In Jesus Holy Name March 9,2008
Lent IV Series: O.T. Challenges Redeemer
Genesis 4:1-12
“Cain: the Story of Alienation”
This is the third message in our series: O.T. Challenges. In Genesis chapters 1-3 we saw Adam and Eve sharing a life of perfect love and harmony, with each other and with their Creator. All of creation existed in harmony with each other, until the slithering serpent came into their world and caused them to doubt God’s goodness and love.
There was intimate friendship with God and each other.
Intimacy is the experience of knowing and feeling:
1) acceptance
2) reassured…..through pleasurable contact
3) in harmony with God…. A sense of peace… an absence of fear and emptiness
4) being in an expansive relationship over a period of time.
Adam and Eve lived in an intimate relationship with each other, with God and their world. The world and the relationships in which we now live are different. Perfect love, harmony and peace are things people in the world only hope to possess. People are at war. They pollute their environment, throwing trash along the road side, dumping oil and chemicals into the beautiful blue seas, and acid rain falls to the earth. After the Chernobyl incident, the soil is useless and death and disease claims the lives of adults and children. Our problem is sin.
Our world, our society still seeks peace and harmony and intimacy but these are elusive. Instead, we have alienation and fear in our city streets, playgrounds and homes. Human beings experience separation from the knowledge of the goodness of God. We have become descendants of Cain.
The story of Cain and Abel may be familiar to you. (read Genesis 4:1-12) The biblical writer lets us know that Cain and God were on speaking terms. Cain brought an offering to the Lord, just as Abel did. God, “looked with favor” on Abel’s offering but not on Cain’s.
Paul Bretscher in his book “Cain Come Home” writes: “We trust God to know what he is doing when he gives gifts or withholds them according to His pleasure and wisdom. In the story of Cain and Abel, the point of God choosing to “look with favor” on one offering and not the other is contrary to our natural notion of fairness. No doubt Cain worked as hard as Abel but God treats the brothers differently.” (p. 12)
Why does God accept the one and not the other?
We are uncomfortable when we see unequal treatment between Cain and Abel. In Malachi 1:1-5 we read about God’s love for Jacob and his hatred for Esau. Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Yet Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated.” The words seem so unfair. Especially when we think of the kind of person Jacob was. He deceived his father into giving him the blessing that should have gone to his older brother Esau. (Genesis 27)
Why does God bless one and not the other? We ask questions like: “Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart and why should he choose Israel to be his people?” Why does God tell Rebecca the elder shall server the younger? Why did God choose the youngest child of Jesse, David a teenager, to be the King of Israel replacing Jonathan the son of Saul?
We are people who “know good and evil” when we see it. These are theological questions for us. Paul confronts the same question in Romans 9…”Why should God speak the promise to Isaac and not Ishmael?” The Jews are descendants of Isaac, the Arabs are descendants of Ishmael.
Our natural feelings, our knowledge of good and evil wants to call God “unfair”, “unjust”. Listen to Paul’s response in 9:14,16 “Can the potter do what he wants with his clay?” “Can the clay trust the potter?” (Bretscher p. 16) Can we trust God? Wasn’t that Satan’s challenge to Eve as well?
In Genesis 4 Cain, by experience, feels that God is unjust, by not accepting his offering. But let me ask you a question first. Do you think Adam and Eve told their boys about the Garden of Eden? Do you think Adam and Eve told their boys about how God forgave them by shedding the blood of an animal? I’m sure they did.
Now we do not know what was wrong with Cain’s offering….how large, how small. We do not know what was wrong in his heart about offering thanks to God. What we are seeing here is an act of worship… an offering to God. We know that God looked with favor on Abel’s offering from the “first born of his flock”, but Cain’s offering did not receive God’s favor. Cain knew his offering was not acceptable. He became jealous and angry. It isn’t fair! Haven’t I worked as hard, if not harder than Abel? It’s not fair. Maybe he thought: “What good is it to pray and sacrifice to God if God treats me like this?”
The Lord comes to Cain, I think in a helpful way; “Why are you angry?” “Why is your face down cast?” Note the next verse…doesn’t it hint that Cain had knowledge of what was right? “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do no do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6-7)
The Lord intervenes for Cain. Cain’s real enemy is not God, not Abel, but sin. God warns him…. “Don’t let your anger lead you to sin….Sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you.” The problem is real for us too.
It reminds me of the story of two little boys about three and four years old who were doing what three and four old boys do best: fighting with each other. The battle escalated with the older doing the taunting and the younger fighting for position. Eventually, because he couldn’t come up with anything better, the younger said, “I hate you!” The older replied in kind, “Not as much as I hate you.”
Realizing she had lost control, the mother resorted to a bit of bribery. “Boys, you know we don’t talk that way to each other. I’m not gong to take my two young men to McDonald’s as long as they hate each other.” Recognizing superior wisdom when he heard it, the four year old capitulated, “I don’t really hat you.” But the younger replied, “I’m not hungry. I still hate you!” They are words of alienation.
Like Cain, we are easily overpowered by our sense of injustice when we feel we are not getting our fair share. Joseph’s brothers resented what appeared to be favoritism on their father’s part toward Joseph. (Genesis 37:4) Jealousy and resentment was the root of their sin, and it nearly ended, like Cain in the murder.
Cain acts as if he did not even hear God’s words. God has also placed his law into our hearts as well. We have a conscience. We know what is right and what is wrong. Too which voice do we listen? Cain invites his brother out into the field? He has hatred for his brother. He murdered his brother.
The act is done. The temptation became a sin. There is no turning back. Abel is dead. It is God who opens the conversation with Cain… “Where is your brother?” It was God who re opened conversations with Adam and Eve in the Garden… Cain shrugs his shoulders… He lies. “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God was not deceived by fig leaves. He sees through Cain as well. Abel’s tongue is silent, but his blood is not. It cries to God from the earth. He ought to collapse in tears, as did Peter after his denial of the Jesus, when on trial at the house of the High Priest. Cain ought to confess the whole horror, thrown himself on God’s mercy… He does not. He retreats into self pity…. My punishment is more than I can bear…. Who ever finds me will slay me.” Cain sees what is happening and he doesn’t like it.
Cain is alienated from his family, from his earth, from God. He turns his back and walks away from God.
I can not help but think of the two men who walked with Jesus for three years. They saw his miracles. They saw him raise the dead. They listened to Jesus tell about God’s love, his offer of forgiveness.
There came a time in a garden of olive trees, outside the walls of Jerusalem. One man Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The other man, Peter, followed Jesus into the courtyard of the High Priest. It was there that he too betrayed Jesus, he lied, saying: “I do not know the man…” in order to save his own skin.
Their self reflection was different. Both admitted their action was wrong. Peter wept bitterly, but Judas, well, for reasons we do not know, could not grasp to his own heart the very words he heard Jesus say to the paralytic: “Your sins are forgiven.”
Cain could have collapsed and asked for God’s mercy and forgiveness…he in stead turned his back on God and walked away. Judas went out and hanged himself. But we find Peter at the cross.
Phillip Hiller, the hymn writer, in 1767 wrote these words:
“All my sins have been forgiven. God is merciful to me.
My account is closed for ever, Jesus Christ has paid
it all.
Shed His blood my sin to cover, paid the price to save
My soul.
There is now no condemnation, I am fully reconciled;
All my sins have been forgiven, God is merciful to me.” (Hymns for the Living Church) 291
At the cross the crowds shouted words of hate. Jesus never hated back. He called on his Father to forgive them. At the cross we can find intimate friendship with God and each other restored.
Intimacy is the experience of knowing and feeling:
5) acceptance – because of Jesus we have been accepted by God.
6) we are reassured…of his love...through the joy of worship and prayer. His word tells us we can trust the potter who made us.
7) At the foot of the cross we find harmony with God…. A sense of peace… an absence of fear of death because Jesus rose from the grave
8) Now, living under God’s grace, filled with His Spirit we learn to live in an expansive relationship over a period of time, imitating Jesus.
