What's in Your Heart? - Genesis - March 15th, 20266 (Sermon Transcript)

St. Augustine once declared, I have become a question to myself. Such an interesting phrase.

I have become a question to myself. He was at this place in his life where he had lost a really close friend of his, and the grief that he experienced surprised him. It shattered him.

And as he thought about it, like he, you know, he lost a good friend, so it makes sense that he would be sad, that he'd be grieving, but he couldn't understand the depth of his grief.

He couldn't comprehend why it was that he felt just so much pain and sadness, and that's when he spoke those words, because he really didn't understand his own heart. Sometimes as human beings, we are a mystery to ourselves.

We might think that we know ourselves, but the Bible often indicates otherwise. The Bible teaches that people often don't know their own hearts. They don't understand themselves rightly.

This is especially true when it comes to our own sinfulness. I think we all like to think of ourselves as quite a bit better than we actually are. We like to hold ourselves in the highest regard, with the greatest confidence in our own goodness.

So this morning, I want to look at a famous passage in the Book of Genesis. It's the story of Cain and Abel. And I want to focus on how the story reveals the reality of the human heart.

The Bible has so much insight into human nature, so much insight into what we're really like. And this is especially true of the story of Cain and Abel.

But beyond revealing truth about the human heart, more importantly, it reveals truth about God's heart. Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us.

Genesis 4 verses 1 through 16. Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have 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 has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. When they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?

And the Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hands.

When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, you have jerked me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Then the Lord said to him, Not so.

If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

This is the word of the Lord. Will you be seated? Please join me as I pray for us.

Father, as we approach your word this morning, your divinely inspired, infallible word, your word of power and goodness and truth. I pray that its power would reach us in our hearts this morning.

We know, God, that your word can do incredible things, that it can change us, that it is truth, unlike anything else in this world, it is truth.

And so we pray for your true, powerful word to take effect in our hearts, in our minds, right now, in the name of Jesus. Amen. The first truth we see about the human heart in this passage is that the human heart is incredibly influential.

According to the passage, Cain and Abel were born to two nice, loving parents. It doesn't really, really say that, but I'm going to make a guess and assume that Adam and Eve were nice, loving parents. But there was one problem.

They were sinners. They were sinners, and their sin influenced their children. In fact, it was passed on to their children.

The author of Genesis, probably Moses, was trying to show us how sin immediately spread from Adam and Eve through their descendants.

When you look at the arc of the story beginning in Genesis 1 with creation, and then the creation of human beings in the Garden of Eden, and then the fall of mankind, and all of that, the big story leads to that moment in Genesis 3, where Eve takes a

bite from the fruit, and then Adam takes a bite. They both rebel against God. They disobey God, and sin enters the world for the first time. And now we're here in Genesis 4, and the author, Moses, is emphasizing that sin continued to spread.

It wasn't just Adam and Eve. It spread to their descendants as well, which reveals a basic truth about the world, a basic truth about us. Our sin affects other people.

The sin in your heart and the sin in my heart influences people, especially our kids and grandkids. The Bible often warns about this very thing, the way that sin spreads from one generation to the next.

For example, God declares in Exodus chapter 20 that he will visit, this is 20 verse 5, he will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.

Now, be sure to pay attention to the wording there, I think it's really important. It says that God will visit the iniquity, not punish, but visit.

In other words, God does not punish kids for the sins of their parents, and he does not punish parents for the sins of their kids, and yet he doesn't stop the consequences either.

Now, when parents sin, it has a ripple effect that spreads out to their families. The ripples spread out in the effect of kids and their grandkids and even their great grandkids.

How many stories have you heard about kids who are abused, who later become abusers themselves? In fact, to my understanding, it is almost guaranteed that if a person is abusive in some way, they were abused growing up themselves.

And the point in making is that we're seeing the same effect here in our passage. Adam and Eve disobeyed and disregarded the commandments of God. And now Cain is going to be doing the same thing.

We need to understand that what happens in our hearts does not stay in our hearts. It leaks out. It comes out in our thoughts and in our feelings and in our behavior.

And it can influence people towards evil. Or here's the good news. It can also influence people towards good.

It can also influence people towards good. Our hearts are influential. That's the first truth.

The second truth about the human heart that we see in our passage is that our hearts were designed, were designed by God, our Creator, to worship. Looking again at verse 3.

In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. The Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. You have to remember that there are no churches at this time.

This is the very beginning of human civilization. So there are no churches. There are no priests.

There are no holy books. There is absolutely nothing in the world that would influence a person to make an offering to God. Nothing except the human heart.

This was natural for them. Worshipping God came about naturally for Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and their descendants because human hearts are designed to worship. Everybody worships.

Even atheists have recognized this truth. And I've shared this quote before, but it is always so striking. The famous novelist David Foster Wallace once wrote this.

It's kind of a long quote, but it is brilliant and profound and remarkable coming from somebody who was not a Christian. Absolutely not a Christian. This is what he wrote.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there's actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or religion is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. You will never feel you have enough. It's the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally believe you. Worship power and you will end up feeling weak and afraid.

And you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect. Being seen as smart, you'll end up feeling stupid, fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are in default settings. We all worship something.

And I'll take issue with that last part. That kind of worship is insidious. It is evil.

It is offensive to God. It is wrong. But David Foster Wallace is spot on when he says that it's all a default setting.

The human heart is a heart of worship. So what are you truly worshiping? Even if you're a Christian, you have to recognize that you are not immune from the sins of idolatry.

Millions of Christians have gotten wrapped up in loving money. I've seen videos of churches online just this past week where it's all about money.

The pastors preaching about money, they're singing about money, they're loving money, they're worshiping money. Even Christians get caught up in that. Or some people get caught up in loving the praise of others.

They go to church not because they love God, not because they want to grow as a Christian. They go to church so they can feel really good about themselves and show other people just how good they are.

And they do all the stuff, and they sign up for all the activities, and they volunteer at this and volunteer at that, and it's all a show to show people how awesome they are. That's idolatry.

When you read the Old Testament, you can become easily confused, because in ancient cultures, many times they would actually carve little statues out of wood or out of stone and worship those little statues, and that was their version of idolatry.

What I'm trying to say is that we have our own versions of idolatry that are a little bit more subtle, where we don't worship little statues, but we worship money, or we worship pleasure, or we worship power, or we worship approval from others.

You can know what you worship because it's the thing that you are really putting your hope in. Like, if I have this thing, then I'll be satisfied. If I get this thing, if I get enough money and my kids turn out okay, then I can be happy.

You know what you worship because it's the thing you can't imagine having a happy fulfilled life without. It's the thing that produces profound anxiety or despair when you think that you might lose it. These are the things we worship.

But God is a jealous God in a good way. God is a jealous God and He will not allow anybody or anything else to be worshiped in His place. Deuteronomy 32 verse 21, God says, They have made me jealous with what is no God.

They have provoked me to anger with their idols. Many other passages throughout the scriptures describe this jealousy and anger of God, and it is a terrifying thing. Let me break down kind of the logical pattern here.

What we're seeing in our passage, one of the big picture themes of our passage, is that God takes worship seriously. Right? He calls Cain out, because Cain did not worship him rightly.

So God takes worship seriously, and your heart is programmed to worship. So you better be sure that you're worshiping God and God alone. You better be sure that you're worshiping him properly.

All throughout the Bible, we see God's anger and wrath break out against improper worship. It's not enough to worship God. We must worship God rightly.

We live in a culture where everybody thinks that they can pick their own religion. They can pick whatever truths they want out of the Bible, and invent their own religion, or out of any other holy book, or off Instagram.

You just pick what you like, and you invent your own religion. God does not look kindly upon such a thing. Imagine if you were God, and you told everybody all about you, and how to worship you, and then they all went off and did their own thing.

Would you be pleased with that? Of course, none. That's one of the issues in our passage.

Cain did not worship God properly. So what does the Bible say about worshiping God properly? This is one of the biggest differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

In the Old Testament, God gave literally hundreds of commands regarding proper worship. He spelled out every single detail. Like, this is who I want to worship me.

This is what I want them to wear. This is how I want you to make the building. This is the materials that I want you to use.

This is the time that I want you to come and worship me. And this is exactly what I want you to do. Step by step by step, he spells out every single detail.

And the people of Israel were required to follow all the instructions to a T. And if they didn't, they might die. And some of them did die.

But in the New Testament, we are given very few commands regarding proper worship. Isn't that interesting? Old Testament, hundreds of commands about worship.

New Testament, a handful. What's the difference? Does God not care about how you worship him anymore?

No, God never changes. He still cares, but as Christians, we now have a different relationship with God. The Old Testament people were the people of God, but they were not the family of God.

As Christians, we have been adopted into God's family. We aren't just his people. We are now his sons and daughters.

We've been given the Holy Spirit to guide us, and we've been entrusted with a certain amount of freedom in our worship. So instead of giving us hundreds of commandments, he gives us just a few. For example, Matthew 5 verses 23 through 24.

Jesus says this, So if you were offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

In other words, if you are harboring bitterness towards people, if you are harboring anger and resentment towards somebody, go and work that out before you come to God in worship, because God wants us to come to him with pure hearts.

With pure hearts. He also wants us to come to him with sincere hearts. And I'll say with regard to pure hearts, it is really hard to have a pure heart.

If you are honest with yourself, if you have any level of self-awareness whatsoever, you'll know it's really hard to have a pure heart.

So I'll just say almost as an aside, even though it's one of the most important things I could possibly say, Jesus is the only way to have a pure heart. You will never obtain a pure heart on your own.

No amount of religious effort or moral effort can purify your heart.

The only way to get a pure heart is to fall on your knees and cry out to God, have mercy on me, a sinner, to recognize I'm a sinner, and I am lost and hopeless, and I'm never going to make it on my own. Jesus, save me.

And Jesus and Jesus alone will give you a pure heart, the kind of heart that you need so that when you come to God and worship, he is pleased with your worship. We also see in the New Testament that God wants us to come to him with sincere hearts.

I think that's what Jesus was getting at in John 4 24 when he said, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. In spirit and truth. And the author of Hebrews adds two more key words for us, reverence and awe.

Hebrews 12 verses 28 through 29 says, Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence, and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Are you worshiping God like that? With reverence and awe? With sincerity?

With a pure heart? As we see in our passage, Cain did not do that. Notice in verses 3 and 4 the difference between Cain and Abel.

The text says explicitly that Abel brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. In other words, he brought his first and his best to God. But Cain did not.

Notice it doesn't say that about Cain, implying that Cain just brought some leftovers. Think about what that says pertaining to Cain's attitude towards God.

Cain thought so little of God that he thought he could just show up to worship God with some leftovers. But the real question is, why? Why did Cain fail to give his best to God?

And why did he end up murdering his brother when God called him out? When you start to unpack the details of this passage, the answer becomes clear. The root sin, the root cause, the reality of Cain's heart was that his heart was filled with pride.

His heart was filled with pride. One of the default settings of the human heart is worship, and sadly another default setting of the human heart is pride. CS.

Lewis, the famous Christian author, talks about how Christians are the only people on earth who will ever really be honest about their pride. He observes that people admit to all kinds of sins and vices.

Some people openly admit, I've got a drinking problem or a lust problem or an anger problem or whatever it might be, but they almost never imagine that they're guilty of pride. And yet pride, Lewis says, is the primordial sin. He writes this.

He says, according to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride that the devil became the devil.

Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind. That's exactly what we see in our text.

Cain is so proud that he thinks it's okay to worship God with his leftovers. Like I'm here, God should be happy that I showed up. That should be enough for him.

Whether I bring my best crops or my leftover crops doesn't matter. God should be pleased that I'm here. How often do we show up to church like that?

We show up half-hearted, with half our attention on church, and we think, yeah, God should be happy with that, I'm here, right? Isn't that enough for him? Cain is so proud that he refuses to listen when God corrects him.

That's another great sign of pride. Perhaps one of the most obvious signs of pride is the refusal to listen to correction. If somebody calls you out on something, do you say, hey, thanks for bringing that to my attention, I'll work on that?

Or do you get mad and defensive? In verse six, God warns Cain clearly, and he seems to be giving Cain a second chance. But instead of coming back with another offering, what does Cain do?

Like God warns him, if you do well, won't you be accepted? What's the logical response to that? What's the right response to that?

Say, I'm sorry, God. My next crop, you are getting my first and my best. In fact, I still have it stored up.

Let me go get it for you right now and do this properly. Thank you for giving me another chance. But what does Cain do?

Instead, he goes out and he murders his brother, which is really fascinating. Why, what is the connection there? We'll get to that in just a moment.

Why did Cain, in response to God calling him out about improper worship, go and kill his brother? The two seem almost entirely unrelated. Well, we'll get there in just a moment, but I want to pause here and note verse 7.

Verse 7 is really important and powerful. God warns Cain, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.

Sin wants to rule over Cain, and God is saying, no, no, no, no, no, you need to rule over your sin. And Cain fails to do that, and his sin consumes him. Sin has the power to consume us.

It has the power to take over and control us. As a result of pride, Cain became so consumed with anger and jealousy that he went out and murdered his own brother.

And you'll notice later that Cain does not even repent, because prideful people don't repent. He doesn't show any remorse, because prideful people don't want to admit that they're wrong. God calls him out.

God! God calls him out, and what does he say? Am I my brother's keeper?

He snaps back at God. Am I my brother's keeper? And when God reveals his punishment, he doesn't even accept it.

He fights back and says that it's punishment. His punishment is too much. Like, God, you got this wrong.

I'm not as bad as you think I am. That punishment is overboard. I'm not really that bad.

You need to give me less punishment. The author of Hebrews warns about this kind of thing. We see this in Hebrews 6 and again in Hebrews 10.

And I'd encourage you to look these passages up and to read them carefully. But the message we get in Hebrews, kind of what we're seeing here with Cain, is that when God gives you a chance to repent, you better take it.

When God gives you a chance to repent, when he says, I love you, I sent my son Jesus to die for you, all you've got to do is admit you're a sinner and say, Jesus, save me. When God gives you that chance, you better take it.

Because if you don't, things will be far worse than if you never got that chance in the first place. The Bible warns us about that. The Bible warns us that God gives people over to their sin.

As God gave Cain over, we see his pride coming out in the form of jealousy. This is just how the human heart works. Prideful people are jealous people.

They hate it when others do better than them. Notice how Cain does not come back to God with the second offering. He goes out and murders Abel because he was angry that Abel was accepted and he wasn't.

He hated Abel because Abel did better than him. That's the connection. They both go to worship God.

Cain does not give a proper offering. God calls him out, and Cain becomes filled with anger and rage and jealousy because at that moment, he realizes, wait, God accepted my brother, he's not accepting me, implying Abel did better than me.

Implying that Abel was better than him. CS. Lewis talks about how pride is inherently competitive.

I know I have a lot of quotes today. I could barely fit them all on the outline. I got carried away, to be honest.

Just finding all these good quotes. So let me give you one more here. CS.

Lewis says that pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they are not.

They are proud of being richer or cleverer or better looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich or clever or good looking, there would be nothing to be proud about.

It is the comparison that makes you proud of the pleasure of being above the rest. Cain realized he was not above the rest. He was below the rest.

He was below his brother. And when you combine that with his pride, it sent him into a rage. But we also have to realize that pride is not just about our comparison, with other people or our relationship with other people.

It's also, most importantly, about our relationship with God. Let me give you one last quote from CS. Lewis.

And I want you to think, before I read this, I want you to think about your own relationship with God. Whatever that might be like.

Maybe you've been coming to church for 50 years, you read the Bible and you pray every day, and you are aware of God's presence all throughout the day, constantly in communication.

And maybe, in other words, maybe you have a great relationship with God. Or maybe you have a terrible relationship with God. Maybe you've gone to church twice in your life and you really have no idea anything about God.

Or maybe you realize in your own heart that you've turned your back on God, that you've offended God and that you're angry at Him. Whatever it might be, think about your own relationship with God.

Think about your own understanding of who God is, your own heart towards Him, how you feel about Him, and listen carefully. This is what Lewis wrote. In God, you come up against something which is in every respect, immeasurably superior to yourself.

Unless you know God is that, and therefore you know yourself as nothing in comparison, you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people.

And of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. That is the danger of pride and the human heart.

And yet, despite the fact that the human heart is filled with pride, God's heart is filled with mercy towards us. Isn't that amazing?

You see Cain here, and you see what he did and the attitude that he has towards God, the immensity of his pride, and yet, you then see that God has mercy on him. Because that's who God is. That's God's heart towards us.

God is eager to show us mercy. Sometimes, we get this idea that God must be really mad at us, or really disappointed in us, or God must have absolutely no interest in hearing from us whatsoever. But look at how he responds to Cain.

After all that Cain did, he puts a mark on Cain's that nobody would kill him. Cain protests, says the punishment is too great. He was wrong, by the way, the punishment was not too great.

He deserved every bit of that and more. And yet God graciously puts a mark on him, so that nobody would kill him.

God declares for all of human history, everybody knows, it's right here in the book of Genesis, in the best-selling book in human history, everybody knows anybody who kills Cain will be avenged sevenfold.

God did that out of mercy because that is God's part. And this is just a little glimpse of the majesty and mercy of God. So whatever you might think about God, know this, he is eager to forgive.

A while back we did a Bible study here at the church through a book by this pastor named Dane Ortlund, and I think it was, we did a couple of them. I think this one was gentle and lowly.

And he gives this amazing analogy to help us understand God and the salvation that he offers us through Jesus.

He compared it, the metaphor that he used was like a doctor who works his whole life and invests his own money and his blood and his sweat and his tears to come up with a cure to an incurable disease. And he finally gets it.

He finally finds the cure and he travels to a far away land to reach the people who are suffering from this horrible disease to give them the cure. Imagine how eager he is to use it.

Imagine how excited that doctor would be to distribute that cure to the people suffering from that disease. That's what God is like. And the cure is for the sin, the pride, and all the other sins in our hearts.

God sent his son Jesus so that we could be set free from the power of sin and death, so that we could be forgiven and cleansed and saved and spend eternity in heaven with him.

God went through sending his own son to suffer and die in order to get the cure for our sin. Imagine how eager he is to use that cure. He's not reluctant with it.

He is eager to have mercy on us. He is eager to show us his grace. He is eager to save us.

We see a little glimpse of that heart of God here. We see it with the mercy that he shows to Cain, and we also see it in some ways with Abel. It's interesting to note that in this passage, Abel never says a word.

His name literally means breath, and he is just a breath on the pages of Genesis, but Genesis is not the end of Abel's story. The Book of Hebrews holds Abel up as an example of faith, and then it says something really fascinating.

In Hebrews 12, Hebrews 12, 24, the author refers to Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood of Jesus that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. To the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

What's he trying to say? Well, what was the word spoken by the blood of Abel? It was guilt.

It was condemnation. In verse 10, the Lord says, The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. What was it saying?

It was saying, Cain killed me. Cain is guilty. Cain stands condemned for his crimes.

But the blood of Jesus speaks a better word. The blood of Jesus speaks mercy, forgiveness, redemption and grace. That's what the blood of Jesus showed across accomplishes for us.

If we put our trust in Him, our faith in Him, it brings us mercy, redemption, forgiveness and grace. Ephesians 1-7 says that in Him, in Jesus, we have redemption through His blood.

The forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. I don't know what's in your heart. God knows what's in your heart.

He knows what's in all of our hearts. And I don't necessarily know what's in your heart, but I have a pretty good understanding of what's in mine.

I know that if I'm honest, my heart is often filled with pride, it's often filled with greed and selfishness. My heart is often much like the heart of Cain. Genesis helps me to see that.

Genesis has so much to teach us about human nature and the human heart, but the good news of the gospel is that the blood of Jesus can cleanse our hearts. In fact, in the New Covenant, God promises to give us new hearts.

And that's the hope that we have in Jesus. It's that hope that Genesis is ultimately pointing to, that the story of Cain and Abel is ultimately pointing to. It's the hope that we have in Jesus.

This is a tragic story, but it points forward to a better story, a story of hope in Christ. Let's pray. Jesus, I pray that we would grab ahold of the hope that we have in you.

Without you, we have no hope of changing. We have no hope of influencing people towards good. We have no hope of overcoming our sin, overcoming our shame and guilt.

We have no hope of defeating death without you. With you, Jesus, we have hope, the ultimate hope that we can be changed and restored and spend forever with you in paradise.

Help us to see that truth and to believe that truth and to live our lives in light of it. We pray in your name, Jesus. Amen.