Our Brother’s Blood
After Cain slew his brother, Abel, God declared that the voice of Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. In today’s Sermon in the Woods, we’ll take a close look at this part of the story of Cain and Abel, and see whether still, today, the voice of our brother’s blood might be crying out from the ground.
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
A reflection on Genesis 4 (Transcribed and edited with assistance from AI powered tools)
Over the past couple of weeks, as we’ve explored these woods together, we’ve seen some magnificent beauty — scenic vistas, stone arches — and we’ve delved into God’s Word. Specifically, we’ve been working through what is really the first story of death in the Bible: the story of Cain and Abel.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about sacrifice — the difference between the sacrifice of Abel and the sacrifice of Cain, and how that difference pointed forward to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. Last week we talked about sin, and how sin lies crouching at the door — how sin seems too small to notice until it’s too big to master.
This week we’re taking another look at that same story, at God’s words to Cain and the lessons those words hold for us today.
The Murder
Genesis chapter four, verse eight tells us: Now Cain talked with his brother Abel, and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.
Cain had offered a sacrifice that God refused to honor. Abel’s sacrifice had been accepted. And because of that, Cain held hatred and animosity in his heart against his brother. But he didn’t show it — at least not at first. It seems as though he concealed that hatred behind a false friendliness. He talked with his brother. Did he talk with hatred toward him? Certainly that hatred was in his heart, but outwardly he was cordial, even warm. He enticed him: Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go out to the field. And when they had gone far enough from Adam and Eve — far enough that there were no witnesses to the pending crime — Cain rose up and killed his brother.
Cain and Abel were both very familiar with death. They had seen it happen time and again in the sacrificial animals. But now Cain was taking death for a very different purpose. Rather than looking forward to the One who would come and pay the penalty of sin, Cain himself was committing this horrible and heinous act — taking his own brother’s life.
As Abel lay there having breathed his last, I can only imagine the thoughts that would have gone through Cain’s heart. He wasn’t yet a hardened criminal. He must have felt the horror and remorse of it — his own brother, the one he had grown up with, the one with whom he had shared nearly everything, now lying cold and lifeless on the ground. What would he tell his father and mother? How would he answer God — the same God whose acceptance he had so desperately sought for his own sacrifice? How could God accept anything from Cain now?
He didn’t have long to wait.
God’s Questions
In the very next verse, we find God coming to Cain — not with accusation, but with a question.
And the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
He doesn’t come to Cain pointing a finger: You murderer. How dare you. How could you. No — just simply, Where is Abel your brother? And I think this tells us something profound about the loving nature of God. We see the same pattern earlier in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve. God doesn’t come to them accusing them of eating the fruit. He simply asks: Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit? Why did you eat it? Even when we have strayed as far as it is possible to stray, God doesn’t lead with condemnation. He leads with a question — giving us the opportunity, in the honesty of our hearts, to come clean.
Sadly, Cain does not take that opportunity.
I do not know, he says. And was Cain telling the truth? Absolutely not. There is no way Cain didn’t know where his brother was. He was, after all, the one who had intentionally murdered him. But he doesn’t stop at the lie. He adds an insolent, almost contemptuous response — speaking to his Creator, the King of the universe, as though he were speaking to an inferior: Am I my brother’s keeper? Do I have to watch out for my brother? Why would you even think to ask me where he is?
And so God asks another question — more directly this time.
What have you done?
One more opportunity for Cain to confess. And then God adds these devastating words: The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.
The voice of your brother’s blood. I want to ask you today, my friends — is it possible that today, just as it was thousands of years ago, the voice of our brother’s blood still cries out to God from the ground?
The Fatal Trap of Sin
Before we go further with that thought, I want to briefly review what led Cain to this moment. Because as we trace the steps that brought him here, I think we begin to understand the steps that can lead any of us — unawares — to the same place.
It began with a seed of jealousy. Cain saw his brother’s sacrifice accepted while his own was rejected, and that seed took root in his heart. From jealousy it grew into anger and bitterness — the Bible tells us his countenance fell, his very face betrayed what was happening inside him. From there it moved into his words — words that on their face may have sounded like kindness, like friendship, like an innocent invitation to take a walk together, but words that in reality were words of entrapment, words of deception, words that completely belied the murderous intentions of his heart. And then came the act itself.
But it didn’t stop there. After the murder came the lies — lies told to the King of the universe in a desperate attempt to conceal his guilt. And beyond the lies, Cain turns it around entirely, essentially accusing God of requiring something He has no right to require. Am I my brother’s keeper? Why are you even asking me this?
This, my friends, is the fatal trap of sin. It doesn’t simply stop at the act. It compounds. It conceals. It deflects. And ultimately, it turns on God Himself.
The Principle of Cain
God’s question to Cain — What have you done? — carries within it a bedrock assumption. Was Cain responsible for his actions? Was there a standard of truth that should have informed his thoughts, his motives, his choices? Yes. The Bible is clear from Genesis to Revelation that there is such a bedrock, and that it is found in the character of God — a character defined by love.
It was Cain’s duty, his responsibility, to look out for his brother. Why? Because that is the very nature, the very principle of God’s love. Should Cain have been resentful that Abel’s sacrifice was accepted? Should he not rather have rejoiced that God was honoring his brother — and allowed that love to inform his own response? But no. Cain chose the opposite path.
I want to suggest to you that the principle of Cain is the direct antithesis of the principle of God’s love. And I dare say that the principle of Cain motivates a large majority of our world today. It is the principle of loving self. It is the principle that says: Because I believe I’m okay, I will do everything I can to justify my own actions — even if it means lying to the King of the universe. I will do everything in my power to make myself look right — even if it means stepping on someone else, belittling someone else, putting someone else down, thinking murderous thoughts, and yes, even coming to blows with my own brother. We see it in the story of Cain and Abel. And we see it playing out in the story of our world today.
Could We Be Guilty?
So how could we, even as Christians, be guilty of hate — of something that looks like murder in the heart? After all, the whole of Christianity is founded upon love. Is it even possible?
I think it is. And I think it begins subtly, in ways we barely notice. It begins with the way we classify people. We start to think of ourselves as somehow better, somehow superior to others. And it’s not just Christians who think this way — I believe it’s natural to the human heart. If I think of myself as good, it’s natural to assume that the evil I see in the world around me must be the result of someone else’s badness. People who look like me, who think like me — well, if I’m good, they must be good too. So the evil in the world must be coming from other people. People like murderous Cain. But we’re the good people. We’re like Abel. Right?
Except that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. All of us are born with a selfish and sinful heart. And until we come to the point of recognizing the evil within our own hearts — until we acknowledge that every single one of us is capable of the sin of Cain — we will naturally carry hate in our hearts, even if we’d never use that word to describe it.
Jesus said — and we touched on this last week — if you bring your gift to the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift before the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. When we hold ourselves above other people, God cannot accept our worship. We cannot come before Him in sincerity while we are nursing contempt — however quietly, however politely — for someone made in His image.
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
When God first comes to Cain after he has slain his brother, notice that He doesn’t ask Cain about himself. He doesn’t ask Cain how he’s doing or how he’s feeling. He asks about Abel. Where is your brother? And Cain lies — denies knowing anything about him — and then adds that seemingly rhetorical question: Am I my brother’s keeper?
In Cain’s frame of thinking, the answer to that question was an obvious no. Why should I be responsible for my brother? Why should I care where he is or what he’s doing? But from God’s perspective — from the perspective of love — the answer to Cain’s rhetorical question was not no. It was yes. And it turns the question back on each one of us.
Am I my brother’s keeper? Do I have a responsibility to my brother — to my sister — to the one with whom I may have a disagreement? Not just the one who looks like me, not just the one who thinks like me, but the one who may be completely different from me in the way they look, the way they see the world, the way they feel and think and live? Am I their keeper too?
God responds to Cain’s deflection with another question: What have you done? And the question for us today is the same. What have we done? Or perhaps more pointedly — what have we failed to do? As Christians, as followers of Christ, what have we failed to do to show the example of Christ in loving our brothers and our sisters?
The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.
How can blood speak? Blood, after all, though it contains the very life of a living person, is in itself inanimate. It cannot speak. And yet it speaks a message louder than words. As the shed blood of Abel soaked into the parched ground, it cried out for justice — because a wrong had been done, by the hatred and negligence of Cain.
It calls to mind the words of the prophet to King Ahab in 2 Kings chapter 9, verse 26: Surely I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, says the Lord, and I will repay you in this plot. Ahab had murdered a righteous man in order to take his vineyard. And God did not forget it.
How many times have we — righteous men and women — through a failure in our thoughts, through a failure in our words, through silence and neglect, spilled the blood of the innocent upon the ground?
The Blood That Cries Out Today
The blood of righteous Abel cried out from the ground, and we stand aghast at the picture of this innocent man murdered by his own brother. And yet today it seems as though we as Christians have forgotten. It seems as though the issues that plague our world — the issues that affect people who may look a little differently than us — fall upon deaf ears. Fall upon stony, cold hearts. And we have a thousand reasons why we fail to get involved in the causes of social justice.
After all, many of those causes are championed by people who also champion other causes — causes we cannot morally agree with. And so we use that as a reason to dismiss the causes of justice altogether, rather than looking honestly at the plight of our brothers and sisters.
But I want to remind you of something Jesus said. As He was entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey in triumphal procession, the men and women and even the children were lifting palm branches, praising the Messiah. The Pharisees and scribes came and said, Master, tell your servants to be quiet. And He said, If these hold their peace, even the very stones will cry out.
My friends, I fear that today we as Christians have been silent for far, far too long — until, as it were, the very stones are crying out for the justice of the blood of righteous Abel that we have allowed to be spilled upon the ground.
The psalmist says in Psalm 9, verse 12: When He avenges blood, He remembers them. He does not forget the cry of the humble. We serve a living God. But we serve a God who cares for the poor, who cares for the humble, who cares for the afflicted and the oppressed — and who spares no words of rebuke for the oppressor.
I love the words of Isaiah in chapter 33, verse 15: He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands refusing bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, who shuts his eyes from seeing evil — he will dwell on high. His place of defense will be the fortress of rocks. Bread will be given him, his water will be sure.
A Story I Cannot Forget
I want to tell you about a friend of mine. He grew up in south Georgia, and like much of his family, he didn’t have a lot to work with. But he made the best of what he had, and he came to this part of Kentucky to learn, to study. We met him there, along with several of his friends, and began studying the Bible together. He got excited about what he was reading and learning, and before long he became a member of our local church congregation.
He had always longed to be a pastor, a minister — to share the precious Word of God with other people. And eventually he had the opportunity to go to a Christian school to pursue that dream. To help pay for his tuition, he did what many students from that school did: he went door to door selling Christian books. He would travel to different states with groups from the school, canvassing neighborhoods, and he loved it.
But one day as he was canvassing, he came to a house in a more affluent neighborhood — a neighborhood where the people had skin that looked like mine, not like his. Because of the heat, or the stress of the day, or a medical condition he lives with, he had a medical episode right there at the door. The police were called. He was arrested and taken to jail. Eventually he was released, but charges were pending against him — charges of burglary. For spreading the Word of God.
For an entire year he lived at home in south Georgia, waiting for his trial. During that year he fell behind in his studies because he couldn’t attend classes. When the charges were finally dropped, he was no longer able to return to school. His dream of ministry had been derailed — not by anything he had done, but by a medical episode, a fearful neighbor, and a system that looked at him and saw a threat rather than a young man trying to serve his God.
It’s a small story, as these things go. Complicated, as real life always is, by many factors. But it drove home something I could not shake. Because the issue wasn’t only the neighbor who called the police, or the officers who arrested him, or the injustice of the charges. What troubled me most — what the Holy Spirit would not let me walk away from — was the racism in my own heart.
Because when I heard his story, one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was: Well, that’s where he came from. Why doesn’t he stay in south Georgia and minister to his own people? And as that thought formed itself in my mind, the Holy Spirit stopped me cold. Would I have thought that if he had looked like me? Would I have said that about my own brother, my own sister, if they had the same color of skin?
I had to sit with that. I had to acknowledge that I too am guilty — guilty of those small, quiet, socially acceptable bits of racism. Of judging someone who comes from a different background, a different economic reality, a different place in the world than my own. And I found myself asking the question I had been preaching about all morning.
Am I guilty of the blood of righteous Abel?
What Does God Require?
The prophet Micah asks the question this way, beginning in chapter 6, verse 6:
With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
What kind of sacrifice will truly please the Lord? The answer comes in verse eight — one of the most clarifying verses in all of Scripture:
He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
Not elaborate offerings. Not grand religious gestures. Justice. Mercy. Humility before God.
A Question and a Commitment
When the Lord comes to you and to me, as He came to Cain, and asks us that question — Where is your brother? — what will we be able to say to Him?
Who is our brother? He is the one who looks like us, thinks like us, believes like us, worships with us — yes. But he is also the one who does not. The one who doesn’t believe what we believe, who doesn’t go to the same church, who may think and act and look very differently than you and me. They are our brothers and sisters too.
Will we respond to the Lord the way Cain did — I do not know — and add that deflecting, defensive question: Am I my brother’s keeper? Or will we, in the spirit of Christ, be able to say: Here am I, Lord — and those whom you have entrusted to me.
My friends, I fear that for far too many of us, our brother’s blood is crying out to the Lord from the ground. And our hands are guilty — perhaps not through an act of murder, but through the sin of omission. Through neglect. Through silence.
It’s easy to say — and I’ve said it myself — we can’t help everybody. We don’t have enough money, enough resources. We can’t even know where to begin. And that’s true. We cannot help everyone. But you can start with one. Who are you going to start with today? Who are you going to love?
Will you commit today that when you see someone being oppressed, being taken advantage of, being denigrated and ridiculed and put down, you will be the one to stand up and say something? Will you commit that when you see someone in need, you will help them — as far as it is within your power to do so? And will you commit to go and seek someone out — because in helping one, you can help another, and if we commit together, the tide can turn.
Let us not be guilty of the blood of righteous Abel. Let us commit today to turn the tide of prejudice, of racism, of thinking ourselves better than someone else. Let us commit to demonstrate the love of Christ — not only in our words, but in our deeds.
Because a gospel without arms and hands and feet is not the gospel at all.
Amen.
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