> [!Scripture] > **6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? > 7 "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."** <img src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/media%3Agenesis%204%206-7.jpg" alt="Genesis 4:6-7" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;"> > [!success] Audio Commentary > <audio controls src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/Genesis%204%206-7.ogg"></audio> ## Brief Observations - **God's merciful confrontation with Cain** — Like questioning Adam/Eve in Eden, God asks Cain: “Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen?”—not for info, but to convict and steer back from sin's brink. Holy Spirit's office: convict of sin, answering painfully when we seek truth. God's kindness lowers to tenderly deal with murderous hearts—unsearchable grace, as Peter says: patient, not wishing any perish but all repent (2 Peter 3:9). + **Grace and mercy: undeserved, unbalanced** — Grace: getting what we don't deserve; mercy: not getting what we do. We've all received both—no grounds to question God's extension to others, even Cain. Prodigal parable: father's embrace enrages elder son, but "we had to rejoice—this brother was dead, now lives; lost, now found" (Luke 15:31–32). God's "unfair" mercy saves; demanding "fairness" reveals self-righteousness. - **Master sin or be mastered** — "If you do well, accepted; if not, sin crouches at the door—its desire for you, but you must rule it." Sin lurks like predator (or debt-collector at door); opportunity to conquer before it consumes. God's warning: grace urging mastery over lurking evil—foreshadowing Christ's victory over sin's power. + **Cain's fallen countenance: envy and resentment** — Anger reveals unrepentant heart—raging against God for "unfair" rebuke (Proverbs 19:3: foolishness ruins, heart rages at Lord). Hatred of Abel unprovoked—righteous brother exposes Cain's lie. Envy corrodes: eats inside, spills as sickness, violence. Unrepentant sinners despise God's favored, like Pharisees blocking kingdom (Matthew 23:13)—whitewashed tombs, outwardly religious, inwardly rotten (Matthew 23:27). - **Abel's acceptance: righteous example** — God's favor on Abel doesn't negate Cain's firstborn dignity; Abel honors it faithfully. Faithfulness to God doesn't excuse disloyalty elsewhere—serve earthly masters (without disobeying God) as unto Him (Colossians 3:23). Christians make best subjects: quiet obedience to authority as God's providence (Romans 13:1)—wise rulers should cherish them, not persecute. + **Sin destroys perception** — Envy twists vision: good seen as evil, evil as good. Cain murders ideal brother; history's tyrants hunt Christians fearing revolution—absurd, as doctrine calls honor authority (unless disobeying God). Sin darkens mind, leading to homicide—first murder born of resentment, not overreaction. - **Lessons for us: rule sin, embrace mercy** — Examine anger: is it rage at God's "unfair" grace? Master crouching sin through repentance—God's patient pursuit invites it. In Christ, we conquer: His blood speaks better than Abel's (Hebrews 12:24)—turning enmity to peace, resentment to rejoicing. ## Full Commentary This is the moment where God reasons with Cain in an effort to bring him to repentance. We saw a similar scene unfold in the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam and Eve some poignant questions to reveal what they had done. One of the primary offices of God’s Holy Spirit is to convict us of sin. He is the one who answers, often painfully, when you ask God, “What am I doing that I shouldn’t be doing and what am I not doing that I should be doing?” God is attempting to steer Cain back from the brink and prevent a furtherance of his sin. This moment is a revelation of God’s unsearchable kindness that He would extend grace and opportunity to such a vile man as Cain. God lowered Himself to deal tenderly with a man who He knew was murderous at heart. When Peter describes God’s patience he puts it this way, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” God’s grace means getting what we don’t deserve and God’s mercy means not getting what we do deserve. All of us have been recipients of both, and so none of us have grounds to question the extension of God’s mercy to others. We might be screaming for God to withhold His mercy from Cain and therefore save Abel’s life. But for whatever reason God didn’t see it this way, and we are in no position to cross-examine Him. The story of the prodigal son communicates the seemingly unbalanced nature of God’s grace and mercy. In this parable, the father readily embraces the prodigal when he returns home. The elder son who never left his father became angry at this embrace. The father reasons with his elder son by saying, “‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and _has begun_ to live, and _was_ lost and has been found.’” Notice how God asks Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?” None of our sinful passions or shameful outbursts escape the observing eyes of God. He’s aware of every detail of our lives, even down to our facial expressions. But God wasn’t simply pointing this fact out to Cain. He asked the question to inspire Cain to look inside himself and actually ask why he was so angry. Most of us could benefit from stopping down and taking inventory of ourselves during heated or disquiet moments. If we ask ourselves: is there a real cause, a just cause, or a cause proportionate to my reaction here — I think we’ll discover that we frequently overreact. We also tend to measure our problems as bigger or more severe than they really are. God knew Cain was both overblowing his own problems while at the same time refusing to take responsibility for them. After asking about his anger, God’s questions become more pointed to show Cain he has no justifiable reason to be angry. God reminds Cain that He sets before men life and death, blessing and curse, and then men difference themselves based on which path they take. The rules of the creation were exactly the same for Cain as they were for Abel. When God says, “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” He’s invalidating Cain’s claim that the system is unfair to him. Cain has the same opportunities as Abel, but Cain’s disposition toward God and toward sin are causing him to fail. Most Americans today live with access to more wealth than 99% of human beings who have ever lived anywhere on Earth. And yet this same spirit which possessed Cain possesses so many of us today. We claim the system is oppressive or unfair to us. We claim we are marginalized and closed off from the gardens of success. Rather than dismantling the “system” which has eliminated poverty and improved quality of life faster and more efficiently than any economic or governance system before it — we should ask ourselves if the problem is us. Are we to blame for our own struggles in the context of such relative wealth? Where is the sin in our lives and what is our disposition toward the sovereign authority of God and the necessity of sacrifice? We have the same opportunity to look inside ourselves and realize the problems we blame on “structures” or social elites are really insufficiencies in ourselves which we need to overcome. That’s a much better story to tell, with a much happier ending, than the story of false victimhood promoted by Cain and those who are like him. Let’s further examine the binary of life and death God offered Cain. He told him if he does well then he would be accepted. Not only that, but God seemed to suggest Cain himself knew this was the case. Indeed he had just witnessed Abel demonstrate this truth. God is no respecter of persons, and so He didn’t favor Abel any more than He favored Cain. God doesn’t harbor hatred for His own creation, so if we find ourselves at enmity with God we have only ourselves to thank. We can argue about freedom of the will and I myself tend to think our lives are more pre-determined than we’re comfortable accepting — but regardless of free will it’s still true there is not a single condemned sinner in Hell who wouldn’t have been a glorified saint in Heaven had they simply obeyed the Lord. God’s forgiveness is such that had Cain repented in this moment and reformed his heart and life then God would have accepted him as if it never happened. Cain’s sin would be fully and entirely pardoned. Cain’s comfort and honor would be restored, and God would work all things together for good for him. God’s extension of grace to Cain in this moment should be a reminder for us that it’s never too late to repent of our sins and invest our faith in Jesus Christ. You’re not too damaged or too evil for the healing of God’s Holy Spirit. You may feel like you’ve wasted too many years of your life, but God is able to do exceedingly more than you can imagine in a short amount of time once you’re walking with Him. The pathway to God’s mercy always runs through repentance of sin. God Himself is preaching the gospel to Cain in this moment, and He offered its benefits even to one of the most notorious sinners — the world’s first murderer. On the other side of things God also sets before Cain death and a curse. Cain had already transgressed against God by offering an improper sacrifice. Now God reminded Him that if he fails to do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for him. During this dispensation a proper sacrifice would have meant righteousness imputed onto you. This is why Abel is called _righteous Abel_. But the inverse was also true. If you abused the sacrificial system and tried to manipulate God or others, sin would be imputed to you. Cain approached God as a sinner, and so he was rejected and frowned upon as a sinner. Cain brought this ominous charge onto himself. In this moment God is warning him that if he persists in his misconduct his heart will harden. The more his heart hardens against God, the more prolific and the more heinous his sins will become. When you’re caught in sin you really only have a few options. You could repent and humble yourself before God, which leads to the Spirit of God sanctifying your heart. You could deceive yourself by perverting the word of God in order to accommodate your sin. Or you could simply double-down and embrace evil, hardening your heart against God and making it more difficult to have any relationship with Him at all. When God is pulling Israel out of the depraved morass of the pagan tribes throughout the Middle East, He impresses on them the importance of observing His specific ordinances. If God’s people neglected to act on the things He commanded them do, they’d become much more vulnerable to acting on all kinds of abominations. Resisting sin is not entirely about avoiding commission of the sin. It’s not a negative enterprise. The most important part of resisting sin is positively acting on the things we already know God has commanded us to do. The godliness of Christ comes in part from His sinlessness, but most of His character is associated with what He did and what He does, rather than with what He doesn’t do. If you expect to become Christlike simply by avoiding sins but also neglecting the forward commands of God, I think you’ll fail in that project. I think the positive movements are indispensable to freedom from sin. You won’t have what you need to be Christlike unless you’re first willing to make proper sacrifices. Devotion to God is protection from sinful temptation. These two things are inextricably linked. In the same way that devotion to God and freedom from sin are connected, so are sin and punishment for sin. Sin and its punishment are so tightly interweaved that their connection is reflected in the Hebrew language for both. Punishment for sin is unavoidable and never far from the sin itself. No one gets away with anything. The punishment may seem asleep for a time, but it will be awakened and the sinner will realize it never slept at all. When the leaders of the tribes of Reuben and Gad petitioned Moses that he might allow them to hold land on the first side of the Jordan River, Moses was concerned they wouldn’t join the other tribes in the war effort against Canaan. They promised him they would. Next we read: >**Numbers 32:20-23** >20 So Moses said to them, "If you will do this, if you will arm yourselves before the LORD for the war, >21 and all of you armed men cross over the Jordan before the LORD until He has driven His enemies out from before Him, >22 and the land is subdued before the LORD, then afterward you shall return and be free of obligation toward the LORD and toward Israel, and this land shall be yours for a possession before the LORD. >23 "But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out. Here Moses is highlighting the connection between sin and punishment. They are so much one entity that if you sin your sin itself will expose you. Remember a crucial part of Satan’s deceiving Eve was convincing her there would be no consequences for her sin. _You surely will not die!_ The serpent said. So Cain had reason to be angry but only with himself for forfeiting God’s favor. He had no reason to be angry at God. Neither did he have a justifiable reason to be angry at Abel. Cain was the firstborn and being the firstborn meant he was preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. God never sought to remove this advantage from Cain and neither did Abel. Abel’s successful offering had no designs at transferring Cain’s birthright. This assurance should have functioned to ameliorate Cain’s raging sense of envy against his brother. But it didn’t. Perhaps it even made it worse because, being the firstborn, Cain should have been the stronger and the more righteous brother. He should have provided a godly example for Abel to follow. But instead Abel provided an example of why Cain was lying. In the sight of God, faithfulness does not foreclose on our duty to serve our masters on earth. So a faithful person is still duty-bound to serve an unfaithful master. This is true so long as service can be rendered without disobeying God. God blessing Abel changed nothing about Cain’s dignity as firstborn, and Abel was righteous to continue to respect this dignity. Faithfulness to God does not warrant disloyalty or disrespect in our other relationships — nor does it excuse it. This is why it’s so absurd that Emperors and entire governments have hunted and persecuted Christians across the landscape of history for fear the Christians will overturn their regimes. Christians don’t lead revolutions. It’s not in their doctrine to do so. In fact the opposite is true, Christians are called to honor those whom God has placed in authority so long as honoring them doesn’t require we disobey God Himself. A wise leader should desire no one more than Christians to be his subjects, because Christians make the best subjects. They live in quiet obedience of the chosen authority whenever they can and their doctrine teaches them these authorities were placed by God’s providence. A wise ruler should desire Christians for subjects just as much as Cain should have desired a brother like Abel. But sin destroys the mind and causes you to see these things through the lens of evil and hatred. And just as Cain murdered Abel, good Christians all around the world have been persecuted when they should have been loved. When sinners deteriorate into the kinds of people who call good evil and evil good, too often Christians become their ultimate target.