Cain & Abel

Good morning, church.

We're gonna be reading from Genesis 4, 1 to 16.

Buckle up.

All right.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.

And again she bore his brother Abel.

Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.

In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

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

So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

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

If you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother?

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 a wanderer on the earth.

And whoever finds me will kill me.

Then the Lord said to him, Not so, if anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here.

Uh this is, as Zach was saying, this is our last Sunday meeting here at Centennial.

And we are going to be moving immediately after the service to uh the Berkeley Park Chapel, which is an old Olinger mortuary, um, which is fine.

And that's what we'll be moving into.

Um we are thinking, since it was an Olinger Mortuary, maybe naming our church something like Linger.

I don't know if that would really work in Denver, though.

Um and uh our plan is uh uh so after the service, makers and breakers, folks that set up and tear down all that you see here, uh are going to be uh you know tearing down things on the stage and things will bit get packed up into their nice crates and containers.

And then uh out the back door past the gym, down at the end of this hallway out the back, uh, we'll all, all, all, all who would desire, uh can grab a container uh and we'll walk together around uh or to the Berkeley Chapel, which is on this block.

It's very close.

It's not a long walk.

Um and we're basically going to just d deposit all of our things into uh our new location.

So this is where we're moving into the neighborhood for we've got a five-year lease with two five-year options.

Uh so that's like 15 years.

Um if my math serves me correctly.

And uh so this is a super exciting move.

It feels like the uh beginning of a brand new journey, uh, the end of a long journey.

Um so yeah, this is like a thrilling Sunday.

Also, when we get there, in order to mark the occasion, we're gonna have a pizza party.

Um which is just where you have pizza in a group.

Um so yeah, join us for join us for that move.

I think we yeah, here we go.

So next Sunday, March 8th, will be our first service in the chapel.

So we will be meeting officially there.

Um we're we're we won't have done any renovations.

There will be, you know, kind of makeshift like this, but we figure why pay rent two places when you can only pay rent one.

And we're uh so we'll just be popping up just like this um in uh the Berkeley Chapel, but that'll be the start.

So the beginning of a new season.

This is like a crazy morning to arrive at.

Um great way to get connected at Redemption Church is to join one of our small groups.

We call them Redemption Groups, and you can do that by uh going, downloading our app, just type in Redemption Church Denver to the App Store of your choice, tap connect, or go to the website, redemptiondenver.com, and tap connect.

Um, and uh you can sign up to join one of those redemption groups.

Great way to get to know people, get connected, that sort of thing.

Uh we are in the midst of our series going through the book of Genesis.

And this is our eighth week in Genesis, and we've made it to chapter four, so that's pretty good.

And we are uh going to go through the story this morning of Cain and Abel, as you heard.

So would you pray with me before we get started?

Holy Father, you teach us the truth of the world that we live in.

Uh that way you might strengthen us to live in it by the power of your spirit.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a clear perspective on the reality of sin, its effects on our hearts, and its effects on the world.

And Lord, I pray that you would give us a clear picture of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and that we might be made new creations in you.

Lord, would you give us wisdom through this passage to deal with the sin in our lives and the sin of the society that we live in?

Father, that can only be done by the power of your spirit.

So we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, uh, Cain and Abel, uh, the story doesn't particularly end well.

Last week we saw death enter our story of creation.

Up until then, the story of creation had been the picture of a beautiful garden uncorrupted by sin.

Adam and Eve stood together naked and unashamed, completely united.

There was nothing to be ashamed of in all of humanity.

And then by the temptation of Satan, sin enters the world, and with sin, death enters the world with it.

So last week we saw sin enter the world through the temptation of Satan.

This week we're going to see sin develop, and we're going to see these new categories of sin emerge in the world.

These are the world, category of the world, and the category of the flesh.

So that means sin that came in through the temptation of Satan, we will now not only experience through Satan's temptation, but we experience through our own fleshly desires.

That means we have a draw and an impulse towards sin in our own hearts.

And the world that we inhabit is likewise corrupted by sin.

And so our flesh draws us to sin, and the normal societal patterns draw us towards sin.

We don't stand a chance.

We're going to see what is the shape of sin, how does it really take place in our lives, and understanding its shape, we're going to understand how to uh how to actually combat it.

What are we really warring against?

This sermon is kind of a know your enemy type of sermon.

Um excuse me, so that's what we're looking at here in the story of Cain and Abel.

So let's go ahead and we're just gonna follow the story, and we're gonna see what we can glean from it.

So let's jump in.

This is Genesis 4, verses 3 through 5.

Genesis 4:3–5

In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

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

So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

So the story begins with two brothers, the first two brothers in existence.

One of them, Abel, is uh someone who tends flocks, so he takes care of sheep or other livestock.

The other, Cain, is a farmer, so he works the ground.

So there's a difference, just sort of a cultural dynamic in the brothers.

Cain is the firstborn, and Abel is the younger brother.

They each bring an offering to the Lord.

Now, if we follow the order of the text, it appears that uh Cain likely brought his offering to the Lord first, and along with Cain comes the younger brother Abel.

Cain bring, they each bring an offering of their own lives.

So Cain brings an offering from the fruit of the ground, and Abel brings an offering from his flocks.

So he brings a sacrifice, an animal, and he brings the best part of his flock and the best part of that animal, the fat portions.

Now, God makes a distinction between their offerings.

He looks at Abel's offering, he has regard for it, and for Cain's offering, he has no regard.

So for Cain's offering, he he he basically despises it.

He says this is not a useful offering.

Now it's tempting, and a lot of times we say, okay, I get it.

The distinction here between the offerings is that what is that Cain brings an offering of blood.

And we know that a blood offering is ultimately what will atone for sin.

If you're familiar with the biblical story, the biblical narrative culminating in Jesus Christ giving himself for us, we see that it's blood that atones for sin.

So that's why Abel's offering was accepted, while an offering of just the fruit of the ground, produce, was not accepted.

Well, the reality is uh that is not the distinction that God is drawing amongst these offerings.

Uh it's it's nothing so practice-oriented.

Uh, it's nothing so particular as blood versus fruit.

But rather, what God sees is the whole life expressed in the offering that is given.

In the offerings of Cain and Abel, what we're seeing is a picture of Cain's heart and a picture of Abel's heart in their offerings.

The only distinction that we see in the text is that Abel offers from the firstborn of his flock.

So he goes and he takes the most precious thing from his flock.

And then in sacrificing it, he also apportions out the best part of it, the fatty portions of it.

And so Abel is giving the ultimate thing that he can offer from his life, the greatest of the fruit of his labor.

Cain, on the other hand, gives him some produce.

So it's an offering, yes, but it's not the it's not the ultimate of the offering.

It's not the highest of the sacrifice.

So, in a sense, what Abel is saying is because I'm giving you the best of this, what this is expressing in my heart is I will give you all of me, Lord.

I understand that I have all that I have because you have given it to me first.

Cain, on the other hand, gives him some.

And when Cain gives him some of his life, what he's saying is, the best or the worst or whatever it is, there is there is this is not a demonstration that I'm giving you my all.

What I'm doing is I'm giving you some to kind of tip my hat to you as God, not in true worship of you as God.

So the true picture of their heart comes out when we see Cain's response to the Lord not having regard for his offering.

It says Cain's face fell and he became angry.

I listened to earlier this week a uh uh it was actually pretty pretty nice.

I'd always listen to Tim Keller's sermons on his podcast.

I recommend it.

Uh he's a preacher in New York.

Um you'll meet him.

No, you won't.

Uh and uh he was preaching uh a couple of months ago, or at least it was released a couple of months ago, on the story of Cain and Abel.

And he drew this great distinction, one that I'm going to share with you now, because I thought it was so good.

He says, when we see Cain's face, when we see Cain's face fall and him become angry at what God has shown him, what we realize is the way that Cain was being obedient.

Cain wasn't offering to God, Cain was bartering with God.

Because here's the way it works.

When somebody who is offering their lives to God, when somebody gives to the Lord or they decide to be obedient, and when their life all of a sudden starts to go wrong, and they feel like, look, the way that I offered to the Lord, I don't feel like I'm being rewarded for it in any real way.

Well, that type of person who is truly offering from the heart becomes just confused.

They think, man, the world is even more complicated than I expected.

It's difficult for me to see how this obedience is beneficial in any way.

But when you're not really offering to the Lord, when what you give to the Lord is a way of bartering with him, which is to say, God, I'm gonna give you this portion of my flock, and then you'll owe me.

I'm gonna be obedient to you because then once I'm obedient, I'm gonna deserve this good life.

I'm going to deserve all of these blessings to flow into my life.

And then when they don't, then we become angry with God because he owes us.

And in Cain's anger, we see that he was never really offering to God.

He was only bartering with him.

That's what becomes laid bare in his anger.

His withholding from God showed that he didn't desire the Lord.

He desired whatever the Lord would give to him.

So the story continues, and God intervenes when he sees Cain's anger.

And he doesn't come, you know, what is, yeah, that just reminded me of that Saturday Night Live.

We're not here to come down on you or anything like that.

He doesn't come down on Cain in that way.

Instead, he just uh asks him a question.

He invites Cain to reflect on his own emotional response.

Listen to what God says.

Genesis 4, 6 through 7.

The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry?

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 contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

You see, this invitation, look, Cain, look at look at your anger.

Why are you angry?

Can we make this explicit?

Can we make your anger clear?

You're angry because you didn't do well.

And when you didn't do well, your life didn't go well.

Just a quick point on what it likely meant for God to have regard for Cain and to not have regard for Abel.

I think a lot of us, because the verses, because the story is so tight and so spare, we think like, oh, this was just the flow of events.

So Abel showed up with his offering, like God's standing there and was like, I'm ready for my offerings now.

And Abel shows up and, or Cain shows up with his offering, and God's like, nope.

And Abel shows up with his offering, God's like, yes, thank you.

And that's the way that they understood who was received and who wasn't received.

But more than likely, what we're seeing is the outflow of their hearts.

And Abel is living in a way that is in line with worship of God as his ultimate ends.

And so his life is going well.

There's probably more joy in it.

There's probably a fruitfulness in it and an openness to Abel's life that was just flowing out as they live together.

And then Cain, this older brother, is looking at that and is like, well, I guess my offering, God doesn't value it all.

Because what's flowing out of my life is this competitiveness and this angst and this enmity that I'm experiencing with my younger brother who seems to be upping me in all these ways.

See, that's more than likely the way that the blessing of the Lord showed itself in the story.

And so what God is saying is, look, why are you angry?

Your life is not going well because you're not doing well.

I can tell the clearest example is look in your offering.

You're not really offering to me.

You have no real desire to know me.

I'm just a part of this family practice for you.

I'm just a tip your hat to.

I'm not the God of you or the God of your creation.

You have a disordered way of viewing the whole world the whole way down, and so things aren't going well for you.

But why why do you why is that making you angry?

If you do well, won't things go well for you?

That's not the time for anger to be lashing out at the people around you.

Cain, the problem is in your heart.

Do you see how God engages Cain's emotions?

It's really wise, as you one might expect.

Cain he's he enters through his emotions, calls Cain to reflect on them, and then holds them up against reality.

So the emotions are real.

What God is saying is like, look, this anger that you're experiencing, this is actually telling us something about your heart.

You know, let's let's walk through that.

Let's, in fact, let's take a step back and look at it.

Why are you angry?

Can we put some words to this?

Anger?

Okay, now that we understand why you're angry, then uh when we look at the way the world is, if you do well, things will go well for you.

And if you don't do well, you're going to experience all this type of pain.

So do you think that anger is the appropriate response?

Or maybe something more like, oh man, I need to change my ways.

God is shining this light on this false world that Cain had invented.

And the false world was, look, God, you know I'm committed to you because look at what I gave.

And God's like, you and I both know that this is a false offering.

And you're just deceiving yourself.

Your heart is not for me.

And you're angry because you're continuing to live in that self-deception, which says, I know that I've got my stuff together, and so God owes me.

God is saying, look at that anger.

It's false.

It's hiding from you the truth.

Which is that if you would step into this to this place of truth, then then you'll be helped out of this place of anger.

And all you'll need to say to come into this is, yeah, I haven't been living well.

That was a false offering.

That's it.

It's an invitation to just normal, simple, ordinary repentance.

I think my anger probably isn't true.

Because the reality is I'm in a pattern of my own making.

All it requires is an admission I didn't do well.

Now, uh God's wonderful counsel that He does in two sentences ends with this warning.

God says, look, I'm gonna teach you what you're playing with here when you're playing with this anger.

Here's what sin is like.

Sin it's it's like a tiger, and it's crouching at the door.

And if you if you don't master it, if you don't Become the one in charge of the sin, and it's the one that's in charge of you.

Its desire is contrary to you.

It's waiting to pounce.

So that's what begins to happen in the story.

The sin that Abel, or the sin that Cain might have thought he was done with, was only just getting started.

And God is saying, look, it's hidden right now.

It's like a tiger that's in the tall grass.

So if we were to enter into this story and kind of get more of a picture, you can picture like the tall grass is Cain's anger.

It grows up around him.

And the more that he involves himself in this anger, look, I gave an offering.

I'm the one who led us here to give this offering.

I deserve to have my life be going well.

Look at this injustice that I'm the victim of.

The more that his anger grows, it's like he's growing this field that sin is able to just lurk in, to remain hidden in.

Because his anger becomes this whole new view of the world.

C.S.

Lewis in Mere Christianity describes this pattern this way.

He says, when a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him.

When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.

When Cain is getting more and more trapped in this anger, over and over again, reinforcing this narrative that he's the one who's owed, he's the one who deserves this.

This comes from no fruit of him.

The badness is just out there and he's the victim of it.

He's growing and becoming more and more self-deceived, and sin is just lurking through all of that.

He might have thought he was done with the sin, but it was in no way done with him.

The story goes on.

Genesis 4, 8.

Cain spoke to Abel his brother.

And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

You can see that the Lord's advice to master the sin was not heeded.

And what started out as a false sacrifice that turned into anger now develops into murder.

So why does Cain kill Abel?

What does Abel mean to Cain at this point?

Abel is evidence, playing basketball.

Abel is evidence that there could be a righteous offering.

And so long as Abel is there, and so long as Cain sees Abel, sees things going well for Abel, sees the true authenticity of Abel's heart, he's experiencing over and over again his own condemnation.

And so he starts to pit his anger against Abel in his jealousy and in his rage.

Because that's a way of saying, look, the problem isn't me.

The problem is I've got Abel here who's showing how bad I am.

And you know what?

Firstborn, before he showed up, I didn't have to deal with this.

You know, before he showed up, I used to just go and give an offering, and it was fine.

And I've been giving offerings like this for years.

But now with Abel giving his offerings, all of a sudden this isn't good enough.

And so Abel becomes this evidence that's walking around, this living evidence, to condemn Cain's own heart.

It's proof that there is such a thing as a righteous offering, which means that Cain's really is as bad as it seems.

And so this grows and develops because he wants to destroy the evidence in the world of his own unrighteousness, and so he decides to kill it.

If I just get rid of Abel, then I don't have to acknowledge that the problem is actually in me.

Killing Abel is an act of revenge, and it's also an act of hiding.

It's a way of getting rid of the people in my life that are actually seeing the real devastation that I cause, that are actually seeing the real sin that takes place in my heart.

The people that are like God that shine a light to expose the truth of who I really am.

If I could just get rid of them, then maybe I won't feel so condemned all the time.

I'll feel vindicated.

So that's the way that the murder we see it grows.

It's this desire to destroy the evidence.

And this is the same type of pattern that we see Jesus describe in the Sermon on the Mount, which is look, see Cain's anger?

It was just the seeds of murder.

In the same way that lust is just the seeds of adultery.

You see, these are, this is the way sin is.

That's the lurking of sin, the hiddenness of sin that God is describing here.

It's wildly practical.

So the Lord says to Cain in verses 9 and 10, Where is Abel, your brother?

And Cain says, I do not know.

Am I my brother's keeper?

And the Lord says, What have you done?

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

You see the pattern?

Adam and Eve eat the fruit.

God shows up, where are you?

Cain kills Abel.

God shows up, where's your brother, Cain?

God rarely pushes you out of sin.

He seems to draw you out, draw you into the light.

The same approach as Adam.

And it will be followed by a similar curse that Adam receives.

So there's a false offering that Cain provides.

This false offering grows into murder.

And then here in Cain's response to God's question, we see that it's become an entire outlook on the world.

Cain says, Am I my brother's keeper?

What he means is, look, this cynicism, this anger that I've let grow in me, this is the way the world is.

This is the way the world is now.

I'm not out for anyone but me.

And I'm not going to let anyone get close again.

I'm going to make sure that I'm the one who's in control of my destiny.

And if Abel wasn't able to do that for himself, well, he got what he had coming.

It becomes an entire cynical worldview.

This anger that had developed in him.

Paints all that he sees now.

But Cain's blood, excuse me, Abel's blood continues to cry out from the ground.

It's the telltale heart.

It keeps beating.

And what Cain thought he would be able to get rid of this thing that was plaguing him by trying to get rid of it through the path of more sin and more hiding, and growing up those weeds so more sin can hide in it and lurk through it in this angry, cynical worldview.

And his curse becomes to live in that world which he created.

This is the way that God responds to Cain's sin.

He says this in Genesis 4, 11 through 12.

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.

Notice the shape of the punishment.

So it's right in the same way that Adam and Eve's curse was right at the place of their blessing, so too is Cain's.

Adam is called to work the garden and to keep it.

And what is his curse?

It's that now thorns and thistles will be warring against you as you try and labor.

Eve is called with Adam to be fruitful and multiply.

Eve is the bearer of life.

And where does she experience the curse?

But in childbearing.

And in the same way, Cain, this outflow of who he is, is that he is the one who worked the ground.

Now, he can no longer work the ground.

We see such a clear pattern here developed.

There's such a symmetry to what Cain loses by continuing to follow this path of sin.

Do you see it?

Cain loses his very self.

In the hiding, in the false world that he creates, he's the one that disappears.

Now, this identity that he has as the one who works the ground, he becomes just a wanderer on the earth and a fugitive.

Cain, excuse me, in uh verses 13 to 14, 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 a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.

Oh, isn't that so strange?

Just a few verses earlier, he says, Am I my brother's keeper?

You know, look at what the world's really like, God.

It's every man for himself out here, and if you can't hack it, then you can't hack it.

Then a few verses later, God says, Then you know what?

You get to go into that world.

You're gonna be a wanderer.

And what does Cain say?

It's too much for me.

It's too much for me to wander in that world.

You're talking about going into a world that's full of rogue vengeance.

And if I go out there, I will certainly become the victim of it.

God's saying, go live in the world that you created.

It's this wild symmetry in the justice.

And it plays out in the way that we see sin work in our own lives.

Sin has these normal patterns where the liar becomes the one who is the most lied to and lives in a world where they can't discern any longer where is the truth and where do I even get to it?

It's the con artist who constantly thinks and lives in fear constantly that he's the one who's being scanned.

It's the adulterer who has already done the abandonment, who doesn't come clean because of this perpetual fear of abandonment.

You see, sin forces us to go live in the wilderness, the desolation that we create by our own sin.

Does that pattern make sense?

The justice seems perfectly pure.

It seems like symmetrical and complete.

It's like this wonderful balance.

But God says to Cain, that world that you created, I will not let the world be that way.

Then the Lord said to him in verses 15 through 16, not so.

If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

You see what the world could be?

This terrible rogue vengeance that we're cursed to live in.

And God says, no, Cain, even for you, the one who didn't take my advice, the one who every opportunity I've given to you to just come back to me, I'm not going to let that have its vengeance in the world.

I'm not going to let that become the pattern of existence.

And what we're seeing here, it's being introduced, is this theme that's so hard to pin down and so hard to wrap our minds around, but it's just this expression of character of God's character, which is that sin enters the world and it radically corrupts everything, even our own hearts.

And yet God has this common grace that He extends into the world so that while we are all corrupted, we are not as bad as we could be.

The world is restrained.

God does this restraining, this merciful restraining act, because he has a bigger story in mind.

Now, Cain goes off east of Eden.

I'm pretty sure this comes from that Steinbeck novel.

Not the other way around, get it?

The other way around.

And he goes and he gets married, and he has a child, and he has a son, and he names the son Enoch.

And Enoch means to initiate.

So what we see is Cain, he gets, he has this like new beginning, is what happens.

And from this line from Cain and through Enoch, we see this amazing development take place in the world and in culture.

You know, the development that we were called to in the garden, it isn't thwarted by sin, but it continues on.

And so Cain gives birth to, or excuse me, Enoch gives birth to uh Jabal.

And Jabal becomes the father of all who have tents and livestock.

So he develops this tent technology.

It's like, check it out, we can follow around our livestock, this is gonna be way better.

Great.

And then uh he has the son, Jubal, and he creates all the music that comes from the lyre and the pipe.

Uh so these instruments for song and for the joy of music to come into the world.

This comes from the line of Cain.

And uh Tubal Cain uh it develops the technology for bronze and iron to make instruments and tools out of bronze and iron.

And what we see is that the development of the world continues on because of God's gracious restraining of the ultimate effects of sin.

You'd expect this line, they just kill everyone.

If it were a lesser story told by a lesser author, there would be nothing good that comes from the line of Cain, and things would be very simple, and we'd be able to understand the world.

But this is not a lesser story.

Instead, we see that even from this godless line, God brings about these wonderful acts of creation, and they are good things that God will later draw out of the world, and he'll call for himself to be worshipped with instruments like this.

And uh yet we see that these beautiful things that come into the world, these beautiful acts of culture, are good and have no power to save.

They're good things, but they can't rescue us.

We need something else for that.

At the end of this line of Cain, a man is born named Lamech.

And Lamech is the first polygamist in scripture.

He takes for himself two wives, and one day he tells his two wives, he says, I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.

If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.

You see what happened in the line of Cain.

We see this duality in our humanity just encapsulated in the line of Cain.

This beauty of culture and the arts developed, and this descent to where Cain killed one person.

Down the line of Cain, I'll kill a man for wounding me.

Cain's vengeance, which was God's, was he'd kill seven people.

But me, I'll kill seventy-seven.

This expansion, the anger in their hearts has grown.

Sin has taken root and developed just alongside these other good things that they developed.

This isn't the end of the chapter.

Uh, in verses 25 through 26, it says, And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth.

For she she said, God has appointed to Seth, or excuse me, uh, called his name Seth, for she she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.

To Seth also a son was born, he called his name Enosh.

And at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

This chapter, chapter four, is bookended by these two declarations by Eve.

Eve says in the beginning, when she first has Cain, God gave, I received Cain from the help of the Lord.

And then she declares here at the end in the song of praise, I have given birth to another.

God has given me another son to replace Abel.

Remember, Abel was the good son, the one through, the one who demonstrated righteousness but was killed for it.

And this new line develops.

A couple generations removed from Seth, we get another Enoch, another initiation.

And Enoch is a good man who lived with the Lord.

And you know what Enoch doesn't do?

Die.

He doesn't die.

He's just taken to be with the Lord.

I don't know what that means.

He doesn't die.

And then we continue down this new initiation from the line of Enoch, and it ends in chapter 5, it ends with this new person called Noah.

And Noah has three sons.

And Noah will be the one who preserves the human race and takes them through, washing away this terrible sin that develops through the line of Lamech, through this incredible world of vengeance, that terrible desolation that Cain imagined himself walking in.

We see that the story isn't done.

And then through the line that's preserved through, or excuse me, that's preserved through Seth, and then Enoch and through Noah, you know, there's someone else that will come down that line.

And he'll be just like Abel.

In that he will be a totally innocent person who gives the ultimate offering to God, offers his whole life to God.

And in offering his whole life to God, he will likewise be killed for it.

And when he is killed for it, his blood will also cry out in the same way that Abel's blood cried out.

But it will be better this time.

In Hebrews, describes Jesus this way.

Hebrews 12 24, it says, Into Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, into the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Because what did Abel's blood cry out?

It cried out for justice against Cain.

What does Jesus' blood cry out?

It cries out for our salvation.

It cries out for our forgiveness.

We are just like Cain to Jesus.

It is our sin that kills him.

And then Jesus' blood cries out for our rescue.

Cain had to be killed.

Excuse me, Cain had to kill Abel because he saw Abel as evidence that he was truly unrighteous, that he was truly condemned.

And he thought by killing him, he could get rid of that evidence.

But when he killed him, his blood still cried out as evidence against Cain.

Jesus dies.

And when Jesus dies, he becomes our evidence for us to God.

Where God says, I can now declare you righteous, even though you have the same sin that Cain had.

It is only a curse for sinners like us.

Sin is crouching.

It will devour us.

It has the last word, unless.

Unless there's a new covenant brought by this new line, by the promised child of Eve, who would take on the punishment that we deserve for not doing well.

That way he might freely give us his righteousness.

That his blood might cry out.

You're free.

You're not condemned.

That our pitiful lives might be received as a glorious offering under the blood of Christ.

If you find yourself trapped in sin this morning, the most relatable part of this sermon was the way that the sin corrupted Cain's heart and how he became lost in this view of the world which was totally myopic and totally self-centered and angry and allowing sin to take root because of an inability to just say, This is my wrongdoing.

When we come to Jesus and say, look, this is my wrongdoing.

His blood cries out for our forgiveness.

100% of the time, it makes us new, it brings us into a new covenant.

It is our only hope in the world.

God shows his own love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Today, while we take communion, remember that it's his blood that cries out, his body that was broken on our behalf.

In the glorious righteousness that looks like, oh, that's just for other people, like people like Abel.

I'm much more like a Cain.

It's for Cains now, too.

That is the grace of Jesus.

Wonderful grace of Jesus.

Come to it today.

Let's take a question.

Ha ha, I knew it.

What does that have to do with the gospel?

Alright, so uh there, look, there's a lot of different opinions on this.

But here's what basically what I think is it was one of his siblings.

Um and it just as in the genealogies that we see mapped through just about all of scripture, we're seeing genealogies used to prove a point in a story.

And we aren't seeing like uh this isn't the a census being taken.

This is a mapping of God's redemption taking place throughout history and through particular people.

So for when we're looking at the story of Adam and Eve, we're seeing a story that's being reduced to its principles that are relevant to that redemptive history.

And a relevant uh aspect of that would likely be would a relevant aspect of that that would be omitted would likely be, oh, and they also had like 35 other daughters.

And they had 67 other sons, because they lived for 900 years.

And so for that to be omitted, I think would still make uh sense of the story.

Um so that's the that's the position that I would take.

That we uh just see there's just a lot of people omitted in all of the genealogies uh that we see in scripture.

Um and so for that to be the same here would not be out of step.

Um so what that that means we just need to become good readers of scripture and understand, oh, when they're doing genealogies, it's different from me on ancestry.com.

Right?

We're doing different cultural things.

Uh so good question.

Nice close reading.

Uh all right, let's pray, and then we'll take communion together.

Uh happy moving day, everyone.

God, your grace is the star of these stories.

Lord, let us see you in your gentleness, how you come to sinners.

Let us see you in your the your humility as you lay your life down, that we might be rescued by you.

God, let that change our hearts so that we would become people that are open with the sin that's really corrupting us, that we would, so long as it's called today, our hearts might not be hardened, but we might come to you because you've given us a way to not be destroyed by sin, but to be created anew in you.

Lord, draw us to repentance in that.

Give us wisdom to understand the fearful shape of sin.

And Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, let us come to you for forgiveness.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.