3. Thirdly, the doomed resent the true people of God.
They resent the true people of God. In Verse 5 it says: “Cain became very angry, and his countenance” or his face, “…fell.” He was showing in his physical body the attitude of anger in his mind. He hated the blessing that was bestowed upon his righteous brother. He hated the fact that Abel was righteous. And the righteous are always a rebuke to the self-righteous. Those who are sinners, those who are broken over their sin, those who confess the need for sacrifice and substitution and a covering, those who realize they deserve nothing and must receive a righteousness not their own, those who are therefore blessed by God, are always hated by the self-righteous, because the self-righteous are not accepted by God. They are not accepted as equals.
When we talk about the gospel, when we say the only way to be saved is to come to God as a penitent sinner broken over your own sin, realizing you have nothing to please God, and falling down and crying out for God’s mercy, when you come like that, we also at the same time say you can’t offer God your works, you can’t offer God your self-righteousness. Nothing you can do can earn your salvation. At the same time we say that, we are rebuking all those who come to God on the basis of their own goodness. And that’s how everybody else comes that doesn’t come the true way. We are a rebuke to all of those people, because we have to proclaim a gospel that does not accept them. God is saying to them: I do not accept you. Salvation is by grace through faith, and not of works.
In today’s climate, of course, as we said this morning, all religion is to be treated as equal, and nobody is to say ours is the truth and yours is not. It is intolerable to the non-Christian; it is intolerable to the doomed people. It is intolerable to the false worshippers for us to say that ours is the only truth, and we are the only people of God.
He was angry; he was angry. And his face slumped in despair and in fury. That is the way it is for people who hold onto their sin and their self-righteousness, who reject God, loving their sin, loving themselves. It is part of their attitude to be angry with the Bible, to be angry with the God of the Bible, to be angry with those who believe the Bible. We’re constantly threatened with that in the public discourse. If you bring the Bible into anything, they’re going to throw you out.
I read this week there’s a mission in Florida that serves meals to homeless people. And the government has been providing them money, a portion of money, to give those meals to the homeless. The government found out that after the meal, there was a chapel service, and immediately cut off all the funds, because in the chapel service the Bible was being preached. Our world is essentially the society of Cain. And it hates the truth, and it hates the people of the truth, and the God of the truth. And it works feverishly and angrily to obliterate the God of the Bible, and the people who proclaim the Bible, from social influence and public discourse. So the unbelievers have a hopeful beginning. They offer God unacceptable worship and they inevitably resent whose who truly worship God as he desires to be worshipped and are, therefore, blessed. Now, let’s pick it up where we left off.
4. Number four: Unbelievers or the doomed reject the Word of God.
This is obvious, but it’s laid out right here for us. I think this is really a very fascinating dialogue. Verse 6: Then “…the Lord said to Cain.” Now, this is direct from God. There is no written scripture, so the Lord speaks directly. “The Lord said to Cain.” And I want to stop there for a moment just to say this is really the direct word of God — no more direct than the Bible, but this is the direct word of God right from God’s mouth to Cain. There’s no getting around it; there’s no equivocating. There’s nothing in this conversation to indicate that Cain suspected it really wasn’t God. He knew it was God speaking to him. This is a flat-out rejection of what he knows to be the Word of God. This is direct revelation from God; God speaking pointedly, specifically, to no one but Cain. This is a one-on-one conversation. God demonstrates compassion. God speaks to him with crystal clarity. God gives him a clear invitation to do the right thing, make the right choice, make the right move. God is literally offering the sinner the opportunity to be delivered from his sin. God still speaks pointedly; He still speaks directly through the pages of scripture.
Verse 6: “The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your countenance fallen?’” Now, let me say very quickly: God is not seeking information. God never seeks information. He knows all that. God is prompting dialogue. He’s initiating a conversation. And He’s going to the heart. He’s trying to cause Cain to take an honest look at what motivates him; to get him to take a look at his sinful heart; at his brooding rage toward his brother and toward God. You see in the words of James 1, lust was at work in him. And lust, when it conceives, brings forth what? “Sin.” And it was going to bring forth a deadly sin.
And so God is saying essentially to Cain: Take a look at your motives. Why are you angry? Why has your face slumped? Why is this brooding rage taking over? Take a look at what’s going on in you. Why are you so angry at Me and angry at your brother? Then He says to him in very gracious words: This doesn’t have to be the end of the story. This doesn’t have to be the way it is.
Look at Verse 7: “‘If you do well, will not your countenance been lifted up?’” It doesn’t have to be this way. “If you do well.” What does He mean? If you do what’s right. Here is God — this will tell you that God is by nature a Savior. Here is God saying: You can repent; you can do what Isaiah said; cleanse your hearts, you sinners. You can go back after you’ve repented and ask for cleansing, and offer God the sacrifice that is acceptable from a right heart. And if you do that, your face is going to be lifted up. You don’t have to be in this condition. You don’t have to be brooding. You don’t have to have lust, conceiving greater deadly sin in your heart. You don’t have to be motivated by this anger. Just do what’s right. Do what’s right in your heart before Me; repent, acknowledge your self-righteousness, acknowledge your hypocrisy, acknowledge the failure to recognize your desperate sinfulness and need of a sacrifice, and then go do what’s right. And your despair will go away and your anger will go away, because I’ll forgive you. That’s what He’s saying. Just do what’s right. And what is right is to do what I told you. God is offering to the sinner joy, the joy of forgiveness. Your face will be lifted up — the opposite of being slumped down in rage. It’s being lifted up. Enjoy. This is the joy of repentance. This is the joy of forgiveness. This is the joy of obedience.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
