First Family Feud

Child prodigies have always fascinated us.

Albert Einstein, as a child, was three years old before he talked. His parents were very worried. One day they were sitting around the dinner table when little Albert said his first words. He said “The soup is too hot.” After they got over the shock of hearing their son speak, his parents asked him why he had never spoken before. Little Albert replied “Because up til now, everything was in order.”

Mozart, the great musician and composer, was a child prodigy. At the age of four he would come home from church, sit down at the family spinet, and play from memory, note perfect, all the hymns he had just heard that morning. He had perfect pitch. The story is told of his visit to a farm. As they entered the barn, a pig squealed. Mozart cried out “G sharp”. Someone ran back to the house to a piano, and sure enough, it was G sharp.

Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician, began his boyhood education by studying ancient languages. One day, one of his teachers happened to mention the subject of geometry - the study of shapes and their properties. Pascal immediately became fascinated with geometry. The fact that he had no formal textbook in the subject didn’t hinder him, for by the age of nine, he had discovered on his own the first 32 theorems of Euclidean geometry.

Parents have always had great expectations for their children. I think all of us at one time or another have wondered whether we were raising a child prodigy. But on the more mundane level, we do want our children to be intelligent, good looking, successful. We often project on them our own unrealized ambitions. We want them to succeed where we have failed, to be strong where we were weak.

In the Broadway musical Carousel, the leading character - a very ordinary man named Bill - learns about the birth of his son. He sings

“I bet that he’ll turn out to be the spittin’ image of his Dad.

But he’ll have more common sense than his puddin’ headed father ever had.

He’ll be tall and tough as a tree, will he!

Like a tree he’ll grow, with his head held high and his feet planted firmly on the ground. And you won’t see nobody dare to try to boss him or toss him around.

Parents have high hopes for their children. But there never has been a greater measure of hope for any child than the hope that Adam and Eve had for their firstborn son, Cain. They thought that, for all intents and purposes, they had given birth to a prodigy. But their high hopes were to end in heartbreak.

In Genesis 4:1, we read

Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.”

The birth of Cain happened after Adam and Eve had sinned against God and been expelled from the Garden of Eden. Their hopes had been dashed by sin and Satan, and they found themselves homeless and humiliated. But the birth of Cain brought a new ray of hope into their lives.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, they fully expected to die as a result of God’s judgment. But they didn’t die, at least not then. Instead, God gave them a promise in 3:15. He told them that a deliverer would come to defeat Satan. He told them that this deliverer would be born of the woman. Now we know that God was referring to the birth of Jesus Christ, the one who would defeat Satan and take away sin by his death on the cross. But Adam and Eve didn’t know that. As far as they were concerned, the birth of Cain - the very first baby ever born in human history, had all the appearances of being the fulfilment of God’s promise.

There is good reason to believe that Adam and Eve thought that their son Cain would be the deliverer who would take away the curse of sin on their lives and restore them to Paradise. In Hebrew, the name Cain is very similar to the word for “acquired”. The name means “Here he is… I have gotten him.” Keeping in mind that Adam and Eve were thinking about God’s promise of a deliverer, when Cain was born, they called him “Here he is… we have gotten him.”

As they looked at that little baby, Adam and Eve were thinking “Here he is, the one the Lord promised us. He’ll get us back to the Garden. He’ll undo all the wrong that we’ve done. He’ll take away our sin.” That’s a very high expectation for a child, don’t you think?

Now some time later, Adam and Eve gave birth to another boy. That must have been a surprise. How did he fit in to God’s plan? Well, to be quite honest about it, as far as Adam and Eve were concerned, he didn’t fit in, at least not in any significant way. Look at what they named him… Abel. You know what Abel means in Hebrew? It means “temporary, meaningless”. How would you like to have a name like that? Real good for your self image! They might as well have called him Rodney as in Dangerfield, because Abel “didn’t get no respect.”

Adam and Eve had placed all their hopes and expectations on Cain. When Abel came along, as far as they were concerned, he was just excess baggage. Classic “first-child, second-child” syndrome!

The boys grew up. Cain became a farmer, Abel became a shepherd. Then the time came for them to bring an offering to the Lord. Look at verse 3…

In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.

This passage indicates that there was an appointed time for the offering. The phrase “in the course of time” means literally, “at the end of days”, meaning perhaps at the end of the year. Evidently there was a certain time that the offering was to be brought. Now if there was an appointed time, there must also have been an appointed place.

Where was this appointed place? Well, Scripture doesn’t say, but I’ll hazard a guess. The appointed place was at the gate of the Garden of Eden, where stood the cherubim and the flaming sword, which represented the Word of God. I believe that God set up there an altar and a mercy-seat to receive the worship of Adam and Eve and their family. Remember the cherubim were there to guard the way back to the Tree of Life, not against Adam and Eve, but against Satan.

Satan wanted to close it down, wanted to shut man off from God. But as long as the cherubim were there - and the cherubim are always found around the throne of God in Scripture - there would be a way open for man to approach God and gain eternal life. That’s why I believe that God set up an altar for man to worship him at the gates of the Garden.

Now if there was an appointed place, there must also have been an appointed method. God must have revealed this to Adam, and Adam must have been responsible for passing this down to his sons. Let’s read on a bit.

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.

Why did God reject Cain’s offering? Some have suggested that it was because Cain had a bad attitude. If Cain’s attitude had been right, then his offering would have been accepted. But I do not believe that that explanation is correct. God rejected Cain’s offering because Cain brought the wrong offering. And he brought the wrong offering because of sin in his heart.

Do you remember when Adam and Eve sinned, they immediately felt shame and tried to cover up their sin by covering up their bodies? Previously, they had been naked and not ashamed. But now that they had become sinners, they wanted to cover themselves up physically. What did they use? Fig leaves.

But that wasn’t satisfactory in the eyes of God. The idea of covering was right - sin needs to be covered - but fig leaves weren’t the approved dress code. God made garments of skin and covered Adam and Eve. In doing so, he had to kill two animals.

God was giving Adam and Eve an object lesson. If your sin is going to be covered, it is going to cost the life of an innocent substitute. The penalty of sin is death. You can’t deal with sin by just sweeping it under the rug. It is a matter of life and death. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sin.

When a sinful man approaches a God who is holy, there must be a covering for his sin. And that covering can only be a covering that involves the shedding of blood, because the penalty for sin is death. Now today, we can approach God and worship God because Jesus Christ shed his blood for us. When he died on the cross, Jesus became our innocent substitute, and it is his blood that takes away our sin.

But what did people who lived before Jesus shed his blood on the cross do if they wanted to worship God? Well, in the Old Testament, God made it possible for people to come into his presence and worship him by means of an animal sacrifice. Not that the blood of an animal would take away their sin. The blood

of an animal was a reminder that their sin was deadly, that it would require that an innocent substitute give up its life so that man could go on living and relating to God. It pointed the way to the final and only sufficient sacrifice for sin - the death of God’s only Son on the cross.

Now I’ve said all that to say this: Adam had been taught the appointed method by which to worship God. He taught it to his sons. Abel brought a blood offering, but Cain did not. Cain brought the fruit of the ground. He brought to God the fruit of his own labor. He brought to God his own good works. His offering was wrong and it was wrong because it wasn’t according to God’s will. That is why it says in Hebrews 11:4

By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did

That is why God says to Cain in verse 7

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

God didn’t just tell Cain to change his attitude, He told Him to change his offering, and do the right thing.

Cain is like so many people today. They are religious and they want to come to God. But they want to come on their own terms, not God’s terms. They come to God with their good works, with the fruits of their own righteousness, and they expect God to accept them. After all, they’ve worked hard, they’ve tried to live a good life.

Have you ever asked anyone the question “If you were to die tonight and stand at the gates of heaven and God were to ask you ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ what would you say?” Nine out of ten people will answer that they would say to God “Well, I’ve tried to be good, I’ve tried not to hurt anyone. Sure, I’ve done some things I shouldn’t have done, but I think that on the whole, my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds.”

You know where that reasoning comes from? It comes straight from the pit of hell. It is the lie of the devil. Satan wants you to believe that sin is not a serious issue in God’s sight. That God can let people into His presence who have a little sin in their life. That our sin can be covered up by our good deeds. Cain was the first person to believe that lie, and everybody who believes it today is following what the Bible calls the way of Cain.

Cain came to God on his own terms and with his own offering. He rejected God’s way in favor of his own way - and that is the very essence and root of what the Bible calls sin. It is saying “my way is better than God’s way.” But the Bible says

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Now I want you to notice that Cain’s offering was probably better looking than Abel’s. Picture the two young men presenting their offering to the Lord. Cain has a beautiful basket of fruit and vegetables. He’s got apples in there that are all polished up, and delicious plump cherries and oranges. Beefsteak tomatoes and golden squash and green peppers that would win the blue ribbon at a county fair. Beautiful.

Over here is Abel and he’s bringing the fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. Now those animals looked pretty good when they were alive, but when Abel gets through slaughtering them, they don’t look too appealing, do they? Blood all over the place.

Sinful man thinks that God is impressed with the beautiful religious things that we do. Indeed, some of the greatest and most beautiful works of art in all human history were created for religious reasons. We tend to believe that God will accept us on the basis of the aesthetic quality of our worship. The more beautiful and refined, the more acceptable. But God accepts us on the basis of how our worship reflects our obedience to His Word. And there, at the very center of Scripture is a blood-soaked cross, and a Savior dying in agony.

Scripture talks of the offence of the cross… how the cross is a stumbling block.

That is because man tries to emphasize the holiness of beauty, but God in His Word emphasizes the beauty of holiness. There is no more beautiful picture in the eyes of God than His Son our Savior, dying on the cross to save us. And if we don’t come to Him with that image first and foremost in our lives, then we can’t come to Him at all.

People don’t want to deal with the cross and the bloody part of Christianity, because it brings us face to face with just how deadly our sin problem is.

Cain’s offering, beautiful and refined, presented with all the right touches and flourishes, was rejected by God, because it didn’t conform to God’s pattern. So how did Cain react?

His reaction revealed the true condition of his heart. His offering wasn’t the right offering because his heart was far from God. His heart was full of hatred toward his brother because his brother was right with God and he wasn’t. We see revealed all the jealousy and the pride that are at the bottom of all “works-based” religions. In 1 John 3:12 we read…

1 John 3:12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one, and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

Cain plotted and deceived and murdered his brother. While Eve was talked into her sin by Satan, Cain wouldn’t even allow himself to be talked out of his sin by God. This reveals just how far sin had made inroads into the human race. Here was a man whom his parents looked upon as the light of their life, their hope of hopes. Yet he conceived the most hateful and horrifying crime and he did so in a religious context. The first family feud occurred over the subject of religion. It wasn’t to be the last time that happened!

Don’t be surprised if some of your relatives reject you for being a follower of Jesus. Though they may call themselves Christians, many people today are just following the way of Cain and pursuing a works-based religion which has no place for the cross and for accepting the shed blood of Jesus Christ as payment in full for our sin. They’re going to work their way to heaven and they’re proud of it. And they don’t have any use for anyone who suggests that the truth may be otherwise.

The first family feud ended in tragedy. And it shows us how deep-seated and terrible sin is in our lives. It sets family members against one another. And it especially lashes out against the truth of the gospel. Jesus said that His coming would set families against each other.

From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”