Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. (Gen. 4:6-7, NIV)
If sin is a falling short of what God has called us to do and how to live (which I believe that to be the case), then idolatry is that which has brought us to the place where we have the possibility of falling short (i.e., sinning).
In Genesis 4, before Cain has sinned in killing his brother Abel, Yahweh gets in front of him with what he sees as a possibility of events to come. As far as I can see, God confronts Cain in the hope that Cain would see the situation for what it is and make a decision for life instead of death—literally.
Cain is angry because of the way God received his offering, ignoring what is probably the reality of the situation that he did little to offer what would actually be pleasing to Yahweh. God, of course, sees the road Cain is walking, he knows where it will lead, and he graciously and lovingly lays it all out on the table for Cain.
Why are you angry?
Why is your face downcast?
In other words, what is going on inside of you that’s causing you to think and act in a way that will not pleasing to me or lifegiving to you?
Yahweh continues to counsel Cain by plainly telling him that what he does next will be a revelation of what he has already decided within himself. Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.
In God’s mind, we either rule over sin or it rules over us; there is no other way this works.
Sin is crouching at Cain’s door because he has started to give himself over to an idolatrous way of thinking and perceiving the world around him, including his relationship with God and his brother. He has started to be frustrated with God and think more highly of himself than he ought. He has steadily stopped worshipping God. Opting, instead, to worship himself.
He will be his own God.
And, tragically, we see how that worked out. A dead brother in a field and a man now on the run from everyone and everything he ever knew—including the One who tried to keep him from this horrifying series of events.
This is the horrendous reality of idolatry that will inevitably give way to sin. And in order to prepare ourselves in this fight—this fight to rule over sin—we must remember the order of things. We never sin just because; we always sin because we’ve started to worship someone or something other than God.
Our call, then, from God himself, is to recognize that there will be times when sin is crouching at the door and then to respond accordingly. He has not called us to focus on the sin; he’s called us to deal with the root of the problem—the idolatry in our heart. Working at it the other way round would be like making sure your seatbelt was on as your drove your car into a brick wall. The seatbelt is not going to do anything to stop your car from hitting the wall.
Don’t worry about your seatbelt; take your foot off the gas!
As Paul says in Romans 8, if we live according to the flesh we will die, but if by the Spirit we put to death the misdeeds of the body we will live.
So then, above all else, let us rule over sin by worshipping God and, thus, live.