God Responds to Cain's Sin

Let me invite you, this morning to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 4. Genesis chapter 4, we're, we're, this is really not a, a pleasant feeling sermon. we are going to be, witnessing God's response to Cain's act of murder. In fact, if you want to give a title to the message today, it would be God Responds to Cain's sin.

We see today God responding to the first murderer in the history of human civilization, and we'll be looking at verses 9 through 16 as we observe God's response to Ward Cain, who has committed a heinous act of murder. So let me start off on a jarring note. You won't like this, but it will help you to get into Adam and Eve's shoes as they would have heard the news of this exchange between God and Cain. Imagine that a criminal.

Kills your child. And then that criminal after killing your child stands before a judge whom you have always known to be a good and a righteous judge. Imagine that the murderer shows no remorse as he stands before this judge over the crime that he has committed against your child. In fact, he speaks with calloused disregard about your child as he stands before the judge.

He won't even admit that he committed the crime. Even though and the judge knows that he did it. Imagine that this judge renders a decision and decides to let the man live. And simply takes the man's job away from him and reduces his livelihood by let's say 80%.

Imagine that the judge evicts the man from his house and says that as a result of his act of murder, he is only able to work at odd jobs temporarily as he moves from place to place. How would you feel upon hearing That judgment and then imagine upon hearing. This news from the judge. This callous murderer who hears this sentence that in your mind is gracious and lenient, but this callous murderer has the audacity to complain about the heaviness of the punishment.

And he complains about the fact that he doesn't feel safe anymore and that he is afraid that someone might come looking for him and kill him. Imagine that the judge in reply delivers a decree saying that if anyone kills this man who murdered your child, he, the judge will see to it. That that person will be repaid sevenfold. In return Imagine that the judge makes himself the personal protector of this murderer, putting a mark on the murderer that serves as a guarantee that no one who ever finds him will kill him.

Imagine all of that happening. And how would you feel? Would you feel satisfied that justice had been done? Would you think that the judge was just in this case?

And I ask you these questions as we start off this morning because pretty much everything I just described. Happens in our passage today. The murderer is Cain, who murdered his brother. The parents are Adam and Eve, who are the parents of Cain and of Abel, whom Cain murdered.

And God ends up responding to Cain in a way very similar to the way that I just described to you. And we're gonna learn in our passage today, just as we actually see through the rest of the Bible, that God is indeed a just God. But he is more than merely just. He is also merciful and he is kind toward the undeserving.

He saves the repentant sinner. We all know that, but he even shows kindness and mercy and patience and gives common grace to the unrepentant sinner. Over this past week we have seen people on the East Coast in Baltimore and the surrounding areas holding up signs calling for justice. These signs say things like we want justice, we want justice, or no justice, no peace.

I personally would not presume to know what happened and who is responsible for the death of the young man who died. I just want to point out that the cry for justice is the natural cry of every heart when we feel that a wrong has been done, especially when a life has been taken. And when justice is not done as we think it ought to be done, we are frustrated. And here's the deal.

If you are sitting here this morning and you are a justice-only person, And your only commitment is to see that justice is done fully and completely in all situations immediately and decisively, you will be profoundly unsatisfied. With God's response to Keen. This morning But if you are willing to open your mind and your heart to the fact that God is an infinitely complex God. who is more than a God of justice, and that life itself is about more than justice, then this passage will give you much to think about, and it just might enrich your view of God.

We saw two weeks ago how Cain and Abel had presented their offerings to the Lord. God accepted Abel's offering, but he rejected Cain and his offering. Cain becomes angry over this. God sees his anger.

So God reaches out to Cain and ask him, why are you so angry, Cain? Cain does not answer, but God obviously sees that murder. is already in his heart. So God tells Cain, Cain, this is a pivotal moment.

If you do well, then your countenance will be lifted up. But if you do not do well in this decisive moment of your life, sin is going to pounce upon you and come to dominate you. And we saw 2 weeks ago how Kane made the wrong choice and he murdered his brother. And it's at this point that we ended two weeks ago.

When you study Genesis chapter 4, verses 1 through 16, you see that everything that is said revolves around this statement that we find in verse 8 that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and he killed him. Everything in verses 1 through 8 leads to this single point. Where his murder is announced and then everything that follows in verses 9 through 16. emerges from the fact that Kane had killed his brother.

His act of murder is the center of this passage, verses 1 through 8 is Cain's journey to murder. And verses 9 through 16 tells us what happened to Cain after he committed this awful act. This is a hugely pivotal moment in Cain's life and also in human history. How will God respond to this act of murder?

Let me read the passage to you this morning, beginning in verse 9. Says, then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?

And 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 I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. 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.

Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. This is the word of God and may God help us to understand his words to us today. The way we're gonna break things down as you see on the insert that is in your bulletin is, we're gonna observe 5 acts of God toward Cain. After Cain murdered his brother.

And the first act we find in verse 9, and that is that God confronts Cain and he exposes his sin. He confronts Cain and he exposes his sin. Mark my words, guys, everybody ultimately will be confronted by God over the choices they make. And over the sins that they commit.

God is the last person Cain wants to see in this moment, but God doesn't care. God is there confronting Cain. And God will confront everybody at some point in this life and in the next. God sees everything, nothing escapes the notice of God.

All things are open and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Be sure that your sins will find you out. We each will give an account to God for every thought, for every idle word, and for every deed, everything. Everyone will be held to account by God in this life and in the life to come.

And God here in this passage is confronting Cain for his sin of killing his brother and he's calling Cain to account. And God confronts Cain by asking him a question. He says, where is Abel, your brother? Notice that God doesn't just say, where is Abel?

Instead, he says, where is Abel, your brother? God is saying, where is Abel, the one Who is related to you, who by virtue of his being your little brother. commands responsibility from you to look after and take care of him. When God asked Cain, where is Abel, it's not because God doesn't know where Abel is, right?

He's gonna say later that, his blood is crying from the ground. God knows exactly where Abel is and asking this question, he's not trying to find out the location of Abel as much as he's trying to point out to Cain that he notices that Abel is not where he should be. It's as if God is saying, Cain, you both went out into the field together and Abel was with you then. But now you are returning from the field without him.

I noticed that. Where is he? Why is he not with you anymore and asking this question, God is giving to Cain an opportunity to confess. What he had done Observe Kane's response.

He says, I don't know. I don't know. Kane could have made up a lie and say, well, last time I saw him, he was walking out this way or doing whatever. He doesn't even go there.

He just says, I don't know. I don't know, but even still, this is an outright lie designed to cover what he had done. Kane knows exactly where Abel is. Kane obviously has fled the scene of his crime against his brother and probably buried Abel's body in the ground and hid it somewhere.

And Kane, when asked, where is Abel, he says, I don't know. Showing callous disregard, this is the God of the universe, his Maker, who is inquiring of him, and Cain has the audacity to lie to God. Additionally, Kane doesn't just deny knowing where Abel is, he denies responsibility for Abel altogether. He says, I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?

One writer commenting on this question by Kene says, the first part of Kane's response, where he says I don't know, is a lie. The second part of his response is a rejection of God's question as an inappropriate one. He's like, you, what are you doing asking me? You shouldn't be asking me this question.

I am not my brother's keeper, am I? is the idea of the question, expecting a negative answer. This is Kane saying don't ask me where Abel is. I'm not responsible for Abel.

The term keeper in a context, a relational context like this is a legal term for a person who is entrusted with the care and the custody of another person. The idea of this term is that even if someone else had killed Abel, let's say Cain didn't kill him, but something else did, Cain would have been responsible for not having protected his brother. Because it was his responsibility to watch after and to care for his brother. But Cain did not just let his brother be killed, he himself killed Abel.

This is a double failure. Cain failed to protect his little brother Abel, and he actually was the one who killed him. And when confronted by God, He says, I don't know where he is, and why are you even asking me? Am I my brother's keeper?

It turns out that though Abel was dead, his blood was still speaking. Cain refuses to confess what he did, but Abel's blood is confessing what he did to God and crying out for justice. So God point blank asked the question, what have you done? What have you done?

Sometimes we as parents might ask that of our children, what have you done? And sometimes we're asking because we don't know what they did. Just what have you done? Tell me what you did.

But sometimes we know what they did and it's an expression of dismay. What have you done? What have you done? And that's what God is doing here.

What have you done? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. Cain is asked this question, and you don't want to just jump from this question into verse 11. There, as it were, there's space between verse 10 and verse 11.

God says this to Cain, what have you done? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, and there is no reply from Cain. He says nothing in reply. There is silence between verse 10 and 11.

He does not confess his sin like Adam and Eve did, even though Adam and Eve's confession was imperfect, woefully imperfect. They acknowledge that they had eaten of the fruit that God had told them not to eat. But Cain refuses to even go there and to make this admission. And so in response to his callousness and in response to his silence, God begins to speak.

And that brings us to the second act of God toward Cain on the other side of Cain's sin, and that is that God curses Cain in connection to the ground. He curses Cain in connection to the ground. He says, 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 Keep in mind that in chapter 3, God cursed two things. He cursed the serpent, and he cursed what? The ground. He did not curse Adam and Eve, he cursed the ground because of Adam's sin.

So he curses the serpent and he curses the ground. And so what we have here is God saying, you are cursed. This is the first time God actually curses a human person for their sin. To Adam, God said, cursed is the ground because of you.

We saw that in chapter 3, to Cain, God says, cursed are you from The ground. This is a surprising mercy. If, if you're reading this carefully, there's a surprising mercy that is observable here. God is not placing a wholesale curse upon Cain.

He's not leveling, at least at this point, eternal damnation upon Cain. The scope of the curse is limited by the phrase from The ground, that's the limitation. It's not a universal curse affecting absolutely everything about Kane. But it's a limited curse, so there's a mercy here in the limitation.

God is telling Cain that he's cursed from the ground or in connection with the ground. His relationship with the ground. is affected by the curse that God is leveling upon Cain. God is saying the curse I'm imposing here will manifest itself towards you from the ground, and God goes on to explain what this entails.

He tells Cain that whenever Cain in the days ahead seeks to cultivate the ground and to cause things to grow from the ground, the ground will no longer give its strength to Cain. Cain will get something. From the earth. But it will be a week.

Response from the earth. So even there's grace here, he will get something, enough to live off of. But he will not get the strength of the earth being yielded to him. To use modern day language, God is telling Cain that from this day forward, you will have a brown thumb.

OK, not to make any of you feel bad. how many of you have a brown thumb? I see those hands. All right.

What's, what makes us interesting is that the ground was already had undergone a curse in response to Adam's sin. So Adam and Eve after the fall were receiving less from the earth than they were receiving from the ground before the fall, but now in Cain's case, he will receive even less from the ground than his parents were receiving from the ground. Think about the appropriateness of Cain's punishment. Cain in chapter 3 gave an offering.

to God, actually, chapter 4. He had given an offering to God from the fruit of the ground, but it was evident, you remember us studying this, that Cain did not give of his very best. Abel did. Cain did not give the very best of the fruit of the ground, and so the earth is not going to give its best to Cain any longer.

The earth will be as stingy in giving to Cain as Cain was in giving of the earth's produce to God. Additionally, Cain has forced the earth to drink his brother's blood, and the earth responds by spitting back at Cain and refusing to ever give its very best to Cain, ever again, no matter where Cain goes. The earth, as it were, knows where he is, and the earth refuses to give its strength to Cain. God tells Cain that he will be a friend and a wanderer.

What this means is that Cain will settle in a place where it seems like crops seem to grow here. This would be a lush place. But then Kane will establish himself there and try to cultivate the ground, but eventually things will stop growing soon after his arrival and after his attempts at cultivation, so he will then eventually have to get up and move to another location. No doubt Kane prided himself in prior days for being a great cultivator of the soil, a magician as it were, who by his, his prowess at gardening could pull amazing things from the soil of the ground, but now he will be a miserable failure as a cultivator of the earth.

But the important thing for us to notice here is that God does not kill Cain on the spot. He could have done that. Such a judgment would have been appropriate. If the text says, and, God confronts Cain and Cain does not even admit what he did and God struck him dead, we all would have read that and said, OK, it makes sense.

1 + 1 equals 2, he's, he's receiving the death sentence for what he did and we're ready to move on. But God does not do that to Cain. Instead, he levels a limited curse upon Cain in connection to the ground. This is grace, and what makes it all the more amazing is that Cain is actually going to have the gall to complain about this sentence from God.

And what's amazing is God will actually listen to what Cain has to say. And that brings us to the third act of God toward Cain after his sin, and that is that he hears Cain's complaint. He hears Cain's complaint, says, and Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is too great. To bear, behold, you've driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face I will be hidden and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.

This statement by Kane, the very first thing he says, my, my punishment is too great to bear. I have to be honest with you and at least alert you to the fact, some of your translations even have a marginal note about an alternative translation. So let me just briefly comment on this. there is the translation that probably 80% of commentators go with, and that is the translation that is in the New American Standard that has Kane saying my punishment is too great to bear.

If we understand what Kane is saying here, then we understand that Kane is complaining about the harshness of God's punishment. And this is an outburst of self-pity and fear from Kane. This is the self-absorbed cry of a man who doesn't have a clue about the greatness of his sin. This is like a murderer on death row for the crime of murder, daring to file a complaint about his accommodations or to complain to the warden saying, I just don't feel safe here.

That takes a lot of gall. There are people actually like that who are so self-absorbed, they're not thinking about anyone else who would actually make this complaint. There's another possible translation of this. Complaint or statement by Kane that maybe 20% of the commentators that I have in my office would, would suggest as a possibility and probably even say that this is the, the viewpoint that they would hold.

and let me try to explain it, this way. You could actually, just going by the Hebrew alone, you can read this statement as Cain saying my punishment is too great to bear. Or the Hebrew will allow you to understand the statement as my sin is too great to forgive. That's very different.

Two very different translations that would alter the meaning in a significant way. The Hebrew word that the new American standard translates as punishment. is a word that is often translated as sin or iniquity in the Old Testament. Also, the Hebrew word translated bear in the New American Standard is sometimes translated as forgive.

It's one of the words for forgiveness in the Old Testament as well. Based on this fact, some commentators translate Cain as saying my sin is too great to forgive. The Greek Septuagint, ancient translation, Of the Old Testament actually translates it this way, my sin is too great to forgive, the Latin Vulgate. translates it in this way, and I believe even Martin Luther, went this way in translating this expression by Kane in this way.

I strongly lean, as most people do with the first translation, the one that you see at the top of the screen where Cain is complaining about his punishment. but even if it's true that Cain is saying my sin is too great to forgive, That itself is not a manifestation of true repentance. True repentance never says my sin is too great for God to forgive because such a statement minimizes the magnitude of the grace of God. It is sorrow, but it is a worldly sorrow that does not lead to repentance.

It is also something that someone would say who is too proud to bring himself to actually ask for forgiveness. In the New Testament we see the story that Jesus tells about the tax collector who came to the temple. He stands far off. He can't even look up into heaven.

So he can't even lift his eyes up. He's beating his breast. And he says to God, God be merciful to me, the sinner. He sees the gravity of his sin, but he's humble enough to ask for mercy.

That's true repentance. He doesn't come to God and say, God, my sin is too great to forgive. Had he come to God and just said, God, my sin is too great to forgive, he would have went home unjustified. But because he was humble enough to actually plead for mercy, to request this mercy that he knows that he does not deserve, he went home, Jesus says, justified.

True repentance does not just acknowledge that you have sinned and that your sin is great. But true repentance comes to God and actually sees the magnitude of His grace as being bigger than your sin, and you ask Him for forgiveness. That's what a humble person. Does.

You think about it, if, if you're here this morning and you're like, man, yeah, there are sins that I've committed, they're just too great. To ever forgive, do you see the pride of that? So there's other sins you've committed that you feel OK about receiving forgiveness for? That sin that you think is unforgivable, it's just too great to forgive.

So if that sin were a lesser sin, if it weren't quite so big, you would feel OK about actually receiving grace. That tells me you don't see the magnitude of all your other sins, right? And you're selling short the magnitude of the grace of God. You're saying my sin is big, in fact, it's bigger than God's grace.

It's bigger than anything the cross could ever cover. That's not true repentance. True repentance says my sin, I am guilty, I have sinned, my sin is big, and God is bigger than my sin. And I come to you, Lord, and I ask for forgiveness.

So whichever way you go in understanding Cain's statement here, it is not true repentance, but in all likelihood, Cain here, given the callousness that he's been displaying up to this point, And then God just announces the curse. Would that cause such a turnaround in Cain? To sudden repentance, possibly, but more likely he's complaining about the consequences that he's brought upon himself as a result of his sin, and he quantifies the results of what God has declared to him with 4, a four-fold description.

He says to God, you've driven me from the face of the ground, from your face I will be hidden.

I will be a vagrant and a wanderer, and whoever finds me will kill me. Two of these 4 complaints make total sense to us, right? Cain, or God told Cain that he would be cursed from the ground and Cain seems to rightly understand that practically to mean that he is being driven from the face of the ground. God told Cain that he would be a vagrant and a wanderer, and Cain is repeating that back.

So, on the first and the 3rd of these descriptions, it makes sense given what God said. But Cain interestingly adds two elements that we would not be set up to expect, and one of the elements that he adds is he mentions that he will be hidden from the face of God. Evidently, Cain is viewing himself as being banished from the face of God, the presence of God, and I'm not entirely sure totally what to do with this, but some writers suggest That up to this point, Kane has lived close to his parents, Adam and Eve, within eyeshot of Eden.

Try to get a visual of that with an eyeshot of Eden, even though they are all banished from Eden, they can all point in the general direction of Eden, up on the heights, they can't get there, but they could always say, Eden, where my parents used to live and enjoy the presence of God in a special way, Eden is there, it's over there.

On those heights. But in God now telling Cain that he is going to be a wanderer and a vagrant, God is probably telling Cain that he will be ultimately going out into the wilderness areas, taking him further and further away from where Eden. is and hence Cain will be further and further away from that vestige of the presence of God in Eden than maybe where Adam and Eve are residing, which is not in Eden but closer to Eden. than Kane will be.

And so Kane is like, I, I get what you're saying. I'm, I'm gonna be thrust out. I'm gonna be a vagrant and a, and a wanderer and in the process, you're driving me farther away from your presence and where my parents used to enjoy your special presence. A final thing that Cain says is interesting also, Cain gives voice to a complaint that whoever is going to find him will kill him.

God never said anything about this to Cain. God didn't say, and by the way, anyone who finds you, they're gonna try to kill you. God never said this. But Cain is including this in his understanding of the consequence that his sin has brought upon himself.

Cain knows intuitively that justice will demand that he be killed. He figures that someday some relative of Adam and Eve will seek him out and find him and try to kill him and execute justice and vengeance upon him. The irony here is that Cain, who refused to be his brother's watcher or keeper will now spend the rest of his life watching out for all of his relatives for fear that some descendant of Adam and Eve will find him. And we'll kill him.

For the rest of his life, whenever Kane meets up with any stranger, as the human population will begin to multiply, Kane will always wonder, is this person looking for me? To execute vengeance upon me. Kane complains about this, which takes, as we've said, a lot of gall. He showed no regard for Abel's life or Abel's safety, yet now he's complaining about the fact that someone might take his life, that he's feeling unsafe.

Kane is so self-focused here. And as he complains here, he voices no concern for his parents' burden in all of this. He doesn't say, God, if you send me away like you're talking about, this will impose too great a burden on my mom and dad. That means they will have lost two sons, Abel, whom I killed, and they will have also lost me.

That wouldn't have been a great thing for Cain to say, but even if he said that, that's at least showing he's thinking about somebody other than himself. But Cain gives no thought to how he treated Abel and showed disregard for Abel's safety and well-being, and he doesn't give any thought to his parents. His only thought is for himself and his own life, and so he complains about this to God. And amazingly, if God, if Cain said something like this to you, I know some of you well enough to know exactly what you would say.

You wouldn't take that from Kane, right? you would throw that right back in his face and say, yeah, you mean like you really cared about Abel? And his well-being. Or you'd say, what, Kane, you absolutely deserve this, and I'm gonna give you no protection, and you're gonna live the rest of your life in fear.

And that's the least of what you deserve. We would have come up with all sorts of things and they all would have probably been just. Merely just. Merely just.

Amazingly, God does not even, at least in the text, rebuke Cain for what he says. God's response to Cain here brings us to the fourth act of God toward Cain, and that is he protects Cain's life through a decree. He protects Cain's life through a decree, so the Lord said to him, therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. God responds by assuring Cain that he has nothing to worry about.

This is not God changing his sentence because of Cain's complaint. This is God assuring Cain. That he already intended to protect Cain's life on the other side of his sin, but God is now speaking this decree in order to give Cain the assurance that his life will be protected. This is amazing.

Even though Cain had sinned and murdered, God still places a value on Cain's life. God pronounces a decree that if someone takes Cain's life, he will receive vengeance from God sevenfold. Cain does not deserve this at all. This is a declaration from God, as one writer says that has the force of law.

It states that despite his crime, Cain will remain under God's care. And using the expression sevenfold, God is saying, whoever kills Cain will suffer a retribution that is 7 times greater. than he would experience if he killed anybody else. And God is willing to sign that decree.

That this is just amazing, the grace and the mercy that God is showing to this unrepentant, calloused man, Cain. God protects his life with a decree, and God does even more than this. He backs up his words with a sign, and that brings us to the final act of God toward Cain on the other side of his sin, and that is he protects Cain's life with a sign. It says, and the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him.

The text could read here, Jehovah put upon Cain a sign or Jehovah gave a sign. To Kane We don't know what this sign was, and it's interesting to read the different ideas down through the ages. Some say that it was, a mark on Kane's body, and I actually would tend to agree with that. This seems implied by the fact that the text tells us that the purpose of the mark was so that no one finding him.

would slay him. This implies that some people would in the days to come, seek out Cain and actually find him with the intent of killing him, but once finding him, they observe a mark, a sign, and decide that they dare not kill him. So this probably was some physical external mark. Some have suggested it was a tattoo.

Of some sort. One writer actually suggested it was a horn coming out of Cain's forehead. Where do we get these ideas? one ancient rabbi argued that the sign was a dog that accompanied Cain and his wanderings.

but guys, we, we honestly don't know what the sign was. Perhaps it was the number 7. On Cain's forehead, representing the sevenfold vengeance that would come to his killer. Perhaps it might have even been the name Jehovah.

Itself written on Cain as God when he delivered his decree, he says, and by the way, let me write my signature. On this decree that shows you that what I say. It could have been a sign that provoked pity in people's hearts for Cain, when they saw him. Or it might have been a sign that provoked fear, either way, it was a sign that would have the effect of causing someone who found him with the intent of killing him to immediately change their mind and let him live.

This is amazing mercy and grace upon Kane, as one writer says, whatever the sign was, it was not a stigma but a safe conduct. It is almost a covenant, making God virtually Cain's protector. It is the utmost that mercy can do for the unrepentant. The point is that God wanted it to happen, that whenever a vengeful person found King, That they would see the sign and know that God, Jehovah God is his protector.

God is protecting Cain from the death he deserves. We see here a God who withholds full justice. From one who deserves complete justice. There's nothing that we've seen in Cain that would elicit such a merciful response from God.

This is a sheer act of mercy from God. Wherein he actually protects from vengeance. Came. This is perhaps the first expression of the common grace of God upon an unrepentant sinner as God makes Himself Cain's protector and lets him live and we're going to see in the later text, he ends up finding a wife and has relations with her and, and, and has children and enjoys in the common grace of God, many of the blessings that you and I enjoy.

Throughout his life You might respond to this by saying this is a scandal of justice. Cain doesn't deserve this grace, he doesn't deserve this kindness. He doesn't deserve this protection from God. God should have just killed him.

Life for a life. You probably would feel even more this way if it was your child that he killed. But let me ask you, do you deserve the mercy that God has shown to you? Any more than Kane did.

Actually, you killed God's own son. And so did I At the cross, and God has shown us mercy and forgiveness and now walks with us day by day and protects our spiritual life for all of eternity. And you say, yeah, but I'm, I'm different from, from Cain. At least I repented and asked for forgiveness.

While noble soul you are. That you had the good sense. To repent and believe. Yeah, you repented and you asked for forgiveness, but How much grace and patience did God show you every day of your life up to that moment?

When you were living in unrepentance, before the day came when you finally broke down by the grace of God and cried out to God for salvation. And what, you did repent. You did repent on the day of your conversion. You did believe in Jesus, but what, even that repentance was something that God gave to you and wrought within you.

As he was regenerating you and drawing you wonderfully to himself. You repented because God awakened you and gave you that wonderful gift of repentance. None of us will be boasting in heaven for the fact that we had the good sense to repent. We will give God all the glory for our repentance and for our faith.

Repenting and asking for forgiveness is not merely something you do in order to elicit from God some saving response. Repentance and faith within your heart are actually the first miracles that God does. In saving you, and he gets all of the glory for your faith and for your repentance. Cain goes out after this exchange and the text tells us that he went out from the presence of the Lord and he settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

It's interesting, the Hebrew word for wanderer is nod. we've already seen the word nod in verse 12 and in verse 14, it's translated as a wanderer. God had told Cain in verse 12 that he would be a vagrant and a nod. You're gonna be a nod for the rest of your life, Cain, which means a wanderer, a wandering one, and now here the text tells us that he goes out from the presence of the Lord, he moves farther away from Eden.

And he lived. In the land of nod, in the land of wondering. This is the writer telling us that God's words came true. After he leveled the curse on Cain, he spent the rest of his life dwelling in the land of wondering.

There's so many layers of grace that we see in this passage this morning, so many layers. As Warren Weirsby asked, why would God allow a diabolical murderer like Kane to go free? In his mercy, God doesn't give us what we deserve, and in his grace, he gives us what we don't deserve. That's the nature of God.

God is a just God, but he's not only just. He's not only just. We don't know what happened to Kane. In the future, he's not mentioned after chapter 4 until the New Testament, and what is said about him there is not good, but it's possible that he could have repented.

At some point later in life. We don't know. But we do know that if he never repented, then he would have stood before a perfectly just God on the day of judgment and faced the full fury of God's eternal wrath. And whatever kindness God is showing to him in our passage today, would have only served to increase the measure of God's wrath.

Upon Cain. Let's learn this lesson well this morning. In the here and now, God is a God of justice, but he's a God of more than justice. He is a God of mercy and grace who gives the wicked less than what they deserve from Him in the way of wrath.

He causes his son to shine on the evil and the good. He causes his reign to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. And he does so with the design that his kindness and his tolerance might lead them to repentance, and if they don't repent of their sins, In the face of such kindness, then all of that kindness that God shows to them will only serve to intensify his wrath. That he unleashes on them in a future day.

Maybe you're here this morning and you have never believed in Jesus and you look around and say, man, I got so many blessings in my life. I got so many blessings. This must mean that God is OK with me. Listen to these words from the apostle Paul.

He says, do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. What Paul is saying is, please don't look at God's present kindness. Towards you right now is proof that he doesn't have wrath against sin.

Instead, you should be amazed by the kindness that God is showing to you and that kindness ought to lead you to repentance, lest you continue in your sin and God's wrath be visited upon you some future day because you did not repent. So if you have never come to Jesus with your sin and experienced salvation through him, my counsel to you today is fly to Jesus, fly to Christ. Don't complain about how maybe what's going on in your life that's maybe come upon you as a result of your sin or maybe not.

Don't complain about your lot being more than you can bear, and please don't say my sin is too great to forgive.

God's grace is bigger than your sin. And Jesus says, if you come to me, if you come to me with all of your sin mess, I promise you, I will not in any way cast you out. But I will receive you and I will forgive you. And I won't just forgive you, I will be pleasured to forgive you.

And to be your Lord And to be your savior. Let's bow our heads together. If God is at work in this room and I trust that he is, listen, we're, we're not playing church. We don't wanna play church.

We're not here to just say some nice platitudes and, and then go home unchanged. There are eternal transactions that need to happen in all of our lives. Sin is real, heaven is real, hell, hell is real. The consequences of sin are real, guilt is real.

And Jesus came into this world to die a real death and to be raised from a real tomb with real resurrection power and time, space, human history so that he could come into your life and to be your Lord and Savior and to bring you forgiveness of sins. Run to him today. Believe in him and repent and cry out to him to be your Lord and your savior. Lord, we're just We're sobered.

We're left scratching our heads at some points. We're just At your response to Kane, it's like, man, this, yeah, there's some justice here, but this is not full and complete justice, and And then we look around at the world around us and we see that you're this way towards people all the time, people that are living in sin, who are blaspheming your name, and yet they enjoy so many blessings in their life. You are a God who causes your reign and your son to bless the evil and the good.

This is just, you are a God of justice, but you are a God of more than justice.

Help us to not take your kindness for granted. But that it would lead us to repentance. And help us, God. To be like you towards those who are wicked.

Jesus tells us how you cause your rain and sun to bless the evil and the good, and he turns to us and says, and I want you to be just like your Heavenly Father. Help us to be a just people and help us to be lovers of justice. But Lord, if all we do as Christians is live for justice only, we will not bear the light of Christ. But may we go above and beyond justice.

May we go beyond justice. And to seek to love with grace and with patience. With mercy In the same way that you have shown love to us. It is then that the church shines its light and the world sees a light that is not humanly explainable.

You're a good God, Lord. And you've You've given us a goodness that we must in turn give to others. And in this room, Lord, we all have people in our lives, every one of us in this room, we got people we're thinking about right now that We think they deserve justice from me. They deserve justice.

That's all they're going to get from me. That's it. Maybe there's husbands and wives sitting here and they're thinking about their spouse and they want to give justice to their spouse. And they don't want to give grace, they don't want to give forbearance, they don't want to give tolerance, they don't want to give mercy and patience.

Lord, make us like you. Make us like you. We thank you for this opportunity to give up our offerings to you, Lord. Receive these funds, do much with every penny that is given for the spread.

Of the gospel of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said,