40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 8

Episode Date: March 10, 2015

The murder of Able and God's conversation with Cain.

you are listening to a podcast produced and distributed by christholdfast.com please visit christholdfast.com for additional resources this is 40 minutes in the old testament Well, thank you for joining us again for another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. What is this? This is episode 8? 8 episodes in, I think. And I am joined by Brandon Hanson and the man Chad Bird. Chad, where did we leave off? Where have we landed 8 weeks in?

Well, we have made it to chapter 4 in Genesis. We got into the first few verses of Chapter 4 last time, and the goal tonight is to for sure wrap up the account of Cain and Abel and then to possibly get into the last section of Chapter 4 as well, get us primed and ready for Chapter 5 next week. All right. Well, let's do it. All right.

First of all, thanks, everybody, for listening. For listening, glad to have you part of the conversation and hope that everything that you're hearing is opening up the scriptures to where you see Christ and the way that he is speaking to us already here in the book of Genesis, and I hope that the same holds true as we talk a little bit more about chapter four. We talked last week about the sacrifice that Cain offered and the sacrifice that Abel offered And the different ways that the Lord reacted to both of those You'll remember that to Cain and to his offering, the Lord did not have regard

But to Abel and his offering, the Lord did have regard Cain's response there in verse 5 is that he became very angry and his countenance fell. And I don't think that we talked this past week about something that I at least want to mention in passing, and that is sort of a broad category. But I think we see in the account of Cain and Abel really the two different understandings of worship. You have the worship of Cain, which is really a worship that's based upon the qualifications of the worshiper. That is to say, Cain thought that what he did, what he offered, was acceptable to God because of who he was. He was the firstborn. His parents thought that he was the Messiah. So he was assured in his own mind that God was going to receive his worship favorably because of who he was.

That's the one kind of worship. The other is the worship of Abel Abel approaches God by faith And he knows that God is going to accept his offering And accept him Not because of some quality that is inherent in him Not because he is good enough Or righteous enough

Or does things in such a way as to be pleasing to God But he knows that by faith he is righteous, and therefore by faith his worship of God is acceptable. And this really is, broadly speaking, two understandings of how we not just worship God, but that we have any kind of relationship with God. The Cain worship is that which thinks that I am acceptable in some way and that I am really – I'm giving something to God. and God is going to be pleased with it because of who I am. The other view, the true view, true worship, is that of Abel. That when I come into the presence of God, I come as one who is there to be received by God.

That God will accept me, that God will bless me, that God will pour his gifts into me and receive back from me prayer and praise and thanksgiving because I am approaching him by faith. And because of faith, God accounts me and what I do as righteous. And you see that throughout the rest of the Old Testament. You see that in the world today, these two understandings of how we come to God. One really ends up being the Cain worship ends up being a worship in which the self is at the center

and my righteousness, my doing, and the other is where Christ is at the center, where he is received by faith, and because of him, who we are and what we do is accounted righteous by God. So I wanted to throw that out there. I don't think that I mentioned that last week before we moved on to talk about a few other things. If we look here at the sixth verse of chapter four, this is after we have the initial offering and Cain's reaction when he is not looked favorably upon. And God responds to Cain in this way. He says, why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? Then he goes on in the next verse, if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Now I want to talk about a lot of things here, and I also want to talk about some of the Hebrew behind that English translation that I just read. And if you're curious, I've been using the New American Standard for years and years. So if you hear me reading a translation, it's going to be most likely the New American Standard. But on occasion like tonight, I'll also bring in some of the Hebrew behind that and maybe clarify the translation a little bit. First of all, I want to talk about God's response to Cain. And this came up in chapter 3 as well. When God approaches Cain, he approaches him with a question.

In fact, more than one question, three in all. Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? And he goes on in verse 7 with more questions. And it's helpful to remember something that we talked about in chapter 3 in connection with Adam and Eve's fall into sin. that when God approached them, he approached them the same way, with a question. So he says in verse 9 of chapter 3 to Adam, he says, where are you? This question is a call from the heart of God for his people to hear him and to turn to him and to receive from him what he wants to give.

So in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve fell, he says, where are you? He's not looking for information. He's looking for a restoration of relationship. And when he approaches Cain here and he says, why are you angry and why is your countenance fallen? Again, he's not looking for an answer to that. He knows why Cain is angry. He knows why his countenance has fallen. What he's wanting from Cain is, again, this restoration that is a restoration based upon repentance and faith.

Now, let's talk about how it goes on in verse 7. Now, the translation that I read says, if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. I would well let me say a couple things first of all about this phrase if you do well and I know that Brandon is listening because he

brought this up in a conversation we had after the podcast this last week when you read that translation know what is behind it the verb there for doing well is

is the verb that's based upon the same word that we see over and over in Genesis chapter 1. The word is tov, which in Hebrew means good. So God says over and over in Genesis 1, he makes this on the first day or the third day or the fifth day, and he saw that it was good. Now, that same word in its verbal form is used here in chapter 4, verse 7. And if I were to expand on the translation, I guess paraphrase it and give a little bit broader meaning to what God is saying here, it'd be something like this. God says to Cain

If you live in accord with who you are As my good creation In other words If you are good in the sense of the good in Genesis 1 If you are the way that I wish you to be If you are in a relationship with me It's based upon my love for you and your faith in that love, then such and such. So this is not about Cain simply being good the way that we ordinarily think about that,

living a moral life, following, keeping the rules. This is a much deeper and a much broader category than that. So it's interesting that when Luther talks about this passage, he says, if you did well or if you were good, that is if you believed, which is exactly where we need to go with this. This is not a matter of simply keeping laws or following rules or being good. This is being in connection with God the way that you're supposed to be, which is to say if you are living by faith, if you are connected to God by faith and so are in his eyes the good that he wants you to be. So I wanted to bring that out to expand a little bit upon what can come across It's just simply a moralistic interpretation of that So if you are the way that I wish you to be

If you are good in that way Then he goes on And most English translations, as the one that I read, says will not your countenance be lifted up? But there's no reference to the countenance here in the Hebrew text. Instead, it's literally, will there not be a lifting up? And the verb that's used there, nasah, is the Hebrew verb, is the verb that's most commonly used to describe the lifting out

or the lifting up of sin from a person. So it's the verb that's used for forgiveness. So when God lifts away, when he takes away a sin, he nassahs that sin. So here's the way that I would render that with a little bit of an expansion. So if you are good in the sense that you are the good creation that I wish you to be, will there not be forgiveness of sins? will there not be a lifting up of the of the burden of sin that that is is weighing you down cain so he's angry his countenance has fallen and and the reason it has is because he's he's living and he's worshiping without faith he is of the evil one has as first john uh says of says of

cain and so he's not living a life of faith and therefore he's not good in the eyes of god And so God says to him, if you were, then would there not be forgiveness of sins? Would there not be a lifting out of this burden that you yourself have imposed upon yourself because of your pride, because of your arrogance, because of your thinking that by your own works or by your own righteousness or by your own goodness that you are right with me. so luther also says that god has regard for faith and judges those to be good who believe that's the reason cain wasn't good because he he didn't believe and faith is that which receives the goodness that god wishes god wishes to give paul in romans 14 says that whatever is not from And faith is sin. You could expand that and say, well, then whatever is from faith is righteousness.

So whatever would have been done by Cain in faith would have been righteous, would have been actually tov, would have been good in the eyes of God. But because he's not operating according to faith, then everything that he is and everything that he does is unrighteous, is not good. It kind of reminds me of an interesting point that was made in the commentary on Luther's Catechisms by Albright Peters, the Ten Commandments volume, where he says that to obey the first commandment is actually to believe that God is both the one who alone commands, but not only that, also alone fulfills all the commandments by his word. And here we've got this flipping where Cain is going, God is the one who commands, sure, but then I'm going to fulfill this command and not believing God alone. Yeah, that's a fantastic way to put it. If there is no faith in the goodness and the graciousness of God, then everything that Cain does is going to be unrighteous. Faith makes all the difference. Anyway, I think it's important, if you're looking at your own translation, to know a little bit of the background of the Hebrew there.

and to have a little bit better understanding of what is communicated, because the English there can be a little bit misleading. Yeah, thanks for taking the time to flesh that out. That's very helpful, especially in light of the way that many people interpret that in a moralistic way, as you pointed out. Yeah, and it goes on. dig a little bit deeper into this because he first of all says

if you do tov that is if you are good in the way that I wish you to be will not there be forgiveness of sins but then he says the opposite of that if you do not do well that is to say if you are

not the good that I wish you to be if you are really living in such a way that you are undoing the goodness of your own creation which is what Cain was doing then he says sin is crouching at the door

it's a the verb to choose here is kind of a depiction of a beast a beast of the field that is crouching at the door and it says its desire is for you but you you must master it there's a couple things there that uh are worthy of note first of all i love this i love this metaphor of sin crouching at the door it's it's like it's it's waiting to get in but it's biding its time asleep or it's pretending to be asleep

But at any moment, it's waiting to pounce. And this is the way that I've seen sin work in my whole life. It's the way that all of us have experienced it. You see it happening in marriages and the scriptures as well. If you think of sin as a beast, while the sin is being committed, it's like the beast is asleep. It's like it's been domesticated. Everything is fine. While the sin is being committed, there's no pangs of conscience.

There's no worries about it. It's like sin isn't even there. It's like this wolf that's over there asleep and seemingly harmless. But then as soon as the sin has been committed, then the beast shows itself for what it truly is. It awakes. It bares its teeth. It attacks the conscience. Yeah, that's some, oh, grandma, what big teeth you have moment.

It is, yes. What big teeth you have. I think it's in Johann Gerhard's Sacred Meditations. There's one of his memorable lines is that when we are being tempted, sin makes itself appear as if it is a mere feather but once it's been committed then it drops onto us with the weight of an anvil to use a little bit different metaphor

but that's kind of what's happening here with Cain it's the same thing that happens with us that's the way that sin works its way into our lives it's not going to reveal itself in all its ugliness and hideousness And it's not going to show us those big teeth. Instead, it's going to pretend as if it's a domesticated, cute animal until it finally gets a hold of us.

And that's when it really causes its damage. And, of course, that's what we see in the case of Cain. You can see a progression that's taking place from his upbringing to thinking that he's the Messiah. You have this arrogance that begins to form. And then when his offering is rejected, you have anger that is added to that. And then you have him rejecting this intervention by God. God is trying to stop what is going to happen from happening. So he really rejects the word of God here.

And then, as we'll see in just a minute, he deceives his brother, so you have lies and deceptions that are added to it. And all of these, as they progress, are getting worse and worse and worse until finally they culminate in the actual bloodshed. So sin is incrementally working its way to its ultimate goal. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Go ahead. I was just going to say, when you pointed out the door there, I couldn't help but recall Jesus saying that he is the door, that he is the way and the life.

And then thinking of, you know, recalling that, looking forward to Jesus' words and kind of ping-ponging back to this, it's like sin is crouching at the door. You know, as soon as we turn from God alone, from Christ alone, that my salvation, my righteousness is in him alone, and I think I can do anything on my own alone, I'm stepping outside that door in a sense. I'm stepping away from Christ.

I'm no longer protected. I'm no longer in that ark, Christ as the ship that takes me through troubled waters of this life, the sin, and guides me safely home. And what we don't realize, though I think, and this is a great way of pointing it out is that it looks like to us like we can handle it we forget we're just like the israelites we go through a good period or we're just like the egyptians you know the plagues the plagues subside and we're like oh we're all right let's you know

let's imprison the israelites again or you know break our promise anyway so we step outside and lo and behold, suddenly we're just tackled by sin again. The moment that we take our eyes off from Christ, there it is. It was crouching there all the time and we've been taken out. I think that's a beautiful connection that you made that I had not thought about before. It's a great example, actually, of what happens. What you just did is a great example of what happens when you're listening to both testaments simultaneously. So you're listening to Genesis, but you're also listening to the Gospel of John, or you're listening to Exodus, and you're also listening to 1 Corinthians, or whatever it is, and you pull these together so that you hear them speaking in concert.

So when you hear God here talking about the door, immediately your mind leaps to where Christ calls himself, the door. And that's the way – that's really the way that this – I hope, anyway, that this podcast is leading people, that when you're reading the Scriptures, they have to be read holistically. That is to say you don't read the New Testament apart from the Old or the Old apart from the New, and they're read Christologically. That is to say, you're always asking yourself, what does this have to do with Christ? Not what does this have to do with just me or with others, but what does this have to do with Christ? And when you're approaching the biblical text in that way, you're going to make these kinds of connections, like between the door here and the door in the Gospels where Christ is that door. And when you pull those together, you have this beautiful picture, which you have just laid out there, where, yeah, since Christ is our door, he is our protector. He is what keeps us safe from everything which seeks to undo us.

But if you step outside that door, if you step outside of Christ and try to live on your own, by your own willpower or by your own righteousness, well, then you're unprotected. The beast of sin Which has been crouching there Is going to attack And you won't make it Because you've separated yourself From your protector By stepping outside the door

So thanks for adding that That's great Moving on to the last part of that verse I want to talk a minute about The command that we have here God says its desire is for you, but you must master it. This is one of those words, one of those must words, that we should point out something about.

Must words or should words or ought words, those kinds of command words. Anytime that you see those in the scriptures, It doesn't matter if it's here where God says you must master it or in the Ten Commandments or in some other imperative that God gives. This is critical, and this is so misunderstood in so many quarters of the church that I wish I could print this in bold and underline it and put five exclamation points behind it. That just because God commands something does not mean that we have the ability to perform it. So imperatives do not imply the ability to fulfill them. Just because it says you must does not mean that you can. This is a critical understanding of the law of God.

Now, the laws are good. It is good that God says to Cain that you must do this. It's good that God says to us that you are not to commit idolatry, not to commit murder, not to steal, whatever the command is. These are good. And ultimately what they do is not give us the ability to fulfill them, but instead they point out our inability to fulfill them, and in fact, all those occasions in which we have not. So just because God says you must do something doesn't mean that you can do something. And I would venture to guess that misunderstanding that has led to more rampant moralism in the church than almost anything else because the law is preached in such a way that people think that it can be kept instead of being preached in such a way as to point out that it hasn't been kept. And therefore, we need someone else to keep it for us, Christ to keep it for us.

So if the law is preached in such a way that must equals can, what need is there of Christ? If I can keep what God says I must keep, then why do I need Jesus to do it? Why do I need him to keep the law? oh, why do I need him to suffer the penalty for my breaking of it? You look like you wanted to say something, Dan. No, I was just thinking that every time I see a must or a should or a should not, I file those all in the column under the heading, therefore be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

That's where they all go. All of those things go. So, Cain, you must master it. Okay, that goes into that category. The totality of every must and should and do in Scripture all goes into that container of be perfect. Like your Father in Heaven is perfect. It's sort of like all of those things are telling you what that one thing that Jesus says, what that would look like. It's all of these things

It's the culmination of all of scripture All the shoulds and musts of scripture If you were to pull all that off That's what it means to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect And I know then that I've fallen short in a million different ways Some of them we read And we think that some of them are more doable than others Thou shalt not murder

That's not that hard I mean, it's not that hard to not murder. I mean, most of us will go through life without ever killing anybody. But Jesus has to come along and tell us what that really means because we are prone to make that dividing line because we want to have a way of distinguishing ourselves. I mean, if we could just feel like we're pulling one of these things off, we'll run with it. We'll pat ourselves on the back for it. We'll muster up some self-righteousness for it, even if it's just that. And so Jesus has to come along and name us all murderers because we've all hated our brother.

And that's the way it goes. And so it's not just a matter of, man, some of these you can't pull off. Man, you haven't pulled off any of them. I mean that's the truth. The truth is you haven't pulled off one single item in this column that has the heading be perfect. Well, it's – yeah, thanks for that. I do something similar. I put them all under the category of we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things, kind of that first commandment.

But it's the same thing. Be perfect even if your Heavenly Father is perfect, or make sure that your entire being is in conformity with the will of God. That is to say, keep the first commandment. So that's really all these commandments are. They're a breaking down into various kinds of categories what God requires of us, to be perfect, to love him and to fear him and to trust in him above all things. So that's what God says to Cain, but you must master it. And we see immediately following this Cain's unwillingness and his inability to do that.

And verse 8 is where we have very briefly stated The first murder recorded in the scriptures Or the first murder that happened in the history of humanity Cain speaks to Abel, his brother And when they were in the field Cain rose up against Abel, his brother And killed him This is significant for a number of reasons

The one that I want to point out, the one that's always, I guess, struck me as most important is the almost instantaneous, full effect of sin upon humanity. Here we have in chapter 4, the chapter immediately after Adam and Eve's fall into sin, we have bloodshed. We have one brother killing another brother. So it's not as if gradually over the course of centuries and then into millennia, humanity sunk farther and farther into sin until finally there was a full depravity and people were capable of the most heinous of crimes. No, immediately Immediately after the fall into sin You have murder taking place And not one enemy murdering another enemy

But instead you have one brother Killing another brother So this is evidence Of what sin does It's not something that But it's not like I'm born with a clean slate, and gradually over time I become 10% sinful, and then gradually 50%. If I don't look out, I'm going to be a full-blown sinner. No, the full effect of sin is immediate, and it is pervasive.

And we see that in the case of Cain taking his own brother's life. And not only that, but the way that he reacts to it. Of course, the murder is bad enough. But after the murder, God says to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? Notice once again, God is asking questions. He's giving Cain a chance to confess, to repent, and to turn to him for forgiveness. But instead, Cain adds to the sin he's already committed. The further sin of really accusing himself by his response to God,

excusing himself, and therefore accusing himself, because he says, I don't know, am I my brother's keeper? Luther points out that in his very excuse or in his excuses, he is accusing himself because he's just admitted that he is speaking of his brother. And if he is to keep, if he is to look out for anyone, it certainly should be his brother. But instead, he's done the exact opposite. He has taken his brother's life. So you have this compounding of sin that takes place throughout the course of Genesis 4. I've always thought the brother's keeper thing was interesting.

It's kind of what sin does as you start down that road. And as you are unrepentant, you further condemn yourself. uh and and you would say something like am i my brother's keeper as if that's an excuse when the answer to that question is yes yes yes you are uh that's not that's not an alibi you know uh that's that yes you are and you know and and yes we are and i think i think it's also interesting that what is it what does it mean to be your brother's keeper well uh i would think it would mean to defend and protect and care for your brother and we see that he does the opposite of that and that he he kills uh his brother he despises his brother and i think that this is a little

bit a little bit of a bunny trail but i think that we do this sometimes that we even get this twisted up in with with other christians with our brothers and sisters though sometimes we think being our brother's keeper means constantly calling him out or keep you on the straight and narrow and uh and and all all of this kind of stuff instead of and sometimes we kill him uh maybe not physically but we kill him we kill each other uh with our words and as opposed to what it means to be your brother's keeper which would be to to protect and to love and to care for and so i think it's interesting that that cain thinks he comes up with sort of this this is his alibi how should i know and and the answer really is yeah you should know where is he exactly

yeah in fact uh that that hebrew verb there i mean you the way you were describing it that's really what it means it means to uh to guard to to protect and so you are when you're your brother's keeper you're putting his interest ahead of your own you're uh you're guarding and protecting him out of love, which is what brothers do, which is the way that we should be dealing with our own brothers and sisters in Christ. I think we just have a couple minutes left. In fact, we might be— You've got to end with something amazing.

Just drop a bomb on it right here. Well, let me throw this out there, and I'll come back to it next week and maybe explain it a little bit more. But when Cain says what he does, God responds this way. He says, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And the thought that I want to leave with you, and you can ponder on this and think about its broader implications,

is that blood has a voice, it uses that voice in death, and that voice of blood is heard by God. What I want you to think about that is it's not so much a connection with the death of Abel, but a greater death that works a greater good and the voice of that blood that cries out I'm digging where you're going we'll wrap it up there and we will come back to it

revisit that and expand on that a little bit in next week's podcast that's a perfect way to end thanks for joining us again guys please go over to christoffest.com and read some articles, listen to some other podcasts, sermons, all of that stuff, and go over to iTunes and subscribe and rate and review this podcast if you would. We'd appreciate it.

That helps it stay relevant and makes it where it pops up for people easily. So thanks for joining us, and we'll see you guys next week. © transcript Emily Beynon