Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you able to remain standing,
please do as we turn our attention to
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first John, chapter three, first
John Three, verses eleven through eighteen.
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This is God's word for this is
the message that you have heard from the
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beginning, that we should love one
another. We should not be like Kine,
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who was of the evil one and
murdered his brother. And why did
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he murder him? Because his own
deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.
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Do not be surprised, brothers,
that the world hates you. We know
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that we have passed out of death
into life because we love the brothers.
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Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a
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murderer, and you know that no
murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
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By this, we know love,
that he laid down his life for us,
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and we ought to lay down our
lives for the brothers. But if
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anyone has the world's goods and sees
his brother in need, yet closes his
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heart against him, how does God's
love abide in him? Little Children,
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let us not love in word or
talk, but indeed and in truth.
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Amen, please be seated. Last
week, we focused on the foundational truth
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of love when we read that this
message that you have heard from the beginning,
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that we should love one another.
We spent time reflecting on this fact
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that we have heard it from the
beginning, that love is so fundamental to
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everything. It's fundamental to human life, our relationships with one another, the
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very prospering of the human race.
We also considered how sin destroys these foundations,
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how lack of love pulls us apart, pulls societies apart, creates all
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kinds of damage and catastrophe. And
we also considered how this fundamental requirement to
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love that we all know and have
known since the beginning, we know in
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a new way, in a new
beginning with Christ, when we come to
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know the Lord Jesus Christ, we
come to understand love in a new way.
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We come to understand how it is
at the core of being who we
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are, because it's at the core
of who he is. We're being made
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into his image. To Re emphasize
that point, remember what John Writes here
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a little later, towards the end
of what I read by this. We
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know love, that he laid his
life down for us, and that has
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implications. We ought to lay down
our lives for the brothers. This foundational
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part of love. Is One of
the ways in which John is underscoring all
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the importance that we ought to love, that it's foundational. Today we focus
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on another reason that he gives.
It's a reason by showing the opposite.
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It's a way to understand the the
the opposite things, so that you can
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you can know what it is we're
looking at when we look at love.
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The opposite of love is, to
use an old word, loathe some the
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opposite of love is a loathsome thing. When you loathe something, you see
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that it you abhore it, you
find it disgusting. I like to use
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the analogy of finding some rotten food
in your fridge. You open it up,
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hoping to make yourself some lunch and
you pull the lid off and there's
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this thing, you know, full
of fungus and bad smell and it is
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loathsome to you. You never sort
of caudle it right or say oh well,
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this is really nice, let's keep
it for a while longer. No,
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you you do everything you can to
get it away as quickly as you
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can and, at least for me, I tend to make a lot of
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noise about it and throw it in
the trash can try and get it out
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of the house. It's like that. With the opposite of love, or
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at least it should be. To
hate is not a minor thing. We
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should loathe hatred, we should despise
it, abhor it, find it disgusting.
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Simply, put in another way and
on the back of a story,
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we should not be like Kane.
That's how John Puts It. He says
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you ought to love one another.
You ought to love one another. We
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should not be like Kane. Now
John is doing what he does here,
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has done several times in this letter, and that he's assuming a certain amount
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of knowledge on our part, on
the part of his breeders. Now,
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if you don't know anything about Kane, you can learn some things from him
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here. There's something that went wrong
between him and a brother. His works
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were evil, his brothers were righteous, he was of the devil. This
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is a bad guy. In other
words, we can get that, but
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I think it would be helpful to
go back to genesis chapter four and here
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and remember who can is. So
I'm going to do that now and read
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to you, read to you from
that chapter. Why should we not be
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like Caine? Came Story, the
story of Cain and his brother Abel comes
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to us. After the fall of
mankind into sin, into death, that
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abiding in death that John Talks about. It happened after the Fall Adam and
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eve, the very first humans of
the world. They fell and now out
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of the garden life continues on by
the grace of God. We should add
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what happened. Here's what happened.
Now Adam knew his eve, his wife,
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and she conceived and bore Kine,
saying I have gotten a man with
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the help of the Lord. Let
me pause just for a moment there and
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say this is a significant thing that
she says this. This isn't a way
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a kind of confession of faith.
The God of the God who made her
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and her husband, the God who
they sinned against, promised them death if
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they disobeyed. But now they are
living and they are producing offspring. That's
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also significant, because God has promised
that through her offspring, things would be
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set right, the serpent that deceived
them would be crushed. And so here
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we have our first glimmer of hope. I Have Begot, I have gotten
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a man with the help of the
Lord. And again she bore his brother
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Abel. Now Abel was a keeper
of sheep and Caine, a worker of
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the ground. In the course of
time, Cain brought to the Lord an
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offering of the fruit of the ground. An Abel also brought of the first
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born of his fraught flock and their
fat portions, and the Lord had regard
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for Abel and his offering, but
for Cain and his offering he had no
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regard. So caine was very angry
and he fell on his face. The
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Lord said to Caine, why are
you angry? Why is your face fallen?
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If you do well, will you
not be accepted? And if you
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do not do well, sin his
crouching at the door. Its desire is
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for you, but you must rule
over it. Caine spoke to Abel,
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his brother, and when they were
in the field, Caine rose up against
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his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Caine, where
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is Abel, your brother? He
said, I do not know. Am
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I my brother's keeper? The Lord
said, what have you done? The
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Voice of your brother's blood is crying
to me from the ground, and now
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you are cursed from the ground,
which has opened its mouth to receive your
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brother's blood from your hand. When
you work the ground, it shall no
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longer yield to you as strength.
You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer
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on the earth. Caine said to
the Lord, my punishment is greater than
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I can bear. Behold, you
have driven me to day, away from
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the ground and from your face.
I shall be hidden, I shall be
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a fugitive and a wanderer on the
earth, and whoever finds me will kill
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me. Then the Lord said to
him, not so. If any one
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kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken
on him sevenfold. And the Lord put
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a mark on Caine lest any who
found him should attack him. Then Caine
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went away from the presence of the
Lord and settled in the land of Nod,
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east of Eden. So this is
the story of two brothers, Caine
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and Abel. It's the story of
two ways of living in the presence of
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God. It's a story of responding
to God when two ways of responding to
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God when he calls us to account
for our sins. It's the story of
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what happens when sin enters into the
world and infects a family, infects of
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the even the whole human race.
But let's start with just one thing,
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the offering. Why did God Not
Take Cane's offering? I think this is
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important because we don't always trust the
Bible like we ought to. God is
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very clear here that Caine is in
the wrong. He says, if you
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do well, will you not be
accepted? So, even if we don't
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understand exactly what's going on with the
offerings, we ought to believe the word
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of the Lord. If the Lord
says one thing, is it acceptable,
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in another is not. That should
be good enough for us. But the
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Lord does give us a reason to
understand what's going on here, why he
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accepts cane's offering and and not ables. What is it that came did wrong
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in the first place? In other
words, what Cain did wrong is he
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did not bring forth his best the
chapters, these chapters in genesis are very,
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very carefully constructed. The details really
matter, and it's significant when it
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says very plainly that came brought the
fruit of the ground, some of the
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fruit of the ground, it seems
rather innocuous until you contrast it with what
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Abel brings the firstborn of his flock, with the fat portions. especially as
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we go to understand later in scripture
how God takes sacrifices and these kinds of
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things, it's clear that what's happening
here is cane brings something and Abel brings
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the best. Well, we see
here, then, is God is not
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being capricious. He's not simply mad
at cane for some random reason. It's
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also not true that God prefers shepherds
to gardeners. He made a garden,
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after all, the garden of Eden. He told Adam and Eve to tend
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that garden. Bruce Walkey and Old
Testament commentator writes it this way. Cane
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sin is tokenism. He looks religious, but in his heart he's not totally
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dependent on God. Childlike or grateful, able takes the very first thing that
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happens, the very first product of
his work as a shepherd, and he
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gives it away to the Lord.
He sacrifices it's to the Lord. It's
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a it's a it's a it's a
moment of trust, it's an expression of
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faith that God has given him this
life and God will preserve him his life,
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in his work and his business and
in his own soul. Cane,
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however, is cane sin is Walki
says, is is tokenism. Well,
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this is the beginning of things,
this is how it all starts, right.
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How does cane respond to this.
Well, his face falls. He
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has that not the angry, shake
your fist in the sky look, but
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the despondent, fine then kind of
look. Then he decides to go to
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his brothers talk to him about this. Then he decides to kill his brother,
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to shed the blood of his very
own flesh. That's a terrible thing.
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To murder anyone is terrible thing,
but to murder your own brother,
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it's hard to imagine. What have
you done, the Lord says, the
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Voice of your brother's blood is crying
to me from the ground. Where is
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your brother? He says to Kane, how do I know my my brother's
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keeper? Does Kane sound repentant?
Does Kane sound guilty, ashamed, embarrassed?
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Cane is defiant. Kane is angry. Kane is full of hatred for
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his brother, in for the Lord. And what did his brother to nothing.
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His brother did not sin against him. All his brother did was worship
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the God who made them both.
What did God do? God did nothing
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wrong to cane. God gave Caine
Life, as his own mother testified with
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her very own words, recorded here
in scripture. God gave Caine Life.
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God gave him the fruit of the
ground, ground that was cursed after the
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sin of his father. God prospered
Cain. God gave him a brother and
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others as well. Does he depend
on the Lord? Does he give thanks
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to the Lord? He hates the
Lord, he hates his brother. He's
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full of anger and rage and evil
and he wants what he wants when he
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wants it. And when the Lord
punishes him instead of again repenting, what
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does he say? Says this is
too much, you're being unfair. And
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what does God do? He gives
him yet more grace and promises to protect
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him while he wanders on the earth, a complete protection and justice that he
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that he will experience as he lives
his life. God's persevering power will continue
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to be over kine even after he
leaves the presence of the Lord, after
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he leaves this family of God.
So this is the tragic story of Kine
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and it's why John can say in
his letter so briefly, don't be like
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Kane. You ought to love one
another. Be Not like Kane. How
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does John Interpret these things for us? One thing he says is that Kane
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was of the evil one, and
we see that very clearly from these events
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in Genesis. Cane's works followed Satan's
works. Kane, it was like Satan,
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a liar, a murderer, a
breaker of families, a disruptor of
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worship. Cane's works followed Satan's,
and that's why John says it in this
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way. He says be not like
Kane, who was of the evil one
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and murdered his brother. In this
we see that his actions were not just
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outward ones. The actions that came
took these, this murder, in other
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words, corresponded to an inward reality, something that was going on deep,
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deep, deep inside Kane's heart.
Kane's actions were no accident. They expressed
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this inwardness, and this is John's
point, his main point. We should
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not be like Cain, because Cane's
works were bad, yes, but we
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should also not be like kine,
because Kane was bad. He was of
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the evil one. He did evil
deeds because his nature was evil. He
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did what he did because, as
John says, he abided in death.
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That's where he lived, that's where
he dwelt. Death infused everything that he
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was doing and it resulted in the
death of his brother and in the death
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of himself. So when we hear
the story of Kine and we feel repugnance
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about it, when we loathe these
actions, when we imagine the blood of
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Abel splattering on Kane as he's being
murdered and we despise it and we feel
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for able, who only was doing
the right thing, who is the first
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martyr for the Lord, when we
think about the injustice of murder, when
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we think about all of these things
in our hatred of it, this is
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how we ought to feel about our
own sins, our own hatred, our
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own fleshly desires, our own pride
and tokenism and false worship. We ought
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to feel the same way about our
own hatred that we do when we see
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kings. Why? Because it's connected
to the same source evil, death,
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punishment, the works of the flesh. But we also ought to realize what
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John is saying about those who are
no longer under the dominion of Satan but
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have been rescued by God into another
kingdom. What John is describing here is
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a change that happens here in this
text and throughout the letter. He's been
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talking about how we know and understand
what a Christian is. A Christian is
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not like Caine, who has been
all who is of the evil one who
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does evil things, who's filled with
hatred and rage and anger. Why?
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Because a Christian has been born of
the Holy Spirit is of someone else.
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A Christian is one who is of
Christ. He has been rescued by Christ
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out of this cane like world and
came like flesh too, becomes Christ like.
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What John is saying is that the
reason the world hates us is the
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same reason that Cain hated Abel.
It's the same reason the world hated Christ.
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Because we are righteous in the world. Is Not because we no longer
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abide in death, but we abide
in life now. Is that because we
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all cleaned up our acts and put
together a to due list and went out
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and didn't murder people? No,
because you and I both know that the
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that fleshliness is still in us.
That heart, that unloving heart, is
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still there and it comes out in
physical actions, even hitting, fighting,
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pushing, biting, even murdering.
These things are evil. We should not
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be like king, not just because
they are evil, but because we have
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been made new creatures in Christ.
There's this weird disconnection that exists in the
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life of the Christian and people see
it. We don't like it, but
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it's true. On the white hand, where people that have been reborn,
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made new, filled with love,
and this is our heart. And then,
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on the other hand, we do
unloving things, hateful things, evil
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things. John is inspiring us in
a way. He's saying, when you
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think about who you are, remember
how you ought to act, act this
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way because of who you are.
They're connected to one another. They're totally
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connected to one another. There is
no abiding in life outside of Christ.
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There is no living anew or loving
again or finding a new way outside of
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Jesus. We love as Christians because
it is the nature of Christ to love,
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and we have been born again in
him. We are freed from death
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because Christ, by an act of
love, has freed from death. We
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have become righteous because of an act
of love. We have gained victory over
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sin because of an act of love. We have grace because of an act
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of love. We have freedom from
sorrow because of an act of love,
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because of what Jesus Christ did in
loving us, we are remade to love
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others. We who are being remade, then are changed. Then we should
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not be like Kine, because we
are not of Kine, we are of
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Christ. Now, of course,
that's the should and we know that we
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don't always do it. We all
sin, as I've said, even is
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Christians. We find blood on our
hands and we despise ourselves for the things
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we do and say and think.
I don't just mean mistakes, I mean
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the works of Kine. The difference, however, between us is Christians and
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kine is not necessarily this or that
action, but ultimately the difference lies in
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the action of God. He has
put his Holy Spirit in us so that
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when he calls us to account,
when he points out the blood on our
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hands, the lies in our lips, the deception in our hearts, he's
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put our wholy, his Holy Spirit
in us so that when he calls us
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to account, we repent rather than
rebel. We turned toward him instead of
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away from him and by His grace
in us, we learn to love.
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This is the good news of the
Gospel, that even when we sin,
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God is There Being Gracious, being
merciful, just as he did for Cain.
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But CAINE's life is a lesson,
an example to not be like,
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not just in his murderous actions,
but also in the way that he responds
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to them. When God puts his
Holy Spirit in US, he allows us
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to respond in a new way,
so that we cannot be like king,
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but's that we can be like Christ. So when you feel hatred in your
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hearts, when you feel discouraged at
the hatred in your hearts, and when
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you see this example and say I
don't want to go this way, I
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want to go this way, I
don't want to hate, I want to
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love and live in love, then
put your faith in Christ, because he
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is love, he gives us life
and he prefrompt any promises to forgive us
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when we confess our sins and rest
in him. Know the love of God,
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Beloved, Know The love of God
in Christ. Let's pray.
