Genesis chapter 4.
Cain & Abel;
Scripture refs - Genesis 4; Matthew 18:22; Hebrews 12:24

The story of Cain and Abel is very familiar to us. Many sermons have been preached on it. As with many OT passages, the usual application drawn is a moral one. In this case, we are usually reminded to beware of the sin of jealousy, which can lead to hate and even murder. The main thrust of the passage, in it's relevance to us, is usually seen to centre on verse 7 - "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

Now that's not a wrong way to preach on this passage, but I think there's a much wider message for us in this part of God's word. I'd like to use Genesis 4 to illustrate how we can read the Old Testament not just to gather little moralisms, but to get a view of God's majestic plan of salvation, and how the gospel of Jesus is not something that just appeared overnight, but was worked out to the smallest detail over many centuries of careful preparation.

So I'm not going to use this passage primarily for moral application. Nor am I going to get involved in endless speculations about the more puzzling aspects of this passage. One of the most frequent questions asked in Sunday School or Scripture classes is "Where did Cain get his wife?" Or, how could he build a city when there was hardly any people in the world? Well I'm not going to touch those questions, because they are not the concerns that the Bible has. The writer of Genesis was no less intelligent than we are, but he didn't seem to be concerned with those issues, so let's just take God's word as it is, on its own terms, and trust God for what we don't understand.

First then let's look at where Genesis 4 fits in with the scheme of things.

Genesis 1-11 deals with mankind's beginnings. The Bible answers here for us the basic questions of our existence on earth. It makes sense of history and the world we live in. The Bible sees history as the unfolding of a huge plan of God to bring everything in creation to perfection in Jesus Christ. Genesis answers the questions we ask about our world - who are we, how did we get here, why is the world like it is?

Everyone, every religion and philosophy (almost) sees the world as imperfect somehow, because they all try to improve it and they all put forward some sort of plan of salvation. cf Mystical religion; Communism & Socialism; etc. But they all fail to reckon with the sinful nature of humankind. In Genesis 3 the Bible explains how we got that nature and how sin, evil and destruction entered the world.

Genesis 4 and following chapters show the inevitable spread and dreadful consequences of sin. So any solution to the world's problems must take sinful human nature seriously. That is why humanism doesn't work. That is why communism doesn't work. That is why capitalism works, but only for the rich. All these ignore the real problem - alienation from God, and the solutions they offer ignore the fact that human beings are not basically good, but are basically and fundamentally evil.

But along with the bleak picture of the gradual deterioration of mankind from our original perfect state, Genesis 1-11 shows God's reaction to human sinfulness. And here we see a pattern developing in these chapters. A pattern of sin, Punishment, mitigation (that's a big word I'll explain further in a minute), and promise. Recall chapter 3 - Adam & Eve sin. They are punished by being thrown out of Eden. But then their punishment is mitigated, that is, lessened, or eased by God. We talk about flood mitigation schemes - that is things we do to lessen, or make less severe, the effects of flooding. A dictionary definition of mitigate is "to reduce the severity of punishment." How did God mitigate the punishment of Adam and Eve's sin?....

1. Provision of skins 3:21

2. Birth of children 4:1, not cutting them of completely,

but going to them outside the Garden 4:1-6

3. Having fellowship with them by an offering system 4:2-6

4. The Promise of 3:15,16 which we come back to in a minute.

How is this pattern seen in relation to Cain's sin? Sin - kills Abel; Punishment - banished, ground now won't yield crops for him and he's forced to become a nomadic herdsman; (complains); mitigation - the mark or sign - same word as 9:13 (rainbow) and 17:11 (circumcision) - almost a covenant with Cain.

We also see as we go through, that the punishment gets worse

in a way - people get further and further away from the Garden situation. Adam's punishment was to till the ground in painful toil. He was driven from Eden to the ground outside. In 4:11 Cain is now driven from the ground to become a wanderer, far from the LORD's presence.

Let's look again at the promise of Genesis 3:15,16 This promise is to be the focus of the rest of the Old Testament in a way - waiting for the One to be born. Genesis puts a high emphasis on birth. Birth is often the occasion of prophecy. By the time we get half way through the Old Testament we can see that every godly woman would have been wondering, could it be my child that will be the promised deliverer, the one who will crush the Serpent?

Imagine reading Genesis as a story, without having read any of the Bible before. We have the promise of Genesis 3, that one would be born, the seed of the woman, who would crush the evil serpent's head. The promise is to the snake, by the way, but it is nevertheless a promise to the woman also. It is a promise that humankind will continue - a seed, an offspring will be born. Adam believes this promise, because he names his wife Eve, meaning `living' because she would be the mother of all the living.

And when we get to chapter 4 that promise seems about to be fulfilled. Do you see what the narrator of the story is doing here? We get really blase about it because we've heard it all a humdred times. But imagine you were hearing the story for the first time. You get to 4:1 Adam lay with his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "with the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man." Now what's the question immediately on your mind? Will this seed of the woman crush the serpent?" Then another is born, Abel. Will it be this one? We read on, and come to a huge anticlimax - one brother is killed, and one becomes a murderer, banished from God's presence - far from being a saviour, he's further away from the Garden than Adam.

But then, verse 17, Cain's wife has a child. Perhaps there is hope here? The name Enoch is similar to the Hebrew word for "initiate" or begin, and perhaps Cain thinks a new beginning will be possible through this son. But nothing comes of it. There is Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, and Lamech.

Let's look at Lamech for a moment. Here we see the pattern that continues through Genesis 1-11 of mankind's deterioration. Cain killed his brother Abel. That was bad enough, but look at Lamech - he kills a young lad just for a slight injury, and then boasts, almost threateningly to his wives about it. We see here also the first incidence of polygany, which although never condemned by the Old Testament, is nevertheless far below the perfect ideal of Genesis One.

There's an interesting connection between Lamech and Galatians which we've just been reading. In Galatians and in Romans, Paul tackles the problem of those who say, well if we're forgiven by grace, we may as well just go out and sin so that we can get more grace. Lamech is saying something very similar here. The mitigation for Cain's punishment was that if anyone killed him, that person would suffer vengeance seven times over. Lamech figures that if he does something far worse than Cain did, then if anyone kills him for it, they'll get not seven, but seventy-seven times the punishment, and so he boasts of his sin and warns his wives that if they do anything about it, they'll be liable for seventy-seven times the vengeance.

Does Lamech's boast remind you of anything else from the New Testament? Yes, Matthew 18:22. Peter asks whether he should forgive his brother up to even seven times when he sins against him, and Jesus replies, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." And then he tells the parable of the ungrateful servant.

Cain's family is a microcosm of human nature in general. Gifted and accomplished in the arts, music, metallurgy and so on, able to use these skills to tame the harsh environment of outside Eden, but unable to tame their own sinfulness. Jesus, in Matthew 18:22 is saying that his disciples must respond in just the opposite way to ordinary human nature as exemplified by Lamech. He wanted vengeance to the full, but we are to forgive fully.

Lamech is typical of humanity apart from faith in God's saving promises. But that brings us back to Genesis 4:25, where we see a new hope appear. So far in the story we've been disappointed. Cain was not the one. Nor was it Abel. Nor any descendant of Cain, and certainly not Lamech! But now we read, "Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him."

The word translated "child" in verse 25 is the word "seed" or offspring, the same word as in Genesis 3:15, so here we have a definite allusion to that promise. Will this child be the one? There is the positive association that at this time people begin to call on the name of the LORD. It looks very promising. But nothing more is made of Seth: he has a son Enosh, and lives a long time, and then in 5:8, he dies.

It's at this point that we begin to discover another great theme of the Old Testament - the idea of the Righteous Line, the Holy Remnant, through which the promised seed of the woman would come. Cain's line is evil and unregenerate, not faithful to God's promises. But the line of Seth is different. Lamech was the fifth generation from Cain. The fifth generation from Seth is Enoch, who walked with God and was taken away. Cain's line is destined for destruction in the flood, but Seth's line goes down to Noah.

Actually, the New Testament makes clear that it was with Abel that this division begins. Hebrews 11:4 says that "by faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead."

What characterizes the righteous line all down the ages is faith in God's promises. It's what makes the difference between an Abel and a Cain, an Enoch and a Lamech, Shem and Ham, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and so on through the Old Testament, we get this continual narrowing down of the righteous line, until at last there comes a woman who is able to say, "from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me - holy is his name." Because Mary is indeed the most blessed of all women - thousands of godly Israelite women must have longed over the centuries to be the one who would give birth to the saviour of God's people, and now he had finally come - the seed who would crush the serpent's head and bring his people salvation from all their sins, and a returm to the paradise that was lost.

Finally, let's meditate on Hebrews 12:24, "[we have come to]...Jesus, the mediator of a New Covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

Abel's blood brought condemnation and drove Cain from God's presence. Jesus was innocent, righteous and pure, and like Abel was killed unjustly. But where Abel's blood cried out to God for vengeance from the ground to which Abel returned, Jesus' blood cried out for forgiveness, from the Holy of Holies in the heavenly Temple where it was poured out for our sin. His blood brought not condemnation, but salvation. His blood did not drive us from God's presence like Cain, but brought us back in to the presence of our loving heavenly Father. And Jesus did not return to the ground like Abel did, but was raised to life.