A Dangerous Doorway: Cain’s Foolish Loitering

October 16, 2022 Jon Stoker

When you choose not to obey God with a right heart, you set out onto a very dangerous path.

Mankind’s Responsibility: An Offering to God

Throughout history, people are responsible to bring their offerings to God.

Cain’s Problem: An Impure Heart & a Wrong View of God

Cain didn’t bring an acceptable offering because he simply didn’t want to do what God had asked him to do.

Offerings to God involve two things: a physical thing to be offered up and a heart motivation.

You simply cannot get around the fact that your offerings to God are representative of your opinion of His worthiness.

A rebellious or an idolatrous heart will always result in an unacceptable sacrifice.

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.Isaiah 1:11-17

Cain did the right thing, but became angry when his “works” were rejected by God.

God’s Warning: Two Responses

Are you keeping areas of sin just within arm’s distance?

God’s Judgment: A Curse

Cain kills his brother in a violent, brutal way.

Cain was cursed and became a vagabond.

By taking matters into his own hands and doing things his way, he achieved the exact opposite of what he was seeking after.

A Warning to Us: Guard Your Heart

God had, in his mercy, given Cain an opportunity to amend his original sacrifice.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.James 1:13-15

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.Matthew 5:27-30

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.Romans 6:11-14

The mature Christian who is committed to fighting the sin nature stays far away from the temptation.{note}