Ep. 66 | The Mark of Cain | Genesis

Listen in as Pastor Eddie Blalock shares today’s daily devotional featuring Genesis 4:9-16. Let’s be Formed by The Word together!

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Transcript

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Every story has a beginning. And if you don't understand the beginning, you'll likely misunderstand everything that follows. Welcome to Formed by the Word. Currently, we're going back to the very beginning as we look together at the first 11 chapters of Genesis. These chapters explain our world, our struggles, and much about ourselves. We'll see beauty and brokenness, purpose and pride, judgment and grace. We'll watch humanity fall and see that God already had a plan to restore his relationship with us. The Bible doesn't start with a problem, it starts with a perfect God, and that changes everything. So, wherever you're listening, whether you're driving, working out, or just scrolling for something meaningful, lean in, open your heart, because the God who spoke in the beginning is still speaking today.

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Genesis chapter 4, verses 8 through 15. One day Cain suggested to his brother, let's go out into the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Afterward the Lord asked Cain, Where's your brother? Where is Abel? I don't know, Cain responded, Am I my brother's keeper? But the Lord said, What have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are cursed and banished from the ground, which has swallowed your brother's blood. No longer will the ground yield good crops for you, no matter how hard you work. From now on you will be homeless, a wanderer on the earth. Cain replied to the Lord, My punishment is too great for me to bear. You have banished me from the land and from your presence. You have made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me. The Lord replied, No, for I will give a sevenfold punishment to anyone who kills you. Then the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who might try to kill him. You know, hospitals are not built for healthy people, are they? They exist for the sick, the injured, and the broken. Nobody walks into an emergency room and says, Only help the people who are already healthy. Yet many people think that way about God, as if his grace is reserved for only people who have already had their lives together. But the story of Cain reminds us that God's mercy often appears in the lives of the least deserving people. Some people treat God like an exclusive rewards program. If I believe enough, pray enough, and avoid enough bad stuff, maybe God will help me. But scripture repeatedly destroys that idea. Think about it. Noah was flawed, Abraham lied, David failed, Peter denied Christ, Paul persecuted Christians, and Cain murdered his brother. Yet God still showed mercy. The Bible's not a story about good people earning God's help. It's a story of a gracious God helping guilty people who could never save themselves. Cain's story challenges the idea that God only helps good people. We see Cain trying to hide his sin from God rather than running to God in repentance. And yet, God in both justice and mercy pursued Cain and promised him a mark that would provide him with protection. Notice how the Lord confronts Cain in verse 10. It says, But the Lord said, What have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now Cain knows that the Lord knows his secret. That realization brings great conviction to our hearts, doesn't it? So what does God do? Well, he sentences Cain. He assigns a punishment to him, and the nature of it is very significant. Notice there are no thunderbolts of wrath here. God does not seize hold of Cain and take his life in vengeance. What happens is what writers sometimes call poetic justice, that is, a strangely fitting result. Cain was a man of the soil, a tiller of the ground, right? And in this work he took pride and he found joy. A man's work is always his pride. Cain was a farmer. He delighted in producing beautiful crops of fruit and grain. I've known a lot of farmers and I know they take pride in their crops, even the straightness of their rows, but now God says the ground, the arena of your pride, Cain, will be cursed toward you. It will no longer yield its strength. You will find in your attempts to work the ground nothing but frustration, sweat, tears, and toil. Now Cain is obsessed with guilt. In fact, he's haunted by it. He knows that wherever he goes, he'll be wondering if the attitudes of people around him will be subtle and sinister, or even if they are friendly, will I be able to trust them? Even with this great conviction, he still doesn't confess or repent of a sin. He simply complains to God saying, My punishment is too great. It is greater than I can bear. I will live in constant danger of repisal. But God said, No, you won't. And then God put a mark upon him, which has now become a proverb by which he, as he says, anyone who sees this mark will know that God himself protects Cain, and whoever takes this life will be avenged sevenfold. The mark of Cain. We've heard about it, but what is it? Ray Steadman wrote, I do not know what the mark of Cain was. It's impossible to tell whether it was some physical mark, some sign in his body which indicated that he was God's property or maybe something else. I just do not know. But the point is not really what it looked like, but what it meant. Even this guilty man is still God's property. God throws a circle of protective love about Cain and says, Yes, he's guilty, yes, he's a murderer, but he is still my property, and don't forget it in your dealings with him. Steadman then adds this, thus the mark of Cain is not a mark of shame, as we often interpret it. It's a mark to brand him in the eyes of others as a terrible murderer. No. Is it a mark to brand him as someone to be shunned? No. It's rather a mark of grace by which God is saying, This man is still my property, hands off. Thus the heart of God is always ready to show mercy. Now there are several points here to ponder, to think about. There's so much from this story, but let me mention four things. The first thing I notice is that sin obviously has serious consequences. The ground is cursed, his relationship with God is broken, and Cain becomes a restless wanderer. Grace does not remove all consequences. Please note that. Even God's grace and forgiveness will not always remove all consequences. Second, notice God's pursuit of the guilty. Even after murder, God comes to Cain with a question, Where is Abel? Now he's not asking for information, you remember. Cain's response is self-pity rather than repentance. He says, My punishment is too great. Yet God still answers his fear with a promise and with a mark, and God protects him, even though he doesn't deserve it at all, but that's mercy. And finally, notice the mark is grace, not a curse. It was a visible sign that said, This one belongs to me. Touch him and you answer to me. There are many scholars who see it as the first clear picture in scripture of God preserving a sinner's life by his sovereign grace. Now, in the last couple of minutes we have, let's make some application, several things I would note. First of all, God's grace is greater than your worst failure. That is the valuable lesson for this particular scripture. God's grace is greater than your worst failure. Cain's sin was enormous, yet God still showed mercy. Now that doesn't minimize sin, but it magnifies his grace. I know that you feel that your sin is enormous. Well, no bigger than Cain's. Second, I noticed that consequences and grace can exist together. Cain still faced painful consequences, yes, but grace was still available. Grace doesn't always, as we said, remove consequences, but it does mean that we are never abandoned. And then third, God's mercy, we see, often appears where we least expect it. If God shows patience even to Cain, how grateful should we be for the mercy we have received in Christ, especially because it is totally unexpected. Cain walked away marked by mercy. He didn't deserve. And by the way, so do we. The greatest surprise in Genesis 4 is not merely that Cain sinned, it's that God still pursued him afterwards. The greatest surprise to you and me today is not that once again we blew it, once again we succumbed to temptation. The greatest surprise is not that we sinned, the greatest surprise is that God still pursues us. We all carry the mark of sin. We call it a foreign nature, but through Christ we receive a better mark, the seal of the Holy Spirit, according to Ephesians 1.13, and the blood of Jesus that cries out for mercy rather than vengeance, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 24. So from this incredible text, I want to give you this takeaway to ponder, to meditate on, and maybe even perhaps memorize. It's this God's grace leaves its mark on our lives. God's grace leaves its mark on our lives. I want to close this morning with an old hymn. I do this often, I know, and maybe I stretch it a little bit, but this hymn came to mind as I read this story of God's incredible, wonderful grace. The hymn is called Wonderful Grace of Jesus. It goes like this. Wonderful grace of Jesus, greater than all my sin. How shall my tongue describe it? Where shall its praise begin? Taking away my burden, setting my spirit free, for the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me. And then the last verse, wonderful grace of Jesus reaching the most defiled, by its transforming power, making us God's dear child, purchasing peace in heaven for all eternity, and the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me, and then the glorious chorus, wonderful, the matchless grace of Jesus, deeper than the mighty rolling sea, higher than the mountain, sparkling like a fountain, all sufficient grace for even me, broader than the scope of my transgressions, greater far than all my sin and shame, O magnify the precious name of Jesus, praise his name. Well, Lord, thank you that your mercy is greater than our sin. Thank you for pursuing guilty people like me with grace. Help us never to take lightly your holiness, but also never to forget the depth of your love, mercy, and compassion. Thank you for the greater mercy we have through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen and amen.

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Thanks for joining us today. We are so glad that you chose to spend a few moments with us in God's Word. If this episode has encouraged you, we ask that you leave us a review or maybe share this episode with a friend. Also, would you consider sending us a note to let us know what God is doing in your life? Pastor Eddie would love to hear from you. You can find this email in the show notes. Until next time, stay in the scriptures, keep following Christ, and allow your life to be formed by the Word.