The First Murder

The speaker begins by examining Cain’s tragic fall, emphasizing how pride, anger, and jealousy led him to murder his brother Abel. He argues that a person’s prolonged thoughts and intentions shape their actions, distinguishing between killing in self‑defense or God‑ordained war and murder, which he defines as the result of malicious intent. The sermon then expands the concept of murder to include the “murder of the tongue,” harmful speech, silence that fails to defend the vulnerable, and careless behavior such as drunk driving, illustrating how sin can be expressed in many forms beyond physical violence. Turning to the cross, the preacher connects humanity’s original sin and Cain’s murder to the ultimate murder of Jesus, asserting that every human act of rebellion attacks the very authority of God. He stresses that Christ’s sacrificial death transforms that terrible murder into victory and salvation for all who repent. The sermon concludes with a call to approach the Lord’s Supper with a right heart, urging believers to remember the blood of Christ, seek forgiveness, and recognize the seriousness of sin while celebrating the grace offered through the crucifixion.

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Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!

Cain had been rejected, his way was wrong, and he was filled with pride. His mistake was only compounded by another. His heart was filled with anger, and he killed his brother. Strange why he would do that, why he hated him, and why he was so jealous of his acceptance and his own rejection, but he did so. And in the eighth verse of Genesis 4, Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him. No mention of the time lapse, how long it took. How much time passed before the murder came to pass. But sufficient enough that he would bring to a climax the venom of the poison that was in his soul. For what a man thinks about long enough, he will do. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And that great friend of time can also become our enemy as time, ill -spent, works against us. Of all of the wrongs in all of the world, murder is considered to be the worst. Let me clearly state that there is a difference in the sight of God between killing and murder. Literally, the commandment says, I believe it is the sixth, thou shalt not commit murder. God is never crossed up. He never commands us to do one thing that he forbids us to do. There seems to be a moral dilemma in which God has ensnared himself when he many times in the Bible ordained war, used war, sent men into war with his blessings. But the difference is that in the intent of the heart, in self -defense, in carrying out the purpose of God, sometimes men have to kill. If a man comes into my home with the predetermined announcement that he will kill my family, then I will kill him. If two men come in my home with the same announcement, I'll kill both of them. If a thousand men come and I have the capacity, I'll kill all thousand of them to protect my family. If a million men come, that's a war, and I'll do the same thing. And God expects us to do it. There are times that it just must be. But murder is a different story. Murder seems to be always the result, not of self -defense, not of the defense of freedom, of the defense of a principle, of the defense of right, but always spawned by hatred and anger, always spawned by malicious intent. And the intent of the heart seems, in the sight of God, to be the difference between murder and killing. Literally, that great commandment says, Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not kill is an oversimplification of the case. Why do men kill? How do men kill? For what purpose do people kill? Well, the Bible tells us that God relates many ways in which people commit murders. There's the murder of the tongue. Someone has said, He who takes my life destroys little, but he who takes my reputation destroys everything. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will ever hurt me. The tongue is a venomous poison and can be used to bless God and can be used to do ill. The Bible tells us that people kill. Life teaches us that people kill and destroy by the tongue. We can commit murder, in a sense, with the ear, by things that we hear, and would well be advised to watch to see that we do not hear some things. We can commit murder with our own silence, by what we do not say in defense of someone. Silence is golden, but sometimes it is a tarnished yellow. So, when good men do not speak up, men can murder by carelessness, by carelessness. Many a man has gone down the highway and has taken the life of another man because he has so carelessly driven the car or seen what he has had to drink before he drove the car. People killed by murderous occupations. One of our fine men was fighting a tremendous struggle to have a great increase in his financial income at a time when he needed it so very much. To work for a great brewing company as a high executive. And I said to him, if the time ever comes, one of your little ones is injured, perhaps killed in an accident, and you're called home from the job, and there is the man that's hit that little girl. And on the front seat of that automobile, that drunken driver laying next to him is an empty beer can from that company that you work for, you'll never forgive yourself the longest day you live. I believe that men that have helped put on the label and print up the advertising and have had any part to do with the liquor industry are, in a sense, helping to kill people. Because statistics tell us that every time alcoholic consumption goes up in any degree, to that degree, crime and rape and murder and death and divorce as well increase. Men killed by murderous occupations. Now, why does God forbid killing so very much? For the simple reason. It is an attack upon God himself. Men are not punished for killing an animal or for killing a plant because they are not a part of God. And we, as surely as I stand before you tonight, are reaping absolutely nothing in our society but what we have sown in the authority symbol of God himself that we have taken out of the schools and out of the courts and out of our society. Now we're just paying for it. Because the ultimate authority is God himself. And an attack upon another man is an attack upon God. And when a man murders, when he kills, there are three that are attacked. The man loses his own life. God is attacked. The man dies a little bit himself. I was speaking at the baccalaid service of Classen High School in Oklahoma City two years ago. It was on a Sunday afternoon and we met in the beautiful St. Luke's Methodist Church. I have never seen the beauty, the fountains, the tapestries, the gorgeous carpets, the chandeliers, the marble. It was exquisite. I thought, what a temple of God. What a temple of God. Then I remembered going home. That was not the ultimate temple. The Bible says, ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost. A man is where God lives. God lives in people. He lives in born -again Christians. And to take the life of a man is to commit an attack upon God. It is God personified, God visualized in human instrumentality. And men that attack other men are in a sense attacking the authority of God. One of the latest theological jags is the question of the guilt around the cross. Indeed, an entire recent Roman Catholic conclave attempted to determine the ultimate guilt. Some say it was the Roman soldiers' fault. They killed him. Others, the Jews killed him. Others, that Pilate was to blame. But as I said, one of the latest theological jags is that God did it. God was responsible. Sort of the old Freudian philosophy that that that is natural must be of God. That that is of God is good, and so what is good is to be expressed. And so God finds his way as the source of the original blame for everything. And they reason thusly in their war of minds. They say that God is either not a good God, or he's not an omnipotent God. Not all -powerful or not all -good. For in the death of his Son on the cross, if he was a good God, he would have wanted to stop it. But if he is good, then he's not all -powerful because he wanted to stop it, but he couldn't. Or if he is all -powerful, then he's not a good God because he could have stopped it, but he wouldn't. Well, the truth of the matter is that neither the soldiers, nor Pilate, nor Herod, nor the Father, nor the Jews, nor the Quaternian Guard were to blame. I was to blame. I was there. I did it. My sins did it. Your sins did it. The ultimate murder was no accident. It was the incarnate wrath. It was the ultimate attack upon God's rule over man at the authority of the human race for all of us. We were all there. Was there a crime so wrong? Was there a love so strong as when Jesus suffered wrong for all my sin? I was there. Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? The ultimate murder was that in all of us, all of the venom, the rebellion, the attack upon the ultimate authority of God over the individual life, was incarnate in one act on Golgotha. We attack God. We destroy any son. Listen. Listen to the pathos and the agony. God himself through the ages had sent the prophets with his offer of redeeming mercy, with his gift of grace, and they rejected him. Then he sends the word of God. He writes it down so they can touch and see. He sends the preachers. He says he comes himself over and over. The word of the Lord came saying, and God said, and the Lord spake, and thus said the Holy Ghost 3 ,000 times. Listen. Then God says, I will send my son. Surely, surely, they will reverence my son. And what? Let him be crucified. Oh, but our God, who is always God, who is always in command of the situation, who is always working out his eternal counsels and inevitable purposes, as the first sin involved a tree, and the second sin involved a murder, combine the two that the second Adam, Jesus Christ, would be murdered upon a tree, and both in one. But God used that calamity for victory and that catastrophe for salvation, and it was through the death of Christ on the cross that God was working out his purpose to shed his blood that all men might be free and all men might be saved. And just as surely as that first man sinned, just as surely as you and I sinned because of that, just as in all, in Adam all died, thank God so in Christ may all be made alive. That is why we partake of the Lord's Supper. That is why we commemorate that death when my sin in all of those men, we would have all done the same thing. In the ultimate attack upon the authority of God, nailed the representative of God, the God -man to the cross. God took that, made victory and salvation possible through it. And tonight, in getting ourselves in faith, neath that blood of that tree, we can be made alive. We can be saved. We can be forgiven. We can be cleansed. That is what we commemorate, my rebellion against God, my sin against the Father that murdered His Son on the cross. From that tragedy, He brought triumph, those very drops of blood, when applied in faith to my poor, poor heart. God, give me salvation and grace and peace through His blood. As you, as a believer, partake of the Lord's Supper, you do remind yourselves of in the past and show forth again till He comes, the death on the tree of the Son of God, slain from the foundation of the world by our very hands and our very lives, yet in loving mercy, providing salvation, being the free sin offering for the sins of the world. Do not touch the cup, do not partake of the bread, until your heart is right with God. If you do not know Him, then you are again guilty, condemned before God of the death of His Son, but may be cleansed and forgiven, and make it a memorial, not a mockery. This do ye, said our Lord, in remembrance of me. Shall we pray? Our Father, we know that this man killed one -fourth of the population of the world. We know that he killed the only remaining son in the world. We know that he killed the only brother in the world. He killed half of the children of all the world. And that seems to be an awful, murderous, awful, lecherous sin. But it's no greater than my sin and our sins. But thank you, dear Lord, that through our mistake and our rebellious sin, thou hast brought peace and pardon and victory through the broken body and the shed blood of thy Son, the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, whose death we commemorate, whose shed blood we memorialize this night. Let none, we pray thee, partake, lest they have first looked within, claimed by faith the cleansing of the blood for their sins. And have made their peace with thee. In his name we pray. Amen.