Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

1 Corinthians 10:13 and Genesis 4:1-8

A few years ago I had a difficult ministry opportunity. A church family asked me if I would counsel with their loved one who had been arrested and was awaiting trial. So I went to the jail and learned the procedure for a pastoral visit to a prisoner.

I sat outside the glass barrier as he was escorted in by a guard. He took his seat as I picked up the phone to talk with him. He told me his life story. “Pastor, I can’t believe I am in here. I have spent the last few days reviewing my life to figure out how it happened. I may end up spending years in prison as a result of what I’ve done. How did I fall this far?”

He recalled as a child in elementary school that his fourth grade teacher selected his poem and put it on the bulletin board. He was so proud. He joined the school orchestra and took violin lessons. He had such potential. Then came the alcohol. Then the strained marriage. Then the bad choices. And finally the offense and arrest. How did it happen? The answer is that it happened very slowly. It happened one tiny step at a time.

His story is a replay of the Bible story of Cain and Abel, Genesis, Chapter 4.

Read Genesis 4:1-8.

Don’t we wish getting out of sinful habits was that easy. God tells us to stop it and we do. Unfortunately, we can say from real life experience it doesn’t work that way. This is why the story of Cain and Abel continues to be relevant today.

Quick review of the basic story. After being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had two sons—Cain and Abel. The two brothers chose different lifestyles. One became a farmer and the other a rancher. When it came time to worship, one brought an offering of fruit and the other offered an animal sacrifice. We are not told why God accepted Abel’s animal offering and rejected Cain’s fruit offering. We could waste our time making excuses for God or complaining about the unfairness of it. However, such theories do not take us where the story goes. Life is not fair. Justice is not the point of the story.

The story moves to the next day. God sees that Cain was upset that his offering had not been accepted. God watched Cain’s eyes grow hard with anger and jealousy. God knew that Cain was struggling with a bad attitude. So God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door.”

Freeze the frame right there. Let us think about this image of sin. Sin takes on a life of its own. Sin is compared to a wild, dangerous animal. It crouches ready to leap. Sin has fangs and claws. The cute kitten grows into a mountain lion. The tiny puppy becomes a rabid, wild dog. It will destroy us if we do not respect it. If fed, it will grow to overpower us. Do we see sin as threatening and destructive?

At this point in the story sin is merely in the realm of Cain’s thoughts and attitudes. Can it really be that dangerous? The battle with sin starts in the mind and heart. The Bible says in another place that the real battle with sin is in our thought life. “Take very thought captive for Christ.” If we don’t fight the battle while it is still in our minds, sin grows claws. Do we fear sin’s claws and respect its bite?

Back to the story. God reminds Cain that there is a choice to be made. Sin is crouching at the door. What will he do? Will he stop it while it is merely a faulty thought, before it grows and takes over his life? The innuendo is that God is offering an alternative to sin. The Apostle Paul was right in 1 Corinthians 10:13 when he recognized that there are no new sins. God always provides a way of escape. But we have to decide whether we will accept God’s offer of help. We have to make the choice not to feed sin and let it grow in our thoughts.

Unfortunately, Cain refused to accept God’s offer of help while sin was merely a bad thought. Instead of letting God cleanse his thoughts, Cain held onto his anger and committed murder. What started as merely a thought of jealousy and hurt feelings played out into violence.

The key to this story is in the interpretation of one Hebrew word: timshel. Different Bibles translate this word very differently. The Hebrew word timshel comes from the root verb meaning “to master.” When God speaks to Cain about sin crouching at the door, God tells Cain, “timshel it.” “Master it.” There are three ways to translate this verb. It may be a prophecy, “You shall master it.” It could be a command “You must master it!” It might be a simple statement of possibility, “You can master it.” Each of these options has been chosen in various Bible translations.

The old King James Version translates this verb as a future tense, “Thou shalt master it.” It appears to be a prophecy from God that everything will turn out okay. God has predestined how it will all turn out. Cain will have victory over sin. How? God will take care of everything. This approach to the passage hints at universalism.

Universalism is the idea that everybody makes it to heaven. God ultimately redeems everybody. Even the worst sinner does not have to worry because Jesus has forgiven everyone’s sins.

While universalism sounds comforting at first, it creates some serious moral problems. If God automatically takes care of sin and everybody is saved, then it doesn’t really matter what we do. Universalism can undercut our personal sense of responsibility. It doesn’t matter if the father abandons his family, since God will make everything alright in the end. It doesn’t matter if we continue in sin, because everyone is forgiven in the end. In such a system, our moral choices really do not count at all. This approach flies in the face of the rest of Bible teaching. “Don’t worry be happy” doesn’t work as an ethical/moral system in real life.

A second way that timshel can be translated is this: “Sin is crouching at the door. Master it!” This emphasizes the idea of duty. It makes our religion into one of obedience. God commands and we must obey. Many people hold this “Bob Newhart view.” They teach us that sin must be restrained by teaching people to obey God’s commands. Theirs is a religion of rules and regulations. “You must do this! You must not do that!” Does this religion of dos and don’ts really work?

I have a vivid memory of fishing with my dad when I was in Junior High. My dad could not swim, but he enjoyed fishing along the edge of rivers. He always remained safely away from the very edge of the river since he feared what would happen if he fell into the water. Of course, since I could swim, I was confident and much more adventurous. I would jump from rock to rock out near the middle of the river as my dad called out his reminder to be careful.

On this day, I jumped to a rock, which turned out to be unsteady. It tipped under me and I tumbled into the fast freezing river water. At that point my memory goes into slow motion. The waves tossed me around. My head kept going under and then I come to the surface just long enough to cough and breathe. I was being pushed downstream. In the midst of this memory, wondering if I would drown or survive, I vividly recall my dad’s reaction. Dad was running along side of the river shouting, “Bruce, you get out of that water right now! Do you hear me, young man? I said right this very minute! Bruce, get out of there!”

I have no doubt my dad’s intentions were good. But I did not find it the least bit helpful. (By the way, for those who hate being left in the middle of a story, I did not drown. I eventually caught a rock and dragged myself out.) How much help is it for God to stand at the side as a stern father-figure and lecture us? “Cain, you stop that right now! Cain, stop thinking those wrong thoughts! Listen here, buster, you better straiten up and fly right!” Is this the way of our faith?

The Hebrew word timshel has one more possible translation. It could mean, “Sin is crouching at the door, but you can master it.” In this translation we realize that our choices really matter to God. In fact, God speaks to Cain and to us with a hopeful offer of assistance. God wants us to choose what is right. However, God knows that we will need help to stop sin in its tracks. Our natural tendency will be to unintentionally feed our sins in the thought life and then be shocked when they grow up and get dangerous.

We are all Cain in the story. All it would have taken was for Cain to admit that his feelings were hurt. God would have listened. If Cain had admitted that he was feeling angry with his brother, God would have understood. If Cain had asked God to help him keep sin from growing, God would have helped. I think this last translation is the truest: “Timshel.” “You can master it.”

She sits across from my desk. After the brief, “How are you?” she reminds me of a sermon from years ago where I had used this word, “Timshel” in conjunction with an image to illustrate the danger of people playing with sin. The image was of a little boy standing with one foot on the sidewalk and one on the lawn. The child is testing the limits. How far can I go and still get away with it? I nod, recalling the image.

She places one foot to her far left and stretches the other foot as far as she can to her right and says, “This is where I am.” She pauses and then says, “Bruce, I just want a yes or no answer. You know what I am talking about. We’ve talked about it before. Is it absolutely, always, definitely wrong?” She knows the answer. She just wants to hear me say it one more time. I respond, “Yes. It is sin.”

We talk for a minute about how all of us struggle with some area of sin. My sins are not hers. But we are all broken. None of us can master sin just by trying harder, getting lectured, feeling shame. We must remain humble and keep asking the Lord for help. We take hands together for prayer. The prayer for her and me is what we all need to pray.

“Lord, we can’t do this on our own. We’ve tried to stop sinning on our own, but we still fall into familiar patterns and stay stuck. Maybe you are teaching us that we will always be desperate for you and it helps us remain humble. So we pray together, we are desperate for you. We need your help to take every thought captive.” I pause to let her pray. She says her entire prayer in one word, “Timshel.”