Your Word, O Lord, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Your testimonies are our delight forever, for they are the joy of our heritage. We are Your servants; give us understanding that we may know Your testimonies. Open our ears, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I imagine many of you are familiar with Peter and the wolf, not just the story but the musical score where each instrument is representative of one of the characters, the hunters, or Peter, or the grandpa, or the wolf, or the duck. It’s a wonderful way to tell that story.

Sometimes when I think of the opening chapters of Genesis, I can’t help but think what a musical score sound like. You open the scene in Genesis chapter 1, a sort of deep, haunting melody as the Lord calls into existence the things that are not and the Spirit of God hovering over the chaos, tohu wa bohu, formless and void, and then shapes and creates this world.

And then you come and you have Genesis 2, bright and cheery, and I imagine flutes and piccolos are playing a cheery song, and maybe there’s some rich French horns in the background as man is there and naming the animals, and woman is created, I imagine something like “Peer Gynt Morning Mood,” [sound effect] Just like that, that’s how he designed it to be sung.

But then you come to chapter 3, screeching violins, bellowing cellos, something has gone wrong.

We’re so attuned to music you don’t even realize if you’re watching a movie that the musical score is telling you what’s going to happen, it’s telling you what you ought to feel. And so all you have to do is have some of those low bass notes, de de, I mean, I just did two notes and you’re already afraid to get into the water. De de. It’s just something about music.

And then when you come to chapter 4, the music turns from foreboding to sad. There’s a single lilting viola playing slowly in the background in a minor key.

When the curtain lifted on chapter 3, we were still in a paradise, the way things were supposed to be, but by the close of the curtain in chapter 3, the good life had been lost, paradise had been lost.

And now as we come from chapter 3 to chapter 4, we see the world sinking from bad to worse, as I have entitled the message, you can see, “The Way Things Are But The Way Things Were Not Meant To Be.” It’s a sad picture of the reality that each of us inhabit, but insofar as we can experience the mitigating effects of common grace and supernatural grace and then look forward to the grace of glory that is to come, we can get a glimpse of the way things were and the way they’re meant to be.

Follow along as I read this sad story from Genesis chapter 4:

“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.’ And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 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. The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 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.'”

“Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the Lord said, ‘What have you done?