Who Are You?

Intro:

Probably most of us know someone who has tried to live vicariously through their children. Whether it was a failed college sports career, a missed scholarship, or just the natural passage of time that makes the “glory days” feel farther and farther away, it’s not uncommon for parents to see their children as an extension of themselves - a second chance to achieve or just relive a part of their lives that has been lost to time. This dynamic has become somewhat of a trope in popular storytelling and can be seen in many timeless classics of film, like High School Musical and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. But the dynamic itself isn’t fiction; it’s one of those elements of realism that makes fiction compelling. Art imitates life. Cliche as it may be, parents really do sometimes try and live on through their children. And the dynamic can get especially intense if the parents are looking to the children to accomplish something they never could - to reach a goal they never did, or to overcome a challenge they couldn’t get past.

A wise man who has pastored for almost 40 years once told me that the church is built to handle sin. Perfect or not, we have processes for that. But unmet expectations, those can divide and even destroy a church… Or a family. And as we move into Genesis 4, there are two sets of expectations to pay attention to. First, Adam and Eve’s expectations of who Cain would be. And second, the text is actually working to create a new set of expectations in our minds, as readers, about what the fall will mean for humanity beyond Adam and Eve. Genesis is a theological explanation of why the world is the way that it is, and so it’s going to help us start to form biblical expectations about what life will be like for people who live in a damaged relationship with God.

So as the story continues, we are going to start seeing some patterns emerge as elements from the previous chapter show up again in subsequent generations of humanity. We will see many familiar things like unmet expectations, fractured relationships, and a steady progression from bad to worse. But thankfully, we will also see some familiar good things. Things like God continuing to speak to us, being compassionate when we don’t meet his expectations, and giving us reason to hope that we haven’t broken everything beyond what he is willing to fix. So today as we look at Genesis 4 I’d like to ask three questions: 1) Who was Cain expected to be? 2) Who was Cain really? And 3) Who are you?

• Who Was Cain Expected To Be?

Speaking of popular tropes in storytelling, it’s a pretty common thing for characters in a fictional story to have names that tell us a lot about them. It’s the writer’s way of “winking” at you and foreshadowing how things are going to go. When you watch 101 Dalmatians, you figure out pretty early on that the antagonist is the one named “Cruel Lady-Devil.” My daughter is only five, but when we started watching Transformers cartoons, it didn’t take her long to figure out that the “Decepticons” are the bad guys. This is extremely common in the Bible as well. But it’s a little different in many places because the stories in Scripture are primarily historical, rather than fictional. Sometimes there are fictional parables with fictional character names, but often it’s real people. And while the names may not tell you obvious things like they do in fictional stories, they still almost always tell you really important things. If nothing else, they tell you what that person was expected to be like.

Ancient Israelite Parents believed they could, in some measure, influence a child’s identity by the name they chose to give them. And whether or not this is true in any spiritual sense, it’s not hard to see how that could quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For better and worse, kids are often quite willing to adopt characteristics that we project on them. But the names in this story are significant because they clearly reflect the expectations of the people involved. Last week we saw how Adam very likely had already begun to hope in God’s promise of redemption through a descendant of the woman, since right after that, before she had any kids, he named her “Eve” which literally means “life-giver.” He appeared to recognize that the only hope of escaping the death that had come into the world through sin would be in the promise of the descendant who would crush the head of the serpent and bring life back to a dying-you-shall-die world.

Cain’s name then seems all the more interesting, as it means, ”I have acquired.” Because, as she says, “I have acquired a man with the Lord’s help.” Or, as one commentator put it, the name could reasonably be translated as “Here he is!” This seems to make some sense of the odd use of the word, “Man” instead of “son” or “child.” It’s as if she’s already thinking of him as he will be. This isn’t just any child, this is him. Here he is! We have gotten him. Clearly the promise of 3:15 is still ringing in their ears - the seed or offspring of the woman will one day crush the head of the serpent, but the serpent will bruise his heel. And here he is. Do you remember how it felt to walk into a public place in June of 2020? Everything was fine in March, then all of a sudden the whole country was effectively grounded, and when we first got the quarantine lifted, there was that moment of, “Oh man, this will be over any minute now! We can get back to normal!” From the moment Cain is born, the narrative is inviting you to skeptical curiosity. Like, Genesis knows that you know this is only the fourth chapter, and you ain’t sittin naked in the garden while you’re reading this. But it does want you to be curious - to want to know the answer. Because the Bible is going to ask you this question over and over and over again. Every genealogy. Every new prophet, new judge, new high priest, new king, “Is this one going to be the one?”

But Cain.. He lived before this pattern of disappointment. The hopes of all of humanity were on him. The expectations of the only living people. Imagine Adam and Eve’s experience up to this point. The very first pregnancy didn’t occur until after the fall. Now, I have observed my wife through two pregnancies. You know right around the 10-week mark Eve was surely thinking “This must be that dying thing we were warned about.” What does pregnancy in a fallen world feel like if not, “Dying you shall die.” And this before AC, mattresses, or dessert. This poor woman. And by the way, we don’t talk enough about the logical reality of Adam having to be the first labor and delivery nurse.

But think about it, you just got cursed with death and expelled from the garden. You’ve gone through 9 months of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth thousands of years before epidurals were invented, probably in a hut made by your husband who had no access to YouTube. It’s gotta be bad. But then you see a baby person for the first time. New human life, where previously there was none. And it’s a boy. And probably at this point, for the first time, the garden doesn’t feel quite so far away. This has to create hope that maybe he’s the one - maybe your exile is almost over.  Maybe things will go back to normal sooner than we thought. And Genesis doesn’t give us any details here, but I can’t help but think those expectations shaped Cain’s life as he grew up. They probably taught him to hunt snakes as soon as he could walk. But all of these expectations for what Cain would one day do don’t seem to have worked their way below the surface into who he was as a person. So, now we have to ask the question, “Who Was Cain, Really?”

• Who Was Cain, Really?

Throughout history, a common assumption about the meaning of this story has been that the real problem with Cain was what he did or did not do. Theories range from the idea that farming was less noble than shepherding to the notion that God is a meat-eater, not a vegetarian, and so Cain’s sacrifice of his vegetables was less desirable than Abel’s sacrifice of a lamb. But if you read this in light of the rest of the Old Testament, it becomes pretty clear that the problem with Cain’s offering is that it was just an offering of “some” of the harvest, not of the “first” or the “best.” Whereas Abel, by contrast, offered the best of his herd and the choicest fat portions. Certainly, there is a lesson here. The Israelites were commanded to offer the first and best fruits of their harvest as a sign of faith that God would provide more like it. They were to show their trust in him by giving back to him the best, so that their confidence would be in their relationship to the Lord and not in what they produced with their work. Their understanding of reality was to be decidedly relational - more about who they serve, than mechanistic; focused on what their work could produce.

So this certainly explains why Hebrews would say that it was by faith that Abel offered a better sacrifice. His sacrifice was a demonstration of his trust in and worship of God. Cain, by contrast, just brought some of his work as an offering. It’s not hard to imagine that the man who grew up with his parents thinking he was born to crush the serpent and save the world might be prone to trusting in what he could do - rather than trusting in God to provide for him. And herein lies the true issue. The text hints at it, when it says that God had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain, and his offering, he had no regard. Sure, there was a problem with Cain’s offering. But that tertiary issue really just highlighted the real issue: there was a problem with Cain. It wasn’t so much that Cain’s offering wasn’t the right type of offering - that could be forgiven. It was that Cain wasn’t the type of person who would make the right type of offering. And this is most clearly demonstrated in the way that he responds to the Lord’s correction.

And on this point it is worth pausing, briefly. Because it is often wrongly understood that the primary difference in a given biblical story is between the people who sin and the people who don’t. But most of the time that’s not right. The more important difference is usually between the ones who repent and the ones who don’t. Everybody sins. Only some people repent. I know we have talked about the expectations that Cain lived under - of being the great serpent crusher, and all. But you can tell by his response to God that this was long since out of the question. The only one who could survive the sting of the serpent’s bite is one who was without sin - one who did not deserve death and therefore could not be held by it. You can’t defeat death if you don’t first defeat sin. Cain was never going to win his expected war against the serpent because his bitter response to God shows that he had clearly already inherited his fallen parent’s susceptibility to the serpent’s poison. He’s a fallen person. If the serpent bites this guy on the heel, it won’t just bruise, it’ll kill. But what I find profoundly touching about this story is that God clearly did not have such unrealistic expectations for Cain. God wasn’t surprised that Cain was sinful, and he wasn’t put off by it either.

When Cain approached God with an unacceptable offering, he walked away downcast, and God noticed. And God didn’t write him off as a failure of a serpent crusher, though he clearly was. Instead, God drew near to him and asked, “Why are you sad?”. And then God encouraged him by telling him that if he would offer right worship, he would be accepted. And God cautioned him against the sin that was crouching at the door of his heart. God knew Cain wasn’t perfect. God knew Cain wasn’t the serpent crusher. And here God is, way outside the bounds of Eden, talking to a resentful young man, encouraging him to repentance, and warning him about the sin that wanted to destroy him. God had no regard for Cain as it pertained to his offering, but he clearly cared for him as a person, even a sinful person. And by the way, if we are thinking of expectations, this exchange should absolutely subvert our own expectations at this point in the story. Cain and Abel, like their parents, are cursed. Exiled. Kicked out. And here’s God, having regard for sacrifices made in faith, and drawing near to sinners with compassion.

But as unexpected as God’s compassion towards Cain ought to be given the events of the previous chapter, it should already look familiar to us. This isn’t the first time God has compassionately drawn near to people he already knew were not living up to his standards. The story is full of call-backs - linguistic allusions to the events of the previous chapter. And they alert us to at least two things up front - first, that God is still being patient with people. Even after the fall. The all-knowing God is still bending down to ask fallen man, “Why are you sad right now?” And to patiently, kindly, teach him words that can lead to life. I hope you can see yourself in Cain here. And I hope you see how patiently and how often and how kindly your heavenly Father has met you in your sin, knowing full-well what’s wrong but gently asked you about it anyway, and pointed you towards life.

But tragically, the parallels with the previous chapter don’t stop here. Not only do we see that God has continued to be patient, but we see that mankind has continued to get worse. The pattern doesn’t just continue, it escalates. Whereas *Eve had to be convinced to sin by the Devil, Cain wouldn’t be talked out of sinning by God Himself. *God asked Adam, “Where are you?” and Adam at least told him the truth. *When God asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” He gets a biting, sarcastic response. Adam or Eve may have extended the command by saying she wasn’t allowed to touch the fruit, but Cain twists God’s words and implicitly accuses God of having unreasonable expectations. He isn’t playing the part of the tempted human; he’s actually playing the part of the serpent who deliberately misrepresents what God said. And in the most tragic of all diversions from the pattern, *it’s not the serpent’s head that he crushes.

Though the effects were more localized in this case, this sin is more grievous than the previous. And so God finally responds with a more direct curse, not only on the ground, but on Cain himself. The question we were asking is “Who is Cain?” The question the text wants you to ask is, “Is Cain the curse-breaker?” And the tragic answer to both is, “Cain is cursed... That’s who he is.” And not only is his curse heavier than Adam’s, but his exile is farther. He is cursed “from the ground.” The soil that had been his livelihood, the family business he had inherited from his father, would no longer be viable for him. He could sow all he wanted, but he would never be able to harvest. Futility was upgraded to impossibility. And even after all that, God was still compassionate to him and spared his life. And so Cain’s deepened exile concludes with him not just leaving God’s presence, but settling there. Taking up permanent residence far to the East of Eden. Separated from his work, separated from his family, and separated from God.

• Who Are You?

So that’s who Cain was. But there’s a more pressing question that the story prompts us to ask. Even after we have figured out that Cain wasn’t the Serpent-crusher, it still compels us to inquire of another identity. Who are you and I? You see, Eve was the mother of all living. So every living person who reads this book is confronted with the question of their own lineage. And now we begin to see the genealogies of Genesis come into play. Chapter four ends with a genealogy to the seventh generation down from Adam, through the line of Cain. And you see that as the generations go, the corruption deepens. Lamech went down in history as a man who would kill you just for striking him. A man who would take revenge seventy times seven, which is an interesting little hyperlink to Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness later in the Gospels. By contrast, Seth’s descendants begin calling on the Name of the Lord immediately, all the way down to the seventh generation, which was Enoch, who walked with God and was no more.

And so you have this great paradigm set up between two lines of descendants. The seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent. Remember the curse, “I will put enmity between your offspring and hers?” So we know there will be offspring from both. But eventually, the two lines begin to mix, and in the Old Testament when the unholy mixes with the holy, the unholy thing wins. Unholiness is infectious, and the holy thing can become unclean. I agree with the many scholarly commentators who think this is what is meant by the sons of God intermarrying with the sons of men, producing unrighteous offspring. I think that’s very clearly talking about the once-faithful “seed of the woman” intermarrying with the seed of the serpent who lead them astray. That’s how you go from two robust lines of descendants in chapter 5, down to Noah and his family being the only righteous people left in the whole earth. So, no, I don’t think the Nephilim are some weird human-demon race, that makes no sense with the story, doesn’t agree with the bible’s teaching on Angels elsewhere, and is a myth started by the apocryphal and fictional book of Enoch that was written sometime during the Babylonian exile. The LXX incorrectly translates it as “giant” but the word literally just means “fallen” or “to fall” which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to call the children of a line of people who were largely faithful until they intermarried with and were corrupted by unfaithful people. But don’t send me emails about that because, in all honesty, it’s really not very important. Anyway. :)

The point is, the Bible follows these two lines all the way through. Here it’s sons of God and sons of men, then it’s sons of Shem and sons of Ham, then it’s the Israelites and the Canaanites, then it’s the Kings of the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, All the way down, tracing these two lines, asking the same question of each descendant: Is it this one? And every time, even when they walk in the ways of the Lord for the most part, it still ends the same: and he died. And increasingly, there is no predicting which line a son will come from - members of one line often spring up from the other line. It starts out fairly consistent but then it gets more unpredictable. Noah and his family came from the line of Seth, and look how Ham turned out. Isaac came from the line of Abraham, and look how Esau turned out. Solomon came from the line of David, and look how Jeroboam turned out. But as we find out, that’s because the lineage was never actually physical; it was spiritual. It wasn’t the children of the flesh who were really sons, it was the children of the promise. And here is the question that Genesis begs the reader to ask: Who are you?

Not, “what do you do?” Not “Who are your physical parents?” But really, “What type of person are you?” What spiritual lineage do you come from? Have you been born only according to the flesh, or have you also been born according to the Spirit? What does your genealogy look like?… You know, Genesis isn’t the only book in the bible that’s structured with genealogies. So are 1st and 2nd Chronicles. And funny enough, if you were to use the Hebrew Old Testament, the books would be the same but they would have a different order. It would end on 2nd Chronicles. And that book ends with a genealogy of the last kings of Judah. And after 66 books all implicitly asking the question, “Is it finally this one?” The whole Old Testament ends with the answer, “it was none of these.” And then the New Testament. On the first page: Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham. Immediately, we are back in Genesis.

Then Luke decides to go full historian and he takes it all the way back. “Jesus, son of Joseph, the son of Heli, 24 the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, so on and so forth… the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, 37 the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” And that’s it. That’s the last genealogy in the Bible. No more “and he died and he died and he died.” Because this one lived. There is no Numbers, Ezra, or Chronicles of the New Testament because they stopped keeping track after they found him. And John’s gospel doesn’t have a genealogy, but it does go all the way back to the beginning, literally, with the same opening line of Genesis 1, “In the beginning… Was the Word.” And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And in him was the light of life. And the light has shown in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” It. Was. Him.

After him, there are no more genealogies, because physical lineage is no longer relevant in the Kingdom. Now you have Jews and Gentiles and Canaanites and Egyptians and Arabs and Hispanics and Chinese and Africans and whatever kind of people each of you are, all who believe are swallowed up under one single heading: IN. CHRIST. No more male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free, only one firstborn son of God. As if there had never been a thousand generations of sin and misery. For those in Christ, it’s as if they had been reborn not just into the garden, but into heaven itself. And every name they’ve ever been given, every yoke of expectation placed on them by themselves or others, every unacceptable offering they ever made, becomes irrelevant and even untrue the moment they decide to bear the name of Christ.

But who are you? Is that your lineage or not? How can you tell? Well thankfully 1st John chapter 3 is all about this. It’s the Apostle John’s attempt to use the story of Cain and Abel to get you and I to ask this question: Who are we? Let’s look at what he says. Please open your bibles if you have them so you can follow along with me.

Conclusion:

See ywhat kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called zchildren of God; and so we are. The reason why athe world does not know us is that bit did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are zGod’s children cnow, and what we will be dhas not yet appeared; but we know that ewhen he appears1 fwe shall be like him, because gwe shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who hthus hopes in him ipurifies himself as he is pure.

4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; jsin is lawlessness. 5 You know that khe appeared in order to ltake away sins, and min him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; nno one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, olet no one deceive you. pWhoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 qWhoever makes a practice of sinning is descended of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was rto destroy the works of the devil. 9 sNo one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s2 seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, tnor is the one who udoes not love his brother.

11 For vthis is the message that you have heard from the beginning, wthat we should love one another. 12 We should not be like xCain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? yBecause his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers,3 zthat the world hates you. 14 We know that awe have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 bEveryone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that cno murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (Two reasons that the world hates you. First, those who are not born of God are prone to hating people. Second, because the curse said “I will put enmity between your offspring and his.” So he’s using Genesis both to explain the way things are, and to explain that if you are born of God you will be different, because you have been shown what real love is.)

16 By this we know love, that dhe laid down his life for us, and ewe ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But fif anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet gcloses his heart against him, hhow does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not ilove in word or talk but in deed and jin truth.

So who are you? Are you someone who abides in Christ? Someone who practices righteousness, not meaning that you are perfect - nobody is, but meaning that you keep trying and keep improving. That’s what practice means, he didn’t say “you who are perfect,” he said “you who are practicing.” Or are you someone who practices sin? Not that you never do good, but that you always go back to sin. Are you improving continually in sin? Are you going back to it over and over again, going deeper down the rabbit hole, not mastering and ruling over sin but being ruled by it? If the answer is that you are one who practices righteousness, then the challenge is this: make sure that includes practicing love - not just for God, but also for other people. And if you are practicing sin, then the challenge is this: ask God to make you a different kind of person. You must be reborn - you need to switch family trees, and you 100% can not do it. You need God to do that for you, and you need to go to him right now and ask for it.

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