Genesis chapter number 4, And Adam knew Eve
his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain,
and said, I have gotten a man from
the Lord.
And she again bare his brother Abel.
Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain
was a tiller of the ground.
And in process of time it came to
pass that Cain brought of the fruit of
the ground an offering to the Lord.
And Abel he also brought of the firstlings
of his flock, and of the fat thereof.
And the Lord had respect unto Abel and
to his offering.
But unto Cain and to his offering he
had no respect.
And Cain was very wroth, his confidence fell.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art
thou wroth?
And why is thy confidence fallen?
If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted?
If you obey my word, will I not
accept you?
If thou doest not well, then there is
only one explanation for that.
Sin has entered in, or sin lie at
the door.
And unto thee shall be his desire, and
thou shalt rule over him.
Verse 8, And Cain talked with Abel his
brother.
And it came to pass, when they were
in the field, that Cain rose up against
Abel and his brother and slew him.
And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is
Abel thy brother?
And he said, I know not, am I
my brother's keeper?
And he said, What hast thou done?
And the voice of thy brother's blood crieth
unto me from the ground.
In Genesis chapter 4, in Genesis chapter 5,
in Genesis chapter 6, we have an overview
of the antediluvian days, the days prior to
the flood.
And in this passage of scripture, we read
and recover from these scriptures a great lesson.
We, in our past meetings, had the study
on the doubts of Cain, entitled, Now Do
You Believe God?
We looked at some passages of scripture from
Matthew 24, 37, 38, and 39, dealing with
the fact that out of the mouth of
Jesus himself, he said, If you want to
know how close we are to the coming
of the Lord, you need to study, be
a student of the days of Noah.
In Matthew 24, in verse 4, we find
even the disciples are asking questions.
They're saying, Jesus, how can we know?
How can we tell when we're close?
What will be the signs?
When will it happen?
And Jesus said, If you want to know,
later in that same discourse as he's talking
to them, he said, The best way for
you to know is God only knows.
Angels don't even know.
But I will let you know that it's
near, and the way that you'll know my
return is near is study the days of
Noah.
And that's what we're attempting to do with
this study of the doubt of Cain, the
church of Cain.
And today, we will deal with the way
of Cain.
What happened in the church of Cain and
in the church of Abel?
The church of Cain has a profession.
The church of Abel has a possession.
The church of Cain has a form of
godliness, and the church of Abel has biblical
holiness.
The church of Cain has a concession, and
the church of Abel has conviction.
The church of Cain has works, and the
church of Abel has grace.
There's a big difference in how we respond
to the word of God.
Jesus said, Ladies and gentlemen, if we want
to know how close his return is and
how we can prepare our hearts and lives,
He said, You take your Bible, and you
read about 30 minutes of slow, deliberate reading,
and read Genesis chapter 4, Genesis chapter 5,
Genesis chapter 6, and you will know how
close we are to the coming of the
Lord.
He said for us to study the days
of Noah.
Then, we should respond to what we read
with a heart of faith.
Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews 14, and verse number
4, it says, By faith, Abel offered unto
God.
And that's what I have to do today.
That's what you've got to do today, is
I have to read God's word.
I have to receive this precious word by
faith, and then by faith, I am obedient
to the word of God.
I follow through with the word of God
by a daily commitment to walk with Him
and to serve Him.
Noah's days, as described in your Bible, the
inerrant, infallible word of God, that you can
read in Genesis 4, 5, and 6, they
are literally markers for us.
If we would illustrate the road to heaven
and eternity as an interstate, when I read
Genesis 4, 5, and 6, and I go
down through all of those events in there,
they are like mile markers along the road.
When I see the commerce, and I see
the morality, and I see the apostasy, and
I see all of the things happening, they
are road markers for me.
And if I'm paying attention and I'm using
my road map, I'll know that I'm not
very far away from that intersection of the
trumpet sounding, and the dead in Christ rising,
and we which are alive and remain being
caught up together with Him, that I'm approaching
that tremendous point in time.
In Genesis chapter 4, I have the description
of the cultural world, and the commercial world
of Noah's death.
In Genesis chapter 5, I have the generational
study, or the dispensational study out of the
word of God for Noah's death.
When I come to chapter 6 of Genesis,
I have the study of the morals of
the day.
And one of the most awesome things that
you can review in Genesis 6 is the
power of corruption to pollute.
That it permeated the whole culture of Noah's
day.
Corruption was everywhere.
And when that corruption was rampant, and the
hearts of men were polluted, they became a
violent people.
Sort of sounds like the news in America,
that we are without natural affections, that we
have men abusing children.
We have pornography growing at an unbelievable rate,
and part of the focusing of that pornography
business is that we are actually prostituting our
own babies for our own pleasures as a
sin-saturated society.
I am convinced intellectually and spiritually that I
am living in Noah's days.
I really believe that.
It's not normal for a man to be
attracted to a child.
It's not normal for a school teacher to
go seduce her little boys in her classroom.
There's something bad wrong with us.
When the church of the living God cannot
cry aloud and spare naught, and the ministers
of our day are intimidated with political correctness
and popularity and paychecks, that they will not
stand and declare the inerrant, infallible Word of
God.
I really believe that when I look at
Genesis 6, I see that account of those
angels which kept not their first estate in
Jude 6.
And I also see that human DNA altered
with that race of giants.
And I reflect upon today as the nation
of Italy just a few days ago declared
that they had cloned a horse, a racehorse,
and had duplicated it just like the sheep
Dolly was reproduced.
And that they are now working, another country
announced, in the human DNA.
They are altering the organs of animals so
that they can be placed in human bodies.
I believe with all my heart that God
has allowed me to be alive in Noah's
days.
And that I am experiencing the effect of
the church of Cain.
That I have seen what religion without God
does to men and women around the world.
These chapters of Noah's days give us a
powerful record.
A record of religion without God's Spirit.
It is literally the church of Cain.
We see human depravity.
We see that mankind will lie to himself
while he is lying to a holy God.
We will make excuses for our own sin
while we even read the Bible and go
to church.
Because our nature has fallen and we are
wicked on our own selves without the life
-changing power of the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I see the accounts of building and commerce
and economic development.
I see actual accounts in Genesis 6 of
city construction.
Many times people have been to me down
over the past years about would I sign
on or could they use my name for
certain products or referrals to certain churches or
groups of people.
Because some people have an isolationist mindset.
Or they think we ought to get up
on Mount Mitchell with a big bore rifle
and some freeze-dried fruit and wait for
the Lord to come.
Because things are going to get bad.
But if I study Noah days and if
I study Lot days, I don't see that
happening.
I see that there was not poverty in
those days.
I don't see that there was a great
financial collapse.
I see there was prosperity in those days.
They were building and growing.
And in Genesis 6, they even were growing
cities.
They were building.
And what's the curse of America?
It's not our poverty.
It's our materialism that we sold our soul
for.
Our babies are wearing tennis shoes that cost
more than my first car.
We got tennis shoes that pump up, pump
down.
Left turn signal, right turn signal, CD player.
That's just for shoes.
A lot's happening.
And we're all caught up in this materialistic
world.
I really believe that when I read these
passages of Genesis 4, 5, and 6, I
see the story of the human race that's
traveling.
It's nomadic.
It's moving.
And we've allowed that to come into our
society, our culture, and our church.
We don't have family time anymore.
We don't sit down and have a family
meal anymore.
The strength of the Christian home was that
family time.
Mama and Daddy and the children were at
the table once a day at least.
Most of the time, twice a day.
They had breakfast together.
And they had the supper meal.
Or if you're from the north, the dinner
meal.
But either way, you know that they got
together.
And they had that fellowship time.
Mama, Daddy, and the children.
But now everyone's on a different schedule.
Mama's working one schedule.
Daddy's working another.
The kids are on another.
They've got to be at soccer practice.
And they've got to be at piano lessons.
And they've got to be at the school.
And everybody is living out of a fast
food window or a microwave meal.
Or we're doing takeout or carry home.
And everybody's not together.
Because we're all caught up in that same
spirit.
We also know that music had a great
part of Genesis 4, 5, and 6.
It influenced the culture.
And we'll come back to that in a
later study.
And agriculture.
And then a desire to be godlike.
Not in the good sense, but in the
little g.
The same godlike that the serpent came to
Eve in the garden.
He said, if you'll eat of this tree
of knowledge and good and evil, you'll be
just like God.
It's the same teaching of the New Age
movement.
I exist.
I am.
Therefore, I am my own god.
The same philosophy of man redeeming himself.
It's religion without the deity of the divine
Godhead.
We're also seeing a disrespect in our day
of authority.
And we're also seeing a religious authority has
been removed.
Matthew 24, 37.
The Word of God says Jesus instructed us
to study Noah's days.
That all the words of Jesus are true.
Even the words that Jesus declared about the
days of Noah.
Now, the most certain thing in your future.
You listen to me.
In the choir, the balcony, the main floor,
in an overflow chair, wherever you are.
The most certain thing that you have in
your future is this.
The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is coming.
He said that and He's coming.
I love to study prophecy.
I love to study world events.
Because I enjoy that.
But I don't have to study anything other
than what Jesus said.
And He said in John 14 and verse
number 3.
And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again.
You know what that means?
Means He will come again.
So the most certain thing in my future
and your future is that the Lord is
coming again.
Well, pastor, when is He coming?
He said read Genesis 4, 5 and 6.
And when you see things happening in those
chapters, happening in your lifetime.
You will know that the Lord is near.
Now, we see the doubts of Cain as
religious apostasy.
We see the church of Cain as man's
efforts to replace the Holy Spirit.
Now, do you believe God's message is a
forerunner or a foreshadow of religious unbelief and
religious apostasy?
The message on the church of Cain is
a study of man's effort to replace the
Holy Spirit.
Even, listen to me, even in fundamental evangelical
churches, we're seeing the danger of mutation and
the power of that church of Cain to
affect the family of faith.
You say, what do you mean?
Well, let me give you three or four
things that I believe the Lord has spoken
to my heart about.
There's several others.
But number one, one way that we're replacing
the Holy Spirit is that we are going
to see churches have a form of godliness,
but they will deny the power of God.
They've got a building.
They've got staples and stained glass and pews
and people.
But the power of God is a stranger
inside their form.
And sometimes it's a fundamental form of godliness.
We're singing the right songs.
We're holding a 1611 Bible.
But it's dead as last year's bird's nest.
It's a form of godliness.
Then the second element that I see happening
in churches is the form of replacing the
Holy Spirit with legalism.
That men and women devise a set of
rules.
And you have to look like I look,
talk like I talk, go to the Bible
college I went to, take the same religious
papers I take.
And if you don't do that, you must
not be spiritual.
So we have now mutated the spirit of
God into the spirit of legalism.
The third element that I see and experience
is that we then go down the road
of intellectualism.
We substitute that for the power of the
Holy Spirit.
Intellectualism.
And then the fourth and probably the most
prevalent one that I see affecting even evangelical
churches is emotionalism.
Moving into the place of moving in the
hearts and lives of people instead of the
Holy Spirit.
Now let me review this for you.
A form of godliness that would be replaced
with routines.
Legalism that would be replaced with rules.
Intellectualism would be a replacement theology of using,
increasing my self-esteem and my self-worth
over the holy, lovely things of God.
That I have an edge on everyone else.
Emotionalism would be the road of ruin.
No anchor.
No taproot.
Only stirred but not changed.
Going to church.
Attending the social activities.
But even in the house of God, planning,
but seeing that I will participate in later
the same day or later in the week.
I'm stirred by a religious moment but I
am not changed by the power of God.
I'm seeing a form of godliness and that
form of godliness is illustrated by a religious
ritual for salvation.
I see legalism and I see rules that
are controlling the exterior of people but nothing
working on the heart of that depraved man
or woman.
They're bearing no fruit of being Christ-like.
I see intellectualism that comes in as a
replacement for the working of the Holy Spirit
and a tenderness to Him.
An increase of self-importance and a disregard
of John chapter 3 and verse 3.
And I see the evidence of emotionalism that
produces ruin.
So I find people stirred by not changed.
I have a form of godliness equaling routines,
legalism equaling rules and intellectualism equaling a replacement
theology and emotionalism moving in to a pathway
of ruin and self-destruction.
When the majority of our religious institutions are
polluted by the Church of Cain, when the
predominant religious forces of our day on the
nation is now testified to be the Church
of Cain, when our children and our teenagers
and our young adults and newlyweds have been
shaped by a society with no absolutes and
the weak pulpits of the Church of Cain,
there is no right and no wrong.
That's how you can have a Baptist minister
in our community saying that you can get
to heaven through Buddha just as easy as
you can Jesus Christ.
It's because he's now practicing in the Church
of Cain.
That's why you can have ministers in our
community saying the first three chapters of Genesis
or the first eleven chapters of Genesis are
nothing but Jewish folklore.
They've gone over to the Church of Cain.
We're seeing, ladies and gentlemen, that there's no
authority in the inerrant, infallible Word of God.
And we have seen that seeping and permeating
in even to the evangelical churches of our
day and the evangelistic efforts of our day.
And we are now substituting concession for old
-time conviction.
We're making sinners comfortable in the house of
God.
When the Church trades its authority of God's
Word for political correctness, you've got the Church
of Cain.
When the Church morphs from God's holiness to
being comfortable in my sin, you've got Cain's
way being lived in the pew.
When our churches place more emphasis on our
theatrical productions and popularity, then we do the
presence of God and his divine power.
We're going to produce a generation of kids
that will walk in the way of Cain.
When we give birth to a society and
a culture that is absent of any reverence
of the things of God or God's Word,
then we're walking in the way of Cain.
Wanderings of our children and our grandchildren that
have gone out away from their heritage and
their faith, they're walking in the way of
Cain.
What does Jude 11 say?
Jude 11 says, Woe unto them!
Woe unto them!
God says, and read Jude 11, there's an
exclamation point in there.
God's saying, Woe!
Don't do this!
This is dangerous!
Woe unto them!
For they have gone the way of Cain.
There's a great warning there.
What is that warning?
Religious, natural man.
The way of Cain believes in a God
and in a religion, but that God and
religion is after man's own will.
Man's intellect replaces God's grace.
And here's what scares me.
Then we have man replacing God's initiative of
our soul's salvation.
The apostate teacher explains away the call of
God.
The apostate teacher explains away the conviction of
God.
And the apostate teacher explains away the conversion
by God!
He's either God Almighty or He's not God
at all.
He's God that arrested my soul and changed
me by His might and power.
I didn't find Jesus.
Jesus found me.
I didn't discover God.
God knew me before He made work.
He's a God of great power and great
authority.
The call of God to salvation and later
after conversion, even the call of a holy
God to divine service.
Conviction in most of our churches has been
replaced with comfort for the sinner.
Conversion has been replaced in most of our
churches with contemporary services that are filled with
religious activities.
Chainsway is a way that produces a society
that uses the polling of the populace to
determine the values preached from the pulpit.
We will poll the population to see what
our values will be from the pulpits of
America.
And when we do that, then we produce
children and grandchildren that will reject the Word
of God as absolute truth without error.
We're in a dangerous time, but we don't
pay much attention because we've neglected Genesis 4,
5, and 6 in our study.
Barnum does a lot of research about churches.
He did one a couple of years ago.
And the Barnum report came out, and this
is what it said, Lorne.
It said that one-third of all Americans
do not believe in the God that's described
in the Bible.
One-third of all Americans do not believe
the God that's described in the Holy Bible.
Most adults, the majority of adults, do not
believe, almost two-thirds do not believe Satan
is a real being as described in the
Word of God.
Most people believe it does not matter which
little god, G-O-D, you pray to.
Every deity is ultimately the same deity, shrouded
in names and attributes given by men and
women around the world.
So you pray to your God, and you
pray to your God, and you pray to
your God, and it doesn't matter which gods
you pray to because ultimately they're all the
same God.
You know what that is?
That's just not so.