What is the first thing to go when worship of the true God has been replaced by something else? We end up wanting to destroy everything that God has left his mark on. We continue our rejection of God by our ill-treatment of his image-bearers.
The truth of the matter is that when we reject God anything goes. We've see this clearly in Paul's description in Romans 1 where the rejection of God leads to dishonoring our bodies (vv. 24-25), exchanging normal sexual relations with unnatural ones (vv. 26-27), and a whole list of vices focusing on our treatment of others (vv. 28-32; e.g., envy, murder, slander, disobedient to parents, etc.).
Soon after the fall of Adam and Eve, the biblical narrative describes the first murder (Genesis 4). Cain, a farmer, kills his younger brother Abel, a shepherd. This is what happens in the new world outside the garden of Eden. Both brothers bring an offering in worship of God and God accepts Abel's offering of a firstborn from his flock and not Cain's offering of the fruit of the ground. Cain is furious that God would not accept his offering, refuses to repent at God's warning, and slaughters his brother in cold blood. Cain's anger toward God is taken out on God's image-bearer, Abel.
The narrative doesn't tell us why Abel's offering was accepted and Cain's was not. Abel's was offered in faith (cf. Hebrews 11:4), so it's somewhat safe to presume that Cain's offering wasn't given with the same intent of honoring God. Though appearing to be an offering to God, Cain's worship was flawed because of his sinful heart (cf. 1 John 3:12). We can see what was in Cain's heart by his response to God's rejection—his refusal to repent and slaughter of his brother.
The same parallel between a flawed worship and mistreatment of God's image-bearers continues throughout Scripture. Isaiah describes this false worship in Isaiah 1:10-17. The Lord doesn't delight in their sacrifices and refuses to listen to their prayers because their "hands are full of blood" (v. 15). James rebukes the hypocrisy of those "who bless our Lord and Father" but "curse people who are made in the likeness of God" (James 3:9). John warns us that those who are able to provide for their brothers in need and fail to do so do not have God's love within them (1 John 3:17).
The point of all of this is to help us see that we cannot presume to be right with God if we don't honor his image-bearers. Thus, we need to repent of our failure to value the people he has made in his image (Genesis 1:26-28).
A though occurred to me the other day. Imagine that a band of tree terrorists orchestrated an attack on the trees in our cities' parks. Imagine that this attack was successful and millions of our treasured trees were cut down. Can you imagine the outrage this would cause within our society? Everyone would be on the same page in condemning such a mindless "slaughter" of our beautiful trees and would be united in calling for the same thing to be done to these tree terrorists. And we would do so while remaining defiantly committed to slaughtering millions of those made in the image of God in our midst, both the young and the old. Something is drastically wrong with us. It is time for us to wake up and repent.
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