Today in our series “Family Business” we will see that apples don’t fall far from the tree as we consider Genesis 4:1-15. Let’s begin by reading Genesis 4:1-7,
Adam was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” 2 Then she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he looked despondent. 6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? 7 If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
From time to time all of us make verbal faux pas. One of my favorite stories about such mistakes was told by former FBI agent and criminal profiler John Douglas in his book Mindhunter. He told of how his boss had once held a news conference about a murder case. In it his boss said, “This is not an uncommon event. People have been killing each other ever since Cain shot Abel.” That’s funny enough, but Douglas went on to say that none of the brilliant members of the Fourth Estate who were present caught it!
So far, in this series, the main culprit has been Satan. Lucifer became proud of his beauty, forgot that it had been bestowed upon him by God, and tried to stage a coup in heaven. He was defeated, and he and his followers were cast out of heaven, but sin and evil had come into being.
In reaction, God, out of His loving personality, created the heavens and the earth, and all living creatures therein, the highest of which was humanity. As we saw in Genesis 2 and 3. Satan counter-punched, striking back at God by tempting Adam and Eve to sin. Satan accomplished his goal of enticing God’s greatest creations to defile themselves and ruin God’s perfect plan for them. Now we will begin to see the impact of the sin of Adam and Eve as Cain followed their lead and sinned in his own right. Let’s begin by considering verses 1-7.
Cain Failed to Worship God:
Worship is “job one” for a Christian. For over fifteen years, the slogan of the Ford Motor Company was “Quality is Job #1.” The company wanted to differentiate itself from other auto manufacturers by highlighting its focus on quality at every stage of production and so high quality, ostensibly, became its highest priority. In the Christian life, worship is our most basic function as a disciple individually and as a church collectively. If we fail to worship, we fail God and we fail ourselves.
Worship is declaring the “worth-ship” of God. It is praising Him and extolling His glory. He deserves our worship, and we have an innate need to worship Him as well. Some have put it this way: there is a God-shaped place in our hearts that only He can fill. The Scriptures support this idea; Psalm 42:1-4 says,
As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?” 4 I remember this as I pour out my heart: how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God, with joyful and thankful shouts.
Worship allows us to connect with a higher being and a higher purpose than just ourselves. Life will never be empty or meaningless for God’s people if they worship Him in spirit and in truth and with all of their heart, all of their soul and all of their mind.
These verses tell us that Cain’s worship was flawed. Like someone giving their cast-off clothes to a charity shop, Cain brought his leftovers to God. And verse 5 shows us that even when he did that, he had a bad attitude about it. He did not care enough to give his very best to God. Abel, on the other hand, worshipped well. He brought his best, his first fruits to God, and his attitude was to make pleasing God his number one priority.
Let me be clear that the issue was not the type of offering that Cain provided. Yes, animal sacrifices were central to the Law of Moses, but it also included provisions for grain and liquid offerings as well. We also must note that the Law of Moses had not yet been given. No, the issue was not with the type of offering, but the quality of it, and the attitude in which it was given.
Steven Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that in life, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” For the Christian, worshiping God is the main thing. Author and Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe has said:
Heaven is a place of worship, and God’s people shall worship Him throughout all eternity. Perhaps it would be good for us to get in practice now!
When we do the right thing, we are often criticized by others who don’t. For example, the first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn, was the object of jealousy by the rest of the first seven astronauts because of his “Mr. Clean” persona. We can see this same thing taking place in the first family as we read verses 8 and 9,
Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?”
Cain Failed to Love His Brother:
Cain not only failed to worship God, but he also failed to love his brother. Cain’s failure to worship originated in his failure to love.
A number of words are used for love in the Scriptures including phileo, which means brotherly love (and from where we get the city name of Philadelphia) and agape which is God’s type of love which is extolled in 1 Corinthians 13. In any case, Cain failed to love his brother to the extent that he lured him out into the field and killed him.
Detective Joe Kenda, who solved 356 murder cases in his career, has said that the three basic motives for murder are money, jealousy, and revenge. All of these things can provoke an immature person into hurting another.
Fear is another reason people hurt others. 1 John 4:18 tells us that, “Perfect love casts out all fear,” but sadly our love isn’t perfect. In fear, we can give way to the idea that we should, “Do unto others before they do it unto us!” Our national fear after the 9/11 attacks caused our government to believe that Sadam Hussein possessed and had the will to use weapons of mass destruction, and yet after our invasion of Iraq, none were ever found.
Sometimes people are simply callous and hardhearted. As James 2:14-16 reminds us,
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can his faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?
For whatever reason, Cain gave place to his anger. He planned and plotted to kill his brother. Then he lured Abel into an isolated place, and he killed him. Afterwards he dismissed his act with a cruel and dismissive comment.
An infantry veteran of the Korean War once told me that he had gotten so accustomed to death, that, to avoid sitting on the frozen ground, he sat on an enemy corpse to eat his rations. This was a battle-hardened and battle-scarred soldier, not someone who was new to death and violence, yet Cain’s attitude was equally callous. Let’s continue by reading verses 10-12:
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?” 10 Then He said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground! 11 So now you are cursed, alienated, from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. 12 If you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
Cain Failed to Love God:
Sin against people is rampant in our world. Theft, murder, rape, child abuse, the list is endless, yet we often forget that, as King David admitted after conspiring to murder Uriah, sins against people are also sins against God. 1 John 4:7-8 tells us,
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
We must remember the true nature of love. It begins on the inside before it shows itself on the outside. This is like the sauce leaking out of a paper bag of barbeque sandwiches; it comes from the inside out. Putting barbecue sauce on the outside of a bag will not season the food on the inside. In the same way, love that is all show has no go.
All through the Bible we see inner love coming out into the open. Abel and his proper worship of God. Abraham willing to sacrifice Isaac. Jonathan who protected David from Saul at his own cost. Mary who sat at Jesus’s feet and learned from Him. Mary who anointed Jesus with perfume. Jesus with the woman at the well. Jesus dying on the cross. As the song says, when He was asked how much He loves us, Jesus stretched out His arms wide, and then He died.
So, it is obvious that Cain failed to love God. What about us? If God loved us like we love Him, where would we be? Vance Havner, a noted revival speaker of the late 20th Century commented that,
"We have left our love for Christ, and when love for Christ dies, love for each other, for the Bible, for souls, dies."
In our world today, if we had more respect for Divine guidance, we’d have less need for guided missiles!
Cain failed to worship God, and he failed to love both his brother and God. Is there any hope present in this story? Yes, there is and we can see it in verses 13-15, and 25,
But Cain answered the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Since You are banishing me today from the soil, and I must hide myself from Your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 Then the Lord replied to him, “In that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” And He placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him . . . 25Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.”
God’s Love Didn’t Fail:
In this sordid tale of rebellion, jealousy, and murder, is there any hope? Is there any bright spot? Yes, of course. The Bible is full of disappointing incidents, but the one element that will never disappoint us is the love of God. We can see clearly here that God’s love didn’t fail.
First, God gave His grace to Cain. Grace is the unmerited favor of God, and we know that this was given to Cain because God did not kill Him. The payment for sin is death, and God could have taken Cain’s life, but He didn’t. He gave Cain the grace to continue to live and to have the opportunity to repent and grow in love for God and for humanity.
Next, God corrected Cain. The Bible tells us that God will discipline the one whom He loves, and He disciplined Cain. We should not fear God’s correction; on the other hand, if we sin and God does not correct us, we need to be concerned, if not alarmed! If we sin and God does not correct us, then that might mean He does not consider us His own, and that is a serious problem!
Also, God protected Cain. When Cain begged God to change his punishment, God did not, but He did offer Cain His mercy. Mercy is the power of God that helps us to live in painful or difficult circumstances. In His love, God showed His mercy through His protection to Cain.
Finally, God showed His love to Adam and Eve in that He gave them a new son, Seth, and later a grandson named Enosh. Usually, the children in a family suffer the collateral damage from family strife, but in this case, it was the parents. No doubt what happened in that field grieved them, and God, in His love, gave them His mercy also.
Conclusion:
The impact of the sin committed by Adam and Eve didn’t just affect them but their family as well. The story told by the murder of Abel by Cain is a sad one, and not just because of its impact on the first family, but also because it is a story that has repeated itself an untold number of times down through the generations.
The good news is that God’s love has also perpetuated itself infinitely down through the ages. Even when we destroy our family relationships, He is eager to give us His correction and discipline so that we can feel and be blessed by His grace and peace and mercy.
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