Genesis 4:1–16
And now you are cursed. Genesis 4:11 If you have never come to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you are somewhat like Cain. You are in danger, and you must flee from it. The Navy in wartime uses an expression of ships that sail into danger. They are said to be “in harm’s way.” That is an expression for you, if you are apart from Christ. You are in harm’s way and you must get back into the safe way before you are lost forever.
There are things that will keep you from it. One is your pride, the very thing that got Cain into trouble in the first place. Perhaps you turn up your lips in scorn, thinking such persons weak who would cast everything aside to obtain God’s kingdom. You would rather go to hell than bow like that. But that is precisely what you will do if you do not lay your pride aside and come to God on God’s terms.
You may also be held back by hate, though you might not call it that. You think you are a paragon of virtue, but the very fact that you think so poorly of Christians should be a warning that all is not right with you and that you are encumbered with far more irritations and animosities than you imagine. Hate is a terrible thing. You do not possess it; it possesses you. It is truly the sin crouching at the door that desires to master the home’s inhabitant.
Again, there are resentment and self-pity. No one likes these things in others, but no one is so blind to anything as these when they occur in himself or herself. Cain had killed a man, his own brother. But he was so possessed with resentment against God and others that he could not see the enormity of his crime and so actually felt sorry for himself when God punished him with far less of a judgment than he deserved.
Can you not see this? Can you not sense your danger? Sin is driving you from God, whom you think to be the cause of your misery. You are failing to see that he is actually being good to you and that his goodness is given precisely so that it might lead you to repentance.
Cain, we are told, “went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (v. 16). Do not let it be true of you that you “went away from the presence of the Lord.” Flee to him and find in him the One you have needed all along.
Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865
Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.