Shame, Sin & the Mercy of God (Rock Springs UMC)

Our scripture today is Genesis chapter 4 verses one through 16.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

We're back now and in the book of Genesis walking through the

Bible still early on in Genesis here and and picking up really

just where we left off. Last time we were in Genesis, we

were in chapter 3 where Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil. And God had told him you eat

from the fruit of that tree and you will surely die.

And now we will see the fruit of their behavior bearing fruit in

the lives of their children. And I will say this, this sermon

might not on the front end look like a Father's Day sermon, but

it is. It is.

There's some good Father's Day stuff in here, but it's good for

everyone too, not just fathers. All right, all right, so let's

listen together. Read together Genesis chapter 4

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

verses one through 16. Adam knew his wife Eve, and she

became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.

She said, With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a

man. Later she gave birth to his

brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain

worked the soil. In the course of time Cain

brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the

Lord, and Abel also brought an offering fat portions from some

of the first born of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on

Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not

look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his

face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why

are you angry? Why is your face downcast?

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your

door. It desires to have you, but you

must rule over it. Now Cain said to his brother

Abel, let's go out into the field.

While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel

and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain,

Where is your brother Abel? I don't know, he replied, Am I

my brother's keeper? The Lord said, What have you

done? Listen, your brother's blood

cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and

driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your

brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it

will no longer yield its crops for you.

You will be a restless wanderer on the earth, Cain said to the

Lord. My punishment is more than I can

bear. Today you are driving me from

the land, and I will be hidden from your presence.

I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me

will kill me. But the Lord said to him, not so

Anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance 7 times over.

Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him

would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's

presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading and the hearing of

His Word. I've got to double check my

notes here and I'm going to just let you know upfront I'm not

using most of the slides I prepared.

I had a change of heart this morning.

Not on the general, you know, message that I'm preaching, just

on the structure and framing of it.

So we're I'm just gonna leave one slide up for the whole

message here and then we'll walk through it.

And the first thing I want to do though, is as we walk through

this is, is look at this story closely.

The story of Cain and Abel is one of those stories of the

Bible that even a lot of people that have no background and

experience in church or Sunday school or Bible reading have

probably heard the names Cain and Abel and know something

about Cain and Abel. And this, this business of Cain

killing his brother, the first murder in history, this far as

we know. And, and the details of it,

though there are details and nuances that we miss sometimes

because we hear a story so often and sometimes because of the

tremendous cultural gap between 21st century America and, and

very, very, very, very ancient Near Eastern, Middle Eastern

culture. So we're going to take a look at

that as we walk through the story together.

And, and to begin with again, we have Adam and Eve.

This is at some point after they've been expelled from the

garden because they did what God commanded them not to do, which

was eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God said if you eat it, you will surely die.

There was also the tree of life, the only other named tree that

we know of in the garden and, and God would not let them have

that. He cut them off from the tree of

life. And now Adam and Eve have had

two sons, Cain. And Eve rejoiced when she gave

birth to Cain. She said, with God's help, I

have made a man. I have made a man.

When Abel was born, we don't know exactly what was going on.

We do know that names mean something in ancient Near

Eastern culture, and the name Abel means nothing.

Now we clarify it doesn't mean nothing.

It means something, but what it means is nothing.

Literally, the name Abel means nothing.

You think of that as the name given to you by your parents.

You're nothing. You're nothing.

Cain was a man, the fruit of Eve's womb.

Abel was nothing. Cain had all the honors, the

first born Abel had none, and at some point along the way they

brought offerings to the Lord. There are no law.

There's no law at this point. The only commandment that we

have been given so far, and the story is don't eat from the

fruit. Don't eat the fruit of the tree

of knowledge of good and evil. That one's been broken and now

they don't have access to it anymore.

So there's no law. But they bring an offering to

God, and God looks with favor upon Abel and his offering and

does not look with favor upon Cain and his offering.

And Cain is angry and his face is downcast.

Now this is to the point where the cultural differences can get

confusing for us. Anytime we hear about face and

looking in the Old Testament and often in the New Testament, what

we're being told about is honor and shame.

Honor and shame were huge parts of the culture at that time and

that age when all of the scriptures were being written

and put down. And for God to look with favor,

to turn his face upon Abel and his offering and look with favor

upon those was a great honor to Abel.

God is sharing His honor and His glory with Abel, who was called

nothing. And God won't even look at Cain

and his offering. It's rejection, it's dishonor,

it's shame. And the question that we have,

one reasonable question is why? And it doesn't say explicitly,

but there's some hints here. We don't know for sure, but

there are some hints. And this is what I think.

And I'm not, I didn't invent this.

Other people have fought this before me.

But you know, rather than listing all of those folks, I'm

just going to tell you this is what I think.

There's a lot of different viewpoints on this.

This is the one that I think explains it best.

When we read in the scripture about these offerings, this is

what we read in the course of time.

Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to

the Lord. Cain was a farmer.

We don't know exactly what he was farming, Grains, maybe,

vegetables, fruits, we don't know.

But at some point in time Cain brought some of that and gave it

to God. Abel, however, Abel, however,

we're told, brought an offering fat portions from some of the

first born of his flock. The impression that we're given

here is that Cain at some point along the way said, well, I

better give some of this stuff to God and he just brought some

of this stuff. Abel brought not only some of

the first born of his flock, but he brought the best parts, the

fat portions of the best part, the first born of his flock.

Abel was honoring God with the best that he had.

And Cain was, whether out of a sense of duty or or out of a

sense of obligation, or just because they thought, well, I'd

better do it, just brought some of what he had given, some of

what he had grown and offered it to God.

God was apparently a much lower priority for Cain than he was

for Abel. Years later, centuries later,

when God gave the law to his children, the children of Israel

through Moses on the mountaintop, he laid out these

rules. And he said, when you bring me

an offering, whether it's a grain offering or whether it's

an animal sacrifice, a blood offering, bring to me the first

fruits, the first born and the best, the unblemished and the

first fruits of what you grow from the ground.

I want. Bring me the best and bring me

the first. Make me your priority, honor me

with the best that you have, and I will share my honor and my

glory, my peace and my mercy with you, my prosperity with

you. Abel somehow understood that

intuitively. In his heart.

He recognized somehow as God, as the source of his life, his

Creator, his sustainer of all that there was and all that

there is. And he brought to God the best

of what he had. And Abel just said, well, I

best, I'd better give God something and gave him the

leftovers. And God looked with honor and

favor upon what Abel brought and did not even look at Cain and

what he brought. And Cain was angry.

Cain was angry to to God for God to turn his face from him and

not even look at him. And his offering was a shaming

action. God was shaming A Cain.

God was showing him disfavor. God was dishonoring him, not to

punish him, but to restore him. So we got, But Cain got angry

and his face was downcast. That you see that a lot in the

Scripture. A downcast face is a sign of

shame and dishonor. And Cain was angry and his face

was downcast. And instead of him going to God

and saying, God, what have I done?

How can I be restored to your honor?

How can I be restored to your favor?

He just got angry. He just got angry.

God's not going to look at me. I'm not going to look at God.

And God came to Cain. Why are you angry?

Why is your face downcast? If you do what's right, it will

go well for you. But if you don't do what's

right, sin is right there seeking to master you, but you

must master it. It wants to rule over you, but

you must rule over it. God shamed Cain not to punish

him, but to restore him. Cain needed to understand that

the most important thing in his life was his relationship with

God. God couldn't take a backburner.

God couldn't be set aside. God couldn't be simply a matter

of duty, a matter of obligation. God, for Cain's own sake, needed

to be honored, needed to be loved, so that Cain could

receive honor and love and mercy as well.

And so God instructed Cain. God invited Cain back in.

But Cain was having none of it. Cain had his own plan to restore

his honor, his own plan to restore his dignity and his

respect and the eyes of all that were around him.

And that plan was to destroy his rival.

And so he killed his brother. And a misguided, twisted attempt

to restore his own honor, his own glory, his own respect.

That's crazy. Who would ever do that?

That's pretty common. Maybe not in that extreme, but

think of it this way. Anyone here ever play sports and

in school play some sports? All right, I've been some some

terrible sports teams. Oh my goodness.

We got my 8th grade year in basketball.

We didn't want a single game. We were humiliated every time we

went out. We got beat 66 to 16 once.

It was embarrassing. We it was a shameful thing.

The next year our coach came. He said what do you want this

year? He said what I want for you is

to win at least one game. How do you get your honor and

your dignity back? How do you get respect back?

By beating your opponent. That's how you do it.

We see that in sports all the time, and we praise it in sports

all the time. Every year I want the Browns to

humiliate the Steelers. Every year.

It's so happened, so seldom breaks my heart.

Every year I want the Reds to humiliate the Dodgers.

Every year it just, we want that.

And we see the extreme extent to which teams and athletes will go

to get their own honor. And we know that people cheat.

We know the ball was deflated. We know it.

I'm just going to say it right here and now.

We know it. We know what go.

We know. We don't necessarily know what

goes on behind the scenes, but we know stuff goes on behind the

scenes. We know it because people want

the honor and the glory of achieving victory.

They want to achieve respect. They want to achieve glory.

They want to achieve honor and they want to get paid for it,

right? They want to get glory for it.

They want to get endorsements for it.

They want all of this and they'll do just about anything,

sometimes even violence. Remember, remember Tonya Harding

and Nancy Kerrigan, remember that story?

Some folks are too young to know that story.

Back in the 90s, they were the blast place you would expect to

find violence. Women's figure skating, yes,

women's figure skating, They were both Figure skaters.

They were both very good. It was just ahead of the

American Championships, which would determine kind of who went

with rank order into the Olympics that year.

And and Nancy Kerrigan always seemed to be a little bit better

than Tonya Harding, but it was close.

And then Tonya Harding's ex-husband conspired with

Harding's trainer and they hired a hitman to beat Nancy Kerrigan

on the knee and injure her bad enough that she wouldn't be able

to compete in the US Championships, and she couldn't.

But they let her go to the Olympics anyway.

Violence to overcome your opponent, to achieve glory and

honor and status and wealth. We human beings play this game

in so many ways all the time, because like Cain we come to

believe, or especially like Cain when we come to believe that we

have to achieve our own honor and we have to achieve our own

glory, and we will do anything to get it.

That was Cain's way. That was Cain's way of gaining

honor. That was Cain's way of gaining

glory, was to defeat his opponent, to cast him down.

But that isn't that way. Cain's way is the way of death.

God told Adam and Eve you do things your own way.

You eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good

and evil, and you will surely die.

And now their son is dead on the ground, his blood sport pill

spilled out and soaked into the earth itself.

And God still shows mercy. God still shows mercy.

He goes to Cain. He says, where's your brother?

God's not looking for information, right?

God already knows what's happened.

He's looking for Cain to come clean.

He's looking for Cain to take responsibility like he did with

Adam and Eve in the Garden. And like Adam and Eve did, Cain

doesn't do it. He won't take responsibility.

Am I my brother's keeper? That question, that question

right there, am I, my brother's keeper, takes us to the heart of

Cain's problem, the heart of brokenness in Cain's life.

And it goes back to what God said when He told Cain, If you

do what is right, that word right is the word for

righteousness. And righteousness is far more

than just following the rules, following a moral code,

following religious law. Righteousness has to do with

right relationship, being in right relationship with God and

the Old Testament that was living within the covenantal

relationship with God, in which God is honored above all and God

shares his honor and His glory and provides peace for his

people and prosperity for his people as they live on His

justice. And justice is another word for

righteousness. And in that covenant, that

covenant was love and honor God and care for one another.

And I will provide you with honor and glory and peace and

prosperity. Jesus refined it and clarified

it for us when He said this. All the law, all the rules, all

of those things, all of the code that came by God through Moses.

All of those things can be summed up in 2 commandments.

Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind,

all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Love your neighbor as yourself. It's about the relationship.

Righteousness is about loving God and loving the people around

us. And the person that asked him

what are the most important bandits said, well, you know

who's my neighbor? Who is my neighbor?

Jesus? Well, I'll tell you a story.

You've probably heard the story. Some of you I know I've heard

the story. Maybe not, maybe all of you have

heard the story, but Jesus told the story about a guy traveling

from Jericho to Jerusalem. He gets attacked by bandits.

He gets beaten and left for dead along the side of the road and a

priest comes by and a rabbi come by and they can't be bothered to

stop and help this guy. And then a Samaritan walks by or

not walking. He's riding by on his animal and

he gets down and he helps the man and he, he pours wine on his

wounds, medicine of the day. He bandages his wounds.

He puts him on his own beast and he ride, takes him to Jerusalem,

takes him to an inn. He says to the innkeeper, care

for him. Here's the money.

I'll come back later. If there's any additional

expenses, I will pay for it. And then Jesus looked at that

man who asked him the question and said which of these people

was a neighbor to that man? And that guy, the Samaritan,

they hated the Samaritans. The Samaritans were ethnically

different. They were culturally different.

They were religiously different, they were politically different,

they were morally different, and they hated him.

They were their enemies. And the guy couldn't bring

himself to say the Samaritan was the neighbor.

All he could bring himself to say was the one who showed him

mercy. And God said, that's it, you do

the same, you do the same. And Jesus flipped it.

And he said to all who would listen, don't spend your time

asking yourselves, who is my neighbor?

Instead, ask yourselves, to whom will I be a neighbor?

To whom do I owe a responsibility of mercy and

compassion and justice? And the short answer for that is

everyone you encounter. Everyone.

Righteousness is about living in right relationship with God and

others. And Cain refused to do what is

right at the most basic level because he refused to care about

his brother. I got no responsibility for him.

What is he to me? He's nothing to me.

He's nothing to me. I owe him nothing.

And God said you owe him everything.

You owe him a duty of love and compassion and care and concern.

You owed it to him to lift him up and help make the world safer

for him and the people around him.

And he owed the same to you. But Cain missed it.

Cain's way is the way of death, God's way, God's way of mercy

and love and compassion. That is the way of life.

And God even at this point, is extending that to Cain, inviting

him into it. He banishes him from the land.

In this land, you've been a farmer, you've been growing the

crops, but the land that received your brother's blood at

your hand will no longer yield crops to you.

Get out. And we're told that Cain had to

leave the presence of God and leaving the presence of God,

leaving the face of God behind and leaving the protection of

God behind. And Cain said, I'll be killed.

Everyone who sees me, they'll know I've been banished from

your presence. I'll be killed.

I'll be fair game. It'll be open season.

And God said, no, no, no. I'll put a mark on you.

You're leaving my my presence. But I want everyone to know

you're still under my protection.

You still belong to me, King. You're still mine.

You're still mine. At the very end, God was leaving

the door open and fighting Cain back into his way.

A way of mercy, a way of compassion, a way of love, of

honoring God first. And instead of spending his

energy trying to achieve his own honor, spending his energy

loving and showing compassion to those around him.

I don't think King got the message.

We don't know. We do know this.

We do know this, that Cain left a heritage of violence and death

to his descendants, his children, grandchildren, great

grandchildren. We read a few verses down in

Genesis chapter 4 and we get to and I, I did the math and I

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

wrote, I worked it all out and I forgot to write it down.

So Lamech is either Cain's great, great, great grandson or

his great, great, great, great grandson.

I can't remember. It's a lot of generate few

generations down. And this is what Lamech said.

This was the legacy he received from his great great great great

grandfather. He had two wives, Adah and

Zilla. Lamech said to his wives, Listen

to me, wives of Lamech, hear my words.

I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.

If Cain is avenged 7 times, then Lamech 77 times.

Cain left his descendants a legacy of violence and a legacy

of death. And this is where I want to talk

to the fathers. Mothers can listen to.

This is not just for men, but it's Father's Day, so I'm going

to talk to the fathers and the moms can listen alone.

We're going to leave a legacy after us to our children, to our

grandchildren, to our great grandchildren and on.

And that legacy can be a legacy of death or it can be a legacy

of life. God affirms that when he gave

the law to Moses in the book of Exodus, God said this.

For I the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the

children for the sin of the parents.

To the third and 4th generation of those who hate me.

This is not God being petulant. If you break my rules, then I'm

going to punish you and your kids and your grandkids and your

great grandkids. This is God saying your sin has

consequences not just for you, but for your children and their

children and their children and their children.

You see this. You see it in your own families

when you look back through the generations and see the same

sort of brokenness and dysfunction that repeats self

generation after generation after generation.

I see it in my family. I see it in my kids.

And the sin that they learned from me.

I was determined I wasn't going to do pass it on.

Well, good luck with that. Good luck with that.

But we parents fought. We fathers, we parents, it's

mothers too. But it's Father's Day.

We fathers, we're going to pass on a legacy based on our

behavior, on our actions, on our attitudes towards God and

others. And that legacy will be a legacy

of death or a legacy of life. And the simple truth for all of

us is it's going to be mixed. The best we can do is mixed

because we receive a legacy from our parents and our parents

weren't perfect and our kids won't be perfect.

But here's the good news because God also said this at that same

time, said punishing the children for the sin of the

parents to the third and 4th generation of those who hate me,

but showing love to 1000 generations of those who love me

and keep my commandments. When we live and write

relationship with God, When we make God the priority in our

lives, give Him first place in our lives.

When we bring the best that we have and offer it to Him and

receive and seek our glory and our honor and our respect.

Not in our achievements, not in what we can do for ourselves,

but in God Himself. And then we use our energy to

love our neighbors and love our family and love our friends and

even love our enemies as Jesus has commanded.

When we do that, then we have a blessing from God that goes for

1000 generations. God's blessing.

God's life always overwhelms any sin that we can do.

Always it goes further and deeper and faster and, and, and

God's heart and God's love and God's desire is not to punish,

but to love and redeem and restore.

The question that we then have to ask is which way will we

choose? Which way will we choose?

Will we choose the way of Abel and give God the 1st and the

best of what we have and seek to live in relationships of love

and peace and mercy and compassion with those around us?

Or we go the way of Cain and say, I'll make my own way.

I'll achieve my own glory and my own honor and my own respect and

I don't care who I have to step on to do it.

And if my if someone else has to pay the price, so be it.

If my kids have to pay the price, so be it.

If my neighbor has to pay, if my enemy has to pay, so be it.

We need to know that that way leads to death, not just for

ourselves, but for our children and our grandchildren and our

great grandchildren and beyond. But if we choose God's way, the

way of life, and that blessing extends to 1000 generations.

In Jesus name, let's choose the way of life.

Amen. Amen.