October 21, Genesis 4
We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. - 1 John 3:12
Genesis 4 begins with a normal picture of married life. God blessed the husband and wife to bring a baby into the world and their family. They named the child. The family grew. But the story very quickly went off the rails. The family was fractured by the first recorded murder in human history. One of Adam and Eve's sons killed his own brother! Perhaps the first couple couldn't grasp the meaning of death when God warned them about it years before. But they tasted the bitter grief and empty loss death brings as they buried their own son.
The story only gets darker and worse from there. Succeeding generations of Adam and Eve's descendants sank lower and lower into the depravity of disobedience and callous disregard for God. The downhill journey toward the destruction of the world by the Flood accelerated toward death and ruin.
But today I want to focus on Cain. Jesus and the New Testament writers did not talk about Genesis as myth or legend. Jesus spoke of Cain and Abel as historical figures. So did Peter, John and Jude in their letters. John asked and answered the question of Cain’s motive for murder in the text above: "Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous." The murder was evil. But Cain’s deeds before and after he killed his brother were evil as well.
Cain's offering was different from Abel's offering. God accepted Abel’s and rejected Cain’s. The New Testament tells why: "By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts" (Hebrews 11:4). This means that God had told Adam and his sons how to sacrifice, because faith comes from hearing the word of God. I believe this related to the idea of the Lamb that runs throughout Scripture. Faith in atoning blood was the means of the patriarchs and later Israel sacrificing the blood of animals for their sin offerings. All those sacrificed lambs looked ahead to the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God. Cain's offering was outside that framework. He brought crops he had raised, but that was not what God had taught them to do. Centuries later, Israel's first king, Saul, would learn the lesson from Samuel, "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22).
The faithless offering was only the beginning. His jealousy toward his brother overflowed in unjustified and uncontrolled anger. No wonder Jesus warns us about being angry without cause, and how anger is related to murder. When God encouraged and warned Cain about his attitude, he rejected God's counsel and proceeded with his plan to kill his own brother. The word brother is repeated seven times in this account, emphasizing the ugly evil of what Cain did.
Then, after the murder, Cain's evil deeds continued to mount. He lied to God and was haughty and disrespectful in his answer. His parents had admitted their sin when God confronted them in a similar question and answer setting, but Cain's hard heart dared to lie and be rude to God himself. Ananias and Sapphira learned the hard way that lying to God was a bad strategy when they died for doing so in Acts 5. Cain cried about the hard punishment God announced for him, but spoke no word of repentance or remorse for the evil he had done. There is godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Tender hearts weep over offending a holy God with their unholy deeds. But not all tears that follow sin are repentance. Cain's were not. The Bible teaches us by some examples what to do, and by other examples what not to do. Sadly, Cain's attitude and actions are all of the latter kind.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—October 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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