I want you now to put yourself in
an attitude to receive the truth.
Don't shut the door to what we're going
to say.
Leave yourself, leave the door open so the
Lord can show you if you are a
keen worshipper.
Now what was wrong with Cain and Abel?
He never looked at either one as far
as the scripture said.
He looked at their office.
He's not looking at you today.
He's looking at your office to see whether
you're making an acceptable offering.
And what you're offering will determine what you
are.
He didn't need to look at Cain or
Abel.
He knew them by their office.
I don't need to look at you when
I see your office.
I'll say this to you in my 50
years on the battlefront near that, despite many
more years in Christ before them, I have
never yet seen a genuine worshipper making an
acceptable offering that you didn't know and couldn't
trust.
Now you can trust anyone whose whole hope
is that acceptable offering I'm going to tell
you about.
But if they're not making an acceptable offering,
you can't trust them.
You can depend on them.
I don't care what they think of themselves.
Hence, will you be betrayed by your own
loved ones?
That's the thing.
Now the first murder came by a worshipper,
a former worshipper.
He was the murderer.
And he killed a fellow worshipper.
And there isn't a more dangerous person than
these worshippers who have gone the way of
Cain, offering themselves and their own good works.
Now first, Cain made an offering of the
fruits of a cursed earth.
And when God has cursed the thing, don't
offer that to him as your salvation.
It's under a curse too, like you.
Now remember that.
What Cain offered was something he'd produced by
hard work.
And let me say to all of you
people who are a member of a church
that has been sound, fundamental ever since I
have known it, and who have continually eliminated
such as were in open rebellion, but by
great multitudes yet, who are going in the
ways of Cain, who are coming, offering what
they've been doing and what they are, just
as Cain offered the fruits that he'd produced
and worked hard to produce.
And you say, well certainly you ought to
have some consideration.
A man that'll work as hard as I
have, I'm a member of this church, I've
joined the church, yes.
So was Billy Graham when he was converted
in my meeting in North Carolina.
He was a member of the church.
And Marlon Clean, I just read his experience,
it's told in this latest book.
And when he came down there and when
I pointed my finger right out at him,
he said, well I don't, of course the
Lord told him I was pointing at him.
And he resented it, got mad when I
referred to him being a sinner.
Well I didn't refer to him, I didn't
know his age.
But the Lord did.
I want you to be right where he
was.
If you are giving the Lord an offering
he's not accepting, don't you want to know
it?
If any of you today are not saved,
do you want to know it?
If you're not accepted to the Lord, do
you want to know it?
How many will say, I want to know
the facts regardless.
And I want the Lord to tell me.
Can you say that?
If so, lift your hand right now.
I want to know if I'm not saved,
do I want to know it?
If I'm not offered an acceptable offering, I
want to know it.
I don't care what it costs me, but
I want to know the truth.
How many of you can say that honestly?
I didn't like that half way, that lay
of the sin way of voting there.
Either hot or cold, which are you?
If you're not acceptable in heaven, do you
want to know it?
Before it's too late.
How many of you do?
I do.
Lift your hand right now.
Very well.
Remember, the Lord is not going to show
you unless you're willing to do.
His offering was the fruits of a cursed
earth.
And so is your nature cursed.
Old Adam is under a curse, you watch
me.
Old Adam is under a curse.
And there isn't anything Adam can do, God
will accept.
Not anything.
There is no good thing in the flesh,
said the Apostle Paul.
He ought to know, for he was certainly
the most religious man before he was saved.
He was the most religious man of his
day.
In fact, he looked like he was more
religious before he was saved than after, if
you look at him through the eyes of
the flesh.
He was very religious then.
But after he was saved, he was a
spectacular man.
And they knew that he was cursed of
God because of what was calling him.
Now it depends altogether on what kind of
glasses you wear as to how things are
going to look.
Another thing, he was also offering his good
deeds, Abel was.
Are you offering your good deeds?
Are you?
You say, well I've been a faithful Sunday
school teacher, I've been a faithful member of
this church, I've been loyal to the truth,
I'm fundamental, I'm orthodox, I try to live
right, I'm trying to do the best I
can, I don't know anything else I can
do.
But that is not acceptable to the Lord.
That's what the old man Adam is doing.
And you had just as well try to
buy this building with a nickel as to
buy and even, that's a very poor illustration,
as to buy salvation with any of your
good deeds or any of your offerings that
you are making.
Another thing, you need not offer your experience,
well Mr. Hamm, I was saved, I was
just as happy, that doesn't mean a thing
in the world.
You can believe a lie rather than rejoice
about it.
For instance, Isaac believed a lie.
He thought he was blessing Esau, but he
was blessing Jacob.
Why, he trusted in what he was feeling
instead of what he heard.
And you may get a great feeling, I've
known people that pray until they got happy
and got shouting, and they say, I know
I'm saved now because I was so happy,
but my friend tomorrow you may be so
unhappy that you'll say I guess I've lost
it.
Well I hope you have brother.
See if you see it.
Because you may make a mistake and trust
an experience, or trust your own offering or
trust something that you felt or something you're
doing, brother that is acane worship.
And you're not offering an acceptable sacrifice.
Another thing, there's no need of you offering
anything that's bloodless.
Now let's get this clear in your mind.
Cain's offering had not shed any blood.
He may have cut the flowers and brought
the vegetables and brought the fruit and brought
everything that he could get, but still there
wasn't a drop of blood on it.
And the Lord is not going to accept
any kind of an offering that isn't bloody.
Without the shedding of blood there is no
remission of sin.
Now in order that you may see the
difference, let's look at Abel's offering.
Abel's offering, first of all, was there between
him and God.
He couldn't get to God.
Why?
Death separates.
It was a dead lamb.
And death separates every man in this world
from God.
There is absolutely no approach except you come
by death.
There is death between God and you.
There's a bloody lamb.
And when I look at that I see
the mystery of the cross.
If I didn't have any other scripture except
this I'm using as my message today, I
could see all the mystery of the cross.
I'd say the greatest miracle today is this
book.
All that we could only realize and understand
that the greatest miracle that's ever been in
all creation was not the making of planets
and bringing them into existence, nor was it
the resurrection of Lazarus, nor the rest of
us human beings.
The greatest miracle is when a man who,
like Abel, has gone down the centuries and
stood looking to God and sees the cross
with Jesus Christ hanging on it and has
the revelation in the light that the dying
son of the thief had when he said,
this lamb's done nothing of this.
You and I are guilty.
He acknowledged that there wasn't a thing that
put Jesus Christ on the cross except his
own sins.
And when Abel came and said, I can't
get to you.
I'm offering this lamb.
And that's not only how Abel's offering speaks.
It tells all about Abel.
He also said, I believe that I can
approach God through death.
By the death of Jesus Christ on the
cross.
Now let's get certain things clear.
God can see in your heart that people
who were behind the blood-stained doorposts in
Egypt were not any better than the people
in the house of Pharaoh.
And Cain and Abel were both religious.
They were both sons of fallen Adam.
I was born of a father who was
a Christian and a minister.
But when I was born in the flesh,
he bequeathed to me what he was in
the flesh, in the likeness of Adam, through
my father, in my natural birth.
And if there isn't something else to offer
except your good works, your good birth, and
your good deeds, that you're a religious man
and trying to do the best thing I
can and trying to live up to it,
my friend, there is no salvation for a
person and God can look in your heart
and tell what you're offering.
He can tell when you turn for some
kind of comfort, you think of the good
deeds you've done.
How long I've been a member of the
church.
How long I've been trying to do the
best I could.
How much I've given.
And God sees in your heart and sees
that your offering is not acceptable.
And hence, Abel's offering was acceptably because it
revealed and gave us the picture of the
death of Jesus on the cross and gave
us what Abel believed, that death separated God
and him, that he could approach God through
a death of another, a death of a
substitute, that God would accept that lamb's death
instead of his.
And the reason I know God is not
going to put me to death, he said
that Jesus Christ, if you offer him as
a substitute of your death, then he can't
put me to death.
Father, in these words first, and then a
call for something even greater.
He loves us too well to forsake us,
to forgive us one trial too much.
All his people have been dearly purchased and
Satan can never claim such.
By and by we shall see him and
praise him in the city on ending day.
Then the tiles of this road will say
nothing when we get to the end of
the way.
Then the tiles of the road will say
nothing when we get to the end of
the way.
Lord, set us on fire for thee.
You have to do it.
May they see the demonstration of the period
of the spirit of God, not, O Lord,
because of some secondary matters, but because of
the great issue.
Christ is being exalted and people are being
saved.
Right now, Lord, these men, may they follow
the pastor with all the earnestness of his
soul as he's laid himself and you on
the altar.
And Lord, you've kept him here physically.
Now you've given him a spiritual experience that
ought to mark and will mark the beginning
of the greatest of all his testimonies and
witnesses by our Savior.
And now, Lord, take these men and take
these people that are in this place today
and, Father, may not one person fail to
move.
May they not stay where they are.
We ask in Jesus' name.
That's all, Stan.