THE BLOOD OF CHRIST SPEAKS BETTER THAN THE BLOOD OF ABEL Genesis 4:1-16
Whenever anyone does something wrong God speaks to them through their consciences and convicts them of their sin.
“What have you done?” He has placed in every person a conscience, the divine assessment which reproves us when we act up and commends us when we do what’s right. I
once owned a dog which was sick. I had to give him a pill and he did not like it. He never thanked me for helping him. People are not animals but are made in the image of Almighty God. A man is directed to do what is right even it may cost him something.
When Cain killed his brother Abel God addressed him personally, in a manner in which He doesn’t speak to men today. Cain, like his parents before him, actually heard the voice of God questioning him, “Where is your brother Abel? What have you done?”
Today God speaks to us through the Bible, through sermons preached to us and through our consciences, especially when they are enlightened by the Word of God. That is why we need to be in church and Sunday school and bible Study. That is how God speaks to us, but the same questions which God asked Cain he still asks everyone of us, “Where are the people you’ve hurt? Can you see them in your mind’s eye? Do you often wonder how things are with them? Where are they today? What have you done?” God is holding us accountable for our pasts, and for our actions, and our omissions.
1. GOD seeks to ask us ABOUT WHAT we are Doing WITH our LIVES.
The Lord who knows all things questions us. We have examples in the life of Jesus. On one occasion the Lord Jesus was speaking to a Samaritan woman. He knows all about us. He possesses omniscience. Jesus knew about a man called Nathaniel when he was still in the shade under a distant fig tree. He is the Lord who knows each one of us; everything about our lives is utterly exposed to his look.
“What have you done?” he asks us.
What have you done with the law of God? “You shall have no other gods before me”, what have you done with the command?
“You shall not make an idol and worship it”, what have you done with that?
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”, what have you done with your lips and voice concerning God’s holy name?
“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”, what have you been doing with your Sundays? Have they been the Lord’s Day or your day?
“Honor your father and your mother”, what have you done to those who cared for you and sustained you for so many years?
“You shall not kill”, what have you done with your lips and heart emotions towards your brothers when they annoy you? Have there been outbursts of anger and hatred?
“You shall not commit adultery”, what have you done with your body and your thought life? Have you practiced purity and faithfulness?
“You shall not steal.” What have you done with your tongue that can cause hurt to others? “You shall not lie”, have you carefully spoken the truth?
“You shall not covet,” are you content with what you have? Have you been thankful for what you have and delighted in the prosperity of another?
What have you done with this one life God has given you? Have you served God, and said no to sin and loved your neighbor as yourself? What are you going to bring before God in the Great Day? What fruits of faith, what victories over temptation, what godly zeal and self-denial, what cross-bearing and suffering for righteousness’ sake? What have you done with your life? What have you done with the gospel? Jesus says, “Come to me,” and what have you done? What have you done? That is what God said to the sinner Cain, and that is what he is saying to you. Let me ask this: “If you miss coming to church on Sunday do you bring what you missed giving in the offering the week before? If you missed coming to church one Sunday do you come the next week wanting to be a double blessing because you are so glad to be back in church? If you missed a Sunday of Church others know it your place was empty. I have read in the bible that when we enter heaven there is going to be a lot praising. We need to practice down here. GOD seeks to ask us ABOUT WHAT we’ve DONE WITH our LIVES.
2. GOD wants to SPEAK TO US ABOUT HIS reaction TO OUR SIN.
Do you hear these other words that he says to Cain? “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground”. What is he saying? “Your life and your actions matter to me Cain, how you live, what you say and do. I notice; stuff matters; I am involved in your life.” Aren’t we held responsible today? Cain cannot say, “But I killed him hours ago, I killed him yesterday, I killed him six years ago.” What has that got to do with the evil done? How does time change an evil that’s been done. There is no forgiveness achieved through the mere passing of the years. As you shred the months off the calendar does that shred away your guilt and shame? It does not. God told Cain that he knew exactly what had happened in the field, and that the blood of Abel kept crying out from the ground to him. The murder was crying for a reaction from God. He acted; he stirs himself and came to Cain as he comes to us and he tells us all that he knows what we are and what we have done. He assures us that the sins that hurt others matter to him. “Listen,” he cries to Cain. “Are you listening Cain? Are you paying attention? Prick up your ears! Listen Cain! You killed a man a few hours ago and now you are trying to turn your mind to a million other things and forget all about the murder, but I want you to listen. Are you listening Cain? Do you hear it the voice of the blood? Do you hear the speaking blood? Do you hear? Abel’s blood is crying out and I can hear it. Listen, can you hear it?” The bloodshed in hate is demanding that God be involved, and of course he is involved.
There are some simple powerful statements at the end of Exodus 2 that speak to this matter. We are told that the cry of God’s people in slavery in Egypt ascended to the Lord, and we are told four things about his response: 1. He heard their groaning, 2. He remembered his covenant with Abraham, 3. He looked on the Israelites, 4. He was concerned about them. That is our Lord today; He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He knows our heart.
3. WHAT is meant by THE BLOOD OF ABEL WAS CRYING OUT?
A. First we hear Imitate me. However men might hate you for being a believer don’t ever back down. Don’t betray the Lord. If you’ve put your hand to the plough then don’t look back. Don’t be parted from the Savior. Abel was a sincerely religious man. He had a saving knowledge; he knew what offering to bring to God, the shed blood of the very best of the firstlings of the flock. In Abel’s heart there was true saving faith because we are told it was by faith he made a more acceptable offering than Cain. Abel said: “Only the best is good enough for God. I’ll bring a lamb without a blemish and offer that to God.” God accepts people according to their faith in him. Imitate Abel. Be faithful unto death and you shall receive a crown of life. Keep that faith alive. Be followers of Abel.
B. Second we hear Vindicate me. There is an outstanding picture in the book of Revelation 6; John sees an extraordinary sight, “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’” From Genesis to Revelation the voice of the martyrs is heard crying for justification.
So the voice of a martyr was crying out in the blood of Abel. He was the first of a great cloud of witnesses who bore a brave testimony for the truth. Did you know that in the 20th century there were more martyrs for Christ in all the previous 19 centuries put together? Let me tell you of one who has suffered for Christ in the past weeks in India. We are told that last month while distributing Christian literature, Pastor M. Aharon, was mercilessly assaulted by a group of militant Hindus. He was beaten up for his zeal in bringing both Hindus and Muslims to Christ. He was not killed but was left half dead. His face was covered with blood from heavy blows to his mouth and nose. He survived the attack at the hands of a Hindu mob. As a group of thugs were beating him, a mob of over 100 Hindus cheered and yelled in support inciting others to join in. Police stood by doing nothing; they even prevented the pastor from escaping. Only after Aharon was falling unconscious to the ground did police move in and lead him away. Pastor Aharon was targeted because he has helped 700 Hindus and Muslims to trust in Christ. He has established 12 churches in that community, and has outraged Hindus and Muslims. When a Voice of the Martyrs contact asked Pastor Aharon what was going through his mind during the attack, he said, “I remembered Christ and many others persecuted for their faith in the last twenty centuries.” What does the blood of Pastor Aharon say to God? Vindicate me! His is a name in the paper to us, and so it is hard to bring our emotions to their stories, but he has families and friends, who are still hurting ‘real bad’ about what happened to a dear man.
4. How did THE JUDGMENT OF GOD CAME UPON CAIN.
How can the devil most effectively undermine the word of God? He can spread lie, lies such as that there’s no such thing as ‘the truth’ to be found, or the lie that everything that exists is because of evolution, or the lie that nothing really matters, or the lie that Christ did not rise from the dead, or the lie that God cannot be known. The devil certainly gives all his energies to spreading the lie that there is no hell. “You can live like a devil but there’s no judgment.” That’s what men and women say they believe today. “Let’s eat, drink and be merry for there’s no judgment.” Cain’s judgment was fourfold;
A. Cain was put under a curse. The serpent was put under a curse in the Eden and here is the first of the line of the serpent, Cain, and he is also cursed. Cain was a farmer whose one vocation was to produce crops, but the ground was under a curse; it produced weeds and thorns and thistles; the heavens withheld their rain, the harvest was nothing, the beasts bleated and bellowed for water and died; Cain’s family starved. “When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you”. Barrenness, pain, frustration, despair, death, that was the curse that came upon the world when man defied God, and that curse remains. When God cursed Cain his state became like the barren soil, but worse, because the soil is dead while living Cain bore God’s image. Cain faced an appalling future of barrenness, pain, frustration, despair and finally death, as do all men who resist God.
B. Cain was made “restless wanderer on the earth”. The first born of all mankind became a tramp, an alien, a wanderer, of no fixed abode. Cain had no sense of belonging, a farmer who was driven from the fertile ground. A man called to sow and then wait until harvest time for the reaping was constantly moved on, unable to gain the reward from his labors. You see it again and again; a man lives for his business, works and sweats and worries and sacrifices for his business, and then he has a heart attack and dies before he gains a reward. Others benefit from all he did.
C. Cain was “hidden from God’s presence”. Cain had no Lord to turn to each day; no day of rest each week. There was no coming to the one Lord who promises, “I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” You reject my Savior and what have you got? You are on your own on your journey to the grave, trying to find meaning in life by indulging yourself in this passion and that lust. The restless and lonely sinner who is made by God and for God will always be alone until you know God.
D. Cain had a desperate fear of man; “whoever finds me will kill me”. The knock on the door, the sounds of a man walking up behind him, the sudden appearance of a stranger waiting round the bend, the noise in the night, the strange taste to food he’d bought, the look on the face of a woman he thought he could trust, the group of teenagers acting oddly, the man riding towards him, the old man reaching under his cloak, was it for a knife? Every day Cain thought, “Is this one out for vengeance for my killing Abel?” He was left in perpetual fear. What irony, that the man who had struck down his own brother utterly mercilessly lived all his life in fear of being struck down himself. Fear God and you will then have nothing else to fear. No fear of God leaves us in fear of man and God.
God assured him that death would not come to him, though many a day Cain might have welcomed death. “Do not kill Cain,” God said to every man, but would they heed God? Cain hadn’t heeded God when he killed his brother. The Lord even put a mark on Cain so that no one who came across him would touch him. We don’t know what the mark was; we only know that it said, “Don’t harm this man. Vengeance is mine. I will repay says the Lord. Don’t you dare touch him or you will feel the full weight of my wrath, seven times over.” God will place restraints on human behavior. He will have no feuds developing, no descendants of Cain killing the man who killed their father, and then the descendants of the man killed killing that man and his family and so on and on. So there was a mark put on Cain to stop that process ever beginning. Cain was left carrying this disgrace before the world, a sign which said, “This is the man who murdered his own brother.” Parents turned the faces of their children away from him. Men looked down as he hurried by, the man who murdered his own kid brother.
This was the judgment that was certain for Cain. Was it not just? Didn’t it perfectly suit Cain’s guilt for taking away the life of his kid brother? It was a perfect judgment, righteous in its every detail lasting his entire life. The Judge of all the earth does right, and he will do right when he judges you. He will bring every factor into consideration; he will know every circumstance. There is no way that the judgment will be unfair, married by any ignorance. God cannot be bought or bribed or given misinformation about a single person. No orator can sway him into a miscarriage of judgment. The worst man or woman the world has ever seen will be judged fairly. The best man or woman will also be judged fairly. Every fallen angel will be dealt with fairly, but all of us will certainly be dealt with; none will be exempt; none will find a hiding place away from the great white throne. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Cain was driven from God’s presence to face a long and empty lifetime.
5. THE JUDGMENT OF GOD CAME UPON GOD’S BELOVED SON. There is other blood that speaks to God. It is also the blood of a murdered man, but one utterly innocent, wrongly condemned by men, one without spot or blemish. It is the blood of “Jesus the mediator of a new covenant . . . the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel”. You’ve often thought of Calvary haven’t you? The children’s hymn says, “I sometimes think about the cross, and shut my eyes and try to see the cruel nails and crown of thorns and Jesus crucified for me.” (William How, 1823-1897)
What does Golgotha say to you? Doesn’t the death of Jesus speak to you? If you should see your wife or husband or child or parent covered in blood wouldn’t that sight cry out to you? Would you be untouched by that sight of a loved one bleeding? Their bleeding wounds would cry out to you for compassion, and pity, and love, and perhaps anger if some wretched person had hurt them. Never did any Father love his Son as God loved Jesus Christ, and one day he saw Jesus’ blood running from hands and feet and side. What did it say to God? Didn’t it say, “See, this is not a sinner dying before you! This is your own spotless Son, and he is pouring out his soul to death.” Why is his bloodshed? Jesus was the Good Shepherd who was laying down his life for the sheep. He was the Lamb of God who was taking away the sin of the world. He had become our Substitute and he was dying under the glorious goodness of a sin hating God. He was the perfect sacrifice atoning the divine hatred of every form of wickedness, and “in my place condemned he stood.”
What was that blood saying to the Father? “Can you be indifferent to this blood? If men who are sinners are moved to respond by the sight of their bleeding children how much more will you respond to my blood? Will you despise the cries and groans and tears and prayers of me your Son? O tender Father, didn’t I lie in your bosom before the foundation of the world? Shall my blood fall to the ground in vain? Can you not see, can you not feel, the force of this blood as it cries to you? Is it not for your honor I die here? Is it not in obedience to you I have humbled myself to the death of the cross? Is it not to honor your law? See your Son’s flesh pierced by cruel nails and a spear thrust. He is dying for your glory. If you hadn’t existed he wouldn’t have died. If there were no law to vindicate he would not have died. If there were no truth to defend, he would not have died. If there was no hell to save sinners from then he would not have died. If God were content to treat fallen men just as he had treated the fallen angels casting them into darkness then Jesus would not have died. But the Lord has given his life for you. He has committed his life to you. He offered himself, and he dies in the place of his enemies; he groans for them who made him groan; he is pierced for those who pierced him; he is mocked for those who mock his agony. O God what will his blood say to you?
Isaac Watts looked at the wondrous cross and said, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Isaac Watts grasped the tiniest part of the meaning of Calvary and yet was overwhelmed with that. God knows all the meaning of Calvary and he is overwhelmed, and the Spirit is overwhelmed, and the angels in heaven are overwhelmed, and the spirits of just men made perfect are overwhelmed at what the blood of God the Son cries to them.
God comes to every one of his people and he says, “I know everything you have done, every sin you have committed, every sinner you have hurt,” and then he quickly adds, “No matter how vast that guilt, however wretched and cruel your sin, the voice of the blood of my beloved Son Jesus Christ has cried to me from the ground of Golgotha for your pardon, and from now on you whose plea is his precious blood shall be blessed. I have forgiven you your iniquities; I have set my mark upon you. No man and no devil shall destroy you. There will be no condemnation. I have received and accepted you, guilty as you are. Go your way in peace for I have taken away your iniquities and cast your sins behind my back, and if the day should come when your sins are searched for no sins shall be found, for I have freely pardoned you.
I wish I could command the Holy Spirit to open every heart and clear every mind. Don’t you see that long ago, before you sinned, and long before you were born, this blood was speaking to God for your pardon? Long before you sinned God knew. Abel’s blood called for vengeance, but Jesus blood cries, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” That is why we are forgiven; it is through the blood of Christ. It is not the cry of the sinner seeking mercy that brings mercy to us; it is the cry of the blood of Jesus. The blood does not need your voice to increase its power with God. God will hear your voice crying for mercy because he first heard the voice of the blood of Christ. Jesus’ blood does not plead for the innocent but Jesus pleads for rebels and hypocrites and the prayer less and killers and adulterers and thieves that God may dwell among them. The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. For you who have broken God’s law and despised his love and fought against his power and now entrust yourself to the Savior the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son pleads for you. Shall it plead in vain? “Dear dying Lamb Your precious blood shall never lose its power. Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more.”
