Listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give he to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me.’ And it’s as if the sin of his great, great, great great, great, grandfather Cain, the sin of violence and murder, it’s as if he’s saying, ‘I did that too,’ and he said, “I’ve killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me.” He’s killed a young child or a boy for striking me who just offended him in some way. I hate to say it, but I think I can hear him doing this at a family gathering in a feast, in a tent and maybe he’s had a little bit too much to drink and he’s just standing up bragging about how nobody can touch him and what a bad dude he really is.
I’ll tell you why I think that. Because in verse 24, he goes on and closes this little section up, “‘If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech is seventy-sevenfold.’” Again, he’s heard from his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather, great-grandfather, he’s heard the story passed down from Cain that the Lord had promised to meet out revenge or justice on anybody that killed Cain sevenfold. That story has been passed down, you see? They may all be in the same tent when this drunken Lamech stands up and says this kind of thing.
Again, I’m speculating, I understand that. But just trying to put it into context of some kind of real life setting. There he stands up in front of everybody, addresses his two wives and I think scares them and probably scares everybody that’s there and says that, ‘If Cain will be avenged sevenfold, well, nobody can touch me. I’ll be avenged 77 times.’ What for Cain was something he succumbed to, for Lamech it’s something he exalts in. You can see how, again, the progress of sin and the problems that sin causes have compounded.
Well, the chapter does not end there and I’m so glad myself. I mean, if that were the end and I were at that dinner, I would’ve tried to find a way to slink out the back of the tent and make my way home, but we’ve got fortunately verse 25 and verse 26, which I think end the chapter on a hopeful note: “Adam had relations with his wife again.” We’re back to Adam and Eve, okay? They’re still alive. “She gave birth to the son and named him Seth for she said, ‘God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel for Cain killed him.'”
You should know that Seth’s name means “appointed” and it is through the line of Seth that we will see down through history, down through the Old Testament, we will see Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, on and on and on it goes until ultimately, you get to the real appointed one, the Messiah, Jesus himself.
The last verse: “To Seth also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh,” and then there’s this interesting sentence that just ends what we call Chapter 4, hopefully: “Then, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” I love that. That’s when they began to pray. That’s when they began to turn to the Lord and call upon his name. You just have to appreciate it.
There are just two different streams of development rolling out here in terms of spiritual development. One’s quite dark and the other is actually quite hopeful, isn’t it? All right, let’s see what we learned here. I want to just highlight a few things for us.
First of all, in the first 15 verses, we see the tragic story of Cain and Abel. Cain’s name means “got one.” We find Eve saying, ‘I’ve gotten one. It’s so great. I’ve gotten a man child with the Lord,’ and I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she’s saying that the Lord blessed her with one and that it’s not, ‘See, I can make them, too.’
No, I think it’s ‘I got one and the Lord was so good to give me one.’ I can imagine that Cain grows up, he’s running around going through his “terrible twos” and whatever else that he might have gone through as a young child, and they’re learning to be parents. Remember, all of this is the first time with nobody to coach you. It’s got to have been an amazing experience, if you just think about it. But this is the story and it’s a tragic one, isn’t it? Of Cain and Abel, because of what happens between them.
Perhaps, an argument can be made for a look at the sacrifices or the offerings that were made, but I don’t think that this chapter is really about the gifts as much as it is about the givers of the gifts. It just seems to me to be the way the Bible constantly talks about when we approach the Lord that his interest is in what’s going on inside of our hearts and how we’re responding to him, not just what we’re doing for him or bringing to him.
Fortunately, we have this New Testament lens that we can look back through and see all of this. You can see from the New Testament that God had to come himself and do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves, and Jesus, our ultimate high priest, the ultimate Lamb of God, has come and paid the price in full for all of our sins—past, present, and future. We can know with certainty that our salvation is secure, that our repentance is received.
Why? Because Jesus is the one that accomplished it, not us, you see? It’s a completely different thing and we have that great benefit, but what is obvious to us is that the author of Genesis, and I think it was Moses, but certainly that’s yet an unanswered question, but it seems that God has revealed a lot of this to Moses. As he keeps this record, he continues as the narrator. He continues to stress how the heart is what’s really important in God’s eyes. There’s truly a difference between the gift and the giver in God’s eyes. So important.
We see this in the New Testament, as I said, in Hebrews 11:4. It says,
“By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain…”
That is, it’s Abel’s faith that made it a better sacrifice than Cain.
“…Through which Abel obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts and through faith. Though he is dead, he still speaks.”
Hebrews 11:4
1 John 3:12 also talks about the two brothers just a little bit:
“Not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brother’s were righteous.”
1 John 3:12
What we have here is these descriptive words, evil and righteous, talking about the hearts of Cain and Abel. Evil and righteous are not just adjectival modifiers that describe what kind of action somebody took, but also what kind of heart they have.
Evil has taken root in Cain’s heart. Again, he’s not being tempted by something outside, it’s inside of him. His anger comes up and it’s like Jesus talked about as well. The mouth speaks out of that, which fills the heart, you see? It’s good for us to take a look at what’s in our hearts and what we’re putting in our hearts and to see that with Cain and Abel, one of the lessons at least has to be this. We don’t come to God on our own terms just any old way we want to. Let me just check the box. Here’s a bunch of fruit. Here’s a bunch of vegetables. Check the box and do a religious ritual without our heart being engaged. We don’t do it that way.
No, we come to God on God’s terms and he desires our love and loyalty and obedience much more than our ritual sacrifices. The story of Cain and Abel is tragic in the sense that all of this starts to get wrong, go wrong, and it ends up with Cain literally leaving the presence of the Lord, verse 16. That’s where we get into the second portion of our outline here, the dramatic decline of humanity.
It says, “Cain went away from the presence of the Lord,” and folks, so therefore did his family go. They went with him. You and I, each and every one of us, somebody’s watching us. If you’re a parent, your kids are watching you. Now, I’m not telling you that because I think you have to be perfect. You can’t be perfect, but what you could do is if you fall down or if you sin or if you’re angry, don’t be angry and sin, be angry and then repent or be angry at the right stuff. That’s another option. Don’t be angry at the wrong stuff.
Our tendency, unfortunately, is to think to ourselves that sin is just a private affair, but it’s not. No. We see here the beginnings of the tragic and difficult decline of humanity and it’s played out in this drama, but it is also played out in our lives as well. Among Cain’s family, many cultural accomplishments, that’s true and that can be praised. We’re not taking anything away from that, but just because we can make technical and cultural advances doesn’t mean we’re also at the same time automatically making a moral advance or a spiritual advance.
These are categories, but they’re different categories and it’s really important that we learned to distinguish between them. Canaan, his progeny worked. They were creative. They were productive. All of that’s great, but there’s not a mention of God in verses 17 to 24, not one mention of the Lord. That’s exactly the way it goes to a culture that leaves God out of the picture. It just continues to decline.
C.S. Lewis talked about this way when he said,
“When you argue against Him (meaning God), you are arguing against a very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”
–C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
That is indeed true.
So what of us in the New Testament times, what of us for those of us who have become Christians that seek to turn our lives back over to God, to return them to the one who gave it to us in the first place, right? Of us who say we would like to be a Christ follower or to be the disciples of Jesus, if you will, the apprentices of Jesus. Of us who would like to live our lives the way Jesus would live his life if he were us, right? What of that? How does that fall into place with all of this?
Todd Billings says in Union With Christ:
“Since we were not created to be autonomous, self-made people, but we’re created to be in communion with God, when the Spirit leads us back into communion with God in Christ, we did not lose our true selves. We regained them.”
–Todd Billings, Union With Christ
That’s exactly right, you see. When Cain left the presence of the Lord, he was sawing off the branch. He really was. You and I, we were designed, created, if you will, to live in right relationship with God.
Sin is a separator. It separates us from God, separates us from one another and separates us from our true selves. As Billings has said here, man, when we are led by the spirit to repentance in faith and trust in Jesus, we return, we regain our true selves. I think that’s really powerful.
Thirdly, and finally, the outline of Genesis four includes the tragic story of Cain and Abel, the dramatic decline of humanity, but those last two verses, love those last two verses, the progress of redemption history all the way back, see? Right after we get Genesis 3 and the story is told of what’s wrong with the world, sin has entered the world and immediately, boom! Right there in chapter 3, verse 15, the seed of the woman will trounce on the serpent, the seed of the serpent and smash his head, actually.
That is a poetic way of predicting the fact that Messiah is going to come and though he will die on a cross and give his life and it will look like, “Oh no, the snake bit him,” three days later, man, he’s going to get back up. This one who’s a real appointed one, the ultimate appointed one, the ultimate Seth, the greater Seth, if you will. Jesus is going to get back up from the grave defeating our last and worst enemy. This is back here in Genesis 4. This is just the launching pad. You start to see it all lining up as God gives Seth to Adam and Eve and with the birth of Seth starts that line and it’s really awesome, isn’t it?
What are the spiritual realities behind these events and these interactions? What is it that can sweep you or me into an evil thought or an evil action? I mean, is it just driving on the highway as so many of us have difficulty with when we get behind somebody we don’t like the way they drive or is it something about your spouse, something about, if you’re not married, your roommates, if you have roommates or your coworkers or perhaps your siblings, you have difficulty, or your parents, maybe? I don’t know. What is it that sweeps you into a profound evil thought or action? Are you your brother’s keeper, your sister’s keeper? Have we been guilty of allowing sin to compound in our lives or the Lord instructed Cain? Are we willing to stop for just a second and ask the question, “Why am I angry? Why do I feel the way I feel?” Pause and prayerfully consider, seek the Lord, seek his Word, gain from his Word, his wisdom. Learn about his ways and his will.
How God responded to Cain just fills me with hope, and the way that God responded even to Adam and Eve and to the human race in general. The way that God was gracious toward Cain, said he kind of continued to have his hand on him, even though he is going to be a fugitive and a wanderer from his home. There, we see that while Cain was a fugitive running away from home and a wanderer without a home, in the New Testament, what we see God’s people depicted as is that we are strangers in a world that is not our home. We are pilgrims on a journey back to our true home.
God is your true home, my true home. He’s one to whom we really belong. He’s the one that created us in the first place. Cain chose to go his own way and he left the presence of the Lord and to live his life without God. Don’t be like Cain in that regard. I hope you find some way, some method to be in God’s presence every single day through prayer. If you’ve got a one-year Bible reading program and we’ve got one on our phone app, it’s free, you’re welcome to download and use that. I hope you will, but you want to be with God, not just check a box, but you want to be with him and hear from him, and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you.
If we’re hungry for God’s forgiveness for our sins, we won’t be like Cain. If we’re hungry for God’s forgiveness, we won’t be lying back to God about whether or not we’ve sinned. “If we confess our sins,” and to confess our sins is to agree with God that we’re sinners, “he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from,” say it with me, “all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Such a beautiful, wonderful promise. The blood of Abel cried out from the dirt for vengeance, but folks, on the cross, the blood of Jesus has secured mercy and grace for you and for me and forgiveness too. It’s all there in Jesus.
David Gooding is a professor of Old Testament. He’s got a book called an Unshakeable Kingdom. He says this,
“God has appointed us a captain of our salvation, and made him responsible for seeing us through this world home to glory. Thank God we can count on his faithfulness and know that he will never fail, never once lose his patience or his temper with any of us, but will fulfill his appointed task to the very end. He will save to the uttermost all who come to God by him.”
–David Gooding, An Unshakeable Kingdom
Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that powerful? Doesn’t that give hope to your heart? It does to mine over and over and over again. A bunch of us around The Village Chapel these days are reading a book called Gentle and Lowly by a man named Dane Ortlund. It’s about the heart of Jesus, which is gentle and lowly toward sinners like us and like you.
One of the most beautiful things that we continue to see in that book as he unfolds those beautiful verses from the Gospel of Matthew is just this welcoming that God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has made an offer to you and to me. He’s literally thrown open the throne room of heaven and said, ‘Welcome. Come on in. Come on home. Come on home.’ See? I love this. One of the quotes from Dane’s book that I just really enjoy is this one:
“Let your own unrighteousness, and all your darkness and despair, drive you to Jesus Christ, the righteous, in all his brightness and sufficiency.”
–Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly
Man, isn’t that beautiful? Yeah. Who wouldn’t want that? If you don’t know him today, why wouldn’t you turn to him today? If you do, if you’ve strayed, if you’ve found yourself in some way distant from God, isn’t that the kind of invitation that would just draw you to at least turn around? If you take just that little step of turning around, that repentance, he comes just like the prodigal son’s father, he comes running out of the house and just so eager to forgive and to lavish us with his grace. That’s the way he would be to you as well. Won’t you trust him now? Won’t you turn to him and offer your life, your heart back to him now?
(Edited for Reading)
