We're looking tonight at the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. And we're going to turn to Genesis chapter four. Before we do that, we'll read Heiderberg Catechism's summary of what the Word of God teaches on the sixth commandment. It's found on page 53 in the back of our Psalters. And so we'll read those three question answers or the three answers together. So page 53, Lord's Day 40, what is God's will for us in the sixth commandment? I am not to belittle, insult, hate, or kill my neighbor, not by my thoughts, my words, my look or gesture, and certainly not by actual deeds. And I am not to be party to this in others. Rather, I'm to put away all desire for revenge. I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself either. Prevention of murder is also why government is armed with the sword." Does this commandment refer only to killing? By forbidding murder, God teaches us that he hates the roots of murder—envy, hatred, anger, vindictiveness. In God's sight, all such are murder. Is it enough, then, that we do not kill our neighbor in any such way? No. By condemning envy, hatred, and anger, God tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly to him, and protect him from harm as much as we can, and to do good even to our enemies. We're reading God's Word from Genesis chapter 4. Reading the first 15 verses. It's the Word of God. Now, Adam knew Eve, his wife. And she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord. And she bore again this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. In the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. And Abel also brought to the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. The Lord respected Abel and his offering, But he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now Cain talked with Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. And the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel your brother? 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 cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth. And Cain says to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you have driven me out this day from the face of the ground. I shall be hidden from your face. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. It will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. And the Lord said to him, therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord said, a mark on Cain, unless anyone finding him should kill him. Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, this is a sermon, of course, about murder, and not just about the physical act of murder, certainly it's that, but against any kind of hatred of life, against neighbor, against God, rage against someone else, envy and bitterness and hardness against people. who get in the way of my glory and my comforts and my control over my life. And we're better to turn then to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4. It seems like things are kind of returning to normal in chapter 4. Adam and Eve are together still. After the events of chapter 3, they're starting a family. They got two sons at least here, Cain and Abel. And after the cosmic events of chapter 3, things seem to be getting to the new normal. I mean the serpents and the temptation and the eating of the fruits and the curses and all of that. And yet we find out very quickly that things are not normal, that things have changed forever. And Adam and Eve have kind of a front row seat to the horror of the effects of their rebellion against God. The depth of the alienation between them and God, and from that, the alienation between people. They've already experienced it in their marriage, for sure. They blamed each other for what happened in the garden. And now, even worse, they see it. alive and well in their own home as their eldest son kills the younger son. Imagine the weight, the burden of realizing that this is the fruit of their own sins. And we experience that as well. It's like a horror show. But we get it. We've felt the sting of murder within our own hearts. Even if we've never committed an actual act of murder, we've experienced the awful sting of anger and hatred. Somebody else against us and we've seen it in our own hearts. Rage against another person and against God. We've meted it out. We've been so tactless and graceless towards our fellow human beings. A rather simple example this past week, not even against a human being, but I was spending some time in the copy room making a bunch of extra copies to send out to churches to invite them to the evangelism conference, which is, by the way, November 11 through 12 next month. A little ad there in the middle of the sermon. And the title of the evangelism conference is Loving the Lost. But in my battle with the copier, I was anything but loving. And it gave me a really hard time. I started to make 250 copies. Maybe you've had battles with a photocopy before. You understand. You sympathize. But it was hardly worthy of the anger that I was pouring out against it for not working properly. It was 11 o'clock at night. I was ready to go to bed. And I was not impressed. I hope no one came into the church at that point and came around the corner, heard what I was saying against the copier. If so, I apologize. It's now actually making a funny noise. It's not working properly. I like to think that it's weeping at the abuse it suffered at my hands this past week. Afterwards, it kind of gave me pause. That's me against an inanimate object. What have people suffered at my hands by rage and anger and hatred? Not only just overtly in terms of being angry, I know I've been angry many times, but also just in terms of a heart that's just not at peace, not loving my children, my wife, and fellow Christians and other people. What have I done to people by my murderous thoughts? Let me ask you the question just in a simple example. Do you think that the main target of my anger was the copier? I'll answer that in just a few moments. Well, not only do we get this, we get the anger in Cain. I also hope that by God's grace we have experienced the sweet cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ, for he died for murderers and for haters. and those who are full of anger. Really quickly, we're going to look at three simple points here tonight. First of all, murder and worship, then murder and God, which will be the bulk of our time tonight, and then murder and Jesus. First of all, murder and worship. We've got two brothers here in Genesis 4, and we've got two offerings. We don't have details in terms of how Adam and Eve and Abel and Cain knew that they were to bring offerings. The Lord must have revealed it to them that they were to bring a token of their hearts to God, an offering of some kind. fruit of their work, whether they were shepherds or gardeners. Many have tried to find out in the actual offering some distinction between Abel and Cain in terms of the reason why God accepted one offering and not the other. And really we can't tell. Some have said that, you know, that Abel brought a bloody sacrifice, you know, an actual animal who had to die, and Cain just brought vegetables, produce from the field. Others have said that maybe it was because Abel, there's a reference here to him bringing the first fruits and maybe Cain just brought the leftovers. He ate, he took the best from the garden and he just brought some wilted celery or something to God. There's no details here though in the actual text in terms of God distinguishing what they actually brought. That's not the point. At least the details are not there in the text. We get a clue in verse 7 what actually is going on here. where God questions kin and says, if you do well, will you not be accepted? In other words, it's not the offering that God is looking at or displeased with, in terms of the content or quantity of the offering, but the offerer. He's caring about the worshiper. Not just the details of the worship, but was the prayer offered rightly? Or did you bring your best into worship here this morning in terms of what you're wearing? Or how well you sung today? Will you not be accepted? Something much deeper going on here. It's clear that God is not what God is pleased with in Abel is not foremost the sheep that he offered, but that he offered himself willingly, honestly, humbly to God as he brought up sacrifice and worshiped God there. It was a heart that God could see clearly of devotion and commitment and loyalty to God. And in Cain's heart, he read something very different. The quantity of produce might have been much bigger than what Abel brought, but the smallness of his heart was really, really plain to God. All of this to say is that we were created to be worshipers. We were created to bring worship, to give glory. We're glory seekers. And if we do not find our purpose in worshiping God, seeking His glory, striving after the awe that is the living God, we will seek glory in ourselves. We'll be committed and overwhelmed with the awe that is ourselves. We will worship the ground that we walk on. And we will work to then protect ourselves and our reputation at all costs. And we'll hate those who do not respect us and do not accept us. We'll be angry at those who dare to disrupt our comfortable life. And we will be envious of those who have more than what we have or have what we want. And we will find ourselves with murder in our hearts. If not the desire or intent to actually commit murder, the feeling, desire, for another person to be less than what they are. And we will not find glory, we will find bondage. That's what God saw in the heart of Cain. Something less than honest, heartfelt devotion and worship to God. Murder and worship. Now second with some more detail here, getting to the heart of Genesis 4, murder and God. Was I angry at that copier. Yeah, I was angry at the copier. But beating beneath all of our anger and those moments of rage, those times when we get out of control with somebody, find ourselves even shaking, our faces turning color, that burning, you know, kind of growing envy towards another person or another family. What's going on there? We can be sure that the person that that's directed at is not actually finding the source, the central source of our anger and our hatred. Something much deeper was going on for Cain and for us. What's going on in verse 5? Where Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. The final victim of our hatred and anger is always God. It's always finally God for putting that person in our life, or putting that situation in our life, or allowing this to happen. Cain is not angry first at Abel, but at God. And what do we find here? Well, there's not a sudden and immediate venting of rage on Abel by Cain, but a gradual descent into murder. It's full of drama. It's full of real important meaning for anybody who cares about the consequences of sin, the danger of anger within our hearts, where our thoughts can lead, and what our hearts are capable of. A couple of things stand out. First of all, the terrible possibilities, capacities found in the human heart for evil. And secondly, the unwavering and stubborn grace of God towards sinners. You see both of them here in how God treats Cain. Now, there's a couple scenes here, actually. Let's look at them in turn before Cain's anger begins to rise. The first scene is God coming to Abel. You see that beginning in verse 6. Just like you remember back in chapter 3 when Adam and Eve eat the fruit and then they hide from God? They don't run after God and say, help us, we've messed up. God runs after them. That's the whole story of the Bible, actually, is God running after lost sinners. And here, God very graciously comes and seeks after Cain. As Cain is beginning to develop murderous thoughts, and is angry towards God's lack of acceptance of His offering. He appeals to Abel's reason, Pleads with him to carefully consider the contents and the direction, the consequences of his heart's attitude right now. The New Testament actually picks up the story of Cain and Abel in quite a few places. It might surprise you. First of all, 1 John 3, verse 11. 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? Because his works were evil, and his brother's righteous." God cares deeply about the truth here, and the truth was that Cain's heart was wicked. It was not righteous. It was not right. His offering was religious, but it was not righteous. His heart was full of a sense of doing something religious. of earning some kind of favor from the God. Maybe even following after Abel's example. But it was not righteous. It was not devoted. And so God graciously comes to him. He rejects his offering, but he speaks to him. He pleads with him. The warning in verse 7 is full of grace. If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin lies at the door. This anger, Cain, against me and against Abel is terribly dangerous. It's not safe where your heart is going. If you turn, don't you think you'll be accepted? Look what happened to your parents. They're not destroyed. I didn't destroy mankind. Don't you know that I'm gracious? God does not turn away anyone that comes to Him in humility and repentance. He doesn't do that. The language in verse 7 is really stark. It's language borrowed from their experience. Like a snake or a lion crouching in low-lying grass, Ready for the prey to come nearby and ready to pounce. Crouching, ready to pounce. God says that's what this anger, that's what this hatred is, that's what's going on in your heart. Sin's right there. What are you going to do about it? If you don't do well, sin lies at the door. Its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. The great enemy in our own hearts. our own anger and hatred. You've experienced that either by anger against you, attacking you, or by events in your own life. You know how out of control anger can get. It's like a wild animal. Not ready to devour another person, but ultimately devour yourself. Sin is like that. It is never satisfied with a little. It always wants more. It is ever intense on increasing in your heart and my heart. It is never neutral. It promises all kinds of pleasures, but it doesn't ultimately want you to be pleased, but to be broken. It is intense on taking your soul If it's not dealt with, it never moves backwards. I mean, it might hide for a little while. It will always move forwards in terms of increasing its control over your heart and my heart. It will consume more and more of our life until it consumes us, if it's not dealt with. You see that in Cain. What does he end up doing? He ends up killing his own brother. Imagine Adam and Eve tearing out their hair. It's the end of our alienation from God, our own son, killing his younger brother. Don't be surprised when unconfessed sin leads you in directions and areas that you never thought possible. Where the beginning of sin, and you even say to yourself, it will never get worse than this. Don't be surprised when it gets worse. You end up thinking things and doing things you never thought you would do. Don't be surprised that when you let lust reign just a little bit in your heart, all of a sudden lurid thoughts and plans take shape that you would have been embarrassed to even consider at one point. Let anger and hatred, let it loose just a little bit, excuse it, pander to it, refuse to fight it. Don't be surprised when it grows and gets out of control. It will begin to master you if you do not, by God's grace, master it. And it will end up grieving us, controlling us, hurting us and those around us. I wonder if your years, however old you are here tonight, have taught you that about anger? how great an enemy this murder is, murderous thoughts are. The heart of murder, when I'm angry against God, when I'm angry at another person, be it the person in the car in front of me, chatting up with the cashier when I want to get my groceries through quickly, right through to my lack of patience with children and neighbors. that in the heart of my being, my response is that I want to be the God of my life. That's how deep the problem is. I'm angry because I want to be the God of my life and I don't like what God is doing right now, and so I'm going to be angry. A rage against those who get in the way of me and my glory. And how much this just emphasizes and trumpets the greatness of God's grace, that only God's grace can save me from this and its consequences. Listen to the Lord pleading with Cain and pleading with us. Cain does not listen and ends up murdering his brother. Then there's the second scene afterwards, after the events of verse 8. We don't know how he killed his brother. He did something with his own hands. The Lord comes back to Cain after all of that. He refused God's help, God's assistance, God's intervention, and yet he comes to him. Where is Abel, your brother? A lot like God in the garden with Adam and Eve. Where are you, Adam? He knows. He knows where Abel is. He knows where Adam and Eve were. It's this God coming after people who are sinners. You look deeper with all this sin and you see God at work. Everything else is alive and things are increasingly bad, but God is there. God is alive and well. You have this extended conversation between him and Cain. In this chapter, God pleading with Cain. I had a chance to have a conversation with an atheist this past week who I've known for a couple of years now, and he trotted out a number of understandable from the atheist point of view, arguments against a God, and especially against the God of the Bible. And in the course of time, he came out, how can you believe in a God who allows the Holocaust to happen, and the murder of so many Jews during World War II? And the charge, which I understand, where was God? If God is loving, if God is powerful, why didn't he do something? And my response always is that He was there. The big question though is where was man? Where is man? Where is man's solution to the problem of sin? He's guilty, unable to solve our problems, unable to explain life, unable to give purpose. Where is God in all this? He's coming to man, pleading with man, searching for man perennially over and over again, inquiring of man and inviting man to repent and believe. This question stands out there on the air. It's everywhere in the universe. Where are you? Where is Abel, your brother? Where are you, Adam? Where are you, sinner? As Augustine said, God made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find rest in him. It's the question of a God searching for and pursuing lost sinners. Now Cain could silence Abel's mouth, but he could not silence the voice of Abel. What have you done? God said to him, verse 10, the voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. This is picked up in Hebrews 11, where righteous Abel is commended as a man of faith. Verse 4 of Hebrews 11, "...by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaks." Abel's blood. He continues to speak, not only calling out to God for justice, but also testifying to the faith of this man, Abel. The curse then falls on Cain and on his descendants and the rest of our text. The curse on the ground will be felt for Cain when you tell the ground, verse 12, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. and a fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth. Cain complains in verse 13, my punishment is greater than I could bear. You driven me from the face of the ground. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth. It will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. We don't know how many people there were at that point, but they were all related to Cain in some way and they know him. They're going to find out what he did. And God again has mercy upon him. He puts a mark on him. He protects him. God pursues justice in response to Abel's blood crying out, but He also pursues sinners, those who don't even know they need to be saved. Here's the skinny here on Cain and our own struggles with sins against the sixth commandment. Eve had to be talked into her sin. The serpent comes along Converses with Eve. Tempts her. She listens. She sins. Here comes God. He pleads with Cain. And Cain will not allow God to talk him out of his sin. He will not confess to it. He will not accept the punishment, the just punishment upon his sin. And my word for you tonight is please make sure this doesn't happen to you. When God comes and starts to deal with you in terms of your sin and my sin, and His Spirit's work is vitally apparent in our lives, and we're becoming aware of our sin, and God is convicting us of sin. And He's coming in His Word, and He's offering help. He's offering assistance. Do not be like Cain and refuse, especially when it comes to the fifth commandment. The revenge, that hatred, that anger. When God comes alongside, do not refuse His voice. When He comes and pursues us and shows us the truth about ourselves, He gives us time to repent. He gives us every opportunity to confess our sins to one another. Confess our anger and our hatred. Take advantage of His mercy and His grace and His patience. All of God's approaches here towards Cain and towards us, all of His questions, His offers of mercy, and our invitations to Cain and to us to reflect on our hearts and our actions, our thoughts, to accept His help, and to fight hard against sin. His desire is for you, but you should rule over it." What's the answer? What's the answer? You find out, yeah, that anger and that hatred and that envy and that bitterness is real. It's starting to move you in directions that are not healthy, that are dangerous for you and other people. There's only one response, and that's humility, humble confession, admittance, and repentance, and a clinging to the cross of Christ. Well, that's our last point, murder and Jesus, just briefly. Murder and Jesus. As I was thinking about this story, I thought about another story, a parable from the New Testament. Another two brothers, we know them as the prodigal sons, younger and older, younger who demanded his father's inheritance and went off and spent it and basically ruined it in wine, women, and song, came home. Because he remembered his father, came home seeking his father's mercy. I don't want to be a son. I don't need to be a son. I'm not worthy to be a son. Take me as a servant." Remember how you fed your servants? Please, just give me that. Have mercy. His heart reaches out to his father in true devotion. He's like Abel, the younger brother. The elder brother's like Cain, who gets angry. when the father throws a party in honor of the younger son coming back. It's the heart of God towards sinners who come back. He's welcoming. He's more than just welcoming. He rejoices when one sinner repents. The other brother is upset. He's angry at the younger brother after he did so many things wrong. The older brother's religious, but he's not righteous. He's not devoted. It's another Abel-Cain story. The end of that parable is that Jesus is presenting himself as the true elder brother who does not leave the younger brother off in a land by himself, but goes out to him and represents the father and goes out and brings the younger brother back. One more reference to Cain and Abel, that's Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24. You've come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel." What did the blood of Abel speak out? Well, it spoke out a lot of things. It spoke out the vengeance of an older brother who hated his younger brother. It spoke of anger and hatred driven to its logical consequences if not repented of. The blood shouts out for God's justice against anyone who would commit such sin. And Jesus said, you know, you've said you shall not murder. That's what you've been taught. I say, if you're angry with your brother, you're guilty of judgment. That's what Abel's blood speaks of. It speaks of all of us guilty and worthy of death. But Jesus' blood speaks something better. It's the curse of Genesis 3 being reversed and undone by the blood of Jesus. The blood that doesn't cry out for justice for all those at the foot of the cross. Justice which was me and our death. But instead it cries out for cleansing and for forgiveness and for pardon and for mercy and grace. For only murderers need apply at the foot of the cross. Not those who are righteous and religious, willing to offer some meager offerings of religiosity, but not their hearts. Only murderers need apply. Those who know they are murderers need apply at the cross of Christ. Or are you one of them? Like Cain was, like I am? Well, stop making excuses, stop ignoring your sin, and turn to Jesus for help, forgiveness, cleansing, assistance. For He is not in the habit of turning devoted hearts and seekers who look to Him for help, for forgiveness, for salvation. Let's pray. Dear God, we turn to You. Dear Father, with the heart of Abel, so thankful for Your work of salvation. So thankful for the seed of the woman who came to defeat the seed of the serpent. So thankful for mercy and grace and patience towards us murderers. Wanting, Lord, to offer You our hearts and to give You our devotion asking for your help in the battle against sin. Dear Father, help us to learn both from the end of Cain's anger and also from the patience that you demonstrated. How great is your love? How can we start to describe it, measure it? We come to You and we ask You, Lord, for a fresh awareness of that love and forgiveness. Help us never to lose our awe. Help us in our battle with sin this coming week. By Your grace, may we master it. And Lord, when we fail again, may we cling to the cross of the Lord Jesus. In His name we pray, Amen.