Cain & Abel: Bitterness vs Obedience | EP 92

Today, we continue the People of the Bible series with famous sibling rivalry of Cain & Abel. 

We'll discuss the story of sacrifice, betrayal and murder and give practical truths on how to guard our heart from bitterness and choose a legacy of obedience.

Transcript

Who were Cain and Abel? Who are they? Well, we know from scripture, and if you want to take your Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 4, we know from scripture that they were the firstborn sons of Adam and Eve. And I think this is interesting. Many people believe that Eve thought that Cain was the fulfillment of God's promise and what you made in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. Remember when God said, we looked at it yesterday, I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed and it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. So he said, hey, there's going to be one that's going to come and he's going to, he is going to conquer death, hell and the grave. He's going to conquer the devil. And we know that this is a foretelling of Jesus Christ. We see this even in the picture of when God made Adam and Eve, before he exiled them from the guardian, he made them clothes to wear. Something had to be sacrificed. It was animal skin. Something had to die in order for their shame to be covered. And this was a picture of Jesus Christ. And many people believe, and many scholars believe that Eve thought she had the firstborn son that Jesus was talking about, or that God was talking about, who would redeem the world of sin and undo what they did in the garden. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 1, the Bible says, and Adam knew his wife and she conceived to bear Cain and said, I have got a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And we see this by her statement. Many scholars believe that She believed that Cain was this son that would redeem them, undo what was done in the garden because of the statement, I have gotten a man from the Lord. But here we see a little bit of the background of Abel and Cain, how Abel was a keeper of the sheep or a shepherd, and Cain was a tiller of the ground. Or we could say in layman's terms, he was a farmer. In verse 3 in the Bible says, and in process of time, It came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord, and Abel also brought of the firstling of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect, and Cain was very wroth, or very angry, and his countenance fell. So get the story here. Abel's a shepherd, Cain's a farmer. God says, hey, listen, I want you when you give a sacrifice, I want you to bring something that is living. This lamb, again, a picture of Christ. And we see this with the lambskins that God used to cover Adam and Eve. And here we see that Abel brought the firstlings of his flock, literally the best. It was the most tender. It was the most innocent. It was the purest of what he had to offer. He brought and the fat thereof, the Bible says, and the Lord had respect in him and his offering. But Cain, he had not respect unto his offering. He brought fruit of the ground. Now, when we look at Cain's offering, we see how it's a pretty noble offering, right? I mean, this was the product of his labor. It seemed very good. But yet God said in verse 5, And Cain, to his offering, he had not respect. Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell. He rejected it. And I think it's important to note here that God didn't just reject Cain's offering. God rejected Cain, right? He rejected him as a person. Why? Because it was his heart. God, it was Cain's heart that God was after. And Cain's heart was not right with God. There was something that was missing and we learn a little bit more of the heart of Cain. We'll unpack it in just a second. But look at what scripture says in verse 6. And the Lord God said unto Cain, where art thou wroth and why is thy countenance fallen? Again, God never asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. He says in verse 7, if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door and unto thee shall be his desire and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, where is Abel thy brother? And here we see a lot, I think one of the biggest statements of Cain's heart was this. He said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? You can just kind of sense the sarcasm, right? Some people think that maybe Cain was a teenager, because that sounds like something a teenager would say, right? Sarcastic. He says, am I my brother's keeper? And he said, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground, and now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath made or had opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. In verse 12, when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. a fugitive and a vagabond, literally a foreigner, a stranger, a wanderer, shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain, he begins, look at the response of Cain in verse 13. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Right? It wasn't really, a lot of people, or some people believe that Cain repented, but I don't believe this is a cry of repentance. He's saying here, he said, man, my punishment, I'm not going to be able to bear it. wasn't that he was sorry for his sin. It was that he was sorry that in a way he got caught. And he was sorry that he would have to be punished for his sin. So a lot of people think Cain, he got right with God, but I don't see any evidence of repentance here. And we see that going further into the story. Verse 14, behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth and from thy face shall I hide or be hid and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me and the Lord said unto him therefore whosoever slayeth Cain vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold and the Lord said a mark upon Cain lest any finding him should kill him and so look at the act of God's mercy toward Cain even though Cain did not repent And even though Cain performed this horrible sin of killing his own brother, God had mercy on him. And he put a mark on Cain and said, do not touch him. He that touches him, vengeance will be sevenfold on him. In verse 16, and Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod and the east of Eden. I think that's one of the saddest verses, really in Genesis, is he went out from the presence of the Lord, just like Adam and Eve, his mom and his dad were exiled from the garden. Even further than that, now Cain goes out from the presence of the Lord. And if you read the passage over again, There was no commandment of God to leave. God just revealed to me this morning, I don't see anything in this passage. If you do, let me know. Be sure to comment. But I don't see anything in this passage that suggests God said, Kane, I want you to go. He foretold that he would be a vagabond, a wanderer, that you're going to wander throughout earth. But he never said, go. I want you to leave my presence. This was a choice that I believe Cain made. And in verse 16, the Bible says, and Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. And he left his presence. There's a couple of things that I think we can learn from the life of Cain right from this passage. And when it comes to Cain's life, how we can sometimes do the same. I think #1, a lesson that we learned from his life is that he worshiped the product of his hands. He worshiped the product of his hands. We saw how he brought the fruit of the ground. Again, that was a noble offering. It was something that he produced. But just because it seemed good, it seemed right, it seemed as though God would accept, doesn't mean it aligned with God's command. See, the Bible says that there's a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Right? Lean not to that own understanding, but in all thou ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct that path. Sometimes we lean in our own understanding, or sometimes we We think we have a better idea of what it means to follow God or what we should do in our Christian life. And sometimes what we do is we make it all about what we do. is we make it about all about checking the box of our devotions each day or checking the box that we went to church each week. And sometimes if we're not careful, we can worship the labor of our hands. God created our hands for work. God created our hands to create, right? God gave us these gifts and talents and abilities, but the temptation comes. It's when we till the ground, when we get our hands dirty, when we work and labor. And we get something from that. The propensity is in our human nature is to worship what we have created. We worship what we produce, right? This is why it's easy for us even today as Christians to give in to toxic productivity, right? We have this skewed view of what it means to be productive. Right? I know many Christians who think they're being productive, and I have a propensity to do this as well, but they think they're being productive, and yet what they're really doing is they're doing the Christian life in their own strength. And what they're really doing is that they're worshiping the labor of their own hands. They're worshiping their work. And God said that, God teaches us in scripture that the work was given to us by God, but it was never meant to be worshiped. And as believers, something I learned from Cain's life was that I've got to be careful of building something or growing something and worshiping that. becomes my identity or that becomes, see, God gave him the gifts to till the ground so that he would take those abilities, use them for God. But there was still a commandment, still a rule that he was to follow when it comes to sacrifice. The Bible says in Leviticus, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. God was setting a precedent that, hey, this is a picture of who's going to come in the future and redeem the world of their sins. You must not deviate from that. This is why he accepted Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's sacrifice. It wasn't the perfect picture. It wasn't the picture that God had established. And so something I honestly, I take from Cain's life is that he worshiped the pride of his hands. Number 2, he tried to obey God's command in his own strength and in his own way. And we already kind of looked into that. But Cain, he thought in his own mind, well, hey, I'm going to bring what I've got. I'm going to bring the best of what I've got. And we learned from his life, we can't do the Christian life in the power of the flesh. We must have the Holy Spirit of God. Every time that I go and I grace the pulpit to preach in evangelism or preach on campus, every single time I say, Lord, fill me with your power and with your spirit. Because I can't do this in my own strength. I can't do it in my own work. There's an earthly wisdom that will tell us to continue in our flesh doing godly things there's an earthly wisdom that'll say I'll keep the commandments and I'll stay close to Jesus and I'll do what I need to do to be a better Christian right and if we're not careful we can even be selfish in our pursuit of being a better Christian we can make it all about us we can make it all about what our efforts can do again the product of our labor the building of our hands. And we can do this in our own Christian life. James 3, I love this passage. I think it's so applicable here. It says, but if you have bitter and bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth. The wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual and devilish. For where envying and strife is, if you were to picture someone in the Old Testament that lived a life of envy and strife, you would think of Cain. Right? And here's what James says, for where envying and strife is, there's confusion in every evil work. This is an earthly wisdom that tells you to continue to strive. As I mentioned the other day, you know, a foolish man, a foolish man hasteth to be rich. He goes after gain. He makes it all about what he can do. And if we're not careful, we can do the same. as Cain. So not only that, I believe what we can learn from this passage from Cain is that he failed to keep or to guard his own heart. Again, I believe Cain's problem was he had a heart problem. He had a heart problem. Proverbs 4 says, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues, the subjects, the things of life. right? Your belief, some people say it this way, your belief drives your behavior. Your belief drives your behavior. Some people, they think that, or some people teach that our belief system, what we believe about God, what we believe about other people, it will drive our behavior. And I wholeheartedly agree. And it drives who we are and it drives what we do. And if we don't guard our heart, if we don't lock away our heart and keep it in the hands of God and in the control of God, our heart, the Bible says, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who could know it? Who could know it? That means literally that our heart will lie to us. It will tell us things that's not true. Our feelings will tell us things that are not good. And so we've got to be careful. We've got to guard our heart. And we see Cain, his heart attitude. We see his heart attitude here towards God. Am I my brother's keeper? Right? He immediately, when God rejected him, verse 5, he fell, his countenance fell. And instead of getting it right with God, He rejected God. He pushed him further away. And sometimes if we're not careful, what we can do in our own lives is instead of what we talked about yesterday, keeping our heart right with God, like keeping short accounts with God and confessing our sin before God, instead of doing those things, what we can do is we can fail to guard our heart against things like bitterness, things like anger and strife. And we can let that fester inside and become what scripture teaches a root of bitterness. And so he failed to guard his heart. And then he failed to repent. He failed to repent. In this passage, there's no, there's no remorse or no repentance. When you repent, Right? You turn away. You confess it and forsake it. The Bible says if you confess and forsake your sin, you're going to find mercy. That's what Proverbs says. And there was no confessing. Hey Lord, I sinned. There was no forsaking, turning away from that sin. He was more worried, verse 13, about the punishment than he was worried about his sin. And so he failed to repent. And I believe one truth in our own lives is that If we are going to live a legacy of obedience instead of bitterness, we can't be like Cain. We must keep short accounts with God. We must keep our heart, our mind clean. So those are a couple things that I learned from the life of Cain and what happens when we let bitterness fester in our heart when we don't get those things right with God. So let's talk about Abel. Let's talk about Abel. Let's talk about what do we learn from the life of Abel? It would be horrible if we mentioned the bad brother because it's usually the noisy ones, the rowdy ones, the bad ones, right, that get all the news coverage and that are the most popular ones to talk about. What about the good brother? What about Abel? There wasn't much to his life here in the story that we read, right? He died prematurely. in our way of thinking. He died prematurely at a young age, right, with a lot of potential, a lot of different things. And we don't really know much about him. We didn't, we don't have a story much because his story was cut short by his own brother. But what we do know about Abel helps us, I believe, to live a life of obedience to God and simple obedience to God. Here's the first thing that I put down. What do I learn from really from the life of Abel? is one, he was willing to give his best. Now, Cain was willing to give his best as well, but it wasn't in the parameters of God's will and God's word, what God wanted with the sacrifice. And this is why it was rejected. But with Abel, right, both things were true. He had his heart right with God, and he did it in the right way. He sacrificed in the right way. So he was willing to give his best. The Bible says in verse 4, And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of the flock and the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and unto his offering. And I think it's interesting it says, unto Abel and to his offering. Again, it's about the person. God doesn't require a sacrifice from you, okay? In the Old Testament, he didn't require sacrifices from them because he wanted the animal, right? God doesn't ask you to tithe because he needs your money. He wants your heart. So any kind of sacrifice that we give, and we know, we understand the Old Testament sacrifices are no longer, Jesus fulfilled that. But same with our tithes, same with our talents and treasures. When we give to God, right, what is God gaining? How can you give a God that's got everything? He's gaining more of you. See, when you got saved, you got all the Holy Spirit of God living inside you. That's called the Holy Spirit. And he lives inside of you if you're a believer, if you're a child of God. But if you've, if you've got all of the Holy Spirit in you, but that doesn't mean he's got all of you. That doesn't mean that you've sacrificed everything that you are to him. And why does God require a sacrifice? is so that we can connect with him again. We can sacrifice our heart. This is the true sacrifice in God's mind. And I believe that's why scripture makes a differentiation between Abel and his sacrifice. He accepted Abel's heart. He accepted his sacrifice. And what he gave, it was right. And how he gave was right. Which brings me to #2, not only was he willing to give his best, but also Abel, what can we learn from his obedience? was that his heart was right with God. The true sacrifice that God requires is your heart. Second Corinthians chapter 9 says, every man according as he perfect in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth the cheerful giver. Right? It's about the heart. Again, God is focusing in on the heart. For if there be a first, a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to what he doesn't have. Speak unto Exodus says, speaking unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart, ye shall take my offering. So even the Old Testament sacrifices that God instituted for the remission of sins, the Old Testament sacrifices that were a picture of Christ, God said, I want you to bring those sacrifices with a willing heart. See, Jesus is not going to knock down the door of your life. He's not going to knock down the door of your heart and force his way into your life. He's not going to do it. He wants you to come willingly to the throne of grace, receiving Jesus Christ, receiving all that he has at the altar. He wants you. So his heart was right. He was willing to give his best. His heart was right with God. And another thing that I learned from the life, the last thing that I learned from the life of Abel was that his simple obedience left a legacy. His simple obedience left a legacy. Think about this for just a moment. Abel died prematurely. He wasn't a king. He had no place of power. In fact, he was literally just a shepherd, which later on shepherds would become people that were like the lowest of the low, right? He had no great wealth. He came from a lineage that disobeyed God, i.e. his parents. And yet, here's what Hebrews 11 says about Abel. By faith, Abel, he's mentioned there in the Hall of Faith chapter of the Bible. By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts and by it he be in dead yet speaketh. I think this is such this actually this passage came to my mind much when I heard the news of Charlie Kirk being assassinated. And I thought about just his legacy. I thought about the legacy that he gave that I agree with everything he said or did. No, absolutely not. But One thing is true that he preached the gospel and he did so boldly and he stood up for what he believed in. I think there's a noble traits. And here in Hebrews 11, I thought about that phrase, he being dead yet speaketh. Even today, I'm seeing video after video after video of Charlie Kirk, right, talking about Jesus. And although he may be gone, he still speaks. His influence still reaches out. His influence still stretches out to those online and those that watch his videos and read his books, right? And this is the legacy in a similar way that Abel was leaving. His simple act of obedience, his simple sacrifice that was given in the proper requirements that God laid out and in the proper way with the right heart, this simple act of obedience literally is testified to us thousands and thousands of years later. You never know what one simple act of obedience, here's what I take from that. You never know what one simple act of obedience will do in the future. I prayed today, I said, God, before I record this video, before I record this episode, I pray that it would echo into eternity. It would breathe into someone else's life, give them life that they need. from the words of God. My words can't change them, but God's word can. And I began to pray, God, I pray that you would change someone's life today. May it echo into eternity. And so we see that in Hebrews 11, and here's one that I think is pretty cool. Matthew chapter 23, verse 25, Jesus refers to Abel and he calls him righteous. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty good testimonial, right? That's a pretty good review. Having a review from Jesus himself calling you righteous, that he did right by his life. See, it's not about the amount of time that you're given, it's what you do with the time that God's given you. Abel didn't have a lot of time here on earth, but yet he made it count. And how did he make it count? Because he was obedient. I was telling, me and my wife were talking about this the other day, and it's just starting to really click in my mind. It's really just my mind, my mindset is starting to shift. I can feel it shifting because we think that life is all about what you can accomplish. It's about being somebody, making your mark on the world or leaving a legacy, although that's not a, those are not terrible goals. But I'm learning that it's the greatest value you might say, in God's mind, I believe from scripture, is the value of obedience. It's not about how much time he gives you on earth. It's not about how much talents he gives you. It's not about how much treasure, money, power that he gives you. That is a testimony of his love or his value to you. I believe the greatest thing that God's values is our obedience. It's our obedience and our sacrifice. It's our heart. God loves us enough that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You see, Abel's sacrifice was a picture of Jesus. It was a picture of what Christ would do for us. He was the sacrifice that ended all animal sacrifices. Sometimes you read the Old Testament, you're like, why did God command that? It was pointing towards what Jesus would do in a perfect way for us. See, the people in the Old Testament, they looked forward to the cross. We on the other side of the cross, we look back. We look back to Christ and what he's already done on the cross. And what did he do on the cross? He took your sin. Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. And Jesus said, I'll be that perfect sacrifice. Came on this earth, lived a perfect life for you and for me. He died on a cross for your sins. And to show you that he was God, three days later, he rose again. He rose again, conquering death, hell, and the grave. And Jesus wants to save you. If you're listening to this and you say, I've never trusted, in Christ. I've never, I don't have a personal relationship with him. The gospel, I've never received the gospel. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me, he is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the only way. He's the only way to God, the only way to forgiveness. And you can trust him today. The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You can know Him. You can love Him. You can know His love for you. Have a relationship with Him. And it all starts with trusting in the gospel, trusting in Him, and then you can live like Abel and have a legacy, a lifestyle of obedience.