Well, it's good to see you all again
this evening.
Nice and warm for you, isn't it?
We don't need much heating in the church
today.
Warm welcome to you, therefore, as we turn
again to our evening studies in the Book
of Genesis.
Now, unless there should be someone here this
evening who has not been with us over
previous Sunday evenings, let me say what will
become obvious as we proceed, but which needs
to be said, I think, at this stage,
that what we are attempting to do in
this short series, in the early chapters of
Genesis, is this.
We're attempting to let Genesis speak for itself.
I have been reiterating over and over again
that we're not altogether ignorant of the kind
of onslaught that is made upon this first
book of the Bible, by so-called scientists
of one kind or another.
There's a whole battery, a whole battalion of
critics, who, from one point of view or
another, vie with one another for the destruction
of this creature, of this phenomenon, this first
book of Holy Writ.
Now, we're not totally ignorant of that.
But what we are trying to do is
this.
We are trying to let the book speak
for itself.
And therefore, we are not really addressing ourselves
to these problems and these criticisms that are
levelled, but we are asking primarily, what is
the book saying?
What is its message?
What does it say to us?
And I trust that as we do so
prayerfully, we shall find that it is not
without a message.
It has something to teach us intellectually.
It has something to say to us morally
and spiritually.
Indeed, it offers a key to an understanding
of the kind of thing that is going
around in the world in which we live
tonight.
I was a little puzzled when it came
to the title for tonight's meditation.
We actually put in the press and in
the calendar, This Side of Eden.
But that's a very general title.
I didn't like to advertise the one I
wanted to.
Because the real title to our message tonight
would be this, Murder After Worship.
You'll see the reason why I didn't want
to put it in the press.
Murder, rank, satanic, fiendish, brackish murder of the
most fiendish order of coming in the wake
of worship.
Genesis 4 makes painful reading.
Gone now is the original innocence and bliss
that marked man's early life.
Gone is that glorious sensitivity to the voice
of God bringing with it pleasure.
Each time the voice of God breaks the
silence now, it brings pain, not pleasure.
The only star in the horizon at the
moment is the one that we were dwelling
upon last Sunday evening.
Everything else is pitch black.
And that pitch blackness is only relieved by
that one solitary star of Genesis 3.15.
Where God breaks into the abysmal tragedy and
says, All right, but I'm still sovereign over
the whole situation.
And I want you to know that there
is coming a day when I shall, through
the seed of the woman that was deceived,
bruise the very head of the serpent, even
though in process of so doing, his own
heel shall be bruised.
But the sky is dismally dark when we
turn over into chapter 4 here.
In fact, in the ongoing relations of fallen
man with his maker and his brother, the
pattern of events becomes uglier and uglier.
And I suppose this is part of the
strategy of the divine writer, which is ultimately
the Holy Spirit.
The lesson that must now be imprinted upon
the consciousness of the race is this.
Things have gone so wrong that only God
can put things right.
And if I understand the meaning of the
Old Testament, it took a few thousands of
years for God to rub home that lesson.
But sin is such a destructive phenomenon that
it not only ruins an individual and a
family, but a race.
And though God may bring in a flood
and a deluge that disperses the whole race
and starts again, sin comes into the new
world.
There is no water that can keep out
sin.
And so the lesson is brought home to
us until, in the fullness of the time,
the Savior comes.
And we see that sin will crucify the
incarnate Lord.
But this is the lesson.
And Genesis 4 begins to teach that lesson.
Only begins, but it does begin.
Now, there are some four main scenes here.
We shall look at them, and we must
be brief with each.
But the first of them is this.
It tells us that there are differences of
worship.
Though children of the same parents and ostensibly
devoted to the same God, Cain and Abel
represent two irreconcilable approaches to God.
The fact that you see two people worshipping
together does not mean to say that they
are necessarily of the same spirit.
This is very challenging, isn't it?
See two people on their knees.
See two people closing their eyes in prayer.
See two people bending the neck before God,
going through all the formalities of sacrifice.
But the one may belong to one camp
and the other to the other, and they
will never meet beyond this life.
Now, look, first of all, at their acts
of ostensible worship.
I think it is very significant that at
this point in history, the two of them
were worshippers.
You see, this proves one thing.
Though I can't dwell upon it, it is
one of the fundamental and the basic issues
of Scripture that originally man was so intimately
related to God that he can't throw the
Almighty on one side just with one slap.
Even though Adam and Eve have sinned and
they've come under the judgment of God and
the curse of God is upon the soil
and upon the serpent and the condemnation of
God upon Adam and upon Eve, notice that
children cannot shrug off the Almighty.
That will come with the next generation or
the generation after that.
Because they were nurtured for however long, but
they were nurtured, as it were, in the
arms of their Maker.
Their parents knew God.
And because their parents knew God, the two
of them tried to worship.
Cain and Abel, the first two children of
Adam and Eve, were worshippers.
Their acts of ostensible devotion were, however, discernibly
different.
Three times over, will you notice, three times
over, the narrative refers to the acts of
worship and devotion carried out by these two
as an offering.
Both brought offerings to the Lord.
Now, the Hebrew word that is used here
simply means a gift or an offering of
any kind.
It can mean a sacrifice.
It doesn't necessarily mean that.
It can mean a serial offering.
And later on, in the Old Testament, you
will find that this one word is used
for both.
I might just give you two references and
you can follow them through the whole of
the Old Testament.
It means both.
You have the sacrifice, the bloody sacrifice, referred
to under this title in 1 Samuel 2
and verse 17.
In the book of Leviticus, chapter 2 and
verse 1, the same word refers to a
serial offering, a thank-offering.
Cain then goes to his own particular field,
to his own area.
He's a tiller of the soil, and he
brings an offering of the fruit to the
ground.
That is, in chapter 4, verse 3, the
end of it.
Abel, on the other hand, he goes to
the flock.
He was a shepherd.
And he brings of the firstlings of the
flock and of the fat portions of what
he's going to offer.
That means, of course, that he's going to
offer a sacrifice.
Each man brought what was produced by him
in his own particular sphere.
Cain was a tiller of the soil, and
Abel was a shepherd.
But their ostensible acts of devotion, which were
discernibly different, were divinely discovered to be wholly
incompatible with the character of God, or with
one another in the first place, and one
of them with the character and the nature
of God.
Look at the second part of verse 4
and the first part of verse 5.
And the Lord had regard for Abel and
his offering, but for Cain and his offering
he had no regard.
Now, I don't know how you would put
that in modern parlance.
I suppose we would put it something like
this.
God couldn't care less for what Cain offered,
but what Abel offered pleased him very much.
God had nothing to do with what Abel
brought, but God had everything to do with
what Abel offered him.
Cain, no.
Abel, yes.
Now, you would be tempted, I'm quite sure,
as I am tempted when I read this
word, to ask the question, uh, how did
they know that God accepted the one and
did not accept the other?
And I have to tell you, I just
don't know.
Now, I'm not the only one that doesn't
know, because I've read as much as I
could on it and I can't find anyone
that can answer that question for you.
But it is important, very important, to notice
these two fellows knew that Abel's sacrifice was
acceptable to God.
Cain's was not.
They knew that.
There was no question about it.
And because of that, as we shall see
in a moment, Cain became terribly angry, while
Abel had a sort of peace and calm
composure in the knowledge that what he had
brought was acceptable in the sight of God
and God had received it.
Differences in worship.
My friends, let us not miss the challenge
of it.
It is possible in the prayers that we
have offered tonight, in the hymns that we
have sung, as well as in our attitude
of soul to the end of this particular
service and beyond it, it is possible that
two people sitting together come into this very
category of representing a worship that is unacceptable
on the one hand and a worship that
God receives on the other.
The mere fact of our going through the
routine of external worship does not guarantee the
acceptance of the worship and the worshipper.
Differences of worship.
The next thing I want you to notice
is the divine warning arising out of Cain's
violent reaction to God's rejection of his person
and his sacrifice.
God saw something that occasioned his direct intervention
in warning.
Is it necessary for me to pause to
say this?
You know, God's warnings are invariably tokens of
his mercy.
If God didn't love us, there would be
no need to warn us.
Now, I know we often take it the
other way around.
We say, oh, that's a warning, that's God
thundering, and therefore we dislike that.
My dear friend, I'd like you to notice
tonight the logic of it.
God only warns the object of his love.
And he warns this boy here because he
loves him, he's his creator.
Even though Cain has all the hatred and
bitterness of his soul burning within him at
this moment in anger, God still loves him
and comes to warn him.
Now, let's look first of all at the
anger that occasioned this warning.
Look at verse six.
Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
The Lord said to Cain, why are you
angry, and why is your countenance fallen?
Now, behind that explosive anger of Cain's, there
is a fire of hot resentment and of
jealousy and of envy.
It seemed bad enough that his own offering
was rejected, but it made it doubly harsh
when Abel's was received, evidently received by God.
You know, the Hebrew puts it like this.
Hebrew is a very pictorial language, as some
of you know.
And it burned for Cain.
There was a burning for Cain.
It's a very graphic picture, and it's beyond
my power to try and bring it up,
but the whole thing is this.
His anger raged within him.
It was like a burning, searing, sizzling fire
in his soul, so much so that he
couldn't look anyone in the face.
He had enough sense to look down to
the ground rather than let anybody see the
skull of bitterness on his countenance.
Have you ever known anger like that, when
you were afraid that somebody would see you?
Cain's quarrel, of course, is with God, with
God in the first place, because God has
rejected his offering.
His offerings were his sacrifice.
And the same God, how could He?
The same God has received the offering of
His brother.
Are things all wrong?
Weren't they brothers?
Weren't they children of the same parents?
Did both of them not bring of the
very best they could, each from his own
sphere?
The whole thing is unjust, he thinks.
It was a smack in the face to
Cain's self-image, and it made him livid
with anger.
Have you ever been angry with God?
The anger that occasioned it.
Now, the announcement that solemnized this warning.
God comes to speak to him, and there's
a reasonableness about all this, as there always
is in the divine conversation with man.
Says God to this man, Cain, If you
do well, He says, will you not be
accepted?
If you do well, will you not be
accepted?
And if you do not well, sin is
couching at the door.
Its desire is for you, but you must
master it.
Now, that's a text in itself, and we
can only glass over it.
This announcement adds solemnity to Cain's anger, and
was a tremendous challenge to his pride.
God would have Cain realize that acceptance or
rejection by himself is determined according to principle,
not caprice.
There's reason for this.
Look, Cain man, if you do well, will
you not be accepted?
Of course you will.
And if you do well, let me warn
you, there's some tragedy lurking on the very
doorstep of your house.
Most graphic picture of this.
I want to come back to it someday.
If you don't do well, He says, then
sin is couching, or better still, crouching like
a lion at the door.
It seems as if this whole community of
beasts described in this one act, crouching outside
the door of his house, and their sin
is crouching.
This sin, or that sin, a whole multitude
of them, pictured like beasts, waiting to catch
their prey.
They're all waiting for you, says God to
this man.
If you don't do well, they're waiting for
you to get a going with your sin,
and they'll pounce on you.
But you must master them, or master it.
I accept or reject someone, says God, to
Cain on the basis of principle, and the
principle is described here in well-doing.
Now, we shall come to that in a
moment.
An offering is not acceptable with God when
the offerer is not given to well-doing.
Now, that is doubly stressed.
Can I read again?
And the Lord had regard, will you notice,
for Abel and his sacrifice.
But for Cain and his sacrifice, He had
no regard.
Now, will you notice what's repeated there?
It isn't simply the offering or the sacrifice
that was displeasing to God.
The man and his sacrifice are in the
same category.
Cain and his offering or sacrifice, rejected.
Abel and his offering or sacrifice, accepted.
Now, will you notice what's happening?
A man and his sacrifice stand or fall
together.
In other words, my friend, let me put
it to you and put it to myself
tonight.
The quality of your offering depends upon what
you are, and mine upon what I am.
And if God cannot accept my person, then
my offering is in vain.
Person and offering are so bound up, what
I give and what I do on the
one hand, and what I am on the
other.
They're so intricately bound together that either both
are received or both are rejected.
Now, this is a tremendous challenge still, you
know.
There are people who still believe that they
can do a few kindnesses for the Almighty,
when they themselves are still lost and grovelling
and rebelling in sin.
No, no, that's not possible.
A man and his offering, either falling or
standing, either received or rejected.
That's the message.
That's the key to an understanding of this
passage.
And as far as Cain was concerned, he
was rejected.
His offering was rejected because he was rejected.
You know, the writer of the book of
Proverbs put it all so succinctly.
The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination.
How much more when he brings it with
evil intent, Proverbs 21 and 27.
Now, there's an important question that must be
raised here, and I raise it here deliberately.
Granted that the offerer and the offering are
either acceptable or unacceptable together, what is the
determining factor in their acceptance?
A few moments ago, I quoted the words
of Scripture concerning well-doing.
It says God to Cain, If thou doest
well, wilt thou not be accepted?
And if you don't do well, you won't
be.
Now, why was Abel and his sacrifice, why
were they accepted?
Why was Cain and his sacrifice rejected?
Now, in answering that question, there are one
or two certainties and there are one or
two uncertainties.
Now, let's get the certainties first.
I suggest to you that there are two
things that we know from Scripture.
No beyond any reasonable doubt at all, because
they're clearly stated in Scripture.
The first thing is this.
It is certain from Scripture that Cain's offering
was unacceptable because, and I put it in
the very blunt terms of Scripture, I'm sorry
if there's anybody who will object, because he
was a child of the devil.
Now, that's not me, that's Scripture.
And however wonderful a sacrifice is offered by
a child of the devil, God doesn't accept
it.
But you say to me, where on earth
did you get that from?
That's not in Genesis.
No, it isn't, it's in the New Testament.
Let me read.
I read from 1 John chapter 3, verses
11 and 12.
"'We should love one another,' says the apostle
John, the apostle of love.
"'We should love one another and not be
like Cain, who was of the evil one
and murdered his brother.'" Did you get that?
He was of the evil one.
He was of the stock, he was of
the family, of the evil one of Satan.
He was a child of Satan.
He was of the seed of Satan, as
much as those Jews to whom Jesus said
one day, "'You are of your father the
devil, and you will do your father's desires.'"
John 8 and 44.
Now, that's a certainty.
The apostle says so.
The reason, one reason at any rate why
Cain was rejected was this.
He was a child of the devil offering
to God.
Still God's creature, of course.
But spiritually he was a child of the
devil.
The second certainty is this.
It is certain that Abel's offering was acceptable,
basically, because Abel was a man of faith.
God saw the faith of his heart.
And this is what we read in Hebrews
chapter 11 and verse 4.
You remember that great chapter.
Someone's called it the Westminster Abbey of the
Bible.
Well, whether that is suitable or not, here
it is.
Here we have the great, lustrous men and
women of faith.
And it starts off with these words.
By faith, Abel.
By faith, Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he received
approval that he was righteous.
God bearing witness by accepting his gift.
Abel's righteousness then, Abel's well-doing was not
just a matter of self-righteousness.
Abel's righteousness was the righteousness which God imputes
where there is faith in his Son.
Whether it be from the other side of
Christ or from this side of the New
Testament.
Whether it be as in the case of
Abel when he's only been given one solitary
promise that the seed of the woman will
come, will rescue men from the bondage and
tyranny of Satan.
Or whether it be from our point of
view where we've received all the promises and
they've been fulfilled in Christ and we look
back and have faith in the same Christ.
We are justified by faith, says Paul.
So was this dear man, Abel, on the
basis of that one promise.
He looked forward to God to fulfill that
promise and God counted it to him for
righteousness.
Oh, our God is good.
Now there are the two certainties.
Mark them, my friend, because they may have
something to say to you tonight.
Are you a child of God?
Have you been born again?
Or let me put it to you in
the words of John.
To as many as received him, that is
the Lord Jesus.
To them gave he the power or the
right to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name.
You see, before we receive the Lord Jesus
Christ, we don't belong to the family of
God.
We're his creatures, all right.
And he's very good to his creatures.
But it's quite a different thing to be
his child.
With right of access to the family circle,
right to call him father, and the knowledge
that his people are our brothers and sisters.
I tell you, if you're not born again
tonight, however much you offer, God doesn't receive
it.
He cannot receive the offering apart from the
quality of soul he requires in the offerer.
Lord, let me put it to you differently.
Have you faith in Christ and in the
promises of God that relate to him?
As you offer your prayers tonight, as you
listen to God, as you offer him your
heart, I hope you're doing that.
You know, this is what preaching ought to
be.
And if it isn't this, then God help
us, we better shut shop.
If the congregation is not able to worship
as the minister preaches, something's wrong.
And I'm taking it for granted that in
your hearts you're worshiping the Lord in his
glory and in his grace.
Is it acceptable?
I'll tell you, it is acceptable in every
soul, in every heart, where there is faith
in Jesus.
For God counts that for righteousness.
And because you are accounted righteous, your sacrifice,
your worship, your praise, everything else is acceptable.
Abel and his offering, Cain and his, the
one falls, the other stand.
Now, there are some uncertainties.
Can I just mention one?
I do so because in some of the
commentaries, in quite a number of the commentaries,
there's reference to this.
And some of you I know will be
asking a question, so I might as well
answer it now.
It could well be, and I put it
like that, it could well be, as many
believe, that God communicated with Adam and Eve
in the garden, and either directly or through
Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, telling
them that because of sin, no man can
approach him henceforth without sacrifice.
It could be.
Many people believe that.
But what I want to say is that
we've no assurance of that because the book
doesn't say so.
If that is so, then what we have
in the case of these two brothers is
this.
We have Abel obeying the divine directive, coming
on the basis of sacrifice, acknowledging that he's
a sinner, and he depends upon the grace
of God to bring him near.
And Cain rejecting the divine way of salvation.
Bringing a very nice offering, mind you, the
best that he could, the best that he
himself could produce, but without blood.
Now, that's a beautiful picture.
I wish it were true, really.
There's nothing in the Bible to say so,
and so I put it as an uncertainty.
It could well be true.
What then is certain is this, that Cain
was personally unacceptable, and God warns him that
his anger is unjustified.
Moreover, he is in danger, for if he
proceeds to do evil, he will find a
host of crouching sins that will master him
and maul him and tear him to pieces.
Differences in worship, a divine warning, and the
next thing is the determined wrongdoing of Cain.
How would you react if God warned you
like that?
How would you react if God came and
reasoned with you just like that, and spoke
to you by name?
Doesn't he do that?
Well, this is how this man reacted.
Cain said to Abel, his brother, let's go
out to the field.
And when they went out to the field,
Cain rose up against his brother Abel and
killed him.
That murder was deliberately planned.
With calculated anger and bitterness of soul, Cain
not only decided upon the murder of his
brother, after worship he set the whole stage.
He planned it all out.
He had every T in its place.
He worked it all out in his mind.
The stage was planned, calculated.
The murder was deceptively executed.
Here was no case of an open feud
leading to a pitched duel between the two
brothers, many two brothers.
Indeed, what two brothers haven't had a squabble
at some time or another?
In youth?
This is nothing of that kind.
This was an unsuspected attack by one brother
upon another, and it was all arranged following
his act of worship, but he carried it
out.
That murder was diabolically flavored.
It shows how deeply prostituted an act of
worship can become.
It shows how rebellious sin can become.
You see, in Eden, sin meant disobedience to
God and taking the forbidden fruit of a
tree.
So small, isn't it, as we humans judge?
But in the next chapter, sin, the same
kind of thing, takes the form of not
taking a forbidden fruit, but a forbidden life.
He who can take the forbidden fruit can
soon take the forbidden life.
It shows the stronghold of sin can have
upon a man, and in so short a
time, that he can brazenly defy God's warning
and ruthlessly kill his own brother and do
so after worship.
I must hurry through that.
Differences of worship, divine warning, the determined wrongdoing
of this man, and lastly, he was dismissed
from the presence of God to a life
of wandering.
Now, here's the last scene.
God comes to interrogate, to know whether any
of us have gone through this experience, when
God has been interrogating us, God asking questions.
No sooner was the murderous deed done than
God appeared in Cain's presence as he had
done in the Garden of Eden with his
parents.
You notice these two questions coming in Genesis
3 and Genesis 4.
Adam says, God, when he had sinned, where
are you, man?
Adam and Eve were hiding behind the trees
of the garden.
Now he comes to Cain and he says,
Cain, where is Abel, your brother?
God is concerned, my friend, with where you
are and I am tonight.
And he is basically concerned also with where
our brothers are.
Where have we put them?
What have we done with them?
What's my attitude to my brother?
Are there any men or women in the
world who are my brothers in humanity, if
not in another sense, who are suffering, who
are wounded, just because of either my inactivity
or my sin?
Where is your brother, he says to us?
My friends, God is concerned for his creature
everywhere.
You remember how this man looked to God
and says, he says, what are you asking
me for?
Am I my brother's keeper?
Now get the point of that.
Abel was a keeper of the flock.
He was the keeper of sheep.
He says, he's looking after sheep.
Are you expecting me to look after him?
He's the shepherd, not me.
Why ask me?
God interrogating.
God probing.
A first question is never the last one
with God.
When Cain tried to wriggle out of it
in this way, God says to him, what
have you done?
The voice of your brother's blood is crying
to me from the ground.
The voice of your brother's blood?
There was no human witness to that act.
Cain had chosen the best place.
He'd gone right out into the open countryside
and he was able to look around and
there was no one who could see what
had happened and at close at hand the
deed was done.
No one saw it.
Never mind, says the Almighty.
I hear the voice of blood.
I hear righteous Abel's blood crying for vengeance
from the ground where you spilt it.
What have you done, man?
And God comes from his probing to his
sentence.
The righteous judge of all the earth in
full knowledge of all the relevant facts sentences
the guilty man, first of all, to a
curse from the ground in verse 11.
The ground will not only bring forth thorns
and thistles in terms of God's curse upon
it in chapter 3, verses 17 and 18,
but from now on, as far as this
man is concerned, it will withhold its potential
strength and its fruit to the heedless, impenitent
criminal who has spilt innocent blood upon it.
It will not yield its strength to you,
says God.
It has reserves, but it will not yield
them to you.
And God delivers him to the curse of
wandering upon a cursed earth.
Think that one out.
The curse of wandering upon a cursed earth.
You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer,
says God, upon the earth.
You know, this is a terrible sentence, really.
Doomed to wander on a curse-yielding earth
was in many respects a fortest of hell
with this one notable difference.
Though the earth does not willingly yield its
fruit to this man, he can repent.
In hell he cannot.
But he'll have no home upon earth.
He'll be a wanderer.
My good people, you like to go home,
don't you?
Mind you, I wonder sometimes in the evenings
here, when the services are over and I
see you talking one to another, whether some
of you like to go home.
But it's a blessed place, our home, where
we can go and recline and relax and
talk freely with our loved ones and rest.
Imagine that if you were living in this
universe tonight and you could make no place
your home.
No home and no hope.
Cain felt it so hard and he says,
Lord, it's too much, it's more than I
can bear.
You know, it thrills me to be able
to say this.
The God who condemned him out of righteousness,
the arrogant man that he was, the God
who righteously condemned him, listen to his grouse.
You know, God loves even the condemned man.
Cain said, wherever I go, the first person
or the first animal to see me, whichever
he meant, I don't know.
The Hebrew doesn't make it clear.
The first man or the first animal that
meets me will slay me.
No, says God.
I will see to it, he says, that
if anyone tries to slay you, he will
suffer sevenfold.
Now what that means I can't tell you,
but it meant something.
And God put a sign upon this man,
a signal, whatever it was, I don't know,
but it was something of a warning to
all and sundry.
Even though this man is under divine condemnation,
let no man take his life or beast.
God is merciful even to the unworthy.
Cain leaves the scene then of his sentence
as a hard, impenitent rebel.
Not even that, not even that touched his
heart.
Not even that gave him a meager sense
of penitence.
He leaves the scene of his condemnation as
if he had been unrighteously condemned by an
unholy God, and he goes with a grouse
in his soul to live it out as
a wanderer until God terminates his earthly pilgrimage.
Now what's all this got to say to
us?
Can I just sum up from two or
three points?
From this scene of murder after worship, there
are some very evident things we ought to
see.
If we want to let Genesis speak for
itself, we must see them, though I can't
enlarge upon them now.
The first thing I want you to notice
is that sin has spilled over into the
second generation.
This is of very practical relevance, you know.
I sometimes meet people and they're wrapped up
with this sin or that sin and they
say, I do nobody no harm.
Have you heard that?
I do nobody no harm.
I have many, many, many, many times.
And sometimes the person who says that has
children at home.
I want to tell you, were it only
on the basis of this chapter tonight, that
sin spills over from Adam and Eve to
Cain and Abel.
I would plead with men and women outside
of Christ in this service tonight, come to
Christ, if it were only for your children's
sake, to break the entail of sin and
the power it has to damn your children,
to make a Cain out of a lovely
little knight that comes into your home.
You and your children are not safe, I
tell you, until you come into the bosom
of the Son of God and receive forgiveness
of sin.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is this.
In seeping into the next generation, it is
even more violent and vicious and profane than
it was in Eden.
Sin doesn't become genteel and gentleman-like as
it spreads.
It becomes more vile and violent and vicious.
It took the fruit of the forbidden tree
in Genesis 3.
It takes a life in Genesis 4.
Then it is, as such, the sin of
Cain extinguishes his parents' hopes for him and
exceeds their wildest fears.
I remember saying last Sunday evening, or rather
asking the question, whether in Genesis 4 and
verse 1, Eve, at the birth of Cain,
thought that the seed of the woman who
would tread upon the serpent's head and bring
deliverance had arrived?
I pose it as a question.
Is it her faith that God has already
answered her prayer?
If she built her castles around that supposition
or that hope, then poor Eve, her heart's
going to break.
And I'm quite sure of this.
Neither Adam nor Eve thought that they were
going to produce a child like this.
And the sin that they had allowed to
come into their lives was going to produce
something of this order.
Fourthly, sin that began in Eden as being
essentially against God now shows its viciousness against
God and man.
Sin always progresses in evil.
It moves forward with a gigantic impetus.
First of all, against God only, His sovereignty.
And I've heard men argue there was nothing
much wrong in taking the fruit, but at
the heart of that there was a rebellion
against God.
Now that rebellion against God will slay one
of His preachers.
The same thing, you see.
But it's gaining impetus.
And lastly, sin as it spreads already shows
the enmity emerging between the seed of the
woman and the seed of the serpent.
God said, I will put enmity between the
seed of the woman and your seed, the
seed of the serpent.
And here you have it.
Cain was the serpent's seed, the child of
Satan.
Abel was a child of faith.
And already within that one family you have
them divided up.
And you have the basic division that runs
throughout the whole course of human history starting
that year.
My dear friends, let me hurriedly close.
Sin is a serious business.
Oh, good people, may the Lord speak to
us tonight about this.
Whatever your status, whatever your standing before God,
oh, may the Spirit of God burn this
into our souls tonight.
Sin is serious.
And you may say to me, that's your
business to say that.
You're paid for saying that.
Yes.
But my friend, even if I wasn't paid
for saying it, I'd have to say it.
Because it's true!
It will dam your soul and it will
penetrate into the soul of your children and
it will go on and on and it
will strangle your soul.
Oh, come to the fountain where sin is
washed away.
Oh, haste to the Savior.
Is there any man or woman here tonight
who is not trusting in Jesus Christ as
Savior?
Come to Him.
I say come to Him because there is
none other that can take the sting out
of it.
There is none other that can forgive the
acts that have taken place.
There is none other that can change your
heart and give you a new spirit to
overcome it.
But by simple faith in Him, He saves
to the uttermost.
Come to Him, then, just where you are.
Close your eyes and say, My God, I
realize it's serious and things haven't changed.
I can just read my newspaper.
I can see the truth of that.
Him that cometh to me, said Jesus, I
will in no eyes cast out.
Let us pray.
Oh, Heavenly Father, forgive us that we are
so feeble in taking in what Thy Word
tells us.
And yet we thank Thee for giving us
a little glimpse of what Genesis 4 is
telling us tonight.
A little of it.
We ask of Thee that what we do
see, by the help of Your Holy Spirit,
may teach us something and give us a
grasp of the immensity of the task that
we have in proclaiming to men the power
of sin to condemn, but more so the
power of Christ to change and to serve
to the uttermost.
Father, grant that all of us who have
gathered here tonight may know the power of
Thy grace in our hearts and not only
that, but may be able to go out
to our needy brethren, our fellow creatures, who
need the Savior that we need.
Come, O Lord our Father, be our God,
that in our presence and in our offering
we may be acceptable before Thee now and
then at last.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.