Genesis Chapter 4 Part 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back to our study. Today we're going to be in Genesis chapter 4, verses 8 through 16. We're going to look at the first murder, the blood that cries out from the ground, the mark of Cain, and all those different things. Before we do, I would just uh ask you again, if you're on Facebook or YouTube, that you would follow the page. It really helps if you make comments and interact with that a little bit. It helps the algorithm push the content to more and more people. If you are listening to this on a streaming platform, Apple Music or Spotify or something like that, if you would just subscribe or support the show, that would really, really help out a lot as far as going forward with these Bible studies. I hope that you've been enjoying them. I've been getting a lot of really great feedback. Please feel free to reach out and send messages about that as well. So last week, as we looked through this study, what we did is we looked at uh we really stood at the altar and we watched as two brothers brought an offering, and we saw that God accepted one offering and rejected the other. And we watched Cain's face darken with rage, and we heard God step toward Cain before anything happened and offered him a way out. Uh his sin is crouching at the door, his desire is for you, but you must master it. And in case you're wondering, Cain did not master it. And so this week we arrive at the moment the whole chapter has been building toward the first act of human violence in history, the first murder, the first grave. And yet, as dark as these verses are, in them we find really deep theology that ties into the New Testament. But once again, what we see is that right in the middle of judgment, grace appears where no one expects it. And so we're going to look at the text very carefully here. Let's start in verse 8. It says, Now Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? He said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear. Behold, you have driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face, and I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. And so the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. And then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod east of Eden. So I want to break this down into a couple of different sections so that we can understand it clearly. Part one will be the murder. So verse 8 opens with the phrase that has puzzled scholars and translators for centuries. It just simply says, Cain told Abel his brother, and then nothing. The Hebrew text doesn't record what Cain said. The sentence simply stops. Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field. What did Cain say to his brother? Ancient manuscripts are the thing that really helps us here. There's one called the Samaritan Pentateuch, and it's an early version of a Hebrew text, and it fills the gap with the words there, let us go out to the field. And there are several ancient translations, including the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament that included similar language. And so the implication is that Cain lured his brother out to the field. What Cain said to Abel really doesn't matter. It's what Cain did that matters. The first human death didn't come from nature. It didn't come from disease. It didn't come from accident. It came from the hand of a brother. And think about how quickly this happened. We are two generations out of the garden. The first family in history, and there's already blood in the field. The fall did not stay in the garden. It came with them. And I want you to notice something that it's easy to miss in the English translation, but it's impossible to miss in the Hebrew. In these nine verses, the word brother, it appears seven times. Seven times. Cain told his Abel his brother. Cain rose up against Abel his brother. Where is Abel your brother? I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? The voice of your brother's blood, your brother's blood from your hand. And so what Moses is doing in writing this is hammering that word because he doesn't want us to forget the relationship between the two. And so he's not going to let us distance the violence from its horror. And this is not a stranger that came killed. This is not an enemy. This is not by accident. This is his brother. Same mother, same father, same family, same blood. And that repetition of the use of the word brother, it's not just literary, it's a theological statement about the nature of violence. Every act of human violence is the killing of a brother, because every human being shares the same origin. Every person bears the same image of God. We're all made from the same dust. Ancient Christian apologists use Genesis chapter 4 to argue against slavery, against gladiators in the Colosseum, against combat, against the Roman practice of leaving unwanted infants to die. Their argument was simple. We're all brothers. Doesn't matter where we're from, doesn't matter our skin color, the language that we speak, and we all bear the image of God. You cannot kill your brother and call it entertainment. And here's something that most Christians have never been told. And in the ancient creation myths of the ancient Near East, violence was not a corruption. It was the divine order. It was the foundation of their order. In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the world is created from the body of a slain goddess. The god Marduk kills to Mat, and from her corpse, the heavens and the earth are formed. And so creation there begins with murder. In the Achahasis epic, humanity is created from the blood of a slain rebel god, and their humanity's uh origin is violence. In Canaanite mythology, the god Ba battles Mot, the god of death, in an ongoing uh cosmic conflict. And the world is a battlefield between two violent divine forces. So the ancient world said violence is woven into the fabric of reality. It's how the gods operate, it's just how the world was made. So just get used to it. But Genesis says something very different. It says the opposite. It says creation was good, and that violence was not original. And the first death was not cosmic, it was criminal. And God responded to it not with indifference, but with outrage. The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. God heard it and he wasn't neutral. The next part I want you to look at is God's question in verses 9 through 10. Where is your brother Abel? Do you hear the echo there? Going all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, God asked Adam, Where are you? In Genesis chapter 4, where is your brother? Two questions, one chapter apart. And together they define the two great commandments. Where are you? It speaks to our relationship with God. Where is your brother? It speaks to our relationship with other people. And so think about what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 22 when he was asked what the greatest commandment is. In chapter 22, verse 37 through 39. What's the greatest commandment, Jesus? Number one, you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, and your soul. Number two, you should love your neighbor as yourself. In Genesis chapter 3, it breaks the first commandment. In Genesis chapter 4, it breaks the second. And so the entire collapse of human civilization is right here. And what we see is a broken relationship with God, a broken relationship with each other, and Jesus came to restore both of those. And so again, God already knew the answer to his question when he asked, Where's your brother? He's not there to gather evidence. He is giving Cain a chance to confess. The door of mercy was still open. Envy, even now, even after the murder. And Cain does what Cain has been doing since the beginning of the chapter. He doesn't answer the question. He lies. He says, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? And so he offers, he offers two responses in one sentence. First, he lies. Then he said by saying, I don't know. He knows exactly where Abel is. He put him there. It's the first recorded lie in Genesis chapter 4. And it's told directly to God. Adam and Eve, when they were questioned, they deflect it. They place blame on other people and other things. But they didn't outright lie to God. Cain does. And watch how quickly sin escalates. One generation from disobedience and murder to murder. They disobeyed and then they murdered. And one breath from murdering to lying to God. And the second thing we see is a deflection from Cain wrapped in a question Am I my brother's keeper? And this question has echoed through 6,000 years of human history. It is the question behind every act of indifference, every turn back, every closed eye, every crossed street to avoid someone in me. And the answer, which God's entire response implies, Am I my brother's keeper? Yes. You are your brother's keeper. The Hebrew word for keeper is the same word used in Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, when God told Adam to keep and cultivate the garden. It was the same word and the same calling. Adam was appointed the keeper of the garden, by extension, the keeper of everything and everyone in it. Cain was supposed to be his brother's keeper, not his brother's killer. And the tragic irony here is the question Cain asked in contempt, am I my brother's keeper? is answered in every prophet, in every apostle, and ultimately by Jesus himself. The Good Samaritan is the answer to Cain's question. The Sermon on the Mount is the answer to Cain's question. And the cross is the ultimate answer to Cain's question. So yes, you are your brother's keeper, and the God who made both you hold you to it. Now God does not answer Cain's question directly. He makes a statement that is one of the most haunting in the entire Bible. The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. That's an interesting statement. The voice of your brother's blood. The Hebrew word for crying here is the same word used in Exodus when the people of Israel cry out to God while they're in slavery in Egypt. It's the cry of someone who is oppressed, the cry of the innocent, the cry of the wrongfully destroyed. And God hears that cry. And this is one of the most important theological declarations in the Old Testament. And that is that God is not indifferent to human violence. God does not look away from innocent blood. When someone is wrongfully killed, the ground itself becomes a witness and it cries out to God and God hears. This is the theological foundation for things like capital punishment found in Genesis chapter 9. Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed. The cities of refuge found in Numbers chapter 35, the entire prophetic tradition of crying out for justice on behalf of the oppressed. And ultimately the cross, where the innocent blood of Jesus cried from Calvary. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24 says the blood of Jesus speaks better than the blood of Abel. It speaks better than the blood of Abel. Abel's blood cried out for justice. Jesus' blood cries out for mercy for you and for me. Both are heard and both matter and both move God to act. Now let's consider next the curse on Cain in verses 11 through 12. It says, Now God pronounced the curse on Cain. Now it's important to note how this curse is different from everything that came before it. In Genesis chapter 3, God cursed the serpent, God cursed the ground, but God did not directly curse Adam and Eve. He gave them punishments, but he didn't curse them. Here, God directly curses Cain. Now you are cursed from the ground. This is a significant escalation. The direct cause here, our curse, is on a person. And it's tied directly to the ground, the same ground that received Abel's blood. In Genesis chapter 3, the ground was cursed because of Adam's sin. It would produce thorns and resist cultivation, but it was the ground that was cursed. In Genesis chapter 4, the curse goes even further. When you cultivate the ground, now it will no longer yield its strength to you. And what that means for Cain, because you have to remember he was a farmer. The farmer is cut off from the fruit of farming. Cain's very identity, his vocation, his livelihood is all taken from him. So he has no way to earn a living or to provide food for himself. The ground that received his brother's blood would no longer give Cain its harvest. And there's a poetic justice in this. The man who took life from the earth is denied life from the earth. The tiller of the ground becomes a wanderer on the ground. And the sentence continues, it says, you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. And the two Hebrew words used together here, the first one means one who staggers or moves without direction. The second one means one who is driven away in an exile or a fugitive. And so together they point a picture of someone who belongs nowhere. He has no home, he has no community, which means he'll never have rest. Adam was driven out of the garden, but Adam still had a place east of Eden, a land to till, a wife, a family. Cain is driven from the land entirely. He is cut off from both the ground, from God's presence. And I want you to know the exile moves a little bit further east each time. Adam is sent east of Eden. Cain settles in the land of Nod, east of Eden, just a little bit further away. And so each generation of rebellion moves further from the garden, further from the presence of God, further east. This eastward movement of exile is a pattern that runs throughout Genesis. And it will culminate at the Tower of Babel, where humanity, far from Eden and far from God, decides to build its own way back to heaven. And we'll get there. That's in Genesis chapter 11. Now look at verses 13 through 15. This is Cain's complaint, and then God's response. And here what we see is something unexpected happens. Cain speaks, and for the first time in this passage, he tells the truth. He's honest. He says, My punishment is too great to bear. The Hebrew word translated punishment here can also mean iniquity or guilt. So the so the sentence carries a double weight for Cain. The guilt is too great to bear, my punishment is too great to bear. And both are true. And for the first time, we see Cain not deflecting. He's not lying anymore. And he's not asking a rhetorical question. He's expressing something real. But notice even here, Cain is not repenting. He's not saying, Lord, I was wrong. Lord, please forgive me. He is saying, This is too hard for me. There's a huge difference between remorse and repentance. Remorse says the consequences are too painful. Repentance says, what I did was wrong. And I turn from it now. And this is the question I ask people when they get caught in sin and they come to me for pastoral counseling. I ask them the question, are you sorry that you got caught? Are you sorry that you committed a sin against God? These are these are huge questions. And Cain feels the weight of the consequences. He got caught, and now he regrets his decision after the penalty. But he does not turn away from his sin. He does not repent. The Apostle Paul describes this distinction in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 10, when he says, For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. Godly sorrow turns us toward God. A worldly sorrow just feels bad about the situation. Cain has a worldly sorrow, and it leads exactly where Paul said it would lead. And Cain has a complaint here in verse 14 that is remarkable. He says, Behold, you have driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face I will be hidden. Now stop at that phrase. From your face I will be hidden. We're talking about the murderer here, the liar, the man who asked whether he was his brother's keeper with contempt toward God. And now he's terrified of losing God's presence? What this does, it tells us something profound. Even in Cain's rebellion, there was enough awareness of God left inside of him to know that separation from God's face was the very worst thing that could happen to him. The image of God in humanity does not disappear with sin. It's damaged, it's distorted, it's suppressed, but it's never erased. And deep inside of Cain, under the rage and the murder and the lies, there was still something inside of him that knew he was made for God's presence. And he dreaded losing that. This is what Augustine meant when he wrote, Our heart is restless until it rests in you, O God. Even Cain's heart was restless. Even Cain knew on some level what he was losing. And that's important. Now we come to the most famous and most misunderstood detail in Genesis chapter 4. This is what it says. It said, So the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain so that no one finding him would slay him. This is often referred to as the mark of Cain. Now, as we talk about the mark of Cain, let me start by doing this. Let me tell you what the mark is not. Because the history of this interpretation of this particular text has been horrifying across religions and certain denominations. The mark of Cain was not dark skin. This interpretation has been used for a hundred plus years to justify slavery and racism and is completely without biblical or linguistic or historical support. It's not a racial marker of any kind. And I hate to call them out on it, but it's true, it was the Mormon church that teaches, that taught and still teaches that the mark of Cain was dark skin. Others teach that it was a divine sign of rejection or permanent condemnation. Some taught that it was a tattoo of evil or a brand of shame. And so the abuse of this particular passage to justify a racial hierarchy is one of the most shameful episodes in the human history of biblical interpretation. And it must be called out and rejected by anyone who reads the Bible seriously. No, the text has nothing about the nature of the mark. Nothing. All it tells us is the mark was a sign of protection. God placed it on Cain so that no one would kill him, so that the cycle of vengeance wouldn't continue. So that the murderer, the exile, the man who had earned death wouldn't be killed by someone. The mark of Cain is not a mark of condemnation, it's a mark of grace. God says whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. The number seven in the Hebrew carries the idea or the meaning of completeness and fullness and divine completeness of action. Sevenfold vengeance means a complete vengeance. Vengeance, total, full divine response from God. God is declaring Himself in this moment Cain's keeper, Cain's protector, the one who said of I'm my brother's keeper. God is saying, I am Cain's protector. And why would God protect a murderer? There's several reasons, and all of them are rooted in the character of God. First, God is the author of justice. Humanity is not the author of justice. If every person who committed murder could be just killed by anyone they encountered, the result would not be justice. It would be a mass chaos, mob violence in the streets, endless cycles of retribution. God reserves the right to execute judgment when someone is wrong. Second, God's protection of Cain shows that even the worst sinners are not beyond his concern. Now, this does not excuse Cain, but it does eliminate his punishment. It also shows that God didn't abandon him. God's protection of Cain is one of the most astonishing acts of mercy found anywhere in the Bible. The man who killed his brother, the man who lied to the face of God, is given a sign of divine protection. This is not justice by human standards. This is grace. Grace that can only come from the Lord. So what is the mark, or what was the mark? Look, the identity of the mark has fascinated interpreters for thousands of years. Because the text doesn't tell us what it was. So everything is just speculation. There are ancient Jewish interpreters who offered a range of possibilities. Some said it was a letter from God's name written on Cain's forehead. One Jewish interpreter said it was a horn that grew from his forehead, making him look terrifying to potential attackers. Some said it was a specific animal companion that walked alongside of him, like a large dog that would frighten his enemies. Some said it was a physical defect, like a trembling or a shaking. The wondering itself became the mark, and people saw him and knew that something was different. The early church fathers weighed in as well. It was Ambrose of Milan in the fourth century that suggested the mark was a sign given not to shame Cain, but just to restrain human violence. Augustine saw a deeper meaning in the mark of Cain. He wrote that the mark of Cain was a picture of what God does with all his people. He marks them, he protects them, and he does not abandon them, even those who have sinned grievously against him. The mark of Cain, Augustine said, foreshadows the seal of the Holy Spirit on a believer. What we do know is what the mark was. It was a sign from God. And we don't know exactly what it was, but we know what it meant. That God still claimed Cain as a man under his protection. He showed him grace, even after everything. And then we read that Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord. Now, as I read this passage, this is possibly one of the saddest sentences in the entire book of Genesis. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod east of Eden. He went out from the presence of the Lord. This is the defining tragedy of Cain's story. It's not the murder, it's not the curse, it's not the wondering, it's not the mark. It's this. He walked away from the presence of God. God had come to him before the murder and warned him, and then after the murder and questioned him, and then after the confession and protected him. The Bible says that Cain walked away. Now, the land of Nod in Hebrew means wondering. So Cain settles in the land of wandering. He makes a home out of his exile, and he does not return to God. Instead, what we see later is he builds, he builds a city, which is exactly what we're going to look at in the next lessons. But right here, I want you to feel the weight of Cain's sentence. God offered Cain everything, even after the murder. God came to him, God warned him, and God protected him. And Cain chose the land of wondering over the presence of God. That choice is still available to every person today. And walking away from God is the saddest choice anyone can make. One of the most persistent questions that skeptics ask when we talk about things like the Bible and God's existence and Jesus, and say, if that's the case, why is humanity so violent? If we evolved toward greater complexity, why are we so consistently brutal? You see, here's the deal. Someone who looks at this through a secular mind, through evolutionary theory, would struggle to answer these questions. Some would have to argue that violence is an evolutionary advantage that some people just have. Some argue that it's a social construct based on where you grow up and what your civilization accepts. And some argue that we're simply getting better over time. And through history, we see that that's consistently disproved. Genesis chapter 4 gives a very clear answer to why all these things happened: the evil and the violence in our world. Violence entered through the fall. It was not original. And it escalated immediately in the second generation. And violence is rooted in broken relationships with God, which produces broken relationships with each other. And it will continue to escalate violence. And as we'll see next week, it'll continue to escalate until God intervenes. The biblical diagnosis of human violence is not, hey, we need better education, better schools, better social constructs, better, better programs. The biblical diagnosis is this: we need new hearts. In Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26, it says, Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. The solution to Cain's problem is not anger management. It's not counseling sessions. It's transformation. And only God can do that. Cain's question in verse 9 is the question that underlies every political and social debate of our time. Am I responsible for the poor? Yes. Am I obligated to help a stranger? Yes. Does the suffering of others require anything of me? Yes, it does. Every political philosophy is essentially an answer to Cain's question. And the Bible's answer rooted in the image of God and the brotherhood of all humanity is yes, you are your brother's keeper. Not in the sense that you're responsible for everyone's choices, but in the sense that you are not free to be indifferent to their suffering. The Good Samaritan crossed the road, the father of the prodigal son ran down the road. Jesus left heaven and walked on the roads on earth for us. Because yes, we are our brother's keeper. And the God who asks, Where is your brother? holds us to it. As Augusta noted, the mark placed on Cain for his protection points forward to something the New Testament makes explicit. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13 through 15, it says this In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance. The believer is sealed, marked, protected, not because they deserve it, but because God claims them. Cain was marked despite his sin, protected, despite his name. And so the believer is sealed despite their sin, protected by the blood of Christ. The Apostle John uses Cain directly as a warning to the church in 1 John 3, verses 11 through 12. John identifies the root of Cain's violence. His deeds were evil, his brother's deeds were righteous. So Cain did not kill Abel because Abel wronged him. He killed him because Abel's righteousness exposed his own unrighteousness. And this is the deepest layer of the story. Cain could not stand to be confronted by the living evidence that a different way of approaching God was even possible. And so Abel and his righteousness, his life was an accusation, not spoken, but lived. Abel did nothing to Cain. He simply lived right before God. So let me wrap this up. Here's the word I want to leave you with. God came to Cain three times in this passage. Before the murder, before the warning, after the murder, God questioned him after the confession, protecting him, and Cain walked away. Whatever you have done, whatever guilt is too great to bear, whatever voice of innocent blood is crying out from the ground, God is still asking that question. God is still reaching for you. This is not Cain's story, this is the gospel. I hope you enjoyed today's lesson. Next time we'll be in Genesis chapter 4, verse 17 through 24. So then, have a blessed day.