Who was in the Right Cain or Abel? Aron Crews examines the story of Cain and Abel. It is up to you decide who you will follow.

<p>Who was in the Right Cain or Abel? Aron Crews examines the story of Cain and Abel. It is up to you decide who you will follow.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Granite Bay SDA Church

Aron Crews

Cain or Abel?

This was recorded at the Granite Bay Hilltop SDA Church, located in Granite Bay, California.

Hope you are blessed by the message and that it draws you closer to God.

I'm excited to share with you this morning a sermon entitled entitled Cain or Abel.

Obviously we're going to be taking a look at the story of Cain and Abel, but I want you guys throughout this sermon to be thinking about what person, which brother do I want to be?

I think most of us familiar with the story, you're automatically going to say Abel.

But we need to ask God to reveal to us in our hearts to say, God, what are the tendencies in my life that may be I'm leaning more towards Cain than I am Abel?

So keep that in mind as we go through this story, unpack, interpret certain points, and come to an application at the end.

Another thing I want to highlight before I get going is we have a youth Vespers tonight at 05:00 at the church and for all the youth here today, those who are in high school, I'm gonna have a quiz tonight during the Vespers, okay, over my sermon.

And whoever gets the highest score on the quiz, I'm gonna do a Kahoot style, will get a reward, okay?

God is a, we must believe that God is, and he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

So I'm gonna reward those who diligently pay attention.

There will be a quiz for you this evening.

And the rest of you, there is a quiz in heaven.

So there's a quiz throughout your everyday life to see how you apply these things.

Let's begin this by taking a look at the names.

The name of Cain means the following acquire get create buy or possess Right the language that we're gonna see the the names of these individuals actually quite well shows us sort of the character of these individuals as we read about the story of their lives.

Abel's name means breath, vapor, vanity, or nothing.

It's the same word that is used in Ecclesiastes, right?

Where Solomon is saying, you know, everything is just vanity.

So you have these polar opposites where Cain is this idea of getting you know All of these things possessions and accumulating versus able his name means Nothing, right The very opposite of getting and gaining and things like that, it's nothingness, vapor, things like that.

Now before we go now into the story, the story really begins in Genesis chapter 3 because of course the Bible is 1 large story So to begin the story of Cain and Abel we have to pick up the narrative in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15 Right after Adam and Eve had sinned by eating the forbidden fruit God comes ask them a series of questions Which by the way the structure of Genesis 3 and Genesis 4 are very, very similar.

Thematically, linguistically, structurally, there's a lot of similarities, and they both actually inform 1 another.

We don't have time to unpack all of the similarities, but I will show at least 1 major similarity of interpretation that we're gonna unpack here in a little bit.

So here, God then speaks to the serpent and says to him, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Now, of course, most Christians understand this promise, the statement to the serpent as being the first gospel promise, the foretelling of a coming messianic figure, deliverer who will defeat Satan, right?

And we say, of course, that's Jesus, that's Jesus.

But let's just think for a moment in Adam and Eve's shoes here They're saying there's an offspring of the woman who will defeat the serpent So once Adam and Eve gave birth to their first child Cain Who do you think they thought Cain was?

The deliberate, we're gonna come to that in a moment.

But here we have this interplay between God's seed represented by the offspring of the woman and Satan's seed, which we're gonna see are representative of both Cain and Abel.

We see here in Genesis chapter 4 towards the end of the chapter, this is after, spoiler alert, sorry if you've never read the Bible before, but Cain kills Abel.

Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and named him Seth, for God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel whom Cain killed." The next time that that word seed shows up in the narrative is in the very next chapter where we're shown that really Abel was supposed to be that seed of the woman, right?

The lineage there of the righteous, but of course he died and so God appointed another and that is Seth.

And so then the descendants of Seth are that lineage that lead us eventually to Jesus.

Which is confirmed in the New Testament where we read in 1st John 3 10, in this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.

So the seed of God, the seed of Satan, the children.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of god nor is he who does not love his brother For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love 1 another Not as Cain who was what of the wicked 1 right?

He is the seed of the devil He is that seed and there manifested in Genesis chapter 4 is the first revealing of that enmity that enmity between the seed of Satan and the seed of the woman, which of course led to Cain killing Abel and murdered his brother.

Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous.

Further, to solidify this 0.1 few verses earlier in 1 John 3, we read, he who sins is of the devil for the devil has sinned from the beginning Then we read Jesus's word in words in John 8 you are of your father the devil speaking to the religious Leaders Who are plotting to kill him and the desires of your father you want to do he was a murderer From the beginning and does not stand in the truth So Satan he's saying you guys are trying to kill me murder me and that was what was in the heart of Satan all the way at the beginning.

Here we have Satan sinned from the beginning, he murdered from the beginning, but if you've ever done a Bible study about the war in heaven, we don't see a murder take place.

But here's an important takeaway, just a side note, not all sin is murder, right?

Murder is number 6 on the list of the 10 Commandments.

Not all sin is murder, but all sin is murderous in its intent.

Because the heart of sin is selfishness, and selfishness says that if there's something I want, and you're standing in the way between me and that thing, I'm gonna get you out of the way.

Whether it involves physically moving you or killing you.

All sin is ultimately murderous in its intent.

And Satan desired the position of God, The throne of God.

So what's getting in the way between him and the throne of the universe?

And so Satan wanted, he harbored murder in his heart from the very beginning, which was very quickly manifested in his offspring, Cain, demonstrating that he was a murderer.

By the way, I'm sorry, I should have told those in the back, if we could have this removed because I don't have my Bible and I'm just kind of walking around it.

So if someone wants to come out and take this, that'd be great.

Not to be a distraction, I'm sorry everyone.

Genesis chapter 4 verse 1 says, Now Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten or acquired a man from the Lord.

Okay, the name cain comes from this this description here gotten acquired created a man from the lord Now what's interesting here when we take a look a little bit deeper at the Hebrew, and you could go either ways in translating this and interpreting it, but the word that comes right before the Lord, Yahweh, is this Hebrew word et, Et.

And et can be used in a variety of different ways in Hebrew.

And 1 of them is as a direct object marker.

It's just indicating in the text that what comes after it is the direct object of the sentence.

However, et can also be understood as a preposition, translated as with or from or something like that.

Prepositions sort of have a range of meaning right primarily with here And so most translators choose to translate at as a preposition From from the help of the Lord right they do something like that But if you understand the word at as meaning direct object marker Which by the way at is used in the clause right before, when you see it says and bore Cain.

In the Hebrew, it's et Cain, et Cain, right?

And so it seems to me that it would make good sense that when it says et Yahweh, it again is being used as a direct object marker.

So if it is that, how does that impact the translation?

Basically, you would remove the preposition and you would read it instead of, I've gotten a man from the Lord you would read it as the following I have gotten a man the Lord you see that you see the difference there 1 is God has helped me get this man the other 1 is this man this child is the Lord Which again in context with Genesis 3 verse 15 understanding that Adam and Eve would have thought okay The seed of the woman is gonna crush the head of the serpent.

This is a messianic figure Perhaps this is God himself When the seed of the woman comes she's thinking this is the seed Right.

This is the seed we read in the book the desire of ages The Savior's coming was foretold in Eden when Adam and Eve first heard the promise they look for its speedy fulfillment They joyfully welcomed their firstborn son cain hoping that he might be the deliverer And so when eve said oh look I've conceived I've given birth to I've gotten a man.

It's the seed It's the promise deliverer What a sad story that you're thinking that Cain is the promised savior when he ends up being the first murder in human history.

And not the seed of the woman but rather the seed of the serpent is the heritage of Cain.

So we have the introduction of Cain, then we have the introduction of Abel.

Then she bore again, this time, his brother Abel.

And what you're going to see throughout Genesis chapter 4, I believe 7 times, Abel is referred to as Cain's brother.

The story is clearly trying to highlight the fact that this isn't just a murder of a random person, but this is a murder of someone's brother, making it even more heightened in a terrible crime.

Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Verse 3, and in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.

Now, before we go on to the offering, just as a side note, what's fascinating is that phrase there that's translated as in the process of time, right?

Just kind of like, you know, eventually, you know, it came to be, right?

In the process of time is literally in the original language understood as at the end of the days, literally translated at the end of the days.

Which then begs the question, the end of what days?

Well, in the story so far, the only days that are mentioned in Genesis are the days of creation.

The seventh day, which would be the Sabbath day, right?

It's not explicit, it's simply implied, so we need not make much ado about something that's only applied, but it seems good sense to me that there was an appointed time where Cain and Abel would have been instructed to make their sacrifices.

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Cain or Abel?

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