There Will Be War
Like any good story, the story arc of the Bible is that there’s conflict before resolution. There’s a battle before peace, toil before rest, darkness before light, night before morning, suffering before glory, death before resurrection, a cross before a crown.
Peace is coming. But first, there’s war. The battle began in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve rebelled against God. In mercy, God broke up the unholy alliance between Adam and Eve and Satan. 3:15 says that there will be “enmity” between the serpent and the woman, between the offspring (or seed) of the serpent and the offspring (or seed) of the woman. This is the big battle that began at the dawn of human history and will last until Jesus comes back.
Our text this morning, Genesis 4, tells us about the beginning of this battle, or the first skirmish in the war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.
Two Boys
Genesis 4:1 begins by telling us that Eve conceives and gives birth to a child named Cain. She may’ve thought that he was the “seed of the woman” because she says, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” It’s almost like she’s looking for the seed of woman. Perhaps Cain would be the one to defeat the devil. But then she gives birth to another son (v. 2).
Two Offerings
Then the action begins in verses 3-5. Why did the Lord regard or accept Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s? The Israelites hearing this would’ve instinctively understood why. Verse 4 says that Abel brought “the firstborn of his flock” and the “fat portions.” This is the kind of offering that the Lord commanded the Israelites to bring to him. He called them to bring their very best: the firstborn, the fatty portions to burn on the altar. Abel obeyed the law of God before it was given to Moses. He showed total dedication to the Lord. He brought his very best.
Abel’s attitude is that, “Because God is what’s most important to me, I want to give him the best of what I have.” The firstfruits, the firstborn, the fat portions.
Notice at the end of verse 4 that the Lord looks at the person before he looks at the gift, “the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering.” The Lord always looks at the heart of a person, at their motivation, before he looks at their gift. This is why Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain.” And, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (v. 6). Abel’s heart of trust in the Lord is why the Lord regarded his offering.
Cain, on the other hand, just brought “an offering of the fruit of the ground” (Gen. 4:3). He doesn’t bring the “firstfruits” of the ground, or the best of his labors. His offering is something he has to do, not something he wants to do. His heart isn’t in it. His attitude is the opposite of Abel’s. His posture is, “I know I have to make a sacrifice, but I really don’t want to, so I’ll just get some fruit of the ground and bring that. But I’d rather be doing what I want to be doing.” Therefore, the Lord’s response to Cain was opposite of what it was for Abel, “for Cain and his offering (the Lord) had no regard” (v. 5a).
Two Responses
The Lord responds this way because he wants to be treated like he’s what’s most important. He wants us to respond to him like there’s nothing better than him, like we have no treasure greater than him. He wants us to be confident that if we do offer to him a sacrificial gift, he’ll more than repay. He wants us to believe Proverbs 3:9-10 when it says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” The Lord wants us to be confident that if we give sacrificially, he’ll meet all our needs.
This is why the Lord has regard for Abel’s offering but disregarded Cain’s offering. When we come to God like Cain comes, we don’t please God and we don’t make our lives better. We may please someone who wants us to come to church, but if our offerings to God are just some outward show meant to make us look good and not from our hearts, we’re like Cain. Because Cain didn’t give himself completely to God, God has no regard for his offering.
Look how Cain responds at the end of verse 5. Cain was angry with God for not accepting his offering. This shows us that what’s most important in Cain’s heart is Cain. God should’ve liked his sacrifice, whether it was his best or not. If you’re really trying to please someone with a gift and they don’t like your gift, you respond by finding out what they would like and doing your best to bring that. But Cain is consumed with Cain, so his reaction is anger, not repentance.
What we offer to God reveals our heart toward God, and as we’re about to see, how we regard God is reflected in how we treat other people. So this whole chapter is about the two great commandments, about loving God and loving your neighbor (Mt. 22:37-39).
An Invitation and a Warning
Like a good parent, the Lord goes after Cain (vv. 6-7). The Lord says to Cain that, despite his sin, he still has the opportunity to do what’s right. He’s not a helpless victim. He can fight sin, do what’s right, and be accepted by God. If he’ll turn away from his worthless sacrifice and bring an acceptable sacrifice, he’ll be accepted.
In verse 7, we should hear God’s generosity. He’s saying to Cain, “I’m ready to be merciful to you. You blew it, that was a bad sacrifice, but if you’ll turn away from that approach and do the right thing, I’ll accept you, you’ll have my favor.”
This is the invitation to us as well. “If you do well, you’ll be accepted.” This doesn’t mean that we need to keep the law and then God will accept us. No, we can’t earn God’s acceptance. It means that we come to God and say, “God I believe that you’re good and merciful, that you’ve made provision for my sin in Christ, so I trust you and give you everything I am because I believe that you delight to accept those who trust in you.”
The invitation of verse 7 is followed by a warning. “Crouching” sin sounds ominous. Sin is like a crouching animal waiting to pounce on Cain and kill him. God is saying that if Cain nurses his anger and broods in jealousy over his brother, then he’s leaving himself wide open to an attack from a dangerous beast. If we don’t repent, sin will kill us.
A Murder and a Lie
God warns Cain but Cain ignores God. Instead, he lets anger and jealousy rule his heart. Verse 8 tells us what Cain did as a result. Cain knows exactly what he’s doing. He takes his brother out to the field where there won’t be any witnesses and no one will hear Abel’s screams. This is premeditated murder.
And there were no witnesses, except one. God saw what Cain did (v. 9). Cain responds to God’s questions with a bold-faced lie. He knew exactly were Abel was.
Jesus said that the devil is the father of lies. Cain’s lie shows us that he’s moved over into the devil’s camp. Eve thought that he might be the seed who would crush the devil. But it turns out that Cain has joined him. His anger against God and jealousy of his brother created an opening for the devil, and Cain walked through it. He kills his brother and lies to God. He’s not the seed of the woman but rather the seed of the serpent who’s out to destroy the seed of the woman.
Cursed Like the Serpent
In verse 10, God mercifully and patiently calls out to Cain, just like he did to Adam and Eve, “What have you done?” He’s giving him opportunity to confess and repent. He’s giving him opportunity to see how merciful God can be. But Cain refuses God’s mercy.
So God identifies Cain with the serpent (v. 11). In Genesis 3, God cursed the serpent and the ground but not Adam and Eve because they represented the seed of the woman. Now God curses Cain indicating that he’s the seed of the serpent. The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent has split humanity into two camps: some are on Satan’s side; some are on God’s side. There are those who respond to God by giving him the best of what they are and loving other people and some respond to God by saying that God is an imposition to their lives and hate people and lie about what they’ve done.
In Genesis, we can start to trace the line of the serpent down through those who’re cursed. God curses the serpent, then Cain (4:11), then Noah’s grandson (9:25), and then all those who oppose Abram (12:3). The seed of the serpent are those cursed like their father the devil.
Cain’s Punishment
4:12 says that Cain’s punishment will be like Adam’s. He’ll work the ground with toil and see little fruit, and he’ll be a “wanderer on the earth.” Sin always makes our lives harder.
In verses 13-14, Cain cries out to the Lord in response. In Israel when a person was killed, a relative of the person killed could hunt down the person who did the killing and kill them. But the Lord, in mercy, said it wouldn’t be so with Cain (v. 15).
What is the “mark” that God puts on Cain? The text doesn’t tell us. What’s important is what the mark stood for. It stands for God’s merciful protection, despite his sin. Cain had switched sides and joined Satan’s team, murdering the seed of the woman, so God rightly curses him. But he doesn’t send him to hell immediately. He puts a mark on him to protect his life. This is a mark of mercy, or God’s common grace. God gives good gifts to people who hate him. As Jesus says, “Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt. 5:45). Even traitors like Cain get to live and enjoy God’s sun and rain and protection.
After he receives the mark of protection, Cain moves into the “land of wandering” (v. 16). Sinners cannot live in the presence of God. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden after they sinned, now Cain moves even farther away from the presence of the Lord, “east of Eden.”
Children and Cultural Development
God’s curse and God’s common grace goes with him. He’s able to experience the blessing of children (v. 17). We see God’s common grace in the cultural developments that come from Cain’s descendants (vv. 18-22). God enables people to cope in a harsh environment that’s under his curse through the gifts of cultural development.
But we see in Lamech that all is not well in the world east of Eden. He breaks God’s creation law of marriage between one man and one woman by taking two wives (v. 19). And then he starts to boast about killing a man who wounded him in verses 23-24.
God’s law demanded that punishment fit the crime: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Lamech moves beyond this and kills a man who injured him and then brags about it. He takes God’s words to Cain and says he’ll do them seventy times better. He vows unending vengeance. He doesn’t need God’s protection. He can fend for himself. Cain and those in his line are self-focused, brutal, and unrepentant.
This is the fruit of Adam and Eve’s sin. In only seven generations, humans now boast about their power to defend themselves, don’t need God, don’t obey his laws, and try to be gods for themselves. Humanity has disintegrated into full-blown secularism, a life without reference to God that continues to this day. With our cultural developments, our technology, our armies, our money, we live as a law unto ourselves. We can defend ourselves, so we don’t need God.
Abel’s Replacement
But instead of ending the narrative on this awful note, look what Moses does in verses 25-26. God’s promise in 3:15 has resulted in faith in Adam and Eve. They’re looking for the seed of the woman. Eve realizes that Cain wasn’t the seed of the woman, Abel was. But since Cain killed him, God replaces him with Seth.
This is the point of this whole passage. In the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, God is faithful to make sure that the seed of the woman will continue no matter what. God will make sure that the woman’s seed wins, and the devil loses.
In contrast to Cain and those in the serpent’s line, those in Seth’s line, “call upon the name of the Lord” (v. 26). They recognize their dependence on the Lord and make him central in their lives. They pray to him, worship him, dedicate their lives to him, and proclaim his name.
Genesis 4 tells us that God is faithful to preserve a people like this for himself on the earth. If he weren’t, this line would’ve died with Abel. But God raised up Seth and his descendants to continue moving his plan to dwell again with his people on the earth forward.
This also means that the bitter battle with the seed of the serpent continues. Abel was the first martyr for God, but he wouldn’t be the last. The Egyptians drowned the Israelite boys in the Nile. Jezebel killed so many prophets in Israel that Elijah thought he was the only one left. But God kept his people alive until the coming of the Seed of the Woman, Jesus Christ. Satan managed to have him killed and the persecution didn’t stop there. Stephen was stoned by an angry mob. Herod Agrippa killed James. The Romans killed Paul and Peter. The early church suffered many martyrs. But the early church fathers rightly saw that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. Through persecution, God is faithfully continuing the line of the seed of the woman to this very day.
The Persecution of the Church
We may think that we’re not involved in this great battle in North America because we have relative peace today. But people are dying for Christ all over the world. Just this week I had lunch with a pastor friend from Cameroon and he told me about a pastor who was killed there recently, and about churches being burned.
The twentieth century saw more Christian martyrs than the previous nineteen centuries combined. The World Christian Encyclopedia published in 2001 puts the number at 45 million. The authors estimate that in the decade of the 1990’s, an average of 160,000 Christians were killed in countries all over the world. These are our brothers and sisters.
All of Jesus’ disciples are called into this battle. There’s no special group that gets to sit on the sideline and watch while other disciples battle through prayer and sacrifice and evangelism and hospitality and cross-cultural missions and radical generosity. This is our shared enterprise.
What role are you playing in this war? Where are your efforts pushing the cause forward? What are you doing to promote God’s kingdom and push back on the powers of darkness? When was the last time you shared the gospel? What lost people are you praying for? When was the last time you talked to your neighbors, do you even know their names? Does your financial giving to the cause of Christ hurt a little bit, or are you content with giving your 2-3%?
Do you ever ask yourself, how would I handle it if my life were on the line for Christ? Will I choose comfort over courage, life over death, the way of Cain over the way of Abel?
John’s first letter helps us on this point. He writes to a persecuted church and uses Cain and Abel as an illustration of how the world will treat us (1 Jn. 3:12-13, 4:3-4). The seed of the woman will conquer despite the pressure of persecution because “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (4:4).
Survival Under Pressure
Professor Sidney Greidanus gives an illustration on how the church has survived under such great pressure through the ages.[1] He said that the nuclear submarine Thresher had heavy steel bulkheads and heavy steel armor so that it could dive deep and withstand the pressure of the ocean. But unfortunately, during a test run in 1963, something went wrong and it couldn’t resurface. As it sank deeper and deeper into the ocean, the pressure became immense and the heavy steel bulkheads buckled and the sub was crushed, killing all 129 people inside.
The Navy searched for the wreckage of the Thresher with a research craft shaped like a ball that was much stronger than submarines. It was lowered into the ocean on a cable and located the Thresher at a depth of 8400 feet, one and half miles down. The Thresher was crushed like an eggshell and burst into hundreds of pieces. That wasn’t surprising because of the pressure at that depth – 3600 pounds per square inch.
What was shocking to the searchers was that they saw fish swimming around at that depth. And those fish didn’t have inches of steel to protect them. They had normal skin, a fraction of an inch thick. How could those fish survive at that depth? Why were they not crushed by the pressure of the water? Their secret was that they have the same pressure inside themselves as they have on the outside. They survive under great pressure because of what’s in them.
Remember what John said, “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 Jn. 4:4). The church will be victorious in its battle against Satan because God has poured his
Spirit into our hearts. John even writes like our victory is a done deal, “Little children, you are from God and have overcome (those who have the spirit of antichrist), for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
No matter how hard the battle becomes, God will preserve his church until Christ returns. The church is where God lives on the earth and the armies of hell will never destroy God’s house. The seed of the woman will never be defeated by the seed of the serpent.
What Does this Mean for Us?
We’re either going to be about God’s purposes or our own. We’re either going to be about loving and worshiping God and being our “brother’s keeper,” or we’re going to be doing the opposite. We’re either living to love God and our neighbors, or we’re living to love ourselves and ignoring our neighbors.
One way to practice this is to talk less and listen more. “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak” (Js. 1:19). As one writer says, “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” (To Mark Cox: I have never questioned your love because you are persistently curious about what’s going on with me. This has been an oasis for my weary soul.) One of the most obvious ways we can love our neighbor is by listening.
We should pray, “Lord, help me to love you the way I should, make me more concerned about you than I am about myself, help me believe that whatever I sacrifice for your cause you will more than repay.” And then pray, “Lord, help me not be so self-centered. Make me somebody who is my ‘brother’s keeper,’ who thinks about other people, help me to be mindful about what other people are going through, give me an imagination that considers what their reality is like. Give me compassion that will help me to love people well.”
A New and Better Abel
The gospel of Jesus Christ creates these kinds of desires in us. The gospel says that Jesus is a new and better Abel. The gospel brings us to “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12:24). Why is Jesus’ blood better than Abel’s? Because “the blood of Jesus…cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7).
Cain took his brother’s life. Jesus gave his life for his brothers and sisters. Jesus’ sacrifice creates loves for God in our hearts.
Lamech boasted that he would be avenged seventy-sevenfold. Jesus told his disciples that they should forgive seventy-sevenfold (Mt. 18:22). Jesus’ sacrifice creates love for others in our hearts.
May we love God more than anything and love one another deeply. May we do battle with evil together as we wait for our King to come and end this war. And, on that day, “when these trials give way to glory as we draw our final breath. We will cross that great horizon, clouds behind and life secure; and the calm will be the better for the storms that we endure.”
[1]Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from Genesis: Foundations for Expository Sermons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 492-3.