Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction & Review - We’re in the middle of our “Big Picture of the Bible” series that we’re teaching through what is called “Chronological Bible Storying”.

The idea is to learn & internalize the Word of God by applying lessons we learn from the major stories of the Bible.

Each story reveals God’s plan of redemption through human history.

It helps us remember Scripture and the Lord will use this to draw us closer to Himself as He reveals Himself to us through these stories He recorded for us.

These stories will also help you share your faith with others and I encourage you to tell these stories to someone outside of church each week.

I’ve been doing this and it’s amazing to see how people are interested in hearing them.

Romans 10:17 says “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”

Before time actually began, God existed in His heavenly home long before Creation.

At some point, God created millions of angels who served Him and obeyed him in eternity past.

The most beautiful, powerful angel that God place in charge of all the other angels was Lucifer.

Lucifer was not content with his position & responsibility and began to covet God’s position, power, prestige and authority.

Lucifer recruited 1/3 of the millions of other angels to join him and he attempted to take over Heaven in a rebellious coupe against God.

God in His infinite power & might kicked Lucifer/Satan and his followers out of Heaven with ease.

God spoke the universe into existence creating everything in the world by the power of His word in 6 literal 24 hour days.

God rested on the 7th day and declared it holy.

The climax of God’s creative work was creating mankind; male and female; that God joined together as a family, husband & wife.

God uniquely made mankind in His own image and likeness; put Adam & Eve in a perfect environment and generously gave them access to eat the fruit of every tree of the Garden of Eden where they lived.

The only restriction God placed on them was that they could’t eat of the tree of knowledge of good & evil.

Lucifer/Satan who is God’s adversary, disguised himself and came to Eve & Adam who was with his wife; questioning what God had said.

Satan claimed God had said they couldn’t eat from every tree in the garden casting doubt in Eve’s heart that God is not a good God.

He tempted Eve to look at the tree to see it was pleasant to the eyes, it was good for food and desirable to make one wise; that she would be like God knowing good & evil.

So Eve ate of the fruit, gave it Adam and he ate too.

Instantly, all their innocence was lost and they realized they were naked & ashamed of themselves.

They tried to cover themselves up by sewing fig leaves together and hid from God.

God pronounced a curse on the serpent (Satan), Eve and on Adam.

God killed an animal & used its skin to cloth & cover Adam & Eve.

Then God evicted them from that perfect garden and put an angel with a flaming sword to guard access to the tree of life.

Today’s story comes from Genesis 4:1-15 & 25-26.

The story begins: Up until this point, there were no children in Adam & Eve’s family.

God’s curse upon Eve was that she would have difficulty bearing children and lots of pain would be involved.

God’s curse on Adam was that the ground was cursed because of Adam.

God said thorns and thistles would be easier to grow than food and Adam was going to have to work hard and sweat all the days of his life to provide for his family.

Finally, Adam & Eve had a son.

Eve named her first born son Cain who’s name means acquire.

She named Cain and explained she had acquired a man child, a son from the Lord.

To Eve’s credit, she took God’s promise in Genesis 3:15 seriously that her seed, her child, would be God’s provision to crush the head of Satan.

She clearly saw that it was God who gave her a child and she trusted that he was God’s promised seed to crush Satan.

Sadly, Eve came to realize that Cain wasn’t the solution to the human sin problem she thought he would be.

Now mama’s know their babies really well.

We get the sense that she figured out that Cain was not going to be the promised son.

When Eve had another son, this one she named Abel.

Abel’s name means breath or nothing.

Little did she know how true Abel’s name would turn out to be.

The boys grew up and became men.

Abel’s career path led him to become a sheep herder.

Cain’s career path had him farming crops.

Both boys were raised in a home that taught them about God, about why it was so hard to survive in the world and the reason they had to sweat every day to have food to eat.

They had heard stories from their mom & dad of walking with God in the cool of the day and being in harmonious fellowship with God.

They learned that God was to be worshiped exclusively in the manner that God had demonstrated for their parents.

In the process of time, Cain decided he wanted to give God an offering in his worship of Almighty God.

It had taken him months of hard, sweaty work from sun up to sundown.

Meticulously planting his seeds in ground.

Learning how to deal with dry conditions, windy conditions, learning from trial and error what seeds grew well in his part of the world and what didn’t.

He learned how much rain was needed or what happens when too much rain comes too fast.

Finally the harvest had come!

Cain was thankful all his hard work paid off so well.

So he brought his produce to God as an offering.

He must have been so proud showing off to God the good looking crop he had in hand.

He stacked up an impressive display of his crops, arranged so precise, it was something to behold.

He thought, “Surely God will be so pleased with my impressive gift!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cain saw his brother Abel coming to the place of family worship.

He had the very first born lamb from his own flock of sheep.

It sure was cute, white and cuddly.

It literally had no defects on it’s body at all.

Sure to win first prize at the livestock show.

Innocent looking is the word that comes to mind.

Cain watched as Abel built an altar of stones, he got dry wood and laid the wood on the altar.

Then he did something Cain must have seen his father Adam do a number of times when they were growing up as kids.

Abel put his hands on the head of that lamb, and bowed his head, pausing with his head bowed for what seemed like a long time.

Then quickly, decisively, there was a flash from a sharp blade, Abel slashed the throat of that lamb, it’s blood splattering all over the place, what a mess.

The wool of that lamb indelibly stained with blood.

It was as shocking and morbid a scene for a proper worship service you can conceive in your imagination; something Cain found, quite frankly, absolutely disgusting.

He looked on with contempt at the cruel hands of his brother holding the carcass of that poor animal up to God.

Then he watched as Abel laid the body of that animal his piddly little altar and set fire to it.

While the smell of burnt flesh was filling his nostrils, Cain may have prayed to God to accept his beautiful, sacrificial offering that he had labored so hard to give to God.

He prayed and prayed but nothing happened.

It just seemed like there was an iron dome above Cain and his prayers did little to penetrate it.

Suddenly, the presence of God appeared!

Ah now we’re getting somewhere Cain thought!

But to his utter amazement the glory cloud of God came down and hovered over Abel’s altar, his sacrifice and suddenly it was all covered up by the glory of God! Abel could barely be seen as he lay on his face before the glory of God!

Cain stood there watching in complete disbelief for what seemed like forever.

Suddenly the glory cloud was gone.

Cain felt the skin on the back of his sun burned neck getting warmer as his blood began to boil with anger.

He could fell his blood pumping and his fists clenching as the muscles in his strong arms stiffened at the embarrassing fact his hard earned, sweat induced offering to God was just sitting there.

God didn’t even acknowledge it!

How rude!

How disrespectful!

The longer Cain thought about it, the angrier he got and a scowl developed on Cain’s face.

One simple look at him and you could tell he was ticked off.

As he sat there in anger & disbelief thinking about how all his hard work meant nothing to God, all of a sudden, a deep majestic voice spoke to Cain.

It was clearly the voice of God:

“Why are you so angry?

And why has your countenance fallen?

The look on your face tells me you don’t feel like you’re respected.

Don’t you know Cain if you do what’s right, if you bring an offering by faith, the way I’ve commanded, and demonstrated for your parents, you too will be accepted?”

God continued: “You need to be careful Cain.

If you are unwilling to do what’s right, sin is lurking at your doorstep.

Sin wants to consume you, control you & be your master.

You have a choice to make and you should choose to conquer sin by doing what you know is right according to My Word.”

PROBLEM: And just like that, Cain was left to his own thoughts once again.