Why did Cain kill his brother?

In Genesis 4:1-12, the first child ever born grows up to commit the first murder. Dr. Toby Holt shows how Cain and Abel reveal the deep reality of sin in every human heart. Both bring offerings, but God accepts Abel's and not Cain's — because of the heart behind it. Instead of repenting, Cain grows furious and murders his brother. There was no bad upbringing to blame; Cain's sin came from his own fallen nature. God had warned, "sin lies at the door."

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did God reject Cain's offering? Because of the heart behind it. The problem was not merely what Cain brought, but the attitude with which he brought it.

2. What did God mean that "sin lies at the door"? That sin was crouching, ready to master Cain — and that he needed to rule over it. It is a warning to every heart.

3. Is sin "at our door" too? Yes. The same fallen nature is in all of us. Like Cain, we must recognize sin's pull and turn from it to God.

"If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door…" — Genesis 4:7 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In Genesis 3, we read about the fall of mankind.

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As you remember, our first parents ate from the forbidden tree,

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and we were removed from the garden.

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As we come to Genesis 4, do you think mankind will have learned their lesson about the dangers of sin?

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We'll find out in today's study of two brothers, Cain and Abel.

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In the late 1600s, there was an author named John Milton.

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Now, does anyone know what John Milton wrote?

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Anyone?

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Paradise Lost.

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Paradise Lost.

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Have you read it?

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You love poetry more than I do.

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John Milton.

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Paradise Lost.

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Now, this is a big deal.

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Paradise Lost.

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I'm not a big poetry guy.

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That's my failing.

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But Paradise Lost was about the fall, or at least the ramifications of the fall.

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You have the fall.

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You have Adam and Eve.

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They're dwelling in the garden.

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Everything's going swimmingly.

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Everything is going great.

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Things are so wonderful in the garden.

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You have not lived an entire day in your whole life.

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that is as good as half a second as what Adam and Eve had in the garden.

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So John Milton wrote this poem called Paradise Lost,

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and it talked about the fall, the fall from grace,

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the fall into this terrible estate in which Adam and Eve dwelled thereafter.

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Now imagine Adam and Eve.

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You see, we look at this world and circumstances, and we don't know any better.

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We look at a sunny day like this and go, this is pretty good, right?

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We look at aspects of our life and say, this isn't so bad.

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But that's because all we know is sin.

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It's like fish, all they know is water.

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You and I live in a culture, a sin-drenched culture,

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where we drink down sin like it's water, so we don't know any better.

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Adam and Eve did.

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Adam and Eve remembered back.

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They remembered the garden.

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Remember after they were cast from the garden,

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there was an angel with a fiery sword, cherubim, guarding the way back in.

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Imagine what went through their minds as they think about what they lost,

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as they think about the lushness of the garden and all the fruits

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and all the creatures and how wonderful it was.

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All that's gone.

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Now what they have is fear.

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Now they have wild beasts.

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Now they have thorns and thistles.

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Now they sweat in order to have anything to eat.

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Everything came hard.

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Everything was difficult.

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And soon violence would fill the globe around them,

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propagated initially by their own son.

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When Adam and Eve thought back to the garden,

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paradise lost.

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When they looked back to the garden in their own mind's eye,

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they had to hate sin all the more

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because they knew what it had cost them.

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Adam and Eve listened to the serpent.

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The serpent said, you know, here's the thing.

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Your life is pretty good right now, I grant you that, but it'll be better if you just do this.

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Eat from the tree, the one tree that God said don't eat from, just do it.

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God's withholding something from you.

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If you have it, if you take it, if you eat of it, your life is going to be better.

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And so they did.

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And what happened?

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Everything got demonstrably worse.

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You know, when you're tempted, you're tempted to do things you want to do.

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That's what temptation is.

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Temptation is when you're enticed to do that which you already want to do.

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If you didn't want to do it, it wouldn't be called temptation.

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You're tempted to do things that you want to do, and part of you tells yourself it'll be better if

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you do it, and if you partake, and if you have the fruit. Will it? Is it? When you look back at the

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sins of your youth, when you look back at the sins of last week, have they borne the fruit that you

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wanted them to bear? Well, probably not. In fact, emphatically not. Paradise lost. Adam and Eve knew

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what they had lost, and they knew how their present reality was way, way worse. And soon,

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soon they would know it to an even greater extent in Genesis 4 in today's text.

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Whatever the case is, God had told them, this is going to be bad. Don't do it. The day you eat of

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it, you will die. They were cast from the garden. Death entered their ontology. They were consigned

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to death. They got achy joints, achy knees. All these things started to go wrong in the world

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around them. But they clung to a promise. Even as they thought back to Paradise Lost, and even as

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they lamented what they lost, they did look ahead in this one regard. They looked ahead because God

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had told him that although you've lost all that, one will come to restore all things. Even though

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you've lost what you had, even though there's now a fracture, your interaction with me won't be what

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it once was. There's now a sword, a fire sword blocking you from the garden, blocking you from

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the access with me you used to have. Even that's true. Even though that fracture exists, a day is

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coming when a seed, a seed, which is an anticipation of the Messiah, of Jesus, the seed will come and

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he will make all things right. He'll make all things new. So if you were Eve, even though you

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look back at what you lost, you also looked ahead and you said, there's one coming. There's one

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coming. There's one coming. Through my union with my husband, one is going to come ultimately that

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will right everything, that will fix everything that we broke. One's coming. One's coming. One's

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coming. Well, what we're going to see here in verses one and two is that one came, one showed

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up, and Eve probably had higher hopes for him. It didn't work out. Let's look at verses one and two

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and see what happened. Chapter 4, verses 1 and 2. I'll read this, and again, we'll kind of work

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our way through the balance of these 12 verses. Verse 1. Now, Adam knew Eve, his wife. They had

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union. Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived. And she bore Cain and said, I have acquired a man

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from the Lord. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep,

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but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

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All right, so chapter four begins

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and you see this ray of hope.

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Adam knows his wife Eve, she conceives

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and she bears a child and his name is Cain

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and she declares emphatically,

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I've acquired, I've gotten a man from the Lord.

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Now, what do you think she might've been hoping?

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If you were Eve, what would you have been hoping

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at that moment?

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God had promised one would come ultimately

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from your union with your husband

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that ultimately there'd be a progeny,

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one would come to make all things right.

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Well, she gave birth and she declares, I've gained, I've gotten, I have obtained, acquired a man from

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the Lord. There's a sense, there's a sense in which possibly she hoped that this would be the one,

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that Cain would be the one, that he would be the one to make all things right, that this would be

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the seed. How cool would that have been if you're Eve? You know, things got broken not long ago,

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but it'll be right any moment now because here's the seed. You probably hoped that.

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Was that what happened? Well, no. Now Cain, what do we know about Cain? Well, initially we know

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this. He's the first child born by procreation, right? Adam and Eve came into being through a

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different fashion, but Cain is the first child born by procreation. Again, he probably represented

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Eve's greatest hopes, the defeat of Satan, reconciliation with God. Now what else we know

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about Cain is he may or may not have been twins with Abel. If you look at verse 1, it says,

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knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, and then she bore again this time his brother

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Abel. Some look at that text in verses 1 and 2, and they say, well, there's only one conception

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mentioned. She conceived and bore Cain, and then she bore Abel. So some look at this and say, well,

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possibly, possibly, since there's one conception, these are twins. If you look at Jacob and Esau as

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an example, there is later precedent for that. I don't know that to be the case here, but I just

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mention that some do see that as a possibility that they were twins. Whatever the case is,

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we know that Cain is first. Cain is the Esau in this equation. Cain came along first. However,

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rather than be the fulfillment of Eve's desires, rather than be the seed, he ends up being the exact

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opposite. Rather than being the seed, rather than being one of virtue, rather than being one who

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could withstand the serpent, we see something entirely different. We see a man who would grow

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up to be history's first villain. History's first villain. Now, let me ask you a question.

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In psychology, if you've been through any level of schooling, at some point, at some point,

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you came into contact with the concept of nature versus nurture, right? Nature versus nurture.

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So you look at an individual and you say, are you a byproduct of your nature or just the way

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you grew up? And sometimes we look at an individual and the decisions that they're

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making. We say, the reason they're making the decisions that they're making is a function of

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how they grew up, their environment, or what have you.

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Their environment shaped them.

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So we've heard that.

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Now, how about Cain?

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Irrespective of what you think about others in the world around us,

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what about Cain?

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Let's start with him.

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Is Cain's sin, Cain's evil, Cain's depravity,

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a function of nature or nurture?

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Anyone nature?

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Let's see a few hands.

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Anyone nurture?

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We'll talk later.

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Nature or nurture?

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See, it's not nurture.

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We know this much.

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it can't be nurture. It can't be nurture. Where was the culture to shape him? What violent video

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games did Cain play in order to form the evil in him? What violent horror movies or what have you

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shaped the Cain that would become the first villain? Well, there was none. There was zero.

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There was no society, no culture. You can't blame government. You can't blame the institutions. You

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can't blame the media. So what's left? His nature. You say he's not a sinner because he learned to

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sin. You say he was a sinner because that is what he was born to be. This is the concept of original

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sin, which takes longer time than we have time to unpack here this morning. But the concept of

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original sin is this, that we come into this world broken. What did the psalmist say? He said,

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in sin my mother conceived me. We come in, dead in our sins and our trespasses. Now, that's not

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just the teaching of Genesis 4. You'll find that throughout the New Testament as well, most

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helpfully in Romans chapter 5. In Romans 5, we read this, through one man, sin entered the world

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and death came through sin and thus death spread to all men, right? So you want to know how Cain

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became a sinner. He became a sinner because Adam's sin tainted Cain and you and me. This is not just

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guesswork. This is the overt teaching of scripture. Again, Romans 5, through one man, Adam, through one

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man, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men. You do not have

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to like that teaching, but it is. It is the overt teaching of the book. All right, whatever the case

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is, before we move to verses 3 through 7, I would just have you note that when you have Cain, you

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have Abel. These two individuals, they represent all of humanity. It's fascinating how God does

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Whether it's twins like Jacob and Esau, right?

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Jacob I have loved, Esau I have what?

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Esau I have hated.

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Whether it's Cain and Abel or Jacob and Esau.

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Whether it's Isaac and Ishmael.

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Whether it's the two different thieves on either side of Jesus on the cross.

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Whether it's sheep and goats.

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God has routinely, routinely, pedagogically, he uses this as a teaching tool.

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He has routinely utilized twins and brothers and goats and sheep

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in these different contrasts in order to identify for us

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that all of humanity falls in one of two categories,

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the children of God or those of the devil.

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This is what Jesus said to the Pharisees.

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Remember, Jesus and the Pharisees, they're interacting as they often did,

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and the Pharisees are attacking Jesus,

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and Jesus is just teaching them truth after truth after truth,

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and they hate it, and they talk about their father Abraham,

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their father Abraham, and Jesus stops them and says,

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no way, no dice.

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He says, you've got it all wrong.

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You think you're of your father Abraham?

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you think God of heaven is your father? No, you are of your father all right, but your father is

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different than who you think it is. You are of your father, the devil. All of humanity, all of

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humanity, so the goats or sheep, all of humanity, all of humanity, are there Cain's or Abel's?

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All of humanity, all of humanity, are there Jacob's or Esau's? There is no middle ground.

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Scripture does not teach a middle ground anywhere. There's none who are morally neutral.

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no free agents. They're only reprobates and sinners and lost people until such time as God

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changes their hearts and adopts them into his family, at which point they can rightly say,

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God is my father. All right, let's look at verses three through seven. Verse three,

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in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground of

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the Lord. And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord

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respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And so Cain was

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very angry and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why has your

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countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin

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lies at the door and its desire is for you. All right. If I were to ask you whether the Bible's

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villains? Guys like, well, Cain here, or Pharaoh, or Ahab, or the Pharisees. If I were to say,

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are the villains in scripture, generally speaking, are they religious people or not religious? What

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do you think? I'm hearing different takes on this. So remember who we're talking about. We're

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talking about Cain. What's Cain doing right here? What's he doing? He's giving an offering, right?

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At least from 10,000 feet, that looks religious. What about Pharaoh? Pharaoh had all manner of

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gods. He went down to the Nile and took his little showers and prayed all the deities of the Nile.

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He had all sorts of gods. The Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious, at least from 10,000

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feet. They were religious. The problem was their religiosity was faulty in one or two regards.

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Either like Pharaoh, they worshiped the wrong god, or like the Pharisees, they worshiped the

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right god in the wrong way. Well, Cain here worshiped the right god. There was only one god,

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and he got to talk to him. We see in this text, God talks to Cain, not from a million miles away

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wrote him a letter in the sand or something. He talked to him directly, and Cain brought God an

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offering. So what was the problem? Well, some believe that the problem was that he approached

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this God in the wrong fashion. Let's explore that a little bit. We have two offerings. You have Cain,

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you have Abel. Now, if you look there in verses 3 through 7, you see that Cain brings the first

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offering. It's offering the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Remember what we read earlier? He's a

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tiller of the ground. He's a farmer. He's a harvester. So he brings some of his harvest

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to God. That's what we see here in verse 3. Abel also brought an offering, but his offering is

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different. Because he's a tenderer of sheep, a keeper of sheep, he brought of the firstborn of

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his flock and of their fat. So you have two offerings both brought to God. However, God

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looks at both these offerings, and more importantly, he looks at the hearts of the men who

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offered it, and one pleases him and one doesn't. Now again, from 10,000 feet, you look at that and

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they say, well, these are two guys approaching the same God. They both bring offerings. What's wrong?

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Why was God dismissive, rejecting Cain's offering? Again, Cain wanted to understand this. Cain was

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angry that God had rejected it. Now, scholars, there's not an overt explanation given to us in

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these verses of exactly what the issue was, but scholars have looked at this and said it's probably

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one of two or three different things. Some think that the problem is that one guy, one of the

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brothers brought meat, and the other brought vegetables. Now, when I sit down for a tasty meal,

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you can guess which plate of food I am more excited to receive. You know, a nice po' boy or a rib

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witch or something like that. I don't want celery. I don't want vegetables or what have you. So some

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look at this and say, you know, God has discriminating taste. He doesn't want no vegetables. He wants

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meat. Now, sometimes they look and they say, well, the issue is even slightly different than that.

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It's really not meat and vegetables. The issue is blood. They're making an offering here, and without

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the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. So if this is an offering of repentance,

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then only an offering of repentance that is bound in blood, so to speak, is satisfactory and

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vegetables don't count. So others look at it and say that's maybe the issue. Now another school of

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thoughts is it's not really so much the meat versus the vegetables. Another school of thought

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is they say, well look, look at what it says about Abel. Abel brought the best, right? It doesn't say

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anything about Cain bringing the best. It says he just brought some fruit and vegetables and things

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that he got from the ground and said, here you go. But we see that Abel, Abel brought, he brought

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the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And Hebrew context, this is a way of saying he brought

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the best he had. He didn't bring, you know, the three-toed, lazy-eyed, buck-toothed sheep. I got

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to give God a sheep today. Which one? Well, that mangy critter over there. He didn't do that. He

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gave the firstborn and of their fat, which at that point had some significant value. So he gave God

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what's best. And meanwhile, Cain just gave him apparently whatever happened to be lying around

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vegetable was. So some people say that's the problem. I'm not convinced that's a problem

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either. It really could be an issue of A or B. It could be the first problem, the second problem,

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or some combination. I think the problem was the motivation of Cain's heart. I think that was the

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issue. I think Cain could have rolled in there and sacrificed sheep to the rafters. But as long

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as his heart perceived God incorrectly, as long as his heart was not filled with a motivation of

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repentance and adoration and worship, as long as he was just going through the motions, I don't

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think it mattered what he gave God. I think the problem here is the motivation of the heart. And

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the reason I think is a problem is the motivation of the heart is look how depraved his heart was.

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Like two verses later, he's going to kill his own brother, right? This is a guy who had all manner

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of evil and sinful things going on within him. Even God knows it because God says in these very

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verses, he says, Cain, I know what's going on, and I know this much, that sin is laying at its door,

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and you're toying with the possibility of opening it. Don't. Sin lies at your door. Its desire is

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for you, but Cain, you must rule over it. I think the motivation of Cain's heart was desperately,

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desperately wrong. Now, one final note of those verses before we move on to verse 8.

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I think it's interesting here that although when mankind was evicted from the garden,

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although when they were expelled from the garden,

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a sword, a fiery sword that's shown in all directions was set up,

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guarding the way back, preventing access from fallen sinful men with a holy God.

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Although a sword blocked the way for man to access God,

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although that was true, interestingly, nothing prevented God from accessing man.

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So mankind couldn't go back into the garden

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any more than mankind can just heave himself into God's golden shores.

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you and I cannot lasso heaven down and make it our own. We can't do it. But here what we see

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is that God condescends to enter into that fallenness, so to speak, and to speak with the

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most fallen man in existence at the time, which is Cain. Nothing stops God from rolling up his

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sleeves and entering into the darkest environment on this globe and saving sinners. Nothing stops

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his word from reaching into the darkest parts of the globe. In this case, the word reached Cain,

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and yet Cain still rejected him. Let's look at that rejection now as we look at verse 8.

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Verse 8, now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field

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that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and he killed him. All right, verse 7, God had warned

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Cain. He said, sin's lying at your door, which should have meant something to Cain. He grew up

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hearing the stories of his parents. Now they didn't have, they couldn't talk about what grandpa's

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backstory, right? They couldn't talk about the old country. So what stories did Adam and Eve tell?

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What did they have to tell? Well, their principal story probably involved the serpent, probably

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involved the snake. The main story Adam and Eve had to tell, at least the story they told their

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kids in order to warn them, was the story of a serpent who had slithered in, so to speak, and

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tempted Eve and caused all this terribleness to follow. So here God says there's something waiting

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for you, crouching at your door, laying at the door. What should have come to mind to Cain?

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What God was telling Cain is that the serpent, he's got you, Cain, in the bullseye. What are you

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going to do that's going to be any different than what your old man did? What are you going to do

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that's any different? You must rule over it. You must rule over it. Whatever the case, you see in

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verse 8, he didn't. Rather, in a short amount of time, like one verse later, he's talking with Abel.

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He says, all right, time to die.

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And he kills him here in verse 8.

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Now, why?

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Well, again, we don't know the full motivation, but we know this much.

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It wasn't spontaneous.

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Most sin isn't.

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Most sin isn't.

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Most of the grievous things that you've done in life, it wasn't like this spontaneous thing.

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You just did it.

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Most often, it's something that you thought about ahead of time.

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Most of the sins that ensnare us do so gradually, so to speak.

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They lasso our hearts and draw us closer, and we indulge, and we indulge, and we indulge.

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In James 1, we read this,

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Let no one say when he's tempted that I'm tempted by God, because God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anybody else.

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But each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

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Temptation comes from within. It starts with desires.

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It starts with thoughts. It starts with things spinning around in our head that entice us.

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Again, it's called temptation because we want to do it.

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So each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed,

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and then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin,

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and sin, when it's full grown, brings forth death.

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In all likelihood, the sin of Cain killing his brother

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was not something that just happened in the heat of the moment.

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In fact, the idea that God warned him just a verse earlier,

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hey, I know what's going on with you, Cain,

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suggests this is something he cultivated.

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He sat there and he thought about it.

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He thought about doing it. He obsessed about it.

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He even pictured what's going to happen.

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My brother, my brother, he thinks he's so great.

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He thinks he's so smart.

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God loves him.

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God's angry at me.

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What's going on here?

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I'll show him, right?

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I'll show him.

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And then when the parents evidently aren't around to see it, he kills him.

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But God sees him.

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God sees him.

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Let's look at God's response now as God comes to Cain in his moment of greatest sin.

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Verses 9 through 12.

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Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother?

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and he said, I do not know. Liar. Liar. So he's compounding sins. He kills, then he lies. Liar.

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Where is Abel, your brother? He says, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? Oh, this gets

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more wicked every syllable out of his mouth. And so God says, what have you done? The voice of your

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brother's blood is crying out to me even now from the ground. We see that in verse 10. So now,

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Now, Cain, you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

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Now, when you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you.

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A fugitive and a vagabond you will be on the earth.

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So God knows exactly what went down, just like he knew what Adam and Eve had done.

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And just like he did with Adam and Eve, he gives them an opportunity to fess up, and we don't see that here.

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There's no repentance.

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There's no taking responsibility.

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Just equivocating.

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But God says, Cain, I know what you've done.

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Furthermore, the very ground knows what you've done.

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Your brother's blood is crying out from it, and that's going to be part of your curse.

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You've been a tiller of the ground.

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The vegetables and on the sweet potatoes and all this different stuff, no more.

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No more.

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Now the ground will produce nothing for you.

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And you will be a vagabond upon the earth.

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As we close this morning, let me ask you.

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It's easy in today's text to know who the villain is and who the hero is,

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or who the protagonist and who the antagonist is.

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We know that Cain is the wicked one.

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We know that Cain is the evil one.

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We know that Cain is the one who had sinned.

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We know that Cain is the one who had messed up.

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But let me ask you a question.

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In your own story, are you the Cain or are you the Abel?

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You see, all of us fall into this mindset.

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We're either victims or victimizers.

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And no one looks in the mirror and sees a victimizer.

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If you'd asked Cain what he was, he was a victim.

371

I've been wronged by God.

372

I've been wronged by my brother.

373

My parents don't treat me right.

374

My circumstances aren't great.

375

I'm the victim here.

376

How often do we do that?

377

We look at our circumstances.

378

We feel like we're the victim.

379

And because we think like we're the victim,

380

we think we're entitled to do what we want to correct the situation.

381

How many sins, how many things do we pursue

382

because we think we're entitled to.

383

Life owes me.

384

Life hasn't been fair.

385

I deserve this.

386

There's this hardship.

387

My spouse hurt me.

388

This thing happened.

389

This thing in the job, this thing in the work,

390

this thing in church, what have you.

391

Something has occurred to me,

392

and because it's occurred to me,

393

I'm entitled to do X, Y, Z.

394

It's not hard to fall into the trap of being Cain or Cain-ish.

395

It's not hard to fall into that trap

396

and suddenly to be sitting there spinning our wheels

397

about that which is wrong,

398

Suddenly be spinning our wheels about things we ought not do.

399

Suddenly be considering sinful paths we ought not walk down.

400

It's not a far leap.

401

So God's warning to us when we consider these things.

402

God's warning to us this week when some temptation comes to you.

403

And it'll come to each one of us in different forms, different ways.

404

When it comes to you, you must look at it, think of it,

405

as a serpent laying at the door.

406

As a serpent laying at the door whose desire is for you.

407

The question is, what are you going to do about it?

408

Well, God told Cain the same thing he'd tell us.

409

You must rule over it.

410

You must, with intentionality, say, I'm not going to be the man I used to be.

411

I'm not going to indulge what I indulged last week, last month, last year.

412

I'm not going to do what I've done in the past.

413

As I look at the things I've done in the past, it's like paradise lost.

414

I see what it's cost me.

415

I don't want to live that way anymore.

416

I want to be different.

417

The good news is this.

418

God's hand's out to you even right now to help you to do that which is right.

419

And he will help guard you from doing that which is wrong.

420

But stop trusting in your own strength.

421

Stop trusting in your own wisdom.

422

Stop trusting in your own judgment.

423

Run to him, flee from sin.

424

You choose one path and one direction, it will lead you away from the other.

425

Run to God intentionally, through your decisions, through your actions,

426

through your choices, through your affections.

427

Cut off that which is wrong.

428

Cut off that which is sinful.

429

Stop pursuing it.

430

Start doing that which is right, and your story, your story will not be the story of Cain.

431

Let's pray.