Cain is unwilling to repent of whatever is in his heart that's not right with the Lord. Instead he's angry at the Lord. He's angry at his brother Abel too because the Lord looked with favor on the offering Abel brought in faith. This anger leads him to resent his brother so much that he doesn't even want him to exist.
This is how sin works when we continue to harbor it in our hearts instead of confessing it to the Lord. It's wonderful when we are able to bring praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, but sometimes we also need to offer the Lord our anger, our disappointment, our sadness, our loneliness, or our inability to forgive someone. The emotions we feel during our time on earth can be too big for our mortal bodies to handle. These emotions have the potential to master us if we don't submit them to the Lord. He is able to do what we can't do for ourselves. I've had to go to Him and lay at His feet some very ugly feelings at times and ask Him to help me not to feel that way.
Our loving heavenly Father wants us to bring all our hurts and cares to Him. Think of it this way: when you were a small child and you fell and scraped your knee, didn't you go running to one of your parents to tell them you were hurt? Or when you were a toddler and you were feeling overwhelmed and you needed to cry a little bit, I bet you didn't hide when you cried. I bet you crawled up into your mom's lap or your dad's lap so they could comfort you. As the children of the living God, we have access to more comfort and help than an earthly parent could ever give us. I believe everything that matters to us matters to our Father, so why not take all our troubles to the One who has the power to do something about them? He may not always change our circumstances right away, but He can certainly help us to react to them in a more positive, faith-affirming way.
Cain doesn't lay his anger and hurt at the Lord's feet. Instead he feeds these emotions by obsessing over them. The Bible doesn't tell us how much time elapses between the Lord being displeased with Cain and between Cain taking out his anger on his brother, but I tend to think it didn't happen on the same day. I think it took some time for Cain's resentment to grow to such a level that the idea of doing harm to his brother no longer shocked him. Some sins are so big and so terrible that when the idea first enters our minds, we are shocked. We don't believe we'd ever do such a thing. But if we keep allowing the sinful idea to keep walking through the rooms of our minds, the next thing we know we aren't so shocked anymore. We start to become comfortable with the presence of this idea in our heads. The next thing we know, the idea becomes not only quite attractive to us but logical as well because we've found a way to justify it to ourselves.
The crime Cain commits is premeditated. We can tell by the way the Bible words this next passage that Cain has everything planned out ahead of time. "Now Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field.' While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." (Genesis 4:8) Jealousy is a powerful emotion. I'd be willing to bet that jealousy is the motive behind the majority of murders. Jealousy takes many forms, but at its heart it's a resentment a person feels because someone else has what they do not have.
I don't think Abel ever looked down on Cain or remarked upon Cain's failure to bring a pleasing offering to the Lord. The Bible doesn't give us the impression that Abel is doing anything to taunt his brother for his lack of faith. It's just that Abel's presence in the home is a daily reminder to Cain that he doesn't measure up when it comes to faith and godliness, but instead of working on building his relationship with the Lord and becoming a better man, Cain simply wants Abel out of his life. If only Cain had confessed his feelings to the Lord and if only he had repented of whatever is wrong between him and the Lord, his brother Abel could have been an inspiration to him to step up his own faith. But in his heart I think Cain feels no desire to be like Abel. He has no interest in developing a closer relationship with his Maker. He just isn't a spiritually-minded man and he's comfortable with that---or at least he is when he isn't in the presence of his brother. He decides he can be comfortable all the time if he can just rid himself of Abel, so he kills him.
Cain's motive for murdering Abel was jealousy, but we don't want to miss the fact that even though we don't see Satan as a serpent slithering through the field when this murder takes place, Satan is behind this terrible deed. Remember, the Lord told the serpent that a descendant of Eve would bruise his head. The Lord foretold the coming Messiah, and the devil is on the hunt for Him. Satan doesn't want the Savior of mankind to be born, but he doesn't know when He will be born. He doesn't know whether the Messiah will be a child of Eve's or whether He will be born on down the line from one of her children. As Cain grew into young manhood, Satan decided he must not be the one. Cain didn't have the character of God's Son and Satan couldn't imagine a child coming from Cain who would be the Messiah. He didn't think God would allow His Son to be born from the line of a man who has no heart for the things of God. But Abel was beginning to seem like a good candidate. Abel loved the Lord. Abel was setting a godly example for his whole family. Abel was a godly man but he wasn't a perfect man, so the devil may have realized he was not the Messiah, but the devil could easily imagine the perfect Promised One coming from the line of Abel someday. I think that while Cain's jealousy festered and grew against his brother, Satan was whispering in his ear day and night, telling him that the solution was to rid himself of Abel. Satan is both a liar and a murderer, as the Lord Jesus said, "He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44b)
Cain didn't have to listen to the devil's lies. But the devil's words were what he wanted to hear. He listened to them because they were the same words that were in his own sinful mind. The devil didn't force Cain to kill his brother. No, what he did was affirm the murderous thoughts Cain was already having. And because Cain enjoyed having someone validate his wrong feelings, he listened. Now he's done something he can't undo. He's become the first murderer. He's become the first man to deceive and betray someone who loves and trusts him. If we were asked to name two of the worst men in the Bible, Judas Iscariot would probably be at the top of the list but Cain would be right behind him. The two of them are almost equally infamous because of their heinous betrayal of men who had shown them nothing but kindness and friendship.
In tomorrow's passage Cain will have to face the Lord and be charged with this terrible crime and sentenced for it.
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