Genesis 4 and 5 Beyond redemption

Genesis 4

Short recap:

Genesis 1-2 God creates the world, He creates the fish in the sea, the birds in the air and the animal on the ground, and He saw that it was good. He created man and woman and saw that they were very good. Genesis 3. Mankind fell into sin, which separated them from God, and they were thrown out of paradise (the garden of Eden).

This is where they are at in the beginning of chapter 4.

We are going to look at today’s text under the following three points:

1.A fallen state: (From godly to devilish)

2.Born into sin:(Born this way; but not destined to be this way)

3.A hope restored:(the identity of the serpent crusher is made known)

A fallen state

Adam and Eve being husband and wife do what a husband and wife should do, they had lots of sex and babies! After giving birth to Cain Eve says ”With the Lord’s help, I have produced a man!”. Which might be interpreted in many ways, Eve is praising the Lord for helping her producing an offspring, and thinking maybe this is the serpent crusher the Lord has promised? However, more likely because of Eve’s fallen state that she was boasting about her creation. Notice that she isn’t saying “God gave me a son”, she says “With the Lords help, I have produced a man”. It almost sounds like what she is saying is: God helped me but I did all the work, with my own body, with my own effort, because I am brilliant and self-sufficient I managed to produce a man. Eve thinks she can fulfil God’s promise made in Genesis 3.15 herself “And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel”

so as Eve pronounced the forbidden fruit good, she has now pronounced herself the “creator” of man, and reversed the good order God set up in Genesis 1 and 2. The order was: God, man, woman. God was the Lord of all and creator, man was set to rule the earth, and the woman God created as the man’s his helper. Man and woman were created as equals, but different. Here the woman tried to make herself the creator, and not the creation. Thereby reversing the good order of God, Eve wanted to be the creator, and self-sufficient.

Eve first gave birth to Cain, and then later she gave birth to Abel, you see, in spite of their sin, God allowed Adam and Eve to have children, although they had not kept their end of the deal, God will always keep His(It’s in His nature), praise the Lord for that! In spite of Adam and Eve’s sin life goes on.

Born into sin:

Cain and Abel were the first people born into our fallen world, as we heard Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden of Eden. Then they had children, so Cain and Abel were born outside the garden of Eden after the their parents had fallen into sin. And as children of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel inherited their sin, and their knowledge of good and evil. They were not just born with the knowledge of good and evil but with the same choice and responsibility Adam and Eve had, they could choose to do what was good or evil in the eyes of God. The situation was completely new, suddenly there was deception, lies, jealousy and murder. Just like the “great” secular literary tragedies, this one ends with Death and misery. Spoiler alert! Cain murders Abel!

When we read the story of Cain and Abel, it is very easy to get caught up in details that aren’t important. We ask ourselves, “Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering, when he had worked so hard for it?” We heard last week how God cursed the ground, and how man with difficulty would cultivate it all of his days. Cain worked really hard for the ground to bear crops. Then we think we might have the answer, because Abel brought forward offerings from his livestock. We start thinking about the Laws of sacrifices given by God to the people of Israel, of course we think it’s because of the blood, there has to be blood. However, this was before any law had been passed. But these are the details that aren’t important, because if they were, there would be a section in the beginning of Genesis on what offerings God would accept.

I’m not sure how much we think about it, but we are born into sin, and into a fallen world. Although this is true, just like Adam and Eve we have been given a choice and responsibility. As was it with Cain and Abel, they had the freedom to do what was good, or to do what was evil in the eyes of God. So instead of stopping to meditate on God not accepting Cain’s offering we should press on, so that we get to the heart of the matter. Please follow in your bibles as I read verses 5 - 7.

“but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected. “Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? ⁷ You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”

In verse 5 we read that God didn’t accept Cain and his gift, then we see Cain’s reaction to God not accepting him or his offering. He’s angry with God and jealous of Abel, does this seem like a man who’s heart was set on serving God? Or does it seem more like someone trying to justify himself? Cain is trying to be like God, and telling God what is acceptable and what isn’t. God not accepting Cain’s offering had nothing to do with what he was offering, but with the attitude of Cain’s heart towards God.

God tells Cain that if he does what is right he will be accepted. God also warns him that sin is crouching at his door, eager to control him . God challenges Cain to do better. With God’s help Cain can repent and turn back to Him, it’s not too late, Cain is not beyond redemption. Will Cain be able to succeed where his parents went wrong? However, to succeed in turning back to God, he must overcome the control sin has over him.

This is where mankind goes from bad to worse, and this is where we are shown that we can’t fulfil God’s promises, Only God can. While Eve is trying to get God’s blessing without God, we see that the nature of the man she has “produced” is revealed. The would-be saviour’s heart is filled with anger, jealousy and bitterness, and he becomes a murderer. Cain walks up to his brother the and says “let’s go into the fields”, they do and in the fields Cain attacks and kills his brother. The sin of rebelling against God, and eating the forbidden fruit has now escalated into premeditated murder. I am so glad God is the one who appoints the saviour and not us, we can’t fulfil his promises, Only God can.

What is sin ?

But what is sin, we speak of it a lot but we rarely try to define it.

To sin is to drive a wedge between us and God, the sin awakens His righteous anger, and fury. The sin hurts us, and those close to us. Some of us in this room might have been told when we were little that us being bad makes Jesus cry. But that’s not the case, but when we sin we push our almighty Father away saying

“ no daddy, you might be God, but I know best, now leave me to it”.

We awaken His righteous anger, but not just that, by sinning we hurt ourselves, and those who love us. We might think that sin is without consequence but it isn’t. A couple of weeks ago a 13 year old boy killed his 3 year old brother, and wounded his father outside of Bergen. How can we say that my sin has no consequence when, children murder children and brother kills brother. Sadly, as we could read and hear on the news, the story of Cain and Abel is not unique, nor is it a pointless cautionary tale.

It shows us how brutal sin can be. Sin is most of the time wrapped up in a nice package, it looks nice, it smells nice, it’s only logical. But here is the truth, sin is ugly, sin escalates, and without Jesus sin will kill us. As we can read in Romans 6:23

“ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord”

And in Romans 3:23 we read “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

For some reason when I read this I identify myself with Abel, the innocent godly man who’s offerings and persona is always accepted by God. Not the bitter, jealous, murdering brother, who rebels against God. But that is who we are, not matter how little we like it, we are Cain. We are rebels and not the cool kind like in star wars, we are rebels against God. He says “left” but we say “right”, He says” forgiveness” but we cry out “revenge”

Last week Daniel talked about the world through the looking-glass (the mirror) where everything is opposite of what it was meant to be. I talked about how Eve wanted the blessing of God without God. Now we see that Cain has decided to rebel against God, and do what pleases him, and not God. He clearly chooses to sin, although he has been warned, does it sound familiar? And as we all hear and read this we’re thinking to ourselves. “Cain, Cain, Cain, you are one bad sinner, has there ever been a sinner like you.” It’s really easy to forget that we are Cain isn’t it. We think, if there ever was a man beyond redemption that would be Cain. He did not by far meet God’s standard, but scary part is that neither do we. We are all sinners, we are nowhere near God’s standards, and because of our sin we are going to DIE…

Wait there is more, but just like for Cain there isn’t more we can do. But if we read Romans 6:23 again we can see that is says that the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus, we can only turn to Him, only Jesus can save us. In verses 11- 12 God pronounces His judgement upon Cain; “Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brothers blood. No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work! From now you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth”

As for many others in the bible, God’s judgement becomes the turning point for Cain, Cain shows remorse when Judged by God. In verse 13 “My punishment is too great for me to bear! ¹⁴ You have banished me from the land and from your presence; you have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me!”

But if you now look at the verse 13 in the bible at your table you’re going to see a little * (star) On the bottom of the page your you are going see that the word punishment can be switched out with, sin. I am going to disagree with the translators here and say that the alternate reading is the right one. The reason for this is God’s response to Cain, God responds to Cain as if he has repented. This is the reason God protects Cain and grants him life. Cain actually says to God,” my sin is too great to bear”. And by doing so he shows remorse, Cain is unable to bear his sin and punishment, and he knows that his punishment will kill him without the help of God. Cain’s remorse is why God forgives him, and gives him a sign and the promise that whoever kills him will receive a sevenfold punishment, to prevent anyone from doing so. The sign he is given is the city of refuge, a place where murderers could go to be pardoned or protected. In spite of Cain’s sin, life goes on and in spite of our sin life goes on, that is a real tangible l sign of Gods mercy.

Life went on in the City of refuge, the people there actually made lives for themselves, Cain got a wife and had Children. As you can see, Cain too were granted a normal life in spite of his sin, all through the grace of God. We can read from the text that God kept His promise to Cain since in verses 17-24 we can read about the first 5 generations of Cain.

When we get to Lamech, we again understand why God is the one who appoints the saviour and not us. Lamech lives in bigamy (bigamy means that a person has many wives), already here we see Lamech’s disregard for God’s good order of things (Genesis 2:24; a man shall have one wife) From bigamy we go directly to murder. He boasts to his wives of having killed a man for wounding or striking him. It does not appear to have been in self-defence according to the text. The Pentateuch (the first five books of the old testament) Insists on proportional punishment. That’s where we get the expression “an eye for an eye”. If you open your bibles in Exodus 21:23-25. Exodus 21:23-25 ^“23 But if there is further injury, the punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, ²⁴ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, ²⁵ a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.” But as I said about the offerings of Cain and Abel, this is before Israel had been given the Law. But killing someone for hurting you is in-proportional, and not a sign of a godlike character. He is boasting that his vengeful character makes him safer than Cain when he says “ If someone who kills Cain is punished seven times, then the one who kills me will be punished seventy-seven times ” Whether Lamech repented or not we don’t know. However, what we do know is that just like Cain, Lamech was not the serpent crusher. And we see how sin has escalated from disobeying a simple command, to spiralling into murder bigamy and a love for violence and revenge.

A hope restored:

Adam and Eve had another son, and this time Eve said “God has granted me another son in place of Abel, whom Cain killed.” What Eve is saying is clearly pointing back towards God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 about the serpent crusher. God is restoring the linage of Adam, Seth means “granted” or “appointed”. God grants Adam and Eve another son, so that the serpent crusher is of Adam’s linage. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord, they started to worship God by His name. Could Seth be the serpent-crusher? Well… no, Seth died.

Then we have the whole genealogy from Adam to Noah, people lived and died. Babies were born, and life kept on going spite of their sin. They were all waiting for the serpent-crusher, (spoiler alert) they were all waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ. He who was going to crush the serpent and shed his blood to cover our bloodguilt (our sin, which can only be washed away with the blood of Christ) The reason God forgave Cain his sins, and the reason God has forgiven the sins of those who are in Christ. Is that when Jesus died on the cross, He took all the sin that had ever been, and all the sin that was ever going to be with Him on the cross and died. That means that every sin you have done, and every sin you are going to do Jesus has already died for. This is why Cain was forgiven when he repented, and this is why we will be forgiven if we turn to Jesus and repent.

Just like Cain built a city where those guilty of murder could seek refuge, Jesus is our city of refuge, in Him no sin or the devil himself can reach us. With the mark of Christ we are safe, sin and the devil cannot touch us. We may get sick, we may lose people we love, we may even die, But in Christ we are safe! So seek refuge in Him, nothing else. We can’t fulfil God’s promises, only He can!