Genesis 4: The Beast at the Door

Foreign. Welcome to Chapter by Chapter A four year journey through the greatest book given to the human race. The Word of God, the Bible. And we get to go through it chapter by chapter, seven minutes a day and seven days a week. Join us each day and share it with others so they can join the journey that will be life changing. We will stop at unexpected places on the journey and be challenged. Some verses will create awe and wonder. We will even have chapters that will be instructive. And in others we will find joy and comfort. We will occasionally be convicted and want to change, but all in all, the journey will be worth it. The best way to get the most from this podcast is read the chapter we're discussing before or after it's His Word that transforms. You will find more and see more than I can ever articulate. Welcome to Chapter by Chapter and today's chapter is Genesis 4. Genesis 4 is the day after. This is the first day after the fall of man, the day that man listened to Satan instead of God. This is epic. Man on his own without God, man who decided he can make better decisions than God. This is the first chapter of human history without God. And man can't even get through a whole chapter on his own without it being chaos. We know how things are going now from how they did the next day. Just in Genesis 4 we have murder, jealousy, revenge, polygamy, spousal abuse, and that's just chapter four. How about we just take the book of Genesis? How does man do trying to make it without God? In the first book of the Bible, one book after Genesis 4, we have this. Noah, the most righteous man on the planet, gets drunk and puts a curse on his grandson Lot. When his home is surrounded by residents of Sodom who want to violate his angelical visitors, offers instead that they can have sex with his daughters later on. His daughters get him drunk, get impregnated by him, and Lot is the most righteous man. In Sodom, Abraham plays favorites between his sons Isaac and Ishmael. They become estranged. Isaac plays favorites between his sons Jacob and Esau, and they are bitter enemies for 20 years. Jacob plays favorites between Joseph and his other 11 brothers, and the brothers want to kill Joseph and end up selling him into slavery. Their marriages are disasters. Abraham has sex with his wife's servant and then sends her and her son off into the wilderness at the wife's request. Isaac and Rebecca fight over which boy will get the blessing. Jacob marries two wives and ends up with both of their maids as his concubines. As they get into a Fertility contest. Jacob's firstborn, Reuben, sleeps with his father's concubine. Another son, Judas, sleeps with his daughter in law when she disguises herself as a prostitute. She does this because she is childless. Since your first two husbands were so wicked that God killed them both, these people need a lot of help. These people need God. In fact, we all need God. You can't read Genesis 4 without understanding that Genesis 3 is called the Fall of Man, or where we are introduced to the theological concept of original sin. That got the ball rolling on all of this. What's original sin? Original sin is that our inherited human nature is twisted with a disastrous self centeredness. Although we're created in God's image, that image has not been destroyed, but has been seriously distorted. We no longer love God with all of our being, but we're hostile towards him. Let's see. Man on his first day without God in Genesis 4, one of the statements that God makes upon the children of the first couple still haunts us today. And that will be the verse that the podcast will come from. Let's look at the story of Cain and Abel. Verse 1. Now, the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, I've gotten a man child. With the help of the Lord. Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of the flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. And Abel on his part also brought the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry and why is your countenance fallen? God spoke to the anger before it would turn to murder. That is important to note. God wanted to get at it before it turned awful. I was reading the story of a elementary girl who was showing her third grade friend the bathroom scale in her home. She said, I don't know what it is, but my mom and dad use it every day. Be careful. All I know is when you stand on it, it makes you really mad. Cain's anger was deeper and more serious than a bathroom scale. God knew that on the other side of anger and is murder. And he called it out in Cain before it would get there. Anger is always the prelude to horrible things. Someone said anger is one Letter away from danger. Just add a D to anger and you get danger, whether that is road rage, hitting your spouse or murder. Like Cain, Cain has the opportunity to turn around. His opportunity to do what's right isn't over just because he failed to do the right thing earlier. He can repent, obtain the proper offering, and return to the altar with a humble and obedient heart. In other words, it's never too late to start doing the right thing and don't miss the implied benefit. God says if you do what is right, you will be fine. Listen to verse seven. If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? It'll fix it if you do the right thing. And if you do not do well, Here it comes. Sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. When you are angry with God, you'll be angry with people. If you're not doing well with God, all of your relationships will be affected. The quality of our horizontal relationships depends entirely upon having a good vertical relationship. That's with God. To put it simply, if you're not right with God, you'll find yourself at odds with everybody else, even including yourself. The apostle John says it like this. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son, will cleanse us from all of our sin. That's in First John 1:7. Also remember that sin moves at supersonic speed and and shows up with a force if left undealt with. You might think it would have take time for sin to gradually become worse with each successive generation. In the book of Genesis and chapter, we would think that the children of Adam and Eve would start with telling little fibs. And maybe as you move on in the book of Genesis, then you see petty theft, and by the third generation, extortion, racketeering. By the fifth, then perhaps murder many years down the road. But the inspired author of Genesis chose to follow the fall of Adam and Eve with this story about their sons. Right after the first birth on earth comes the first murder on earth. This points us to an undeniable theological truth. The problem is in the heart. We do wrong because we're wrong. We are not sinners because we have committed sins. We we sin because we are sinners. We are wrong all the way to the core. Murder is merely the fruit of a heart Problem we all share. It's not a weapon problem in our country any more than it is a heart problem. Murder is the byproduct of a twisted, selfish nature that came to all of humankind as a result of Adam and Eve's fall. In Genesis 3, the word brother in Genesis 4 is used six times in verses 8 through 11 of this story as if to punctuate the seriousness of the crime and show us sin is forceful and will hurt and harm even our own family. This story tells us be careful of giving to God what you want instead of what he wants. Abel's offering was excellent. Keynes was mediocre. This should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks that God will accept anything we choose to bring as long as we're sincere. We don't know from the original story how they knew what to bring to God, but I'm confident that Adam taught Cain and Abel the importance of an offering and how they were to approach God. Blood sacrifices to God were a part of a Hebrew culture long before Moses recorded the detailed requirements as part of Israel's official covenant with the Lord. Before Moses, they probably learned it from the patriarchs. The book of Job confirms this. Does our offering look like Cain's or like Abel's? We will give God our attendance. We think we will give God a few Sundays each year, maybe Easter and Mother's Day. We will give God our I don't do this in my life. I've never killed, never stolen, never cheated on my wife. We will give God our money. Always. Remember, just because the church cashes your check, don't think it is accepted in heaven. Just because we accept it doesn't mean that God accepts it. Do you see the difference in their offerings? This means that a cane offering is giving what you want and not what is according to God's prescription and commands. And then this verse. Notice the metaphor of language. The imagery is profound. This 5,000 year old verse screams with truth that has no limitation to time frame. Here it is verse seven. And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. The imagery for the Bible's first use of the word sin. First use of the word sin, that awful word that killed God's son, is horrifying. It describes sin in the crouching position that at the door it's snarling, hissing, growling outside, waiting for an opportunity to come all the way in. For Cain, anger was the crack in the door that brought in this diabolical beast. Of murdering your own brother because you're upset with God. Sin is a beast. Sin is the beast at the door. Unresolved sin does not go away. It just gets deeper and rooted. Men live under this delusion that if you ignore a problem, it goes away. It never goes away because of knowing this principle. You know, my wife and I have an agreement that we will not go to bed angry. And we have stayed up at times till 2 and 3 in the morning talking an issue through. That's helpful on a number of levels. I found that by 3 o' clock in the morning, I will agree and repent of anything by that time. But it's bigger than that. It's the beast at the door. It's a crack that if we don't resolve it. Chuck Swindoll writes this in his commentary. The Hebrew word translated killed him is a term used not just for murder, but animal sacrifice. I don't want to make too much of the word choice, Swindoll says, but I do think it adds a chilling irony to the story. If I were writing a novel with Cain as a character, I would have him hiss these words. You want to sacrifice? Then here's your sacrifice, God. Abel's blood spilled on the ground and his lifeless body sank into Cain's arms. Let us not forget that that same murderous heart that Cain inherited by the fall beats within each and every one of us. Sin crouches at your door. At my door, just as it did for Cain. Don't be fooled. Very few murderers woke up one day and decided to become a killer. We don't know how much time passed between verses 8, 9. When God said to Cain, where is your brother Abel? And he replied, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper? But the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. A secret sin on earth is an open scandal in heaven. Never forget that whatever we may hide on this earth is fully known to God. Three quick thoughts about the beast at the door. The beast is untamable. You, you can't have it come down because you were in a certain situation. No matter who you are, what you do, you cannot tame the beast. It will come out. Whatever is in you eventually comes out. John Stott said it this way. A promise is not enough today. We need a contract. Doors are not enough today. We have to lock and bolt them. The payment affairs is not enough. Tickets have to be issued, inspected and collected, and an ID even looked at. Law and order are not Enough. You need police to enforce them. All this is due to our sin. We cannot trust each other. We need protection against one another. It's a terrible indication of what human nature is really like. That's the beast at the door. God has diagnosed the problem, but we are too full of ourselves to even accept the diagnosis. The beast is uncooperative. No matter what you do or how much you make, wherever you live, the beast will show up in a slum or a trailer park as well as park avenue or a CEO's 10,000 square foot house. I heard Swindoll go on to say some years ago he asked this question, Is this the NBA, the NFL or Major League Baseball? Listen to these statistics. 36 have been accused of spousal abuse. 7 have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have been been either directly or indirectly involved in bankrupting at least two businesses. Three have done time in prison. 71 cannot get a credit card based upon their bad credit history. 14 have been arrested on drug related charges. 8 have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits. That means you're being sued. 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year. Can you guess which one? NFL, NBA or mlb? None. It's the United States Congress. The best men still have a beast crouching at the door. Whether you are voted in or signed a multimillion dollar contract, no one is exempt. The beast is underestimated. You can be cute and you can be king. You can be in ministry or you can be in a crack house. It's the beast. Listen to this New Testament progression from James chapter four, starting in verse one. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you is the source your pleasures that wage war in your members. Here it comes. You lust, do you not have. So you commit murder. An old Scottish preacher named Alexander McLaren writes this on the beast at the door. He says, what an awful menagerie of unclean beasts some of us have at our doors. Which sort of creatures have you tethered at yours? Crawling serpents, ugly and venomous. Wild creatures, fierce and bloody, obscene and foul. Tigers and bears, lustful and mischievous apes and monkeys. It is a great deal easier to find a man who has never done a wrong thing and to find a man who has only done it once. Beware of the first step. For as sure as you are living, the first step taken will make the second step become more necessary. The first drop will be followed by a bigger second and the second at a shorter interval by a more copious third, until the drops become a shower and the shower becomes a deluge. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing itself. This is what the beast does. Our only hope is a beast killer. Thank God. When the fall of man happened, we were given a hope that someone has prophesied to come that can kill the beast. God said, I'm sending a seed of the woman that shall go after its head. His death on the cross was the crushing of the serpent's head. There is hope and victory against that crouching beast. Thank you for joining. Chapter by chapter, every chapter from the greatest book, the Bible, the Word of God. Seven minutes a day, seven days a week. We'll see you tomorrow.