We're going to be in Genesis 4 this morning. If you were with us last week, this is a sermon series I was able to preach with my college students this past winter. And it's a series that I titled, God the Questioner, because as soon as Ab and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, God comes to them. And he comes to them in some pretty peculiar ways. He comes to them with questions. And so the first question, where are you? And then last week we looked at who told you. And then if you fast forward to Genesis 4, this is now the fourth question that God asked, not of Adam and Eve, but of their descendants, Cain and Abel. This is the word of God. Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, we once again come to you in prayer asking, pleading for your mercy that we might truly hear from you, that we truly might have an experience with the risen Christ this morning through a very ordinary just means as we open up this text. And these people will hear from a very broken man who is also very much in need of King Jesus and his grace that together as one body, we might be changed by your word and find great hope in it. It's in your name we pray, amen. So, have you gotten the vaccine? The question everybody wants to ask but can't. Actually, I bet a lot of you are the exact opposite. You'll do anything to avoid being asked that question. A lot of you guys are wondering where I'm going with this. Right, the awkward social dynamics, the fear of conflict and friendship, The much dreaded response of, oh, gotcha, okay. In many churches, it's become like the explosion of a grenade that has left the people of God divided and angry. It's left pastors like me wondering, why does this have to be the case? Why can't we just love Jesus and all kumbaya together, right? But that's not the world we live in. And lots of things could be to blame, right? We can blame the media, we can blame your social media feed. I could point out how secular culture, with its lack of transcendence, has placed this extra intensity and obsession on the eminent, on our here-and-now political arena that has both the world and the church in a chokehold. But instead, I'm going to make another hot take. I'm going to make the hot take that the reason you either avoid or want to ask the vaccine question so badly is primarily an emotional problem. It's primarily a problem of deep-seated and deep-rooted anger. And so let me nuance this a little bit. This is worth nuancing. This is an important question, right? We should wrestle with this question because the COVID-19 pandemic has taken way too many lives to reasonably keep track of. It's taken our normality, it's taken a lot of our daily interactions, and if I'm being honest, at least for me, it's taken our sanity. So this is an important question. I'm not trying to dismiss the question in and of itself. But right, like, therefore when a vaccine does come out in response to this terrible pandemic, And it's got the potential to end this thing. Many of you jump out of your seats and you say, give it to me, give it to me as fast as possible. And on the flip side, why would anybody in their right mind refuse to get it? But the opposite is also true. The vaccine comes out and many of you remain seated, skeptical of how quickly it got to the public and would rather wait to get it later or straight up not get it at all. Your thought process is, why would anybody who absolutely doesn't have to get it, get it at all? I just don't understand. But what I want you to see is that in both responses, with the heightened emotions behind them, again, right, that makes sense. But in that both responses display a good desire to know truth and to act on truth, but also a bad and angry self-righteous sense of looking down your nose on people who might disagree with you. But this isn't just limited to vaccines. I mean, this isn't the first thing that has torn the church apart, has it, right? We do this with everything. I send my kids to public school. I homeschool my kids. I send my kids to Christian school. Whenever there are differences among us, one side of us feels the need to stand up and really advocate for what we believe to be true and good. That's a good thing. It's a God-given thing. But then there's this other side of us that uses it as an opportunity to grow angry at those who don't believe as we do. And so no matter how we might justify it, there is always this subtle rage within us that's waiting to come out and to attack even the people we love most in the world. As we see from our text this morning, the curse of sin has always, has always made people angry. Genesis 4, 1-6 reveals the rage that is inside of Cain. And even the same rage that is within you and me this morning. For all of us, God asks the question, why are you angry? It's a deeply psychological question. It's designed to peel back the layers of our heart to better help us understand our emotions. However, if you've ever tried to understand your emotions, you quickly realize that there's a slight problem. You have tons of them. You have tons of them and they're all so complex. One moment you're feeling sad, the next moment you're feeling angry. Which is it? Am I sad or am I angry? Am I both? How can you make sense of anything? And just to get real with you all for a second, I think the first 28 years of my life, I responded to the complexity of my emotions by doing one of two things. I either blamed my emotions for getting in the way of me trying to understand my problems, I think that might be somewhat of a Presbyterian way of thinking about things. Emotions, bad. I straight up ignored my emotions because it was too overwhelming and exhausting for me to try and understand. So denial or just blame them as the problem in and of itself. Is anybody else in this boat? Is this just a me thing? Angry? Just go work out. Use that energy, you know, for something positive. Sad? Just listen to sad music. Exhausted? Well, hang out and just watch some Netflix. Some of y'all actually might be hating so fact that I'm talking about your emotions right now that you would rather have me go back to the text right now and exposit it in a nice, reasonable fashion. I think it's this idea that if we spend enough time talking about the Bible, talking about theology and the doctrine that comes out of the Bible, then maybe I don't have to actually think about how the Bible might be cornering me to get honest with myself about how I'm actually feeling. We're all like an infant who, when asked if we have a stinky diaper, we immediately run the other way because we don't want to have it get addressed. We run away from understanding our emotions because, I'm going to argue, we instinctively know that they are sounding the warning alarms of our souls, that something's off, that something needs to be addressed. Fortunately for us, God in his mercy won't let us hide from our emotions. He corners us to ask us the question, why are you angry? In the hopes of restoring the chaos that rages within us, that rages within you and me, and within the world. And he does this through two points this morning. Anger revealed, and anger responded to. Anger revealed, and anger responded to. And so, I'm sure if I were to ask any of you this morning, do you have an anger problem? Your first instinct might be to think, well, I get angry sometimes, but doesn't everybody? I wouldn't consider it a problem. I get angry when Michigan football loses to Ohio State every year, or when someone cuts me off in traffic. But that's not a problem per se. That's normal. You and me think of people who have anger problems as the over-the-top visceral rage that lashes out and abuses people or breaks things. If you've ever seen the movie Anger Management, this is back in 2003, it's got Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler in it. There's this one scene where they're in a support group meeting, And Jack Nicholson's character asks this guy, Nate, that they thought they agreed it wasn't helpful for him to listen to basketball games. Nate responds, this is what he says. He says, ah, no, we good, Dr. B. It's the Sixers. Iverson just missed a layup at the buzzer, and see, we're all fine. It's just a game. Oh, no. I'm beginning to feel the anger sharks swimming around. You got to dunk that. You got to dunk that. What are you thinking? It's these people, right? It's these people, of course, that need anger management therapy and have a problem. But me? I'm the person sitting in the pew right now. I'm the churchgoer who's just living his ordinary life, her ordinary life, and I express normal human anger when the occasion calls for it. Nothing to see here. Move on. But I think what you and me don't see is that even if we aren't outwardly yelling and screaming, internally that normal human anger that makes you want to play mind games with the buddy who stood you up last week. It's a destructive emotion that is actually consuming your very humanity. And just to be clear, and this is important, I'm talking about the negative dimension to human anger. The sinful dimension to human anger. Not the type of anger that God designed and blessed in order for you to go out and energize you to destroy sin. Right? Not the type of anger that boils up and spills over when we see the cultural apathy to the marginalized in our society, to the poor in our society. That type of anger, that type of anger, C.S. Lewis says, is, quote, the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. Like, you feel so strongly in love toward a neighbor that if you were to actually cut it, it would bleed out anger. Like, that is good and righteous anger that we see in the scriptures from King Jesus. That is not the anger I'm talking about. No, no, what I'm referring to is the anger that we feel as fallen human beings when we realize that the world was not made for our personal convenience. Other people out in the road cut me off in traffic? I can't believe them. The sinful bitterness that was never meant for your humanity. Hear what author Frederick Buechner has to say about this type of anger. He says, quote, of the seven deadly sins, anger is the most fun. To lick our wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor the last toothsome morsel, both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. In many ways, it is a feast for a king. The chief drawback is that what you're wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you." I think what I've noticed about people who live in Ann Arbor, and this is only my third year here, I'm not an expert by any means. A lot of my demographic focus is with Michigan College students, and so if this is not you, I apologize. But what I've noticed, and maybe what you've noticed about people who live in Ann Arbor, is that most of you are used to being polished. Maybe in your chosen career field, social circles, maybe it's your Instagram profile. You're used to being polished and it means that you've actually become a professional at knowing how to hide your anger. Because to show anger would be not so polished. You went through a divorce or you have marriage problems, pour yourself into your job. Ignore how you might be feeling and it's just gonna go away. And you know what? It's actually worked. Time has made you forget the extreme pain of the moment. And you use that pain to get you further along in your career. It's kind of like a motivator. Yet, all the while, that pain still lies dormant inside of you. Every now and then, it flares up in moments where you feel like you have just this acute need to readdress it. Because you realize that even with time, that pain has just not gone away. Buechner's quote is to say that your anger, even in its socially acceptable state, even in the socially acceptable dormant state, it's actually eating you alive. Even though you would say it's the fuel to your success, it's kind of the reason why you've gotten to where you are in life, he would argue, and the Bible would prove, that it's a cannibalistic feast that leaves you nothing more than a mere skeleton. Just look at Cain. Many of you might be familiar with this story. But if you aren't, this text essentially lays out two brothers. Verse 2 says they each had a job. Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. They eventually come to worship the Lord and bring an offering of their labors. And then verses 4 and 5 show that God has regard for Abel's offering, but not for Cain's. And depending on, you know, if you'll Google this or read different scholars, there's been much debate back and forth over the years over the meaning of God accepting Abel's offering and not Cain's. But I think if you look at the text this morning, I think it's pretty clear. I think Abel brought the best portions of his animals, the fat portions, and Cain didn't bring the first fruits of his harvest. He just brought some of his harvest. Some of the fruit of the ground. It doesn't specify. Both with Cain and with Abel, we see that their offerings reflect the state of their hearts, though. It's not just kind of like a random thing that they do. The state of their hearts lead them into wanting to offer to God either their best portions or just any portion. Abel, in faith, And faith brings God the best. Trusting, knowing that God will provide. But Cain doesn't share that same faith. God isn't worth it to Cain. That ultimately brings us to verse 6. God obviously sees that Cain is dejected. He sees that Cain is dejected with his offering not being accepted. Instead of going, Cain, what's your problem? Why didn't you bring me the first fruits of the ground? That's what you're supposed to do. I can't even deal with you right now. How does God come to Cain? I think this is very revealing of the God of the Bible's character. He comes to Cain with the question, Cain, why are you angry? Again, kind of like we visited last week, it's kind of a silly question if you think about it. Of course God knows why Cain is angry. Why would he ask that? It's like he's asking, Cain, are you angry with me? Do you feel like I should have accepted your offering? Talk to me about how you're feeling. Let's sort through this. I think this is where I would invite you to pontificate a little bit. This is not in the text. But what do you think Cain would have said if he had the courage to respond to God's subtle, gentle invitation? How do you think he would have responded? Here's how author Philip Greenslee thinks Cain would have responded. God, why am I angry? I'm angry because I feel devastated and humiliated at the core of my very being. You have no idea what it feels like to have something you have carefully prepared rejected by the one to whom it is offered." Now, if that is true, if that's how Cain were to respond, and again, it's not in your text, but that's some raw honesty, isn't it? This is Cain laying himself bare before God and acknowledging and addressing the very pain he feels so deeply. He's man enough to confess his emotions, you could say. And you have to wonder, you just have to wonder if he had responded to God's probing question, if he would not have found a reason to actually turn from his anger. to turn from his eventual path of violence into a path of healing. Greenslade goes on to say, quote, Envy and jealousy, resentment and rejection, shame and humiliation, these are the poisons working in Kane's heart. God's question is intended to lance the boil before it burst into violence and tragedy. Self-recovery begins by seeking emotional health through emotional wisdom. Listening to what our emotions are telling us about our feelings is the beginning of wisdom." The very point being, emotions are feelings that you can reflect on. Emotions are feelings that you can use your mind to reflect on. There is no foregone conclusion. Just because Cain is angry doesn't mean he can't turn from it and seek healing. And that's God's whole point in verse 7. God's asking Cain the rhetorical question, if you do well, will you not be accepted? It's almost like this gentle way to lift his perspective out of his rejection and shame. and on to life and healing. Put simply, Cain is invited into repentance. He's invited to turn from his anger and see God at work to dissolve the burning rage consuming him on the insides. So brothers and sisters, this morning, why are you angry? Do you know? Maybe you don't. And that's fine. That's really fine. Because that's really kind of the whole point why God, through the scriptures this morning, asked us this question. It's a call for us to take stock of what's actually going on inside our hearts. To put aside the busyness for an hour and a half during corporate worship and actually get to know ourselves. I think what you'll find the more you actually get to know yourself, is exactly what the theologian John Calvin once wrote. This is what he says. He says, quote, Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts. One, the knowledge of God, and two, the knowledge of ourselves. End quote. The more you know yourself, the more you'll know God and His specific tender love toward you this morning. But the opposite has to be true as well. The more you know God and want to grow in your love for God, the more you also ought to know yourself and grow in self-knowledge. If I'm being really honest with you this morning, I think as Presbyterian Reformed people, sometimes we don't do the greatest job of this. It's like, memorize the Catechism answer, know your theology, and you'll grow in your relationship with the Lord. And I think Calvin is saying, yeah, that's definitely part of it. It's good to know theology. Theology is good and right and needs a high place in worship, worship of God. But Calvin's also saying that's not enough. You have to know yourself. You have to grow in self-awareness. You have to know your emotions. I think what we'll come to realize is that we worship a God who responds to your anger and my anger in the same way He has always responded to His people's anger. This leads me to my second and last point, which is anger responded to. The thing about the guy of the Bible, y'all, is that he's a personal God. He's a husband who so desires deep and unhindered relationship with his bride, the church, And the way he time and time again draws his beloved back into relationship with him is by meeting her where she is at in life. In 1 Kings 19, 1 through 18, after the prophet Elijah does battle with the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel, Elijah is suddenly gripped by fear because he learns that Queen Jezebel wants him dead. Panic and flight ensue. He does the thing any one of us would have done. Depression overcomes him as he is spiritually, emotionally, and nervously exhausted. Again, he may have been like many of you who don't know how to make sense of your emotions. You're just strung out dry in this season. And just like with Elijah, God asks you and your emotional mess What are you doing here, Robert? I see you. Let's make sense of this together so that you can be restored, so that you actually might grow whole, become a whole person. And even in Jonah 4, 1 through 4, after Jonah doesn't get what he wants from God, and after he goes off and throws a little temper tantrum with the Lord, God moves toward Jonah with the question, Jonah? Do you do well to be angry? It's almost like a way of teasing out Jonah's self-righteousness and nationalism. And with the Israelites in exile, God comes to them in Isaiah 55 verse 2 and asks the question, why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which is not satisfied? Translation, I see you Israelites, You've been sucked into the Babylonian way of doing things. You live life in the fast lane, but is it going anywhere? You are working harder and for longer hours, but where is it getting you? The guy of the Bible has always done this with his people. Always. Who is to say he is any different now? He has always met them in their particular time and place with the right question that is designed to draw out their emotions. To get them to think about how they're actually feeling and to invite them to turn from it so that they might find life in Him. Alright, so this is true. If this is true, then what is his question for you, Christian believer, non-Christian skeptic? What is his question for you this morning in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the year 2021? Don't make any mistake. No matter what you believe, this morning God probes your anger, your emotions, with the question, why are you angry? But he also probes other emotions, right? Anger is not the only emotion we feel. Does he ask you the question, why are you scared? Do you do well to be so busy? How do you want to be loved? What do you want me to do for you? Do you want to know what deep in relationship with God looks like? It's laying down your wide range of emotions at his feet and letting him ask questions about them. It's not feeling not angry. That would be my greatest fear is that you leave, you go through those doors and you go, Pastor just said don't be angry. So I'm not going to be angry this week. Good luck with that. Is that when you are angry? Is that when you are sad? Is that when you are just complex and can't even think through how you might be feeling? You go, Lord, help. Help me sort through where I am in this moment because I don't know. I don't know myself. To me that sounds like a prayer of confession, of repentance, of life. There's something so raw, so real, and so life-giving about that process. I know this because it's going on in my very life right now. Why are you angry, Robert? I'm angry because I've already torn my ACL. I've already put in the work to recover. I'm angry because I'm entitled to no more knee problems. God, I'm angry because this is just one more thing you have me doing. I'm angry because you won't give me a break in what has been a really hard season. I am angry. And the only reason I and you should have confidence that God is willing to hear my temper tantrum or your temper tantrum, that He's willing to hear it but also respond with gracious questioning, is because He has already proven Himself by His actions. This is what makes the Christian worldview so much different and better than anything you will ever find out there, is that we serve a God who talks the talk but also walks the walk. He is not Allah far off in some transcendent paradise, but he is a God who gets broken. He's a God who gets messy and dirty with you and for you. You see, this isn't just an invitation to have a conversation with an invisible friend. This is an opportunity for a divine encounter with the God who took on flesh and dwelt among us. This God who bled on a Roman cross absorbs your anger and your hate that you feel at getting rejected or denied your perceived rights. Greenslade puts it so well. He says, Jesus Christ died the innocent victim. He did not revile when He was reviled, but trusted to Him who judges justly. He forgave His enemies from the cross. He plumbed the depths of God's forsakenness. He drained the dregs, the cup of wrath our sins had mingled. He thirsted in tongue and heart in the furthest desert of our emotional emptiness and psychological deprivation. He declined the cheap wine that might have offered quick fix alleviation. He surrendered his divine entitlement for the sake of us sinners. He forwent his diplomatic immunity from pain and death for our sake. In his wounds is our healing and wholeness. The question, why are you angry, is a call for you to hand your life over to sovereign love. It's a gift of grace at work to transform your experience both now and in the future. If we're ever going to be a church that looks different than the raging nations of the world, if we're ever going to be a church that has a unified body with King Jesus as its head, if we're ever going to be a church that can actually love people who either did or didn't get the vaccine, then we first have to take the Lord's lead and ask ourselves the question, why am I angry? Why are we feeling the way that we are feeling right now? And the hope of the Christian believer is that there is a God in heaven who doesn't just ask the questions of our anger, but he's also a God who takes our misplaced anger upon himself. And when he does that, and when he does that, the greatest hope in the entire world is that we might receive his patience for our impatience. It's that we might receive his grace for our judgment. We might receive his contentment for our anxiety. we actually might become whole people and a community of believers right here that is marked by our love for one another. Would you pray with me? Great Father in heaven, we come before you confessing our anger, confessing all the subtle ways that we confuse our anger and justify it. Thankful that by your grace you meet us with probing questions, You tease out our hearts that we might better know ourselves, and by knowing ourselves better, also might know of your chesed, steadfast love toward us, and the grace of the gospel. And so Lord, I pray that as we sit and digest this preached word of yours, that we would leave changed people, That we'll leave people who are eager to have conversations about our emotions, ask about not only our emotions but other people's emotions, and in doing so find life-giving opportunities to repent and to follow you deeper, more faithfully. And so, help us to be a community marked by love, marked by sovereign love, your love toward us and our love toward one another. I pray this all in the mighty and powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.