ENGAGE
It’s one of those things that when it’s right, you don’t even notice it. And yet it is still one of the most important aspects of a joyful, fulfilling life.
It’s undoubtedly important in music. When everyone on the worship team plays and sings right along with it, the music sounds great. But if even one singer or instrument gets out of sync with it, everyone notices it immediately.
It’s also important for our physical lives. When our heartbeat is synchronized with the proper one, we don’t even notice it. But when it gets out of whack with it, we immediately notice it and have to take steps to correct that if we want to stay alive.
And, as we’ll see this morning, it’s also important in our spiritual lives.
Perhaps by now you’ve figured out that I’m speaking of rhythm.
TENSION
The importance of rhythm in our lives shouldn’t be all that surprising since God established a number of important rhythms at creation. While we’re going to primarily look at Genesis 4 today, I want to begin by going back to Genesis 1 and taking a look at some of those rhythms.
First there is a rhythm establish in each day of creation. Each of the six days of creation have a consistent rhythm. God speaks. Something comes into existence and then God pronounces it good. But you’ll also notice that at the end of each day, we see another rhythm:
And there was evening and there was morning, the ____ day.
You’ll notice that this is just the opposite of the way we view each day here in the Western world. We tend to think that a day begins in the morning and ends in the evening, rather than the other way around.
But the Jews concept of each day is more in tune with the rhythms of creation, which is why they consider each day to begin at sunset. We’ll see that quite clearly when we take a look at the feasts that God prescribed for His people.
Then there is a larger overall rhythm built into the creation as well. God engages in the work of creation for six days and then He rests. That rhythm later becomes the foundation for the idea of Sabbath.
And we find that those same rhythms are still important to living a healthy life today. If we don’t alternate periods of work and rest each day throughout the week and if we don’t take one day off out of every seven from our work, then our bodies fail to operate as God intended and we become ill – physically, mentally, or spiritually – or in some cases all three.
Today, we will see that Adam and Eve’s sin that we looked at last week introduced another rhythm into this world – one that is not nearly as healthy as the ones God established at creation, but one that is nonetheless an integral part of life here on this earth.
TRUTH
So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 4.
In this chapter we’ll discover that mankind is divided into two different groups or lines based on their response to God. This chapter begins and ends with the promise and hope of the line of Abel and Seth that comes through living life on God’s terms. But in between those two bookends is the heartbreaking tale of disobedience and despair of the line of Cain that comes from living life on man’s terms. And that alternating between periods of promise and hope with periods of disobedience and despair is one that we’ll see over and over again throughout not just the Old Testament, but throughout history until Jesus returns to this earth again to put an end to that cycle.
Promise and Hope
Disobedience and Despair
While this is by no means a healthy cycle, it is one that we find ourselves living in the midst of so we need to learn how to make sure that we remain in the portion of this cycle that is characterized by promise and hope. And Genesis 4 helps us learn how to do that.
[Read Genesis 4]
There is a sharp contrast here between the line of Abel, and later Seth, and that of Cain. And it is important for us to identify what it is that causes that contrast.
• On the surface, it might seem that the difference is that Abel and Seth were religious, but that Cain was not. But as we’ll see this morning, Cain was actually quite religious. But just like many in our culture today, it was a religion of his own making.
• If we look at their outward actions here, we could also conclude that Abel and Seth are obedient and that Cain is disobedient. While that is true, it still doesn’t get to the root issue here.
• Like we see so often in Scripture, the heart of the matter here is a matter of the heart:
Promise and hope are the product of a heart that desires to do things God’s way
Disobedience and despair are the product of a heart that desires to do things man’s way
Let’s see if we can develop that idea together this morning.
Like I said earlier, this chapter begins with great hope. We don’t really have any handle on the time frames here, but we need to keep in mind that the people that we read about in these fist few chapters of Genesis all lived 100’s of years and so many of these generations were all alive at the same time. Sometime – we don’t know how long - after the events of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve have a son and Eve names him Cain, which means something like “acquired” or “gotten”.
As I talked about with the kids earlier, names are really significant in the Bible and the name Cain is evidence of the faith of Adam and Eve in God’s promise to send a deliverer through Eve’s offspring. By naming her son Cain she indicates that she believes that she has acquired or gotten that redeemer that God had promised in Genesis 3:15. But as we’ll see, that hope gets dashed several years down the road when she realizes she has given birth not to the Messiah, but rather to a murderer.
She also has a second child, who is named Abel, which means “breath”. That name turns out to be quite prophetic given that Abel’s life ends up being so short – just a breath in history’s timeline.
Abel becomes a keeper of sheep and Cain a worker of the ground. There is absolutely nothing in the text to indicate that God valued either of those occupations above the other or that either was unacceptable to Him.
At some point – again we can’t be sure of the timing - Cain and Abel both bring an offering to God. God accepts Abel’s offering of the firstborn of his flock, but he rejects Cain’s offering of some of the fruit of the ground.
On Monday morning, we joked that this proves that God prefers steak over vegetables. But as I thought about that more this week, perhaps that is closer to the truth than I first thought. Up until this week, whenever I looked at this passage, I’ve always assumed that the reason that God accepted Abel’s offering is because he brought an offering of the best of his flocks and that he rejected Cain’s offering because Cain only brought leftovers, so to speak. But while that may be true, at least to some degree, I think there is a much deeper reason for God’s response to the offerings.
Remember last week we saw how God made garments of animal skins to replace the fig leaves that Adam and Eve had fashioned for themselves. And we talked about how that was a picture that God was going to require the shedding of innocent blood to cover man’s sin. I think God was also making the point that Adam and Eve’s own efforts to cover the shame of their sin by making coverings out of fig leaves was inadequate so God replaced them with a covering of His own making. God was establishing right up front the idea that we have to come to God according to the way He prescribes and not according to our own ways.
It’s hard to imagine that Cain and Abel had somehow dreamed up the idea of bringing an offering to God on their own. As they grew up, they undoubtedly had heard the account of what had happened to their mom and dad in the garden over and over. They learned what God had shown their parents about the proper way to approach Him. It is clear that God had given them adequate instruction about the proper kind of offering to bring, likely through their parents as well as by His direct commands. I think that is confirmed by what the author of Hebrews writes:
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
(Hebrews 11:4 ESV)
The only way that Abel could have offered his sacrifice in faith is if God had clearly revealed to him that He required a sacrifice that involved the shedding of the blood of an innocent substitute. Without that knowledge, it would have been impossible for Abel to respond to God in faith.
From the very beginning God had declared that the penalty for sin was death. But by providing Adam and Eve coverings made from the skins of slain animals, He had also shown than He would accept the death of a suitable substitute in place of the death of the sinner. By doing that, God pointed ahead to the Lamb of God, Jesus, who would come to take away the sin of the world.
As I suggested earlier, both Abel and Cain were religious. They both engaged in a religious act by bringing an offering. But the difference was that Cain’s religion was one of his own making while Abel’s actions were motivated by his faith in God and His ways. God didn’t accept Abel’s sacrifice because it was Abel’s best effort. After all, Abel was, by nature, just as much of a sinner as Cain. God accepted it because it was offered in faith in response to God’s revelation.
On the other hand, Cain offered up a sacrifice of his own making. Even though he undoubtedly had received the very same revelation as his brother, he decided he would bring an offering of his own making so he brought some of the fruit from the ground that he had produced with his own hands.
So it’s not surprising that when God rejects his offering, Cain gets very angry – at both God and his brother. But don’t you just love how God deals with Cain here? Just like He had done with Adam and Eve in the garden, God doesn’t immediately condemn Cain. Instead, He asks him a series of questions. As we pointed out last week, God doesn’t ask questions to get information. He already knows what Cain has done and what is in his heart. But He asks those questions to allow Cain to understand his own heart.
He also gives Cain a second chance. God tells Cain that it is not too late for him to “do well”. If he will just admit his sin and repent and bring the proper offering God will accept him and restore their relationship. He extends to Cain an offer to live a life of hope and promise. But he also warns Cain that if he doesn’t accept that offer, he is going to live a life in which sin will try to master him and where he will constantly battle to try and rule over that sin. That idea is 100% consistent with what we learned in our study of Romans where we saw how the man without Jesus is a slave to sin.
But in spite of the fact that God gives Cain that second chance, Cain makes the choice not to take advantage of that. Cain’s pride gets the best of him and that prevents him from coming to God on God’s terms. He still insists on approaching God on his own terms.
And since he can’t really do anything to take his anger out on God directly, he does the next best thing in his mind. As far as we know, Abel had never done anything to harm Cain. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that God had tried to tell Cain that he needed to me more like his brother. So there was really no rational reason for Cain to hate and murder his brother. But perhaps Cain couldn’t handle the fact that his brother would always be around as a reminder of his own sin and desire to do things his own way. So he lures Abel out into the field and murders him.
God comes to Cain once again and asks some more questions. Instead of responding to God with any kind of contrition at all, Cain pokes his finger at God and defiantly says. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”.
So God imposes an appropriate punishment on Cain. Unlike we saw in Genesis 3, where God did not directly curse Adam and Eve, this time God curses Cain himself and takes away the thing in which Cain had taken pride and the source of the self-centered offering he had made to God – his ability to work the ground. Not only that, Cain was sentenced to a life of a fugitive and wanderer.
But even after all of that, Cain still isn’t about to humble himself and repent. Instead, he whines about the severity of his punishment and worries that another family member is going to try to avenge Abel’s death by killing him.
Once again we see God’s grace and mercy on display here. He puts some kind of mark on Cain to protect Cain from those who might try to do him harm.
But in spite of God’s repeated offering of His grace, Cain thumbs his nose at God. In verse 16, we see that Cain leaves the presence of God and goes to settle in Nod. There Cain basically says to God “I’ll show you! You sentenced me to wander the earth, but I’m going to settle down and build a city.” He and his wife have a child that they name Enoch, which means “dedicated”. The Jewish Feast of Dedication gets its name “Hanukkah” from that same root word. By the way, this is not the same Enoch we see in Genesis 5, who is the son of Methuselah, and who God took directly to heaven.
Several generations later a man named Lamech is born into the line of Cain. Again, this is not the same Lamech who will become the father of Noah. We’re really not certain what the name Lamech means, but most likely, it means something like “to be made low”. Lamech takes two wives and has three sons who develop shepherding, music and the production of bonze and iron tools. That all looks very good on the surface.
But we soon see that over the matter of just a few generations, Cain’s sin has now multiplied within his line. First, we see that Lamech defiled God’s design for marriage that was established at creation by being the first to engage in polygamy – a practice that God never commands or condones and which leads to all kinds of problems throughout the history of God’s people.
But even worse, Lamech, not only sins, he brags about his sin. He sings a song to his wives in which he claims to have killed a man for wounding him and young boy for striking him. And then he mocks God’s grace that had been extended to Cain by implying that he was more powerful than God because he would take revenge seventy fold on anyone who tried to avenge those murders.
So a chapter that began with great promise and the hope of a redeemer quickly devolves into an entire line of people who is characterized by their desire to live life on their own terms in open defiance of God.
But once again, God is about to pour His grace into the lives of Adam and Eve. After seeing what had happened with Cain, no one could have blamed Eve if she had decided to never again have another child. But Eve had enough faith in God to go ahead and obey His command to be fruitful and multiply and to trust that He would still fulfill His promise to bring a deliverer from her offspring. So she and Adam have another child.
Eve names him Seth, which means “appointed” in recognition of God’s grace in appointing a son to replace her son Abel who had been murdered. And Seth becomes more than just a physical replacement for Abel. He and his line carry on the heart of Abel – a heart that desires to do things God’s way. Instead of turning their backs on God, they begin to call on the name of the Lord. In other words, they worshipped God on His terms and not their own. And it is the line of Seth through whom the Messiah would one day come, as confirmed by the genealogy of Jesus in Luke chapter 3 that traces the lineage of Jesus back to him.
Once again this passage reveals much about the character of God and the character of man and points ahead to Jesus. Since much of what we learn in this chapter merely confirms what we learned in Genesis 3, I’ll be pretty brief here, but there are also a couple of new, or at least more complete, revelations that I want to touch on.
What this passage teaches about God
This passage confirms what we learned last week. God is a God of love, grace and mercy. But at the same time he is also holy, righteous and just. He offers grace and mercy to Cain over and over, but when Cain refuses to accept it, God carries out the appropriate punishment, which directly deals with the nature of Cain’s sin.
We also see God’s sovereignty in play here. Just when it seems that God’s promise to provide a redeemer from the line of Eve has been thwarted by Cain’s sin, God steps in and appoints another son through whom the Messiah will come.
But there is one other thing we learn about God here:
• He is a God of second chances
No doubt this is an aspect of God’s mercy, but one that we see clearly for the first time in Scripture. Even after he thumbs his nose at God on numerous occasions, God just keeps coming back to Cain and offering him chance after chance to repent and turn back to Him. This is an aspect of God’s character that we will see over and over again in His dealings with individuals as well as His dealings with His people as a community.
But we also see here that there is a limit to God’s patience. At some point when His mercy is rejected time after time, God will mete out His justice and impose His wrath. And only God knows where that point is.
What this passage teaches about man
Once again we see that God gives man the ability to make choices. Not only did he allow Abel and Cain to make choices about the kind of offering they would bring, He continued to offer Cain the chance to choose to repent and to return to God and do what was right.
But we also begin to see here the impact of having Adam’s sin nature passed down to all men. We see how that left unchecked
• Man’s natural tendency is to do things his own way
Without God’s intervention in our lives, that is what we would all be like all the time. But the offspring of Seth, Jesus, came into this world and did things God’s way to both provide us with a model and also to make it possible for us to die to sin and become alive to God through faith in Jesus. That idea leads us directly to the application of what we’ve learned this morning.
APPLICATION
IMPLICATION FOR MY LIFE
• I need to live by faith, not by feelings
As we’ve seen this morning, since the time of Cain and Abel our world has been divided into two groups. On one hand, we have those who, like Cain, live on the basis of their feelings. We see how he allowed his anger to control his life to the point he rejected God’s grace and murdered his brother. But that was just a symptom of deeper problem – a heart that wanted to live life on his own terms.
On the other hand, there are those who, like Abel and Seth, live their lives on the basis of their faith. Obviously neither Abel or Seth did that perfectly, any more than we can. But their lives were consistently characterized by their trust in God and in His purposes, plans and ways.
And it is the tension between those two ways of life that lead to the rhythm that is still present in this world.
Promise and Hope
Disobedience and Despair
God has given us a choice about which of those two ways that we will live our lives. We can live by faith and have a life full of promise and hope or we can live according to our feelings, which inevitably leads to a life of disobedience and despair.
I think the best way to evaluate whether I’m living by feelings or by faith is to consider how I respond to the things in God’s Word that might not make sense to my finite human mind. How I choose to respond to those commands of God will go a long way in determining whether I am living by feelings or by faith. Let me suggest some very practical tests:
o Obviously the most important area in which I need to evaluate my heart is in how I attempt to approach God. Do I do that based on my own accomplishments and works, because of my pride which leads me to believe that I can somehow attain favor with God by what I do? Or do I approach God in humility, acknowledging that my works are nothing more than filthy rags and that therefore I am trusting completely on what Jesus has already done for me as the only way to approach God?
o When someone insults me, do I let my feelings control me and respond with an insult of my own, or do I do what 1 Peter 3:9 commands and bless the other person instead?
o When my finances are tight, do I let worry and fear keep me from giving to God, or do I follow the command of Jesus and lay up treasure in heaven or the command in the Proverbs to honor the Lord with my firstfruits and trust that God will provide for my needs?
o When someone harms me or someone I love, do I let my anger push me to retaliate or do I heed the words of Jesus and forgive that person and pray for him or her?
o Do I let my pride compel me into doing religious deeds in a public manner that will bring attention to myself, or do I serve others out of my genuine love for them and a desire to do what is best for them?
INSPIRATION
Given the choice, I’m pretty sure all of us want to have lives that are characterized by hope and promise and not disobedience and despair. And that is the kind of life that I know God wants us to have as well. And the good news is that kind of life is possible for all of us if we’ll have the heart of Abel and Seth – a heart that is devoted to doing things God’s way – even when they don’t make sense.
[Prayer]
ACTION
I want to encourage all of us to take some time this week to ask God to reveal our hearts to us and to show us anywhere where we are pursuing our own ways rather than God’s. And where God reveals those things, will you confess them and repent? If there is anything we can do as a church to help you in that process, please let us know.
Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable
1. What are some examples of “offerings’ that we can bring to God that are merely the fruit of our own hands?
2. Is all anger sin? How can we tell the difference between sinful anger and righteous anger? How should we deal with our anger?
3. In the Bible, polygamy is quite common and God never seems to specifically prohibit it or call it a sin. Does that mean it is an acceptable practice to God? Why or why not?
4. Lamech’s children developed shepherding, music and iron and bronze tools. How have those developments been used throughout history for both good and evil?
5. What does it mean to “call upon the name of the Lord”?
