Sermon25-16 Gen4 Guide

Gen 4:1-17,25-26 theme verse Gen 4:7

The praise and honor and glory be to our heavenly Father who seeks true worshipers who worship Him with the Spirit and truth.

In this eleventh Sunday of 2025, I pray that His grace of the application of all the benefits which Jesus earned for our salvation and also the glorious ministry of the proclamation of His kingdom by the power of the Holy Spirit may be full in our life. Last week, we meditated on what the glory of God is and also on the virtuous chain in which God’s glory is given to us in Christ and we glorify God again as Christian identity, yet this week, we would like to look at the fall of human beings, by eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil after being created in His glory.

1)    First of all, to summarize the story of the Genesis chapter 1 through 4, after the creation story is provided in chapter 1 & 2 and then the story of first sin of Adam and Eve who ate the fruit of knowledge of good and evil which God prohibited to eat and so were expelled from the Eden being punished. And then in chapter 4, today’s text, the story of their two sons, Cain and Abel was written. I mean, when these two sons offered sacrifices to God, God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, yet did not accept Cain’s. So Cain got angry and killed his younger brother Abel which was the first murder in the God’s creation world. And then when God who already knew this asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”, Cain lied that he did not know and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” So God said to him “What have you done? The sound of your brother’s blood cris out to me from the ground,” and punished for his sin that he was cursed from the ground and became a fugitive and a wanderer on earth. But, Cain protested against God, saying, “My punishment is greater than I bear and whoever finds me will kill me.” So, God put a mark on Cain lest any who found him should attack him.

2)    To look at theological meaning of these creation, fall and corruption story of Genesis chapter 1 through 4, first, human beings, the pinnacle of God’s creation, in the chapter 1 and 2, were created in male and female, according to His good will, in His love, and God saw them and said, “It is very good” and He gave them the cultural mandate, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God made them live in the Eden, which was full of the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and all kinds of trees that were beautiful to look at and good for food, and to cultivate and care for them, yet God commanded them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And as such, God made human beings, created in the image of God, live righteously and holy according to God’s will. However, they were tempted by the serpent and ate the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had told them not to eat, saying that when they ate, they would surely die. Through this sin, they meant that they wanted to judge good and evil according to their own will, instead of God’s will. And also at the root of this first sin was pride and unfaith. Anyhow, in this way, the sin of eating the forbidden fruit not only brought spiritual, physical, and eternal death to human beings, but also caused us to live a life of pain and suffering, and also separated from God, from other human beings, and from nature, and even from true self. And then the first incident in which this sin and its consequences were manifested as a crime was the first murder case in Genesis chapter 4, in which Cain killed his younger brother Able. Because God did not accept Cain’s sacrifice, while accepting Able’s sacrifice in faith, Cain, becoming jealous of Abel, killed him. In this brutal murder, we can find unfaith in Cain’s sacrifice, and disobedience to God’s will to help each other, and even the arrogance of deciding and judging good and evil according to one’s own will, protesting to God’s punishment for his murder. And then the Bible said that Cain gave birth to his son and named “Enoch” meaning “devotion”. And after building castle for him, he named it his son’s name “Enoch”. Through this incident, we can know that Cain lived pursuing to make his name for himself. That’ why I think Sigmund Freud wrote in his book ‘Civilization and its Discontents”, quoting Plautus’s words, “Human is a wolf to human,” said that, “Human is an animal born with a strong aggressive instinct. Ultimately, their neighbor is not only a person who helps them or a sexual object, but also an object that can satisfy their aggressiveness, exploit their labor without compensation, sexually exploit them without consent, take away what they have, insult them, cause them pain, torture them, and kill them.” And also that’s why even the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Human is the most evil and dangerous being without law and rights.” But, it is very meaningful to see the Bible said that people of the lineage of faith based on God’s forgiveness called on the name of God the LORD even in that situation.

3)    Anyhow, about this fall and corruption of human being is confessed in Belgic confession article 14 that “We believe that God created man out of the dust of the earth and made and formed him after His own image and likeness, good, righteous, and holy, capable in all things to will agreeably to the will of God. But being in honor, he understood it not, neither knew his excellency, but willfully subjected himself to sin and consequently to death and the curse, giving ear to the words of the devil. For the commandment of life, which he had received, he transgressed; and by sin separated himself from God, who was his true life; having corrupted his whole nature; whereby he made himself liable to corporal and spiritual death. And being thus become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all his ways, he has lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God, and retained only small remains thereof, which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse; for all the light which is in us is changed into darkness, as the Scriptures teaches us, saying: The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not; where St. John calls men darkness. Therefore, since man is but a slave to sin, and can receive nothing, except it have been given him from heaven. That’s why Jesus said, ‘No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him’ and ‘Apart from me ye can do nothing.’”

4)    Here according to the Belgic confession, it confesses that “God created man out of the dust of the earth and made and formed him after His own image and likeness, good, righteous, and holy, capable in all things to will agreeably to the will of God.” Here, “good” means according to the Oxford dictionary, a) that which is morally right or b) that benefit or advantage to someone or something. But, in the theological meaning, Louis Berkhof said in his book “Systematic Theology” that “We speak of something as good, when it answers in all parts to the ideal. Hence in our ascription of goodness to God the fundamental idea is that He is in every way all that He as God should be, and therefore answers perfectly to the ideal expressed in the word “God.” As such to the human being, we can say good when human is everyway all that human should be, in other words, to consent to the purpose of God’s creation. The Belgic confession says that human is good, righteous, and holy when human will agreeably to the will of God.

5)    In that sense, John Stott’s saying about the ideal relationship between God’s will and human will in his book “Good Christian” is very meaningful. I mean, he said in his book that “Human has own will. … This means there exist two wills. I mean, God’s will and human will. Then what is the ideal relationship between God’s will and human will? Some say that as asserting one’s rights and becoming independent from one’ parent is the process of maturity for children, a person becomes an adult only when the person rebels against God’s will and seeks independent will. However, we Christians say that this is not the case. We say that declaring our own autonomy as human and removing Glod as the Lord is not maturity but sin, and this is exactly what the Bible says is sin. Adam in the Garden of Eden committed this foolish sin of rebelling against his Creator and the Israelites committed this foolish sin, stubbornly and persistently rejecting the Word of God proclaimed through the prophets, and we have been committing the same sin today too. By the way, as the rational relationship between human will and God’s will is not rebellion, neither is it an ideal relationship for one side to be absorbed into the other. This is an error of the Eastern mysticism such as Hinduism and Buddhism which regret our own individuality, or own existence as opposing divine one, whether it be called the ‘supreme being’, ‘reality’ or ‘the soul of the world’ so that they long to lose their own identity and become a state of no-self in order to immerse themselves in nirvana, to become assimilated like a drop of water in the ocean of existence, or like a spark in the primordial flame. This is also not Christian belief. Rather in Christianity, we believe that God created us to have a clear individuality, and we will enjoy it forever. That is, you will remain as you are, and I will remain as I am forever. In this way, the relationship of human will to God’s will is not one of rebellion or unilateral absorption, but rather submission, voluntary submission. In Jesus’ example we can see clearly the example of obedience, who neither exercised his will against the Father, nor desire to withdraw his will and be absorbed by the Father. Instead, He kept his will yet submitted it to the Father. So as His disciples, we have to find our true identity in this voluntary obedience of our will, not in the rebellion or extinction of our will.

6)    That’s why Jesus prayed all night in Gethsemane the night before he was arrested, that “Not as I will, but as you will(Mt 26:39).” and in the Lord prayer, He taught us to pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Mt 6:10).” This is true meaning of free will. I mean, free will is not a will that is free from all authority and restrictions. And free will is not a will that is free from one’s own existence in order to be absorbed into the divine will. Rather it is a will that is free from being bound to oneself by confessing God as absolutely good and surrendering oneself to His will! That is free will. That’s why even Heb 6:18 confesses that even God cannot lie. True freedom is not doing as one pleases, rather true freedom is found in standing in the truth, that is, rejecting all lies.

7)    As we can say good when a person lives as one should be as one was created, true freedom is freedom when one does what one ought to do, not what one wants to do. In that sense, Kanzo Uchimura said that “External freedom without inner freedom is worthless. Even if I am free from the submission of external pressure, what good is it if I cannot control my own mind from ignorance, sin, selfishness, fear, etc.? I would like to say that only the following people are free. That is, those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the happiness of mankind without being caught up in their own arrogance, anger, and negligence are truly free.”

8)    As we saw today, when we submit our will to the will of God, we can enjoy real freedom. That’s why the Lord said in John 8:32 that “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free” and in John 14:6 that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and in John 8:36 that “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Therefore, I hope that this year, we may all realized the true will of God’s creation, follow the Lord who is the truth, and submit ourselves to God’s will, so that we can all live in true freedom.

Key Questions as Small Group Activity

Q1 According to today’s sermon, we can know that God created in His image, good, righteous and holy to be able to consent to His pleasing will. So after thinking about this end of will of God’s creation, and whether we have been living in His will, I hope we could share our thought and experience with our team members together to learn from each other.

Q2 But then why do you think we His creation have to live in His will? After thinking about the reason why, I hope we could share our thought and experience with our team members together to learn from each other.

Love you. Thank you. God bless you.

Prayer Note

Dear ( God’s attribute which you found Today ) God!

Thanks for ( something you received through the sermon or  even during the week )

Praise, gratitude and glory be to You, Lord!

Today, I realized my sin (pains) that ( the sin God reminded through the sermon ),

please forgive (or heal) me and help me not to repeat ( the sins you recognized   ).

I learned that ( something you learned through the sermon                                    )

Please help me to live in that (  learned way of life                                                )

I pray in ( Jesus’ attribute you find ) Jesus’ name. Amen.