Genesis 4:1–16 (ESV)
Now Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” And again she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.
In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.
And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.
So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.
The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?
If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.
Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”
And the Lord said, “What have you done?
The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.
And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.
When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.
You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.
Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden.
I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
Then the Lord said to him, “Not so!
If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”
And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.
Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
How Should We Read the Text?
Here we're encountering the next step in humanity's story right after Adam and Eve have left the garden. Eve conceives and bears two sons: Cain and Abel. Cain grows food from the soil, and Abel tends the sheep, and we soon see that there’s this tension that develops between them.
Now why does God accept Abel’s offering but not Cain’s? Some point to the fact that Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. It suggests that his heart was full of faith and gratitude. But Cain, on the other hand, may have offered something that is less than his best. The text doesn’t spell out its reasons, but we do see that Abel’s offering pleases the Lord, while Cain’s does not.
So Cain grows furious, but God in his mercy speaks to him. He says, “Why are you angry? If you do well, will you not be accepted?” So God warns Cain that sin is crouching at his door, wanting to consume him. It’s the image of sin lurking kind of like a wild beast.
And Cain has a choice. He could either let sin rule over him or he can give in. But instead of repenting and turning back to God and crying out to God for help and strength, Cain instead kills Abel in the field.
And so when the Lord asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain replies with that very famous saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God confronts Cain’s lie. Abel’s blood is right there. It’s crying out from the ground. And in judgment Cain is cursed. The ground that he’s worked so diligently to make all this food is no longer going to produce food for him, and he’s going to be a restless wanderer on the earth.
And yet even here we see God in his mercy. Cain fears that someone’s going to kill him, and so God puts a protective mark on him. Now we don’t know exactly what this protective mark is, but we do know that even though Cain’s life has been marked by this violence and by fighting with his brother, the Lord is still offering him a measure of grace and a measure of protection, shielding him from the complete destruction that he was going to face.
How Should the Text Read Us?
It’s pretty easy to read this story and to sort of create this distance between us and Cain. We think, after all, most of us have not committed murder. But there’s a deeper question going on here. And the question is, do we see any of Cain’s heart attitude in our own hearts?
You see, Cain resents God and God’s love for Abel. And there’s this envy that brews within him. He feels that life has treated him unfairly. And so instead of taking that unfairness to God and dealing with it with God, Cain ends up taking his anger out on his brother.
And that kind of interaction, that kind of tension, can be all too real for us living today. You know, how often do we get jealous of our friends or our siblings or the people we see who get the promotion or who are most talented, who appear happier, who seem to have the blessing of the Lord upon them?
This can cause us to kind of nurse this bitterness inside ourselves, either towards God or towards that person. Maybe we feel that God has given us a bad deal, that he hasn’t blessed us in the same way that he’s blessed other people.
We do have the option to let that bitterness fester and grow within us, but that always leads down a dark and sinful path. Maybe it’s not going to go all the way to physical violence, but this resentment, these bitter feelings inside, do create distance and essentially broken relationships between us and other people.
So God’s warning to Cain is also a warning to us. You know, sin crouches at the door. It waits for a chance to pounce. We can pretty easily drift into a kind of bitterness if we’re not watchful for this thing that crouches at the door waiting to have us.
Our hearts can get pretty comfortable in our anger and our jealousy and our desire for what other people have. Now of course outside of Jesus and outside of the work of the Holy Spirit we don’t have much of a choice in whether we allow that to happen or not. But we do now have the Holy Spirit through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so God’s invitation to Cain is also an invitation to us through the power of the Holy Spirit: “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” You see, by God’s grace, we can change our ways. We can repent of this desire for having what other people have.
And instead of letting our deep sinful desires master us, we in fact can master them because we have the Holy Spirit living within us. And that’s a really great place for a Christian to work from. Because even though Cain couldn’t do this, we today can.
And that’s a really important thing for us to do because this passage shows us that God’s judgment on sin is very real. Cain’s sin led to some very severe consequences. And so if we let our sinful hearts and the bitterness within us go to its fullest extent, the consequences are going to be severe for us too.
We can choose to continue to pursue the sin in our hearts, but do we really want to as people who love the Lord Jesus? This is a call for us to examine our hearts, to examine our envy, our jealousness, our discontent and even the anger that lives within us.
It warns us that sin is not a guest that should have a place at our table. Rather it’s a predator waiting to devour us. So will we invite the predator to the table or will we see the sin and flee from it?
Prayer
Lord,
Here we see how envy and anger took hold of Cain’s heart, and we confess that these same attitudes can creep into our own hearts as well.
We pray that you will help us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to watch out for the sin crouching at our door.
Help us to turn away from that and to turn to you.
We pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.