Genesis 4 Preached as Therapy

But here is the prophetic problem: the sermon does not remain faithful to its own opening claim.

If the sermon had truly allowed “the Lord’s response to worship” to govern everything that followed, the trajectory could have been very different. The focus would have remained on divine evaluation, acceptance and rejection, holiness, and judgment. Instead, after naming worship as the starting point, the sermon gradually re-centres on the worshipper’s inner life: motives, emotions, anger, bitterness, and forgiveness.

In other words, Archer begins with a God-centred statement but resolves it with a man-centred application.

Two brothers come before the Lord. Both are religious. Both bring offerings. Both stand within the orbit of God’s address, warning, and evaluation. That fact alone should unsettle us, because Genesis 4 is not a story about faith versus atheism, nor even about good intentions versus bad ones. It is a story about acceptable and unacceptable self-made religion offered on human terms.

The sermon rightly resisted shallow explanations for why Cain’s offering was rejected. It noticed that Abel brings the firstborn and the fat portions, while Cain brings merely “some of the fruit.” It correctly refused the crude notion that God prefers shepherds over vegetable farmers, or meat over vegetables. These observations, shallow as they are, are not wrong. But Genesis 4 will not allow us to stop there, because the question the text presses is not about generosity of spirit or inner sincerity of the worshipper.

God does not say to Cain, “If you calm down, will you not feel better?” He says, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?” Acceptance is covenant language. It is forensic language. It belongs to the courtroom, not the counselling room. Cain’s problem is not first emotional instability; it is that his worship has been weighed and found wanting.

This is where the story becomes prophetic rather than therapeutic. Cain is not irreligious. He is not careless. He was raised in a God-fearing home, he is near to God, speaking with God, offering to God, and yet resisting God’s correction. His anger does not arise out of nowhere. It is born from rejected worship that refuses to repent. When religion is refused by God and not surrendered by man, it curdles into resentment. It is interesting to observe that God’s call to Cain to repent is glossed over by failing to even mention repentance.

The sermon warned rightly about anger and bitterness, and Scripture does indeed warn that sin crouches at the door. But in Genesis 4, anger is not the root. It is the fruit. The root is a refusal to come to God on God’s terms. Cain’s offering says, even if unconsciously, “I will come as I choose.” Abel’s offering says, “My life and future belong to the Lord.” One worshipper trusts himself. The other trusts God. That difference is not psychological. It is covenantal.

The text then darkens. Abel is murdered. And Scripture tells us something chilling: his blood cries out from the ground. This is not poetic colour. Blood speaks because blood testifies. Abel’s blood calls God to act as Judge. The ground itself becomes a witness. Justice is not a background theme here; it is the axis of the narrative.

The sermon acknowledged this language, even saying that Abel’s blood cries out for vengeance and that God will bring justice. But justice was not allowed to govern the sermon. It was named and then resolved emotionally. The congregation was moved quickly from blood crying out to forgiveness flowing freely.

Genesis does not move that quickly.

Abel’s blood is meant to accuse. It is meant to unsettle. It is meant to leave us asking an unbearable question: if God hears innocent blood crying out for justice, what answers that cry for me?

Here the New Testament speaks with terrifying clarity. Hebrews tells us that Christ’s blood speaks better than the blood of Abel. Better than what? Better than a blood that already speaks judgment. Christ’s blood does not cancel Abel’s cry by sentiment. It answers it by satisfaction. Justice is not bypassed. It is fulfilled. Forgiveness does not float free of judgment; it is purchased at its full cost.

Without this, forgiveness becomes moral inspiration rather than divine absolution. Christ becomes a model of gracious behaviour rather than the mediator whose blood secures acceptance for unacceptable worshippers.

Genesis 4 also presses a larger frame that the sermon barely touched. This chapter is the first outworking of the seed promise of Genesis 3:15. Two brothers stand not merely as individuals, but as representatives. One belongs to the line of the serpent, the other to the line of promise. Cain’s line builds cities, forges tools, produces culture, and boasts of vengeance. Seth’s line quietly calls on the name of the Lord.

This is not an incidental genealogy. It is the beginning of two humanities. And both are religious.

That is the prophetic sting. Cain’s religion is not crude. It is productive, respectable, busy, and God-adjacent. He does not rage against God until God refuses his worship. And when God does, Cain does not repent. He kills his brother.

Genesis 4 was not written to teach us how to manage anger. It was written to warn us that sincere religion can still be rejected by a holy God. Cain stands in Scripture as a permanent warning to the church: proximity to God is not the same as acceptance by God.

The sermon closed with moving stories of forgiveness, and forgiveness is indeed beautiful. But Genesis 4 does not end with reconciliation between brothers. It ends with separation, judgment, and the emergence of a new seed. The text will not let Cain be healed back into communion. It points us instead to another Brother, another blood, and another hope.

Genesis 4 does not ask us which brother we admire. It asks which brother we resemble. And the only safe answer is not, “I am Abel,” but, “I am Cain, unless I am covered by the blood that speaks better than Abel’s.”

That is not therapy.
That is prophecy.

We must conclude here by asking, does any of this matter? It is when we ask what the teaching impact of the sermon was, the take home message, that the failure of the sermon truly becomes apparent. The lengthy illustration from a TV show at the end of the sermon leads to a natural application that Abel needed to learn how to forgive Cain for murdering him. Without resorting to scorn here, such a scenario is farcical. 

However, the teaching effect of the sermon was this predictable. The congregation was encouraged to examine their anger, to manage bitterness, and to aspire toward costly forgiveness. These are worthy ethical outcomes, but they are not the burden of Genesis 4. What was not addressed was the more searching question the text itself presses: whether our worship is acceptable before God, whether our religion has been weighed and found wanting, and whether we stand in need of repentance rather than reassurance. The fallen condition of mankind in the passage is not primarily unmanaged emotion but defiant worship that refuses God’s verdict. By bypassing that condition, the sermon soothed consciences that should have been submitted to being unsettled first. Guidance was offered where a summons to repentance was required, and left hearers instructed in how to live better with one another without first being brought low before a holy God. In that sense, the sermon may have produced kinder Cainites, but it did not produce trembling worshippers.