Effects of Sin Gen 4

Sermon Nuggets Mon March 26

Verses- Gen 4

Effects of Sin-
I liked Jerry Shirley’s sermon on the first in our previous chapter. Last week we were introduced to the first time Satan was mentioned, Sin came on the scene. It introduced for the first time a sacrifice for sin as well as a need for a Savior. And it was the first time a sentence was carried out.
We saw the sin has consequences. When God said in the day that you eat of this forbidden fruit you will surely die. What died that day first and foremost was a spiritual death. There was not the intimacy with God. There was the beginning processes of the body decaying. There was death in the garden when the animals died for the sins of Adam and Eve.
Sin is initially attractive. It is pleasurable for a season. But as we see in the rest of the book of the Bible it destroys self, relationships, spiritual vitality, and our circumstances and environment.
A Minister tells the story of Jill, their 6-year-old, who was “helping” him in the front yard of the parsonage. She chattered away about her Sunday school lesson on Adam and Eve. He thought he’d test her. “Did you know Adam and Eve sinned?”
    “Yep.”
     “What did God do to them as a punishment?”
      Her answer was immediate and matter-of-fact, without even looking up she said: “He made them have kids.”
This week we will look at the kids they had. It is the first mention not only of children but the jealousy and crime of murder taking place.
We read regular of the sons and daughter of Adam committing murder. We read about it in countries overseas with the terrorist bombing. We know about it in US with shootings that are publicized in schools. We see people beaten by gangs for various reasons include racial hatred. We have families killed because of fighting going on between husbands and wives, between boyfriends and girlfriends. We have been churches bombed and entered into with mad gunmen.
The first murder of an innocent godly person came right from the beginning chapters of Genesis. As soon as sin entered the world it didn’t even take one generation before the worst of sins was committed against the closest of relatives.  Right from the beginning we see how the fall of man affected the sons of Adam.
  What Satan meant for evil God can bring out good. In the depths of the effects of sin God is still at work providing ways to overcome our evil and fallen heart. The questions are appropriately asked, “What is wrong with our world?” Why do wars persist? How can we live in peace?
        The effects of sin will continue until the reign of Jesus Christ and Satan is judged and bound. But much is revealed about how the world has changed from how it was first created. We know that God is not finished yet. He has a plan.

Pastor Dale

Sermon Nuggets Tues March 27

Verses Gen 4:1-51 Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.
   Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.


Original Sin
  In the previous chapter we read not only about the first sin and the fall of man, but some of the curse and the hope that God gives to conquer sin. It was prophesied that an offspring of the woman would crush the serpent. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Eve was so excited about the baby. This is a gift from God, an offspring of a woman. Perhaps she had her hopes he would take away evil when Cain was born.
  What we found out instead was the place original sin plays itself out beginning with the first born of mankind. Original sin means not only the first sin, but it means that all humans ever born right from the beginning of time have been sinners. We are under the judgement of God in that all will face death and we are also under the curse of the world affected because of the original sin.
       People ask about the bad weather and natural tragedies from draught to plagues, to hurricanes and earthquakes. The Bible tells us the sun shines and the just and the unjust, meaning there is something we all experience both the grace of God even if people act out in evil ways and the traumas and tragedies of this life even if people act in good ways.
Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— In the Old Testament, King David tells us “In sin did my mother conceive me.” He was the last son of Jesse and it didn’t speak about the immorality of his biological parents, but rather pointing to the fact we are born into a world of sin- we are victims of it’s affect.
       The concept of original sin bothers some people, but I do not know why because everyone if given the same choices that Eve and Adam had would do the same thing. Frankly we all have been disobedient to God. No one can claim they have lived a sinless life. So the scripture applied is correct. “All of sinned and come short of the gospel of Christ” We are all in need of salvation and all are effected by the fall in separation from a Holy and righteous God.  Ish tells us there is none that is good no not one.” All our righteousness before a holy God is as filthy rags.
         So in this chapter we see two offspring of Eve and Adam. The firstborn is called Cain and she celebrates life by saying I have received a man from the Lord. Her delight is recorded in the Bible. Her pain is not, for she did suffer in childbirth as predicted in the previous chapter. Then she conceives again and Abel is the other offspring.
Some people have proposed the idea that it is society that makes people corrupt. If kids were left to their natural inclinations they would be good. You  have to be taught how to hate, and hurt others. The world would be a better place if we didn‘t have other people influencing out thinking. If our social circumstances and upbringing was right, if we had good playmates then the world would be a perfect place.
       Cain did not go wrong through the influence of neighborhood boys. There were no drinking crowds and rowdy companions that lead him into sin. Although no parent is perfect, the Scriptures are full of examples of Godly kings who had sons who were particularly wicked and evil. And likewise there were some examples of men who were evil whose sons and daughters followed God.
            Sin has its effect on all the people of the world. We are all Adam’s offspring.

Pastor Dale

Sermon Nuggets Weds March 28

Verses- Gen 4:  3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Sin Offerings
          We see that the worship of Cain and Abel was revealed in two different offerings.
Cain had an offering of fruit and Abel presented before God a blood sacrifice. Some commentaries want to make a point of the difference of attitude and other sacrifice. I think both are important to understand the prophecies of God.
When we talk about worship, primarily we think of the worship service. Worship is more than just getting together to read Bible passages, sing songs, pray, listen to somebody preach, or have communion. True worship comes from the heart. It is an expression of adoration. Worship can take place in church, but just because we’re here in church doesn’t necessarily mean we’re worshiping. If it’s not coming out of the heart and head, then it’s just a ritual — and ritual, without the corresponding heart-feeling, has never satisfied God. God looks upon the human heart and can cut through all of our acting and pretending to see what we’re like down deep.
          Could it be that God was not pleased with Cain’s offering solely because he looked into Cain’s heart and saw that his worship was done grudgingly and out of superficial motives?
In November of 1995, Paul Harvey told this story: The Butterball Turkey Company set up a hotline to answer consumer questions about preparing holiday turkeys.
          One woman called to inquire about cooking a turkey that had been in her freezer for twenty-three years. The operator told her it might be safe if the freezer had been kept below zero degrees the entire time. But she warned her that, even if it were safe, the flavor had probably deteriorated, and she wouldn’t recommend eating it. The caller replied, "That’s what we thought. So we’ll just give it to the church."
           True worship comes out of a desire to please God, to show one’s gratitude to God, to show one’s love for God. True worship comes from the heart.
            There is another way to identify an attitude. Cain does not give the best or first of his produce, but Abel does. The first took from his bounty, the second from the best and first of his flock. Heb 11:4 “By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.”
Some might prefer the offering of fruit or flowers over bloody sacrifice, so messy and repulsive. But let’s not also miss the prophetic point. Abel’s sacrifice involved blood and therefore testified to the death of a substitute. He was coming to God as a sinner in need of forgiveness. Cain came on the products of his own works. When God killed animals in the Garden and then clothed Adam and Eve with their skins God was showing that because sin means death, innocent victims must die in order that sinners might be pardoned. The sacrifices pointed forward to Jesus. When Abel came with the offering of blood he believed God and was looking forward to the provision of the deliverer.
The offering of Cain represented all the beautiful things of this world that God has given to us and which you and I would like to offer back to Him
     . There are lots of churches that come with offerings of men without relying of the conditions God wants. Today's church does whatever it can to attract new people and as many as it can. Some churches do not even preach gospel because it may offend people. I know of one BGC pastor that admitted he doesn’t speak about sin because people want something positive when they come to church. Preaching on sin can be negative and judgmental. He doesn’t speak about judgement because he doesn’t want to instill fear in his people, but love.
God loved us so much he wants us to know about sin and judgement. Christ took the judgment of death in order that we might have peace. But if we come to God on our own offerings of good works and sincere hearts and are sincerely wrong then we are no better than Cain.  The first cause of Cain's problem was he came to God as he wanted, not as God required. It is possible for us to offer our works to God, but only after we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ by accepting his perfect sacrifice to cleanse us from unrighteousness. We do that as a step of faith and commitment our lives to Christ and believing and receiving him into our lives by an act of the will.
           Our offerings to God are received in the form of money, as well as service and worship. Many give talents, as well as time and treasure. But if we haven’t first come before God calling on Christ to forgive our sins we have come with the wrong offerings. Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by me. We must come with the offerings that are well pleasing unto God. Rom 15:15-16
          The grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”

Pastor Dale

Sermon Nuggets Thurs March 29

Verses- Gen 4: 6 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
 8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

God’s Warnings
         It was true with Adam and Eve. It was true with Cain and Able. There were warnings before sin needed to be committed. Adam and Eve knew taking the forbidden fruit would have adverse consequences. Likewise God warned Cain before he committed the sin of murder what answer can do. He had a warning also. Sin is personified as a wild animal lurking at the door ready to pounce on it’s victim. Sin is temporarily under control, but dangerously ready to attack us when we least expect it. To master the beasts and not allow sin to grow further one has to do what is right.
         All of us are enticed by our own evil desires. James tells us that after sin is conceived in our hearts it gives birth to sin and sin give birth to death. Yet we learn that by God’s grace we do not have to remain enslaved to our evil desires. With His help we can resist temptation.
         I am impressed that God did not turn his back on Cain, but gave him the plan whereby he finds acceptance. God initiated the relationship and called Cain to Himself. Is that true today? Are there people who have disobeyed and wandered from God? God is not rejecting you, but calling you to Himself to know Him, to find his love and power and peace, but there is one way. It is the way of faith expressed by obedience.
         The fault was not outside of Cain with his anger. It was something that could be changed. We tend to blame others for our troubles, although others can be a factor, the true cause is mostly within us. “If you do what is right will you not be accepted?” Asked God. If Cain had been admonished to do the right it was because the right had been made known to him. Yet he rejected the right not for lack of knowledge but lack of humility and faith, and obedience.
         George Martin tells the following true story of a fellow who wrote a nasty letter to his father. George told his co worker not to send it because it was written in a fit a anger, but this man sealed it and gave it to him to mail. George Martin simply put it into his pocket and kept it for a couple of days. Sure enough when he arrived to work after the weekend the man came to him and said, “I wish I had never sent that note. I’d give 50 dollars to get it back.” Mr. Martin reached into his pocket and returned it, and declined the money.
           So often what we do in anger or hurt comes back to haunt us if we would only wait and think about our actions. That is what God wants us to do. He knows that such emotions can overtake us at the time and we do something stupid. We often get warning from God because he knows the damage that sin does.
           Someone pictures sin as a swimmer in a rapids of large river, miles up stream for mammoth waterfall. The swimmer can easily get out of the water but as the rapids get rougher and he gets closer to the falls it becomes more and more difficult to be free of the currents and the force of the water. The safest and best time to resist temptation is before it is too strong or powerful to resist. The rising doubt or evil thought quickly becomes in when we dwell on it and allow it to take up residence in our hearts.
         I Jn 3:12-13 “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.”
         Eve had been talked into her sin. Cain could not be talked out of his, even by God himself
Why did Abel have to die? Luke 11:50-51 Jesus says, “Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed” God declares war on murders and abusers and those in their evil plot against the innocent, but like so much in the Old Testament Abel is called a prophet, meaning his life and death are foretelling something that God is doing. The death of the innocent at the hands of the evil one will be played out by God himself in the form of one who was sinless and killed on a cross.

Pastor Dale


Sermon Nuggets Fri March 30

Verses- Gen 4: 8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
   “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
 10 The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
 13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Sin’s Outcome
          God’s guidelines for our behavior are there to protect us. Think about it: think of something named as a sin in the Bible. Doesn’t matter what it is? A person will always be safer and better off if they follow God’s laws for mankind. Obedience is commanded for our own good. God’s rules for our behavior are not things we must do to earn our salvation or rules to obey because of some arbitrary decision made by a vengeful Creator, they are there to protect us, to make our lives easier and the sooner we stop thinking of God’s rules as ruining our lives and see them as things that make our lives easier the better off we’ll be.
          One is killed and one is lives. What we consider the worse of sins was the first of sins recorded after the human couple was driven from the garden.
Now the question posed to Cain was similar to the one given to Adam in the previous chapter. Here God asks “Where is your brother?” God asked Adam, “where are you? “ Adam identified his hiding place. Cain did not.
         He said in essence, “How do I know where my brother is? I am not responsible for him.”. Adam pointed the finger the other way trying to divert responsibility from himself to his wife, and she to the serpent. Confession is hard. The most difficult words are, “I was wrong. I did it. I sinned.”
          Did you think God didn’t know the whereabouts of Abel? Of course He did. He is asking, not because he didn’t know, but  he wanted a confession. As parents we might well know what happened to the cookies, but we ask our child what happened. “I don’t know.” “Did you take them?” No. Evidence might be all over the child’s face and hands, but lying comes naturally.
            God reveals to Cain the truth- He did do it. Abel’s blood cries out from the field. This is the way of saying the victim is crying and I heard his cries. But instead of intervening at that time, God waited and watched as the first murder occurred just as he watched when the murder of Jesus occurred. Murder turns to lies and cover up.
          Cain was allowed to live, but it was the life that is typical of sin. He lived out of fellowship with God with his family and from others. He could not make a living any longer from farming. The land would not cooperate with Cain from that day on. He was a wanderer in fear of his life and in fear of revenge and guilt for his sin. His life was not as he wanted, now in the fellowship of God without Abel, but worse than before.
           Edward Hale published a story in 1863 right during the civil war called “The Man without a country: It was about an US Army officer Philip Nolan who had been involved in the revolutionary war treachery of Aaron Burr. At his trial he was asked if he wished to say anything in his defense to show that he had always been faithful to the United States. But he cried out “Damn the United States. I wish I may ever hear of the United States Again”.
          The judge decided to take Philip Nolans request seriously. So instead of sentencing him to death for his treason, which he had every right to do, he sentenced him to be imprisoned at sea on government vessels with instructions to the officers that no one was permitted to have him hear the name or receive any information about his country. In this fashion many years go by. He passes form ship to ship, always being transferred just before the one on which he has been traveling returns to the US port
  As last he dies at sea but not before a naval officer broke orders and told him about America and its remarkable growth and prosperity during the 25 years. Noland’s last words were that no one ever loved his country as much as he.
         A man without a country. This was the outcome of Cain’s sin. As far as we know there was no change of heart.
           There seemed to be a progressive curse on the land of Cannan. In history we know it was once flowing with milk and honey but has had countless wars and invasions. The land shorn of its forest resulted in topsoil eroded. The rainwater flows away. It has turned into desert land in an increasing among. Where of the giant civilizations of Babylon and Assyria and Nineveh and the cities of Baalbek and Jeresh are now desolate. Sin brings a curse even on the ground. And God made Cain know that.
             Later the Bible speaks of the way of Cain. It means that although Cain’s case is a sorry one it is sorrier when people follow in Cain’s ways. If you are alike in Cain’s way you have rejected the way of salvation and warning. He had rejected God’s sacrifice gift of his son Jesus. Yet look at the outcomes. Abel is mentioned as well as a prophet. One who does what is right. Here is the death as an innocent victim, but also acclaimed by God in glory. There is the judgment when God will avenge his death, just like the death of Jesus Christ. He has a testimony for all of mankind to follow.
           By faith he was commended as a righteous man, who God spoke well of his offering and by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead. (Heb 11:4).
           The final judgment those in Cain’s way, those who remain in sin are banned from the country of God and excluded forever from His presence. That is the eternal curse for all sin that has not been cleaned by Christ and faith in Him.

Pastor Dale