Scripture Introduction
Edward Everett Hale first published his novel, The Man Without a Country in 1863. He created an American army lieutenant, Philip Nolan, who developed a friendship with Aaron Burr, and is then tried as an accomplice when Burr is accused of treason. During his testimony, Nolan bitterly renounces his nation, angrily shouting “****** the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!” Upon conviction, the judge sentences Nolan to his wish: he is to live out his days on Navy warships, a floating exile, never again to set foot on U.S. soil or to hear of his country again.
The sentence is carried out to the letter. For the rest of his life, Nolan is shuttled from ship to ship as a prisoner on the high seas, never touching U.S. soil or hearing about the U.S.
A friend visits Nolan just before he dies. They recite together several prayers for the country from The Presbyterian Book of Public Prayers, then Nolan’s last words were, “I have repeated those prayers night and morning, it is now fifty-five years. Look in my Bible when I am gone.” Then he passed.
In his Bible was a slip of paper and Hebrews 11.16 marked: “They desire a country, even a heavenly one: therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared for them a city.” And on the paper he wrote: “Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not someone set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear?”
Mr. Hale wrote that novel to stir sentiment for the union cause during the Civil War. To do so, he invoked the image of another traitor, the first fugitive and wanderer, the first to complain that his punishment was greater than he could bear. Cain was exiled from God’s presence, and spent his days building a life and home away from what is good and godly. This is the way of Cain, and it our somber, but important, task to consider the beginning of the way of Cain, and how to root this tendency from our hearts. I will be reading Genesis 4.8-24; please give your attention to the Word of the Lord.
[Read Genesis 4.8-24. Pray.]
Introduction
The Bible tells us that “without faith it is impossible to please [God], for whoever would draw near must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11.6). Without faith it is impossible to please God.
It seems to me that most Christians readily understand the implications of that verse for conversion. Faith is the means by which a sinner receives the gift of salvation: it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing” (Ephesians 2.8). A person may do “things” which conform outwardly to God’s standards, but she can never do enough to repay the debt she owes, and whatever she does, bears the taint of sinful motives. Therefore, we could say that she who would please God apart from faith, and by good works, is doubly damned!
Instead, faith sings with Horatius Bonar, “Not what my hands have done, can save my guilty soul; not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God; not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Thy grace alone, O God, to me can pardon speak; Thy pow’r alone, O Son of God, can this sore bondage break.” Faith trusts an alien forgiveness and righteousness, the good works of another; faith asks Jesus be damned in my place, to receive the just punishment for my sins, and to apply to my credit his good works. Thus we understand how God cannot be pleased with us apart from the faith of salvation.
Maybe we are less sure of the relationship between faith and sanctification, between faith and the deeds which the justified believer does that please the Lord. In 2Corinthians 5, Paul notes that we make it our aim to please God. That includes trusting Jesus, God’s Messiah, for salvation. But more is there. The “pleasing God” of 2Corinthians 5 puts to death the old, sinful desires, and walks in obedience to the Word, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. How does faith relate to obedience? It turns out that we obey when we believe that the reward of obedience is greater than the reward of sin.
You need to know that the world, the flesh, and the devil argue against such obedience. When you contemplate witnessing to your coworker or fellow student, the world condemns your narrow-mindedness and arrogance, the flesh cowers at the possibility of rejection or rebuke, and the devil convicts you of your lack of prayer to God and of love for neighbor. Together they promise great ease and comfort if you but remain silent. Only faith can taste the rewards of God: the comfort of the Spirit, the power of Christ, and the favor of the Father. Faith pleases God because it believes he rewards.
I remind you of these things because Hebrews 11.6 follows immediately after the author explains that faith is what separated Cain and Abel. The faith of Abel lead him to “a more acceptable sacrifice,” to obedience which pleased God by demonstrating his dependence on grace. But Cain rejected God’s rewards; he did not want those promises; he felt that doing things his own way made him manly and complete. He was not a man of faith. He did not look to God for satisfaction and meaning in life. He looked to his own feelings, his own preferences, his own opinions about what was best. Cain thus becomes a model of unbelief.
We might assume that reminders of Cain’s rebellion apply only to those who do not follow Jesus. But the New Testament book of Jude warns Christians about the danger of Cain’s way.
Jude 1.5: “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
In the next five verses, Jude describes the horrible sins of the fallen angels, of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of evil men. His summary warning is verse 11: Jude 1.11: “Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.”
Pulling together these texts and Hebrews 11, I take God to be saying that “the way of Cain” is unbelief and its destructive consequences. Cain did not believe or desire God’s rewards, so for the sake of a different gain, he disobeyed and went to another country.
Last week I tried to show you how Cain’s unbelief resulted in sinful actions. Unbelief rejects God’s regulation of worship, it responds in anger to God’s rules, it refuses to hear God’s rebukes, and it rails against God’s people. To those four, we add, this morning, four more, and complete our study of Cain. But though we leave his sad story, we keep our sinful hearts. Hearts prone to unbelief, all too ready to walk the way of Cain.
Thomas Manton (1658) comments on the danger of unbelief from Jude 1.5: “Many were the people’s sins in the wilderness, murmuring, fornication, rebellion, etc. But the apostle includes all under this, “they did not believe.” Unbelief is charged upon them as the root of all their miscarriages elsewhere also, as in Numbers 14.11 and Deuteronomy 1.32. Whence observe, that unbelief brings destruction, or is the cause of all the evil which we do or suffer” (Jude, 176).
God provides a path for us different from the way of Cain – the way of faith. Not perfection, for that we must wait for heaven. But the way of faith, trusting God to reward conformity to his ways. To get there, please note how unbelief manifest itself in our lives.
1. Unbelief Refuses Responsibility for Its Actions (Genesis 4.8-9)
After Cain angrily murders his brother (in verse 8), he lies to God. He knows exactly where his brother is, for he has just beaten him to death. Then he asks a question which is really an accusation: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In other words, “I don’t know where he is, God; can you not keep up with the people you made? If something has happened to him, it is either his fault or (more likely) yours.”
Cain does not want to believe that God knows all things. He does not accept that each of us will give an account of himself to God, that he is responsible for his rebellion.
Have you ever seen Cain-like unbelief in your life? When confronted, do you ever say, “But you did it first”? Do you feel your sins are your parent’s fault, your school’s fault, your pastor’s fault, the government’s fault, your spouse’s fault?
Of course, Cain’s refusal to accept responsibility does not come merely from denial of accountability. He also refuses to accept God’s forgiveness. How should Cain have answered God’s call to repentance: “Where is Abel your brother?”
“Thank you God, for asking about my dear brother Abel. God, that sin which crouched at my door has ruled over me, and I have killed my brother in my pride and anger. I have done a terrible thing! Please help me; please forgive me!” But he could not accept responsibility, because he did not accept grace. Only those who know that there is forgiveness at the cross can confess their sins to God. It is faith in God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.
2. Unbelief Rejects God’s Judgments (Genesis 4.10-15)
God treats Cain better than he deserves; yet Cain cries, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Genesis 4.13).
Is it, Cain? You punished Abel for being godly, and that was greater than he could he could bear, for now he is dead. You are offered mercy, and time to repent. But Cain rejects God’s judgment.
Matthew Henry: “What he says is a reproach and affront to the justice of God, and a complaint, not of the greatness of his sin, but of the extremity of his punishment. Instead of justifying God in the sentence, he condemns him, not accepting the punishment of his iniquity, but quarrelling with it. Note, impenitent, unhumbled hearts are therefore not reclaimed by God’s rebukes because they think themselves wronged by them; and it is an evidence of great hardness to be more concerned about our sufferings than about our sins.”
You might think, at first, that Cain’s response sounds almost like sorrow. But the Bible draws a distinction between godly and worldly grief.
2Corinthians 7.10: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”
In other words, unbelief looks at itself and says, “Woe to me, for I am suffering.” (Such is worldly grief.) Faith, on the other hand, looks to God and cries, “Woe to me, for I have sinned and fallen short of glory. I deserve death. How is it that you are patient and long-suffering, showing me such grace and mercy?” Such a grief always brings us back to God.
How do you respond when disciplined by the Lord, or by those whom he has placed in authority over you? Is our sorrow marked by complaining at our condition, or rejoicing over God’s gift of conviction?
The third mark of unbelief which God would root from our souls is seen when we realize that…
3. Unbelief Retreats from God’s Presence (Genesis 4.16)
• Faith delights in God’s presence, because it believes that God treat us better than our sins deserve.
• Faith delights in God’s presence, because it accepts that God’s love grants freedom with confession.
• Faith delights in God’s presence, because it trusts that God’s goodness makes holiness into happiness.
• Faith would rather be humbled and remain in the presence of God, than to be self-righteous and far from the One who will share his glory with no one.
I love how the filmmakers created the scene in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe where Edmund faces Aslan after his betrayal. We see his grief, but also his faith. Edmond knows his guilt, but also that he cannot fix it. So he trusts in the only one who can restore.
How do we respond when we mess up badly – after we have yelled at our kids or mistreated those closest to us, or when we have lied, or stolen, or cheated, or gossiped? Do we fight our guilt by rising early and devoting an extra hour to prayer? Do we thank those who confront us, and thank God for them? Or, do we get angry and frustrated, and leave off devotions and prayer until we forget what we did?
The difference between faith and unbelief is not that unbelief sins while faith does not. Both are sinners. Faith runs to God; unbelief retreats. What will you do?
4. Unbelief Relishes Opportunities to Rebel (Genesis 4.17-24)
Verses 17-24 contain a sad commentary on the expanding effects of the sin of unbelief. First, Cain builds a city in defiance of God’s pronouncement that he would be a wanderer. Then he names the city, “Enoch,” after his son, an act which Psalm 49 calls pride and arrogance.
In verse 19, we find that Cain’s great, great grandson is the first polygamist. Refusing to accept marriage as God defines it, Lamech takes two wives, both of whom are named after words of fleshly and sensual attraction rather than spiritual and inner beauty. And Lamech and his family invest their lives in production, in devices to make their lives more pleasurable. Not that such is inherently wrong, but they have left off all thought of pleasing God or serving others, for they have set their hope on riches, on the things of this life. Their treasures are only on the earth.
All of this rebellion and focus on the pleasures of the flesh, culminates in the war song of Lamech, in verses 23-24. The scene must have been something like this. Lamech’s son, Tubal-Cain was a forger of iron. Lamech comes to his shop, picks up a sharp sword and takes it home. Here there he has a captive audience, one before whom he was quite safe in boasting. Waving the sword around, he brags that if anyone bothers him, he will kill them, be they man or boy. Nobody messes with Lamech, for I show neither grace nor mercy.
Leopold: “If God will see to it that the one who harms Cain will have a sevenfold measure of punishment, Lamech, not needing (even despising) God’s avenging justice, will provide, for himself, by the strength of his own arm, reinforced by his son’s weapon, a far more heavy punishment than God would have allowed. The arrogance and presumption are unbelievable. The spirit of self-sufficiency here expressing itself overleaps all bounds. This, then, coupled with its hate and revengefulness, makes it one of the most ungodly pieces ever written. Such are the achievements of human culture divorced from God.”
Such is the sad story of the “way of Cain.” We need not travel that way, however, for God provides the path of faith to replace the way of Cain. Whether you have been a Christian for years, or you are first considering that you must place your trust in Jesus’ gospel, the solution is the same, fight against unbelief in every nook and cranny of your heart.
5. Conclusion: Stirring Up Faith
In Psalm 11, David quotes a taunt by which the ungodly tormented him: “Flee like a bird to your mountain, for behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
That last verse is often misapplied. It is not the lament of a Christian, saying, we must protect the foundations of society or we have no hope. It is the insult of the rebellious: we have destroyed the foundations of your society; give up now, for what can the righteous do now?
David answers in the next verse: Psalm 11.4: “The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD's throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.”
Next week we will see that the in the midst of the way of Cain, another group of women and men called on the name of the Lord. Rather than give in to despair or doubt the power of God, they trusted God and acted in faith.
Hebrews 11.13-16 tells us that they “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”
Let us be people of faith, “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11.10).
