The Blood Still Speaks

July 22, 2025 - Genesis 4

I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.

🪔 Today’s Truth:

The blood of Jesus speaks for the broken, the weary, and the ashamed and it says, “Come home.”

She thought he might be the one.

Eve, cradling the first child ever born, looked into the face of Cain and dared to believe the promise would come true through him. “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord,” she said. Some have translated it, “I have gotten a man, the Lord.” Her theology wasn’t precise. But her longing was.

And when Abel came, he was just that: Abel. A breath. A vapor. A second son in the shadow of a mistaken hope.

The years passed. The boys grew. One farmed. One herded. One wrestled the cursed earth. They worked. They lived. And then came the day that changed everything.

Two altars were built.

Cain came with vegetables. Grain. Earth-born evidence of his own labor. It wasn’t that his gift was bad. It just wasn’t blood. There was no cost in it. No surrender. No death.

Abel came with a lamb. The best of his flock. Its throat cut, its blood pooled, its fat burning. He stood before God, not with pride but with faith. The blood said everything he couldn’t.

One sacrifice was accepted. One was not.

Cain’s face fell. His fists clenched. His eyes darkened. The seed of the serpent stirred in his chest.

God spoke. Not with wrath. Not yet. But with a warning: “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

Cain said nothing.

Instead, he called Abel to the field. The grass was tall. The sun high. No witnesses but God. The younger brother didn’t run. Maybe he didn’t even see it coming.

The blood soaked the soil.

And the ground, cursed as it was, opened its mouth and cried.

Where is your brother?

Cain lied. “I don’t know.” Then the sneer: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

He wasn’t asking. He was accusing. As if to say, “Why did you accept him and not me?” As if the fault were God’s.

But the Lord had heard the blood. It had a voice.

“Your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

The sentence fell like a storm: You will be a fugitive. A wanderer. The earth will resist you. Your hands will blister, but the ground will not yield. Your home will be nowhere. Your peace, nowhere.

But even then, mercy. God marked Cain. No one would kill him. No vigilante justice. Only the long punishment of life without rest.

Cain left. Not just the garden. But the presence of the Lord.

He built a city. Named it after his son. Settled down when he was cursed to wander. The rebellion continued. Sons were born. Generations passed. Culture advanced. Metalwork. Music. Agriculture. Human ingenuity rose, even as godliness sank.

Seven generations in, Lamech sang a song to his wives. It wasn’t a lullaby. It was a boast. He had killed a man. A boy. And he was proud. Cain’s vengeance was sevenfold, he said. Mine will be seventy-seven.

Polygamy. Murder. Arrogance. Cain’s children had learned his rage, but not his remorse.

And yet, not all was lost.

Adam and Eve had another son. Seth. His name meant “appointed.” Not Abel returned, but a new hope, a line of faith. He had a son named Enosh. And the text says that in those days, men began to call on the name of the Lord.

A new altar was built.

Not in Cain’s city. Not in Lamech’s house. But somewhere in the soil stained by Abel’s blood, men stood and prayed. They sang, not of violence, but of mercy. They named the Lord. They remembered the promise. And the blood kept speaking.

Not Abel’s. Something more.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus’ blood speaks a better word. Abel’s blood cries out for justice. Christ’s blood cries out for forgiveness.

Cain brought crops. Jesus brought himself.

Cain killed the innocent. Jesus was the innocent who was killed.

Cain was marked to warn the world. Jesus was scarred to save it.

There are still two altars. One built with effort. The other soaked in grace.

There are still two sons. One who takes. One who gives.

And there are still only two paths.

One ends in wandering. The other in worship.

Come to the altar that bleeds. Not with vegetables, but with your need. Not with pride, but with surrender. Not with what you’ve done, but with what he did.

The blood still speaks.

Make sure you know what it’s saying.

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🛑 Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom.

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Home is where the hearth is.
Joy’s got the brush, I’m on trim duty—and together we’re giving this old fireplace a fresh start. A little shiplap, some tile, and a lot of love in our little home in the Ozarks.