The Anatomy of Cain's Anger

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Please turn now to the opening of your Bibles as our message this morning comes from the book of Genesis. the book of Genesis and the 4th chapter. And this morning I'd like to focus on the 5th and 6th verses so that we may consider what I've called the anatomy of Cain's anger. But for context I would like to read the first 15 verses. Genesis chapter 4 And the first 15 verses hear now once again the words of the Living and True God.

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have acquired a man from the LORD. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel, Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering.

And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.

Now Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother 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 he said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond, you shall be on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you have driven me out this day from the face of the ground. I shall be hidden from your face. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. And the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.

Let us pray together. Oh, blessed heavenly father, eternal one. We praise you, oh God, this morning for giving us this revelation that we might better understand not only the history of your people, but also that we might understand better that sin and depravity which dwells in our hearts. And so, Lord, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts would be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer, for we do pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The setting for our text this morning are the offerings brought to the Lord God by Adam's sons, Cain and Abel, and we read that Jehovah God received or had respect to Abel's offering but he rejected Cain's offering. Furthermore, we understand from the scripture that Abel's faith was demonstrated in his and the Lord God accepted both His offering and Abel himself. Now, much more could be said about Abel. We read that he was a keeper of sheep, and as a shepherd we are told that he brought to the Lord the fat of the firstborn of his flock, which simply means that Abel offered the very best of what he had. This also means that Abel sacrificed sheep or perhaps even a lamb. And this might remind you of the words of John the Baptist when he saw the Lord Jesus, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John 1.29 or it might bring to mind the Paschal Lamb when the Apostle Paul writes, for indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7. And then we understand that Abel was the first shepherd in the world, and the word shepherd literally means the feeder of sheep. And so, this might suggest to your mind the beloved 23rd Psalm, where we read, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

That is, He feeds me, and I will lack nothing. And what is more, what about the words of the Lord Jesus Himself in the Gospel of John? We read that He said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd. who gives his life for the sheep. John chapter 10 verse 11.

Yet there is still much more that could be said about Abel. Indeed, further in the same fourth chapter of Genesis, we read about him in respect to his shed blood. His untimely death by the hand of his own brother is tragic. And if we were to think about it correctly, we would even say that his death is quite disturbing. And yet, when we think of Abel and his faithfulness, and how the scripture of the New Testament speaks of him as well, even from the lips of the Lord Jesus himself, we find that the memory of Abel is edifying to us. It's very edifying.

Now, nonetheless, If you consider the scope of the fourth chapter of Genesis, it's really less about Abel and more about the genealogy of the people who are, in the language of Genesis 3.15, the seed of the serpent. As Noel Weeks writes in his Gateway to the Old Testament, the text in Genesis 4 is not concerned primarily with Abel.

Instead, it focuses on Cain to show the spread and the progress of sin. And so we see that Cain, the one who is guilty of the bloody murder of his own brother, is the father of that lying. As a matter of fact, it's not really until we get to the end of this chapter, the fourth chapter, in the 25th verse and then onward into the fifth chapter, that we begin to see the generations of the seed of the woman. And it is, of course, from this line that the promised Messiah would come. So, with this scope in mind, and this import of Genesis 4, let us turn our focus to Cain.

And to begin with, as a prelude to this heinous act of murder, we read that Cain was angry Very angry. And so this morning I like to focus on these things and I think it might be helpful to you as well as to me to perform something like a spiritual autopsy on Cain to better understand the anatomy of his anger. And as we follow the teaching of our text we will consider two parts. So first, Cain's envy. And then, secondly, Cain's anger in and of itself. Let me repeat that. The two heads are first, Cain's envy, and secondly, Cain's anger considered in itself.

And so then we come to our first head, and that is Cain's envy. Now, perhaps the most conspicuous part of our passage, as we spoke of it just now, is the murder of Abel by the hand of his own brother Cain. But we should ask ourselves, why would Cain commit this most wicked deed? In fact, between man and man, there is no weightier sin. and no sin more deserving of God's wrath and judgment than the act of murder. Furthermore, the fact that Cain murdered his own brother, and we might note his younger brother, is a further aggravation of his sin.

The Apostle John in his first epistle in the fourth chapter writes, Beloved, Let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." 1 John 4 7-8 My brothers and sisters, we must understand that the scripture tells us that if you do not love, then you cannot know God. For God is love. And because God is love, we are called to love one another. For the Lord made us in His own likeness, that we would love Him first and foremost, and then one another. And this holy love should be demonstrated within the church because, as you know, that's how we testify to the world that we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But we should also love one another within our own families. To not do so is even to run counter to the light of nature, which is universal to all of mankind. Now by saying this I do not mean to minimize the destructive effects of sin in the home, such as in the cases of anger and abuse. And of course, the murder in our passage done by one brother against the other is the most gross level of the evil of sinful anger. But love and care for one another within the family should be the norm. For the Lord God has given us what has been called natural affections. to love one another within our own family, whether it be husband and wife, parent and child, or brothers and sisters.

The Apostle John, again to quote from that first epistle, this time in chapter 3 verse 12, he makes the same point. And here he actually speaks explicitly about Cain and Abel. He writes, this is the message that you have heard from the beginning. that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother.

And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous. So the scripture here answers the question, why did Cain commit this heinous deed of murder, even killing his own brother? It is because his works are evil and his brothers righteous.

And I think already this hints at the sin of envy. And it really goes back to the offerings which they brought to the Lord. We read in verses 4 and 5 back in Genesis chapter 4, And the LORD respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. Cain did not like it. He did not like it that his brother's offering was accepted by Jehovah God when his offering was rejected.

And so you see, it really is all about the sin of envy. And there is a difference between jealousy and envy. Let me explain that. In fact, there's a kind of jealousy which is holy. Holy Jealousy. For example, when Jehovah God commanded Moses to make two new tablets of stone for the Ten Commandments to replace the ones that were broken, the Lord told Moses, For you shall worship no other God, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a Jealous God. Isn't that intriguing? Jehovah God says that His name is Jealous and that He is a Jealous God.

And even at the human level, there is a kind of holy jealousy. For the love of a husband for his wife and the love of a wife for her husband should be a jealous kind of love. For the sanctity of the bond of marriage should be protected against the intrusion of strangers. So there is certainly a holy kind of jealousy. But there is no such thing as a holy kind of envy.

Envy is always evil, for it is bent on the destruction of another. And sinful jealousy is only the first step towards envy. The jealousy of Cain would say, I wish my offering was accepted by the Lord like Abel's offering was. And so if that was the end of it, Cain's jealousy would have simply indicated a kind of sinful discontentment about the ways of the Lord.

But no, envy takes a further step, another step. Envy says, not only do I wish that I had what my brother has, but because he has it and I don't, I'm going to take it away from him. I'm going to steal away what was given to him. And then the voice of envy continues. And it says, as a matter of fact, to make sure he doesn't hold onto what God gave him, I'm going to destroy him. That way he will never keep any of it. For how can God approve of anything about my brother if he's dead? My friends, this is the voice of the wickedness of envy.

And envy, properly speaking, is the heart of the devil. We see how the devil used envy as a motivation in his temptation of Eve in the garden. There the devil presented God to her as if God was keeping back something good from her, by forbidding them to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the devil spoke to her as if God was fearful that man would become as wise as he is because he wanted to keep that knowledge all to himself. As the Puritan John Trapp comments, It is remarkable that the devil here charges God with envy, which is his own proper disease.

And then Schrapp makes this observation. There is nothing more usual with the wicked than to suppose that evil to be in others, which they find to be in themselves. Now another example, well-known example in the Bible, of the evil of Envy comes from the 37th chapter of Genesis. We find it there with all the same characteristics as we see with Cain.

For Envy also raged in Jacob's sons against their brother Joseph. Here we see these brothers adopting the heart of Cain. for they wanted to kill their brother Joseph because of their envy against him. Now, it's probable I say that Jacob's sons knew all about the account of Cain killing his brother Abel, yet their rage of envy nonetheless overpowered them. Yet, unlike Cain, Jacob's sons did not kill their brother Joseph, but this was only due to the Lord's special intervention to save Joseph's life, even as we read further in the book of Genesis that the Lord would work out the brother's evil for a good purpose.

Nonetheless, envy, considered in and of itself, is always, always evil. As Joseph Hall writes in his contemplations, there was never envy that was not bloody, for if it eat not another's heart, it will eat our own. And Hall goes on to say, unless it be restrained, it will surely feed itself with the blood of others, oftentimes in action, but always in affection. And yet there is another instance in the Holy Scripture of the murderous heart of envy, and this one is the one which is most significant.

We read in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27, verse 18, that Pontius Pilate knew that the chief priests and elders handed Jesus over to him because of their envy. That's what the Scripture says. that Pontius Pilate had this insight. You see, what was hidden to the chief priests and Pharisees because of the self-deception in their own sinful hearts, that heathen Roman governor Pontius Pilate could see plainly.

These Jewish leaders were man-pleasers. And they didn't like the fact that Jesus had become more popular than they were. And also they were frightened. They were frightened that because of Jesus, their positions of authority over the Jewish people would be taken away from them. So they became obsessed, obsessed with bloodlust to kill the Lord of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ. So you see, envy was not only at the heart of the murder of Abel, but even at the heart of the crucifixion of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My brothers and sisters, are you, like Cain, envious of your brother or sister in the Lord? Do you know someone who seems to be more spiritual or has more gifts, or whom you suspect is more favored by the Lord than you are. Beware of the envy of Cain. As we read in the 11th verse of Jude, Woe to them, for they have gone in the way of Cain. You know, instead of being envious of your brothers and sisters in the Lord, let their example inspire you to reach higher in your own spiritual growth.

For this is the very place where Cain's heart took a wrong turn, so to speak. He should have rejoiced in the Lord's respect for Abel's offering and delighted in the Lord's blessing on his younger brother. That's what Cain should have done. My friends, listen to me. Beware of envy, because it is not only sinfully jealous, but it is dangerously malicious.

As we continue in our study of the anatomy of Cain's anger, let us consider anger in itself as our second head. We read in the fifth verse of our passage that after Cain's offering was not accepted by the Lord God, the expression on Cain's face changed. As our text says, his countenance fell. And we also read that Cain became angry. Not just angry. The scripture says that he was very angry. You might say that Cain's whole being was out of sorts.

Because of the fall, our affections or emotion are literally out of order. Not only are they corrupted in their sinful attachments, but they are also defective in their natural function. In other words, not only are our feelings attached to the wrong things, as Keynes was, but they are often inordinate. That is, our emotional responses are not proportional to the circumstance at hand. It is often the case that our emotional response is far, far away from the reality of our situation.

And our anger expresses a kind of self-righteousness, as if our cause is so just that it is worthy of defending with our very lives. In our anger, we strike out in words, as if the whole world has plotted together against us. And so anger, perhaps more than any other emotion, readily displays our folly. My friends, of all the different kinds of emotion that we experience, Anger might be the one which is most given to extreme exaggeration. We act as if the wrong that has been done against us, when often there has been no wrong done at all, is the greatest injustice, the greatest injustice that has ever been committed in the history of man. That's how we act. That is the extremity of our emotion when we are angry. And this is what I meant when I said that the corruption of our sinful nature, our emotions have become inordinate. They are excessive.

But perhaps you're thinking in so many words, pastor, aren't you being a bit overly strict about the morality of anger? I mean, But doesn't everyone get angry? Well, we must remember that just because a sin is very common doesn't make it less sinful. Indeed, it may be for such a perspective that Jerry Bridges takes two chapters and not one to deal with anger in his book called Respectable Sins. And remember the Lord Jesus in His teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, I'm thinking of Matthew 5 verses 21 and 22, He connects anger with murder under the sixth commandment, thou shall not kill.

Therefore, I tell you that anger is one of the most serious of all of our sinful passions. My brothers and sisters, please do not make light of it or excuse it. Murder is the gravest, the weightiest and most heinous sin that one person can ever commit against another. And yet anger, anger is the life force, so to speak, of murder. If left to itself, anger will fester and grow and lead to killing another. That's its natural progression. My brothers and sisters, anger is the beating heart which stops the beating of someone else's heart. And we see that teaching in the Word of God here before us this morning. Cain was very angry. And so what does he do? He kills his own brother. Now, John Calvin, I think, gives us some additional insight on the sixth commandment.

And in the second book of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes that because man is created in the image of God, we ought to hold our neighbor as sacred. Isn't that interesting? You and I were made in the divine image, and on that basis, we should hold our brother and sister as sacred. Calvin goes on to say, The Lord has willed that we consider these two things which are naturally in man, and might lead us to seek his preservation.

First Point

First, to reverence God's image imprinted in man, and secondly, to embrace our own flesh in him. is speaking along the same lines as Calvin Louis Burkhoff in his systematic theology writes, the crime of murder owes its enormity to the fact that it is an attack on the image of God.

Murder is an attack on the image of God. Do you understand what these men are saying in their celebrated theological works? Because Mankind, that is man, woman, or child, are made in the image of God. Again, the act of murder is not only an attack on the person, but also on the Lord God Himself. For by destroying man, you are destroying an image-bearer of God.

Similarly, Calvin, commenting at another place, writes, Since the devil could not drag God from his throne, he assailed man in whom his image shone. When the devil tempted Eve in the garden, the sin of our first parents not only resulted in their own death, but that also of the whole human race. Murder, then, is the great sport of the devil himself. The Lord Jesus testifies to this very fact as we read in John 8, verse 44, Jesus says that the devil was a murderer from the beginning. And here now, back in our passage in Genesis 4, we see that Cain, as a son of the devil, acts according to the devil's desire and will and murders his own brother Abel.

Before the bloody murder, when we read in the fifth verse that Cain was very angry, the Lord God takes note of the sullen expression on Cain's face. and the Lord asks him a rhetorical question to prompt his conscience. Why has your countenance fallen? In other words, why do you look so dejected, Cain? This observation is part of the anatomy of anger. A sour face with a ruffled brow often comes along with an angry heart.

And the Lord God specifically addresses Cain's anger and he asks him, Why are you angry? This reminds me of a very similar question the Lord puts to the prophet Jonah. As we read in Jonah chapter 4 verse 4, the Lord asks him, Is it right for you to be angry? With both Jonah and Cain, the Lord is directing these angry men to examine themselves. The Lord is probing their hearts. As Matthew Poole comments in his annotations, the Lord asks Cain why he is angry so that he might bring Cain to repentance and the knowledge of his sin.

However, repentance from sinful anger is often elusive. Like I have heard it said in the counseling room, please tell me where I can find the switch to my anger so I can turn it off. But I'm afraid the most common response to the Holy Spirit when He probes our conscience about our anger is the same thing in which Jonah responded from chapter 4 verse 9. It is right for me to be angry, even to death," Jonas says. But my friends, what if your cause in anger is not just?

Remember what we read this morning from the 20th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, what has been called the parable of the workers in the vineyard, The workers who were hired at the beginning of the day complained about their pay at the end of the day.

They compared themselves to the other workers, which was their first mistake. And they murmured against the land owner who hired them and said, These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the heat of the day. But you see, the master did them no wrong, no wrong at all. He was paying them exactly what they agreed to when he hired them at the start of the day. If he decides to pay a day's wage to those who only worked the 11th hour, what is that to them? As the master goes on to say, is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?

Or is your eye evil because I am good? The annotations to the Old Geneva Bible informs us that that expression, an evil eye, the Hebrews understood it to mean envy. Envy. Because, as they continue to write, such dispositions appear chiefly in the eyes. Envy in the eyes. So, again, you see, it's really all about envy.

They resented the Master's goodness and generosity towards the other workers, because He paid them more than what they earned. Actually, He paid them the same, but to them it was more, because they worked all day, and they didn't. So, my friends, I want you to see this, and this is an example. This is an illustration from the Holy Scripture itself. Their cause was not just And the teaching of the Lord Jesus in this parable is remarkably relevant to our own day. For Marxism, which has become popular in our culture, takes envy, which is evil, and turns it into something that is good. The Marxist ethic says, it's not fair that I don't have what you have. Does that sound familiar?

And so in the name of so-called social justice, they will take away all that you have. Or even better, they will deny that you have a right to any personal property at all. And so it's no wonder that Marxists and socialists hate Christians and despise Christianity. For what they call justice contradicts the very law of God, which is holy and just and good. When God says, Thou shalt not steal, the Marxist, in effect, is saying, Nonsense! No one should own anything anyway. Now, here's the point at hand.

If you believe your cause and anger is just, and that emotionally you feel like you should defend it to the death, then it will be difficult for you to examine yourself. Indeed, one of the most difficult things for anyone to do when they are angry is to be self-reflective.

You know, if we could just pause and ask ourselves these questions, is the anger that I'm feeling right now, is it a good thing? Jonah asked the Lord, is your anger good? Is the cause of my anger truly as just as it seems to me right now in my anger and rage? For someone who is very angry to question themselves in this way, To use another illustration from the scripture, I'd be like a rich man entering the kingdom of God.

That is more difficult than a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Not only is it difficult to see that your anger is not justified, which nine times out of ten it is not justified, then you are faced with yet another challenge about your anger. What happens when you realize that the cause of your anger has not so much to do with another person or even with the Lord, but instead it has to do with you, you yourself.

And this was the truth behind Cain's murderous anger. Was it Abel's fault that his offering was accepted and not Cain's? Was that Abel's fault? Was Abel obligated to offer a worse sacrifice in order to make it fair for Cain? Was Cain's anger the Lord's fault? Because, you know, he did accept Abel's sacrifice, which was offered in faith and with a sincere heart.

My friends. These ways of reasoning might sound absurd, but you and I use the same kinds of things to excuse our own anger. In closing, I would like to address one final point. It's about an objection which you might have. Pastor, I see what you're saying about sinful anger. But in your whole message, you never talked about righteous anger. Why is that? Well, you're right. I didn't. But my brothers and sisters, don't let this objection cause you to discount the whole message this morning.

And for one thing, I did not spend time talking about righteous anger because we don't see any of it in our text. But let me ask you, when was the last time that you saw righteous anger? If we were to judge correctly, we might say that the only time we've seen righteous anger is when we read about the anger of the Lord Jesus in the Gospels. Now don't mistake me, it is right for us to get angry, for example, about the death toll every year from the abortion industry.

Or about the transgenderism movement, which in the name of tolerance and fairness mutilates our children. And in connection with the teaching of the Lord's parable this morning, I spoke very briefly about Marxism. The new Marxism in our day should make us angry because it offers itself, especially to our youth, as an alternative to the gospel. As an alternative to the gospel is something for our children to believe in and to promote. Nonetheless, between man and man, or husband and wife, or parent and child, righteous anger is, to use an old expression, as rare as hen's teeth.

Let us pray. O Blessed One, You who dwells in all of eternity are Heavenly Father and God. Lord, we praise You again for what You revealed to us in Your Holy Scripture. There's so many things for us to learn from Your Word that we could revisit it again and again and again for the rest of our lives, and we still would not exhaust it. And so, Lord, we do pray that you would give us the hearts and minds to receive your Holy Word, that you would give us that gift of the Holy Spirit of illumination, that our minds may be enlightened and that our hearts would turn away from our natural waywardness. Lord, help us to remember those things from your Word.

Help us not to be so quick to excuse ourselves for our sin, even when we feel that we are wholly just. Help us, Lord, to remember that because of our sin, we are given to our own self-deception, and that we often do not judge rightly. O Lord, we do pray that you would then draw us close to you in your perfect righteousness. And for those in Christ, we rejoice in that perfect righteousness of Christ, which has been imputed to us and reckoned to our account when we ourselves have earned nothing good whatsoever, but only in ourselves, only condemnation.

Lord, we pray, please be with us now in the remainder of this service, service of worship unto You. And please be with us throughout this holy Christian Sabbath day. And by Your Spirit, O Lord, draw us ever closer to Yourself. We do pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

And thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.