A real book about real people
The Bible, Kent Keller began, is a nice book full of nice stories about nice people who do nice things to other nice people so we can all learn nice little lessons about being nice. The technical term for someone who believes that is someone who has never actually read the Bible. Because this is a real book — real people who lived in real places and made real decisions with real consequences, some of them very good and some of them very bad. Our faith is not a collection of fairy tales and fables and moralisms. It is a matter of acts and facts.
Which is exactly why the Foundations series had to come to Genesis 4 next. Genesis 1 through 11 is what we call primordial history, and it paints the foul lines for the whole playing field on which God's drama will unfold — creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Last Sunday we watched the fall itself. This morning we watch the radioactive fallout of it land in the very first family. And here is the thing to know: when we move away from the order God called good and very good, things do not get better. Entropy is real. There is no feud, Kent reminded us, quite like a family feud.
Don't bring God your leftovers
Here are three lessons from the sad story of Cain and Abel, and the first one is about worship. Cain brought the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions — his best. The text never says Cain brought his first and his best. It just says he brought something. And God was not impressed.
We preachers have a name for the folks who show up twice a year, throw a twenty in the plate, and assume God is pleased — CEOs, we call them, Christmas and Easter only. But God does not need your money. He is not impressed with going-through-the-motions, lip-service worship. Jesus said as much to the Pharisees, quoting Isaiah: this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. The danger is real even — maybe especially — for a church like ours that truly believes this book. Why did God accept Abel and not Cain? Hebrews 11 settles it: by faith Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice, and through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. It was never about what was offered. It was about what was in the heart of the one offering it. So bring your A game. He wants your heart, your mind, your soul — the whole person.
Don't blame others for your sins
Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The root of that word in Hebrew means he was burning — white-hot. But what had Abel actually done to him? Nothing, except succeed where Cain had fallen short. And that is the second lesson: don't blame other people for your sins and shortcomings. We have been pointing fingers since the garden — it was that woman you gave me, it was that serpent — and Cain simply keeps the family tradition going.
God's warning is sobering. If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; its desire is for you, and you must rule over it. Sin, Kent said, is the spiritual equivalent of an opportunistic infection. It never sleeps and it never rests, always looking for the weak spot in its host so it can get in and devour it. And it is not only the loud, obvious sins we are so quick to condemn. It is the soft, culturally acceptable ones we tolerate: pride, self-righteousness, smugness, the quiet contempt for the parts of the body of Christ that don't think like we do. Henri Nouwen confessed he could not decide which did more damage, lust or resentment — there is so much frozen anger among the people most concerned about avoiding sin. The Puritan John Flavel put it plainly: it is easier to cry out against a thousand sins of others than to kill one of your own. So when you fall, don't lie down and wallow in the guilt. That is what the cross is for. He does not get tired of forgiving.
Don't ever think you're beyond the reach of grace
The third lesson lands at the end of the chapter. Cain murders his brother, is called to account, and cries that his punishment is more than he can bear. And then something astonishing happens. God puts a mark on Cain to protect him. Justice would have been a life for a life, on the spot. Instead Cain is sent out to the land of Nod — a word that means wandering — a man who will wander far from God, far from family, far from home, and God guards his life the whole way.
Why would God do that? Kent's answer was honest: I don't know. Except that God's grace is greater even than Cain's sin. The Puritan Richard Sibbes said there is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us. So don't ever think you have gone so far that the grace of God cannot reach you. Each of us, as Chuck Colson warned, has an infinite capacity for self-rationalization — and none of it can carry us beyond the reach of that grace.
Abel's blood still speaks
This story begins in a garden and ends in a city, and all the while it is pointing us somewhere. Cain murders his brother, and the voice of Abel's blood cries out to God from the ground. But Scripture tells us of a better blood. The blood of Christ still cries out to this day, and it speaks a better word than Abel's — not a word demanding vengeance, but a word offering mercy. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
That is why the chapter does not close in despair. Seth is born, and in his line people begin to call on the name of the Lord. And the blood that speaks a better word is still calling — to fallen people of every kind — calling us to the table. A table of grace, from a God of grace, for people in need of grace. Two ways to live stood before Cain and Abel, and two ways stand before us. The path this church wants you to walk is not the path of works, but the path of grace.
