Raising Cain

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

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This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsack.

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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.

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Here's Pastor Don. This morning we're going to be going deeper into the book of Genesis.

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If you want to open up your Bibles now, you can get to Genesis 4, and that's on page 3 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you.

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So if you take that Bible out, you can turn to page 3. But just a couple of thoughts before we read that together. What we're really doing is we're going deeper into depravity, which is super exciting, right?

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It's like, woo, all right, Cain and Abel, here we go. Last week we got to see Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent, took the fruit, ate the forbidden fruit and sinned, and basically broke the world.

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Uh -oh, we broke it. And that's kind of where it starts. But then what we see in our text this morning is

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Cain and Abel, their first two sons, taking the sin of the parents and driving it down deeper into depravity, driving it down deeper into the darkness and the abyss.

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And in reality, what we see this morning is that sin is a serious problem for the human race. Would you guys agree with me on that?

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Sin is a significant problem for us, for us as individuals, but also for humanity in general.

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But even as we encounter in our text what amounts to the first death and the first murder, we also see hope in the grace of God.

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Even in this very dark, dark portion of Scripture, we're going to see seeds of hope again, seeds of the light.

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And as the darkness is dark, we get a chance to see that the glory of the gospel is all the brighter set in the backdrop of our own sinfulness and wickedness.

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So, Genesis 4, 1 to 16, follow along as I read God's very word to us this morning.

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But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell.

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The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?

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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

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

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

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I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done?

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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.

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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.

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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

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I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Then the

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Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

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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

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Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Let's pray.

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Father, we see a darkness in this text. We see depravity. We see sin. We see murder.

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And it's very easy for us to cast a judgment on Cain, to look down on him and say, what a wicked and evil man.

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And we don't see repentance. We don't see remorse. We don't see him turning from his sin at all in this text.

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And it's very easy for us to cast judgment on Cain, and yet, Father, I know that if we're honest in our own hearts, we see the seeds of Cain in our own behavior, in the way that we act.

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That, Father, I confess to you that I have sinned against my brothers and sisters many, many times, that just something as simple as somebody cutting me off in traffic has led to me saying, fool.

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And Jesus Christ has said that if I declare somebody a fool, I have murdered them in my heart.

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So, Father, I ask that you would move us beyond just a looking out from ourselves at Cain and recognizing the

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Cain that is in our heart, the rebellion and the seeds of murder that exist within each one of us, and then to rejoice because a solution has been made to this problem.

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That the solution is not more sacrifices or better sacrifices or just trying to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and honor you, but that the solution has been made in the giving of a son,

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Jesus. Your son, God in flesh, come down here, sinless life, the perfect sacrifice offered up for us.

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Father, move our hearts to rejoice in gratitude that what we could not accomplish has been accomplished for us through the blood of Jesus Christ.

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Let our praise be raised up to you because we recognize that you are so awesome in the light of our sinfulness.

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I ask for that for each one of us this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. A big thanks to the band for leading us this morning.

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Remember that there's more coffee and donut holes there and juice and whatever it takes, maybe a little bit of sugar to keep your attention on the word of God.

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Also make sure you have your Bible open to Genesis chapter 4. As we walk through this text, you just get a chance to kind of see that what

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I'm trying to explain is the text, not as much my thoughts about the text, but as much as trying to get us to understand what

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God wants us to hear from his word today. Last week, we saw the first sin.

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That was a relatively small thing, right? I mean, in the scope of everything, like just eat some fruit.

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How many of you maybe ate a piece of fruit this week? Good for you if you did, that's healthy, right? But it happened to be that it was a fruit that they were forbidden from eating, right?

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God said, don't eat it, and it's the only fruit on the face of the planet they were told not to eat, so what did they do?

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They ate it, right? And so, pretty big in the scope of things that have happened since then, as we're going to see in our text, the way that sin corrupts and changes things.

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So again, it was a relatively small thing. The serpent deceived them, they ate the fruit. She ate the fruit, gave some to Adam, and he ate it.

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But ultimately, what they were doing in that act was doubting God. They questioned his wisdom, they questioned his goodness, and in the end, they plunged humanity over the cliff into an abyss of depravity.

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And in reality, now, therefore, all the sons of Adam and Eve, all the daughters of Adam and Eve, down to us, question

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God's goodness. We have a tendency to question whether or not he knows what is best for us, and sin ultimately is the questioning of God's goodness.

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His word says, don't do this, and we do it anyways, because we think we know better than him, right? And so, in essence, that's what sin is.

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And in our text this morning, we're going to actually get a glimpse in high definition how desperately wicked the human heart becomes right away after the fall.

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It didn't take time for us to learn sinfulness. It's not like we had training wheels and had to get up to speed and kind of figure this thing out right away, the first generation, a brother murdering his brother.

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You think that they've driven a spike down deep into this sin thing pretty early on? It goes from eating a piece of forbidden fruit to murder, boom, right there, in cold blood.

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And we're going to see Cain not ever in our text, from beginning to end, ever show remorse for his sin.

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He's not going to repent. I'm kind of giving you a spoiler here. But he's not going to repent. He's not going to change his heart.

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And again, some of us have heard this story in Sunday school before. How many of you have been to a Sunday school class and you've heard about Cain and Abel?

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This isn't the first time you've heard about it. Some of you were raised maybe in church or whatever. There's going to be some things that we're going to talk about here that you might not have gotten from your

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Sunday school teacher, but that kind of tie this text into where we live today.

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But right away, we're going to see the battle between good and evil begins right after the fall, and the human heart is the soil on which that battle is going to play out.

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And in verse 1, right off the bat in verse 1, we see a little bit of a unique thing. Now, Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore

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Cain. Adam intimately knows Eve. Know is one of those words that has a significant semantic range.

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It means a variety of different things. The word in Hebrew has a variety of different meanings, kind of like our word bank.

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Think about the different meanings in English for the word bank. Know has different meanings here as well. Adam knows

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Eve, she conceives, and Cain is born. Now, in ancient times, there were all kinds of thoughts about how a child came to be, but I want to point out that although it's not scientifically detailed, there was no ultrasound, there was no embryology going on at the time.

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It's not scientifically detailed, but it's scientifically accurate, what the text conveys. And notice the level of faith expressed by Eve at this first birth.

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Look at verse 1 with me. Now, Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the

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Lord. She's going to give God credit for this labor and delivery. Now, I want you to think about this.

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She's the first woman to give birth. Like, how many of you women are moms?

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Some of you are moms in here. Was going into labor, that process of pregnancy and going into labor, was that a scary notion for you the first time around?

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Was it? I mean, I've never done it, so I'm depending on you to respond. Was it scary? Yeah, okay. I would imagine that it was a scary thing.

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Now, imagine that you are the first woman. Nobody's done this before. Is that scary?

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Terrifying? You better believe it. Not only that, but what was her punishment that was given last week? One of the punishments given to the woman?

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Increased pain. So she knows that whatever this process is, it's going to hurt a lot. I don't really know how this is going to work and what's going to happen, but I know it's going to be painful, and God promises me that.

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Okay, good. Exciting. So, she acknowledges here, after the fact, she's given birth to Cain, she acknowledges that God is the one who has brought her through it.

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She looks to God, and she says, He is the one who has delivered me from this. He is the one with the help of the

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Lord, she says, I have gotten a man. Now, was Cain born a man? Was he a baby?

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Was he a man? I mean, is that a little bit weird to have a woman just give birth and say, God's given me a man?

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Well, not quite. It's a little baby right now, and he'll grow into a man. But I think what she's doing is playing on the

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Hebrew words ish and ishah. So when God first brought Eve to Adam in the garden, when she was first created out of his side, he said,

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I will call her ishah, for she was taken out of ish. I will call her woman, for she was taken out of man.

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And now she's going full circle on this, where the first female, ishah, was taken out of male, ish.

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Now the second ish, male, is taken out of ishah, female. Do you see that?

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And I think in Eve's mind, this occurs in here, because now the circle is completed for Eve.

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Her understanding, the mutual interdependence of male and female is now solidified in her mind, and she understands that I was taken out of man, and now mankind is taken out of woman.

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Are you getting that? So that male and female is intrinsically important to humanity.

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That the interdependence upon, between the sexes, between the genders, is significant.

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But I can't really belabor that, there's a lot more in this text. Cain, the name, so she names him Cain, after the words gotten or obtained.

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That's why it's in the text there, I've gotten a man, I've obtained, received. But I want you to think about this, the name then,

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Cain, which means obtained or received, has a ring, rings with a sense of faith, right?

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Like if you obtain something, what does that imply about it? If you receive something, what does that imply about it, if you received it?

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That somebody gave it, right? There's a sense of faith in this word that she's like, with the help of the

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Lord, I've received a child. And she recognizes that, with the help of the

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Lord, the first child has been born. Now sometime later, there's no time designation here, we don't know how much older Cain was then

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Abel, we just know that he was older, but we find very little about Abel in the text. Have any of you ever noticed that?

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There's just not much, Abel does not speak, ever. We never see his words in the text of Scripture, we don't know what he was like, well we have some indication about what he was like and we'll talk about that, but we don't ever see him speak his own words.

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Another thing that's interesting is what's absent here, conspicuously absent, is that often times in ancient culture, and in ancient documents, with the birth of a child comes the naming of them for a reason, right?

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They were named Reuben because of this, or they were named Gad because of that, or they were named Cain because they were gotten by God.

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What's the name of Abel mean? Can you find that in the text? It's not there, but it is a significant word that we come to understand.

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And again, a little bit of a spoiler alert here, but Abel's going to be a short -lived character in the

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Scripture, and his name actually means vapor or mist.

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Vapor or mist. What is vapor or mist a sign or a symbol of often in Scripture? The brevity of life, like I just turned 40 this past week, the brevity of life, it's going fast, right?

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And so God often says life is like a vapor, like a mist, and then the wind just blows and it's gone.

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And that's the name Abel. Do you think that's a pretty appropriate name for this guy? It is very short -lived, especially when you contemplate and consider that people were living hundreds of years in those times.

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He's cut short. And in verse 2, we see very directly the first occupation, the oldest occupation, which might not be what, you know, the, not the oldest occupation, but might not be what you're thinking.

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The oldest occupation is farmer. Cain takes after his, two of you got that.

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I don't even know if you should have gotten that. So and everybody's kind of like nervous laughter, like I don't really know if I'm supposed to I don't know what that means.

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The oldest occupation is farmer. Cain takes after his daddy and is a farmer like Adam was.

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But Abel, Abel is a new occupation on the face of the planet. Abel is now a shepherd, a keeper of sheep.

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Multiple sources identified the first, identified that the first domesticated animals, according to archaeology, the first ones that were farmed are sheep.

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And that matches scripture. I think it's just kind of, I like to point out when archaeology identifies and works in with scripture, which matter of fact, it does, always.

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I haven't seen evidence of archaeology that hasn't yet. But this gels with biblical evidence that we see here, that sheep were the first domesticated animals and here it is.

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The phrase that starts verse 3, so if you look down at verse 3, it says in the course of time. That phrase has the notion of harvest time or an annual time of the year.

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It actually has a cyclical meaning to it and implies that the routine of harvest time offerings had already begun in the ancient, even in that first family.

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So that as harvest time rolled around, there was already growing a culture of offering sacrifices to God at that time.

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So farmer Cain quite naturally brings an offering of fruit and veggies. Does that make sense? He's a farmer, so what does he bring to the

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Lord? He brings of the harvest. It's important for us to understand that this was a completely, 100 % legit offering.

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This was acceptable. What's happened is a lot of people have misunderstood down through the ages and got this inaccurate thought that God wasn't pleased with Cain's offering because it was not an animal.

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That God only liked animal sacrifices and he did not want the grain and that's absolutely false. As a matter of fact, in Leviticus 2, there's some light reading for you.

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Go through the first few chapters of Leviticus, all about the offerings and the sacrifices. But this word that's used for offering here, minha in Hebrew, is actually a word that means grain offering.

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So that's the acceptable, required sacrifice of Israel later down through the ages when

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God is going to give his law to his people, he's going to say, I want you to bring a sacrifice of your grain, of your grapes, of the fruit of the harvest that you bring in.

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I want you to bring part of that to me. So is that an acceptable sacrifice? Is it okay for Cain to bring veggies?

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Yeah. There's something else that we're going to need to look at. It's not necessarily just the stuff that's brought that's the issue here between Cain and Abel.

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Again, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but Cain is going to be rejected and Abel is going to be accepted for his offering.

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What's going on here? And so we're going to see down, we're going to get into that here in a second.

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But in context, I think it is important that Cain brings, it says, of the fruit without any further designation.

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But Abel brings of what? His firstborn. To put these on parallel and to understand, you'd have to change something to get what

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Cain brings to be the same as what Abel brings, because it doesn't just say that Abel brought some from his flock.

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Do you hear how that would be different? It kind of says, it says, Cain brought of the fruit.

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He just brought some of the harvest. But Abel brings of the firstborn.

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So those aren't exactly the same things, but I think that what we're seeing here is a sign of their hearts.

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You're going to begin to see that something is different about the heart of Cain and something is different about the heart of Abel.

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It's not just merely the offering. Did Cain do a good job bringing a sacrifice?

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Is it good for him to bring a sacrifice? Is it good for Abel to bring a sacrifice? Did they both do something externally well?

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I want to point out that as we go through this and we walk through what is wrong with Cain and what is right about Abel, that they both do the same thing externally.

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They both bring something to God, right? So what we're going to see is that there's an issue whereby, if we apply this to ourselves, we could actually see that you could have two people both doing the identical religious duties, performing the same thing externally, and one doing so in a way that's acceptable to God, and one doing a way that is unacceptable to God.

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Are you getting that? That's what we're seeing here as a center point lesson for this story in this book.

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Two people doing religious duty, one doing it with God's approval, and does anybody want to know, how many of you think that it might be important for us to get down to the bottom of why was

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Abel's sacrifice acceptable and Cain's not? Anybody want to know the answer to that question?

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Anybody think that's a valuable question to ask? I hope you want to know the answer to that because it's significant for our lives, right?

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We're talking about how am I acceptable to God? What is it that he accepts and what is it that he rejects?

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Why? And I think it's less to do with the quality of,

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I think the quality of the sacrifice indicates something about the heart. It's not that one brought good things, one brought bad things.

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In verses four through five, we're going to get the contrast. The Lord has regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he has no regard.

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Do you see it in the text? Says that directly. And I think in the confusion over why

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God accepts the sacrifice of Abel and not Cain, I think we missed something important here because the text does not say that God had regard for Abel's sacrifice and not for Cain's sacrifice.

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It takes it a step further. The text says that God had regard for Abel and his sacrifice.

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Do you hear the difference? So that what we see is not just the difference between the quality of these sacrifices, but it's the individual.

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God does not regard Cain, not just his sacrifice that he's rejecting, but God is rejecting

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Cain. Are you seeing what I'm saying here? Is there a difference in that?

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It's not just the sacrifice that's laid. Hey God, I brought you something and God says, I don't like that. He says,

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I don't like this or this. Is that different? So there's something going on in Cain.

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Would you agree with me? There is something fundamental in Cain that he is missing. And it's not until we're going to get a little bit in cross -referencing into the

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New Testament that we're going to see what that major thing is that he's missing. But he has accepted Abel and his sacrifice and rejected

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Cain and his sacrifice. Now what does this regard look like, practically speaking?

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Have you ever wondered this? I mean, did your Sunday school class teacher get into this? Okay, Abel comes and brings a sacrifice and God accepts it.

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Cain brings a sacrifice, a picture of an altar or whatever, puts it on there, burns it. How does he know that his is rejected?

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Have you ever wondered that? I mean, some people have speculated, all kinds of speculation.

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The text isn't extremely clear on that. Some people think that Cain put his veggies on there and that Abel put his sheep on there and killed it and then they stepped back and waited and God consumed the one by fire and the other one kind of just sat there waiting and waiting and waiting.

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So that's possible, right? Would you agree with me on that? Maybe that's the way that they knew that one was accepted and one wasn't.

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I see something a little different here and I'm not alone in this. Some other scholars and commentators have actually led in this direction, but it was kind of my hunch when

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I first read it, just reading the entire text together. I think something more unique than that is going on here.

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I think God was still coming down into the garden, walking out the gate and coming and visiting with them.

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Because we're going to see Cain later on fearful that God is going to cast him away from his face, from his presence and that I'm no longer, if you exile me,

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I'm not going to be able to hang with you anymore. I think God was still connected with his people, even in this time when they had rebelled against him and turned from him, he's still coming down and visiting.

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So that I wonder if Cain sets out some lamb, roast lamb,

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I mean Cain sets out some roast veggies and Abel sets out the roast lamb and God eats the roast lamb and doesn't take any of the veggies.

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I mean something like that along those lines. He knows definitively God has rejected my offering, hasn't accepted it, but he's accepted

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Abel's. But whatever the disregard from God looked like, it makes Cain very angry.

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Is he justified in his anger? What do you think? I mean wrestle with that in your heart, right?

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Is he? To be rejected from God, is that a pretty major thing? That would be tough, hard to take on, right?

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Wow. And he became very angry and his face fell. A literal translation of the

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Hebrew words there, his face fell. He's in an angry, dark depression.

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I dare say that some of us can relate to the way that Cain feels here in the text. An anger, a brooding anger, a self -centered anger and frustration and he's dark.

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Some see God as the cause of this anger. God has provoked Cain by regarding Abel and not him.

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But I would suggest to you that Cain brought a murderous heart to the altar before any rejection had occurred.

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It is not God's fault that he is angry. I think he was an angry man to begin with. And so it takes a little cross -referencing, but here we go to the bottom of what

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I think that Cain did not possess that Abel did. And you can find this in Hebrews 11 verse 4.

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Hebrews 11 verse 4 deals directly with Abel and tells us something about Abel that we do not get in our account in the

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Old Testament, but very significant. We find it directly stated, By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous.

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So what is the difference between Cain and Abel? A sacrifice offered by faith.

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What is faith? Hebrews, earlier, I would encourage you to read Hebrews chapter 11, but earlier in Hebrews chapter 11, read it this week, check it out.

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It is all about faith, all about the centerpiece of what Abel had that Cain did not. But in that context of the book of Hebrews, faith is the assurance of the future promises of God.

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It is a genuine trust, believing that God is going to do good and is going to make things right.

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Things that you have not yet seen with your eyes, but trusting. God is going to work this out in the end.

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That is faith. And according to the book of Hebrews, Abel possessed that kind of hope in the promises of God.

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Now do you think that maybe Adam and Eve sat little Abel and little Cain on their laps at night and talked about the time in the garden?

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Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what that was like? I mean, I sometimes think, and maybe sometimes my imagination is a little too vivid, but have you ever just thought what it would have been like for Adam and Eve, who had tasted that kind of glory and splendor and delight in the garden, to have lived 930 years with that memory of the greatness that they got rid of, that they broke, that they messed up.

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But I would imagine them taking little Cain and Abel on their laps and talking and telling the stories and saying, talking about that punishment that had been given to them, but that seed of promise.

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And Eve talking with her sons saying, but God has promised that he is going to provide one who will crush the head of this evil serpent that tempted us and deceived us and brought us into this mess.

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And one is going to come. One is going to be born one of these days who is going to stamp out the evil one.

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Can you imagine that they heard that story time and time again? Two sons hearing the same stories, one accepts it by faith and says,

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I believe God is good. I believe that he has our best intentions in mind. I believe he loves us.

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The other one saying, I don't trust that guy. I don't think he's got my best interest in mind.

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One expressing faith and trust in the goodness of God. The other one rejecting him saying,

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I don't really like him that much. Look at what he's done to us. Can you imagine how you can see two different sides of that coin?

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How dare he kick us out of the garden. We ought to go storm it and take it back. Versus, he's going to work this out.

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He's good. He's been kind to us. He's been generous to us. And he's going to fix it. By implication, through the book of Hebrews, Cain is the opposite of Abel.

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As a matter of fact, we don't need to take that by absence because in Hebrews we have an accounting of Abel's faith.

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But then in 1 John 3 .12 in the New Testament, we actually have an account of Cain's evil. A little bit of a description that we are not to be like those who we should not be like Cain.

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Who was of the evil one. Whoa. What was the promise to the woman, to Eve?

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That the offspring of the evil one would be constantly at war and in enmity with the offspring of the woman.

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We have here almost a declaration that Cain is of the serpent. He is of the evil one by his lack of faith.

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And his deeds were evil and Abel's were righteous because his deeds were not done in faith. As a matter of fact,

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Cain was distrustful of God in his heart from the beginning. He did not offer fruit from his harvest based on faith.

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And according to the Apostle Paul, whatever does not proceed from faith is... Can anybody finish that?

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Sin. Whatever does not proceed out of faith, trusting in God, is sin.

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That's a pretty significant verse in and of itself for us to deal with on a day to day basis. Whatever we do that is lacking belief and trust that God is good and has our best intentions in mind is sin.

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Regardless of whether it's offering a sacrifice or doing something evil. Do you see? I mean,

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I don't think I can overemphasize, and I'm not sure if we quite grasp this, that Cain does a good external behavior.

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If you were to sit and watch what Cain does in offering the sacrifice, we would all go, Bravo, he sacrificed something, he's given something.

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Are you getting what I'm saying in that? That even the good that you or I do that is not exercising faith and trust in God, how many of you maybe have messed up a couple good opportunities in your life to exercise faith because you did it for your own pride?

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Anybody like me on that one? Where you're like, okay, I guess I owned that. And literally what we're talking about here is that that is sin.

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Doing good for the wrong motive is sin. Is that hard for us to get our minds around?

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Doing good without faith, it's like filthy rags.

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Cain was distrustful of God in his heart from the beginning. He did not offer fruit from his harvest based on faith.

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So the Lord confronts Cain in his anger. Verses 6 and 7 are the gentle and kind attempt of God to divert

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Cain to do what is right. Like when God asks Adam in the garden, where are you?

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Again, God asks a question he already knows the answer to. He says, why are you angry, Cain?

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Don't you know that if you do well, you will be acceptable? He's offering a change of course to Cain. God knows the murderous intent of Cain's heart before he ever commits murder.

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And he says, I'm providing you an out here. I know where this is going and you don't have to do this.

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He says, sin is ready to own you. It's desirous for you. It's like a monster crouching in the dark outside your door.

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A monster on a dark night sitting right outside the door. This monster, this snarling, crouching.

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Probably not snarling because it wants to be silent. Because it wants to catch you unaware. You open the door, boom.

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Sitting outside the door and it is hungry for some Cain. Sin would love to enslave you,

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God says. But, and this is huge, you must rule over it.

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Now since we know that the problem for Cain so far has been a lack of faith. And Abel is accepted based on his faith.

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Again, they both did the same thing. The only difference is faith. Then it doesn't make sense that God is merely saying, your hope,

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Cain, is that you rule over sin by just working harder. Bring me a better sacrifice. Do better things and then you'll be acceptable.

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And that comes down to a fundamental question in verse 7. What does it mean to do well? How do we do well?

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What does it mean to rule over sin? And I would suggest to you that God has provided a way for us to do well.

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And has provided a way for us to rule over sin. But it is through the cross of Jesus Christ.

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It is through the Messiah that he has provided for us. That is the pathway to doing well and to ruling over sin.

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Is by putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. It really is to act according to faith in God.

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The God that's standing in front of Cain. He's there. And in saying, sin wants to be your master,

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Cain. But there is a better way. And God is offering that.

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He's beckoning. He's calling. He's saying, trust me, Cain. Follow me. But the choice to believe

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God here in the text is finally left up to Cain. And he doesn't choose to battle sin with faith in God.

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But he opens the door. And sin is not slow in eating him alive. He opens the door and sin has him.

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Cain speaks to his brother. We don't have the words that he spoke. I think it's in verse 8. Cain spoke to his brother

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Abel. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel. And what?

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Killed him. The brevity of verse 8 is breathtaking considering its importance.

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Cain rises up against Abel, his brother. And kills him in a jealous rage. There's a few different words in the

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Hebrew language for killing. And this is the most brutal of all of them.

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Without getting too graphic, there are enough mentions of blood. And this Hebrew word and its grotesqueness come together to lead me to believe that Cain did not kill

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Abel by blunt force trauma. There's something else going on here. There is blood spilled. The first human to ever die, dies by.

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Very first time that anybody has ever died. Did you catch that in Scripture? How did they die? It wasn't cancer.

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It wasn't heart attack. It wasn't cigarettes. It was murder. A human soul has never been separated from its body prior to this account.

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That's never happened. This is a new thing. And now at the hands of his brother, the one whose name meant wisp or vapor or mist, has now ceased to live.

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Cain has taken the sin of his father and mother and has carried their legacy down to the depths quickly.

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Within just a few years. The rest of the text is a confrontation between God and Cain.

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Does that seem reasonable? God's going to have something to say about what's just happened here. Have you ever noticed that God likes to ask questions?

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Have you seen that so far in the text? We serve a God who likes to ask questions. Because I think he likes to draw us out.

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How many of you learn by thinking for yourself? How many of you ever had that professor that wouldn't answer a question? Or a teacher in high school that wouldn't answer a question?

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It was always a question with a question. Jesus does that as a master teacher in the New Testament. God does that in the

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Old Testament. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The son does what the father does. And the father asks a lot of questions.

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Even questions that he knows the answer to. He asks Cain, where is your brother? Does Cain have the answer to that question?

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Yeah, but he lies. He adds a brash lie. And then even a quip that shows how far sin now owns him.

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He says in response, where is your brother? I don't know. Liar.

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And then adds this phrase. A very common phrase that many of us have heard. Probably used a few times. Am I my brother's keeper?

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Am I my brother's keeper? Do you see the contempt even for God still? Cain has killed his brother.

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Is there remorse? Does he feel bad for it? No, he's even showing and demonstrating contempt for God. A modern translation might say something like this.

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God comes to Cain and says, where is your brother? And Cain responds, how should I know? Why come to me?

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Am I responsible for my brother? If I came and asked one of my kids a question about where their brother was, and they responded this way to me.

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Right? Don't speak to me with that tone of voice. Contempt.

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Contempt. Almost like, duh. Why would you come to me with this?

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You're seeing Cain's contempt for the evil that has resided in his heart because of a lack of faith.

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He does not trust this one he's speaking with. He doesn't even like him. And he's demonstrating contempt.

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The irony in this interaction. His brother's corpse lays precisely where he has hidden it.

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If anyone knows where his brother is, it is Cain. He knows exactly where his brother is.

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But not only him. He's not the only one who knows where his brother is. The Lord knows what has happened, and he exclaims, what have you done?

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We shouldn't put a question mark on that. We should put a couple exclamation points on it. Have you ever asked that question with an exclamation point instead of a question mark?

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What have you done? What have you done? That's the way that God is responding. What have you done?

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Your brother's blood is crying out from the ground. Not literally. It's not like the soil had a mouth. I'm dead.

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But notice that Cain doesn't even come clean when he's confronted by God Almighty. But God knows that blood has been spilled, and it highlights to me that death does not go unnoticed by our

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Maker. He knows when it happens. And God immediately begins the sentencing of Cain.

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The one who is a farmer will have even more difficulty farming. Now, that was one of the punishments on his father

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Adam, right? That the ground would not yield its fruit as easily. And now Cain is doubly cursed with that.

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He's going to struggle to get food from the ground. The punishment ultimately kind of fits the crime because he has sown his brother's blood to the ground.

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Now the ground will cease to yield up its strength to him. This will require the farmer who needs food to become a wanderer, always looking for greener pastures.

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He is now exiled from the rest of his family. And with all the bluster and pride of a sin -cursed human,

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Cain has the guts to challenge God on the sentence. This guy is a piece of work.

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Would you agree with me on that? I picture this being whiny, kind of complaining, Oh God, my punishment is greater than I can bear.

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Why are you picking on me? Can you believe this guy? He's just whining in the face of God.

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This story might end differently if you were God. Do I even need to go any further than that?

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You're whining because I'm going to exile you for killing your brother? Done. Or here's something for you to suffer with for a few years.

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Do you know what I'm saying? He's complaining about God's grace and mercy toward him.

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But he does fear some legitimate things. These are hardships on early earth. He's going to be cast away from farming.

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That's his sustenance, that's his livelihood. Is that going to be a hardship for the rest of his life?

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Yes. He's going to be cast away from people, cast away from the face of God. And in the most ironic twist, he declares that he fears.

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The murderer fears what? Being murdered. A little bit of irony there.

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Now a brief word on the population. Does anybody struggle when you read in here that Cain is afraid somebody is going to find him and kill him?

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Because on the flannel graph, when you were in Sunday school, how many of you know what I say? When I say the word flannel graph, you know what

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I mean? Okay, a few of you that are like my age. Or older. You've got the flannel graph here, and you really only have four characters that you can fit on the flannel graph.

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You've got Adam and Eve, and then you take them off, and then you put Cain and Abel up there. And so you really don't have the room for the rest of the population of Cain and Abel's brothers and sisters who have been born during the duration of their time where they got old enough to start farming and shepherding.

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How old are they by the time we get to this text? How many siblings have been born to their parents?

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Now I want to point out the range of fertility. We actually have children who are born to women that are 500 years old in Scripture, according to the reckoning of the ages that are there.

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I'm going to take that by faith. You need to understand that as we get into the genealogies next week. I'll just hedge that off right now and say,

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I'm going to stick with the dates that Scripture says. It's not a misunderstanding. Maybe they added a zero in there or something.

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It's going to say Methuselah lived 969 years old, and I'm just going to believe that. So we're going to just operate on that.

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So if the fertility range for women could get up to 500 years, and we're going to see

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Seth being born next week to Adam and Eve in replacement of Abel who died, and it's going to be like Seth replaces

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Abel. Of course, you can never replace a son, but that's the way that it's going to roll. So we know that 130 years have passed before Abel has died.

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How many kids did Adam and Eve have in that 130 years? And how many kids did those kids have, and on and on.

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So are you getting what I'm saying? Is Cain reasonable in fearing that one of his younger brothers or sisters is going to kill him?

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Because they kind of liked Abel? Is vengeance a reality? Yes, it is. So there's that possibility.

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One scholar taking into account the lifespans, the extended fertility range, and other indicators from the book of Genesis says that it's conservative to estimate that if Cain lived to an average age for his generation, the population of the world at Cain's death was around 120 ,000 people.

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Conservative number. So those don't fit on the flannel graph real well. But was it reasonable for him to fear vengeance?

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Yeah. Yeah, it was. Now, revenge from a family member was reasonable, and apparently

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God thought that it was a distinct possibility because God's going to take precautions and measures to protect

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Cain's life. So take at face value that God thought that there was a chance that he was going to be the victim of retribution.

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And so God places a curse on anyone who would take revenge sevenfold against them, anybody who would kill

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Cain. And then God places a mark on Cain to identify him clearly so that people will think twice before they shoot the arrow or whatever before they kill him.

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So what's the mark of Cain? Anybody been curious about that down through the ages? What is that mark?

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There's all kinds of possibilities. The text is unclear, and so we have to remain unclear. Some speculate that it was a tattoo.

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Some more creative scholars have speculated horns, a bullseye.

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I like the horns one. That was the one that I thought, okay, yeah, I can see that. It's possible that he had a different skin coloring or whatever.

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How many of you know that what provides the intrigue is it had to be something you could readily see on him, right?

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That's what kind of gets the mind spinning. What did this dude look like that it was obvious that he was

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Cain? But it doesn't matter much what it actually was because what we see in this is simply

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God extending grace even to one who has murdered his own brother. Do you see the mark of Cain as grace?

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Can you understand how that is a step for God to actually protect this murderer?

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And it points out that even those under God's curse can still experience his grace. The liar and the cheater can still enjoy a sunset, right?

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Even those who are under his curse. How gracious is this God that we're meeting in the book of Genesis?

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How far does his grace extend? Anybody wowed that he would extend grace to Cain?

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That he would give more time to Cain? That he would provide him more of a chance? The grace of God is a scandalous thing.

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Scandalous. Cain goes away from the presence of the Lord bearing his mark and he settled in the land of Nod east of Eden.

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In this last verse there's a play on words because Nod spelled backwards is Don. And I think there's some kind of conspiracy in this somewhere.

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I know. See, my name is in Scripture. Biblical name. No, but there really is a play on words because I think it's kind of tongue -in -cheek funny because it says in the text he settled in the land of Nod.

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What does Nod mean? Wandering. Settled into what?

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Wandering. Settled into a life of exile. Settled into a land of not a permanent residence.

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He's got a rough life ahead of him. But I want us to consider at least two realities from this text.

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The first reality that I want us to face here in 2013. Here in Matawan.

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God is here pleading with fallen people to turn to Him from sin. For each one of us in this room this morning, sin is crouching at the door.

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It desires to own all of us. Did you know that? Sin's desire is to eat you up and spit you out.

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And we have before us the way of Abel who offered his sacrifice of faith.

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He trusted God. He believed God. He put his hope in his maker to make things right.

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And he looked to God as the source of his hope for the future even though he could not see what the future held.

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Or we can go the way of Cain who even after a warning like this, even after a face -to -face meeting with God still went out and immediately opened the door to sin not even trusting that God's truth that sin would own him was true and real.

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And so my question to each one of us this morning is what sin is crouching at the door for you? I believe that each one of us here, it's not going to take us long.

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We don't need to think much longer than the time that we have left together here this morning for I think

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God to put a finger on that. And I could list all kinds of sins. And you might sit back and breathe a sigh of relief because I missed the one that is particular to you.

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Right? But instead, I'm going to trust and pray that the Holy Spirit grabs a hold of your heart and identifies for you what it is that you need to deal with.

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It could be pride. It could be lust. It could be back -talking or gossip or a whole host of things that are crouching at the door for us that would seek to destroy us.

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Do you believe that sin will own you if you let it in? Or do you believe that you can contain it?

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Do you believe that you can control it? I'll let it in, let it visit for a little while, and then I'll push it back out the door at the end of the day and we'll be done with that.

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I'm not hurting anybody. It's not going to hurt anybody. Is that a lie?

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It is a lie. Sin will own you. It will destroy you. It will take you places you did not think you could ever go or you would ever go.

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It will humiliate you. It will shame you. It will destroy you. And sin, I believe, by faith, that sin leads to what?

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Death. That's a promise. Sin leads to death. I like to think of it this way.

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Sin leads to the death of something. It's not always my death, right? Sin doesn't always lead to this flesh dying or else

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I would not be able to stand here. I'd just be a pile of ashes on the floor. Sin leads to the death of relationships.

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It leads to the death of hopes and dreams and all different kinds of things in our lives. Would you agree with that?

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It does also ultimately lead to physical death because we die because we sinned, but that's another story.

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So I want you to think about that this morning. What is it that God would put a finger on in your life that you say, I need to give this over to God by faith and ask for His, to trust

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Him that this is true, that this will destroy me, and then to take steps to push that out, whether that's accountability with others or just a concerted effort to pray through that issue.

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I would encourage you that a lot of different things need to come in together for you to get victory. And one of the first things is just coming and sharing that with me or one of the elders or talking with us about that and letting us know that you want to be engaged in the battle.

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You're tired of being owned by your sin and you want to take steps of restoration and repentance and turn from it and walk towards God and we would love to walk through that with you.

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We're walking through that with some of you right now and grateful for it, but I'm convinced that there's a lot of issues, there's a lot of sin crouching at the door for many of you that you're just trying to go it alone and it keeps beating you up.

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And it will, it'll destroy you if you let it keep running. The second thing, lastly, how gracious is the

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God you serve? So we have this image of sin, this horrible thing that wants to own us, but the last thing is how gracious is

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God? A vision of God, and I want us to see this. How radical is your

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God's grace? How much will he extend forgiveness and grace and kindness to people?

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I think for many of us, it's awesome when a cute little kid, a child, asks Jesus to save them and come into their heart and into their life.

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Have any of you ever had that experience where a little kid that you know comes to faith in Christ?

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Or maybe it's a family member or a friend or an associate or an acquaintance. Have you ever had that joy of seeing somebody come to faith in Christ?

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It's exciting, it's awesome, it's cool. But what about when a crusty, sin -hardened criminal comes in to the kingdom?

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Is there grace for prostitutes? Is there grace for murderers, for pimps, for drug dealers?

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Now I'm not suggesting that Cain ever repented and was saved. He ends in a world of hurt here.

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We don't see any indication. I don't know if he ever repented or not. But God is patient with Cain, giving him more time to think about it and work things out.

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Do you see that in the text? Is that grace? Significant grace.

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Like I said, more grace than I might extend. Where we might not be so patient,

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God marks him, telling the population of the world to back up off him and give him a second chance. Now this is

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God's prerogative of grace. He will be gracious toward whom he wishes. And as a sinner who is being saved by God's grace,

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I rejoice that he has decided to be gracious towards me. Anybody agree with that? He's been gracious towards a sinner like me.

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And I'm praying that his grace leads each and every one of us to extend more grace to others as we walk in this sin -cursed world, pointing them towards the source of ultimate grace, the cross of Jesus Christ, the place where he took our punishment on his shoulders and has forgiven us based on the work of redemption, based on his standing in the place and being the

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Lamb of God. You see, we now know in detail what Abel had to take on faith.

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He had to look forward and kind of think, okay, God's going to provide this offspring. Somebody's going to be born of woman.

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He's going to crush the head of the serpent. His heel is going to be bruised. There's going to be this battle between good and evil.

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And I can only imagine that Abel and Cain, as I said earlier, had heard from their parents about the promise of God.

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And little Abel believed that God would bring a victor to deliver them and that God had not given up on them.

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And now we stand at a place looking back because at the fullness of time, God sent Jesus as that promised offspring,

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God in flesh, God with us. And he came down, not into the garden, but he came to us even east of Eden.

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And he lived a sinless life in a world full of sin. He was the sacrificial lamb of God who died to take away our sins.

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And if you're here this morning and you believe Jesus is Lord and have asked him to save you based on his sacrifice, then join together with your brothers and sisters in communion this morning.

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But if you're here and you have not done business with God regarding your sin, and you're sitting here and you're kind of going, I don't know what forgiveness means, and I'm not really sure who

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Jesus Christ is, and I've been wrestling with that, and I've come here this morning because I want to know more about who Jesus is.

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I'd encourage you to come and talk with me, come and talk with Zach, or Kyle who's opened up the service, or any of the people up on the stage, and we would love to talk with you more about how you can have a relationship of forgiveness based on what

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Jesus Christ has done for you. Let's pray this morning. Father, I rejoice in your plan of redemption that as I look at this text and I see myself in it,

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I see how I could have gone the way of Cain, and I see the signs of him in my heart and in my life of evil and wickedness that would seek to destroy me.

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But Father, I praise you for your grace that is changing me and transforming me from that man to a man more resembling

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Abel who was a man of faith, who trusted you, who loved you, who delighted in your presence, who was not angry at you and bitter towards you.

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Father, I pray that you would move in all of our hearts to identify the sin that you would seek for us to be rooting out.

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Father, give strength to those who might need to have conversations and to take a step further in meeting with somebody and talking with somebody and exposing that darkness to the light that they might obtain freedom through the cross of Jesus Christ.

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Father, I thank you for his death. We remember in the cracker that we take that his body was broken.

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We remember in the juice that we drink the blood of Jesus that covers us and washes us clean from our sins.

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Father, I thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I'm so unworthy of it, and yet you did that for me and for many.

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I pray that if there's anybody here this morning that has not experienced that freedom and that relief from the forgiveness of sins,

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Father, that you'd move in their hearts, even this morning, to come and talk with one of us to understand what you have done more fully.