We have now come to the fourth chapter
of the book of Genesis, and if you
have your Bible, and we'll turn there to
the sixth verse, and we have seen that
Cain and Abel have come together to worship
God.
And these two boys that were identical, I
think, some actually think they were twins, I
think that was the position of the late
Dr. Harry Rimmer, but I think they were
even closer than twins because of the fact
they had no bloodstream that reached way back
on both sides that might cause a difference.
They were the sons of Adam and Eve,
but there's a great divergence between the two,
and it's not necessarily a character divergence.
It happened to be on the basis of
one accepted because of his sacrifice which he
brought by faith, the other, Cain, brought his
without any recognition at all.
Now we find that Cain is angry.
Verse 6, And the Lord said unto Cain,
Why art thou wroth, and why is thy
countenance fallen?
Why is he angry?
Well, notice what he says.
Let me read on what God says, and
then we'll go on.
If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted, and if thou doest not well, sin
lieth at the door, and unto thee shall
be his desire, and thou shalt rule over
him.
Now, the important thing to notice is that
Cain was angry.
Why was he angry?
Well, he's angry enough that he's going to
slay his brother, and back of murder, always
there's anger.
Our Lord said, Well, if you're angry with
your brother, you're guilty of murder, and back
of anger is jealousy.
Back of jealousy is pride, and spiritual pride
means there's no sense of sin whatsoever in
that.
You will recall that James put it in
language like this, in James 1 15, Then
when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin,
and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death.
So this man here is angry, and it
led to murder, but back of that was
his jealousy and also his pride, and God
deals with him like that.
He says, If you do well, shall you
not be accepted.
Actually, the meaning is better to translate like
this, Shalt thou not have excellency?
That seems to me to be a much
better translation, and what it means is this,
that the eldest son always occupied a place
of preeminence, and this boy thought now he'd
lose that.
God says there's no reason for you to
lose it if you do well, and what
would be to do well would be to
bring that which God had accepted from Abel,
a sacrifice and acknowledgement that he was a
sinner, but not this boy.
He's just angry, you see, and he says,
Sin lieth at the door.
Now, there are those that have interpreted that
as means sin offering lies at the door.
That is, there's the little lamb.
Now, that, may I say to you, it
makes sense, all right, because that was true,
but I don't think it means sin offering
here.
Up to this time and beyond this time,
in fact, up till Moses, as far as
I can tell from the Word of God,
there was no sin offering.
You find the sin offering, instructions given for
it in the book of Leviticus, in the
first part, where you have these five offerings,
and one of them is a sin offering,
and the sin offering did not come into
existence until the law was given.
You remember that that is the thing that
Paul had said in Romans 320, by the
law is the knowledge of sin, so that
the offerings that were brought up to that
were burnt offerings.
You find Job in his day, which obviously
was before Moses, he brought a burnt offering.
It was not in any way a sin
offering, and I think if you go through
the scripture, you'll find that that is true.
And it is said of Cain, not as
Cain, who was of that wicked one and
slew his brother, and wherefore slew he him?
Because his own works were evil, and his
brother's righteous.
Now, if thou doest not well, sin lieth
at the door.
Well, to do well would be to bring
the kind of offering that Abel had, and
that would be a burnt offering.
That would be the one that was offered,
and you find Abraham offering that type.
And as we say, there could be no
sin until the law was given.
That is, sin would not become a trespass
against law until then.
And therefore, you'll notice God actually protected this
man.