God’s Abel & the Devil’s Cain | 1 John 3:10-12

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Okay, let's go ahead and get started. I want to jump right in here.

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There's a lot of really, really important ground to cover. I'll start off by where we left off previously on the last

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Lord's Day. We left off with John the

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Apostle expounding for us all of these contrasts, right?

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All of these different contrasts. Black and white, good and evil, light and darkness,

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God and devil, Cain and Abel contrasts. And recall too that verses 9 through 10 in 1

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John chapter 3 and the prior ones as well are indicatives which describe for us what

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God's people, his seed, manifest themselves to be. As well as the devil and his people, his seed, likewise manifest themselves to be like.

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And this is all of this is illustrated by the object lessons of Cain and Abel in particular as an example.

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And I'll say that I was actually very surprised by how much depth and substance there is to these brothers,

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Cain and Abel, and their lives. Even though there's not a whole lot that the

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Bible says about them explicitly, but there's just a lot of important things there in their lives that are important for us to know.

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And so there was so much depth that this overflowing cup might runneth over to another sermon.

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Okay, so bear with me here because there's a lot of good stuff and I think you'll be blessed by it.

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So I want to turn our attention to 1 John chapter 3 starting in verse 10. And God's word says, "...by

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this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested, discerned, made evident.

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Everyone without exception who does not do righteousness is not of God."

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Remember that that's descriptive. "...as well as the one who does not love his brother.

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For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another."

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So we also saw that the devil and his seed hate and oppose

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God and his seed. "...and all that is true, good, and beautiful, pure, lovely, and excellent."

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So and it's no, the Bible makes no mistake about why this is, right?

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The devil is a lying murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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I mean, you couldn't be any clearer than that. In the words of our Savior, how he puts it, the devil is the first murderer just like Cain is.

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"...and the one who does sin does not consequently and cannot do righteousness and is of the devil."

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Just like Cain was. And by contrast, the one who does righteousness is righteous.

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Like verse 7 earlier says, "...he does not sin and cannot sin."

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Cannot sin because he has been born of God and because his seed abides in him from verse 9.

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And I did want to mention this because I forgot to. Speaking of righteousness and all of those things, when

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I was preaching on verse 7, I primarily defined righteousness as God's goodness.

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God's goodness because God alone is truly righteous and because true righteousness comes from God.

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However, I forgot to mention that there are, or remind us really, that there are different kinds of righteousnesses in the

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Bible and all of those different righteousness actually tell the gospel story of redemption.

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And I don't have time to get into this today, but to look more into this, you can check out the sermon

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I preached a couple years ago called The Gospel According to Righteousnesses based on 1st

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John chapter 2 verse 1. So that being said, we also understand that love, that true love,

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God's love is righteous because it is defined and conditioned by the law and logos of God, right?

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True love, God's love is righteous because it is defined and conditioned by the law and the logos of God, the law and word of God.

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This is likewise why there is no such thing as lawless love, no such thing as love without repentance because God's love is not unjust and God is love, right?

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And his love, like his law and like himself, is holy, just, righteous, and good.

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It's all good. And so contrary to popular belief and, you know, people like that liberal buffoon

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Gary Wills that I quoted and the He Gets Us movement, all these liberal, you know,

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LGBTQ +, whatever ABC people say, the reality is that God's love is the opposite of what they tend to say.

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God's love is discriminating. It is selective. It is exclusive.

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Because God's love hates sin and evil and it hates unrepentant, wicked sinners like Cain.

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God doesn't love Cain just like God loves

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Jacob but hates Esau. And that to some people can't stand that. They can't stand the thought of God hating someone.

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But that's what the Bible clearly teaches. It's not even something that you have to interpret like I mentioned a few weeks ago.

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Because God is good, God loves the wicked. God hates the wicked and the unrepentant sinners who don't believe in him.

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So, and the reality is that, yes,

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God loves sinners and all of us are evil, wretched sinners.

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But God's love always brings, always, always without fail, brings regeneration and repentance.

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It brings regeneration and repentance and sanctification and all of Christ's benefits, all of the other benefits that we get from being united to Christ by faith alone.

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That is true love. That is God's love that is defined and conditioned by God's righteousness, goodness, and law.

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Right? So we can't lose sight of that because the world has a totally perverted notion of what love is.

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And that's not real love. God's love and saving grace condition us and conform us to the image of his son.

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And likewise, away from sin, towards righteousness, towards holiness, towards his son, and away from sin, away from the devil, the world, and the flesh, and from our fallen, wretched old man.

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Right? So love and righteousness and law and truth and God and his glory all go hand in hand.

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Those are never out of harmony with each other because God is perfect. And this is why liberal, again, these liberal pro -LGT movements like he gets us, they present a false gospel of this radical love, quote, unquote, without any mention whatsoever of repentance or holiness or any warning of God's judgment.

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It's like John the Baptist said, when he saw many of the

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Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, and he told them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.

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Therefore, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Amen. Repentance.

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That's a fundamental component of the preaching of Christ and the apostles.

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It's not the gospel per se, but it is how we must respond to the gospel, to the preaching of the gospel.

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And you'll never hear these guys say that. These liberals say that. It contradicts what they're, what they, the

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God that they preach. And speaking of, you know, this, this, this false stuff,

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I did want to clarify something I mentioned when I read from the, the he gets us website.

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They said there's just, on top of bad theology, there's bad grammar there. So bear, bear with me.

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I read a quote that said, we're challenging our own assumptions and preconceived notions about who he is, that Jesus is, and creating space to doubt question and learn from the authentic Jesus.

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Now, this was very sloppy and poorly written because you can take that to mean, oh, they mean that they're creating space to doubt question and learn from Jesus.

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So doubt him, question him and learn from him at the same time. But then

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I realized it could actually be taken another way that they're creating space to doubt and question in general, and also to learn from the authentic Jesus.

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But, you know, this is, this is just, it's bad theology. It's bad grammar. It doesn't excuse any of what they say.

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It doesn't let them off the hook by any means. And so it's kind of like Luther and the

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Romans used to say, if you speak ambiguously, let your words be used against you.

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So there's that. So anyway, now let's turn to the letter of, the pastoral letter of Titus chapter 2.

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Cover some really, some important, an important correlated passage here.

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In Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 11, God's word says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.

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And here I have to stop right there for a minute. There, this is kind of a, this is actually a mistranslation, unfortunately from the

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LSB. It doesn't say bringing salvation to all men, but rather for the saving grace of God has appeared to all men, has appeared to all men, has appeared to all men, to all kinds of men, which is what the passage is getting at.

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It's all kinds of men by specifically by the preaching of the gospel message, instructing us that, so God's saving grace instructs us that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age as children of God with his seed and anointing abiding in us.

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So in the same way that God's love, it's the same as God's love. God's grace is the same instructs us to deny sin, ungodliness, worldly desires, and live sensibly, righteously, and godly verse 13, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of our, of the glory of our great

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God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us for what exactly that he might redeem us from all lawlessness, from all lawlessness, sin.

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Remember what is sin? Sin is lawlessness and purify, purge, cleanse, conform, condition for himself a people for his own possession that are zealous for good works and for doing righteousness.

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Like 1st John says, these things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority.

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Let no one disregard you, whether they come from within or without the church, whether it's from anti -church movement, you know, that's why we have the full authority of God's word to renounce and to call out and to condemn these false movements like he gets us and these liberal movements.

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They are completely at odds with God's word. So there's a, there's an, there's an important takeaway here and that is do not let the world, the flesh, the devil, or even misguided, misled, or false

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Christians define what love is for you or anything else for that matter.

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Don't let them define love or anything else for you because they will twist things to their own destruction, just like the word warns us about even here.

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Do not let the enemy, do not let the enemy define the terms for you.

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That's what the devil tried to do to Eve. He said, wait a minute, wait a minute. God didn't really say that, did he?

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God didn't say you, you shall not eat. He said, that's not what he said. You'll, you'll be like God if you eat it and so on.

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So that is very important to understand. Now, God has given us his spirit and his saving grace and sanctifying means of grace and of deliverance to both deal with our sin now, after we are saved, and do righteousness to practice, live, believe, speak, and behave righteously, beginning with the law and gospel.

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That's the foundation of all that we are and do. And like I've preached many occasions before, the six

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S's of God's deliverance, God's means of deliverance. Scripture, sound doctrine, the sacraments, the baptism in the

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Lord's Supper, self -awareness and self -denial, sage counsel, and the last one being spiritual warfare.

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And we also live righteously and avoid sin like Abel and deal with it in part by the light that marks true believers, which is what the apostle

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John has been showing us in his letter. It is the lifestyle or in the

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Greek, the peripateo, the habits, our habits that we've been seeing all along and that John has been cataloging and summarizing for us, which

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I've often referred to as the acronym CAWFS, CAWFS, C -A -W -F -S, right?

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C being confession of sin, confession of sin, which take note of that one, especially it'll become very relevant later on when we deal with Cain and Abel.

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A is for abstaining from sin and denying our flesh.

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W is for walking in the light of God's anointing and truth. F is for fellowshipping with God and his people, his church, and S is striving for obedience.

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Now, so that with all that groundwork covered, now we see in the following verses, which give us specific examples of a child of God and of the devil as object lessons.

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They're object lessons or illustrations. So if you turn with me there to 1st

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John chapter 3 verse 11, we will find that God's word says, for this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, for example, who was of the evil one who belonged to his father, the devil, and slew his brother

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Abel, murdered him. And for what reason did he slay him?

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Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous, right?

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So this is a very, very powerful object lesson that God has given us here.

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Now, object lessons in the Bible are objects that teach us important, valuable lessons of different kinds.

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That's really all object lessons are. And the objects in this case are the lives and examples of Cain and Abel, of what not to do and what to do, who the example we should follow and the example we should not follow.

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That's what they illustrate for us to live, like Titus says, to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age like Abel did.

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Right. And not do what Cain did by denying ungodliness and worldly lusts and desires.

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Right. So that we so that we not go the way of Cain, of evil and the devil, the world, the flesh, the devil, and instead follow

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Abel's example of faith, faithfulness and godliness. Proverbs 28, 18 similarly says, he who walks, he who walks, he who lives blamelessly, uprightly, straightly will be saved.

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But he who is crooked, double dealing, deceitful, hypocritical, will fall, will fall all at once.

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And this is a really fascinating little nugget

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I discovered in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the

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Old Testament. This verse uses the word for crooked.

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The word for crooked is scoliosis, scoliosis, which you might know comes from where we get our word scoliosis, where you have a crooked back.

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I have a very personal familiarity with that condition, but not fun.

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But that's the same word crooked, scoliotic. And so, okay, now we see very clearly what

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John says about Cain and Abel. What actually happened between them? What actually happened between Cain and Abel?

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And why were Cain's deeds evil and Abel's righteous, right?

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Why is, why is Abel, God's and the devil's and Cain, the devil's

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Cain? Turn with me now to chapter four of Genesis. Genesis chapter four, in the beginning, the beginning of Genesis chapter four, which is the beginning,

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Genesis. In chapter four of Genesis, God's word says, now the man,

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Adam, knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.

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And she said, I have, I have gotten a man with the help of Yahweh. I have begotten a man with the help of Yahweh.

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And again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of flocks of sheep and livestock, but Cain was a cultivator of the ground.

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He was a farmer. So it happened in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to Yahweh of the fruit of the ground.

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Abel on his part also brought of the first of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

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And Yahweh had regard for Abel and for his offering. But for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

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So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then Yahweh said to Cain, why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen?

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If you do well, if you do righteousness, in other words, will not your countenance be lifted up?

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And if you do not do well, if you do sin, sin lies at the door.

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And its desire is for you, but you must rule over it, crucify it, put it to death, mortify it.

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Like the Bible repeatedly tells us. Then Cain spoke to his brother, spoke to Abel, his brother.

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And it happened when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

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Then Yahweh said to Cain, where's Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know.

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Am I my brother's keeper? Those famous words. And he said, what have you done?

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The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. And now cursed are you from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

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Wow, so this is a very striking, disturbing passage.

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It's a recounting of the first murder here on earth. But before we really wrestle with what's going on with Cain and Abel, we must first understand something about the nature of sin and how it operates in our human nature.

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Not just in reprobate unbelievers like Cain, but in even in us who are born again believers.

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And to which I would also encourage you and remind you again to go back and listen to the series on knowing your enemy and on the flesh to learn more about that.

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But I want to touch on a few things here specifically based on this passage. Look with me at God's admonition to Cain in verse seven,

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OK? God tells

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Cain, if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

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And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door and it's desirous for you, but you must rule over it.

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So. Just as a sort of a side note here, this is a fascinating, this is a fantastic parenting lesson.

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Notice what God does to Cain. God did not compare Cain to Abel.

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He did not compare Cain to Abel, which often causes jealousy, right? Many of us have a personal experience with that or have made the mistake of doing that, but it's often not good to compare in those ways.

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Nor did God show partiality to either one in any way. He showed no partiality whatsoever.

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But instead, he held both Cain and Abel to the same standard, the same exact standard and rewarded the one and punished the other accordingly and appropriately.

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These are, you could, I could write a whole book about parenting just from this verse. It is fascinating how the

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Lord shows us these things. How he dealt with, he dealt with Cain the right way.

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And yet, sadly, Cain was not at all grateful or appreciative of that.

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But sin here is personified. It's personified as if sin were a living person.

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And it's a literary device and it's personified as insidious, insidious, which

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I've preached on before as well, like because the devil is also this way. Gradual means gradual sin is insidious and gradual and subtle.

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It seeks to entrap and ensnare us deceitfully to dominate us, to put us in bondage.

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And sin is always restless. It's always restless and never satisfied, always wants more of our lives.

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And constantly desiring to overpower and dominate us. That's its desire.

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Its desire is for you, even if it's inch by inch, little by little, gradually, gradually.

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It's not always, you know, a sudden thing.

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And in a lot of cases, and maybe even most of the time, it's gradual. And it's like you find in men like Steve Lawson, who publicly fail, that didn't happen overnight.

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Those things don't happen overnight, usually. But especially if we don't keep sin in check and put it to death, like the

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Bible repeatedly tells us to. Sin doesn't like to stay put.

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It doesn't like to stay still. And the more ground it gains over us, the more, the progressively worse it becomes.

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The more it becomes, the worse it becomes. The more it kills us, in order to master us completely in its bondage of death, until it kills us.

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Literally kills us. Even as believers, we're not exempt from this as believers.

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We still carry around and live with our flesh, which is primarily our physical bodies.

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Not redeemed yet, right? So we still have to deal with this reality. Now, that said, look at Cain's sin progression.

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Look at his sin progression with me here. This reveals his walk, right?

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Like in verse 2. And again, in verse 2, which says,

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Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a cultivator of the ground. So it happened in the that Cain brought an offering to Yahweh of the fruit of the ground.

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Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of the fat portions. And Yahweh had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.

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So what happened? Cain became not just angry, but very angry.

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And his countenance fell. So you already see that even before, even before he was angry, he already messed up.

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Cain had offered the wrong sacrifice, right? Cain had offered the wrong sacrifice.

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And notice the difference between Cain and Abel's sacrifice here.

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Cain did not offer up the firstborn and the fat portions like Abel did.

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Abel, because Abel put God first and prioritized him in his life and therefore gave

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God his very best, he gave him his fat portions and the firstborn, which is considered the choicest and the best of your animals and your produce and everything.

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So Abel gave God his best, but Cain, on the other hand, gave

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God his leftovers. Right. He gave him his leftovers. He gave him an afterthought like here,

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God, here's what's, you know, here's what's left. And so he did not offer up the first fruits of his labor and produce.

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He was supposed to offer up the first fruits of his labor and his produce like Cain did.

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Now, turn with me here to Proverbs chapter 3, where we see this really come to light.

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Proverbs chapter 3, as we practice the analogy of Scripture and compare

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Scripture with Scripture to understand what Scripture itself teaches and the doctrines that it teaches us.

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In Proverbs chapter 3, and I'll start in verse 9, but take note that this is the same chapter in verse 5 that says, trust in the

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Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.

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Right. Put him first. So in verse 9, honor, therefore,

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Yahweh from your wealth and from the what the last, the first of all your produce.

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So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will burst with new wine.

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My son, do not reject the discipline of Yahweh or loathe his reproof for whom

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Yahweh loves. He reproves and disciplines even as a father reproves a son in whom he delights.

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Right. And this same principle is repeated in Hebrews in the New Testament. God disciplines us and sometimes he has to whoop us into shape.

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Right. Because we go astray. And that's what

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God was doing to Cain. He was loving him and showing him the way. Hey, Cain, you messed up.

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But look, do it right. You can do it right. Do it right and you will be blessed.

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Your countenance will be lifted up and things will go well with you if you do things my way, not your way.

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Right. So that's what

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Cain should have done. Now, some also claim that Cain, he failed to provide a blood sacrifice like Abel did because Abel offered an animal.

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He sacrificed an animal and offered the fat portion and the first born animal.

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But Cain, on the other hand, he didn't sacrifice an animal. He just offered up his his produce.

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Now, this may also be a problem, perhaps, because as we know, the analogy of Scripture teaches us that without the shedding of blood, there is no what?

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There is no forgiveness of sins. Right. There has to be shedding of blood in order to forgive for God to forgive sin.

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Hebrews 9 .22 and Leviticus 17 .11. But keep in mind, however, that this this these events were all took place before the ceremonial laws of Moses and sacrificial laws of Moses were enacted and instituted.

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OK, so we just have to be careful with how we apply these laws. But clearly,

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God had instructed them to offer sacrifice because God said, hey, you didn't do it right.

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Do it right and you will be blessed. So, however, even if Cain had brought an animal sacrifice like his brother and even if it was the first born like his brother, he still lacked one thing, one all important thing, the most basic, most important, most fundamental thing of all.

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What might that be? What might that be? That one thing that Cain lacked?

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And it's not as clear in Genesis, but as we know, the progressive revelation of God and how later revelation explains and expounds and reveals to us earlier revelation like this one, we see that by faith,

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Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain in Hebrews 11, verse four, by faith,

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Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain. And that, by contrast, shows us that Cain did not offer up his sacrifices by faith.

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And that simply worked itself out in the fact that he gave an afterthought. It wasn't the first fruit and it wasn't the best.

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And it was just an afterthought because Cain did not have faith in God.

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He did not live by faith and therefore was not just and not righteous.

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The just shall live by faith. Faith always has to come first.

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And everybody, so many false gospels and heretics and people knocking at your door, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, all these people will tell you that faith is not all you need.

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You need to have something else. You need to have works. You need to have sacraments. You need to have this, that, and the other.

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Circumcision, right? Like Paul told the Judaizers, he condemned them just because they added one thing, and that was circumcision to faith.

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We cannot add anything to faith, but without faith, you have nothing like Cain.

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You have nothing. Even if you go through the motions like the

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Pharisees did, and those are often the worst kinds of people, the ones who do things hypocritically but lack faith, true faith.

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So notice that too, how 1

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John, back in 1 John chapter 3 verse 12, it points out Cain's motive for murder.

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Cain's motive for murder was blind, baseless jealousy, simply because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

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So Cain was crooked. He had a crooked life.

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He was a crooked guy. He had a bent toward sin and a lust for evil.

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He was a crook. That's an interesting word, by the way. Crook basically means a swindler in American English.

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It also, in a figurative sense, crooked of dishonest, you know, crooked in conduct.

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It describes people like Cain perfectly, and it also refers to dishonest schemes and tricks from the

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Middle Ages in reference specifically to the wiles of the devil. So it's like, man, that's how fitting, how sad and how fitting that the word applies to Cain.

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Beloved, don't let that word apply to you. All right. Don't be crooked. Don't be a crook.

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Be straight and walk the straight path. The straight and narrow by faith alone.

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Cain then was a jealous hater. He was a hater, a spiteful murderer, hated his own brother, killed his own brother, walked crooked paths, even though it gets worse.

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It's worst of all. Look at what he did. Look at what happens with Cain. God had specifically disciplined him the right way.

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He told him the right thing. He disciplined him in a loving way, encouraged and instructed

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Cain to learn from his error and showed him how to make things right so that he could also be blessed by God and walk with him.

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He said, hey, just do what's right. Do well. Do righteousness.

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And why are you angry, Cain? Why are you angry?

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And why is your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

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And if you do not do well, sin is lying at the door and its desires for you. But you must rule over it.

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So God, like a loving father, disciplined Cain. And yet what does Cain do? This is what's so perverse about human nature manifesting itself in the object lesson of Cain.

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Cain's response to God's admonition was to murder his brother.

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Instead, he responded to God by murdering his brother.

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He did the exact opposite. And it gets even worse. It gets even worse.

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No wonder John the Apostle marks Cain. You know, that's the word pun there because God marked

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Cain. So that if anybody tried to kill him, they would be avenged sevenfold.

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His death would be avenged sevenfold. But now in the New Testament, God's word in 1

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John marks Cain as one who is of the evil one. He belongs to the devil.

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He's of the devil. This guy is the devil's spawn. His lying, murderous, imposterous, crooked father, the devil, just like his daddy.

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This is why 1 John 3 .12 says, in part, that Cain's deeds were evil.

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The problem is not that he did one bad thing. He didn't just mess up one time.

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There's a whole chain of events here. It wasn't just one pecadillo, like R .C. Sproul used to say.

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You know, these little pecadillos, we tend to trivialize our sin a lot, right? We tend to trivialize sin, like these little sins.

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No, it wasn't a little sin. Cain was totally screwed up, totally screwed up.

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The problem with Cain is revealed in the entire pattern, the entire peripateo, the entire way of Cain's life, his walk, his disposition, his lifestyle of sin, his choices, beginning, all beginning with his lack of faith.

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And from then, it's a domino effect, right? It just gets worse and compounds. He was a hater and a murderer rather than a lover and repenter.

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Now, that's not a word, but it rings nicely, right? He was not, he was a murderer and a hater rather than a lover and a repenter of his sin.

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He didn't repent. He was not penitent. But like I said, it did not, obviously it didn't start with,

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Cain didn't start with murdering his brother in cold blood. It was a process.

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It was a gradual progression or rather digression towards worse sin.

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And this is exactly what 1 John teaches us, how we manifest, how the children of God and of the devil are manifested.

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They're visible and evident because of their life. What do they do? What do they say? What do they profess?

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What do they confess? How do they carry themselves, right?

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And murdering Abel was merely the fruit of Cain's root sin.

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It was the outflow, the consequence, the outworking of Cain's root sin, internal sin.

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And I love the Puritans about, because the Puritans are so good with this. They had their finger on the issue here because we have to understand this dynamic of root sins and fruit sins.

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A lot of times we try to deal with the surface and not with the root cause of our sin.

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Turn with me to James chapter 1 verse 13 as we find out just what that looks like.

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In James chapter 1 verse 13,

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God's word says, Let no one say when he is tempted,

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Cain included, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone to sin.

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But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by what?

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His own lust. His own lust. Then when lust has conceived, has given birth, it gives birth to sin.

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It conceives and then it gives birth to sin. And when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death.

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It brings forth murder. It brings forth murder.

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That's what happened with Cain. This is illustrating and describing for us the process of how sin gradually, progressively worsens us.

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It makes us worse when we don't repent and don't believe in God and don't trust his gospel and his forgiveness and his means of grace.

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Cain did none of that and therefore got worse and worse and worse. And this is fascinating because there's a passage in Milton's Paradise Lost that very vividly brings this passage to life as well.

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This is a quote by a sermon from Dean Plumter. In the marvelous allegory of sin and death in Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan represents intellect and will opposed to God.

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Sin as its offering, I'm sorry, as its offspring, self -generated, self -generated.

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It springs out of the devil's mind in the novel, in the poem.

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And death as the fruit of the union of mind and will with sin.

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Just gives you the creeps. In the incestuous union of sin and death that follows and then its horrid progeny,

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Milton seems to have sought to shadow forth the shame and foulness and misery in which even the fairest forms of sin finally issue.

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The fruit that they finally bear and that is death. And Milton took an example from Greek mythology because one of the goddesses,

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I think it's Aphrodite, is born out of Zeus's head.

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And he uses that to personify, to illustrate this very passage. It's a very graphic illustration of exactly what

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Cain has done and did. That is the root sin.

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It's perverted desires, lust. It is wicked internal desires and our will, our disposition that is against wanting what

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God wants, but rather what we want instead. Cain knew better and Cain had no excuse.

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Cain knew better. God had just told him what to do, even though he already knew what to do.

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He had just told him what to do. Cain had no excuse. And the reality is that none of us do.

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None of us do either. Because we're all guilty sinners. You know, we can all point the finger at Cain and say, that guy was a wretched, heathen, hellion, rank murderer.

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But beware, beware of your own self because none of us are that far removed from Cain.

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As hideous and wicked a sinful murderer he was. Because the apostle John later confronts us with the reality that everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

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Just like Cain was. Right? And you know, you know, you have no excuse that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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Right? 1st John 3 .15. That is the brutal reality of our sinful nature.

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All of us are born this way. Fallen, hating, sinners and murderers at heart.

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That's the root sin. Cain murdered his brother because he hated him first. And God is holy.

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God is holy. Just because you don't physically murder somebody doesn't mean that you're not guilty of murder.

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Just like you lusting after somebody is adultery at heart. Like Jesus said, even if you don't physically commit adultery, you're still just as vile as the person who does it.

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So, but thanks be to God. Thanks be to God for his regenerating, conditioning, gracious love that restores our relationship to him by granting us repentance.

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Repentance. That blessed change of mind and of conviction.

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Internal. Repentance deals with our root sin.

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It's unbelief. That was Cain's root sin ultimately. It all stems from unbelief.

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And by grace alone, through faith alone, in his seed alone, none other than Jesus Christ, the righteous, and conforms all of us to all of him.

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To all of him. His love is a sanctifying love. Amen.

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I'm not as bad as I used to be. Ain't that true for y 'all? I was a wretched sinner before I was saved.

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I was a wretched sinner. And yeah, maybe I didn't do a bunch of bad stuff or like, like maybe more prodigal people do, but I was still just as bad and filthy wicked on the inside.

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And that, of course, we still sin. That doesn't mean we don't sin anymore. We still sin.

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But by God's grace, we are not as bad as we used to be. And we are, by God's grace, getting better and better because his, he's, he is, is he not powerful to save and preserve us and sanctify us?

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Is God not powerful enough to do that? And he promises us those blessings in his son.

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So the, the, the, what

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Cain should have done is that we, this is what we all need to do.

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We must first know ourselves. We must know ourselves and our sin truly and see ourselves as the wretched sinners that we truly are.

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And that God sees us as apart from his grace alone. We were all children of wrath, just like Ephesians says, right?

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Several other Romans three, so on. And we must know

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God truly and what he has truly done for us. Not like these perverted false gospels that say, well,

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God loves, God loves LGBT. God loves homosexuals and transsexuals and whatever. He, he loves everybody.

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So, but wait a minute. No, he doesn't. First of all, he doesn't love everybody.

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You're contradicting the words. You're contradicting Christ himself and his word.

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But not only that God's love changes us and conforms us to righteousness.

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It's not some, it's not some promiscuous love that just, oh yeah, I love you.

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And you know, I just, as you are, it's like, no, God has an end in mind.

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He wants us to look like his son. And that's what he is purpose to eat.

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That's what he has purpose to do and will do all through by grace through faith.

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So as we start to close out here, beloved, we can all, we can all take great comfort in knowing, knowing truly that all these things were written for us, for our benefit, for our instruction, both the good and the bad and the ugly, as ugly as the devil and Cain are.

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They are written for our benefit. Turn with me to first Corinthians chapter 10.

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As we close out with this passage, first Corinthians chapter 10, such an amazing passage, just an amazing illustration of God's love for us.

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First Corinthians chapter 10, starting in verse six, I'm sorry, verse five. Nevertheless, with most of them, the

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Israelites who were led by Moses out of Egypt, God was not well pleased.

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Okay, so does God love everybody? It just says most of them God was not well pleased with just as he wasn't pleased with Cain for they were struck down in the wilderness, struck down even.

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Now these things happened. Why? As examples for us, as object lessons, illustrations so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.

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Amen. Continue on to verse 11. This is so important that he repeats the same thing.

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Now these, and I encourage you to look at this whole chapter. Now these things happen to them as an example.

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He's given all kinds of examples of wicked and perverse sinners and men as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have arrived.

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Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.

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Take heed lest ye fall. No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to all men.

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But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. But with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, just like he provided to Cain.

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He told him what he needed to do so that you will be able to endure it and to be preserved to the end and be saved to the end.

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Amen. God loved us so much that he thought all of this through and predestined it beforehand so that these things happen so that we would be benefited by these examples, these negative examples and positive examples.

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Such an amazing love that God has for us, beloved. That is something to meditate on for the rest of our lives.

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I love how and what he has done for us, what he has done for us even more directly, like the hymn says, you rose the grave and death are conquered.

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You broke my bonds of sin and shame, broke them completely through his precious son, his perfect life and death on the cross for us.

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Amen. Let us, beloved, now bow our heads with a word of prayer. Our dear precious heavenly father, we thank you so much,

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Lord, for your grace and your mercy and for writing these things down for us, father

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God, as object lessons and examples for us to learn and to be blessed by and edified by and as warnings, father, so that we don't fall in the same errors as these sinners, these wicked sinners did,

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Lord. Help us, Lord, to grow in the knowledge and grace of our Lord and savior, your seed,

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Jesus Christ, your precious son. Help us, father, to grow in your means of grace, to be well pleasing in your sight, to be a soothing aroma that is a living sacrifice, father

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God, wholly committed to you, father

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God, in all that we do, Lord, not that we have to do something drastic and something crazy, but just simply to live faithfully, quiet and peaceable lives in humble obedience to the truth of your precious words, father.

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We thank you, Lord, for your blessings. Give us faith, Lord. Help us to increase our faith and to continue more and more to grow in holiness and in righteousness, father, and less and less and more and more, conversely, to die to sin and to unrighteousness,

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Lord. Help us to crucify our sin and our flesh, and we thank you, father God, in Jesus' mighty name, we pray.

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Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcast, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.