The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When parents find out that a child is on the way — either by birth or by adoption — it’s only natural to dream about what that child will turn out to be like: what they will do, what they will accomplish, from the time they’re out of the womb as newborn babies until they’re adults. It’s also true that children, to one degree or another, eventually disappoint their parents — though their parents might not admit it publicly.
Over the next three weeks, our Wednesday night sermons are dedicated to three particular father-son relationships in the Old Testament. To say that these relationships ended in disappointment would be an understatement. But each sermon will not only look at what went wrong in these father-and-son relationships, but it will also look at the perfect relationship between God the Father and God the Son. We’ll look at what it is that caused God the Father to say of His Son: “This is My Son, whom I love, in whom I am well pleased.”
We begin this year’s series by looking at perhaps the most disappointing son in all of the history of humankind: the son of Adam and Eve, the one who was given the name Cain.
Now you know: in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve — who were without sin up until that moment — fell into sin. They wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil. So they ate of the forbidden fruit. And once they took that bite, their own natures themselves were corrupted. They not only committed a sin; they were now sinners of themselves. Original sin thus took root in humanity, in human nature.
And Adam and Eve understood their condition, and they understood their dire need for a rescuer, a Savior. They were naked, and they had to hide from God. They knew something was terribly wrong. But God, of course, found them, and spoke a judgment against the serpent, and against Adam, and against all mankind — all of their descendants. Judgment: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.”
By the time God was done speaking His words of judgment, life would now be hard — marked by hardship, pain, sickness, and ultimately death. That’s what now lay ahead of both Adam and Eve. Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and into dust you shall return.”
They understood the gravity of their situation. They needed a deliverer. So when God promised them one, they were full of hope. Then, chapter 4, verse 1: “Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.'”
Now there’s a great deal of debate over exactly how that was translated into any language. There’s a debate over exactly how to translate it into English in particular. The debate is rooted in a grammatical oddity. The phrase “I have gotten” is three words in English, but that phrase “I have gotten” is one word in Hebrew. And the sound of this word, this verb, this Hebrew verb that’s made in order to make that phrase — sounds to us like the name “Cain.” “I have gotten” sounds just like “Cain.” Cain comes from the Hebrew word which means to possess or to acquire. And the sound “I have gotten” becomes Cain’s name.
Thus the NASB and the ESV, many translations, will say: “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” But a more literal translation is: “I have gotten a man — the Lord.” One of my Old Testament professors said that an equally valid translation is this one: “I have gotten a man, the Lord.” Some scholars, including Martin Luther, have understood Eve to have said something to this effect: “I have gotten the man of the Lord.” And in his commentary on Genesis 4:1, Luther wrote of Eve and the meaning of Cain’s name the following: “Because she is so happy about her son, she speaks of him in such grand terms: ‘I have gotten the man who will conduct himself properly and with greater fortune than Adam and I conducted ourselves in Paradise. For this reason I do not call him my son, but he is the man of God who was promised and provided by God.'” That is: Adam and Eve likely thought that the firstborn son in all of creation was already the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. They thought he was the one who would come and crush the serpent’s head.
So imagine raising your firstborn son as if he’s the promised Savior from God. Imagine raising your firstborn son as if he’s actually the promised Messiah. In our own culture, when parents think their first duty is to be their child’s friend, and to give the child everything that the child wants — we see why we have the culture that we’re in. Imagine that, with Adam and Eve, in regard to their firstborn son.
Imagine that original sin has been passed on, first and foremost, to Cain himself. Then that pain — like every other child that would come into this world after him — he would be born in original sin, a sinner just like anybody else. “I have gotten a man — the Lord.”
Now contrast the name and the treatment that Cain likely received with the naming of Abel, and probably the treatment he received. His birth wasn’t greeted with the same kind of enthusiasm. In fact, the name Abel — spoken in Hebrew — is more of a breath than a distinct name or word. The name Abel literally means vanity, worthlessness. Abel’s name implies that the thing is worthless, or it’s something that you can cast aside because it’s unimportant, of no real value to you.
Taken together, the names of these two brothers reveal the hopes and the expectations of their parents, Adam and Eve. So Cain, the selfish prize, was probably a good start in original sin — it had been passed down to him from his parents. And to this normal original sin: this inclination to be self-righteous and arrogant and selfish, being treated as if somehow you are God Himself in the family.
Whatever the cause, Hebrews 11:4 tells us that it’s by faith that Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he was attested to be righteous — God testifying about his, that is, Abel’s, gifts. And through faith, though he is dead, Abel still speaks to us. Now see: Abel, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of what Cain grew up to be. He possessed true faith in God, and in the promised Messiah. True faith in God, as a brother too — it’s called humility. And it’s Abel’s faith and humility that make his offering acceptable before the Lord God Almighty. And Abel is praised by God in the biblical text. Cain, on the other hand, was rejected for lack of faith and lack of humility.
Verse 4: The Lord God had regard for Abel’s offering, but for Cain and his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry, and his face fell. Sin was crouching at the door like a wild animal. It was there waiting to pounce on him, to make him as well an unsuspecting victim. But God gave Cain a warning. He warned him: he’s about to lose control, and he was about to act like a wild animal. He urges Cain to repent. He says to him: “Sin is lurking at your door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
This is a great word, by the way, in the Hebrew. It’s only used three times. We translate it “desire.” The word translates “desire,” but it’s unique — three times only it appears. First in Genesis 3:16: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Second in Genesis 4:7, which I just read. And third in the Song of Solomon, chapter 7, verse 10.
This particular word is teshuqah, and it means desire, but it has a connotation of the desire to control, to take hold of, to have power over. So in the first case, she has desire for her husband — that is, his position, his place, his authority. It’s the beginning of the battle of the sexes, where they must contend with each other for the proper order of creation in the household. Well here, Cain is going to be controlled by sin. It’s contending, they’re wrestling — and Cain obviously loses the struggle here. Cain’s already struggling and deeply losing to his jealousy and anger in God’s eyes against his worthless brother, who offers acceptable sacrifices that he does not.
God urges him to strive, to fight against this desire to control, to lord it over sin. Instead of doing so, sin pounces on Cain. Cain pounces on Abel. Abel dies. He kills him and becomes the first murderer — the first man in history to destroy the image-bearer of God, another human being.
Now imagine the pain and disappointment of Adam and Eve when they find out what Cain has done. The son that they thought would save their lives instead becomes the first one to take life unjustly. What they had become of their own free will, their son now — and all others who follow — do wrongly because of original sin, because they’re born in sin. They can’t help but sin. And when sin decides it’s going to take control, if a Christian does not fight against it, we fall — and we do, time and time again.
This sin is passed down to Adam and Eve’s children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and to every single human being of every single generation thereafter. That’s Romans 5:19: “By one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners.” We’re all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. We have all inherited the same disposition that Cain had. We’re all guilty of killing in our hearts.
Jesus expands that in His preaching and in the Epistles. For example, 1 John 3:15: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has everlasting life abiding in him.” And our Lord Jesus in Matthew 5:22: “Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be answerable to the supreme court; and anyone who says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” Pretty strong words from Jesus. If you hate somebody in your heart, it’s the equivalent of being a murderer in the sight of God.
The Son of God came into the world — a world of hatred and violence, of killing and of murder. Why? Because God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. From Jesus’s earliest days on this earth, the spiritual heirs of Cain tried eight times to kill Him.
The first was Herod in Bethlehem. The second: the people of Jesus’s own town, when Jesus declared that the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the Messiah was about Him — they tried to throw Him off a cliff. He walked through their midst. Third: He healed a man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees immediately met to make a plan on how to seize Him and kill Him. Fourth: when Jesus told the Pharisees that His authority was greater than their authorities, they doubled down on the plan to kill Him — but they were afraid in the moment. Five: when Jesus told some Jews that He was the great “I AM” of the book of Exodus, they picked up stones to kill Him, but He passed right through them. Six: John 10 — the Jews wanted to kill Him because He made Himself out to be God. Seven: after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, the religious leaders looked for an opportunity to seize Him. Eight: when Jesus told them He was taking their kingdom away, again they sought to kill Him. When He cleansed the temple, they again looked for an opportunity to seize Him and kill Him — but they didn’t, for fear of the crowd. That’s, by the way, when Judas decided to go into action.
Eventually they succeeded in killing Him — but only when God’s good time allowed it. There are two Lenten hymns that bring the story of Cain and the story of Jesus together as it ought to be. One is “My Song Is Love Unknown” (LSB 430), stanza 5: “A murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay.” Or “Glory Be to Jesus” (TLH 158), verse 4: “Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies, but the blood of Jesus for our pardon cries.” One leads to death, the other to life. One is under the Law, the other is sheer grace.
Now the Lord God’s sentence came to Cain: a life of banishment. He cursed the ground upon which Cain was to make a living, so that it would be even harder. The strength of the soil would never be under his feet. He would have to work very hard to eke out a living from the ground. God takes that which is in Genesis 3, and God doubles down on it in Cain’s case: “Now you are cursed from the ground, and when you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you. You will be a wanderer and a drifter on the earth.”
Worst of all, Cain left the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. In an act of mercy, though — from the very beginning, a merciful God — He placed a mark on him. We don’t know what the mark was, but it was placed there as an act of protection, like a brand: that this man belonged to the Lord God, Yahweh, and no one better kill him, or vengeance would be visited sevenfold on the murderer.
The Lord God, your heavenly Father, by the way, has placed a mark on you as well. I like to call it a freedom from sin and death and the power of death. It’s the mark of your Baptism, wherein you’ve been wrapped in the righteous robe of Jesus Christ. And in that robe, your heavenly Father finds absolutely no reason for disappointment in you. He has no words of judgment for you. He looks at you with approval and loving eyes, and He says proudly: “This is My son, My daughter, with whom I am well pleased, for their sins are no more.” Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.