“The Fallout, pt.1” (Genesis 4:1-16) | 4/19/20
Genesis 4:1-16 | 4/19/20 | Will DuVal
I want to begin this morning with a story: Imagine this scene with me: a bat somewhere in rural, southern China takes flight for a typical late-night feeding. But as it descends on the unsuspecting bugs below, it’s met by another predator, a Chinese pangolin. In the skirmish for the bugs, the bat bites the pangolin. The next morning, a villager stumbles upon the pangolin, and realizing how rare and valuable they are, he captures it, but not before the PANGOLIN, in self-defense, bites the man. The villager doesn’t think anything of it, and throws the animal on his truck headed for the big city of Wuhan. He heads for the Huanan Food Market, where he illegally sells the pangolin to an eager buyer. He thanks the customer and shakes her hand, and without realizing it, he has given the woman far more than an illegal, endangered animal. This is patient zero, the first human-to-human transmission of COVID-19, aka, the novel coronavirus. The villager hasn’t even experienced a single symptom yet, nor do the dozens of additional customers he will infect throughout the course of that day. Nor, initially, do the hundreds of people that those customers then infect over the days that follow. Indeed, by the time patient zero develops a nagging cough, which then devolves into a serious respiratory problem, that eventually takes his life weeks later, THOUSANDS of people have now been unknowingly infected with the disease.
Now, if that story sends a shiver up your spine, settle in this morning, because if I’m honest with you up front, it’s only going to get scarier. Because as I pointed out last week, the coronavirus isn’t the biggest danger threatening the human race right now; not even CLOSE. No, there is another disease running rampant out there, far more widespread and FAR more deadly. That pandemic is in fact the CAUSE of every other ailment in the world, coronavirus included, and viruses serve as a fitting analogy for this sickness. Like a virus, it is invisible to the naked eye. So small it HARDLY seems capable of inflicting much harm, CERTAINLY not DEATH. But like a virus, this condition GROWS with time, seeking to completely take over and ravage its host. Finally, like a virus, it isn’t content to merely destroy the life of its CURRENT host; inherent in the very nature of this disease is the need to SPREAD. If this plague has its way, it wouldn’t stop until it has infected and eradicated all of humanity.
I’m talking about SIN. As we saw last week, sin is the Bible’s answer to the question: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not suffering, not some impersonal version of “evil”, not human ignorance, not a cruel, vengeful God nor a passive, uncaring one; no, the Bible’s answer is clear: the problem with our world is human SIN. The easiest way of understanding sin is to define it simply as “rejecting God”. God says, “Don’t eat the fruit from that tree,” and you do it anyway. Seems insignificant. But as we will see today, Adam and Eve’s SIN from Genesis chapter 3, their rejection of God, begins to GROW over time. And not just in their OWN hearts; this morning we’ll see how their sin then SPREADS and starts to overtake all of humankind.
If the story of their original sin in the Garden of Eden from Genesis 3 is commonly referred to as “The Fall”, humanity’s fall from grace, the rupturing of the God-man relationship, then Genesis chapters 4 through 6 can be thought of as the Fall-OUT. The consequence, of that fall from grace. The aftermath. The domino effect that ensues. And we’re going to see the fallout of sin unfold in three stages, personified by three different characters in these three chapters, as sin progressively multiplies, spreads, and worsens - first in Cain’s heart, then in Lamech’s, and finally in the Nephilim, in chapter 6. But for sake of time, I’m gonna spread this message out over 2 sermons and discuss Lamech and the Nephilim next week, and focus this morning exclusively on chapter 4, vv1-16, and the story of Cain and Abel.
So if you have your Bibles at home and want to turn there with me now - If you DON’T have a Bible, we’d love to send you one as our gift to you, just leave us your name and address on our website there and we’d love to connect with you.
SCRIPTURE: Genesis 4:1-16
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 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, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 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.”
8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 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.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.[e] 14 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.” 15 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. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
If I gave you 20 attributes [back to title slide] of GOD in my sermon a few weeks back from Genesis ch.1, this morning I want to give you 17 attributes of SIN I see arising out of the text here in ch.4 alone. Ready? Let’s go!
#1 - Sin spreads GENETICALLY. In Christianity, we call this doctrine “original sin”. The idea is that we’re not just sinners because we sin; we sin because we’re SINNERS. And we hear right off the bat in...
V1: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain...”
And we know, biblically, that in the very ACT of “knowing” his wife, that’s a Hebrew euphemism for sexual intimacy, that in so doing, Adam and Even have now passed on NOT ONLY their unique made-in-the-image-of-Godness, but so too they have passed on their sin NATURES, which MAR and DISTORT that once-perfect image.
Scripture is clear:
Romans 5:12-19 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… [D]eath reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come… [O]ne trespass led to condemnation for all men... [B]y the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners”.
Similarly, King David confesses the truism in Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
This is why, by the way, God will later institute CIRCUMCISION as the sign of His covenant, with Abraham and his offspring, as a perpetual reminder of man’s GENETIC sinfulness. It’s gotten all the way down in our very DNA. The biologically determinative, informational material that we pass on sexually that makes us human, is now MARRED by the effects of sin.
#2 - Sin is REBELLION. We need to camp out here the longest, because this gets us to the very HEART of sin; its definition; what it IS. But we read in...
Vv2-5: “And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 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, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard [use this excerpt ONLY on title slide].”
Why not? Well, I agree with many other commentators who suggest we have to read between the lines of the text here to piece this together.
*I think we have to ASSUME that God has made clear by this point to Cain & Abel how He wants to be worshipped. What kind of offering God views as acceptable. And I think it’s at least POSSIBLE, if not PROBABLE, that God even made that clear to Adam & Eve all the way back in chapter 3 before they even left the Garden of Eden; remember how that story ended last week: with God making the first ever substitutionary atoning sacrifice on their behalf and for their sake: after Adam & Eve sinned and ate the fruit, what does God do before he kicks them out of Paradise? “the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” (3:21) God had warned that sin causes death, but in order to spare their lives, he provides animals to die in their place, and then symbolically covers them - kaphar, “he atones, he covers” them in the hide, as a reminder of the death they deserved but were RESCUED from. Now admittedly, it’s a bit speculative to conclude that this necessarily then became the paradigm that God instituted for all offerings going forward thereafter, but what we CAN say definitively, is that God does not arbitrarily play favorites, so there is some reason, rooted in the expectations he must have given them, that God regards Abel’s offering but not Cain’s.
And we get Additional Hints of this in 3 NT Texts, where Cain shows back up:
*Heb 11:4 “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. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”
-Faith simply means “trusting God”. As we’ve seen time and time again, faith is a matter of the HEART. So at the end of the day, whether God demanded an animal sacrifice and Cain disobeyed and brought crops, or whether God demanded a FIRST-fruits offering (some commentators point out that Abel brought the “fat portion of the firstborn of the flock”, the best of the best, while the text is conspicuously silent about whether Cain offered his FIRST-fruits, his very BEST). All we know for certain is that Abel trusted and therefore obeyed God, whereas Cain, like his parents a chapter earlier, decided he wanted relationship with God on his OWN terms. We gather as much from...
*Jude 11, as well: “Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. ” - Jude associates false teachers here with the sin of Cain. And what IS his sin? We get clues in the other 2 examples Jude lists for us:
-“Balaam’s error” (Numbers 22-24): sought to profit off of cursing what God had chosen, namely, the people of Israel. So Balaam viewed God as a means to his OWN end.
-Likewise, Korah: Number 16 - who rose up and defied Moses’ leadership in the wilderness, essentially saying, “Why should HE be our leader? I’m as qualified as Moses is”. So Korah too rejected God’s ways, and God’s appointed leader, in favor of calling the shots himself.
And that’s really the core issue here, and the heart of sin. God, as we noted all throughout our study of Genesis 1 and His 20 attributes we outlined there, God is the Sovereign Creator and King of the universe, from whom and FOR whom everything exists. God is worthy of all glory and praise; we were created to OFFER it to Him. Sin is deciding that instead, I’d like to be a god UNTO MYSELF, thank you very much. I want to be the glory-GETTER, instead of the glory-giver. To be in charge and call the shots. Rejecting God’s ways in favor of your own. And we see that in the third and final NT passage as well:
*1 Jn 3:12 - “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.”
Now that’s really interesting, isn’t it. We think of the “sin of Cain” as his murder of Abel. Cain was the first murderer in history. And murder is the worst sin, right? But Jesus said in Matthew 5 that if you harbor anger in your heart against a brother, you’ve as good as committed murder already. And instead of identifying murder as Cain’s sin, his root sin, 1 Jn 3:12 tells us that Cain’s decision to murder Abel was actually just symptomatic of a deeper problem: “why did Cain murder him? Because he was evil”. His REAL problem lay much deeper; it was a heart problem. Sin is ALWAYS a HEART problem, friends. And in Cain’s case, long before the murder, his inherent sinfulness was already manifest in his unacceptable offering in God’s sight in v5. He rejects God as King.
1 John 3:4 “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.”
Matthew 7:23 “then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
See, It’s not enough to be religious, friends. Cain was religious. The Pharisees, Jesus’ worst enemies, were VERY religious. But God demands to be worshipped on HIS terms. Sin says, “My law; not yours; I am king, not YOU, God.”
Now from attribute #2, it’s all downhill from here. The domino effect has now been set in motion.
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#3 - The confrontation of sin provokes INSECURITY and INSOLENCE.
We observed a few weeks back in our “Tough Texts” series, with the sermon on Jephthah, the painfully true adage that “Hurt people hurt people”. We find it true AGAIN this morning with Cain…
V5: “for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.[use above]”
That’s an interesting response, isn’t it? Cain doesn’t get SAD. He doesn’t get FEARFUL, that the almighty God has just rejected his offering; he gets MAD. “How DARE God not accept my offering?! I didn’t have to bring him a share of my crop.” But how many of US, today, when we are confronted even in the most loving of ways with the reality of our own sin, are so quick to respond with our own insecurity, by taking offense. We become INSOLENT - contemptuously insulting. We lash BACK out. We love Jesus’ warning “do not judge, lest ye be judged”, don’t we? So we rip it totally out of context, to make sure that we’re ready to pounce on anyone who confronts us and judge them in return ourselves. We start making our OWN lists of critiques for rebuttal, so we can point out the plank in their eye. Because the truth of our sin is too painful to bear. So we want to turn the tables, flip the mirror. Even, in Cain’s case, on GOD - “God, can’t you see you’re being totally unfair?”
#4 - Sin (then) becomes BLINDING.
In vv6-7: God replies to Cain’s insolence: “The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?”
God says, “Cain: can’t you SEE?! There’s a really easy solution here: repent, and follow my commands.”
But Cain has been blinded to the beauty and the simplicity and the MERCY of God’s solution. The blinding effects of sin have already begun a hardening of Cain’s heart that he will NEVER recover from.
In 2 Cor 4:4 we hear “the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” It’s not just that unbelievers DON’T see their sin, DON’T see their need for a Savior, DON’T see God’s gracious provision of one in Christ, that they DON’T see the beauty and simple truth of the gospel - God’s offer of forgiveness and salvation and ETERNAL LIFE, and all they have to do is simply turn from their sin to follow Him instead; it’s that they CANNOT see it. They have been BLINDED. By their own sin. So sin breeds more sin.
#5 - Sin wants to RULE you.
V7: “if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to[c] you, but you must rule over it.””
Scripture:
Peter picks up on this metaphor in the NT, where he exhorts us to: “be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8) The presence of sin, and its SOURCE, Satan, in your life, is like having a hungry, 400 pound lion curled up on your doorstep, just waiting for the door to open EVER so slightly so he can get his paw in the door jam, and the rest will be history. Because guess what, you may THINK you’ve got your sin problem under control. You may THINK you’ve got it “tamed”; but you are a LOUSY Tiger King. Your sin is not a cuddly kitten; it wants to rip you limb from limb. That why Ephesians 4:27 says don’t even give Satan a foothold, an inch; cuz he’ll take a MILE.
Paul puts it this way in Romans 7 (vv21-23): “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” Remember, sin is a virus; and unlike much of what passes for Christianity in the 21st c. American church, sin isn’t just looking for a comfortable place to fit in and pass the time; sin wants to SPREAD; it NEEDS to spread, its very survival demands that it grow and multiply. So its desire is going to be contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Notice, that’s the same phrase used to describe sin’s curse on the husband-wife relationship back in ch.3 (v16) - God told Eve her desire “shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”” In the same way that husbands and wives are now doomed, BECAUSE of our sin, to be at odds with one another, to experience conflict in the marital relationship - can I get an AMEN from anyone else in quarantine?! Cooped up under the same roof for over a month, and now the governor says for at least another month; Mike Parsons must not be married. There are things deadlier things than coronavirus; just ask my wife after she’s been stuck with me for a month straight. But in much the same way, God’s curse on Adam & Eve, and now Cain, and on ALL of us, is to be perpetually locked in this Romans 7 battle between wanting to do GOOD, but finding another law waging WAR within us, to tempt us back towards sin; even though Jesus has set us free! Call it Stockholm syndrome, but we still wanna crawl back in our prison cells.
#6 - Sin leads to JEALOUSY and SELF-JUSTIFYING.
V8: “Cain spoke to Abel his brother.”
Here’s the next domino to go, in the fallout: Insecurity and insolence leads to a blinding and a hardening of our hearts, because sin wants to rule us, which drives us to turn from the vertical relationship - remember, the root problem here is with GOD; David says in Psalm 51:4 “Against you ONLY have I sinned, O Lord” - but because the weight of our sin in comparison to GOD’S holiness is too much to bear, we turn horizontally instead, to either JEALOUSY and covetousness (“I want what SHE has”), or self-justifying (“at least I’m not as bad as HIM!”). Cain realizes he isn’t winning the argument with God, so he goes and takes up his beef with ABEL instead, in v8. And we do the same thing, we either want to self-justify by RELATIVIZING our own sin - as long as I can find examples of other people around me who are WORSE than I am, I must be alright with God, OR in a jealous rage, like Cain, this leads us to attribute #7 - we’re forced to overlook, or worse, DESTROY anyone that threatens our self-justifying ways to feel marginally less bad about our sin. Because…
#7 - Sin hates RIGHTEOUSNESS.
V8: “when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” Why? Remember 1 John 3:12 already answered it for us verbatim: “why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.”
Jesus says in John 3:19-20 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
It’s not enough to say that sin IS lawlessness; we must also recognize that sin hates that which is lawful, that which stands opposed to sin. Because it threatens sin, just like light is a threat to darkness. They can’t coexist. And that hatred leads directly to attribute #8...
#8 - HIDING! Sin necessitates HIDING.
V9: “Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?””
Obviously God is omniscient and isn’t seeking information here; he is giving Cain an opportunity for confession. For repentance. But the fact that Cain responds “How should I know?” implies that after Cain slaughtered Abel, he sought to cover it up. To hide. He waited to murder him til they were out in the field, so he could hide the body and then run home. Hide from God. And isn’t that one of the saddest parts of all this: what did Adam and Eve do after THEY messed up? They made fig leaves and tried to hide from God. This is generational sin, unfolding before our eyes, in the very first and second generations of HUMANITY. In Numbers 14:18, God warns that He, “visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation”. This is exactly how he does it: he gives us over to our hard-heartedness, and then “hurt people hurt people”. Hurt parents hurt their kids. Maybe Adam and Eve never WARNED Cain that you can’t hide from God, because that part of their lives was too painful to go there. How many of us never got the sex talk, because that area of our own parents’ lives was so broken they couldn’t bear to “go there”. My wife has 4 generations of alcoholism running through her bloodline, going back to the founder of Anheuser Busch himself. Generational sin. But it’s a RESULT of trying to HIDE from our sin, and run from it, rather than face and confront and repent of it, to be in a position to help steer future generations away from the pitfalls. To leave our kids a little less screwed up than we are: that’s the goal of parenting. Can’t do it if you’re hiding.
#9 - HIDING from Sin then requires us to LIE, to cover up. [Sin requires LYING]
V9: “Cain said, “I do not know” where my brother is.
And anyone who’s ever watched a sitcom knows where this is headed. Probably the most common sitcom trope, right? One little white lie: “Tell her that’s YOUR Porsche, to win the girl”; then he spends the rest of the episode lying to cover up for THAT lie, and it builds and builds and builds. But in the real world, there are no laugh tracks in the background. The lying and the hiding and the guilt and the shame that are piling on - they’re no so funny in the real world, are they?
#10 - Sin drives ISOLATION.
V9: “am I my brother's keeper?”
Sin not only causes a rift, MOST importantly, in our relationship with GOD, but our horizontal relationships as well. God designed us - Genesis 1 - for relationship, and moreover - the depiction we get in Genesis TWO of Adam & Eve, is “suitable helpers”. We are made to HELP each other, not JUST husbands and wives. So the presumptive ANSWER to Cain’s question here is: “Well… YES!” I gave you spouses and siblings and friends and loved ones because you ARE supposed to take care of one another. But sin isolates us from others, in our hiding and shame. SO much so, that...
#11 - Sin ultimately becomes INESCAPABLE. It becomes ALL-CONSUMING. It STAINS everything.
V10: “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.”
You can’t avoid it. Cain - you can try and lie and hide all you want, but your sin will ALWAYS find you. Catch up to you. And when it DOES, you’ll realize that...
#12 - Sin has FAR-REACHING consequences. Unintended, unanticipated consequences.
Vv11-12: “now you are cursed from the ground, [end with “...”] which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. 12 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 could have NEVER suspected that killing his brother would have led directly to his inability to successfully grow crops ever again (he loses his livelihood as a result), much less that he would be cursed to wander the earth for the rest of his life (he loses not just his livelihood, but his chance at a LIFE. At a family. A home.
And notice again, like Adam & Eve’s curse in ch.3, the INVERSION here, the distortion of God’s 3 life-giving commands from Genesis 1 & 2; remember, God had called them to:
produce life (be fruitful and multiply; Cain: no family man; might have kids, but he’s no father, as we’ll see next week)
Promote life (take care of the earth; Cain: nothing will grow)
Preserve life (God’s original design was NO DEATH; Cain has become the first murderer, and now, he fears “they will kill me!” Sin breeds sin.)
#13 - Sin DEFIES punishment. In a desperate attempt at self-preservation, sin demands a characterization of any and all punishment to be “UNFAIR”.
V13: “Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.”
No one hates the idea of Hell more than unrepentant sinners. A true Christian doesn’t agonize over the doctrine of Hell, we lose sleep over the people we know who are HEADED there, but not over the IDEA of a “supposedly loving God who could send people…” - No. Because we know EXACTLY how fair Hell really IS, how much we ALL deserve, and but for the grace of God I’d be there already!
#14 - Sin breeds SHAME and FEAR.
V14: “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.””
Interesting: Cain ADDS two details here, that God didn’t include in Cain’s actual curse: God never SAID “from your face I shall be hidden” OR, “whoever finds you will KILL you”. Those are PERFECT descriptions, aren’t they, of SHAME - “from your face I shall be hidden” - and FEAR - “whoever finds you will KILL you”. And that’s the end result of our sin. So overwhelmed with guilt that we can’t even bear the THOUGHT of standing before God’s face. Of attending church. Some of you may be watching this at home online for the first time and you haven’t darkened the doorstep of a church in YEARS, and the reason, if you’re really honest with yourself, is that you’re CONVINCED that God hates you. You’re too ashamed to be here. Can I just assure you, I can’t speak for any other churches from your past that may have left you with that impression, that you’re not good enough to be a part their church, can I just speak on behalf of West Hills and say, “We’d LOVE to have you here.” West Hills isn’t a museum for good people; we’re a hospital for the BROKEN. Jesus said, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick”; West Hills is a church filled with 100% of folks who have tested positive for the virus of sin. We’ve just by God’s grace found a cure. His name is Jesus, and we’d love to share Him with you as well. Because OTHERWISE...
#15 - Sin causes SEPARATION from God.
V16: “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.”
Just like Adam and Eve were sent out of the Garden in ch.3, generational sin, Cain is sent away from the presence of the Lord here in v16. And friends, if you HAVE been keeping your distance from God, because of your sin and shame and guilt and hiding, then you are right about one thing - that sin really has separated you from a holy, perfect God. But it need not be so… oh I’m DYING to get to attribute #17, but one more first...
#16 - Sin begets MORE SIN.
V17: “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch...”
If sin is like a virus, what we’re going to see next week as we walk through the genealogy of Cain’s line, is that within just a few generations, sin has gone totally VIRAL. Sin’s more popular than Tiger King, the coronavirus… I’m bad on pop culture, but it puts them all to shame. It is RAMPANT. But...
#17 - Sin is met by God’s JUSTICE and GRACE.
V15: “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. ”
God should have killed Cain on the spot, that’s certainly what he deserved - “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” but in spite of cursing him, and allowing him to bear the consequences of his sin, because of His JUSTICE, God simultaneously and graciously preserves Cain’s life.
And he wants to for you too, friends. And he’s made a way for it to be possible. For God to perfectly satisfy BOTH his JUSTICE, his righteous wrath against your sin, AND his GRACE, and MERCY, and LOVE - and those two seemingly paradoxical attributes of GOD, intersect and hang together in holy harmony on the cross of Jesus. God covered Adam & Eve with animal skins, an atoning sacrifice… he covers Cain with a mark… but he can cover YOU with the precious blood of CHRIST, His own Son and the only spotless lamb who can TRULY and ETERNALLY take away the sins of the world.
Will you receive Him today? Let’s pray...