The Bible is a very useful book because it teaches us the truth
about life. This always conflicts with the way that the unbelieving world looks
at life. That is why the Bible is useful. If the Bible didn’t tell us so, then
there would be no way for us to understand things correctly. The world will
loudly tell us the opposite, and we can’t help but believe it, if that’s the
only thing that we are taught.
This is why it is so important for us to be educated with
the Bible. I urge people to come to church every week. I do not do this because
I want them to be miserable or because I want them to somehow earn their way
into heaven by their attendance. I say this to people because otherwise they
are not going to hear what the Bible teaches and how that conflicts with
popular opinion. Without this constant training whatever is taught in the
schools, by friends and neighbors, by the TV, and all the other things that
take up our time, is what we will believe. And we won’t think anything of it
either. It’s the air we breathe. How often do you think about the air you
breathe? The fish also doesn’t notice the water it lives in. It is only when
the fish is out of water that it might think about where it used to be. So
also, we will not think about all kinds of things that are taken for granted
until we are taught something different. This is something that the Bible will
do if it is taken seriously.
The teaching from the Bible that I’d like to look at today
is about our human nature. What are we like? How do we act? What do we want? What
happens when we get what we want and what happens when we don’t?
So let’s begin with our Old Testament reading. Here is a
good place for us to learn about human nature because this is where we learn
about the first human being who was born in the natural way. Adam was intimate
with his wife. She conceived and bore a son. They called him Cain. They thought
a lot of Cain. Eve thought that he was the Messiah that had been promised. It
is grammatically possible for the Hebrew to be translated as we are used to
where Eve says that she has gotten a man with the help of the Lord, but I don’t
think that is what she said. A very wooden, literal translation goes like this,
“I have gotten a man, the Lord.” Or, “I have gotten a man, who is even the
Lord.” The context also supports this translation because God had just told Eve
that her seed would crush the serpent’s head. Why wouldn’t she believe that
this first born seed of hers would be the Messiah? And so Adam and Eve were
very impressed with Cain and even pinned all their hopes upon him.
It seems that Adam and Eve were not as impressed with their
second born son. They named him Abel, which means insubstantial—like a breath
or nothingness. His name is from the same root word that gives you the Old
Testament word for vanity, as in “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.”
Cain seemed to be the favored son. He is the one who ended
up taking up his father’s occupation. He became a worker of the soil. Abel
tended sheep. When the time for sacrifice came they both offered their
sacrifices. God was pleased with Abel but not with Cain. This was crushing to
Cain.
Here we can learn something about human nature. We all want
to be recognized as someone good. We all want to be esteemed. We all want to be
the best. There are many different areas in which we can be high achievers. We
can be the smartest, the strongest, the best looking, the best athlete, the
nicest, the funniest, the richest, the most popular, and so on and so on. Depending
on our talents we all seem to pick a few different categories where we try to
be high achievers. When we believe that we are good, then we are happy. We
especially like it if we hear other people say this kind of stuff about us.
Talk about giving a person a high! We love it and we cherish whatever good
things might be said about us. We will mull them over and over in our minds,
savoring it to the last drop.
On the other hand, there is perhaps nothing so awful as when
we do not feel good about ourselves. That stinks! And if other people point out
the way that we are not the greatest, then that makes us especially miserable.
We will mull their criticisms over and over in our heads and that is extremely
unpleasant. It does not matter if it is true or not. In fact, if it is true it
only makes it all the more depressing. We want to love ourselves and we want
everybody else to love us too.
So what happens if recognition of our greatness is withheld?
Cain gives us the answer that comes naturally to us. The other person or other
people become the enemy. They are hated. Revenge is contemplated. Whatever can be
gotten away with to make the other person’s life miserable is mulled over.
Thankfully God restrains people with the Law from murdering or taking another
person’s property, and so what normally happens are nasty looks and the running
down of the person’s reputation with others. But murder is what is really in
the heart. It is only because the consequences are feared that people don’t go
through with it. But sometimes the consequences aren’t even enough to restrain
the murderous heart.
Think of all these mass shootings that we have had in recent
history—particularly those that have taken place in schools. Here we can see
the importance of being recognized and the disastrous effects that can happen
when a person is not recognized and esteemed. Who are the ones who are doing
these shootings? Are they the popular ones? Are they the ones who everybody
thinks are just great? No, these are the ones who are run down with the cruel
words and actions of their peers. Every recognition of goodness in every sphere
of their life is withheld from them by the mockery and jeering of their fellow
students. Having been rejected, they become hateful. Then they turn murderous.
The people they shoot are not necessarily the ones who wronged them. They end
up hating everybody.
In the fight for recognition of achievement and goodness
there are winners and losers. The winners are the kids that are on top. The way
they get to the top and stay on top is by not associating themselves with those
who are on the bottom. The ones on the bottom wish that they could be on the
top. Cain was someone who knew both of these states. He was the first born and
the highly favored son. He was feeling pretty good about himself. When God does
not have regard for him and his sacrifice, then he became angry and envious.
The picture that we get of our human nature from this first
human being born in the natural way is very disagreeable. He is proud. He is
vain. He is a murderer. He is quite like the devil, as Jesus describes the
devil. The devil is a liar and the father of lies, and he is a murderer. Cain
was a liar. He lied about himself to look better than he really was. He was a
murderer of those who got in his way. Being a liar and a murderer—being a
little devil, a chip off the old block—is not a very pleasant picture of what
we are like.
Alright, enough depressing talk. How do we fix this? There
are two ways to answer this question. There is a theoretically way, and there
is a real way. We will start with the theoretical way. Theoretically we should
be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get to work on reforming
ourselves. God has even given us the blueprint for how to do this. It’s his Ten
Commandments. If you keep the Ten Commandments, then nobody can say anything
bad about you. Even God wouldn’t be able to say anything bad about you.
But with that last statement we can sense no matter how
successful we might be in our endeavors, we won’t be able to pull this off. If
we could keep the Commandments, which we can’t, but suppose that we could, how
would we feel about ourselves? We’d feel pretty good. We might just strut
around a little bit. We might say a little prayer to God thanking him that we
are not like other men. Pride is the queen of sins! It is said that pride is
the very thing that caused the devil to fall into sin. He was created an angel,
a good spirit. Pride—the desire to be God, the desire to have all glory, laud,
and honor—is what corrupted him. That desire to be recognized as good—that’s
what did it. The truth is that only God is good.
And so this first way of fixing our human nature, which is
altogether evil, where we apply ourselves and bring about great achievements is
not possible. It will always be remain theoretical. As a theory it will always
be true, but it cannot be brought into practice. In a way, when we start to go
down this road, the harder we try, the worse it gets. The more we achieve, the
worse our being lost in the imagination of our own hearts becomes.
Let’s turn to the real solution—the one that can actually
happen and has actually happened. What is required is that there be action on
God’s part rather than on our own. God condescends and comes down from heaven
to meet us in our wretchedness. He who is best joins himself to those who are
worst. This is like the cool kid in school—and not just superficially so, but
genuinely good and deserving of all the praise; this is like the cool kid in
school going to the nasty kid who picks his nose and does whatever else is
unattractive and truly becomes friends with the kid. As a good friend he sticks
with you and helps you come what may. He does not consider himself too good for
you. He strangely loves you.
But here we meet a tragedy that has played out over and over
again on down the ages. The uncool kid so often tells the good kid to go away.
The sinner tells the Savior of sinners to go away. And why? Because the kid
doesn’t want to be uncool. The sinner doesn’t want to be a sinner. It’s
embarrassing to not be cool. It hurts like hell to admit that you really are a
loser. And so the person says, “Go away.” They can manage on their own. Like
Frank Sinatra they say, “I’ll do it my way.” Then they can own their own praise
for whatever it is that they accomplish in their life instead of giving all
praise to God who alone is good.
In addition to this natural resistance to the Gospel there
are also all kinds of religion and philosophy teachers who will say that this
kind of thing is a recipe for disaster. They say that you can’t tell people
that they are forgiven otherwise they won’t work to be good. You can’t be too
friendly, otherwise they’ll keep picking their nose and doing all those
unattractive things. Pride, they say, is the secret to success. If people are
humble, then they’ll be satisfied in the situation where God has placed them
and they won’t strive after higher and more glorious things. They’ll remain a
bunch of losers!
That, indeed, is the thing that the devil likes to say to us
over and over again. He accuses us of our sins day and night. He does not want
us to look up into heaven or to Jesus who is beside us as our friend. He plays
upon our emotions and our dreams and our pride like Charlie Daniels plays his
fiddle.
But while the devil says and does whatever it is that he
does, we have something more certain and powerful. God himself is behind it. We
have the glad tidings of great joy that is for all the people. To us a Child
has been born. To us a Son is given. He is the Savior, Christ the Lord. God’s
good will is toward us. His favor rests upon us. That is a blanket statement
that applies to all people the whole world over. It doesn’t matter if we pick
our nose or do other unattractive things. It is not dependent upon what we have
done and left undone. Although we are sinners, Jesus sticks with us like a good
friend even though we deserve to be picked on. And merely saying that he sticks
with us is putting it altogether too mildly. He also died for us, was crushed
for our iniquities, and why? For no other reason than that we can be set free
and live in peace together with him, our friend.
And so let’s drop this silly preoccupation of ours where we
are always evaluating ourselves and comparing ourselves and trying to make
ourselves lovable. Frankly, we aren’t loveable, and yet we are loved by God.
This is not some achievement of our own, but is in the mystery of God’s love
for us. Check out from that rat race where the devil is prodding us on to
establish our own worth. Be satisfied with the callings that God has given to
you and love as you have been loved. That is a good life. It is a life that is
not lived for some grand eulogy at the end, which people will forget in a week
or a month. The life we live is for an eternal song of praise to God, who alone
is good.
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