Watchful

Let’s just, you know, I had an experience a long time ago when I was a college pastor in Southern Cow. Took students to Yosemite and in the valley we looked up at El Capitan and we were just in awe. Awesome was the right word for that moment. There was this monolith, the largest piece of granite anywhere. God made it.

We were just little people at the bottom looking up and and we sang together that song. And so I don’t know if you can imagine El Capitan or Mount Hood or Mount Rainier or some Mount McKinley. You pick your place. But with your eyes kind of open and imagining something outside of the roof confines of this gathering place. Let’s just sing that again right now.

Well, shall we? And just imagine in awe an awesome God that is worthy of these words that we’re singing to him now. Oh Lord, we exalt thee. We exalt thee. We exalt thee.

We exalt thee. The think that the day will come when as revelation says we will gather before your throne Lord with people that have bowed their knee in generations throughout time. And we will be joined by heavenly host in that moment Lord. And it will blow us away again and again that you look from your throne at your people with a smile of love and compassion and and joy and fulfillment on your face because we are your people and you as you say so often will be our God. So today is a little sort of step in that direction.

It really is. And we exalt you with our limitations. With our humanity we exalt you because you’re worthy of that praise. And I pray that would redefine and reset some things this morning. Let’s stretch all the way forward to that day.

Because we exalt you. Amen. Amen. Have a seat if you would this morning. Amen.

Wow. We probably looked a little strange in that gathering that long ago in Yosemite Valley because we all took hands and we sang and we were surrounded by a whole lot of people that were staring and none of it mattered to us. Because we were doing something that we’re doing and we’re able to do here. Yeah El Capitan and Half Dome and Bridalville Falls. All the cool things of Yosemite there.

600 miles south of here but God is right here. Right. So, amen. We get to be community. It’s a series that we started a couple of weeks ago and it’s what we’re made for.

Well, we just did. Would make would be meaningful and make a impact in our hearts if we did it all alone. But there’s something incredibly more than that when we do it together. Would you agree church? Yeah, amen.

By the way, can I just tell you something really funny. I had you look with your eyes open up and in my case I was staring at some very, very bright light. So right now none of your faces are visible to me still. It’s like wow. But that’s okay.

Maybe that’s what God wants. He wants my eyes on him, right? So that’ll be good. So two weeks ago we started a series that began in the second page. Second chapter of the Bible.

In Genesis chapter two God made an assessment. This is before sin entered the world. That was chapter three. And he said very simply in chapter two verse 18 that aloneness is not good. Would you please reach for your outline?

It’s not an outline. It’s like a notes page in your bulletin. And if you weren’t here two weeks ago, that’s a takeaway already. Aloneness is not good. That’s not a commentary on singleness.

That’s a statement of fact that God says about aloneness. Because we as humans were never meant to do human alone. That’s the idea here. So you can be single and called to be single and celebrate your whole life. And aloneness is not good.

And aloneness is not good. Still applies to you. So chapter two verse 18 that’s that statement. Now most of you have turned to that chapter again. And I want to tell you something that with God’s words still echoing in his statement in verse 18.

It’s not good for man to be alone. And yourself hearing them with how to echo to them. They were spoken by the thunderous voice of the creator God. This isn’t just, hey, this is God speaking. And he said it clearly.

And while I was still being sort of echoed if I can use that imagery, he sets out to do something about a less than good situation. So he in this context, there’s only one human alive. His name was Adam. And so he sets out for Adam to solve the problem of aloneness. And I want you to look on in the same chapter to verse 21 and see how it goes.

Verse 20, Adam, for Adam, there was no suitable helper found. Okay. So verse 21 then introduces the Lord God doing something about it. And he caused the man to fall into deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken from the man and he brought her to the man. And the man said something that’s not recorded in Hebrew. Whoa. No, I’m just kidding. Okay.

So the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. For she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. And then notice how the chapter ends.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame there. Problem solved. Solo is a no go. And God did something about it, right? Adam that day had somebody else.

Aloneness was resolved. The problem was fixed. Now, I want you to stay in that last verse for just a second so I can say this. I’m not sure I’ve thought about it. I’m not sure how long happy lasted.

You say, where’s happy? Well, read verse 25 and that’s happy. Okay. That’s the word I’m using to describe what we’re looking at in the text. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but the next chapter, the smile of being naked with your spouse and feeling no shame replaced by a very different look, a look of worry and a annoying feeling of something you’d never felt, fear.

Both are a direct result of what unfolds in chapter three. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from the tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die, she adds, which was words that weren’t in the original warning. You will not certainly die came the reply from the serpent to the woman.

For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. You will know good and evil. Woman digesting those words saw that the fruit of the tree tells us she’s looking back at the tree and reconsidering her thinking. She saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom and that prompted her to take some and eat. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he too ate and the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized what they did not realize at the end of the previous chapter.

They realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden of cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked.

And so I hid. And in those 10 verses we’ve been introduced to two new words that have never appeared in the biblical text. The narrative does not record these words until verse 8 and verse 10. The words are hid, verse 8. Man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord and they hid from the Lord their God, verse 10.

In answer to the question, where are you? I heard you in the garden, so I hid which introduces in verse 10. 10, a second word not seen or heard until you read it in verse 10. And it explains why he hid. I was afraid.

I hid because I was scared. I’ll spare you the details. You can read them on your own. The rest of chapter three is really an extensive presentation of of curses and consequences for what we just read in those 10 verses. Repeatedly the word cursed or cursed comes up verse 14.

It comes up again in verse 17. Everything changed in the words of John Milton. Paradise was indeed lost. And you and I just read about it. It’s a bad, unseen, which makes what introduces chapter four really quite strange to me.

If you’re an unfamiliar reader of the text, you’re even going to say, maybe it wasn’t as bad as the preacher just said. Look at verse one of chapter four. Adam, this is right after curses and consequences. This is right after God said you’re going to be banished from the garden and they were. Verse one then introduces something altogether, extremely the opposite.

Adam made love to his wife Eve and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. And she said with the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man. It’s an interesting, maybe it was a big child, I don’t know. But I have brought forth a male son, of course, a baby. And later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

So they went from banished verse 23 in the previous chapter. Banished meets kicked out and excluded. They were banished and they didn’t go willingly. They were driven out, that’s verse 24. God said, get out.

And they did. And we go from that horrible, horrible. You ever been kicked out of something, your home or job? I wrecked a car at the gas station I worked at and the boss said, get out. It almost fell off the rack.

I guess it was, you know, appropriate. Get out. There was no smile. I went out through my grease rag and thought, I don’t need this job. And my mother got me the job back.

But anyway, get out is not a good sound. Is it? I don’t care where you are, what you’re thinking of, right, this is not good. You’re fired, you’re done. Get out.

And then we go all the way to another, you might be tempted if this is news to you to sort of see chapter three as a bad dream. Maybe it’s just a horrible aberration. But I’m afraid that would be wishful thinking. And here’s why. You only have to read the next eight verses in chapter four.

“To see that the consequences of sins spelled out in chapter three were very, very real.” Indeed. Let’s read them. Verse two goes on. “Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil.”

So Abel, a farmer, Abel took care of, rather Cain took care of the farm and Abel was a a shepherd. Abel keep flocks, Cain worked soil in the course of time. Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering, fat portions from some of the first born of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering of these fat portions.

But on Cain in 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?

If you did what was right, will you not be accepted?” So I’m not sure what it was about his offering, but it wasn’t right. The text tells us. Maybe it was just, you know, I don’t know. It’s just a bunch of vegetables.

Who cares? I don’t know. Meat causes you to actually sacrifice an animal. That’s a cost. And there’s probably a lot of deeper reasons.

But the point is, just let’s just go with the plain reading here. If you’re done with right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is, this is a great image, crouching at your door. It desires to have you, almost putting live properties to sin, doesn’t it? It’s like a lion.

I picture this lion, it’s just ready to jump out from hiding and take you down. It desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out into the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Let’s stop for a second.

Somehow in this presentation of offerings, Cain sieved in jealous resentment. Maybe they were there together when the offerings were presented. I presume that to be the case. And Cain looked over at Abel and that exchange between a God that says, “I like and receive and accept your offering.” And God didn’t have the same look on his face.

I try to put images in my mind to sort of be in that moment. This situation here where Cain is seething in jealous resentment, he got the pat on the head. He got the attaboy. He got the nice going. And it was probably way deeper than that.

So he sucked it up and held it in only briefly until his anger boiled his resentment and eventually blew up in this murderous rage, killing his kid brother. By the way, that’s the first murder in the Bible. It wouldn’t be the last. Meanwhile, God who saw the whole thing happen, asked Cain two questions that drew him out of hiding. And once I stopped short of reading this, pick up with me now verse nine.

The Lord said, what have you done? He goes on to say, I know what you did, but I’m asking the question, listen, your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. What have you done? Cain’s reply to some simple questions is revealing and disturbing. He says, I don’t know.

Immediately thought of chapter three, which is a similar question that his dad was asked. What have you done? Have you eaten from the tree? And he avoided a straight up answer. And then he says, am I my brother’s keeper?

Those famous words is a way of saying I don’t care. Why should I care? Is the more accurate tone of this context? Am I my brother’s keeper? That was not a question by Cain.

It was a statement. It reads as a question, am I my brother’s keeper? It’s not what he’s saying at all. Am I my brother’s keeper? Is the tone of what his answer is to God’s question?

He was saying, I’m not my brother’s keeper. And here’s where it gets really serious for us. The Bible emphatically disagrees with Cain. And that’s what this series community is all about. So I want to ask the same question this morning that Cain asks, but not as a noun.

I want to ask it as a verb. And then it’ll come alive for us. Who are part of a community and that’s what we’re made for. So are you your brother’s keeper? The change in meaning hasn’t come out clear yet.

Let me say it again. Cain was disputing the point. He was saying, everyone for themselves. I got no duty to anyone but me. I don’t have time for you.

I certainly don’t have interest in you. The moment you do something wrong, it just reinforces my bias. It’s about me. That’s what Cain is saying here. I don’t define myself as my brother’s keeper, so end of discussion.

My question is built on this exchange between God and Cain. And it goes like this, are you behaving as your brother’s keeper? It’s a question of practice. Are you practicing? You are your brother’s keeper.

Are you practicing keep? And all that’s represented in that word. These words written from a pastor long ago, I think it should cause a squirm in all of us like they did in me. Certainly of a moment or two, of honest thought, writes Matthew, Henry, a loving concern for our brothers and sisters as their keepers is a great duty. Strictly required of us by God, but, and this is hard to hear, generally neglected by us.

In the late sixties, there was a British band called the Holies, and they recorded a ballad that struck really a chord in people the world over. It resulted in a song they sang that was famous in the top hundred songs listened to worldwide for four months or more. It was inspired by a bronze statue of a teenage young boy with a smaller boy writing piggyback. On his shoulders at Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. The statue is still there, so is Boys Town.

Boys Town existed long ago as a place for herding and many cases broken and homeless boys. They continue their mission to this day, and I think their song is so good. I want you to listen to it and take in the words because they’re more than just a cool song. (singing in foreig

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 3,089 words.