Genesis 4 - Am I my brother/sister’s keeper?

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.

It's my great joy and privilege to be leading us through Genesis chapter 4 today.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

If you want to grab your Bibles and turn there, we're calling our study of Genesis in the beginning because it is a book whose title even means beginning, and it is the story of beginnings, and it begins with the beginner of the beginnings.

So Genesis 1-1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And that big, huge, broad, wide-angle lens sort of description of where everything came from starts to answer some of the big questions that we have in life.

Where did everything come from?

Does life have any meaning?

Is there any real order to the universe?

Is human life significant in any way or in any different way from the rest of life?

Or is this all just one big cosmic accident?

And the answers to those kinds of questions really, really are important.

Last week, Pastor Tommy led us through Genesis chapter three, which starts to answer another big question.

What has gone wrong in the world?

And uh we're gonna pick up in chapter four with a little bit more of a sequel, I guess I would call it, to chapter three, where it gets a little more specific with how that unfolds.

A problem that was exposed in chapter three now begins to unfold a little bit.

Lots of first, though, lots of beginnings.

I'll try to point them out as we go through the text.

We'll read, uh it breaks nicely into three sections.

So we'll read uh verses one through fifteen first, and uh we'll pick up the middle section and then close it out.

Verses one through fifteen.

Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and so here we have the first instance of human sexuality as an experience.

And she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and so now we have the first conception, pregnancy, and delivery of a baby.

And can you imagine without a hospital?

No OBJYNs, nobody giving you a sort of a pre-birth class to go through.

You're just Adam and Eve, and you're out there all by yourself with the gorillas and the you know, antelopes and the giraffe and the tiger and all that sort of thing.

And now you're pregnant and you have a baby.

And I'm supposing that you know Adam was there and involved in every little bit of the delivery and may have cut the umbilical cord to Cain, who knows?

But she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said her reply in all of this was, I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord.

Now, of course, it's probably not the way you know some of y'all would have said it today if you're having a baby.

But uh here she is, and the first child to be born, not made, but born uh physically like this in the entire history of the world, Cain comes forth.

And that's awesome.

Verse 2 speeds right along, and they have a second child.

Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

And so again, uh the storyline is moving pretty quick.

Uh Adam and Eve are having not one child, but now they've had two, and now those two children are no longer in diapers and being rocked like this, but they're out one in the field, and he's tending to the crops, the other one is uh caring for the flocks or uh out with the herds of cattle, that sort of thing.

Well, it came about, verse 3 says, in the course of time, and so that gives you an idea, there's a lot of time passing here, Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.

Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.

And you can see where these two guys, you know, if they just get together, it's like meat and vegetables.

I mean, they, you know, and it's it, you know, one guy working in one, one guy working in the other.

And they're both now uh experiencing something together that for the first time in the Bible is mentioned, and that's they're gonna offer something to the Lord.

They're they're they're returning some kind of thanksgiving or some ritual of thanksgiving anyway.

And uh for each of them, it's coming from their labors and their work that they do.

But there's something uh that you're gonna see that's just a little bit different between the two of them.

A distinction will be drawn in any way.

And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

Now there's been a lot of ink spilt on this.

Why did God accept or receive Abel's offering but not Cain's?

Why did he have regard for Abel's offering but not for Cain's?

And most of that is drawn in the direction of speculation.

It's not really here in the text, it doesn't tell us why.

It just tells us that God had regard for one but not for the other.

What the story goes on to tell us after that, I think, gives us a clue to why that happened.

And so let's take a look a little bit further into this whole thing, if you will.

Cain, verse 5b.

Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.

First mention of anger in the Bible, first uh indication of anybody uh despairing or upset or moody like this.

This is pretty uh interesting as we go through these first few chapters to see all of these firsts.

And uh here is the first one.

Uh Cain is very upset about this and the way that God has responded, probably more upset at the way God's responded to Abel's offering than the way God responded to Cain, his own offering.

The Lord said to Cain, verse six, Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen?

I'll remind you that all of God's questions are rhetorical.

Uh He already knows the answer.

He just wants us to think it through and come to the conclusion as we think it through and and learn something.

And so God also says, if you do well, verse seven, will not your countenance be lifted up?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, and you must master it.

And so not only is God asking questions of Cain, and those are good questions for for God to ask Cain.

They're good questions for us to ask ourselves too.

Why are you angry?

Why am I angry?

Why why is my countenance you know downcast?

Um just to stop for a moment.

Because feelings can just swirl and swirl and swirl like a tornado and and run away with us and and leave a uh you know horrible path of destruction in their in in their wake.

Um, but to stop and ask the question.

And that if you pause for just a second, he says in verse 7, um, and you're wise about it, uh it will go well for you, your countenance will be lifted up.

But if not, sin is crouching at the door.

In other words, uh sin isn't just sort of an option out there, it's actually right up in our hearts.

And here we see, you know, because last week it was the serpent speaking to the woman, Eve, and distorting God's word and causing her to doubt God's promises and God's word.

And um now it's not just there's not something outside that's speaking to Cain.

There's actually his own ego is involved.

And uh ego, if it stands for anything, it stands for edging God out.

And so God has come to Cain, asked these questions to get him to think a little bit.

Why are you angry?

Why are you downcast?

Why is your countenance down like this?

And think about it.

And the way you respond is important because if you respond one way, your countenance will be lifted up.

If you respond another way, sin is crouching right around the it's just it's like a it's like it's like a predator uh animal, some kind of an animal that's a predator waiting to pounce on you and uh draw you in and and devour you, basically, is what it is.

And so there's fair warning that God has given to Cain here.

How's he gonna respond?

Verse 8, Cain told Abel his brother, I do not does that mean he told Abel his brother what God said, or does that mean he told uh uh what God said in terms of the the offering of wisdom and the questions that he asked?

Or did he just tell Abel, you know, in some way to shame him or make him feel bad about the fact that God had accepted Abel's offering but hadn't accepted Cain's, and so he's brooding and he's mad, and and I can see the two of them kind of going out into the field and having a chat or whatever, and that's exactly what I had to go out in the field, it says right here, came about when they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

And so here we have the first violent act in the Bible and the first murder, um, and it's brother against brother in the context of worship.

Uh, there was an opportunity for learning, there was an opportunity for gaining wisdom, but it was rejected, turned away, and sin was crouching at the door.

And uh indeed it uh it came true that Cain fell to the sin and to his anger, and he kills his brother, and so we have brother-on-brother uh violence here.

This is just so sad.

Well, verse 9 says, The Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother?

This is probably hours later.

You know, Cain has come back in from the field, probably buried the body out there, come back in from the field, and here's the Lord speaking to him again, and God asking another question that he already knows the answer to, because he's God.

Uh, Where's your brother Abel?

And he wants Cain to think about that.

Where's your brother?

And so here is what Cain says.

Quote, I do not know, end quote.

Well, that, my friends, is a bold face lie.

How do I know that?

Because Cain killed Abel.

He knows where the body is.

He left the body in the field, and wherever it is that he left the body where he killed him, that's where Cain, that's where Abel is.

Where's your brother?

I do not know, he says, Am I my brother's keeper?

And he gets a little bit arrogant, a little bit sort of snarky here, too.

Am I my brother's keeper?

It's not my job to take care of him.

And we've been saying that same kind of thing for a long time, haven't we, about others?

That it's not my job to take care of him.

And yet I think we learned something really good here.

So, right, it's not my job to take 100% care of everybody on the planet.

That's true.

That's true.

I could not do that, I do not have capacity for that.

But it is my job to care for my brothers and my sisters, whether they be in my family or not.

Uh, and we read throughout the Bible that it's our job to care for the poor, it's our job to care for others, it's our job to care for those who come to us and ask for help.

It's our we are, in other words, we have responsibilities, and that's so important for us.

Uh, we don't just isolate ourselves and start hoarding stuff ourselves, but we're always seeing, well, how does God want to use me in his mission in the world?

And so, great question that has, you know, obviously become quite famous, uh, and my my brother's keeper.

That's true.

That's a good it's a very famous question.

Uh, but the answer that we get determines is determined based on where we turn to uh to look for the answer.

So I love this.

Verse 10, he says, God does, what have you done?

Again, he knows what he's done.

Uh he just wants uh to give Cain a chance to confess.

The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, God says.

And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you cultivate it, remember Cain's the guy that worked out in the fields, okay?

When you cultivate the ground, it'll no longer yield its strength to you.

In other words, this isn't going to be easy anymore working in the field, all right?

You will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

Wow.

So this is a this is basically God's judgment on Cain for what he's done in this murder of his own brother, his younger brother.

And this is God uh not being harsh at all.

This is not in any way disproportionate to the crime that's committed.

This is God saying, your work, your labor in the field that you're so you know proud of, that's what you brought me as an offering.

You but you probably brought it to me thinking, you know, again, if we're looking at the the giver more than we are the gift itself, what we find in Cain is somebody who just seems to be checking boxes.

And he has a sort of a lust for autonomy, we're gonna see in just a second as well.

But he says, now your work is gonna become tougher.

And when you cultivate the ground, it'll no longer yield its strength or the reward or or the the, you know, it won't be easy for you to till the ground and you'll be a fugitive and wander on the earth.

Verse 13, Cain says to the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear.

And here he kind of kicks into, man, I it sounds like a very modern response to me, you know.

Um I mean, in the modern world in which we live right now, uh there's a lot of people that don't think anything's wrong unless you get caught.

And then if you get caught, uh the consequences for what you did should be minimal.

I mean, just and hardly any.

Maybe there shouldn't be any at all, you know, that kind of thing.

But here is the the father of all of that kind of thinking.

Cain saying, My punishment is too great to bear, you know, it's gonna be hard plowing that field and trying to get that crop to grow.

And oh yeah, my little brother's dead, you know.

And and, you know, that's just amazing that he could go there in verse 13.

Verse 14.

Behold, you've driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden, and I will become a fugitive and a wanderer.

That's what God told him, He would.

Yeah, you become a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth, and it will come about that whoever finds me will kill me.

So fear has led to paranoia.

There's gonna be people wanting to kill me.

And evidently there are other people in the world at this time.

Um, these folks we'll see later in Genesis, they live for hundreds of years.

And so it is likely, as we read in chapter five next week, uh, verse, I think it's four or five or six read in there, that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters.

And so there'll be other people out there, and they'll be having children as well.

And uh, so Cain is nervous, uh, he's fearful, he's angry, uh, not only about his offering being rejected, but he's upset because the punishment is too great, you know, you know, and then he's paranoid that people are gonna want to kill him.

What does God do?

What is God's response to the first murderer?

What is God's response to the first person that just goes ritualistic with his religious offering and his heart isn't really in it?

What is God's response?

Oh, wow, this is interesting.

Verse 15.

So the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.

And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, or a mark, some of your translations will say, lest anyone finding him should slay him.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Here's God in an act of amazing grace toward the first murderer, the first uh uh sort of ritualistic religious guy.

Um the first one who's complaining uh about the consequences for his own evil act.

Uh on and on goes the list uh uh of of what had gone wrong and dark in in Cain's heart.

And again, no, it springs up out of his heart.

This isn't about a serpent luring Eve from outside, luring Eve and Adam into some sin.

No, this is about something coming up from inside that has been passed down from their parents, this spiritual inheritance, if you will, of original sin as we call it.

And so verse 15 is God being gracious and saying, Cain, I know you're afraid, I know you're angry, I know you're upset, and look at the violence you've done, and you're not gonna there will be consequences, okay?

And and and and that which m points to another uh timeless truth, I think.

Um God can forgive our sins, and yet there remain temporal consequences in this world for us.

And I think a lot of us think that when we go to God and ask for forgiveness, that he should also remove all of the consequences for our foolishness and our sin that we have committed and chosen to go against his will.

And that's just not the case, and we see that right here.

So Cain is gonna go out, but he's gonna go out with God watching over him, with God having set a sign or a mark on him, and a lot of ink has been spilled on that and speculating what what was that mark?

Was that a tattoo, a birthmark?

Was it an animal walking alongside him?

What was that all about?

And I just don't think we know the answer to that question, and it's okay with me that we don't know.

Somehow or another, all of those people would have known, and it would be a sign that would communicate something to them.

Don't mess with Cain.

He still has the Lord's hand on him in some way, even if it's just in a common grace kind of a way.

Um, Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and he settled in the land of Nod, N-O-D, east of Eden.

Where's the land of Nod?

I haven't got a clue.

Although I think I've seen hints of it on Sundays when we've gathered for worship and people have gone there and nodded off in the middle of a sermon.

And by the way, just so that you know I'm not picking on anybody, when I'm having trouble sleeping at night, sometimes what I do, little secret, I put on one of my old sermons and it helps me nod off.

So there you go.

Um, so he goes off and he goes to the land of Nod, which we don't know where it is, east of Eden.

Verse 17, and Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived, and she gave birth to Enoch, and he built a city and called the name of the city Enoch after the name of his son.

Now Enoch, to Enoch, rather, verse 18 says, was born Irad to Irad.

He became the father of Mahujael.

Mahujael became the father of Methushael, and Methushael became the father of Lamech.

And I know you got you guys are just getting real excited about hearing all these names, aren't you?

And especially watching to see how I struggle with trying to pronounce some of them.

It's fascinating.

Don't have time to do it right now, but it's really fascinating if you have time.

Go back into one of your study Bibles or go online to Bible.org or or um or the Gospel Coalition site and see if you can't find the meaning of some of these names.

And what you'll just see is this spiritual declension in the meaning of each of their names.

They get further and further away from God.

It's quite an interesting study.

I leave that up to you.

Lamech, who's uh five or so generations down from Cain now, although I think they're all still alive, uh Lamech took to himself two wives, and so now there's a distorting of the original creation design for marriage, which was the male and the female.

A man leaves his mother and his father, cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

So there's a complementarity, there's the potential uh of uh of procreation there, and that that complementaritarity just simply means they're they're not the same.

And now uh here, what we have here is a sort of a further twist of the whole thing, away from the original creation design.

And this guy, Lamech, uh, takes two wives.

So we have the first instance of polygamy here in the Bible.

The name of the one was Adda, the name of the other was Zillah.

Adda gave birth to Jabal.

Uh, he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.

And so you start to see uh culture making and work and industry and that sort of thing coming into play here as well.

So at one and the same time, while we got all of this sort of sin and and spiritual declension happening, we also have um the sort of progress of humanity in terms of culture making that sort of thing.

To Zilla, excuse me, to uh Ada was born Jabal.

He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.

His brother's name was Jubal.

Okay, so it's J-A-B-A-L and J-U-B-A-L, Jubal.

He was the father of all of those who play the lyre and the harp.

Do you get that?

He plays the lyre and the pipe.

I'm sorry, it says here.

The lyre and the pipe, that stringed instruments and the wind instruments.

This is the first mention of music in the Bible.

And the Bible overflows with music.

As a matter of fact, the the there's a big book in the middle of your Bibles, uh, pretty much in the middle, called Psalms.

It's 150 songs.

And uh often it'll say uh to be accompanied on the this instrument or that instrument, or to be sung to the tune of this uh song previously written or whatever.

And it's a lot of the songs were the songs the ancient Jews used to read as they worshiped the Lord.

But here's the father of music right here in verse 21, his name Jubal.

I love that.

Um, verse 22, as for Zillah, that's the other uh daughter of Lamech, uh, she gave uh she also gave birth to Tubalcane, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron, and so metallurgy.

See, again, there's lots of things happening here in terms of culture making.

And the sister of Tubalcane was Na'amath.

And Lamech, now this is uh a little look into Lamech's heart, he said to his wives, Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice.

You wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me, and a boy for striking me.

And it's as if it's as if the sin of his great great great great great grandfather Cain, this sin of violence and murder.

It's as if he's saying, I did that too.

And he said, I've killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me.

So he's killed a young child or a boy for striking me, who just offended him in some way.

And I hate to say it, but I think I can hear him doing this at a family gathering and a feast in a tent, and maybe he's he's had a little bit too much to drink, and he's just standing up bragging about, you know, how nobody can touch him and what a what a bad dude he really is.

And then I'll tell you why I think that because verse 24, he goes on and closes this little section up saying, if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech 77fold.

And again, he's he's he's heard from his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather and great-grandfather, he's heard the story passed down from Cain that the Lord had promised to meet out uh revenge or justice on anybody that killed Cain sevenfold.

And that story has been passed down, you see.

And they may all be in the same tent when this drunken lamex stands up and says this kind of thing.

Again, I'm speculating, I understand that.

But just trying to put it in the context of some kind of real life setting.

And there he stands up in front of everybody, addresses his two wives, and I think scares them, and probably scares everybody in the that that's there, and says that you know, if if if Cain will be avenged sevenfold, well, nobody can touch me, I'll be avenged 77 times.

So what for Cain was uh something he succumbed to.

For Lamech, it's something he exults in.

And you can see how, again, the progress of sin and the problem that's the problems that sin causes have compounded.

Well, the chapter does not end there, and I'm so glad myself.

I mean, if that were the end and I were at that dinner, I would have tried to find a way to slink out the back of the tent and and make my way home.

Um, but we've got fortunately verse 25 and verse 26, where the which I think end the chapter on a hopeful note.

Adam had relations with his wife again.

So we're back to Adam and Eve, okay?

They're still alive.

And she gave birth to son and named him Seth.

For she said, God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.

And you should know that Seth's name means appointed.

And it is through the line of Seth that uh we will see down through history, down through the Old Testament, we will see Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph.

On and on and on it goes till ultimately you get to the real appointed one, the Messiah, Jesus Himself.

So the last verse, and a Seth to him also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh.

And then there's this interesting sentence that just ends what we call chapter four, so hopefully.

Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

Ah, I love that.

That's when they began to pray, that's when they began to turn to the Lord and call upon his name.

And uh you just have to, you just have to appreciate it.

There are just two different streams of development rolling out here in terms of spiritual development.

One's quite dark, um, and the other is actually quite hopeful, isn't it?

All right, let's see what we learn here.

I want to just highlight a few things for us.

First of all, in the first 15 verses, we see the tragic story of Cain and Abel.

Uh Cain's name means got one, you know, and so we find Eve saying, Oh, I've gotten one, it's so great.

I've I've gotten a man child with the Lord, or uh, and I and I I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she's saying that the Lord blessed her uh with one and that it's not, see, I can make them two.

No, I think it's I think it's I got one, and the Lord was so good to give me one.

And I can imagine that you know, Cain grows up, you know, he's running around going through his his terrible twos and whatever else he, you know, you know, that he might have gone through as a young child.

And they're learning to be parents, remember, all of this is like first time with nobody to coach you.

And and uh it's it's it's got to have been an amazing experience if you just think about it.

But uh this is the story, and it's a tragic one, isn't it, of Cain and Abel because of what happens uh between them.

And perhaps an argument can be made for for uh a look at the sacrifices or the offerings that were made.

But I don't think that this chapter is really about the gifts as much as it is about the givers of the gifts.

And it just seems to me to be the way the Bible uh constantly talks about when we approach the Lord, that his interest is in what's going on inside of our hearts and how we're responding to him, not just what we're doing for him or bringing to him.

Um, he has, fortunately, we have this New Testament lens that we can look back through and see all of this, but you can see from the New Testament that since God had to come himself and do for us what we couldn't do for ourselves, and Jesus, uh, you know, our ultimate high priest, the ultimate Lamb of God, has come and paid the price in full for all of our sins, past, present, and future, we can know with certainty that our salvation is secure, that our repentance is received.

Why?

Because Jesus is the one that accomplished it, not us.

You see?

So it's a completely different thing, and we have that great benefit.

But what is obvious to us is that the author of Genesis, and I think it was Moses, but we're, you know, certainly uh that's yet an unanswered question.

But it seems that God has revealed a lot of this uh to Moses, and as he keeps this record, um, he he continues, as the narrator, he continues to stress how the heart is what's really important in God's eyes.

There's truly a difference between the gift and the giver in God's eyes.

Um, so important.

We see this in the New Testament, as I said in Hebrews 11:4.

Hebrews 11:4

It says, by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain.

That is, it's Abel's faith that made it a better sacrifice than Cain.

Through which, this faith, through which Abel obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.

And he, of course, there in that great chapter, Hebrews 11.

1 John also talks about the two brothers just a little bit, um, not don't not as Cain, who was the evil one and slew his brother.

And for what reason did he slay him?

Because his deeds were evil, and his brothers were righteous.

And so what we have here is these descriptive words, evil and righteous, talking about the hearts of Cain and Abel.

And evil and righteous are not just uh adjectival modifiers that describe um uh you know what kind of action somebody took, but also what kind of heart they have.

Uh, evil has taken root in Cain's heart.

Again, he's not being tempted by something outside, it's it's inside of him.

His anger comes up, and it's like Jesus talked about as well.

The mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart, you see.

So it's good for us to take a look at what's in our hearts and what we're putting in our hearts.

And to see that with Cain and Abel, one of the lessons at least has to be this we don't come to God on our own terms, just any old way we want to.

Let me just check the box.

Here's a bunch of fruit, here's a bunch of vegetables.

Check the box and do a religious ritual without our heart being engaged.

We don't do it that way.

Now we come to God on God's terms, and He desires our love and loyalty and obedience much more than our ritual sacrifices.

So the story of Cain and Abel is tragic in the sense that all of this starts to get wrong, go wrong, and it ends up with Cain literally leaving the presence of the Lord, verse 16.

And that's where we get into the second portion of our outline here, the dramatic decline of humanity.

It says, Cain went away from the presence of the Lord.

And folks, so therefore did his family go.

They went with him.

And you and I, each and every one of us, somebody's watching us.

You know, if you're a parent, your kids are watching you.

Now, the I'm not telling you that because I think you have to be perfect.

You can't be perfect, but what you could do is if you fall down or if you sin or if you're angry, don't be angry and sin.

Be angry and then repent.

Um, or be angry at the right stuff.

That's another option.

Uh, don't be angry at the wrong stuff.

Um, our tendency, unfortunately, is to think to ourselves that sin is just a private affair, but it's not.

No, and so we see here the beginnings of the the tragic and uh uh difficult decline uh of humanity, and it is uh uh it's played out in this drama, but it is also played out in our lives as well.

And among Cain's family, many cultural accomplishments, that's true, and that can be that can be praised.

We're not we're not taking anything away from that.

But just because we can make technical and cultural advances doesn't mean we're also at the same time automatically making a moral advance or a spiritual advance.

These are categories, but they're different categories.

And it's really important that we learn to distinguish between them.

Cain and his progeny worked, they were creative, they were productive.

Um, all of that's great.

But there's not a mention of God in verses uh 17 to 24, not one mention of the Lord.

And that's exactly the way, you know, that's the way it goes to a culture that leaves God out of the picture.

Um, it just continues to decline.

C.S.

Lewis talked about that this way when he said, When you argue against him, meaning God, you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.

It is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on, and that is indeed true.

So, what of us in the New Testament times?

What of us, those of us who've become Christians that seek to turn our lives back over to God, to return them to the one who gave it to us in the first place, right?

And and and we say we would like to be a Christ follower or or to be the disciples of Jesus, if you will, the apprentices of Jesus.

We would like to live our lives the way Jesus would live his life if he were us, right?

What of that?

How does that fall into place with all of this?

Uh Todd Billings says, in union with Christ, since we were not created to be autonomous, self-made people, but we're created to be in communion with God.

When the Spirit leads us back into communion with God in Christ, we do not lose our true selves, we regain them.

That's exactly what that's exactly right, you see.

When Cain left the presence of the Lord, he was sawing off the branch.

He really was.

And you and I, we were designed, created, if you will, to live in right relationship with God.

And sin is a separator.

It separates us from God, separates us from one another, and separates us from our true selves.

And as Billings has said here, man, when we when we uh when we are led by the Spirit to repentance and faith and trust in Jesus, we return, we we regain our true selves.

And I think that's really powerful.

Uh, thirdly and finally, uh, the outline of Genesis 4 includes the tragic story of Cain and Abel, the dramatic decline of humanity.

But those last two verses, love those last two verses, the the progress of redemption history, all the way back.

See, right after we get Genesis 3 and the story is told, what's wrong with the world?

Sin has entered the world.

Okay.

And immediately, boom, you know, right there in chap in chapter 3, verse 15, the seed of the woman will trounce on the serpent, the seed of the serpent, and and smash his head, actually.

All right.

And that that is a poetic way of saying of predicting the fact that Messiah is gonna come.

And though he will die on a cross and give his life, and it will look like, oh no, the snake bit him.

Three days later, man, he's gonna get back up.

This one who's the real appointed one, the ultimate appointed one, the ultimate Seth, the greater Seth, if you will, Jesus is gonna get back up from the grave, defeating our last and worst enemy.

And this is the this is back here in Genesis 4.

This is the the just the launching pad.

You start to see it all lining up as God gives Seth to Adam and Eve.

And with the birth of Seth starts that line, and it's really awesome, isn't it?

So, what are the spiritual realities behind these events and these interactions?

Um, what is it that can sweep you or me uh into um an evil thought or an evil action?

I mean, is it is it just driving on the highway, as so many of us have difficulty with when we when we get behind somebody we don't like the way they drive?

Uh or is it something about your spouse?

Something about, if you're not married, is it something about your roommates, if you have roommates, or your coworkers?

Or perhaps your siblings you have difficulty, or your parents, maybe.

I don't know.

What is it that that sweeps you into profound um evil thought or action?

Are you your brother's keeper, your sister's keeper?

Uh have we been guilty of allowing sin to compound in our lives?

Or or or like the Lord instructed Cain, are we willing to stop for just a second and ask the question, why am I angry?

Why do I feel the way I feel?

Pause and prayerfully consider seek the Lord, seek his word, gain from his word his wisdom, learn about his ways and his will.

How did God respond to Cain is just fills me with hope.

And the way that God responded even to Adam and Eve and to the human race in general.

But the way that God was gracious toward Cain, said he'd kind of continue to have his hand on him, even though he's going to be a fugitive and a wanderer from his home.

And there we see that while Cain was a fugitive running away from home and a wanderer without a home, in the New Testament, what we see God's people depicted as is that we are strangers in a world that is not our home.

And we're pilgrims on a journey back to our true home.

And God is your true home, my true home.

That's He's the one to whom we really belong.

He's the one that created us in the first place.

Cain chose to go his own way, and he left the presence of the Lord and to live his life without God.

Don't be like Cain in that regard.

I I hope you find some way, some method to be in God's presence every single day through prayer, through if you've got a one-year Bible reading program and we've got one on our phone app, it's free.

You're you're welcome to download and use that.

I hope you will.

But you want to be with God, not just check a box, but you want to be with him and hear from him and allow the Holy Spirit to speak you speak to you.

If we're hungry for God's forgiveness for our sins, we won't be like Cain.

If we're hungry for God's forgiveness, we won't be lying back to God about whether or not we've sinned.

If we confess our sins, and to confess our sins is to agree with God that we're sinners.

And to cleanse us from, say it with me, all unrighteousness.

Such a beautiful, wonderful promise.

The blood of Abel cried out from the dirt for vengeance.

But folks, on the cross, the blood of Jesus has secured mercy and grace for you and for me and forgiveness too.

It's all there in Jesus.

David Gooding is a professor of Old Testament.

He's got a book called An Unshakable Kingdom.

He says this God has appointed us a captain of our salvation and made him responsible for seeing us through this world home to glory.

Thank God we can count on his faithfulness and know that he will never fail, never once lose his patience or his temper with any of us, but will fulfill his appointed task to the very end.

He will save to the uttermost all who come to God by him.

Isn't that amazing?

Isn't that beautiful?

Isn't that powerful?

Doesn't that give hope to your heart?

It does to mine over and over and over again.

A bunch of us around the village chapel these days are reading a book called Gentle and Lowly by a man named Dane Ortland.

It's about the heart of Jesus, which is gentle and lowly toward sinners like us and like you.

One of the most beautiful things that we continue to see in that book as he unfolds those uh beautiful verses from the Gospel of Matthew is just this welcoming that that God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has made an offer to you and me.

He's literally thrown open the throne room of heaven and said, Welcome, come on in, come on home, come on home, see?

I love this.

And one of the quotes from Dane's book that I just uh really enjoy is this one Let your own unrighteousness in all your darkness and despair drive you to Jesus Christ the righteous in all his brightness and sufficiency.

Man, isn't that beautiful?

Yeah.

Who wouldn't want that?

If you don't, if you don't know him today, why wouldn't you turn to him today?

If you if you do, if you've strayed, if you've if you've found yourself in some way uh distant from God, isn't that the kind of invitation that would just draw you to at least turn around?

And if you take just that little step of turning around, that repentance, he comes just like the prodigal son's father, he comes running out of the house and just so eager to forgive and to lavish us with his grace.

And that's the way he would be to you as well.

Won't you trust him now?

Won't you turn to him and um offer your life, your heart back to him now?