Continuing In Communion With God—The Sin Spiral (Part 4): Genesis 4:1–7 The Heart Of Worship

by on October 28, 2025 | Comment

Authenticity is the banner of our time for what is supposed to be good. The notion is that striving for conformity to any norm outside of ourselves means we are not genuine. That view results in antagonism toward every stable aspect of human society. The notion that being authentic means doing only what you want to do without checking whether what you want to do is a good thing is an incredibly quick way to chaos.

When it comes to practicing our faith, we often hear people pit going through the motions over and against heart-level spirituality. When I was in college, it was popular to say things like, “I do not have a religion, but I have a relationship with Christ.” The motivation behind that saying was that some folks thought it made Christianity seem more personal.

Unfortunately, as the world has embraced the practice of doing whatever one feels and redefining truth according to what is inside us rather than according to what God has said to us, most things in the western world have suffered. But we do not set the terms for our relationship with God. He does. He tells us how we are to approach him and on what basis he will welcome us. God is the one who outlines what the Christian life should look like. Hence, he tells us how to practice our faith in his Word, which comes to us from outside ourselves.

The point is that we should not set the formal practice of our faith as juxtaposed to heartfelt faith. In Genesis 4:1–16, we find the tragic story of Cain and Abel which tells us a lot about the human heart. We see that both Cain and Abel were practicing religion. The problem, however, was that Cain’s heart was not invested in his outward acts of worship.

We often think of Genesis 1–3 as a block of Scripture that goes naturally together, since these chapters all focus directly on Adam and Eve. Yet, chapter 4 should also be included in this first section.1 In Genesis 5, we have the first big genealogy which kickstarts a new major section. So, Genesis 4 rounds out a portrait of the problem that began in Genesis 3. In Genesis 3, beginning with Adam and Eve, sin disrupts our relationships with God and one another, and it causes all sorts of trouble. Genesis 4 shows us that this problem was not limited just to the first couple. The effects of sin carry on past Adam and Eve.

This article considers the story of Cain and Abel and how worship was at the heart of the problem for Cain. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve rebelled against God and refused to worship him rightly. That same story continues in Genesis 4. The main point is that our hearts should conform to the norm, rather than be the norm.

The Sacrifice

Genesis 4 in some ways raises questions for contemporary readers. For example, in verse 14, who are the people whom Cain fears will kill him? It seems unlikely that he means just his parents. In verse 17, where did his wife come from?2 We do not have record of when Eve conceived and bore her. Again, in verse 17, why is Cain building a city? Cities are for lots of people.3

Clearly, more has taken place within the timeframe of Genesis 1–4 than is detailed for us in the biblical record. Although we should affirm that all people descended from Adam and Eve, Scripture has not given us an exhaustive record of everyone who lived in the early years of humanity’s existence. It also seems as though, under God’s inspiration, the focus in Genesis is less on providing that sort of detailed knowledge than it is on helping us understand the world and the way we find it under the curse and full of sin.

Genesis 4:1–7 begins the hard story of Adam and Eve’s sons Cain and Abel. Both are farmers, although Abel farms livestock and Cain farms plant crops. In this opening story, there is a difference between them in that God finds Abel’s sacrifice acceptable but rejects Cain’s. That difference is the main hinge of this story, and it brings us to consider what made them different.

In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. (Gen 4:3–5)

Debates abound about why God had regard for Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s.4 Some suggest that Cain’s sacrifice was not acceptable because it did not include bloodshed like Abel’s. But grain offerings are prominent throughout the Old Testament.

Some highlight that verse 4 explains that Abel brought “the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions” while Cain brought mere “the fruit of the ground.” The difference might be that Abel brought an offering from the initial harvest of his flock and brought the best part of it, whereas Cain brought just something—that is, he did not work to bring the best to God.5 This perspective makes some sense but does not address everything. The text’s slight suggestion that Cain was trying to shortchange God alerts us that something is off. Cain came without having things in order. But that was not the ultimate problem.

Cain’s reaction to God rejecting his offering is the problem. God’s rejection does not produce a bitter heart in Cain—rather, Cain’s bitter heart is the reason for God’s rejection of his sacrifice. We will consider why this is the case and what it means for us.

The Spiritual Component

I always enjoy talking to someone who introduces himself as a “worship pastor.” Being the difficult person that I am, I always say, “Me too.” Then, my conversation partner usually asks something about how I do it, so I say, “Well, I pray, I read Scripture, I preach sermons, and administer the sacraments.” Then, the penny drops, and he emphasizes that the whole service is truly worship.

My point is that we too often reduce worship to music. We make that mistake because we think that our most emotionally invested moments of the service are what really count as worship. We seem to think the other parts of the service are for something else, but that the music is really worship.

This issue flags something useful to consider in our passage. Namely, although the heart must be involved in worship, worship is not defined by when our hearts are engaged. We might ask the question: Is a car a car when the engine is off? Of course it is.

The same is true with worship. When we assemble as Christ’s people, the whole scope of our service from the call to worship to the benediction is worship. The issue is that we need to work to have our engines turned on for every part of worship. We need to assess ourselves to see if our hearts are properly engaged the way they should be at each step of the way.

Consider Adam and Eve as they ate the forbidden fruit. The problem was not that they lacked things to engage their hearts. It is that their hearts should have been fully engaged in doing what God told them to do. Their hearts were not in it, so they failed to do the right thing. Both the inward and outward parts are important.

In Genesis 4, we find Cain and Abel both doing what they were supposed to do outwardly. But Cain’s decision not to bring the best of his harvest hints that something was amiss in his heart. Even though Cain had not brought the best, he was bothered when God did not accept it.

What is going on? He thought God should be satisfied with whatever he wanted to bring. He thought he ought to decide what makes an acceptable offering. He thought he should keep the best for himself and that God should be happy with the leftovers. Then he got mad when God rejected his offering.

The issue was that God was opposed to Cain’s heart attitude. He told him in verse 7, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” The implication is that even though Cain had gone through the outward motion, he had not done well. But God was encouraging him that if he would engage his heart to offer a proper sacrifice in the right posture of faith and gratitude, then he would do well.6 When the spiritual component is missing, worship goes wrong.

The Savior

Worship is a heart issue. But our hearts do not define worship. We might tend to think of our heart’s relationship to worship like a tailored piece of clothing. With tailored clothes, the outer garment is made according to the shape of what is inside it. We can wrongly think that what is already in our hearts should to shape what we do outwardly.

In truth, the relationship of our heart to worship is supposed to be more like Jell-O to a mold. That external mold shapes what goes inside. The difference between Cain and Abel was that Abel’s heart was properly shaped by the task of bringing an offering to God. Hebrews 11:4 says, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts.”7 Cain was not shaped by the task at hand. His heart was malformed. Abel believed that God had his purposes and was at work through worship. So, his faith made his sacrifice acceptable to God.

Why does worship work this way and why does it require faith? Because Christ is the focus and the basis of our worship. Every sacrifice throughout the Old Testament, including Abel’s, was just a teaching tool—an object lesson—about Christ himself. So, going through the motions without trust in the object of those lessons is not enough.

By faith, we are accepted before God, and our worship will be well regarded because Christ has made us clean. He is the one who lived the perfect life that earned our acceptance before God’s throne. He is the lamb who died to forgive our sins. He is the one who rose from the grave and stands in heaven to reign on behalf of his people. By faith, Abel saw Christ’s day even before the incarnation. For all of you who trust in Christ as the Savior, God counts Jesus as your acceptable sacrifice, making you righteous in his sight. For all who trust in Christ, God regards you well.

Notes

  1. C. John Collins, Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (P&R, 2006), 189–92; John Goldingay, Genesis, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Pentateuch (Baker Academic, 2020), 92.
  2. Collins, Genesis 1–4, 200–1.
  3. Goldingay, Genesis, 102.
  4. Collins, Genesis 1–4,199–200; Derek Kidner, Genesis, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (DIVP Academic, 1967), 80; John D. Currid, Genesis, 2 vol. (EP Books, 2015), 1:145–46.
  5. Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Zondervan, 1987), 104; Meredith G. Kline, Genesis: A New Commentary, ed. Jonathan G. Kline (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), 25; Goldingay, Genesis, 96–97.
  6. Collins, Genesis 1–4, 212–13.
  7. Currid, Genesis, 1:145

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

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