The Sin of Cain

I. Introduction
A. We have embarked on a summer series thinking about great sins of the OT.
B. We talked about how the sins in the OT story are not just historical information. They are examples for us, that we might avoid the pitfalls which they fell into.
C. We come this morning to the second great sin of the OT, the sin of Cain, the first person ever born.
D. 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. 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, east of Eden.
E. There are actually four distinct sins which Cain commits. But, as constructive as it is to ponder Cain’s sins, it is also constructive to ponder God’s responses. So, this sermon has eight parts.
II. Cain’s offering
A. Cain’s sin in this story began with his offering.
B. Hebrews 11:4 tells us that Abel offered an acceptable offering by faith, implying that Cain did not.
C. 1John3:12 teaches the same thing: “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.”
a. “His own deeds were evil” refers to their sacrifices.
b. Cain’s sacrifice was evil, Abel’s was righteous.
2. He “was of the evil one” and his offering was evil.
D. Was it just the motivation of his heart? No. I think it was also the content of the offering.
1. Abel offered an animal, a being, something given the breath of life by God; Cain offered grain.
2. Substitutionary sacrifices in the OT, sacrifices which pictured salvation on account of a substitute, always involved an animal, never plant material.
E. You see, there are two kinds of offerings:
1. A response to God’s salvation
2. A means to God’s salvation
F. Abel’s animal sacrifice represented the sacrifice of a substitute on his behalf and pointed to Christ.
G. Cain’s grain offering represented his own work and the expectation of being accepted because of it.
III. God’s response to Cain’s offering
A. He rejected Cain’s offering. “The LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.”
B. God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.
C. God will not cooperate when men exalt themselves.
D. When people try to come to God on their own terms, they are seeking to use God, not honor Him.
E. And God will not be used.
F. This is part of what’s wrong with the whole notion that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe in something. When we try to come to God on our own terms, He turns a deaf ear to our cries, He doesn’t listen to their prayers or accept their offerings. (Read Proverbs 1:24–31.)
IV. Cain’s jealous anger
A. Because God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and rejected his, Cain became very angry, and downcast. The absurdity of this is shown in that Lord asked him why he was angry and downcast.
B. Why was he angry? “Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.” – 1John3:12
C. Is it not a strange thing to get angry at someone for something like this?
1. If something wonderful happened to you: winning the lottery, or being given some prestigious award, or given a lifetime supply of rhubarb, why would other people hate you because of it?
D. It makes sense to get angry if someone mistreats you, or mistreats someone else. But Abel did nothing wrong. Cain hated Him without cause.
E. Who am I to be angry at someone because God blessed them?
1. Who am I to be angry at God for blessing someone else?
F. But you can see this same sin in other stories in the Bible.
1. We have the envy of Joseph’s brothers, who were envious of their younger brother who received his father’s favor above them – just as Cain was envious of his younger brother who received God’s favor above him.
2. And we also see it in the case of Jesus. He did nothing wrong, but they hated Him without cause.
G. Why do non-Christians so despise Christians sometimes? There are many reasons.
1. It might be because of some bad experience they’ve had.
2. It might be because they hate Jesus so much.
3. Or it might be the sin of Cain. They might be envious of us, that God is on our side and not on theirs, that we possess a great treasure they don’t have.
a. After all, we’re told that the priests arrested Jesus and handed Him over to Pilate because of envy (Matt.27:18). Envy!
b. It’s not that they really disagreed with Him. It’s that He was favored by God & God’s people – and they weren’t. They wanted to tear Him down off His throne – just like Cain with Abel.
V. God’s response to Cain’s jealous anger is not what we would have expected.
A. Instead of rebuking Cain for his jealous anger, God pleads with him not to carry it farther.
B. “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.”
1. I don’t know why the ESV translates it this way. All the others say something like, “Sin’s desire is for you.” Like a hunter wants his prey, so sins wants you, Cain.
2. If you offer the right sacrifice, I will accept it. But if instead you continue down the path of rebellion, sin is going to eat you up.
C. Here we see the kindness of God. He doesn’t just wait for Cain to sin, He tries to help him not to sin. He intervenes tenderly, not harshly.
1. Not: “How dare you be angry!” but, “Why are you angry & downcast?”
2. And He doesn’t first emphasize outward conformity, He urges Cain to examine his heart and probe into his motivations.
D. Jesus said that the person who looks at a woman with lust has committed adultery in his heart and that the person who insults someone has committed murder (Matt.5:21-22, 27-28). But in the story of Cain, God shows us that there is also a difference between the seed of the sin and the action.
1. When the sin of the heart hasn’t yet resulted in action, as when Cain was angry but hadn’t yet murdered his brother, something can still be done. It is still possible to derail the train.
2. This also shows us that when we entertain sin in our hearts, it often grows into something more.
3. When God confronted Cain with these words, the sin process had already begun in his heart. But it hadn’t come to fruition.
4. Sin is never just there. It says, “I’m just over here minding my own business. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” But as soon as you turn your back on it, it pounces.
5. Sin just wants to be tolerated. But when we tolerate sin in our hearts, we are just asking for trouble. Sin is never content to take up a little space. Sin wants to take over our whole lives.
E. God says, ‘Cain, sin is crouching at the door. It wants to conquer you, but you must rule over it.’
1. This is language used of a predator like a lion or leopard when it spots its prey.
2. In a horror movie, you have one person going along oblivious, but from the camera angle you see that there’s something crouching at the door.
a. Or, there’s someone just going along oblivious, but they are being viewed through the lens of a rifle’s scope with cross hairs. He is oblivious to the fact that an enemy has him in their sights.
3. This is how Cain was. And this is how we are with our sin. Sin crouches. It hides. It is sneaky.
a. And it’s out to get you.“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” – 1Peter 5:8
b. Lions try to remain inconspicuous. They crouch, they tiptoe, they creep.
c. They want to be invisible to their prey, or they want their prey to think that it’s not really a problem or a threat: it’s just the sound of an insect or a harmless rabbit.
d. So our sin tries to disguise itself as something harmless: stinginess disguising itself as frugality, shopaholicism disguising itself as bargain-hunting, appearance-addiction disguised as concern about one’s health, ruthlessness disguised as capitalism.
e. If we don’t think sin is crouching at the door, we are most vulnerable to it.
f. We see it in others. We see it in our husband’s pride, or we see it in our wife’s vanity, or we see it in our children’s selfishness. We see it in our housemate’s laziness or in the criminal we read about in the news. But we see little of it in ourselves.
4. In our day, sin is crouching down more and more, getting out of the way, going unnoticed. It’s saying, “I’m not here.” But, like Cain, God calls us to be alert, to recognize what’s going on.
5. God wants us to be joyful, but He also wants us to be sober-minded and alert. He wants us to have a sober joy, and a glad alertness.
VI. Cain’s murdering
A. But all of God’s pleadings were to no avail. Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
B. We see in this that sin doesn’t just come by imitation. It is in us from the start.
1. Apparently Cain was the first human being ever born. He had never seen or heard about a murder, but he committed one nonetheless. Murder was in his heart.
C. Probably no one in this room will ever actually murder someone, but that doesn’t mean this is irrelevant to us. listen to...
D. 1John 3:11–12 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.
E. John isn’t saying, that Christians should be different from the rest of the world in that we shouldn’t go around murdering one another.
F. He is saying that we must allow the spirit of Cain to well up in our hearts toward one another.
G. And, trust me, after over 40 years in ministry, it’s very easy for that spirit of anger, rage, revenge, to crop up in the context of Christian people.
1. Sometimes that face of Bilbo appears on very devout Christians.
H. That’s why Paul, before the he lists the fruits of the Spirit in Gal.5, lists the fruits of the flesh, including “enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions.” (Galatians 5:20) and warns them, “If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” (Galatians 5:15)
I. You see, this is us. We get angry. And we lash out. There is a Cain living inside us.
1. And the reason for our anger isn’t necessarily any better than Cain’s.
J. This story helps us to see ourselves in the mirror. It shows us how we react to things sometimes.
1. There is a time for anger. The problem is that our anger isn’t restrained by appropriateness. We get angry when we shouldn’t be angry. We get angry for the wrong reasons.
K. And then you have an explanation of this sin in James 4:1–3. It’s as if James has Cain in mind: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
1. Envy starts with idolatry. We have desires for things which we shouldn’t crave. And we think we can’t be happy without these things.
2. And so if someone threatens our having it, we explode. We may not murder with our hands, but we murder with our tongues or our facial expressions or our actions or just in our hearts.
3. Often it is done in contexts where it’s more acceptable: talking behind someone’s back, or yelling at referees, but it’s the same sin.
4. But the fact is, believers already have what they need.
a. The lines have fallen on pleasant places! We have been given the best gift of all! We’ve been given God Himself in His Son Jesus! It doesn’t get any better than this.
b. And everything else which happens to us is a blessing, even if it hurts.
VII. God’s response to Cain’s murdering
A. 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.”
B. The blood of Abel was calling out for vengeance. And so the Lord confronted Cain and cursed him such that the ground should no longer yield its fruit to him, and declared that he would be “a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
1. And this is similar to how God deals with those who reject Him today. He allows them to wander on the earth as fugitives. They have no home, they have no Father or real family.
2. He gives them over to follow aimlessly after the desires of their hearts (Romans 1:24-27).
VIII. Cain’s blaspheming
A. But even this was not the end of Cain’s sin.
B. 13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 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.”
C. This is the same bad attitude Cain showed when he lied to God, “I don’t know where Cain is,” and when he said to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
D. Here there’s one more aspect of Cain’s sin we need to talk about. Jude 8–11 condemns some false teachers who reject authority, and even blaspheme angelic beings. And he says to them in v. 11 “Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain” & Balaam & Korah.
1. Why would Jude say that false teachers walked in the way of Cain?
2. Well, the Jewish rabbis taught that Cain was the first heretic. And, if you think about it, that’s true. What was his heresy, his false teaching? that God does not treat people fairly, that God doesn’t do a good job running the universe..
a. He clearly thought God was unjust in accepting Abel’s sacrifice and not his. He rebuffed God’s interrogation. And he explicitly declared that God’s curse upon him was unjust and unreasonable.
E. The repentant sinner says, “My punishment is just.”
1. The unrepentant sinner is more concerned about his punishment than he is about his sin.
2. The unrepentant sinner says, “My punishment is too much, it’s over the top.”
F. And we are susceptible as well to concluding or even claiming that God is really messing up.
1. It might be subtle, like fantasies. We fantasize about career success, or about being rich or famous. We have sexual fantasies. But aren’t they a form of self-pity, discontentment with what God has given? Fantasizing doesn’t seem like an enormous sin. But sin is crouching at the door.
G. Cain’s sin began with his offering. It swelled with his jealous anger. It reached a crescendo in his murder of Abel. And it culminated in his accusation of God Himself. 
IX. God’s response to Cain’s blaspheming
A. Cain’s declaration was such that God had to disagree with him: “Not so!” God says in Gen.4:15.
B. God was merciful to Cain, even though Cain was so hard toward God. God held out His hand to an obstinate and stiff-necked person (Romans 10:21).
C. God is still kind and patient. He still shows goodness. He says, “If anyone kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him 7-fold.” And then He puts a mark on Cain, to make sure no one attacks him.
D. God is kind, but there is no sign that Cain is grateful or recognizes God’s mercy in this.
E. And this is how the unrepentant usually are. You say, “I can’t accept your sin, but I still love you.” But the grace in that goes unrecognized. They’re just angry at you that you can’t accept their sin. “You don’t love me! If you loved me, you’d approve of my life choices!”
F. And it makes it hard for believers to keep loving, to keep being kind, to keep desiring their best. We are tempted to import the mentality of the judgment day into this era of grace. And that’s just as bad as Adam and Eve wanting the reward before they proved themselves worthy, like we talked about last week.

X. Communion meditation
A. The story of Cain’s sin is mentioned one other time in the NT, in Hebrews 12:22–24: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
1. The blood of Abel spoke. God said that in Gen.4:10, “ The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” What did Abel’s blood say? It cried for God’s vengeance.
2. But the blood of Jesus also speaks, but it speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. It doesn’t cry for God’s vengeance; it cries for God’s forgiveness.