Good morning, everyone. Try it again. Good morning, everyone. There we go.
You are here. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for bringing us here this morning. We pray that you would open up your word to us, that we may learn more of you and learn of Christ, or that you would encourage and strengthen believers, and that you would point sinners through the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ, that they may come to know Him as the only Savior of the whole world.
We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. As you can see, we are continuing our studies in Genesis. This is kind of a study in the foundations of, not just the foundations of the Scriptures, but the foundations of life and the foundations of who we are, what we are, and who God is, and obviously to point forward from the book of Genesis through until Matthew, the Old Testament points, quite clearly to the Lord Jesus, and that's our desires that we point you to Him.
Just to review where we have been, chapter one, we looked at the very beginning, the beginning and creation of the universe, the creation of the world, and then we got into the creation of animals, the creation of the sun, the moon, the stars, and all that there is. Everything that we know and experience was created by God, created by the eternal God, by His Word. He spoke, and all of these things came into existence. Chapter two, and chapter three, we looked at the beginning of the human race.
Where did man come from? Man was created by God, the same God who spoke the universe into existence and into being was the same one who created man, created man in his image, created male and female. He created them both, it says in the Scriptures. Very important verse to remember.
Genesis 1, 27, I believe it is. Fundamental verse. He declared it was good, it was all good. Then we looked at chapter three, it was the beginning of sin.
Man was in the garden, all that was good, and then the deceiver came, the serpent, and questioned the very Word of God. And God's credibility, and first Eve got sucked in, and she was deceived, and she disobeyed God, she doubted His Word. She acted in unbelief for the first time, and sin entered the world, but even worse, Adam willingly took the fruit and disobeyed. Because of that, sin has come through the whole line of mankind because of Adam and his sin.
So we looked at sin the last time, we saw that sin entered, that death entered at the time of sin coming into the world, and then death spread to all men because all have sinned, and we saw the death reigned from the time of Adam. We'll look a little more at that today. And then we see from Genesis chapter 20, the results and the progress of sin and death. Romans 5 verse 12, a very important verse for you to remember.
Therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, that would be Adam, and death through sin. So death spread to all men because all have sinned. You see people question, how can a good God allow all this death and destruction in this world? The man has brought on death and destruction to themselves.
It's not God saying, I'm going to send them a hurricane, I'm going to send them a cyclone, I'm going to send them a psycho killer. It's not that. It's sin has crept through our whole society. And sin has a partner.
It's called death. And death reigns in this world because of sin. For the believer, the great hope is that the day is coming when that will be taken away, that will be gone. I look forward to that.
I hope you do too. I hope you know your sins forgiven, and that you have to look forward to the day when we are not just delivered from the power of sin, but the presence of sin, we will be taken from this world. And if anybody were to say, amen, that would be okay. All right, thanks.
Two of you are awake. Or two of you are praising God that you will be taken from this world. All right. Now turn in your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 4.
Genesis chapter 4, I'm reading from the ESV, it says, now Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived in more Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of the sheep, and Cain was a worker of the ground. So notice that it was Eve that named her son.
She named him acquired. I have acquired a son with the help of the Lord. Now when we go back to, and it's good to go back and look at this verse in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, well actually the 14, the Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle or all animals, and more than every beast of the field on your belly you shall go, and thus you shall eat all the days of your life, and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise you on the head or crush you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbirth, and in pain you will bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
So when you look back at this, there was the promise of a deliverer, one who is going to come and crush the head of the serpent, crush the head of Satan. So I'm just trying to imagine what it would have been like for Adam and Eve. Adam and his wife had relations, and she conceived and bore a son. So he's looking at his wife, and she's taking on my shape.
She's getting a little heavy in the front. What's going on? I don't know. I mean, we're on a vegetarian diet.
I know. But I don't know. I don't know, Adam. Maybe see avocados.
They have a lot of fat in them. And he said, no, avocados are good. So they kept eating their avocados, and they kept eating all of the good stuff. And she kept getting larger.
And then she said, something's wrong. I'm feeling like these kicks and flutters and stuff like that going on inside me. What is this? And Adam probably said, I don't know.
Maybe we should get you to...oh, there are no doctors. Okay. We can't ask God because I kind of messed that up in the garden, and he's not talking to me, and I'm not talking to him. What are we going to do?
So then this son comes, a child, and all the pain that went with it, the first child, because it was promised to her. And she has this child, and she goes, you know what? I remember about my seed. This is my seed.
This is my offspring. And he is going to crush the head of that serpent that's got us in this terrible situation. Like, Adam, we went all that time. We didn't even get a sniffle or a head cold now.
Like it's like sickness and trouble and, you know, those thorns every time you go into the garden. Right. This is the deliverer. This is the seed that's coming.
Ah-ha. Well, you know what? It turned out it wasn't what they hoped for. Now, I think of Cain.
Cain, it says, was a one who was a worker of the ground or a tiller of the ground, depending on whatever version you're using. Cain would have been the most spoiled child ever. I mean, you know when you have no offense to anybody who has an only child, but when you have an only child, and I was that for a little while in my family, but that's the only child in the world. Like there's no greater child than the only child in your family.
I mean, at least in your family there's no greater child. But you imagine, you're the only child in the world. Imagine all the stuff that's said about you. Like, this kid is the smartest kid in the whole world.
And it's true. This kid eats more than all the rest of the kids in the world. And it's true because he's the only one in the world at that time. So here's Cain, and he grows up to become a tiller of the ground, a gardener.
And then Abel is born. Later, it doesn't say when, but Abel, his name means breath or vapor or a sense. From what you read in the New Testament about Abel, it would appear that he was a spiritual child, a child who was great in faith. He was a shepherd, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
Now that does not mean that one had a better job than the others than the other. They're both important. What they both did was important. Sometimes you look at it and say, oh yeah, because as the story works its way out, you think that's because he was a tiller of the ground.
And the other guy was a shepherd, shepherd's a much better job. Not really. I would not want to be the guy's hurting sheep around. Can you have been there?
Go to the UK and drive through Scotland. And they're sheep everywhere. They're on the road. They're on the walls.
They're on the cars. They're everywhere. I'm not sure that that's a really prestigious job trying to keep those guys in order. So this is what they're, this is what they both do.
But what I want you to notice from this, you see, if you watch enough Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, CBC, I'm trying to be equal in my opportunities for those who teach fall science, they would tell you that humans existed a long, long time ago and they dwelled in caves and they figured out, I'm going to be a hunter gatherer and I'm going to hunt and gather and I'm going to hug and I'm going to hug and gather and all of this stuff. Well, here's the third person on earth and he's knowledgeable in agriculture. Here's the next person who's spoken of on earth and he knows how to raise animals, animal husbandry. It came to them immediately.
It did not evolve over many thousands of years, as you've been told. God created man with a great intellect and great abilities. Don't think otherwise. These are not cave dwellers.
These are not, oh, they might have had the odd cave for a resort or something, but they were not unintelligent people who had to evolve their brain into figuring out how to raise animals and how to grow crops. They knew it. The third person on earth knew how to grow crops. That's an amazing thought.
And then we get to the place of, they bring their offerings. First three. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. An able also brought the firstborn of his flock and the fat portions and the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering.
But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell or his countenance fell. So it says in some versions in the process of time, it infers that there was a time set to bring sacrifice to God. Don't know what that was.
We don't have any. We don't want to make anything up. But it would seem that there was a particular time when they were to come and bring a sacrifice to God. And it also infers to me that there was some instruction from God of the importance of an offering and an offering for sin.
Now we don't have anything laid out. We don't have a law. We don't have anything in ancient writings that would tell you this. But it would seem, why would they be doing this if they did not learn this from God, that it was transmitted and passed on?
God, Adam, and so on. You see, we don't know how long it was before Adam sinned. And this may have been a process that was put in place. That God had said, here's something.
I want you to bring me a sacrifice. Now it wasn't a blood sacrifice back at that point in time because there was no need. There was no sin. But when God had taken those animals and given them the clothing, the covering, I'm sure Adam was looking saying, you just slaughtered a sheep.
Why? It's a covering for your sin. This is the price of what you have done. And they probably knew that and passed that on.
And these boys grew up knowing that. There was a pattern for sacrifice. The shedding of blood was required. So April sacrificed a lamb.
And it was respected by God. Now that's a sad occasion. You take the first link, you take a baby lamb and you slit its throat and you kill it, you drain the blood out. Sorry, the kids are here, but that's the fact of how it was done.
And because there's the Bible from the beginning to the end speaks of a blood sacrifice for sin. And so Abel did this. It's not very beautiful. There's blood everywhere.
And he offers this lamb to God. Now, pain came in with all these grains and plants and I mean it's exciting. It's beautiful. I'm sure he arranged it all.
Maybe put a few flowers in and brought this and said, here God. This is what I was able to grow in the garden. I mean, I know it was great work. I was hired, but I harvest it and here you go.
And God had no respect for that. See, it speaks of trying to come to God on your own terms versus God terms. When God says, without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sin. He means without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sins.
There's no other clause in that that says, or you can try to work it out yourself. Or you can do your best to your neighbor. Or you can do your best and go to church. Or you can give money.
Or you can do all of this stuff. It doesn't say any of that. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sin. Here is this bloodless sacrifice that is not really in God's eyes a sacrifice at all.
It's plants from the ground. So why was Abel's sacrifice regarded as superior? Well, first of all, by its kind, it was offered in faith. We read that in Hebrews, chapter 11.
I'll read that a little later on. It was offered in faith. Secondly, it was a substitutionary sacrifice. Like the animals used in Adam and Eve's clothing.
I already mentioned that. So here is this lamb sacrificed on his behalf for his sin to make him right with God. And it was a blood sacrifice. Blood was required in order to cover sin.
Secondly, the quality of the sacrifice. Abel didn't go around and say, where's that lame sheep that's blind in one eye that I don't need? No. He took the first thing.
Well, all the fat. Fat represents a healthy, robust lamb. And it was a year old. He took the very best that he had.
There's my best sheep right there. And God is worth it. I'm going to give that sheep. I'm going to give that lamb.
You see, God is more concerned with the character that's behind the offering than he is with the offering itself. The offering is important here, but it's the character behind the offering. You know, we can fall into this ourselves when we come to worship. We can come and we can worship and our kind of worship is maybe the same as everybody else.
We're going to sing our hearts out to the Lord. But at the same time, I'm perhaps not going to sing as well as I usually would on a Friday night with my buddies. So I'm going to kind of hold back a little bit. But that's not really what I'm thinking of.
I'm thinking of the character of the heart as we come to worship God. Do I come and worship and I think, ah, why is she singing behind me? Sorry for the ladies that's behind me. But why is she singing off key?
Like, come on. I sing. Perfect pitch. And why is she doing that?
I mean, God must be really pleased with my offer of praise this morning because pitch is right on man. But hers? Or like, really, he wore that the last two weeks to the break and break doesn't even have another shirt. Like, so the character of the heart matters to God.
When I come humbly before him, Abel came to him humbly. I'm going to take, you know what, I need my sins taken away. I'm going to take the best of my sheep, my best lamb and offer it to God because God is great and God deserves this. My praise is not about me.
My praise and my worship is about God and how great he is. It's directed to him. So have a good heart. That's why the Scriptures tell us everyone ought to examine themselves and not to come in an unworthy manner.
Sometimes you look at that and say, well, none of us are worthy. True. That's true. The wrong way is what it really means.
It's not to come in the wrong way to God, to come in looking at self or looking at others, examining others, examine yourself and then come to God. And further, we read of the character behind the offering in Hebrews, chapter 11. Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 4, the second verse I have up there. It says, by faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous.
God speaking about his gifts and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. All, even though he's been dead for millennia, still speaks through his sacrifice. Romans, chapter 15, verse 4. I can embarrass him.
He got me. Brother Remae brought me this first years ago, a number of years ago. I didn't even realize this verse was buried in the book of Romans. And it's just like a huge light went on.
It says, Romans 15, verse 4, for whatever was written in the former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. I say that because he put up where I wrote in a book on the screen behind. I'm running at you now. Not really.
But when I first heard that verse, I thought, this makes sense. This is what all the Bible, the Old Testament is for. All of this is not just stories. You get a kid's storybook of the Bible.
Some are more accurate than others and some are good. Some are not that great, but I think it's good to have them. Believe me, I love kids' Bible story books. So this is not me soapbox about Bible story books.
I love them. I think they're great. But all of those things, they're not just stories. It's all things that were written in the former days.
It's a history book written for our instruction. It's a history book and an instruction book. These things are written so that we may, through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures that we might have hope. All of these things are written so that you may have hope.
Other things that are written about the sacrifice of Cain and Abel. First John chapter 3, verses 11 and 12, it says, for this is the message which we have heard from the beginning that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.
So this tells you right here about the heart of the two who came to offer sacrifice. And evil in the heart, one righteous in the heart. Jude chapter 1, verse 11 says, whoa to them. They have gone the way of Cain.
And for pay they have rushed headlong into the era of Balaam and perish in the rebellion of Cora. I won't go into either one of those two right now. But it's whoa to those who follow the way of Cain. The way of Cain is the way of wickedness.
Now as we continue on, I see God's mercy. I've been thinking all week about the mercy of God. I've been thinking about how great is the mercy of God. If you are here today and your sins have been forgiven, you are a trophy of the mercy of God.
It represents 100% the mercy of God, not a thing that you have done. It's 100% the mercy and working of God that you are here, that you are saved, and that your sins are forgiven. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 7, we see a little glimpse into the mercy of God. It says, you will be accepted if you respond in the right way.
This is from the new living translation. You will be accepted if you respond in the right way, speaking to Cain. But if you refuse to respond correctly, then watch out. Sin is waiting to attack and destroy you and you must have to do it.
See God gave Cain a heads up. He gave him fair warning. You know what? Go, why don't you take the fruit, make a deal with your brother and get a lamb from him and offer that lamb as a sacrifice.
He could have done that. It would have been an entirely different story. But if you don't do this, if you don't do what's right, sin is crouching at the door. Now I put this picture up of a big cat, sin crouching at the door.
And I thought all day long, it hasn't started yet because I haven't filled my bird feeders, but I've got two cats in the neighborhood. There's an orange cat in a, like a tiger cat, whatever you call it, main coon cat or whatever things called. And they come along and the birds are back and forth and they're happily feeding. And then they get into that position right there, that position right there.
They're crouching. And growing up having cats, I know when a cat crouches, it's going to pounce on something and destroy it. My sister has a cat and doesn't like me. And when I come in, the cat can get into that position.
And I know if I'm in trouble, if I have shorts because he's made pretty short work of my leg and has attacked. So Cain, you've got sin, it's sitting, it's crouching. It's going to pounce on you and it will destroy you. Go, make things right, offer the sacrifice that you should, humble yourself.
But Cain, instead, he's a false worshipper. He's filled with pride. He's filled with anger. He judges his brother.
I'm going to make my own way to God. That's his heart. And sin is in his heart. Sin is in all of our hearts.
And it's crouching at the door. It desires to control us. It desires to consume us. But it says, he must rule over it.
Subdue it. How do we do that? We do that through Jesus Christ the Lord. We do that by spending time with him, by fellowshipping with one another to encourage one another.
Strengthen one another. Being in the Word of God. The Word of God is like a mirror. Whoa, I just read that.
That's my heart. Yikes. I need to deal with that. And then it tells me how to deal with it.
Spend time in prayer with God. The Holy Spirit asking to reveal if there's any wicked way in me as what King David wrote. And lead me in the way everlasting. This is the first mention of the word sin in the Bible.
I was interested when I found that out. This is the first mention of sin in the whole Bible. And I thought, wow, okay. So when you get the first mention, you've got to look and see what it's saying.
And it's telling me that sin is ferocious. It's sitting there. It's croaching. And it wants to consume me.
It wants to take me down. And it tells me that I have to subdue it. It's going to destroy me if I don't. Sorry, this phone is somebody's active.
There we go. What I find in this passage here, God gives Cain a second chance. He gives him a second chance. It's the mercy of God.
I couldn't resist putting this one up. I told Ben I had a special slide for him, but I don't see him up here. Ben works at UPS, my son. So this guy comes along and he says from devil deliveries, I have a package for Mr.
Joe Sinner. And the guy in the house says, Joe Sinner died and didn't leave a forwarding address. My name is Joe Sanctified and I refuse the delivery. And then you see where Joe Sinner is buried next to the house, but Joe Sanctified now has his name on the mailbox.
You know, simple little cartoon, but I thought, wow, this does speak volumes. I can sign off the delivery for the dead man that's living in my house, or I can sign off for the sanctified man who's now alive in Jesus Christ. I do not accept delivery from devil delivery. If you make that choice, it is part of how you master oversight.
All right, the murder of Abel. I will move along quickly now. So it says Cain spoke to his brother Abel and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother and Abel killed, his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, where is your brother?
Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. And my brother's keeper and the Lord said, what have you done? And the voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
And now you are cursed from the ground, which is open to smoke to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you in his strength. You should be a fugitive and a wanderer on this earth. So the first death, death was promised in the day that you eat thereof of the fruit, you will surely die.
So here's the first physical death happens on the earth. And it's a brutal murder. It's planned, it's premeditated, violence, and there's humanity. Cain, his heart is hard, it's calloused.
He invites his brother to come, let's go to the field together. They go to the field together and he rises up and he kills him. It's a refusal to repent by Cain. And then God asks him, where is your brother?
I don't know. What have you done? He doesn't repent. He doesn't even acknowledge what he's done.
He doesn't confess. He just continues on. The wicked heart of Cain. Here his brother is lying dead.
The way of Cain it seems like if you look at it, he just rejects everything about God, everything that comes from him. He comes his own way. First of all, we saw that in the offering that he made, the fruit of his own labors. His works.
I'm going to come to God on my terms. And then a total refusal to repent. A refusal to acknowledge sin. You see, that is why many, many today do not believe.
I refuse to believe this. I refuse to repent. I refuse to confess my sin. I refuse to turn from it.
Well, then if that's the case, then judgment will be yours. The next verse is God says, now you are cursed from the ground, which is open to his mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you in its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.
First of all, he's cursed from the ground once again. The ground is cursed. And we read that back in 317, when man originally sinned. It says, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree, which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground because of you.
In Toyo, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. But thorns and thistles, both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you and you shall eat plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. You see, there was a curse put upon the ground back in the original sin.
You know, Adam, what came easy when I grew the trees and allowed you to just eat from anything you wanted? That's going away. Now you're going to have to work for it. Now you're going to have to labor and dig and dig out the weeds and dig out the thorns and the thistles.
It's going to be hard to work before it was pleasant. Now it's going to be difficult. This is an additional curse that's put upon Cain. It says in this verse, now you are cursed from the ground.
You are cursed from the ground. So what it's going to be like, and I was kind of talking to the Warren about this the other I got an experience of this this summer. I grew my prize winning tomatoes and they didn't win any prizes. They didn't win anything.
They didn't even win the race to the top of my garden. I worked and worked with these. I put more fertilizer in. I'll crush up eggshells and I'll put those in.
I'll do all the stuff I'm supposed to do. I'll water them more. I'll buy these fancy hoses that weep the water out and I did all of this stuff and I got the pathetic tomatoes this year. The way of Cain.
Yet I gave some seedlings to Simian. She's probably still got them growing in her garden. Yes, she has. See, the way of Abel.
So, so this is what was going to happen. It wasn't just going to be hard work to try to grow your crops, Cain. But even worse than that, you're going to look over at your neighbor's garden and it's going to be lush and beautiful and yours is going to be dried up and barren. That's just part of you won't repent.
You won't confess your sin. You won't bring me the you won't come to me on my terms. That's what the consequence is going to be. And next to that he's banished from the land, a fugitive, always on the run from harm and looking for good land.
He's going to lose his family protection. You know, this is a reminder that God will judge sin. He has to judge sin. He cannot stand sin.
He cannot be in the presence of sin. Cain had a chance to repent and he refused. If you have been given chances to repent and turn from your sin and to be born again, you've probably heard it from this pulpit. And if you have and you've said, no, I'm afraid that what waits ahead is not good.
It's the judgment of God. You do not want to fall under the judgment of God. If you repent, if you turn from your sin and you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior who died for you, you'll be saved and you'll be freed from the judgment of God. I never fear the judgment of God upon me.
I don't. And if you're a believer, you should not fear the judgment of God upon you. You are freed from your sin. You are God's child.
You may be disciplined. You may be guided and even chastened in difficult things. But God will not judge you for your sin. He's already judged Jesus Christ for your sin so that your sin can be dealt with and taken away.
And I plead with you if you have not accepted that sacrifice for your sin, accepted today. Do not go home saying, well, I'm going to do it my way. My way leads to the judgment of God. It's the way of Cain.
I need to move along here. Here's Cain's response. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Now, I'm sure I should read this in a whiny voice because it sounds so whiny to me.
He just murdered his brother. He's hideous, horrible. And then he says, my punishment is greater than I can bear. I've been driven away from the ground and from your face.
I shall be hidden. I'll be a fugitive in a wander on the earth. Whoever finds me will kill me. Then the Lord said not so.
If anyone kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain lest anyone who found him should attack him. You know what I found really interesting because I started reading this and I thought, why is he upset and worried because aren't we back to just three people on the earth? No, not really.
This tells me that there were other people on the earth at this point in time because he's now worried that somebody's going to rise up and kill him. So it says, as you go ahead into Genesis chapter 5 that Adam and Eve had more children, many more children. In fact, Josephus, the historian if you can trust what he says, he said it was 33 sons and 22 daughters. The 55 kids at least, so if that's the correct math.
So there were many children. Adam had over 900 years to have children. So there would be many children. When this happened, we don't know.
We know it was before 130 years though. We know it was in the first 130 years of Adam's life that this took place. Now 130 years is a long time because from 1989 to 1997 we had three. In 2016 my son had three.
Well, it seems like that. It seems like they're all the same age. So we can think 130 years is a lot of time to have a lot of children. So we don't know if it was Cain, 10, and then Abel.
We don't know that. But there are obviously others on the earth at this point in time. And so here's Cain thinking, uh-oh, somebody is going to kill me for killing my brother Abel, which is going to lead to another question. We'll get to that in a minute.
So God says, you know what? That's fine. I'll make a pledge. You will not be killed.
You will not be killed. And I thought, how can that possibly happen? Well, because civil law was not introduced until after the flood, capital punishment. That came after the flood.
So at this point in time God says, I'll tell you what, I will put a mark on you, a special mark, and I'll make a pledge that you will not be killed. But you're going to wander. You're going to be like on the run the whole time for two things. You're going to be looking for crops, a place that's to grow.
And you're going to look over your shoulder every day of your life because you think somebody is going to avenge Abel's death. So Abel moves along. One of the things that he found in all of this, oh, oh, my punishment is more than I can bear. And I remember this quote that we read in finishing strong in the men's study.
And it goes like this, it says, I put it there in yellow. It says, sin will take you further than you ever expected to go. It will keep you longer than you intended to stay, and it will cost you more than you ever expected to pay. That is the payout on sin.
And so here is Cain now a marked man. He knows that everybody knows. He's got a mark on him. That mark indicates there's a murderer, but I'm not to touch him because if I do, I'll pay seven times.
So then Cain goes along and will read this to the end. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, East of Eden, and Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bear Enoch. And when he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of the son Enoch. Enoch was born I read and I read father, this guy, and he had Mothusiel and Mothusiel Father Lamach.
And Lamach took two wives and the name of one was Ada and the name of the other Zilla and Ada bore Jabal. And he was the father of those who dwelled in tents and have livestock. And his brother's name was Jubal, the father of those who played the Lear in the pipe. I think he played in that band, Jethro Tal, that guy with the flute and the guitar.
And Zilla bore Tubal Cain and he was the forger of all instruments, bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal Cain was named Nema and Lamach, said to his wife, Ada and Zilla, here my voice, you wives of Lamach, listen to what I say, I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamach is 77 fold. The only thing that stands out among this, Lamach is a very, very wicked man.
A very wicked man. And he was the offspring of Cain. He descended from Cain. And also the other thing, when you read this, you see the craftsmanship, you see that again, going back to the whole idea, men were not cave dwellers that had to develop cerebral cortex to help them understand how to build a flute or a guitar or forge iron and make a pammon organ or anything like that.
So they already had those skills already given to them. He's God given skills to build all of these things. So here we are. Now we've got Cain and Cain married in the land of Nod.
Orrin, what's a very common question that you get on the streets? About Cain? Where did Cain get his wife? Did you ever think about that?
Cain married his sister, probably, or a niece or something. It would be a close relative. He did. And you're going yuck.
And I say that too because I don't want to marry either one of my sisters. Nor do you. But you see back then, that's who lived on the world. That was the population of the land.
The gene pool was not polluted. Genetics were not as mutated. There wasn't all these years of, I mean, there's even things and theories of vapor canadiness and things of that that I won't go into because there's speculation. But the fact is that this is only a very short distance from the original people that God created.
You don't have all those genetic mutations that you would have. So I look at it and think, what's a good example of that? And I thought of the Sackville River. Why would I think of the Sackville River?
Because I used to live in Bedford. And you go down to the end of the Sackville River and you kind of look. And once I see somebody pull out one of these mutated flat fish out of the river. Because it empties into Bedford basin.
And the water is brown and bleh down there. But if you trace it back the distance to the source to where it all began, Lake Pockwalk. That's the city watershed. Everybody who turns on their tap on city water gets water from Pockwalk.
Pure-ish, fresh, clean-ish water from Pockwalk. That's where it began. It's clean. It's not polluted.
It's pure. But as it goes along, as time goes on, it picks up stuff. A cottage that isn't up to code here and somebody threw something in there all the way along until you get down to Bedford where it goes into the ocean. And it's disgusting.
So today the thought of marrying your sister is disgusting. Because genetic mutation means that you are going to have problems in your offspring. But back at the source, back at the beginning, the gene pool was pure. So Cain married his sister.
That's Orhisnius. That's my long way to tell you that. It was never, it wasn't broken but at that time. So Cain had a son Enoch and he named a city after him.
Once again, in God's face. God says you're going to travel. You're going to wander. You're going to try to grow on the ground.
But he says, no, you know why not going to build a city. And that's what Cain does. He defies God his whole entire life. And then we get into Lamech.
One wife wasn't enough. So he had two. And then he just goes into self-lory. Let me tell you two what I've done.
Not only am I a murderer, but I'm a double murderer. And I'm going to brag about it. I'm proud of what I've done. This is how sin, it takes you further than you want to go.
Keeps you longer than you want to stay. Cost you more than you want to pay. And just magnifies as time goes on, as things go on. Now that's what I was supposed to show you.
Next, his son Seth. I'm going to do the entire chapter, chapter 5, right now. Adam, and Eve, it says here, in verse 25 and 26. Adam knew his wife again and she bared us on, called his name Seth.
For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel. For Cain killed him. To Seth, also a son was born. And he called his name Enoch.
At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord. A couple of things about Seth. First of all, he replaced Abel, not in place of Cain who was already gone from the family because of his murder. He replaced the righteous Abel.
It's 130 years after the creation. And likely there were other brothers and sisters around at the time, as I said. What I liked about this short little thing about the birth of Seth, it says, at the last part in verse 26, to Seth was born a son and he called his name Enoch. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.
A wonderful promise, just mentioned as half a verse in the scriptures. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord. You see, Seth was that child of promise. Seth was the one through whom the deliverer was going to come.
And people began to call on the name of the Lord. As you get into chapter 5, okay, so here we go. I just, to make the whole point on this, in the line of Jesus Christ through both Joseph and Mary, you trace them both back, King David, in the center of it all. He's the son of David.
And then from David, it goes back, weaves back to Abraham, to Noah, right back to Seth. In both genealogies you'll read, or in, no, I'm sorry, Luke's genealogy I believe it is. It'll go back and it'll mention Seth. The other one you have to kind of guess back from Abraham, but the line from Abraham to Adam is the same.
So through both genealogies in the scriptures, it goes back to Seth. From Seth to Noah, here we go. This is chapter 5, shortest sermon I've ever given. When you read chapter 5 of Genesis, it reads like you're walking through a cemetery.
Now I sometimes walk through cemeteries and I look at headstones of people that I don't know, but I think I just like to see what's on their headstone. So I'm your read, obviously a believer. Some, that guy was a Freemason. That person was a nurse.
This person was a child. This person died 1700 or something. This person, oh wow, they were only 19. You know, and there's a lot of stuff you can get from a cemetery.
You read through Genesis chapter 5 and you can learn a lot of things, but it reads like you're walking through a cemetery looking at headstones. It's a reminder that everyone will die. Everyone will die. It's that so and so was born.
They had, they begat this person and they died after so many years, all the way through. Genesis chapter 5 verses 1 and 2, this is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and he named them man when they were created. I want you to just get these things from chapter 5.
This is it. And I'm going to close. One, God created mankind. It says they're right in the first of chapter 5 verse 1 and verse 2.
God created mankind. Secondly, mankind, you were created in the image of God to bring glory to God. That's very important. You understand that you were created in the image of God and your purpose is to bring glory to God.
Thirdly, it's mentioned again, male and female, he created them and he blessed them and named them man when they were created. So please ask these chapter 12 verse 1. This is written, remember also your Creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come and the years drawn near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. Very important that we remember our Creator.
Don't come in the way of Cain. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to make my own way to God. Humble able, righteous able came and offered the sacrifice that was necessary.
He came on God's terms through the blood. The only way you will ever come to God is through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for you. His blood was shed so that your sins would be taken away.
Father, thank you this morning. From this great account in history, there is so much that we can learn about you. Learn about how to know you and how to come to you. I ask Lord that if there's anybody here this morning who has never come to know the Lord Jesus as their Savior, that today that you will wiggle our heart to the point that they will come to know Christ, that they will trust Him and Him alone and be saved.
We ask it in His name, amen. I see the guitarist is here so maybe we are going to sing a song.