According to the Scriptures

Announcer (Male): Speaking of the unmitigated gall of some people, here's Pastor Damian Kyle.

Damian Kyle: The person who kills their parents and then they throw themselves on the mercy of the court as an orphan is more concerned with his punishment than with his sin. There is no repentance at all in him. His heart is so hard. There is no godly sorrow for his sin. There is only self-pity.

He is only concerned about the consequences that his sin is going to have upon him rather than what about the consequences of your sin upon others?

Announcer (Male): How can someone be so uncaring and hard-hearted is a puzzle to many, but not to God. He knows how it starts and where it ends. It is time for According to the Scriptures with Pastor Damian Kyle. Welcome to the program. In our series Gleanings from Genesis, we have been looking at the life of Cain. Last time, we learned his story as a warning about sin and where it leads. Here now with more from Genesis 4 is Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: Be absolutely ruthless concerning any sin within our lives. Why does Paul use such strong language to talk about dealing with sin? Because he understood fully what God warned Cain of here. And that is that sin will show no mercy to us as so we must not show it any mercy within our own lives.

It is literally a life and death decision. We will either mortify sin, or it will ultimately destroy us. Now Cain makes the wrong decision, and it is a disaster for him. But for us, just to make sure that none of us make the wrong choice, whatever the sin might be, just take responsibility and choose repentance concerning any sin and then choose life.

Guest (Male): It is one of the images that is very important that it is burnt into my mind and the imagery of it. It is so important of sin, and to always see every sin in our lives as a lion in a doorway just waiting for the moment. Making myself vulnerable to such an attack. Just waiting for the moment when it can rise up and destroy me. And that imagery helps me. I don't know if it helps you, but it helps me.

Guest (Male): Sometimes you look at this and we see, I know we are dealing with subject matter here that is pretty common within the Scriptures. And God repeats it an awful lot. I just wonder why. I mean, only He knows. In this congregation and any congregation of Christians meeting anywhere in the world today, what percentage of our lives, if our lives were known to anyone other than God, live habitually and long-term in the place of Cain?

Guest (Male): He does repeat Himself a lot because even if we don't stay in that place, things attach to our lives even on a weekly basis that we look at and go, "Whoa, okay, that attached recently and I need to cut that away from my life." The fact of the matter is there are no secret sins, as we will see in just a moment.

Damian Kyle: God tells him a fourth thing He tells Cain here: but you should rule over it. In other words, God tells Cain there is absolutely no need for you to become a casualty of sin. No need for anyone that knows God to become a casualty of sin. It is so unnecessary.

Guest (Male): It reminds me of that encouragement of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the church at Philippi. And he said, "For it is God who works in you," speaking to a Christian, "both to will and to do of His good pleasure." And how it is that God supplies us both the will—the desire, the motivation to do the right thing—and then the power to do the right thing.

But we must choose to exercise that. And God speaks to Cain and says, "But you should rule over it." There is no need for you to become a casualty or to continue on this path that you are on, Cain. Cain's response is there in verse eight. He murders his brother.

Guest (Male): Not very teachable. Evidently didn't believe this was any kind of a danger to him. And so he takes Abel out for a walk somehow, some kind of an innocent walk in a field, and then he kills him. I wonder how he killed him. I'd have to get the CSI units on all of this.

We know it wasn't a pistol or a sword or a spear. It had to be something primitive. Just stop, put yourself in a field with Cain and imagine. This is your brother. But really any human being, but this is your brother. And he kills him out in that field. And what is required of a person's heart and their mind to do that to another human being? And here you have the very first murder in human history.

Damian Kyle: Cain is just totally despicable in all of this. Not only in his premeditated violence against his brother, but his murder of a human being who is almost infinitely superior to him. And he does it, this lesser. And it is almost continually the case by virtue of the committing of murder. Always the lesser taking the life of the greater. But it isn't merely the act of violence against Abel. He does this in defiance of God.

The Apostle John gives us insight into Cain's motivation for doing so, First John chapter 3, verse 10, for you note takers. He said, "In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother."

And why did he murder him? We're on the edge of our seat, aren't we? What was the motivation for that? And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous.

Damian Kyle: In other words, he murdered Abel because Abel's obedient life exposed the wickedness of Cain. And exposed Cain's disobedience to the Word of God, to his rebellion against God, and made him responsible for continuing in that wickedness.

Every Christian, every righteous person that lives the life and walks the talk and talks the walk in life, that person is a living advertisement for the fact that the Christian life as it is described in the Word of God can be lived. And what it does to a Cain is it removes all of their blame-shifting and excuses for failing to live that kind of life.

A Cain is forced with one of two choices: to either join the way of Abel in walking righteously with God, to come into the light, or to put out the light. And that is exactly what he chooses to do. And that is what he was putting out. It was Abel's light, and what it communicated, what it exposed about Cain and Cains all through history. Rather than repent himself, he decided to destroy Abel.

Damian Kyle: It is important to recognize this in the account, that this is not just the first murder in human history. But the first murder in human history involved bloodshed associated with religious persecution. The persecution of the righteous by the self-righteous. The persecution of those who know that a relationship with God is received on the basis of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, but choose now to approach God in some other way.

Cain's anger—this is the first mention of human anger in the Bible—is in the context of God confronting a man concerning his sinful condition and the inadequacy of his self-righteousness in approaching God. And sad to say, really, this kind of thing did not end in the murder of Abel. But it continues in the murder and the persecution of Christians all over the world today.

This persecution comes forth from those that are determined to approach God independent of Jesus. And to do so whether on the path of secularism or to do it on the path of some work-based religious system. It has never been more dangerous to be a Christian in human history around the world than it is today. More Christians are being persecuted and dying for their faith at the hands of secularists who refuse to believe.

You want to really steam some people in life? Tell them the words of Jesus: that there is only one way to God and that is through a faith in Jesus Christ; that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no man comes to the Father but by Me. You want to see a person become enraged and even murderous? To see their anger raised and their countenance changed toward you? But that is the message that we carry because that is the message of truth concerning salvation.

Every other religion in the world is a works-based religion. It is "I do this and I gain acceptance before God." And Christianity stands not only as an individual like Abel, but it stands as a people as the body of Christ within the world. And it communicates to the world that this is the way and that this life can be lived. That we can please God, not only in how we are saved, but then in how we live following the fact that we are saved.

It is that persecution, it is that light, it is that uniqueness of Christians in the world that makes it the target of modern-day Cains who now number in the hundreds of millions around the world. God's curse upon Cain is recorded for us here in verses 9 through 15. God confronted Cain concerning his murder in verses 9 and 10. He asks Cain there in verse 9. He said to him, "Where is Abel your brother?"

Guest (Male): It is not like God did not know. He is confronting Cain. He is giving Cain an opportunity to confess his sin and to do it willingly before it is drawn out of him. Cain's answer to him is, "I do not know." It is an absolute lie.

Good luck trying to lie to God. You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can never fool God, not for even a moment. He knows everything. So he is just going to bluff and bluster. He is going to lie. And then he follows it with one of the greatest examples of chutzpah, of nerve, in the whole Bible. He says to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Damian Kyle: How hard-hearted is that? We're not talking here, Cain, about being your brother's keeper. We're talking about being his murderer. You've fallen way short of being your brother's keeper. And yes, you ought to have been your brother's keeper. You know better, one generation from the Garden of Eden. And you are the older brother.

Long before the Law of Moses, there was the recognition that the older within the family took care and had a responsibility for the younger. And here he is, he's trying this bluster, trying lies, probably trying to buy time to get out of this, but it can never, ever fool God. And God confronts him straightly concerning Abel's murder. He informed Cain that Abel's blood cried out to Him for justice, for judgment, for God to make this murder right.

Imagine, you think about how much innocent blood, how many bodies have been buried in persecutions and pogroms and all kinds of things that have happened in history. Innocent blood that's been buried, bodies hidden in the ground and all that cry out to the Lord for justice every day. And the Lord pronounced His curse upon Cain. He said in verse 11 that the earth would no longer cooperate with his efforts as a farmer, would no longer allow him to make a living from the earth anymore.

Guest (Male): His concern for himself is that God's punishment has now made him vulnerable to being murdered by others. Here he can dish it out, but he cannot take it. How often we see it in the news. We see it in these mass shootings and all these kind of things that go on. Or even the shooting or murder of another person or the violence that's taken out on another person.

They can dish it out, but they can't take it. And then as soon as they're caught, Cain is a pure coward if the truth is known about them. You have these people that ruthlessly murder another person or a whole bunch of other people and then they get into the court system and now they're going to fight tooth and nail for every day of their life.

Damian Kyle: God puts a protection on Cain in verse 15, declares that whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken upon him sevenfold. He puts a mark on Cain. Nobody knows what that mark is. God kept vengeance for Himself at this time concerning Cain. You ask yourself, "Why did He let him live?" I can only assume that somehow it served God's purposes at the time.

Perhaps so that the rest of Cain's life would be like this sermon of what happens to a person when God's way is rejected. And the misery that unfolds from the decisions that he made. For the world to see that the life of a transgressor is hard. Capital punishment is going to be instituted in Genesis chapter 9 as part of God's covenant with Noah, and then it is going to be definitely made a part of the Law of Moses, but it wasn't in place at this point in time.

And so as we leave this account, it is familiar territory. But evidently, as with the partaking of Communion, it is a time of allowing my heart to be searched for the quality of my relationship with Jesus Christ and the quality of my Christian life on a par with the greatness of the sacrifice that was made in order to provide it to me. And so the passage is here to search our lives and to make sure that we are not walking in the way of Cain at all. You can only be saved His way, God's way, and on His terms, in the relationship with God that you've been created for. And then for us to allow this message of Cain to make sure that we're not deliberately continuing in any sin, recognizing that it will destroy us as fully as it destroyed Cain.

Announcer (Male): You're listening to Pastor Damian Kyle. We will be right back. This is According to the Scriptures. We're in our series called Gleanings from Genesis. To order resources like today's message on CD, you can give us a call at 209-545-5530. Again, you can reach out to us at 209-545-5530.

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To help us in this endeavor to get the word out on stations all over the country, you can make a donation at accordingtothescriptures.com. We'd also like to take your prayer requests, so write today so we can pray for you. Our address is According to the Scriptures, 4300 American Avenue, Modesto, California, and the zip code is 95356. Or email us through the website accordingtothescriptures.com. Well, here again, as promised, concluding our time together in prayer, Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: Father, I pray for myself and I pray for each of us. I readily confess my ability to read these 15 verses in a devotional setting, in a church setting, and even listen to a sermon concerning these things and to leave a place like this and continue on in some measure invested on the way of Cain and not allow it to impact me and to search me and to change me, Lord.

I think that capacity is within all of us. And I pray and we pray for one another and we pray for ourselves individually, most of all, that nothing of the way of Cain would be allowed to survive to later destroy us and the life that we know and the life that You have planned for us. We pray for that work of Your Holy Spirit through Your word to continue upon us through this day and beyond. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Announcer (Male): On we go to Genesis chapter 6 next time on According to the Scriptures with Pastor Damian Kyle. This daily radio outreach is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto.