Back to the Beginning No.9 The Posture of Sin

We've been engaged in a series over these last few weeks, which we've entitled Back to the Beginning. Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start. And of course the word Genesis means beginning, and my argument's been that these opening chapters of Genesis are so vital that really unless you grasp the significance of them it's not easy for you to comprehend all that follows.

The New Testament leans very heavily on the Old Testament. The New Testament authenticates the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is concealed, the plan of salvation, and the New Testament it is revealed. So the two books are integral, the one requires the other.

And the Old Testament deals in these opening chapters with grave issues, and this morning we reach the pinnacle in terms of the gravity of issues because we're looking at the problem of sin, the posture of sin. And so I want to set this within the framework of Genesis 4 and the opening verses, but also to demonstrate that this is, as I've indicated, germane to the whole of the Bible. It looks back on Genesis 4 and Genesis 3 and builds so much teaching around what is contained here, the problem that demands a solution, the diagnosis which needs a remedy.

So Genesis 4, we highlight the tragedy within the family circle of Adam. Adam lay with his wife Eve, and 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 favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. 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? Here is one of the most striking verses in the whole of the Bible.

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not, if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it. Let's leap forward to Psalm 91, sorry Psalm 51.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to the great compassion, but out my transgression. Verse 3, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation, grant me a willing spirit to sustain me, then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Verse 15, O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

And forward even further to Romans in chapter 7, most astonishing chapter. We're going to be looking at Romans during our fondly called Bible school in the summer months. And Romans 7 is an amazing passage of Scripture, especially when you think of the Apostle Paul, who he was, and what he here acknowledges.

Verse 15, I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do, and if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. Verse 18, I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, for what I do is not the good I want to do, nor the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Verse 24, what a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So I address you on the most striking title that sets the platform, so to speak, for this sermon. Did you ever think that sin has a posture? The posture of sin, that sin has a particular position, a particular stance? I mean this is what verse 7 of Genesis 4 implies, sin is crouching at your door. This is graphic language.

Here is Moses, who I reckon to be the author of the first five books of the Bible, at least the major part of the material, and he sets down, sets out this picture. I mean compressed into chapter 4 is such narrative, such long years that Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve have experienced, here it's all compressed, and the compression and the highlighting comes at the most crucial point. Moses wants to placard in front of you the difficulty of chapter 3 now spilling over into chapter 4, the problem of the first man and the first woman flowing through into their family.

And when you move from verse, chapter 4 to chapter 5, you see exactly the same thing. It's just like a perpetual stream. It runs, it widens, and it becomes more deep and more difficult and more sinister and more dangerous throughout the whole of Genesis and on into Exodus and right through the whole of the Old Testament into the New Testament.

What is the problem? It's the problem of sin. A sin which has infected Adam, a sin which has infected Eve, a sin which has infected the whole of the human race. And when Moses uses the language of an animal about to pounce as he recalls God's comments to Cain, he highlights the difficulty that befell not only the first family but every family.

Sin is crouching at your door. How Cain reacts to this needs to be noted. It is God that sends the warning.

It is God who is the first preacher. It is God who therefore sets up an illustration for us here in his word which is not just historical, though that, I argue, it is. It is also typical.

Cain was in trouble. You are in trouble. Cain was weak.

You are weak. And in the very hearing of a sermon from God, Cain went out and did that which he knew was wrong. And so often that has been my folly.

And so often probably that has been your foolishness. Confronted with what we knew to be right, we went in the opposite direction. And sometimes we ourselves are more flabbergasted than anyone else.

How could I have done this? How could I be in this particular problem? Here is Cain who has had God's own words spoken to him by God himself. And still he goes wrong. And God says, that's the problem of sin.

It's like a ferocious beast ready to spring on its prey. And this language is sustained not only in the Old Testament but through the New Testament as warning is given as to the power of sin. The Apostle Peter in one of the letters that bears his name says that Satan is like a roaring lion who seeks who he might devour, ready to pounce.

And yet I have to rush to say this, that the sermons of God are always cast within the framework of grace. They're always cast within the framework of grace. He diagnoses the problem.

He has more than an inkling as to the way that the person who has been addressed will respond. But he comes back with grace, with some sort of hope. I mean here I argue you get a rerun of what we discovered in the first proclamation of the gospel which once again God preached.

It was a curse directed towards Satan but within that curse there was hope. Because God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will cross your head and you will strike his heel.

God says that despite the malevolence of the evil one, despite evil being present in the human race, there will be an answer. There will be a resolution of the problem. As here, not speaking to the Satan, not speaking in the hearing of Eve, but entirely to Cain.

God tells him what will happen and yet he gives him this advice, you must master it. And God would not give Cain that advice and he would not pass on that advice to you if it was impossible for you and me to secure and live by. So the first major thing I bring to your attention as I try to rapidly go through this, this doctrine of sin in scripture is that sin is here personified.

Sin is crouching at your door. Here is the beginnings of scripture examining the mechanics of sin. There is a sense in which sin itself does seem to be personalized in the word of God.

And you know the occasion, and there was such a hush when I said it, I take that hush as being indicative of you identifying with it. There are occasions when you ask yourself, how could I have done that? As though sin was external to you and yet seemed to control you as though you were a puppet on a string. Now that's not the conclusion.

You're not a puppet on a string, but it seemed like that. And it did to the apostle Paul because if there's any man who can expound for us what is meant by sin crouching at the door, surely it is Paul and staggeringly so because we might have thought that Paul, this mighty apostle, this great ambassador of God, got all his act together and was ever successful in the struggle against unrighteousness and sinfulness. And yet in the sixth chapter, having warned his readers about the problem of sin, in the seventh he goes on and he speaks from his own experience.

And he talks about verse 11, sin, seizing the opportunity and deceiving me. In the 25th verse, or the 24th verse, he seems to suggest that sin has so dominated, as far as he is concerned, his wretched, he has become as a slave. This is his problem.

I know what I want to do, but I don't do it. The evil that I would not so often envelops me and I seem to be driven by it. And says Paul, as he comes to the end of that almost harrowing chapter, and from his breast comes this plaintive cry, who shall deliver me? The last point caps that depressive catalog of personal statements by saying, thanks be unto God, there is someone.

Jesus Christ can step into my life. The spirit within me of lawlessness can be overcome by the spirit that Jesus brings, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit of Jesus working within me can enable me to live a life that is a righteous life and pleasing to God. But you see, what I'm arguing is this, that in Romans 7, coming from the pen of Paul, you get exactly the same situation as in Genesis 4. And as Paul says, it is possible, so God says to Cain, even though he seems to have personalized the power of the devil hovering over Cain, he says, you can, indeed you must master him.

You must master it. I want us to continue with a spotlight upon the sinner just for a moment. Cain, as I say, is a historical figure, but there is a sense in which I want the word Cain to blur and for it to refocus with yourself, because as I say, this is historical and it is also typical.

So here is a question to ask of yourself as well as to ask of Cain. Was Cain a sinner because he sinned, or did he sin because he was a sinner? Now think that one through. It's not obvious at first reading, but give it a little bit of concentration and you'll see that it enshrines a problem.

Was Cain a sinner because he sinned, or did he sin because he was a sinner? In other words, did Cain have a bias towards sin? Do you have a bias towards sin? Did you discover with me that you didn't need anybody to teach you how to sin, but I have needed people to teach me how to live righteously, and alas, I haven't always been a very good student. Come, let me tussle with you further. Those of you who are parents, I really am identifying a psychological problem in parenting.

You children, be honest. Were they naturally good? Were there times when they almost took you to breaking point? At times when your patience was strained? Did you ask yourself, how did he have that trait? How did she have that trait? If you're a father, you probably said, well, he got it from his mother, or vice versa. You see, the fact of the matter is that even modern psychology agrees with the psychology of the Bible here, that there is a trait, there is a sinful bias, which you and I have, as well as Cain demonstrated.

Let's just talk a little bit further about Cain literally. He was the first naturally born person, wasn't he? I mean, it's quite unusual language that Eve uses when she describes the fulfillment of her pregnancy. She said, with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man, and presumably we read the word man there in terms of man-child.

Adam was created by God, and Eve was peculiarly formed from Adam. So, Cain is the first one to be born like you and I are born from the mother's womb. And there's possibly a sense in which, as Eve gives acknowledgement of her indebtedness to God for the birth of this man-child, she too is embracing the promise of the Lord, putting her own life in order, acknowledging the sovereignty of God, and clinging to the thought that from her seed would come forth someone who would one day slay the serpent, who would undo the problems that she and Adam caused in the Garden of Eden.

I mean, the possibility is, I put it no firmer than that, that even Cain, on the horizon of Eve's estimation, might have been the fulfillment of what God had in mind when he made this promise. But the fact is that Cain inherits the same sinful tendency as Adam and Eve. I wonder if one can touch on a delicate area for a moment.

If the reason why our first parents cover their sexual organs with a ridiculous apron of fig leaves was because there you got from that incident the growing impression that they were forming, that somehow their disobedience, their sinfulness would be passed on in the very gene, in the very procreative act. A man, a woman, a boy or a girl flowing from the loins of the parents, so to speak, would in some sense inherit that same sinful disposition. Well, as far as Eve is concerned, though she names Cain Gotten, which is a familiar word with our American friends, though we don't generally use it here in the UK.

Gotten, Gotten of the Lord, though God did fulfill his promise to Eve in part, Cain is not to be the one who will put to rights the damage in Eden. Cain has the same traits of Adam and Eve, and when the events of this chapter become history, Eve will blush at the thought of what Cain has done. Move on to David, King David.

I mean, in one sense, King David is one of the great hopes of sinners as we reflect upon the Old Testament. I mean, he was a man who was taken to the heights of ecstasy, spiritual ecstasy. He's a prophet, he's a priest.

Well, perhaps not a priest, but certainly a prophet. He is a king, the sweetest psalmist that Israel ever knew. I mean, there's a spirituality in David that is, if not unique, it's certainly rare.

And yet David, in a multiple of sinning, brings damage to Israel, disgrace to himself, and when caught up in contrition and conviction, what does he say? In sin, my mom conceived me, but he wasn't born out of wedlock. I mean, he was the seventh son of Jesse and his wife. This is no adulterous affair of which David is the offspring.

What David is saying is what you find here in Genesis 4, what the Apostle Paul experiences and tells us in Romans 7, that that trait, that germ, it's there within me. It was within me, not just from the point of birth, but also from the point of conception. As in Adam all die, we all partake to some degree of the nature of our first parents.

But I must hasten on to bring something else out from my text. I've spotlighted the sinner. I want to highlight the choice.

You see, here is God, and though I haven't been dealing directly with this incident in Genesis 4, because I'm pulling out the principle rather than looking in detail at the narrative, here is God speaking to Cain, and it's a message of warning. You see, at this point, Cain has not engaged in the sinfulness. Very often, and some of us with great contrition and a sense of failure would have to admit that when we went wrong in our lives, we did have intelligence from God.

He did send the warning. In the most remarkable ways, God sometimes, in His grace, tries to warn us from falling into the chasm that's just in front. And here is Cain, and there is hostility between him and Abel, a hostility born out of reckless jealousy, and God perceives what could come from this jealous attitude, and so He says to him, don't be so downcast.

Don't be so carping. Don't be so bitter. Do what's right, and your actions will be accepted.

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you. You must master it.

So, you see, that puts the other balance to the scriptural teaching on the fact that we have inherited a sinful trait. It doesn't mean that we are therefore irresponsible for our actions. You cannot say to God, I couldn't help it.

Cain, here are the options. Sin, it's there like a lion. It's crouching.

It's going to pounce. But Cain, you can master it. You must master it.

But he doesn't. He doesn't. When man is tempted to fall into sin, there always is God offering to stop him.

He can keep our feet from falling. Satan would cause all men to totter and drop over the precipice. God wants you to stand and to stand firm in his purposes in your life through this world.

The devil wants to knock you down. God wants to keep you standing up. There is a choice.

There is a choice when we are confronted by sin. But what is sin? What is this thing that the evangelical pulpit so preoccupies itself with? Well, we put the question up and rightly so here because this is the first place in the Bible where sin is actually mentioned. Sin is missing the mark.

Sin is falling short. But actually, if you compress sin in terms of what it is and try to break it into two or three points, you have to admit this, that sin is always against God, against thee. Thee only have I sinned and done this evil.

There was a lot wrong with David's practice. There was nothing wrong with David's theology. Here is Eve and Adam before the fourth chapter, the third chapter.

They are tempted. Against whom are they sinning? Against one another? Well, only as a secondary consequence. Primarily, they're sinning against God.

The attack is always directed to him. Here is Lucifer endeavoring to infect Eve and Adam and eclipse the glory of God which stands supremely in man over against any other animal. Sin is always against God.

Sin is always foolish. It's utterly irrational. Cain here is behaving like a child.

There is an irrationality about sin. That's why the Bible says that man basically is a fool. He's a genius as well.

There is this problem within man, this psychological confliction of two things. He knows what he can be and his exploits and his development, they are wonderful. What he can do, he can put a man on the moon.

He can send a message around the world in the twinkling of an eye. All this he can do, but he can't live with himself. He's a fool.

God has set up certain laws of behavior, certain laws of conduct. The reason he set these laws up is that man might be happy, content with himself, content with his fellow, content with his God. When you break the law of God, actually, that is a nonsense.

You cannot break God's law. What happens is God's law breaks you. The law remains intact because the law is holy and good.

Therefore, all sin is essentially foolish. And what's more, all sin is congealed. It's an ugly word, congealed, isn't it? We talk about congealed blood.

Here is a congealed sin. I can illustrate it quite easily from chapter four because, well, first it was jealousy. I mean, Abel, his sacrifice was accepted.

And incidentally, I don't think there was anything particularly good about Abel's sacrifice over against Cain's. I don't think it was the constituent of the sacrifice. I think it was the attitude of the worshiper that God was interested in in this particular incident.

And Abel is accepted. Cain is not. And Cain has jealousy.

And that jealousy, if you examine it, is a congealed thing which will lead to murderous intention, which actually will lead to murder realized. That's why Charles Spurgeon said that there is all hell even in the little sin. Encapsulated in the smallest sin is the vileness of hell because from that little sin other sins can grow.

So, sin diagnosed. It's against God. It's essentially foolish.

It is congealed. What does God do when he sees a man about to fall in sin? Well, he tells him. He warns him.

Our papers have been flooded these last two days. You're almost beginning to feel sorry for the man who's been caught out, this politician, with so many problems, so many disgraces. But those who are heaping their venom against him and judgment perhaps is right, well, definitely is deserved.

We know that we, too, are also sinners. Fortunately, ours is not to run with the spotlight of the national media on us. God comes alongside this man who is the potential sinner, and he endeavors to dissuade him from engaging in his act of folly.

So, finally, sin is confronted, or it should be confronted. It should have been confronted by Cain, and it should be confronted daily by you and me. You say you can't help it.

Well, one has sympathy for human weakness. The Bible has sympathy for human weakness. I obviously have.

I'm human and weak, vulnerable, and I fail. But here is what the Bible says about temptation. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.

And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 13. You see how that again is reaching back to Genesis and chapter 4. Cain, you must master it. Lord, I can't get rid of this thing that binds me.

Time and time again I fall. All right, thank God he's a merciful God. He's a compassionate God.

He knows that you've fallen time and time again, but he's now asking for a renewed effort. He's asking that you put your hand in his hand and having a clean start because he is the God of all forgiveness. You now try to slay that sin with him.

How do you attempt to do it? Well, by analyzing the condition that prompts you to sin, making no provision for the flesh. Whatever sin is, endeavor to get away from the context where it so frequently occurs. Matthew Henry, an old-fashioned preacher, says that sin is a brat that no man can tame.

And the problem is that very often we fight sin when it's too late. You have to fight sin at the beginning because it's just like getting on a slippery slope. Once you're on the slope, even though you know you're doing wrong and you want to stop, you find that the flow of events won't allow you to.

That's the power of sin. It really is a devastating power. That's why the apostle Paul says we have to wrestle against it.

He talks about, at least Peter talks about this roaring lion. We know that the force of sin is such that we are puny. We are incapable, once we are in its flow, of fighting against it.

So you have to start your mastery of sin right at the very beginning, the first thought, the first suggestion of compromise. At that point, you have to fight because it's there where you will win or you will lose. And unfortunately, here, Cain lost.

Sin crouched. Sin pounced. And to the disgrace of Cain and the household of Adam and Eve, the first murder was perpetrated.

But if you read the chapter through, there's still an offering of grace. Unfortunately, Cain doesn't respond. He's deaf to the voice of God.

There is an almost audible silence when God remonstrates with Cain. And yet in his great grace, when Cain has murdered Abel and is afraid for his life, God puts a mark on Cain. And although the sinner doesn't deserve even physical preservation, it's there.

Such is the grace of God. Such is the mercy of God. You can't outstrip the mercy of God, the compassions of God.

Here in this framework of this passage, of this verse, one of the most difficult verses to translate in the whole of the Bible. I've just been working through Calvin as he's expounded this in the earlier hours of this morning. Yet here is this verse and it tells you that within the condemnation that God directs towards sin, there is also grace.

There is also the possibility of forgiveness, of a new start. And so you see, and here I must close, how right it is for us to go back to the first four chapters of Genesis. I think I would go so far as to say this, that unless you understand the teaching of the first few chapters of Genesis, you really cannot fully grasp the marvel of all that is to come.

Here is this great God of creation. Here is man in his puniness. Here is man in his fragility.

And when man fouls things up, God is always there. Adam, where are you? Cain, stop it. Nor am I going to make a way out for you.

Abraham, you shall have a child. Joseph, you're safe, even though you're in the dungeon of Egypt. Throughout Genesis, like a babbling brook, there gurgles the grace of God.

And that grace is highlighted and illustrated even further in the coming into our world of our great and precious Lord Jesus Christ. Sin has a posture, but sin also has to submit to the victory of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer. That's here, Evelyn, and we're all going to start to play something about the forgiveness of God.

Then we're going to go into a hymn, the words of which you'll not be familiar with in as much as it's not in the hymn book. But the sentiment, you will, because it's from Psalm 51, and it's sung to rock of ages cleft for me. But that in a moment or two.

Enjoy listening to this music and prepare to come around the table of our Lord. God be merciful to me. On thy grace I rest my plea.

Plenteous in compassion thou, blot out my transgression now. Wash me, make me pure within. Cleanse, oh cleanse me from my sin.

On the overheads, and also some of you on the side should have word copies. I listen to the breaking of bread. I rejoice in the high life of grace.

Sin has been erased from my heart. Master, Father in heaven. And now we bow to you.

We are worthy brothers. Blessed be the Lord.