Years ago when I was at Purdue I decided to read the Bible for myself. So, I bought myself a Bible Commentary, and a Bible Dictionary, and I made a deal with God: I told Him I’d read everything but the poetry, the prophecy, and the “who-begat-whos.” I set my Bible and study books out where I would remember to read them, and I decided that I’d read ONLY if I felt like it. But when I read I’d read as often and as long as I felt like it. And, as I read, I’d put marks in the margins along the side of the page. If I had a question, I’d put a question mark (?) with the hope that sooner or later a teacher or preacher would help me understand what the verses said. But if something impressed me, I’d put a star (*)
It was in the 4th chapter of Genesis that I put the 1st star in my Bible. It was the story of Cain and Abel, and the verse I put a star beside was this one: “The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.’” Genesis 4:6-7
Now obviously, the fact that Cain murdered his brother got my attention - but it had never occurred to me that God might expect us to rule over our emotions and sins. Yes I know, that would seem like a gimmee (it seems obvious) but for some reason, I’d never thought about that before, and the very idea caught me by surprise.
Now, let’s back up a little and think about what’s happened in this passage. Cain and his brother Abel offered sacrifices to God, but God accepts Abel and his sacrifice, but rejects Cain and his sacrifice. Cain gets mad at Abel, and he kills him. And that’s pretty much the story.
The question (of course) is why did Cain get mad at Abel? Abel didn’t do anything, so why kill him!? Well the following is my THEORY of what might have been going on (I admit could be wrong). In Genesis 3 we’re told God pronounced a curse on Adam & Eve… and Satan. Among other things, Adam and Eve lost their home in the Garden. But then, when God speaks to Satan, He says: “I will put hatred between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15
Essentially, God was declaring that the offspring of a woman (a boy child) would defeat Satan.
Now, fast-forward to Genesis 4:1. “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.’”
Cain means: “I have gotten or acquired”. So Eve had acquired a boy child… a man. And I think she thinks that she has given birth to the boy that will defeat Satan and get her back into the Garden. But her next child is Abel – and Abel means “meaningless”, “emptiness”, “worthless.” (http://www.crossmarks.com/genesis/genesisd.htm) Essentially, she was saying “I have Cain… what do I need Abel for?”
Now… if I’m right – Cain is the Golden Child; he is the fulfillment of the prophecy; he’s the boy she wants and she treats him that way. He can’t do anything wrong. Everything Cain does is praised. But Abel is a distant 2nd. He has to work twice as hard to get half the attention. So, when the time came to offer sacrifices to God, Cain did what he’d always done - he gave a half-hearted effort. By contrast, Abel did what he’d always done… he gave it ALL that he had. And so God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s, and God tells Cain “Next time do better and it will be alright.” But Cain gets ticked. He’d never been rejected before, and he sees it as all Abel’s fault. Abel got what Cain deserved - AND IT WASN’T RIGHT!
Cain was furious, and at this point, God does an intervention. He goes and has a little talk with Cain and explains: “Boy YOU’VE got a problem. Sin is crouching at your door – and you better master it or it’s going to destroy you."
Now, the anger we’re dealing with in Genesis 4 is anger towards others. According to one source, research shows that “angry people tend to SEEK someone to blame.” (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/12/science-of-anger-gender-age-personality)
So here we have Cain being angry at Abel, probably because Abel got the praise that Cain felt he should have had. As one preacher noted: “Instead of asking for God’s forgiveness – Cain began to invent a plan where he could get back at his brother. It was a plan of murder. And not just murder… but premeditated murder. He planned the place. He planned the time. And it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d already dug the grave (Edward Hardee)
ILLUS: Clarence Darrow, a famous criminal lawyer, once said, “Everyone is a potential murderer. I have not killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction out of obituary notices.” Darrow was echoing the words of 1 John 3:15 which says: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”
In the eyes of God… hatred of others is a terrible thing. Galatians 5:19-21 lists “the works of the flesh” amongst which are “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions... I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
In other words, hatred (and emotions like it) will rob you of heaven. And you don’t want to lose that!
But is anger always wrong? Well… no. Ephesians 4:26-27 says “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” So, it’s OK to be angry… just don’t sin. Don’t curse, don’t seek revenge, don’t insult, don’t belittle. As Proverbs 29:11 tells us, only “a fool gives full vent to his anger.”
ILLUS: I once read that there was a therapy for “releasing your rage” that involved punching things, throwing things around and screaming to your heart's content. But research has found that venting your anger doesn’t work. In fact, it makes things worse. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201512/7-myths-about-anger-and-why-theyre-wrong)
That’s why God confronted Cain immediately and said: “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?” God knew that the best time for Cain to deal with his anger was while he was just thinking these angry thoughts. I mean, he hadn’t done anything… yet.
A repeated theme in Scripture is – master your anger, control it - because if you don’t it will control you, and it will hurt you! As God warned Cain in Genesis 4:7 - control your anger because “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Or, as Ephesians 4 says, “give no opportunity to the devil.”
So, the question is, how do we control anger we might have toward others? How do we keep this sin from controlling us, and even robbing us of salvation? Well… I can think of at least 3 different ways.
1st – decide to CHANGE THE SITUATION. I have a relative who - when it comes to politics – always seems to be angry. He says nasty and hurtful things about a certain party of politicians, and if you happen to be of that party he says nasty things to you and about you. Well, I happen to be of that party, and years ago, I stayed at his house for a few days. As I was leaving his house to go home he and his wife flanked me as they walked me out to my car, just hammering me on how evil THAT party was and how foolish I was to be part of it. It made me a little angry, and plunged me into a time of depression that took me several weeks to work myself out of. So we finally had a little talk about this. I told him: “I love you… but we’re not doing this anymore. No more politics, no more arguments. As long as you leave that topic alone… we’ll be good.” And once I told him I was not going to accept that situation anymore he never brought it up again and life was at peace.
So, sometimes, you’ve got to change the situation.
And 2nd– sometimes you’ve got to decide to CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE.
ILLUS: Years ago, my nephew Joshua lived with us, and I really enjoyed having him around and he looked up to me. When he was about 12 years old I bought a really nice car. It rode nice, had a nice paint job. I loved that car. But one day we stopped for gas, and Josh decided to help wash the front window… and he scraped the metal part of the squeegee the hood of the car scraping the paint off a spot about 3 inches long. Instantly, I was furious. But then Diana asked “which is more important the car… or Josh?” (pause) I had to think about that a couple of minutes. But she was right… Joshua was more important. I had to change my attitude so that I remembered how much more important Josh was than the car.
But now, wait a minute. I loved Joshua, so loving him more than the car was relatively easy. But what if it was somebody I didn’t even like? What if I couldn’t stand that person who’d scraped my car? In fact, what if they’d done something that was far worse than scraping the hood of my car?
Well, that’s brings us to our 3rd way of controlling anger. We need to CHANGE OUR VIEW OF GOD.
ILLUS: In 1944, the ten Boom family was arrested for hiding Jews from the Gestapo. Corrie and her sister Betsie, were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and the rest of the family went elsewhere. Over time, Betsie & their 2 brothers, Casper & Christiaan died as prisoners. But because of a clerical error, Corrie Ten Boom was released one week before all the other women her age were killed. After the war ended Corrie ten Boom was a bitter woman. The devastating horrors of what happened to her family filled her with rage.
But she was also a Godly church-going woman, and she began to read passages from the Bible that said she needed to forgive those who had sinned against her. She didn’t want to do that – she didn’t want to forgive. They didn’t deserve it. So she and God had a long series of talks about that issue. But she finally surrendered to God and began praying for one person at a time until she finally felt the pain of hatred go away, then she moved on to others.
For the next 32 years she shared the idea of forgiveness throughout the world. But in an article in Guideposts, Corrie Ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident over and over again… and couldn’t get any sleep. After 2 sleepless weeks, she finally went to her minister and asked for help. The preacher thought about that for a moment and then said “Do you see that church tower? Up in the church tower is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. It goes ‘ding and dong, and ding and dong letting people know that church is about to begin. But then the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding dongs of the old bell slowing down.’” (Leadership, Summer of ‘87 p. 48)
The people she forgave had done unspeakable things to her and her family, and yet she learned that those were the very people that God loved. God so loved the world – He loved you and me, and the little old lady down the street… and He loved the wicked and evil of this world. He loved them so much that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Corrie realized God forgave those who’d done bad things, and so she had to learn to forgive them too.
CLOSE: But someone might object: “Jesus you don’t understand. You don’t know what that person’s done to me. You don’t understand what it’s like to be treated like they treated me.
And Jesus would reply: “Yes I do. I was betrayed and abandoned by my friends. Abused and mistreated by people who hated me. I was beaten… and whipped … and ridiculed, and the crowd demanded that I be put to death… nailed to a cross and crucified. I was forced to carry my cross to Golgotha, and there my and hands and feet were nailed to the rough timbers… and I was left there to die."
YES… JESUS UNDERSTANDS WHAT IT’S LIKE!
But do you remember what Jesus said as He hung there on that cross? “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.” Even on the cross Jesus reached out to those who had hurt Him, because Jesus believes that even the worst of us are still salvageable.
INVITATION
