Human Relationships

Some of us might be old enough to remember this date, but on 04/16/1963, Doctor Martin Luther King sat in a Birmingham jail. And as he was sitting there, he, while he was sitting there because of his role in a protest for basic civil rights for everyone. In an opening letter that he wrote to the city government at that time, he said, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one affects all indirectly.

And that is where he feels, or that is what motivated him for his stance on civil liberty or civil rights. Now this morning, we're going to be looking at the beginning of human society and the beginning of this interconnectedness of humanity. And looking at Martin Luther and what he called this interconnectedness or this mutuality. Turn with me to Genesis 4 where we're going to be looking at the story of Cain and Abel. Genesis chapter 4, starting from verse 1.

Now Adam lay with his wife Eve, she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man. Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. 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.

The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, He did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it. Now Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother Abel?

I don't know, he replied. Am I my brother's keeper? The Lord said, what have you done? Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence. I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. The Lord said to him, not so.

If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over. Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. And so Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, East of Eden. So far, our reading this morning. Our text this morning talks about human relationships and the inescapable network of interconnectedness or mutuality.

And it addresses the question, who is my brother and am I my brother's keeper? Am I my brother's keeper? Are we really caught in this inescapable network of mutuality which we call humanity or society? Are we tied in a single garment of destiny or can we live lives isolated from one another? If we can and if we do, what price do we pay?

Now the story of Cain and Abel has forever confused people of faith, because it has some very difficult concepts to grasp. What we see in the story is that both Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to God. Right? They brought gifts to God. Cain, the oldest son of Adam and Eve, was a farmer, so he brought fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob as an offering to the Lord.

Well, we don't know that exactly, but vegetables. Abel, the younger brother, was a shepherd, and so he brought animals, a lamb or cattle or something, beef. Both brothers, we see, wanted to worship God in this way through sacrifice. Both wanted God to receive this sacrifice with favour. But the Bible says that God regarded only the sacrifice of Abel and didn't regard or favour the sacrifice of Cain.

Now why is this? Why is this? Why? Was it because God loved lamb chops more than broccoli? Some men here are like, yep.

That's definitely true. But that's obviously not true, because we see throughout the Bible that God Himself planted the garden of Eden, a place full of fruit and vegetables. We might think that vegetables was the effect of the fall, but it's not. God planted a garden that was ripe and had lots of great fruit and vegetables to eat for Adam and Eve. Is it because God didn't like farmers that He liked shepherds more than farmers?

Of course not, because both occupations are spoken of positively throughout the Bible. Jesus Himself spoke many times in His parables of shepherds and farmers. So it wasn't because God favoured one over the other. So why does God accept Abel's sacrifice but not Cain's? Well, part of the answer lies in verse 3.

If you look at that in verse 3, right in the start, says, in the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil. Verse 4, however, says, but Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. From the text it appears that Abel brought the first and the very best of what he had to God. While Cain, in the course of time, waited to see what he had lying around and perhaps what he didn't need so much, and he brought that as a sacrifice. Abel brought the fat portions of the livestock.

Now for us, fat is bad. Get rid of that unsaturated fat. But back in those days, a piece of fat was amazing. Okay. We like bacon with a little bit of rind as well.

We can maybe relate. But a portion of fat, fat portion was the best part of the animal. And that's what Abel brought for the sacrifice. The most desirable piece of the firstborn of his flock. While Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil.

Did you see that word? Some of the fruits. Not the first fruits, not the most healthiest, biggest pumpkins or capsicums, some of the fruit. There might also be something about the sacrifice of an animal being the only sufficient method of covering sin, and so in a sense, the first indication of the atonement sacrifice that would later come in with Leviticus and Numbers. But it might be a little bit of both.

God, we see really in essence, wasn't satisfied with the leftovers. God wasn't happy with the crumbs. But in either way, what we see is God answering one man and not answering another. We see blessing for one man and no blessing for another. Now has this sort of thing ever happened to you?

You might have to think hard about this. That you've seen someone being blessed when you clearly haven't felt blessed or seen blessing. Maybe God hasn't responded to all your religious offerings, your efforts in the way that you hoped. Perhaps you've prayed for something that has never happened or called on for healing that never came. Perhaps we can always say yes to these things when we remember those times where we bargained with God.

If you will give me this, I will give you this. If you bless me with this, I will sacrifice this. The real spiritual question and the much harder question that we need to answer is how do we respond to a God we cannot control or manipulate? If God's ways are truly higher than our ways, how do we respond to that? When Cain discovered that his sacrifice, his offering did not find favour with God, how did he react?

He became angry. He became more than angry. He became furious. What he didn't understand and what many of us have a hard time understanding is that while God did not think much of what Cain had brought or the motives with which he brought it, God still loved Cain. God did not reject Cain.

God did not reject Cain. He rejected the sacrifice. He rejected the motives behind the sacrifice. In fact, we see from our text that God knew that Cain could do better, that he could be better than he was. How do we know that?

Well, look at how God warns Cain. Verse 6, why are you angry, Cain? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

It desires to have you, but you must master it. Two ways to live, son. One will lead to life. The other is like a ferocious tiger crouching outside your door. And as soon as you decide to walk through that door it will devour you.

Two ways to live. This tiger is not going to play with you. It's not going to be cute and cuddly like the dream world tigers. It's not gonna entertain you. It's not going to just mess you up a little bit.

It's going to consume you. It's going to destroy you. It will devour you. God simply wanted Cain to be better and to serve Him better than he was. Do you see that?

He did not reject Cain, he rejected the sacrifice and the motives of that sacrifice. And how much more clearly could God be? How much more clearly could God be? But Cain wasn't interested in listening. The Bible doesn't indicate any time where he sort of reflected on this at all.

All he could see was red. He was furious. He was depressed. He was angry. And while his arms were too short to box with God, he decided to take it out on someone closer at hand, his younger brother Abel.

And so that's what he did. In a predetermined, cold blooded fashion, Cain led Abel into the fields and murdered his brother. It wasn't an act of even hot blooded anger. It was predetermined. Let us go out to the field.

And he murdered him there. We see that the sin that was crouching at the door in his bad mood, in his anger, did eventually devour Cain. Then we read how God came to Cain in the same way as He did with his parents. Do you see that? The same way that God came to Adam and Eve, God came to Cain.

He asked, what's going on? Where is your brother? Now God, of course, knew full well what had happened, but the question, just like the one He asked in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, was an invitation to confess and perhaps even repent. And Cain, being a chip of the old block, he gave God the same attitude his parents did when they were caught red handed. What?

Me? No way. What are you talking about, God? Then Cain asked a question to God that strikes deep at the core of our humanity. Am I my brother's keeper?

The word keeper here can also mean guardian or protector. Am I the protector of my brother? Am I his guardian? Am I supposed to look after him? And this is where Scripture becomes really poignant.

The passage builds up to this question and it leaves us begging the question. It leaves us knowing that the answer to this question actually matters to God. The answer to this question, am I my brother's keeper, matters to God. When Cain saw no responsibility between himself and his brother, God marked him in some way so that everyone would know that he did not look after his brother. When a lawyer asked Jesus in Luke 10, what must they do to inherit eternal life?

What did Jesus say? He said, to love God with all your heart and with everything inside of you and to love your neighbour. Then the lawyer asked him, who is my neighbour? And Jesus responded with the story of the good Samaritan, the man who looked after another man. And then Jesus said, that is your neighbour.

In Matthew 25, when Jesus' disciples asked him, when do we ever see a stranger or someone hungry or thirsty or naked or cold, alone or oppressed. And Jesus said, as you have done to these, the least of these brothers of mine, you have done to me. And so what we see in the Bible is God draws a line. He says, those who answer, yes Lord, I am my brother's keeper. They are kingdom people.

They are the people that are part of God's people. Those who say they are not their brother's keeper are not part of that kingdom. Now it's helpful for us to go back a little bit into the story just to press rewind very quickly. When something like murder was something that was not even considered, and this was a time before the fall in Genesis 2. And we get a picture of how things were originally intended for this interconnectedness of humanity.

In Genesis 2, we see the state of human relationships and what God had intended it to be. Firstly, we see the threefold relations of humanity. Mankind with others Adam and Eve, mankind with God in worship and mankind with the world with creation as stewards, as nurturers of creation. We see human relationships being centred upon companionship and a mutual interdependence. God didn't create two men or two women.

He created men and women differently to look after one another, to be dependent on one another in a mutual way. The essence, the kernel of society. And then we saw that God created this community. God created this community. It wasn't because some humans decided a good idea for us to live together and hang out.

God fashioned us to live like this. But then we come to Genesis 4, and we see the state of human relationships after the fall. We see that the first sin, the very first sin after the fall is a sin against community. Notice that Cain's offering of vegetables or fruit or whatever it was isn't in fact a sin. God doesn't say that's a sin.

It wasn't so much what he brought to worship that was the problem. If his broccoli or his cabbage was truly the best and the first fruits of his crops, he would have served God honourably, in other words. But God warned him from falling into sin by allowing his grumbling and his jealousy and his depression to turn into anger which eventually would turn into murder. But unfortunately, that sin and that warning went unheeded and that is exactly what happened. And that murder is the first sign of the fractured state of human relationships as a result of the fall.

Jealousy, the wanting of something that you do not have, drives Cain to murder. It highlights the breaking of relationships. It highlights the cracks starting to appear immediately after the fall. The breaking of community. But not only does Cain break relationship with a fellow human being, he breaks relationship with God as well.

Do you notice that as well? When he was discouraged, when he got depressed, when his face became downcast, did he turn to God to discuss it? Did he cry out to God, why do I feel that there is no favour? Why do I feel that I'm not being heard? He doesn't.

It is God that comes to him and asks him, why are you angry? Why are you downcast? Instead, Cain starts scheming and stewing over his feelings. Sin causes him to distance himself, in fact, from the very one who could have truly helped him or given him an answer. At no time do we see him asking God for what was wrong.

Now friends, if you're struggling with depression, if you're struggling with ongoing sin of temptation or feelings of guilt, the warning is don't stop worshipping God. Satan is the one that tells us we're not worthy. Satan is the one that tries to drive that wedge between us. But what we see here and we see so often in Scripture is when people are struggling like this, they turn from God. They do their own thing.

And I've said this before, I cannot understand for the life of me when people are struggling in our church why they don't come to church. It's the last place they want to come to, but it's the place where we meet together to be encouraged by God. The challenge is for us to remember that God is worthy of our time and our mental energy far more than our self pity is. God is worth far more than our self pity is. So worship God through the pain.

Worship God through the anger. Worship God through the frustration. Run to Him when you are tempted and you will be accepted by God. That's the promise. The story of Cain and Abel leaves us to wrestle with this important question, am I my brother's keeper?

The story flows in such a way that the expected answer to Cain's question can only be, yes. I am my brother's keeper. It grips us because it makes us reflect on how we are living in relation to others. Are we fulfilling our intended, our God intended purpose of living a mutually beneficial lifestyle? With the fall of humanity, we saw the start of society's disintegration, but this is the other part of the story because we see in God's master plan that He was going to create a new society.

He was going to provide an alternative community, a redemption to society. Let's have a look at this plan of this new society in Acts 4:32-35. Genesis 4, Acts 4. The beginning of human history, the beginning of the church. Acts 4, verse 32.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them, for from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. What an image.

In the New Testament, we see the beginning of a new society called the church. Paul calls this church a vessel of grace, like a bucket or an urn poured full of God's grace. This vessel will distribute grace to those who need it. This vessel of grace contains the foundations of a restored humanity which is in the process of being perfected until the return of Jesus. And friends the amazing truth is this, that your church, these weird eccentric people sitting around you, are the redeemed community of God and they are living in a way that God intended humans to live. Not they should be, but they are.

They have been redeemed to live in that threefold relationship that God had originally intended for Adam and Eve. They exist through Jesus Christ in a relationship with God, worshipping and glorifying Him, acknowledging His authority over their lives, loving Him as their Father and striving to be good sons and daughters. They look after the earth, they are conscious about their surroundings. They are good stewards of what God has given them. They cultivate the earth and do not destroy it.

And thirdly, they care deeply about other human beings. They love one another. They sacrifice their time for each other. They reach out with open hands to one another. I think it's one of the most awesome things to see how Jesus changed that downward spiral of humanity.

And you just have to read the Old Testament to see how bad it gets. He didn't just save a few people from an eternity in hell, a one way ticket to heaven, he created a new world order. He didn't put a band aid on a wound. He stitched it up and poured antibiotics or disinfectant in that whole mess. Cleaned it up. One evening while I was driving back from some place in Brisbane, I was listening to 96.5, which is the Christian radio channel there.

And one of the counsellors who does their thought of a day sort of segment, I don't know if you've heard of that, mentioned that the term community is actually an overused term. It's overused. It's a feel good popular term for something that is intangible, something that is not really described very well, or it can be isolated and used in a very narrow way. But everyone likes to use the term or talk about it because it causes warm and fuzzy feelings. Community.

The truth is, he says, that real community is actually really hard. Real community is hard. It takes self sacrifice. It means putting others before yourself. And these are principles that God had when He created man and woman, Adam and Eve, society, living side by side, mutually benefitting one another.

And this is what Jesus returned to do. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says this, listen to this, for Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And Christ died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again. Verse 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.

All of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Ministry of reconciliation. Christ died for all so that we don't live for ourselves. And this self sacrifice is the ultimate sacrifice that God desired from Cain. Not the vegetables.

Not even the fat portions from the firstborn flock. The motive of Cain was to give God the crumbs in order to look holy. There was no real sacrifice in that. And it showed in his relationship with Abel and what he was willing or able to do. But Christ self sacrificed.

Christ who became the keeper of His brothers and His sisters showed real humanity, showed the intended purpose God had created. And it has made us able to be reconciled with God once and for all. God didn't count our sins against us. He didn't turn His face away and clench His fist at anger with us. He addressed us and our problem.

What's more, He sent His Holy Spirit in Acts into the church to breathe life and vitality into it, to enter our lives once we believe Him and to start recreating us, renewing us, making us holy. We are new creations. It says, though the old has gone, the new has come. It's as though He is reversing time to Genesis 2. Are you your brother's keeper?

As the redeemed people of God, we say yes. Yes, we are. And that is why we open our homes to hospitality. That is why we offer friendship and companionship. That is why we will put ourselves second to the real physical needs of those who struggle in our community.

That is why we would value our cell groups, why we say that it is the backbone of our ministry at church. That is why we make so many sacrifices, you know, that we work hard for things like Sultanal Lights. We have really hard working people involved in that to create a space for fellowship, for community, to teach others who aren't part of this community about God's love. Are we our brothers and sisters keepers? Are we guardians of society?

Yes, we are. Let's pray. What a responsibility, Lord. That we are guardians of society. And, Lord, there have been people in the past that have abused that, that have been self righteous and judgmental with that, but there have also been men and women that have done amazing things.

Lord, and even the Martin Luther Kings and the William Wilberforces that have gone before the Mother Theresa, Lord, that have done this, that have shown because of their faith and their determination, Lord, that they are keepers of their brothers and their sisters. Father, we pray that You will remind us and convict us of this, that You will challenge us in our lives wherever we find ourselves with the gifts that You have given us that we may be stewards in the right way of our gifts, of our talents. That we will love those who are in need, that we'll have hearts that break with their hearts. And Father that we will make those efforts that we will not be selfish anymore. That we will keep our eyes open.

That we will be sensitive to Your guiding Holy Spirit. Father, we thank you for what you have done in Jesus Christ, that you didn't leave it to us with that warning that if we walk through that door of sin we will be devoured because we've all been there as well. We know the fear and we know the pain of that. Thank you that you have not let us, or left us there, but that you sent Jesus Christ for us and that you have begun the process of reversing those effects. You have created a people, a community, your church broken as flawed as it is with people that still wrestle with sin, but people that are serious about you, people that want to please you, people that want to serve you, and Lord, are genuinely and inherently good because you have started that great work in our hearts.

Father, I pray for strength and encouragement in that and we give you all glory and praise for what you are doing in our lives and through us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.