Genesis 4:1-16 — The Pride of Man

This sermon is from Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 16, and is entitled, The Pride of

Genesis 4:1–16

Man.

It was delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday, June 7, 2026.

Many of the stories and the characters from Genesis are going to be familiar to many of

us because most of us have grown up in a culture that is heavily influenced by Christianity,

and we've been introduced to parts of this narrative.

But I think the part that I have missed often, and maybe you have too, is the way in which

these stories are more about the character of God than they are about the human characters

in them.

The human character that is at the center of today's passage is named Cain, and we also

meet his brother Abel.

And I think if you ask most people what the lesson of the story is, they would say probably

something about don't murder.

And this is good advice.

And I told you in our first sermon from Genesis that it's full of commentary on all kinds

of things.

And we might look at this story and see bits about controlling our anger or not being jealous

or any number of moralistic lessons that are certainly good advice.

But this passage isn't so much giving us good advice as it is pointing us toward a good

God.

In music, we have a type of song that's called call and response.

And these are really common in the church today because they allow us to practice this recognition

of who God is and then also responding properly to that truth.

One that we know as a church really well is the song, Is He Worthy?

And in this song, we keep making these statements about the worthiness of God that calls for

our response, and then we respond wholeheartedly, yes, he is worthy. And this is the nature of the

worship of God. This is what the worship of God is all about. It is and should be a wholehearted

response in every area of our whole lives to the goodness of God and to his surpassing worth. It has

very little to do with music and has everything to do with responding rightly. And so to set the

seen as we jump into our passage today, these opening few verses, verses one through four,

show us some of the goodness of God. So first, Adam and Eve know each other, and the result is

a baby boy. God has given offspring. And so for this, he who has ears, let him hear. I'll let the

parents listening explain this to their children appropriately. But imagine the wonder on the part

of Adam and Eve experiencing this new life growing inside of her. And then when he is born,

Eve literally says, oh, another Adam.

But she also recognizes that this child is a gift of God.

We see the two boys that are born, Cain and Abel, come of age and they take on occupations.

So even in a fallen world, there is still this creation mandate to take dominion over

this earth and these animals that now, to an extent, resist them.

And Abel chooses the life of a shepherd, and Cain chooses the life of a farmer of crops.

And then it says, in the course of time, which means essentially at the end of one crop season,

they worship God by bringing him offerings of their work.

So the first point of this passage that it's making is that God is good, and he's still giving good gifts to mankind.

He's giving children.

He's giving good work to do.

and even some measure of prosperity as a result of that hard work.

So even though humanity is deeply flawed and has marred what God created perfectly,

he is still so good that he gives these good gifts that we would call common grace.

And so that's where we start this story from.

And we recognize that God is gracious and he's worthy of the highest level of gratitude from us.

And we see Abel right off the bat responding rightly.

The description of his gift is the firstborn of the flock, which is symbolic, but also

means the biggest and best animal that he had at the close of that season.

He also brings the fat portions, which were in ancient times considered to be the most

valuable part of the meat.

And so Abel, by his offering, has recognized the goodness of God.

And he is filled with gratitude, which overflows in this offering.

Lord, here's my best animal.

Here are the best cuts of meat from what I have harvested.

You are worthy.

And God sees the heart of Abel and he's pleased.

Here's a man with a heart that is responding rightly,

even in spite of sin, to the goodness of God.

But Cain's heart is evidently in a different place.

And so let's begin our reading with verses 5, verse 5 through 7 here, and read about Cain's

response to God's goodness, and then God's correction of that response. So verse 5 says,

But for Cain and his offerings, he, God, had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why is 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, and you must rule over it.

So we don't know much, honestly, about the offering that Cain brought.

But we can see some of his heart revealed in his immediate response to God's response.

It wasn't just the offering that God took issue with.

It was Cain and the heart behind that offering.

because when God doesn't immediately bless Cain in response to his offering, Cain becomes angry.

And so something is exposed here and it is Cain's sense of expectation that favor be returned.

It's the sense that Cain thinks he has done God some sort of favor and is somehow owed blessing in return.

Imagine for a second that you get invited to someone's birthday party

And this person is someone that you have seriously wronged in the past.

And even though you've been perfectly awful to them, they still invite you to come.

And instead of bringing them the best gift that you can, you pull something from the bottom

of your closet, something that you don't use anymore, and you head to the party.

But it gets worse.

When you give that gift to the person, you say, you know, this is probably worth about

$50, so you can pay me back whenever.

If it wasn't already apparent, Cain is in the wrong here.

He's mad that God didn't have regard for him and bless him in return.

He gave expecting to gain in return.

And that is not generosity.

That is a transactional relationship that comes as a result of Cain's pride.

See, pride is this inflated sense of self-importance that leads us to feel so superior that we

think everyone owes us something, whether that is praise or affirmation of our choices

and decisions, and we refuse to be corrected.

Pride is universally condemned in Scripture.

There is no good pride according to God.

In fact, we are called to the opposite of it over and over again, which is humility.

A humble willingness to be corrected, to be aligned with God's definition of what is

good over our definition.

And if you are willing to be corrected, it can completely change the trajectory of your

life.

But Cain is so full of pride that when he doesn't get the affirmation and blessing he

desires, he sits in and wallows in self-pity. His face falls and he turns away from God.

And so God corrects Cain, and he does so with such kindness. From the way that God talks to Cain,

God's perspective on Cain becomes clear. Cain's attitude is as much the issue as his offering.

As a parent, sometimes you give your kids a warning early on to try to give them a chance

when they're still at that bad attitude position.

You can just tell something's brewing.

In our house, it usually sounds something like,

hey, you need to bring it down a notch

before someone gets hurt.

Or that attitude is going to get you in trouble.

And so let's fix that before it happens.

As we found out last week,

the very beginning of sin is this seed of doubt

that God may not be good.

And that's exactly where Cain is.

Instead of repentance for his entitled attitude,

He has started to believe that God somehow is unjust or unfair in his judgments.

So God warns him that this circular path of sin begins right where he is.

Do what is right.

Beware of the serpent that's waiting in the grass.

Your heart and your feelings that are anchored in your sinful flesh are liable to lead you

astray.

You cannot trust them, and that sin will devour you if you let it.

But Cain doesn't listen.

and he turns his sense of injustice against someone else.

So very often the anger and hostility that we experience at the hands of other people

results from an anger at God.

Cain can't believe that his pride might be the problem

and he can't really lash out at God directly, so his pride turns to envy

and he directs his anger at the nearest image bearer of God that is near to him

and that's Abel, his brother. And in this part of the story that we know so well,

he gets Abel to come out into the fields and he murders his brother in cold blood.

And this pattern should really be familiar to us because it's exactly aligned with Satan's

first deception. 1 John 3, verse 12 looks back at Cain and says that he was of the evil one,

1 John 3:12

which means he was following the pattern set by Satan bringing death. And that means that

Cain's hatred of Abel was based in his hatred of God.

In one generation of sinners, we have gone from the first act against God in the garden

to the destruction of someone made in the image of God outside of the garden.

Imagine the horror and heartbreak of Adam and Eve that their firstborn son,

who they may have even hoped would be the one to crush the serpent's head,

has now crushed his brother instead.

But God's not done with Cain.

While we still have breath in our lungs, there is the possibility of repentance.

Maybe that's something that you need to hear.

God's not done.

This is a good God who even in his just punishment of sin offers us a chance to recognize our

sin and repent of it.

Let's read verses 9 through 14 and see the consequence of this sin and how Cain responds

to it.

Then the Lord said to Cain,

Where is Abel your brother?

And he said, I do not know.

Am I my brother's keeper?

And the Lord said,

What have you done?

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

and now you are cursed from the ground,

which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.

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

Cain said to the Lord,

My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground,

and from your face I shall be hidden.

I shall be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth,

and whoever finds me will kill me.

The first thing that God gives Cain a chance to do

is to own his own failure.

Because God knows that the first part of the antidote to pride here is swallowing this

bitter pill of recognizing that we have failed, that we have sinned.

He did the same thing with Adam.

He asked, where are you?

And did you eat from the tree?

God knows what happened to Abel.

And we'll find out in a moment that he is known all along, but he still gives Cain a

chance to recognize his sin and repent.

And we are given that exact same opportunity today.

This is part of the work of the Spirit calling us to repentance and showing us those places

that we have failed with selfish, prideful words and deeds.

And God knows what we have done.

He knows the intention of our heart.

He knows where we have failed.

And yet he calls us to recognize that.

And that's called repentance, recognizing what I have done wrong before God and turning

away from it.

Cain, however, decides to continue living as someone of the evil one, someone who still

has priorities in the sinful flesh over the call of God.

And instead of the truth of God, he opts to lie.

Am I my brother's keeper is a phrase that is well known inside and outside of the church

and is this thing that people kind of say when they don't want to take responsibility.

But in the Hebrew, this phrase is even more cutting and sarcastic.

Cain says, essentially, am I supposed to watch over the shepherd?

Cain's heart here is defiant.

It is cold, and he rejects any responsibility for his actions.

But that doesn't mean that there won't be consequences for them.

Rejecting responsibility doesn't mean that you get out of consequences.

This injustice that was done against Abel is an injustice against God as well,

and it requires a response. God doesn't often use the word hate in scripture. There is a short list

though in Proverbs chapter 6, and do you know what numbers 1, 2, and 3 on this list of hated sin?

Proverbs 6 · chapter mention

It says, haughty eyes, which is pride, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. Pride,

lying, and murder. The top three spots on the list read like a record of Cain's life choices thus far.

So God's just consequence is not really to add an additional curse to Cain so much as it is to let

the curse have its full effect on Cain. So up until this point, while Cain has been under the curse of

sin with the rest of sinful mankind. God, in his mercy, has still shown so much kindness to them.

He had to work hard and plan and weed and reap, but the ground did produce food for Cain to eat.

And remember, every good thing comes from God, which means our rejection of God results in

rejecting the source of every good thing. So now God essentially stops holding back the curse at

all. And the same ground that he stained with Abel's blood will now not produce its strength for Cain.

He will have to become a hunter and a gatherer because his time as a farmer is over. And he also

will have to leave the area like a fugitive because there will be no peace for him among his kin now.

But these consequences too are intended to humble Cain.

They should lead him to repent of his sin, to recognize the consequences, to recognize

his wrongdoing, and to beg for mercy.

But what does Cain do instead?

He says the punishment isn't fair.

He blames God, not his sin, for driving him away, just like Adam did with the woman you

gave me.

And he announces that he's going to hide from God's face.

Cain is unrepentant and he continues to reject God.

Despite the warning of God to correct him and even the punishment here meant to humble him,

Cain remains lost in his own pride.

And he even tries to redefine his own punishment by saying, I'll just end up being killed anyway.

Cain is an example of what it looks like to be blinded by sin.

And yet even here, God shows him mercy.

He marks Cain in some way, we don't know what that was, to stop anyone from killing him in response to Abel's murder.

And in the next verse, we'll find out that God even gives him children.

But ultimately, Cain does reject God and his goodness and chooses to remain in his own destruction.

So as we close up this passage, a few things should become clear.

The destruction of sin knows no bounds, and it will always, always lead to our ruin.

It will always escalate.

It will always increase when we give in to it.

Cain's pride led to jealousy and eventually led to murder.

And so often, our sin will have collateral damage on others.

Our infidelity that seemed like a personal choice damages everyone in our family.

Our abuse of a substance has impact on people, and often it's the people that care about you the most

that are the most impacted by that. Our pride that leads us to such anger that we end up doing

and saying things that hurt other people. We've all seen it, and we've seen it happen over and

over again, and we remain blind to it, absent the intervention of God. Sinful humans are really good

at digging that hole deeper and justifying and blaming and shaking our fist at God as

we really walk the road to hell.

And I don't mean that as a metaphor.

In Jude 11, the author describes the way of Cain as this escalating path of rebellion

and also paints it as a picture of hell.

Hell is a place of destruction that sinners gladly walk the path to through every single

one of their own actions, all the while being so prideful that we aren't willing to see where it's

headed. And that's the condition of every single person, without the work of God to show us what

is wrong and to redeem us. Not a single one of us can read this passage and not see something of

ourselves in the person of Cain. Because we have all been tempted in our flesh to give in to the

way of the evil one. We have all wrestled with our own pride. How appropriate that on the first

Sunday of what many in the United States call pride month, we are talking about the destructiveness

of pride. Paul addresses a similar culture in Rome in Romans chapter 1 verse 32 saying,

Romans 1:32

though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

So while our response to anyone who is trying to glorify pride should absolutely be to speak

the truth of God, it should also be to walk in the humility of God. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 9

Ephesians 2:9

says that our salvation is not a result of our works or our righteousness, but it's of the grace

of God. So we don't boast in ourselves and our inherent holiness because we have none.

In humility, we boast in the righteousness of Christ, which was given to us by the grace of God.

Abel's blood was shed on the ground and called for the retribution of God. But Jesus shed his

blood on the cross to provide for the redemption of men. All of mankind will find certain death

in our sinful pride, that is a fact, but we may find certainty of life by trusting the salvation

that's offered by Jesus. And God, in his mercy, just as he left the door open for Cain to repent

and turn away from his path to destruction, he also leaves the door open now to the lost.

As we live in this tension of this kingdom that already has a victorious king, but also is

awaiting his return, we can kind of start to wonder, what's taking so long? Come Lord Jesus,

why are we still waiting? And in 2 Peter 3, 9, it says, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise,

but is patient toward you. He's being patient. This tension of the present world that the church

exists in is due to the patience of God, that the lost may hear the gospel and repent and find life

in Jesus Christ. So as we live in that, I would encourage us to do two things. First, lay down

your pride at the feet of Jesus. Repent of your sin and receive forgiveness and life in his name.

And second, pray often for the lost and speak freely with them of what you have been given in Christ Jesus.

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