The Blood that Speaks Better

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 4:8-15

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Well we continue on in Genesis chapter 4 this morning with verses 8 through 15 and we have to keep in mind the things that we discussed and considered last week in the first seven verses.
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Of course, as we move out of chapter 3 into chapter 4, we're seeing the outworking of the fall, the effects of the fall, the disruption of the harmony that humans had between God.
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Humans had with each other and humans had with creation. All of that is thrown into disarray and we see that working out in the logic of the seed of the serpent opposing the promised seed.
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The lineage of God and the sons of God and the lineage of the children of the devil.
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We see that as soon as the first generation after Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel. This is the outworking of salvation history.
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This is the outworking of God's redemptive plan and therefore we expect to see God's promise, the promise of his salvation and we will see that this morning in verses 8 through 15.
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We're going to look at that in three parts. First we want to see the way that Cain kills the keeper, the killing of the keeper in verses 8 and 9.
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Then we see God's curse upon Cain in verses 10 through 12 and then lastly the mark of mercy in verses 13 through 15.
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So first killing the keeper and as we consider this we do keep in mind our verses from last week.
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The way that Adam and Eve raised their sons. The fact that Cain and Abel knew that they had to come and offer a sacrifice to the
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Lord because that's how they were raised. They were raised outside of Eden doing family worship, bringing sacrifices unto
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God. We intimated that perhaps this is why Abel became a keeper of the sheep. He became a shepherd.
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He raised the very animals that would be part of the sacrificial offerings to God. Cain, it would seem, took matters into his own hands.
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Cain grew up worshipping God, sacrificing to God, being taught by his mother and his father the ways of God, the will of God, the result of their disobedience to God, the promise that God made, the mercy that God showed, the patience that God exhibited.
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He would have been catechized day by day and night by night. Adam and Eve would have been fulfilling, though it had not been commanded yet,
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Deuteronomy 6. In the time that they rose, in the time they laid down, in the going of the way, they would have instructed their boys, their sons, in the ways of God so that they could avoid the tragic mistake they had made, that they would find
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God's favor and blessing as he showed them glimmers of grace in the midst of now a crooked and depraved world.
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Cain could have grown up saying what many in our ranks could say. All these I've known from my youth. He had heard of the mighty, deceitful serpent who cast doubt on the goodness of the
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Creator and cost Adam and Eve their place in paradise, cost them their peace and their conscience, cost them their harmony with God and the communion that they had once enjoyed with him.
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From the lips of his own parents, Cain would have heard about the rebellion and the misery of sin and the judgment of God.
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He would have heard them reminisce about how good they had had it, and then the mercy that God poured out when he spared them, how
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God provided a sacrificial covering over their guilty, shameful flesh, a blood sacrifice, the very sacrifice that Abel, only moments before our verses here before us, had offered to God.
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That lamb that was slain and laid down upon the altar, only moments before, Cain brought the offering of the ground.
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Abel brought a blood offering, a blood covering, a guilt offering, a sin offering.
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Cain's was bloodless, self -willed. He took the fruit from the ground with almost no regard.
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He thought, if I can produce it, it's good enough for God. God should start countenancing my labors, my activity, and not that of my brother's.
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Why should I have to trade with him, barter with him to offer a sacrifice? And as we considered last week,
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Cain's sacrifice was not regarded by God. Then we see, as we're now being introduced to the effects of sin, the consequences of sin in creation and in humanity, we're also being introduced to the character of God.
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How much do we know about God from the first two chapters of Genesis? We know much of the power and might of his attributes, much of his omniscience, much of his omnipotence.
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How much do we know of his goodness in Genesis 1 and 2? A lot, right?
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He plants them in the Garden of Eden, gives them everything that they need, and then more so.
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As an artist, he gives them not just, you know, he doesn't run it like a communist, you know, bureaucracy.
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You have one kind of fruit, one type of tree, one type of work to do.
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It's not all gray, right? God gives this explosive variety, every kind of tree, every kind of fruit, all of the joys and the beauty that he created around them.
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We know something of his goodness from that, something of his wisdom in the way he ordained a tree that was to be set apart, a tree of life being set apart from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a sacramental tree, as we considered in our time then.
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How much do we know about God's long -suffering patience? How much do we know of God's mercy in Genesis 1 and 2?
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After the fall, we begin to understand more about our God, more about the nature of his mercy, more about the nature of his compassion, more about how he's not only holy, but he's loving.
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In shocking, almost scandalous ways, he's long -suffering. We're beginning to see that here.
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Notice, as we considered this last week, Cain has brought worship that doesn't meet the mark.
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Cain has brought a sacrifice that is not pleasing to the Lord. And the Lord doesn't blot him out, like he does with Nadab and Abihu for bringing strange fire.
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He takes that stained worship and that stained worshiper, and he actually shepherds him.
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He actually condescends to reason with him. Cain, if you do well, will you not be accepted?
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He's essentially saying, Cain, you can't come to me this way. You need a blood cover. You must do what you've always done.
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You must come to me through the Lamb. That's the only way you can come to me. There's no other way but the Lamb. There's no other way but the sacrifice that I have appointed.
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And he's warning Cain. Why is he warning Cain? Out of compassion, out of a love, even for this man's resentful and warped heart.
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Behold, he's warning him. Behold, sin is crouching at the door. You must rule over it. Don't let it rule over you.
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Don't let it snatch you away from the way that you know is right. Don't let it ruin and make a travesty of your conscience.
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Isn't this a picture of God's compassion and patience? We're understanding more and more about the nature of God as a result of his dealing with sin and sinners.
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And the shock, really, of verses 1 -7 is that the Lord had, on the face of it, less concern for the travesty that was made by unacceptable worship and more concern for the state of Cain's heart.
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And that's not to say that the Lord is not jealously guard. Just to say that here, at the very beginning of Scripture, God condescends to give us a picture of his compassion.
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And of his long -suffering patience. And so he speaks to Cain. Even though he sees and discerns in the midst of Cain's mind and thoughts and heart this brooding desire, this hatred toward his brother, a plot to kill
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Abel. And yet God speaks to him lovingly. He gives him the chance. He gives him a pang of conscience, perhaps.
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He calls him to turn from his bitterness. To rule over the sin that's welling up within him.
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To repent. And still, despite that mercy and long -suffering patience of God, Cain pulls away and he plots murder.
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This very scene must play out hundreds of thousands of times each moment. Don't you think? Throughout the world.
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Hundreds of thousands of times in a moment. God exercising patience, giving that pain of conscience.
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Causing people to slow down in their tracks, to be confronted with the gravity of a decision they've just made. Or a plan they're plotting in their heart.
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Don't you think that this is the case still, always? Men love darkness rather than light, the scriptures say.
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Their hearts only think evil continually. Their hearts are desperately wicked, Jeremiah 17 said.
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Who can know it? The Lord knows it. The Lord sees the inward frame of Cain. Verse 8,
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Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field. Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and God had promised death as the wages of sin.
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That was true in the most profound sense. Yet, as we see here, the first death in this fallen world, the first physical death, was not
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Adam's and it was not Eve's. It was Abel's. The first death in the fallen world of death was a murder.
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And this speaks volumes to the disruption of sin. In terms of why God created life and how he created this world to be.
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Cain draws his brother into conversation, draws his brother into the field. We don't know what their conversation was about.
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It almost seems that Cain is sort of lulling, maybe ambushing his brother. Putting him at ease, drawing him out to the place where he would kill him.
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We don't know, but we know that the moment came. The way the scripture reports the moment is so nondescript it's almost surprising.
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There's no detail given. It's simply, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.
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This is the first human death in history. And it's just given in ten words.
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Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. And behind those ten words, there's no newspaper headlines that would show up on Adam and Eve's doorstep every morning talking about the latest murder in Worcester.
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There's no movies that they could watch that had the actors spouting blood out of their mouths. There's no video games replicating violence of this degree.
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There was no training or warfare that had desensitized Cain to the reality of what human death, human murder, looked like.
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This was the first. The first experience. All that Cain knew in that moment was the blindness of sin, the fury in his heart, the adrenaline of that flashing rage now dissolving into terror and shame, one would think, if Adam had wanted the ground to swallow him.
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When he took a bite of that fruit and the Lord came near, what could we make of Cain as his hands are covered in the blood of his brother?
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You would think, one would hope, there would be some horror to the reality of what just took place.
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As we would say, his sense is returning to him. What am I going to do now? What am I going to tell my parents?
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What's going to happen to me? But we don't see any of that.
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We don't see really any guilt. We hardly see any shame. The Lord does what he did to Adam and Eve.
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He comes, he pursues. Notice verse 9. The Lord said to Cain, who's taking the initiative here?
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The Lord said to Cain, where is Abel your brother? And he said,
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I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? Notice, before we even look at Cain's response, the
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Lord is taking the initiative, just like he did in Genesis 3. The Lord is already pursuing
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Cain, just as he pursued Adam after the fall in Genesis 3. And the similarity is striking.
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It's purposeful. God said to Adam, where are you? And now God is saying to Cain, where is your brother? And God doesn't just ask where Abel is.
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He doesn't say, where is Abel? It's meant to turn the knife on guilt. Where is your brother,
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Abel? Your own brother. Your own flesh. And like Adam and Eve in the garden,
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God is not asking for information. When he poses a question in this way, he's not asking for information.
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God knows all there is to know. Theologians talk about God's middle knowledge.
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He doesn't just know what is. He knows all potentiality of things that could be. If one molecule was a micron over to the left, how all of eventual history could shift, and that with every micron that exists in material creation,
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God knows the possibilities of all things. So when he says, where is your brother? He's not asking for information that he does not already know.
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God knows where Abel is. Cain knows that God knows where Abel is.
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He's asking for Cain's sake. Again, just as in Genesis 3, he's giving
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Cain the confrontation, the opportunity, to fall down to his knees, to confess and to seek for mercy, because it's already known to the
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Lord what Cain has done. It's always already known to the Lord the sins that we do. Men and women go down to their graves, refusing to confess the sins that were done fully before the sight of God.
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Fully in the knowledge of God. Their pride. They cannot humble themselves, and remove that pride that has hardened their heart.
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They somehow think, still, they're preventing God from seeing their guilt. And Cain's answer in light of that is bewildering.
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It's bewildering. As far as the context goes, there's no intimation that he somehow left.
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For all we can understand, he's still standing over the limp body. And instead of dropping to his knees in grief when that voice of the
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Lord comes, or covering his mouth in horror as he wonders, how can I find mercy from the
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Holy God for what I've done? Instead of just coming clean, as at least Adam did when God called him out, and Eve did when
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God called her out. They explain, this is what happened, this is what we did. Instead of any of that,
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Cain says, bewilderingly, I don't know. Like some annoyed teenager.
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I don't know. And this is not just a lie to cover up, it's more of a thumb in God's face.
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I don't know. You know. I don't know. This is the reality of Cain being the serpent's seed.
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It shines through, doesn't it? And then he adds even a further offense.
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Am I my brother's keeper? You really have to say it like that. This isn't a lie, this isn't a cover up.
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Cain knows. Keeper is the exact same word for shepherd. You could easily translate as we have in Genesis 4.
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Abel was a keeper of the sheep. He was a keeper of the cattle. And so Abel had been a keeper, a shepherd, part of the way he worshipped
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God rightly, and Cain killed the good shepherd. It's very significant theologically. Cain kills.
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The seed of the serpent kills the good shepherd of the sheep. And now he asks, am I the keeper's keeper?
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Am I the shepherd's shepherd? There's no hint of sorrow for what he had done. It's almost a cruel humor in his response.
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Remember how he was seething in rage at his brother's sacrifice, the keeper's offering of the lamb.
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And now he's almost thumbing his nose at God. Am I that keeper's keeper? Am I supposed to be shepherding that shepherd?
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You know where he is. I know where he is. He may be insinuating that even
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God was at fault, just like his father Adam had done in the garden, right? It was this woman you gave to me,
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God. And perhaps Cain is intimating that. It was your job to keep him. He was your favorite.
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You accepted his sacrifice. Why weren't you looking out for him? Why weren't you providentially guarding him? You accepted his offering, didn't you?
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Cain's heart, you see, had been hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin, as the
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Lord warned him, was crouching at the door, prepared now to fully leap upon him, and it did. It devoured him entirely.
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And so he puts, he does what sinners do when they're hardened in their minds and in their hearts toward God. They bring
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God to an open scorn. They have a hatred, a rage even toward God. They break the first table of the law.
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They have no fear toward God, no reverence toward His name, no shame in blaspheming or being impudent toward Him.
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And then also they break the second table of the law. They hate their neighbor, they hate their brother with a murderous hatred, with a hatred of the serpent.
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And this is the result of sin, right? No love for God, no love for man. No love for God, no love for neighbor.
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Only a cold indifference. A waywardness that inevitably becomes more and more selfish and more and more miserable.
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This is always the result of sin. It may take a year, it may take 30 years. It may take 70 years.
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This is always the result of sin. Always. As we saw last week in 1
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John 3, why did Cain murder Abel? Because his works were evil.
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That's why. His works were evil. His brothers were righteous. And if we read this in a larger context, we see the immediate application for us as Christians is learning how vital it is to love.
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It has this kind of stake attached to it. What we're considering in Genesis 4 is very real, very urgent application to how we regard and treat each other.
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All of the New Testament writers take this for granted. One of their constant exhortations, no matter who the writer of the
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New Testament letter is, is love your brother. Love the brother. It's a chorus. We find it in almost every aspect.
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It's not just in the New Testament writings and letters, of course, instructions to the churches, but it's at the very heart, very center of God's law.
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1 John 3, 10, taking a step back. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.
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Abel was of God. His works were righteous. He practiced righteousness. He was of the chosen seed.
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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the wicked one, and murdered his brother.
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Do you see? That's the kind of contrast that's introduced. Christians, why should you love your brother so that you're not like Cain, who murdered his brother?
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That's the alternative. Love your brother because your works are righteous and you know God, or hate your brother with a murderous hatred, like Cain did his.
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Seeing hatred for what it is, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 5.
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Seeing the importance of the heart, as God warned Cain. God was exposing
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Cain's heart to his conscience. Saying, you need to examine yourself rightly.
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He was, I'm convinced, giving that pain, that awareness, that self -awareness in his conscience and saying, here's that sin.
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You must roll over it. You must drop to your knees and repent. According to Jesus, from within, out of the heart of men, perceived evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.
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All these things come from within and they defile a man. Where do they come from? Keeping the heart.
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Every issue of life flows from it. We see that as soon as Genesis 4. Keeping the heart before the
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Lord. As Christians, we keep the heart that we might love our brother in law.
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And beyond loving our brother in law, the dying world, the perishing world around us, we learn how to love our neighbor. By learning how to love your brother, you can love your neighbor.
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So as Christians, we put away gossip and quarreling. We put away jealousy, outbursts of wrath, actions, slander, gossip, arrogance, disorder.
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The viceless of error for a reason. All of this is contained like seeds within the human heart. As Christians, we root it out in repentance.
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We examine it. Lord, keep me from the way of Cain. Keep me from being hardened in my mind. Keep me from sowing and cultivating a root of bitterness.
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Lord, help me root it out. That it doesn't become infested within my life and begin to poison my actions and my thoughts and my ability to love
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You, and love those that were created in Your image, and love those that were saved by Your blood, my own brothers and sisters.
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This requires humility. Cain had brotherly love without humility. Cain has zero humility.
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Not in worship. Not in self -examination. Not in the most heinous deed.
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Murder itself. Not even when he's confronted by God as a result of that. We never see humility in Cain.
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We see cold indifference, waywardness. That inevitable, as we said, selfish misery.
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That's not the only result of sin. There's also a judgment. There's temporal judgments.
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In addition to eternal judgments. And we see that. God brings a curse to bear upon Cain. That takes us to verses 10 and 12.
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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.
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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.
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Notice again the echo here from Genesis 3, 13. God says to Eve, What is this you have done?
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It says the same thing here. Cain had been silent in his explanations and defense.
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What did he mutter? I don't know. Am I the shepherd of the shepherds? But God calls the earth to witness here.
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What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. It's a very graphic image.
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You can picture the blood pouring out of the wounds. Perhaps there are many wounds. And the earth is being pictured anthropomorphically, as though it has a mouth and a throat and a digestive system.
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The blood is being forced down the opening, forced down the throat. And the earth is coughing it up, spewing it up.
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It's protesting. It's groaning under the disorder and the dysfunction of this cruelty.
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And it's crying out for deliverance. One of the things that we see here is
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God is attentive to a cry for justice. This is very important throughout
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Genesis. It's very important as we begin Exodus. How does Exodus begin? God being attentive to cries.
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Cries that are coming out of deep oppression and suffering. And God is attentive to them. He remembers
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His covenant with Abram. He hears the cries of the people. Calvin says, This is good for us to know, when our own sufferings, which we have to silently suffer, go to the presence of God.
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Abel was speechless when he was losing his life, but after his death, his blood cried out more vehement than all.
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Oppression, Calvin says, in silence, do not hinder God from judging, nor the cause which the world supposes to be buried.
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In other words, He hears. He hears. You know, there's Christians this very morning in prison camps in North Korea or in Communist China, and God is hearing their suffering, even though they hear nothing.
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Even though their prayers are silent and their tears are kept hidden from the guards, and they put on a brave face for the brothers and sisters that they're sheltering with.
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Their plea, their cry, their blood, it mixes with the martyrs who are now in heaven in the presence of God, and they cry out,
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How long, O Lord? You see? Heaven's not just this endless spectacle of worship to the throne.
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It's also a protest, if you could put it this way, a protest movement of the martyrs, saying, How much longer,
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Lord, King? God changes now.
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He hears. Another way we have a window into the character of our God. He hears the blood of the righteous.
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He hears the suffering of his people. He concerns himself with it.
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This isn't just a proof text for martyrs and suffering mission. When you're disheartened, the
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Lord is attentive to you. When you're weak, because you've just had a pitiful week, and you haven't taken, you know, a few stumbles backwards, you've lost miles in the direction of your spiritual faith, your integrity.
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The Lord is attentive to you. This is a comfort to us. God changes not.
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He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is the character of our God. Jesus comes in the flesh, and for that reason, he's not untouched by the weakness of our flesh.
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He's not unmoved by human grief and human suffering, by the difficulty of the way of obedience.
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He's moved. As he was made weak in our weakness, he took that flesh to the throne room of God.
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He's now our high priest, in our flesh, in our blood, with our nature. And he's bearing with us, interceding for us, on our behalf.
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He knows what it's like to be where you are, brother or sister, in every way, tempted in all points, yet without sin.
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What a comfort to know. This is the unchanging God of Genesis 4. And it begs the question, why wouldn't
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Cain have repented here? Why wouldn't Cain just repent here? God has given him every opportunity.
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He can't even blame God. He can't blame God. He's covered in his brother's blood.
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He should be executed summarily on the spot. And yet God is confronting him.
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Even the curse is a demonstration of mercy. Oh, that Cain would have repented here.
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God has literally called him out. He's brought the shame of this sin into stinging view.
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But we read, no response to the light being shined upon his conscience, though it's full of sin now.
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Cain is irresponsible. All along, he's lacked any fear. Notice he doesn't pile together fig leaves and try to make a covering for his guilt.
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He doesn't feel guilt. He doesn't feel shame. He doesn't dive for cover and try to hide.
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It's a picture of stone cold and different. And God brings a curse.
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The ground doesn't open up to swallow Cain. The heavens don't pour out brimstone. He doesn't turn into a pillar of salt.
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The angel of death doesn't come and snatch away his breath. There's no lightning bolt from heaven. God's curse is actually filled with mercy.
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Cain is spared. Cain is allowed to live. That's already undeserved mercy.
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And this is God's curse. You are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
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When you tilt the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth.
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Notice the curse here is directly upon Cain. You are cursed.
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That wasn't the case with Adam and Eve. They weren't directly addressed in this way by the curse.
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Think of Adam. God said the ground is cursed because of you. But here he says you are cursed.
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It's not the things around you. You are cursed, Cain. You are cursed. Adam was told that because of his sin it was going to be a lot harder now.
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He couldn't go willingly pluck pears and grapes off the trees in Eden. Now he'd have to sow. He'd have to watch blight and famine and locusts destroy his crops.
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He'd have to depend upon God season by season for every drop of dew and rain. He'd have to deal with insects and worms and destroying marauders in his vineyards.
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It was going to be hard now. Hard work. By the sweat of his brow, he'll bring forth bread. That's a result of his sin.
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But how much more with Cain? It's not just that it's going to be difficult. It's going to be impossible. You're a tiller of the ground.
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No more will the earth yield its strength to you. You'll keep wandering because you'll find no produce.
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All your efforts will be futile. You'll be an exile, a fugitive. You'll never find rest.
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You'll never belong. You'll be, as it were, perpetually lost. And that's a picture of sin, isn't it?
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That's a picture of sin. A life that cannot be fruitful.
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Labor that cannot have meaning. Nourishment, comfort, sustenance that cannot be found.
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A place that seems alienated. Who am I? Where do I belong? I'm perpetually lost, perpetually wandering, even if I have the same routine of a nine -to -five.
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The condition of being lost. This is the condition of sin. And once again, we see that sin only brings more and more misery.
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And finally, this stone -cold, indifferent, moral monster breaks.
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He's been mocking toward God in his answers. Silent, no hint of guilt or shame.
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And now, now that the consequence of his sin has been laid out, now he breaks out in speech. Look at verse 13 and 14.
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Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you've driven me out this day from the face of the ground.
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I shall be hidden from your face. I'll be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. And it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me.
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Now he's pleading. Now he's protesting. Now the hardness of his heart is on full display.
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There's not a hint of repentance here, is there? And it's not that Cain lacked the opportunities.
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At least twice, if not more, God has personally dealt with him, given him a point, and even this arguably is the point, that he could drop to his knees, say, thank you for sparing my life.
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Thank you that I can at least wander this earth, that you haven't snuffed me out like I've snuffed out the life of my brother. But there's not a hint of personal remorse.
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There's no guilt of his sin. The only thing he protests is the consequence of his sin. The only thing that gives him inward pain and causes him to cry out is a protest of God's curse.
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Oh, that punishment's too much. My punishment's worse than I can bear. Completely ignorant, completely naive to what he has just done, he cries out, my punishment, my punishment.
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Not my sin, my guilt. Brothers and sisters, that's the difference between a heart that's been made repentant by God's grace and a heart that's in the same stony flesh of a fallen angel.
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That's the difference. When the consequences outweigh the guilt, when the sense of my punishment, the fruit of my actions and my decisions, when that weighs more on the sinner's conscience than the guilt they have before God, the spiritual consequences, the separation, the hardened heart says,
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Lord, I can't bear the consequences. But when God by His Spirit touches a sinner's heart and moves it to repentance, they say,
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Lord, how could you give me so much mercy? See the difference? One is, I can't bear the consequence.
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The other is, I can't believe I've received mercy. I'll bear with anything
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He sends my way. Anything is not even close to what I actually deserve. That's what grace does to a human heart.
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Cain is only concerned with the consequences of his sin, not the fact of his sin. Not sin as it is.
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Not sin as it is in a defense before a holy God. Not sin in robbing his brother of his life.
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It's interesting, in the Hebrew, the blood of your brother cries out to me. It's a plural form of blood.
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And Jewish interpreters took that to mean it's not just Abel's blood, it's actually his whole line of descendants that was here cut off.
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All of that blood, as it were, is crying out to him. That's how they understood it. It's the travesty of this.
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When a human life is lost, it's not just a human life that's lost, it's all the fruit and potentiality of that life.
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Life that's only lived once. It's the horror of war, isn't it? When millions of men are slumped over, dead from poisonous gas or artillery in the trenches, in World War I, and you just think not just the sheer loss of human lives, but the impact, the loss of the potential of all that life.
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Grandsons and granddaughters and nieces and nephews and generations, whole generations that are now pulled off the face of the earth because of sin.
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It's a horrid thing. And Cain is only focused on his punishment. Oh, I have to wander now.
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Oh, I can't till the grounds like I used to just outside of Eden. There's no indication of regret.
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He would have made a good politician in our day. Horatius Bonner, the great
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Scotsman, said there's no right sense of sin here. There's not. Remorse is not repentance.
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We don't even see remorse. Even if it was there, that's not repentance. Terror is not repentance.
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We don't even see terror. Despair is not repentance. These are but Cain's sullen ravings,
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Ahab's alarm, Judas' despair. They're outcries such as these in hell, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but no godly sorrow, no tears from a broken and contrite heart.
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You see the difference? It's the difference Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 7. He says,
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I rejoice you were made sorry. He wrote a letter of tears. Actually, we don't think we have that letter.
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Some argue it's actually contained within 2 Corinthians, but historically we don't have that letter of tears that was sent to Corinth.
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But apparently it was quite a rebuke and it was a painful letter. And it moved them to repentance. And now he's explaining his rationale and trying to give them comfort and ease some of the pain of that judgment he had laid out.
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And he says, I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance.
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For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer a loss from us, and nothing for godly sorrow produces repentance, leading to salvation, not to be regretted.
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The sorrow of the world produces death. What kind of sorrow does Cain have? It's the sorrow of the world.
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It's the sorrow of the world. My consequences? It doesn't really matter.
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Completely unmoved. Sociopathic. I remember watching a video of a young woman.
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She was standing before a judge at a sentence hearing. And she was, of course, crying crocodile tears.
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She had driven drunk and killed a family. I think it was a family of four. Of course, she was crying and crying and crying.
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The impact statements had already been made by the victim. And then it came to light, this wasn't her first offense.
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This was something like her third. Three times. And she had done property damage and other things, and now she took human life.
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The remorse of this woman was only for her consequences. Only for her sentence. She could think nothing of the human lives she had taken away.
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Nothing. To let that enter your conscience would lead you to the place where you say, even life in prison could not erase the wrong that I've done.
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A Christian understands something of the nature of punishment and mercy in a way that worldly sorrow never does.
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Cain is a classic example to us of worldly sorrow. And brothers and sisters, we have to be very careful that we don't ever fall into worldly sorrow.
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Worldly sorrow. Do you want to know a quick way to grind your conscience that's so finely tuned, morally as an instrument, tuned to the right ways of God by the word?
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Worldly sorrow will do that. You want to harden your heart so that you're no longer feeling, you no longer think through the consequences and the pain you cause in others?
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By your sin, you're only consumed by getting away with things. What's best for you, what's most comfortable for you, is worldly sorrow.
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Worldly sorrow. I don't know if we've had a leader in recent memory that's ever demonstrated godly sorrow from the lectern or from the campaign platform.
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I've never seen it. Never seen an example from our leaders of godly sorrow. We only ever see worldly sorrow when it's when they get caught in evil deeds.
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Cain is a classic example of worldly sorrow. You've driven me out this day from the face of the ground.
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Notice again this charge against God. Cain is establishing a pattern that we will see again and again.
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The hatred of God is as though God is at fault. This punishment is too much. You have driven me from the face of the ground.
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I'll never forget it. I'll never serve you. I'll never worship you again. You've done this to me.
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Don't you see that played out time and time again? Entertainers on the stage making an open mockery of God.
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Atheists trying to get a rise out of Christians by blaspheming his name. Stand -up comedians taking pot shots at Jesus Christ.
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You say, why don't they drop dead on the spot? Again, it's this mystifying scandal of a long -suffering
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God who desires that they should not perish. Cain will be driven away.
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This is what happens to sinners in their sin. They're driven away from the presence of God. Adam and Eve had already been driven by God from the presence of Eden and now
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Cain will be driven even from that external presence. Sin separates man from God.
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And notice, it's as though Cain understands that he deserves death. At least something there is ticking in his conscience.
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He says, it will happen. Anyone who finds me will kill me. Where is that coming from?
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God? This is the first murder, but we have no recorded command of blood for blood.
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That doesn't come until Genesis 9, the introduction of capital punishment. How does Cain know this? Well, it's likely reflecting that in the moral order of God.
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I think God here wisely prevents vigilante justice. Blood is to be shed by the rightful sphere, the sphere of the civil magistrate, the sphere of government, not families wildly like the
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Wild West going to take justice out on other families. It's not the domain of the family to exercise capital punishment, but we see it reflected here with Cain, isn't it?
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He knows he deserves to be killed. I've killed, it should be, it will be. Whoever comes across me will kill me.
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He's morally attuned to that. It's in the fabric of creation. It's a travesty in our day, isn't it, that that's been lost.
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Even someone as hard, unmoved, unrepentant, unfeeling as Cain understands, because I've killed,
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I deserve to be killed. And we as a society have become so enlightened that we no longer think rightly.
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We think capital punishment is something relegated to the history books, something barbaric, something not fit for our civilized time, so civilized as we dismember thousands of children in a morning.
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We're so civilized and enlightened. Part of the reason we have such disdain for human life is that very reason.
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Part of the reason that men and women can put on pink hats and celebrate the ritual murder of children and be completely unmoved and desensitized to it is because we've already been desensitized to the value of life, because it's not backed up by capital punishment.
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Capital punishment, the taking of life for the one who has taken life, it undergirds, it supports the value of human life.
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Human life is not expendable, it's not dispensable. Your life must be taken. Remember, it was just in 2016.
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We were still meeting at the Princeton Community Center and that poor young woman, Vanessa Marcotte, remember?
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She was murdered. She was murdered, what, a half mile from where we were worshipping that very morning.
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And they ended up catching the man. He's still going between legal teams. That man deserves death.
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He deserves to be killed. He took a life. You see? We devalue human life.
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We devalue the image of God in humanity when we don't preserve this kind of justice.
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Even Cain knew that. And that makes, I think, so surprising that God spares
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Cain. It does so by giving him a mark, giving him a sign. Now we know, of course, the long -suffering of God is designed to bring people to repentance.
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And if they don't come to repentance, they will face the fullness of His wrath. The same fullness that Christ faced on the cross for His people.
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So long -suffering is not an open license. If anything, it's an urgent time. It's an alarm to say, while God is near, while your conscience is open before Him, while your heart is being stirred, lay hold of Him, cry out to Him, you are drowning.
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That's the reality of it. We know that His justice and mercy will both come together at the end, whether in this life or at the beginning of the next.
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Forbearance is meant to lead to repentance, but forbearance has an expiration date. No one knows what that is.
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It's a sad thing when you've seen in people's lives a stirring. We pray this isn't the case with Linda, for example.
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We've seen it too many times, we almost lose heart. We see a stirring, a curiosity, a warmth.
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And it's snatched away. It's choked by thorns, just like Jesus said.
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It's surprising to see this picture of God's grace again. Verse 15, the Lord said to him,
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Whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. Cain's a murderer.
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And now God, He's saying, this is too much. You've driven me out of your presence. He's only concerned about himself, and God actually shows him more grace on top of it.
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Instead of saying, you've spoken enough. It's time to dissolve you. God actually shows him more mercy.
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If anyone touches you, I'll avenge you on them sevenfold. And then
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He sets a mark on Cain so that he won't be killed. It's a mark that spares him.
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It's a mark of mercy. Technically speaking, the Hebrew text does not say that God put a mark in Cain or on Cain, though it's often translated that way.
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Better translations, better interpreters understand. This goes back even to John Gill picking this up.
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There is some manifest symbol. It wasn't necessarily put on Cain. It was given to Cain.
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It was a sign for Cain. In other words, something symbolic that God's protection would be with him wherever he traveled.
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It was a sign, a symbol that God would preserve the life of this man, though he had just taken the life of a man.
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That's the scandal of grace here. Derek Kidner says, it's almost a covenant.
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Let's just think about that for a moment. Here's this unrepentant sinner.
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He's just slaying the righteous able. The blood of the righteous able is staining his hands.
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And he cries out, my punishment's more than I can bear. And this God of mercy, this God of grace comes and it's as though he makes a covenant with him.
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I will protect you. I will protect you. This is just scandalous grace.
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This is undeserved mercy. This is on a sedum. This is on an unrepentant sinner.
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How lavish the display of the mercy of God. We have no reason to think that Cain ever repented.
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We'll meet Abel in glory. I have no expectation we'll meet Cain. The lavish display of mercy.
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You know coworkers, you know relatives that are receiving this kind of mercy even today. Undeserved.
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And so in the midst of ruinous sin here in Genesis 4 reminded that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.
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Our only hope is to look away from ourselves and to look at what God provides for sin. And that draws us back as we come toward the end of our time in this passage.
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That draws us back to verse 10. As we saw last week, the sacrifice of blood, the blood covering, the lame that Abel offered.
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That was a type of Christ. That was fulfilled by Christ being our lame, being our blood covering.
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But it goes deeper than that now. Now that Abel himself, righteous Abel is killed. We see that Abel himself was a type of Christ.
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Abel, his blood being shed as a righteous man. The good shepherd being slain by the seed of the serpent.
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That itself is ultimately fulfilled, ultimately realized in Jesus Christ in his death, his atoning death.
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And we have that from a few verses. First is establishing that Abel is righteous.
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Hebrews 11, we saw it last week. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous.
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In other words, he was in a right relationship with God. His deeds were accepted by God. Matthew 23, our
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Lord said, in speaking and rebuking the prophets that he had been sending again and again to Jerusalem.
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He said, I send you the prophets that you're now killing, crucifying, imprisoning, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous
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Abel to the blood of Zechariah. That encompasses all of the history of God's people, as it were, from the very first death to the most recent death of a prophet,
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Zechariah. And he says, all this guilt is coming upon you, this generation here in Jerusalem.
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Notice that it's the righteous blood that's shed. And Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews picks this up even further in Hebrews 12, beginning in verse 23.
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He's talking in Hebrews 12 about the superiority of the new covenant. Better than the old covenant.
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All the shadows have given way to the reality. So he's making his case. Talks about how we've not come to this mountain of flames, this mountain in which we tremble and we're afraid to even touch a beast lest we die.
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We've come to Zion, not Zion. And he goes on to say, we've come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men, made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
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This murder, this first... We have come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.
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What does he say at the supper? A new covenant in my blood. We've come to that mediator.
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We've come to his blood. And this blood of sprinkling, it speaks better things than that of Abel. Abel's blood was crying out for vengeance.
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Christ's blood cries out for reconciliation. It speaks better things.
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Abel's blood cries out for justice. Christ's blood cries out for mercy. Do you see it?
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It speaks better things. And notice that the writer of Hebrews says very carefully, the blood of sprinkling.
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He doesn't just say, we've come to the blood that speaks better things than that of Abel.
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No, he says the blood of sprinkling. That's very specific. That phrase, the blood of sprinkling, it appears at some very crucial points in the history of Israel.
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And so by pointing to Abel, he's also pointing forward to Israel. He's pointing forward to the
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Passover in Exodus 12, when the elders were instructed to sacrifice the
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Passover lamb and to strike with Issa, the doorpost and the lintel. That was a sprinkling of blood at the
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Passover. In Exodus 24, when Moses assembles there at Horeb, and he ratifies the covenant, and he fills
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Basil with half the blood of the sin offerings, and he sprinkles it upon them. This blood of the covenant, he says.
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And they say, we will obey. They ratify. And perhaps most importantly, Leviticus 16, the instructions to Aaron on the day of atonement, taking blood from the sin offerings, particularly of the bull, and bringing that into the
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Holy of Holies and sprinkling it on the mercy seat. You see, entering into the presence of God and sprinkling the blood, the blood of the covenant, sprinkling the blood of the mediator, which was pictured in the sacrifice, upon the mercy seat.
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And just notice the language here. He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his fingers on the mercy seat, on the east side.
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And before the mercy seat, he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his fingers seven times. And he shall tell the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people.
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Bring its blood inside the veil and do with the blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat.
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And he'll make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, because of their transgressions, for all of their sins.
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You see, all of that is being contained, the sprinkling of the blood. Blood that speaks better things, better than Abel's blood spoke, better than what
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Aaron could splash across the brazen altar. Christ's blood was the fulfillment of all of that.
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The blood of bulls and goats can't take away sins. It was always pointing forward. Christ was the righteous one, the righteous shepherd, the one who was acceptable to God and he was slain.
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I love what John Owen says in his commentary on Hebrews. He says, all these were types of redemption, justification, sanctification.
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He separates those two passages, types of redemption, justification, sanctification by the blood of Christ.
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And these, and besides these, with every institution of sprinkling of the blood, it was always part of burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin.
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Therefore, the blood of Christ is called the blood of sprinkling. It's really what it is. And to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ is not by the imitation of his sufferings.
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He doesn't mean to be sprinkled by the blood of Christ. He says, well, it's not just to imitate his sufferings, as though he was some great example in shedding his blood.
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Nor merely the belief of his death for the confirmation of the covenant. I believe that he died and shed his blood.
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I believe that. And that's why I'm now. Nor to the efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ, which is expressed in them.
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It's not just that, oh, I know what the blood did. I know that the blood, symbolically, is effective.
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No, no, no. It is the expiated, purging, cleansing efficacy of his blood applied to us.
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He's expiated, purging, cleansing unto us.
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What does the writer of Hebrews do with that? And this is, I think, a vital application. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
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For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse.
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Put a blank there. Here's the strengthening of the blood of the mediator.
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Here's the strengthening of the blood of Christ. If blood of bulls and goats could sanctify the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse?
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We've been trained as cross -centered evangelicals to rightly maintain that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all our sin, from our guilt, from our sins.
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And we think of it really only as a transaction. Is it a divine transaction? Yes. Is it forensic?
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Yes. It's all these things. But what I mean is we reduce it to only be that. That's not what Hebrews 9 says.
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How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse what? Cleanse my sin?
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Clear my status? Draw me near? Notice. How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living
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God? Is that an answer that you would normally provide as a result of the blood of Christ?
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I don't think we often think about the effect of Christ's blood being sprinkled on our conscience.
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What does the blood speak? The blood of sprinkling speaks.
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It has a voice. It pleads. What I'm saying here is that the blood is cleansing our conscience.
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It's speaking. Not just toward God because it's sacrificial, but to us. The blood of Christ is cleansing us.
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Cleansing our conscience. So we no longer go through the motions of dead works, but that we come to a right relationship and a right service of the true and living
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God. That's the effect. One of the effects. One of the benefits of the blood of Christ. What does it speak for you?
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It speaks, Father, forgive them. Spurgeon says,
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A melodious cry went up to heaven from the cross of Calvary. Father, forgive them. Resounding from the wounds of Emmanuel.
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Do you see how he put that? It's not just what is uttered by Christ. It's as though his wounds were saying that.
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His blood was crying. The blood of Abel was not voiceless.
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It cried so as to be heard amid the thrones of heaven and blessed be God. The blood of Christ spoke for us, not against us.
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It spoke not worse things as it should have done. It spoke better things than that of Abel. It didn't demand vengeance and a fiercer vengeance than fell upon Cain.
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It didn't ask that it would be driven from his face before the earth. It cried, Father, forgive them. And it prevailed.
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The blood of Jesus Christ speaks for the guilty. The blood of Abel spoke against the guilty.
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Jesus' blood pleads for the innocent, but not for the innocent as though there are some, but rather makes them innocent.
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Jesus pleads for the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell among them.
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For you that have broken his laws and despised his love and fought against his power, the blood of Jesus pleads for such as you.
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Part of your answer must be to cleanse my guilt, to cleanse my woes, to purify my way, to exhume my selfish pride.
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The more, A .W. Pink, the more the Christian exercises repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, the more he will experience the peace -speaking power of that precious blood in his conscience.
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What's the state of your conscience here this morning? That's the issue. Is the blood of Christ sprinkling that?
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Is it cleansing it? Is it making it sharp and sensitive and tender? To put it another way, is your heart a heart of flesh or is it a heart of stone?
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Are you like Cain, justifying and making excuses and being unmoved by the gravity of your sins? Not just the things that you can take on your mind of what you've done, but how about the laundry list of things you've failed to do?
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The opportunities you've let pass by, the people you've let down, people from the past, from the cross you remember every now and then.
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Where are they? What has your relationship to them meant for their lives? What little of God do they know as a result of that?
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What distortions of God do they know as a result of that? Does this come into your conscience and load you with guilt? And is the blood of Christ cleansing your conscience so that you no longer try to sew together fig leaves or go through the motions but that you actually serve with a clean conscience, with a pure heart, with joy in your life?
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The Father who draws you near and cleanses you by the blood of Christ.
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The blood of Christ speaks peace to our conscience. Notice what Pink is saying. The more you exercise repentance toward God and faith for the
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Lord Jesus Christ, the more you experience that peace in your conscience. Do you even have enough of a conscience to experience peace?
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First you must have a conscience that can experience guilt before you can experience peace for that guilt. There are many,
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I'm convinced many in our church who just don't have an underdeveloped conscience and they don't know what it's like to experience the sprinkler.
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Too blinded, too self -deluded, too quick to excuse, too quick to shift blame, haven't sat before the
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Lord and allowed His word like a surgeon's scalpel to expose them before the living God. They haven't shuddered at the thought of their failure and their guilt and their spurning of mercy almost at every turn in worse ways than Cain.
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Cain was just perhaps in an afternoon. We do it every hour or every week. Spurning the constant pleas and bids and woos of our
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Lord. Chasing after vain pursuits in the wind. Filling our flesh with the sensitivity and the pleasure of the world.
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Making our conscience like a filthy rat. How much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your conscience from dead works?
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How much more should it not only cry out to God for your forgiveness but cry to Him?
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How much should that blood of Christ cry in your heart, in your affections, in your thinking, in your reason, in your conscience?
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This is what Calvin has to say as we come toward a close. It's indeed possible that God may have interrogated
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Cain by the silent examinations of his conscience. Does the voice audibly come from heaven?
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How is the Lord speaking to Cain in this moment? Here's John Calvin. It's possible that God may have interrogated
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Cain by the silent examination of his, and that he in return may have answered inwardly, fretting, murmuring.
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We must however conclude that he was examined, not barely by the external voice of man but by a divine voice.
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One to make him feel that he was dealing directly with God. Listen. As often then, as the secret compunctions, feelings of guilt, as the secret feelings of guilt of conscience invite us to reflect upon our sins, let us remember that God himself was speaking.
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This is John Calvin. If you need a qualification, you shouldn't from Calvin.
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He says earlier, what I before said must be maintained. God now speaks to us through the scriptures. He formally manifested himself to the fathers through Oracles.
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He somehow prophetically or divinely made his will and his words known audibly.
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Now he does it through his written word. But listen to what Calvin's saying. As often then, as the secret feelings of guilt of conscience invite us to reflect upon our sins, let us remember that God himself is speaking with us.
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For that interior sense by which we are convicted of sin is the peculiar judgment seat of God where he exercises his judgment.
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Let those, therefore, whose consciences accuse them beware of the example of King.
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How sensitive is your conscience? How sensitive is your conscience? Do you discern the voice of God when you examine your life before you?
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When you shudder, when you pause, when you delight, when that feeling of guilt comes, are you discerning that or are you dismissing that?
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Is this trained behavior or is this the dynamic relationship I have with God as a result of his spirit indwelling within me?
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This is not mystical spirituality. This is just what a life lived before God looks like.
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Friends, we must allow the Scripture to inform our minds. We don't do this apart from Scripture.
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We don't go and try to discern what our conscience... We always train our conscience by the word of God. That's the clear, full revelation of God.
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What I'm saying is are you aware that God is living active within that word and therefore when that word is hidden within your heart, when it's giving illumination to your mind and to your conscience, do you discern the voice of God even there?
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That's how God speaks to us. No doubt different than he did with Cain, but it's the same
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God who spoke to Cain and he speaks in the same way. He speaks to our hearts before him. Ah, says an old
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Puritan, I know your sins speak very loudly. Ah, well they may. I hope you hear their voices and you hate them in the future.
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But they cannot speak more loudly than the blood of Christ. You see what Hebrews 9 is getting at?
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How does it cleanse your conscience? God says to Cain, what have you done? He says to the sinner, what have you done?
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He says to you this morning in your conscience, what have you done? What have you done?
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And we gather here, we gather around the symbols of a body that was broken, of righteous blood that was shed.
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We have it in our hymns, we tune our prayers to it, we exalt it in the preaching of the word, we gather around it to eat the symbolic representation of it.
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It's all about the blood that was shed. It's all about the sacrifice of Christ. What are we doing when we gather in this way to worship him?
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We're training our consciences, we're training our lives to think when our conscience rightly says, when
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God comes and interrogates, when he comes into our minds, into our hearts and he says, what have you done?
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That we drop to our knees as it were. You might be fully standing, someone might be talking to you, but inwardly you know what
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I mean. You're dropping to your knees and your eyes are looking up and you're saying,
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Father, forgive me. But then the question is, how can I be forgiven? The blood of Christ must cleanse my conscience, must cleanse my heart, must lift up my plea to God and make my request for mercy acceptable.
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And so we're being trained as we come to worship to say, in response to what have you done, not what my hands have done, not what my life has been, not the mistakes that I've made, of yesteryear or yesterday, not what my hands have done.
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That can't save me and I can't make up for it. Lord, it's what you've done, it's what you've provided. I repent and dust and ashes, show mercy to me.
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My greatest virtues, any sacrifice or resolution I can make, that cannot save me. But by your mercy,
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Lord, my worst failure is my, my habitual sins will not damn me. It's not what my hands have done. It's not what they could do.
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It's what Christ has done. He's the mediator of a better covenant. His blood speaks better things.
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That blood cleanses, a sinner draws near to,
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God walks in my, I'll close with this quote from a sinner.
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Long before you hear the blood of Jesus, and he spares your guilty soul, long before that blood comes into your soul to meld you to repentance, it has already been pleading for you with God.
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It's not the cry of the sinner seeking mercy that causes mercy. It's the cry of, it's not your repentance.
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It's not feeling bad. It's not worldly sorrow. It's not even Godly sorrow.
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Godly sorrow is just the road to understanding this. It's the cry of the blood of Jesus Christ.
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That is what saves you. I know you will tell me you cannot pray. Oh, what a mercy it is that the blood can.
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And when you cannot plead or prevail, the blood pleads. If you're to get mercy from God and get forgiveness, it will not be by the power of your prayers and tears.
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It'll be by the power of the blood of this. Father, we ask that you would remove so much rust, so much dead tissue from our conscience this morning.
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Sharpen our conscience, Lord. Make it tender to you. Lord, some of us have grown up in the faith like Cain grew up in the faith.
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And we can see just how hardened our consciences have become. We knew what it was like when we were younger and knew the things of you to mourn over our sins.
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And now we don't even flinch. We don't even wince. Oh, God, put a right spirit within us.
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Give us a heart that is pure, a heart of flesh. A heart, Lord, that is malleable to your grace, tender, sensitive to your touch.
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And let that stir our conscience as we examine ourselves. Lord, I do pray that you would show us that pollution within.
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Bring to mind those actions, those omissions, Lord, the people and relationships that we've strained and damaged, hurt that we've caused, whether we're oblivious to it, whether we intended it.
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Lord, bring these things to our minds. Let us see them for what they are.
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Let us feel the guilt and the weight of it, Lord. But then sprinkle the blood of Christ upon us.
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Cleanse our consciences. Give us peace today, Lord. We've come to worship you around emblems of his broken body and poured out blood for this very reason.
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We've come to receive the peace that can only come through our meeting. We've come,
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Lord, to restore our joys and the salvation that only you could provide. We come,
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Lord, with empty hands. And many of us here perhaps this morning, Lord, we've come with empty hearts. We've come discouraged in our walks,
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Lord. We've seen strained habits and seasons of laziness and spiritual sloth,
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Lord. Bring us to repentance that we might have zeal once more.
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Renew our consciences before you, God. These things we ask in your son's name that he might preserve us from the way of Cain and draw us ever closer to him.