Overcome Sin — Anton Bosch

Cain, Abel, and the Warning to Rule Over Sin

Turn with me to the book of Genesis and chapter four. Genesis chapter four. Obviously, we encourage you to bring your Bible and to follow as we go through the scriptures. And this morning we will be turning up, looking up quite a few scriptures.

We have just finished last week, the study as we've gone through the Bible, one book at a time, one book per week, which took us quite a while. And so we've begun a new series in the adult Bible class on the book of Revelation.

And obviously I'm not going to keep track of that in the Sunday morning. So Sunday morning meeting, we will be simply ministering those things that the Lord lays on my heart. And it may not necessarily be, it may be a shorter series, but there is no connection.

So we're breaking the connection between the adult Bible class and Sunday morning from here on until the Lord directs us otherwise. I may come back to Genesis chapter four next week. I'm not sure, but I just had my heart to share with you from Genesis chapter four.

And it's the story of Cain and Abel. And we're going to read from verse one through 15. Genesis chapter four, verses one through 15. Now, Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord.

Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.

Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.

So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.

Now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother?

And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond, you shall be on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you have driven me out this day from the face of the ground.

I shall be hidden from your face. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. And the Lord said to him, therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him. And I want to speak with you from verse seven. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.

And I'm going to focus on that last part of the verse. Sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now you see the picture. Cain's sacrifice was not accepted because it was something that he had produced with the works of the labors of his hand because he was a tiller of the ground, and so he had labored and produced this crop, and God rejected that offering.

God accepted Abel's offering because it contained blood and because it was not the labor of his hands. The sheep just multiplied, and he just offered that which God had given to him, and so a very important spiritual principle.

We touched on that last week in a different context. And so Cain looks at this, and I don't know how Cain knew or how Abel knew that God had accepted the one sacrifice and the other. There is a tradition, and I want you to just understand that this is not in the Bible, and I don't think that there is any basis for truth, but somehow many Christians believe that the way they knew was that the smoke of the one sacrifice went straight up to God, and the smoke of the other one went at an angle.

And when you look at children's Bibles with pictures in them, you'll see that picture. You'll see the smoke of the one going straight up and the other one not going straight to God. Now, there is nothing that tells us that that is the way it was.

We don't know, it just doesn't tell us. But what we do know is that God accepted the one sacrifice and he didn't accept the other. Now, Cain obviously was very angry, and it says his countenance fell.

In other words, he had a long face. He was unhappy that God had accepted his brother's sacrifice and not his. And so he is now at a very critical time in his life. He is at a point where he could do the wrong thing.

Remember that his father had already sinned, and so sin was a potential. Sin was a thing that could happen. And so God says these things to him. He says, if you do well, will I not accept you? In other words, I have no prejudice, God says.

I'm not prejudiced against you, Cain, and I have no favorites, and Abel is not my favorite. If you do the right thing, I will accept you. And many Christians feel that God somehow is against them. Many people feel that God somehow has chosen to bless others and not to bless them, that God somehow picks and chooses who he wants to bless.

But in fact, God has no favorites. And over and over, the scripture tells us that he is not a respecter of persons. God is not interested in whether you are educated or not educated. He's not interested in whether you are of this race group or that ethnic group.

He is not interested in any of those things. God does not have any prejudices. God does not have any favorites. His blessing is simply based on the fact that he wants to bless all, that he wants to save all, but it depends on you to respond.

And so both of these boys had an opportunity to offer a sacrifice that God would find acceptable. But the one offered the right sacrifice and the other didn't. And God simply says to Cain, if you do well, won't I accept you also?

And so, you know, you say, well, you know, how come God doesn't bless me? How come, you know, these things in my... God can bless you, you just need to respond to him. It's as simple as that. Now, it's not for us to choose, but it's for us to respond.

Sin's Desire and the Reality of Temptation

And when God speaks to us, we simply need to respond and say, Lord, I want your blessing. Now, he then explains the thing that was about to happen. And these words are prophetic because he says, sin is lying at your door.

Its desire is for you, but you've got to rule over it. In other words, sin, and when he uses that word, is lying at the door. In other words, it's like an animal, a lion or a bear or a wolf lying outside the door, waiting for you to put your head out of the door and it's going to grab you.

It wants you, he says, sin wants you. And obviously, sin wants you in order to control you. But he says, you have to rule over it. And I just want to look at those three little things this morning, and really the message is not complicated, it's simple, but yet it's an important message that we often don't understand.

James's Account of How Desire Gives Birth to Sin

Let's go to the book of James and chapter one. So now we're going right through to the end of the Bible and just before revelation, James chapter one. And I want you to see the process that leads to sin.

And God was warning Cain and he was saying, now, very soon you're going to face this temptation. The temptation to do the wrong thing. And sin is going to want you to do the wrong thing. Sin is going to want you to kill your brother.

But you need to decide what you're going to do about it. You see, the problem is that there are too many Christians who feel that they have no choices, that I'm made with these desires, whatever those desires may be, whether it is for drugs or whether it's for alcohol or whether it's for illicit sex or whatever it is, we feel that we have these desires and these desires control us.

And we are simply a product of the sin and the environment in which we find ourselves. Now, this is what he is saying. First of all, he says, sin is there and it is a reality. For us to say that it is not out there or that is not within us and that sin is not looking to control and dominate us is to be naive and foolish.

And we will certainly be caught by it. And so if you go to a game reserve in South Africa, we have huge game reserves. Some, one of them is bigger than the whole country of France. And there are very clear warnings.

You're never to step outside of your car. You have to stay in the car all the time. But every now and then it comes up on the news, somebody was killed by a lion in the game park. What happened? They stepped out of the car.

Now, they think, well, you know, it's just a big pussy cat. You know, it's just standing there looking all tired and lazy. And that's the problem is that we don't understand sin is lying at the door. It's right there.

It's waiting for an opportunity. And yeah, it looks so innocent. It just looks so nice. But in fact, it's waiting to have us, to control us. And here's the process. James gives it to us in James chapter one and verse 13.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I'm tempted by God. Because God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. So don't blame God. And I think that Cain was blaming God in a sense. He was saying, God, if I kill my brother, it's your fault because you chose him over me.

No, God is not the cause of sin. God does not tempt us. God does not lead us into sin. And he does not bring us into a position where we sin. But here is what happens, verse 14. Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

By his own desires and enticed. So don't blame God. In fact, don't even blame the devil. Because where is the sin? In fact, the sin is right inside of us. One of the fundamentals of our faith is that we are born in sin.

That we have inherited from Adam a sinful nature, which by nature wants to do the wrong thing. And so we have this problem because we say, well, you know, I was born this way. I have an alcoholic gene.

Or my DNA makes me predisposed to addictions. Or I have a homosexual gene. I was born like this. No, he says that we are tempted when we are drawn away by our own desires. And so every one of us has the potential for sin.

And if you think that that's not a reality, you've never faced the reality of your life. There's not one of us who doesn't have issues. There's not one of us who don't have problems that we have to face up to.

And so to blame our parents, or to blame Adam, or to blame society, or to blame God, or even to blame the devil. And I agree, the devil's to blame for a lot of stuff. No, he says we are tempted when we are drawn away by our own desires and enticed.

And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. So there's the process. Desire, but the desire needs to conceive. Look at the language. It needs to conceive.

Now, how does something conceive? Can an egg on its own conceive? No, it needs to be fertilized, then it conceives. And every one of us has desire for the wrong things. We desire power, we desire money, we desire sex, we desire pleasure, we desire all sorts of stuff.

But if you leave it alone, it's not going to do very much. But if you fertilize it, in other words, you make it grow, you feed it, you give it the right kind of environment, it's going to produce something.

And what is it going to produce? It's going to produce sin. Desire in itself is not sin. Temptation in itself is not sin. But when I feed it, it results in sin. When I fertilize it with what it needs to become something in my life, it becomes sin.

And what does sin lead to? It leads to death. In Romans chapter seven, verse eight, Paul speaks and he speaks about sin-taking opportunity. Sin-taking opportunity. Now, I know we're speaking as though sin is a person, we know sin is not a person, but we understand it better when we speak in terms that we can relate to.

Giving Sin No Opportunity

And sin just needs an opportunity. It just needs an opportunity in our lives. If you don't give it an opportunity, it won't cause damage. But give it an opportunity and it's going to grow. At our house, when we moved into the house at the porch in the front, there was a small shrub growing out of the concrete.

Right in the crack of the concrete, there was a shrub and we had to poison it to kill it. How did that shrub come to grow in the concrete? Well, it got an opportunity. The seed got a little gap. There was a crack in the concrete and in the cement and the seed got into that crack.

I don't know how, but it got an opportunity and it began to grow. And when we give sin a chance or an opportunity in our lives, it will grow and it will produce death. And so he says, sin lies at the door.

So what do I need to do? I should not give it a chance. I must not give it an opportunity. That's the first thing I need to do. Unfortunately, too many times you say, well, you know, I'll just step outside of the motor car and I'll just pet this, just rub the mane of this lion.

You know, I can handle it. I can run when it begins to look aggressive. And we play with sin. We allow things into our hearts and into our minds and into our thinking. And we say, I can handle it. We don't understand what we're playing with.

Anger, Cain, and the Need to Settle the Heart

What should Cain have done? Let's get back to the example that we're dealing with. What should Cain have done? He should have sorted out his attitude before he faced his brother. But the moment he met his brother out there in the field and there was nobody around him, he turned around and he had fed the anger.

You see, obviously he didn't have the New Testament. What does the New Testament say he should have done? He should not have allowed the sun to set on his wrath. Now, if he had done that, the next time he saw his brother, there would not have been an issue.

There would not have been a temptation. But he was feeding and fueling his anger. And the same way we feed and fuel the sin in our lives, the evil thoughts, and then when the opportunity is there and there's nobody around, we do what we shouldn't be doing.

So sin is at the door. And what it wants to do is its desire is for you. It wants you. Sin wants you. Sin wants to control you. Sin wants to dominate you. Sin wants to be your master. Sin has no desire to help you, to bless you, to encourage you, to strengthen you.

Sin has only one agenda, and that is to control us. And Peter, and while you're in the book of James, Peter is close by, a couple of pages further on, 2 Peter chapter two and verse 19. 2 Peter chapter two, verse 19.

He's speaking about false teachers, but you'll find a principle that applies to sin also. Verse 19, while they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

Now, that's not, remember the Sunday school, we said that there are levels of interpretation. The first thing that he is speaking about here is false teachers. But you can see a certain principle which applies to sin also.

And what does it do? It promises liberty to begin with. Wasn't that what Satan said to Eve? If you just eat the tree, you'll be just like God. It makes promises. It makes promises. Oh, you'll be so wise.

You'll be so happy. You'll have such a fun time. All these promises. But then what happens? They themselves are slaves of corruption, because by whom a person is overcome, by him also he's brought into bondage.

And so instead of sin offering liberty, what it actually does is it brings enslavement and bondage. And that's exactly what we see happening in the time in which we're living. In my generation, we had the hippies.

And the time of free love, and of liberty, and of no rules. And now what we're seeing is the results of that whole mindset. And in fact, we have a society today as a result of that mindset of saying that we'll be free, which is enslaved to licentiousness, to immorality, to all of the stuff of this world.

It doesn't bring freedom. Sin doesn't, it makes all the promises. But in fact, what it's going to do is it's going to bring you into bondage. By whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.

Sin wants to control us. Sin is never happy. And again, I'm just speaking of it in personal terms. Sin is never happy just to be there in your life. You know, just to occupy some little space, somewhere like an ornament.

We all have ornaments in our houses. What do they do? Nothing, they collect dust. But they're just there. Sin is not happy just to be there in your life. It wants to have control. It wants to overcome you.

It wants to control you. It wants to dominate you. It wants to be your master. Never be fooled into believing that you can just have sin like an ornament. It can just be there in the corner of my life and it's never going to become anything more than that.

It's looking for an opportunity. Its desire is for you. It wants to control you. But what does he say? What is God's advice to Cain? You shall or must rule over it. You must rule over it. Now, that's the good news.

Christ's Power to Free Believers from Sin

I've just given you the bad news. The bad news is sin is real. Sin wants you. And sin wants to control and dominate you. But the good news is you must rule over it. Now, remember when God tells us to do something, it is a possibility.

It is something that can be done. God does not tell us to do things that are impossible. That would make God unjust and unfair and unrighteous. And God is not that way. And so when God tells us to do things, those things are doable.

There are things that are possible for us to do. And it must have been possible. And I understand we're speaking about the Old Testament. We're speaking before the cross, before the resurrection, before Jesus, and all of those things.

But the fact that God says to Cain that you should rule over it meant that it was possible for Cain within the limited means that he had to actually overcome this problem. But what did he do? He chose not to.

He chose to allow sin to control him and to dominate him. And so here's the message. As Christians, our responsibility is to rule over sin. You see, I'm concerned that there are so many Christians, never mind unbelievers, there are so many Christians who are saying, that's just the way I am.

I was born with a temper. I was born with these desires. I have this gene, I have this in my DNA. No, you must overcome it. You must rule over it. Don't allow your evil, carnal, fleshly, human nature to rule over you.

Don't allow your habits to control you. Don't allow your desires to control you. You need to rule over it. Now, God was speaking to a man, as I said, in the Old Testament, before Jesus, before the cross.

And he said, sin is lying at the door, the desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now, if that was true for Cain, that Cain could rule over the sin in his life, that he could have the victory.

If that was true for Cain, how much more is that not true for us in the New Testament? And so if Cain had no excuse when he killed his brother, then we have no excuse. We have even less excuse to say, sin made me do it.

My carnal nature made me do it. No, we can have the victory. And we go right forward to the New Testament. And you remember in Matthew 1, verse 21, the angel speaks to the parents of Jesus and says, you will call his name Jesus.

Why, what does it mean? Because he will save his people from their sins. You will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. And we've spoken about this before, but let me remind you, he does not say you will call him Jesus because he will save his people from hell.

That's what we mean when we say I'm saved today. What do we mean? You're saved. I'm saved from hell. I'm saved from the judgment of God. But his name shall be Jesus, not because he will save you from hell, but because he will save his people from their sins.

And when he says save them from their sins, it means save them out of their sins. That's what Jesus came to do. He came to set us free from the bondage of sin and of death. And yes, hell is part of the deal, but hell is simply a consequence of the real issue.

Yes, he does save us from hell, but not take us out of hell, but deal with the problem. The problem is sin. And so he will save his people from their sins. That's the wonderful thing that Jesus came to do, was to deal with the issue of sin.

And so when we as Christians are constantly find ourselves under the control and the domination of sin and sin overcoming us, instead of we overcoming sin, we're denying what Jesus came to do. Jesus came to set us free.

Jesus came to deliver us, not from the Romans or from some political system, but to deliver us from the domination and the power of sin. And Paul writes in Romans chapter six, verse 14, and he says, sin shall not have dominion over you.

Now go back to what God said to Cain. Sin lies at this door, its desire is for you. It wants to control you. But Paul says, sin will not rule over us. So what are we going to do? Are we going to allow sin to control us?

Are you going to continue to allow those thoughts, that habit, that lifestyle to control you? Or are you going to have control over it? Now, folk, I don't want you to think that I'm thinking or I'm saying that this is easy.

We're talking about a war here. The terms that God uses in speaking to Cain are terms of war. Its desire is for you. It wants to have you. It wants to consume you. But you must rule over it. And the word rule is the word that is used when a conqueror conquers another country and with force and with vigor and with rigor controls that country and keeps it in subjection to himself.

Those are the words he's using. Our control over sin does not come by mediation or by a peace talk process. Let's sit down and let's come to some kind of compromise and let's find some kind of agreement here.

The language that he is using is the language of domination. And the only way we can deal with sin is by dominating it, by putting it under and by bringing it into subjection. And so sin shall not have dominion over you.

Greater Is He Who Is in Believers

In 1 John 4, and I'm not sure where you are in the Bible now, but if you were in Peter, then 1 John 4, and in fact, John uses this term a number of times in his epistles. And let's just go back one step and let's go to 1 John chapter one.

In verse 13, he says, I write to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you have overcome the wicked one. And now in chapter four, in verse four, he says, you are of God, little children, and have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

That is something that Cain did not have. And yet it is no excuse. Cain has to get control. And yet we are in that far better position because we have someone in us, and I'm speaking to Christians. We have someone in us who is greater than the devil, who is greater than the sin, who is greater than the temptation, and who empowers us and who has come with a specific purpose, and that is to set us free from sin.

And so now it's two against one. And again, I'm speaking in personal terms. Maybe for Cain, it was one-on-one, him and the sin. But you know what? For you and me, we have an advantage because it's not just you against that issue that you're struggling with, but it's you and Jesus against that issue.

And we may say, well, you know, I'm weak. And I think that this thing is bigger than me. To speak American, it's got me beat. This thing is more than I can handle. Well, first of all, I don't believe that it is more than you can handle.

So that's what Cain said, yeah, I just had to do it. God said, no, you have to rule over it. So firstly, we are, I believe we can overcome it. And yet we understand that these issues are so deep seated and so rooted in our lives and into our thinking and so much part of us that it is almost impossible.

But you see, we leave out of the equation the fact that we have someone in us who is far greater than any issue that you are facing. Greater is he that is in us than he who is against us. Greater is he that is in us than the temptation, than the power of the sin, than the bondage.

Now, I also know that there are many Christians who are looking for an easy answer. And I need to just address this on a sidebar. Some kind of just hoping that, you know, if somebody will just pray for me and deliver me.

And I understand and I believe that there are times that God does instantly deliver people of whatever it was that they were bound by. But I also understand that this is not the way it is for everybody.

And in fact, the majority of us have to struggle with these things. And we may even find that we have this instant, wonderful, miraculous deliverance in one area in our lives and yet there are other areas in which we don't get it.

The fact is that there is not one of us here this morning who does not have to wage this war, who have to fight this battle. And John says that if we say that we are without sin, we make God a liar and the truth is not in us.

So if you've been sitting here this morning and you're saying, well, preacher, you know, this is not for me. Well, you just made God a liar because we all have a problem with sin. And the word I used is a problem.

It's a problem. And the only way we can deal with it is to fight it. But we're not fighting it alone because we have one in us who is greater than that sin. And we have he who is in us has overcome the sin.

Remember, he was tempted, the scripture says in Hebrews, in every point like as we are, yet without sin. So Jesus was able to overcome. And maybe you weren't there when we dealt with this, I think on a Sunday evening, but you know, there is, many of us think, well, you know, Jesus could not have been tempted to the same degree that I'm tempted.

You know, it was easy for him. You know, he just said, it is written and the devil left him. But that wasn't the full extent of his temptation in the wilderness. He was again tempted, remember that says the devil left him to come again at another more opportune time.

And that more opportune time was in the garden of Gethsemane. And in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus wrestles with the issue of sin. Now, the sin that he was wrestling with in Gethsemane wasn't alcohol or materialism, or it was simply doing the will of God.

And you boil down any kind of sin, it all comes down to this one issue, doing or not doing the will of God. That's all it is, that's what sin is. And Jesus wrestled and was such an issue that eventually the blood vessels on his forehead burst, but he didn't give in.

He didn't give in, he overcame. And that's why the writer to Hebrews says that you have not yet resisted to blood in striving against sin, because we just give in so easily. Sometimes the thought pops into our head and instantly we just do it.

There isn't even a struggle, we just capitulate. But Jesus overcame, and he is in us. And then John writes in the book of Revelation to these seven churches, which we're gonna be studying in the next few weeks again.

Overcoming Sin in the Heart and Mind

And to every one of those seven churches, he says to him who overcomes, and he makes a promise. I will give you a name, I will give you a crown, I will do this, I will do that, to him who overcomes. In fact, we need to be overcomers.

Now, we use that term and people say, well, you know, I wanna be an overcomer. I want to overcome the devil. I want to overcome the world. You need to begin to overcome the issues in your own heart and your own mind.

That's where the battle begins. How are you going to overcome the devil if you can't even overcome the sin in your life? I'm amazed by these Christians who want to fight spiritual war and go do battle in the heavenlies and fight the devil and fight these demons when they haven't even dealt with the sin in their own lives.

If you can't win the small battles, how are you gonna win the war? We can overcome. He has come to empower us. He's come to break the power of sin. He's come to set us free. He's come to give us a new ability and place within us a new heart and a new desire.

We can overcome. Don't allow the devil and sin to win the war on the propaganda front. Many wars and a part of warfare today or has been for a long time has been the psychological part of the war. And in the Second World War, I think that this was raised to new heights when both forces, the Allied forces and the German forces had radio stations, they had printing presses that were spewing out all the propaganda, you're losing the war, we're winning.

And many times that propaganda has a profound effect on the morale and the ability of the opposing force to fight the battle and to win or to lose. It's just part of warfare today. Suppose it's always been.

And you know, part of the spiritual war that we fight within our own hearts and our own minds is a propaganda war. And unfortunately, many of us believe the propaganda of the devil and the propaganda of sin that tells us that we can't win, that we can't get the victory, that we're losers.

Don't believe the devil's propaganda. Don't believe sin's lies. Believe the word of God, when it says that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. That greater is he that is in us than he that is against us or he that is in the world.

That Jesus came to set us free and that he has broken the power of the devil, that he's broken the power of sin within our lives. Don't lose the war even before you've begun to fight it because you believe the lies of the enemy.

Believe the word of God. We can win. And I don't care how long that thing has controlled you. I don't care how long it's been an issue in your life. It may have been 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.

You can win. You can overcome it. You can be more than a conqueror. And you can stand before him on that day with those who have overcome to him who overcomes. Sin is lying at your door and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.