Well, good morning, everyone.
Again, my name is Keith Knowlton.
It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.
If we haven't met, I hope to have the chance to do so after our service this morning.
As James mentioned, we are continuing our series in the book of Genesis,
the very first book of the Bible.
We've been walking bit by bit through this book.
We've already looked at the creation story,
the creation of man and woman made in God's image.
They're placed in the garden with a command to rule over creation.
They live in fellowship with God.
But yet, as we saw last week, they end up rebelling against God.
They are tempted by the serpent, and they eat of the forbidden fruit,
and sin enters the world.
And though God promises them soon after their sin that he will rescue them,
he will send this rescuer sometime in the future to overthrow the evil one,
we see the immediate effects of the fall,
brokenness and separation from God being banished outside the garden.
And so that's where our passage picks up today in Genesis chapter 4,
this familiar story of Cain and Abel.
And I wonder if you've ever heard the phrase,
someone said it to you perhaps,
welcome to the real world.
It's one of those phrases that's said with a bit of cynicism,
a bit of sarcasm, a sarcasm in your voice.
Perhaps there's a student who recently graduates from uni
and is looking forward to getting their dream job,
and they begin work, but then they recognize there's office politics,
and they have a difficult boss and coworkers that are targeting one another.
Someone may say, welcome to the real world.
Or maybe you have a young adult who's ready to branch out on their own.
They move out of their family's house.
They find their own flat.
They're excited for the sense of freedom and independence.
And then comes rent and council tax and insurance and utilities.
Welcome to the real world.
Or maybe it's a newlywed couple that returns from their honeymoon,
excited about this life of marital bliss.
And then it's the very next day that they recognize these differing opinions
in finances and in family and in their future.
Welcome to the real world.
We see this, I think, a similar situation in our passage this morning,
this welcome to the real world moment,
because we recognize that man had been in paradise in the garden,
and now they're suddenly confronted with this ongoing effects of sin
in life outside of Eden.
And so again, this is a familiar story of Cain and Abel,
I would think, to most of us,
but I don't want us to characterize it the wrong way,
because I think oftentimes we can just look at it as this historical narrative
about the first murder in human history.
And we can kind of keep it at arm's length to think,
well, that doesn't really have anything to do with me and my situation.
But what I hope that this narrative portrays for us is the picture of the real world
in which you and I still live,
in which you and I continue to experience the pervasiveness of sin.
But also in the midst of this brokenness,
I hope that we see today that we are not left without the mercy of God.
And so let's look at our passage.
This is in page 6 of your church Bible,
Genesis chapter 4, starting in verse 1.
Adam made love to 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.
But Abel also brought an offering,
fat portions from some of the firstborn 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 to the field.
And 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 seven 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.
This is the word of God.
Will you pray with me again?
Heavenly Father,
as we turn now to the preaching of your word,
we do ask that you send your spirit among us,
that he may prepare our minds to receive your word,
to move in our hearts to embrace your truth,
and to strengthen our wills,
that we may follow in your ways.
We pray this in the name of our Savior Jesus.
Amen.
Now, as I mentioned,
our passage today,
we are confronted with this post-fall reality
of life after Eden.
This is not a narrative that simply describes
the environment thousands of years ago.
It describes our environment here and now,
the conditions in which we live in.
And so I wonder,
after Adam and Eve first sinned,
how they first thought about sin.
Obviously, they recognized
the consequences of sin,
these external consequences.
We know that they felt remorse,
but how did they initially think
that sin might affect them internally and personally?
I wonder if they might have had this thought,
well, yeah, we slipped up,
but it's not going to happen again.
Or it might happen again,
but it's not going to happen all the time.
Maybe it'll be kind of more of an occasional dealing
that we have to face.
But I think they probably woke up very quickly the next day
and recognized a very different setting.
Arguments began, selfishness creeped in,
anger and pride.
It affected their thoughts and their actions
and their speech.
And they realized, oh wait,
sin has affected everything
and there's no escaping it.
And we see how quickly sin grows and expands
that even in this first chapter
that records man's life outside of Eden,
we're faced with murder.
We only have to go two more chapters in Genesis
where it says this about God's people,
that the Lord saw how great the wickedness
of the human race had become on earth
and every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart
was only evil all the time.
And we think, wow,
that escalated quickly, right?
I mean, we look though
at the Westminster Confession of Faith
and it gives a similar description of human condition.
We are utterly indisposed,
disabled and made opposite to all good
and wholly inclined to all evil.
And so that's what I want us to think about today,
to think about sin
and its seriousness and its pervasiveness.
And specifically in this passage,
I want us to think about the progression of sin
that we see here
from conception to confrontation to completion.
And so those will be the three points
of this sermon today.
Sin conceived,
sin confronted,
and sin completed.
So let's consider that first point of sin conceived.
Now we're introduced to Abel,
Cain and Abel right off the start.
Abel, he keeps flocks.
Cain, he works the soil
and they both bring these offerings to God.
Cain brings the fruit of the soil.
Abel brings the firstborn of his flock
and these fat portions.
And I think it's worth noting right off the bat
that there's this sameness here.
They're brothers.
They're both in this act of worship.
And on the surface,
it doesn't appear like there's much different.
I remember from my childhood,
you see these images of Cain and Abel.
And Abel is kind of this innocent boyish figure.
And you see Cain like this big menacing dark figure.
I don't think that's what we see right off the bat here.
They're both engaged in this act of worship.
And so why is it then that God looks at favor,
looks at Abel's offering with favor,
but not Cain's.
And I think we get our first clue
by just looking at the offering itself.
And I don't think it's simply because Cain
didn't bring an animal as Abel did.
Remember, this is before the Mosaic law
where there's instructions about different kinds of offering
and different kinds of sacrifices.
We know that Cain was a farmer.
He grew crops.
This is what he brought to the Lord.
But the thing is,
what we see here is a missing key word in the Hebrew.
It says that he brought fruit,
but it doesn't say that he brought his first fruits.
The first fruits are the yield,
the first yield of your harvest.
And they're supposed to recognize,
it's a recognition that all creation belongs to God.
And so we get a sense here of Cain's stinginess perhaps,
that he's holding back his first,
he's holding back his best.
He's making offering to God,
but he's wanting to make sure that he has enough for himself.
We get a second clue about this offering
and God's pleasure with Abel.
We see when we go to the New Testament,
to the book of Hebrews chapter 11,
says this in verse four,
by faith, Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did.
By faith, he was commended as righteous
when God spoke well of his offering.
And so we see here,
it's not simply about the gift that's brought,
but it's the heart of the giver.
Abel brought his offering out of faith.
You may say, well, faith in what?
Like they literally just got kicked out of the garden.
Well, remember, when God kicked them out,
he gave them this promise
that through the seed of a woman,
a rescuer would come to crush the head of that serpent.
A rescuer is going to come.
Abel didn't know when it was gonna happen,
how it was gonna happen,
but he exhibits faith.
On the other hand, we see Cain's offering.
He doesn't give this offering
in response to this promise of salvation.
In fact, his offering exhibits a lack of faith,
a lack of trust.
He's holding back his best.
And so isn't this how sin often begins in our lives
with this little lack of faith?
And perhaps it's small,
and perhaps it's unnoticeable at first,
but implicitly, we start to doubt God's goodness.
Can he be trusted?
Is his way best?
And we stop resting on him,
and we start thinking that our way is better.
This is what's described in the book of James
in the New Testament
when it talks about how sin begins.
It says each person is tempted
when they are dragged away
by their own evil desires and enticed.
Dragged away from the will of God.
And then after this desire has conceived,
it gives birth to sin.
And so we see here,
Cain, it's not like he's refusing outright
to worship God or to give an offering.
It's not that he denies
or doesn't believe God exists.
We see him interacting
and communicating with God in this passage.
He's involved in this religious activity,
but it's not done with a pure heart.
And so I wonder if we often do the same thing.
We come to church,
we're involved in a community group,
we serve on the welcome team,
but where is our heart?
We believe that God exists,
but do we truly long to be in relationship with him?
Or are we simply here out of a sense of duty,
just going through the motions?
Do we recognize our deep need for him?
Or do we think that religion
is just kind of one of those things
we add to our life's portfolio?
The reality is,
is that God sees the condition of our heart.
And he doesn't desire for us
just to go through the motions of worship.
Listen to God what says
through the prophet Hosea,
he says,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgement of God
rather than burnt offerings.
Have you ever considered
why a lot of church doors are painted red?
It's done with a purpose.
It symbolizes that we enter into the presence of God
through the blood of Jesus.
We don't come to worship
based on the fruit of our own labor.
We're not trying to come here
to prove ourselves to God.
We come into his presence.
We come to worship as his people,
to experience the means of grace,
confident that he will forgive our sins
and redeem us through the work of Jesus.
And so for anyone here
who has sinned grievously this week,
anyone here who has forgotten God's goodness,
anyone who has relied on your own strength,
God welcomes you here.
And we're glad that you are.
Because we're invited to come in faith
recognizing that God freely gives grace to us.
The old hymn says,
nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to the cross I cling.
And that takes us to our second point.
Sin confronted.
Now some of you know that
before coming to Scotland,
I practiced law in the States.
And law school is a little bit different.
It's set up here.
We actually were talking about this
in our community group last week,
that the teaching is a bit different.
It's not just you sitting in class
and are lectured.
It's a form of what's called the Socratic method.
It's this dialogue of the professor asking questions
and the student answering those questions.
And so when you go to class,
the professor would likely call on one person.
You'd have to stand up that student.
And then the professor may pepper them,
all class,
just that one student with questions
about the reading,
about the case law that they should know.
And so maybe he picks on a few people.
But the point is,
he's asked these questions
not because he doesn't know the answer,
but he's trying to draw out understanding
to cause the student to think critically
to come up with the right answers.
And so I think we see something similar here.
God comes to Cain and he asks,
why are you angry?
Why is your face downcast?
And God's not asking these questions
because he doesn't know the answer.
It's not that God is lacking information here.
Instead, he's asking these questions
in order to bring Cain
to this point of self-reflection
and understanding
that he may recognize his own sin.
And so I think it's worth noting here first
that we see the tenderness of God.
So often people outside the church,
they want to look at the Christian God
and think he's this judgmental God
who's looking up,
just waiting for us to fail
so he can drop the hammer on us.
That's not the picture we get here.
We get a picture of God's patience
and forbearance.
Cain is already in sin.
He's demonstrated this lack of faith.
He's been jealous toward his brother,
but God doesn't seek to immediately punish him.
He seeks to bring about restoration.
And he does so by this very ominous warning
that sin is crouching at your door.
There's another old English version
translated this way.
I like it.
It says sin is lurking at your threshold.
This crouching verb in the Hebrew,
it describes the way that a predator
would leap upon its prey.
It's this readiness to spring.
It's a language that's echoed
in 1 Peter 5 where Peter says,
your enemy, the devil, prowls around
like a roaring lion,
seeking whom he may devour.
And so we've all seen those animal documentaries, right,
where you have a lion
who's hunting down its prey slowly
and stealthily moving through the bush,
sneaking up on this unassuming prey.
And it's only to the last minute
that this animal takes notice,
but it's too late.
And the tiger or the lion has pounced
and overpowered its prey.
And so do we really view sin this way,
that it's crouching at your door?
This is the phrase that kept coming up
in my study over and over again.
It really was haunting me this week
because I realized how often
I personally fail to acknowledge
the opportunity for sin
in every aspect of my life.
Sin is always ready to attack.
In your interactions with your family,
every time you pick up your phone,
every time your mind wanders,
every time you sit at your desk at work,
every interaction you have
with coworkers and classmates,
every time you're by yourself at home,
sin is ready to pounce.
And so how are we encouraged to respond?
The New Testament has descriptive words
throughout that says,
how do we confront our sin?
It says we resist,
we fight,
we flee,
we struggle,
we put to death.
We cannot address our sin passively.
We are engaged in this spiritual combat
empowered by the Holy Spirit.
And so we do this
because of the second part of God's warning
that we see in our passage.
It's so important because it says
that sin desires to have you.
When a lion attacks an antelope,
it's not simply looking to tear off one leg
and then let it hop away with three.
It wants to kill the animal.
It wants to consume it whole.
Likewise, sin is not looking to affect
just part of us.
It doesn't want to attack
and then retreat.
There's no truce
in our battle against sin.
It wants to fully overpower us.
And so it's not content
to allow you to just have a few arguments
with your spouse.
It wants to destroy your marriage.
It's not content to just interfere
with some of your thought life.
It wants to ruin it
with lust and anger and pride.
Sin doesn't want to steal
just a few minutes of your day.
It wants to make you destroy
your productivity
through idle scrolling,
through being distracted
from anything other
than Christ and his kingdom.
And so what we see in this story, though,
is that destruction,
it doesn't come all at once.
It's not like Cain woke up one day
and just decided,
I'm going to go murder my brother.
We see that sin
has this gradual effect.
So think about maybe
how it played out in Cain's life.
He's farming after the fall.
He has no heavy equipment.
He probably has little help.
It's hard to even bring
enough produce to survive.
And so maybe he's a little disgruntled
even from the beginning
that God has put him
in this situation.
And so he brings some of his fruit,
his produce to offer to God,
but it's not his best.
He needs to make sure
he has enough for himself to eat.
And God's not pleased with this,
so he's a little upset
that all this hard work
is going overlooked by God.
And he begins jealous
because God is pleased
with his brother.
And so maybe he exchanges
some words with his brother Abel
over time,
begins to get angry
rather than just jealous,
and that anger finally turns to hatred,
and this hatred then
proceeds to murder.
It's really a wonderful book
that creatively illustrates
the tactics of the devil.
It's the Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis.
And in there we have
this senior demon Screwtape
who's writing these letters
to his nephew demon,
and he's explaining
how to effectively tempt the human
that he's responsible for.
And he makes a point
to say that it's not
through dramatic evil events
that you tempt someone,
but through quiet,
gradual manipulation.
He says this,
he says,
the safest road to hell
is the gradual one.
The gentle slope,
soft underfoot,
without sudden turns,
without milestones,
and without signposts.
And so throughout the book,
Screwtape is repeatedly encouraging
that you make these sinful habits
feel normal and harmless.
And so the goal
is not dramatic rebellion,
it's spiritual numbness
that ultimately destroys
the whole person.
And so this is the process
that works in each one
of our lives.
It's subtle,
it's quiet,
and so therefore,
often we let our guards down.
How often do we address
sin in our lives?
Oftentimes,
we want to justify it.
We want to validate
our actions based
on our circumstances.
Why cheated on the exam?
Because everyone else
was cheating on the exam.
I didn't want to be
at a disadvantage.
I was holding a grudge
because you don't know
what that person did to me
and they're not even sorry for it.
I spoke angry to my kids
because they just won't listen to me
and they're disobedient all the time.
I was rude to my spouse
because my spouse was rude to me.
I was ruthless at work
because that's the only way
that I'm ever going to get a promotion.
Similarly,
in addition to justifying,
oftentimes we try to minimize
our faith, right?
Think it's not really
that big of a deal.
Well, it was just
a bit of lust.
It's not like I cheated
on my spouse.
It was just a bit of gossip.
I don't do it all the time.
I may work more than I should,
but look at that other guy.
He's with his family
far less than I am.
I think worst of all,
we often try to hide our sin.
We know that it's wrong.
We know that it's destroying us,
but we try to conceal it.
We try to make and deal with it
on our own.
We don't want to ruin our reputation.
We don't want to have to ask for help
or accountability,
and so we wallow in the sense
of guilt and shame.
And when we do that,
that often spirals into a cycle
of more sin and more shame,
and we get to the point of thinking,
God would never forgive me
for what I've done.
But look again about how God
responds to Cain here.
He gently warns him.
He urges him to acknowledge his sin,
that he's been minimizing
and justifying and concealing.
And we need to recognize
that even today,
God continues to work
in the lives of his people
in this way.
Through his spirit,
he confronts,
and he convicts,
and he encourages us.
And so do we recognize
that this is God's mercy toward us,
that we feel guilty for our sins.
Not that it leads to self-loathing,
but that it leads to repentance,
so that we can be enabled,
as God encourages Cain here,
to rule over our sin
rather than it rule over us.
Every Sunday here
in our worship together,
we try to incorporate
a prayer of confession.
It's a way of acknowledging corporately
that we fall short of God's glory.
And hopefully,
this is a personal practice
for each one of us,
that we're willing and ready
to confess our known sins,
but also to ask God
to convict us of hidden sins
that we either ignore
or overlook in our lives.
That we can pray
like the psalmist prays
in Psalm 139,
Search me, O God,
and know my heart,
know my thoughts,
see if there is any wicked way in me.
And so may we let
God's kind confrontation
lead us to repentance,
that we may be vigilant
in our fight against sin.
And that brings us then
to our final point,
sin completed.
You ever had the opportunity
to tell someone,
I told you so?
Or maybe someone said that
to you before?
I feel like this is
a daily occurrence
in the lives of parents
when they see their kids
fighting or doing
something questionable.
Someone's going to get hurt,
there's going to be tears.
Then within minutes,
there are tears
and someone's upset.
And it says,
I told you so.
I warned you.
We see that with the same thing here.
Cain was warned.
He didn't listen.
It says,
I told you so moment for God.
We could have predicted
something bad was going to happen.
It says in verse 6,
Now Cain said to his brother Abel,
let's go out to the field
and while they were in the field,
Cain attacked his brother Abel
and killed him.
And again,
God comes to Cain
the same way that he came
to Adam and Eve
after they sinned
and he asked them,
where's your brother?
But instead of confessing his sin
like Adam and Eve did,
he tries to deny it.
He tries to cover it up.
Am I my brother's keeper?
And so we see this cycle
of unrepentant sin
leads to unrepentant sin
which leads to unrepentant sin.
And so God punishes Cain.
No longer will he be able
to grow crops.
He will be a restless wanderer
in perpetual exile.
And sadly,
even now,
we don't see Cain
with repentant heart.
We don't see any sign of remorse.
He's simply bemoaning
the punishment.
He's full of self-pity,
full of resentment.
He thinks this punishment
is more than he can bear.
In his mind,
being cast out of God's presence,
being taken away from land,
it's a death sentence to him.
But even in the midst
of Cain's ongoing rebellion,
we see really something
incredible here.
And it's God's mercy
accompanies his justice.
And he places a mark
on Cain so that no one
who found him
would kill him.
We need to recognize
that God would have been
fully within his right
to strike Cain down.
In fact,
in the Mosaic Law
that comes later,
it prescribes
this death penalty
for someone
who intentionally
murders somebody else.
But yet,
God chooses
to show mercy.
The late theologian,
Meredith Klein,
he notes in his commentary
on this passage,
he says,
God's concern
for the innocent
is matched only
by his care
for the sinner.
And so if God cares
for an unrepentant
murderer like Cain,
how much more
does he care
for you and me
who come to him
in faith and repentance?
We've spoken
these last few weeks
about how Jesus
serves as a second Adam.
Adam wasn't able
to perfectly fulfill
the law,
but Jesus came
in perfect obedience
and did what Adam couldn't.
But we see
in this passage
that Jesus also came
as a second Abel.
Because just as
this shepherd Abel,
his blood was shed
by his hypocrite brother
who is offering,
who is giving
these offerings to God
in false worship,
we too see
our good shepherd,
Jesus.
His blood was shed
on the cross
by Jewish religious leaders
who Jesus personally
called hypocrites,
who said they were
clean on the outside
but full of greed
and indulgence
on the inside,
whose jealousy
led to hatred
and hatred
to murder.
And so while
Abel's blood
cries out
for justice,
we see something
different
in the blood
of Jesus.
In Hebrews 12,
24 it says this,
it says,
we come to Jesus
the mediator
of a new covenant
and to the sprinkled
blood that speaks
a better word
than the blood
of Abel.
Abel's blood
speaks of judgment.
Jesus' blood
speaks of grace.
And so this should
be an incredible
word of encouragement
and hope
and comfort to us
because this is
the real world
in which we live,
that there's not
an inch of creation
that hasn't been
affected by the curse
of sin,
but we have a loving God
who fulfilled
his promise
to send a rescuer
through the seed
of woman
to be the perfect
sacrifice,
to redeem us
from our sins,
to restore us
into perfect relationship
with God.
And so if you're here today
and you've never
placed your trust
in Christ,
the invitation
is for you
to come forward
in simple faith
just like Abel did
because you're not
too far
from God's mercy.
You don't have to
get your life
in order
and straighten
your ways up
to think that God
will accept you.
Come in your sin,
come in your shame
and heed God's warning
that judgment
is coming for those
who do not repent
but his mercy
is extended
to those who put
their faith in Christ.
For those of us
who are in Christ,
maybe we remember
just how formidable
of an enemy
we face.
That sin
is ever crouching
at your door.
And so may we be
ever vigilant,
not trying to justify
or conceal our sin
but being welcome
to welcome
God's gentle confrontation
that we may be
trusting in him
that he's ready
to forgive
and ready to restore.
Amen.