Genesis 4
Peace be with you, listening
friends. We greet you in the name of God, the Lord of peace, who wants everyone
to understand and submit to the way of righteousness that He has established,
and have true peace with Him forever. We are happy to be able to return today
to present your program The Way of Righteousness.
In our last program we learned about the first two
sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. We saw how each of
them wanted to worship God and present to Him a sacrifice. Cain took some crops
that he had cultivated and offered them to God. But Abel offered God a lamb
without blemish and slaughtered it as a sacrifice that covers sin. And the Scripture
declares: "The Lord accepted Abel but
He did not accept Cain."
Why did God accept Abel but not Cain? Because God's
way of righteousness demanded a blood sacrifice. God judged Abel as
righteous because he believed the Word of God and brought the offering that God
required. As for Cain, he attempted to approach God through his own efforts,
which is why God did not accept him.
Today we plan to conclude our
study about Cain and Abel. Do you know what happened after God refused Cain's
sacrifice? In the book of Genesis, chapter four, verse five, the Scripture
says: "So Cain was very angry, and his face
was downcast."(Gen.
4:5) Why was Cain angry? That is not difficult to understand. To illustrate, if
I do something bad and someone says to me, "You have done wrong! Change
your ways, and do what is right!" how might I respond to the one who
rebuked me? Either I will humbly receive his words and change
my ways or
I will get angry with him and continue in my error.
God rebuked Cain so that he might realize that the
works of his hands, which he had presented as a sacrifice, were worthless
before God. God wanted Cain to repent and to bring the
sacrifice of a lamb without blemish, as Abel had done. God wanted to lead Cain
in the right way, the way of forgiveness. However Cain, in his pride, refused
to admit his transgression before God. Instead, he became angry and despondent.
Thus, "the Lord said to Cain, 'Why
are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not
be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door;
it desires to have you, but you must master it.'"(Gen. 4:6,7) Why did God
question Cain in this way? He questioned him because He did not want Cain to
perish. God wanted Cain to repent of his sins, and follow the right way. God
was warning Cain about a terrible enemy, which threatened to destroy him and
his descendants. That enemy is called Sin!
What is sin? Sin is the
problem of the world.
It is our worst enemy. Sin is like a snake, full of deadly poison. It is like a
little spark that can burn up a great forest. Sin is a torch with which Satan
is burning up the world! The Word of God says,"Anyone
…who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (Jam. 4:17) "Sin is
lawlessness…. He who does what is sinful is of the devil,
because the devil has been sinning from the beginning." (1 John 3:4,8) Sin is
the force that moves in the members of our bodies and fights against what is
true and good. Sin is anything that does not agree with the will of God. Sin is
refusing to believe and obey the Word of God. To
go my own way is sin. (See Isaiah 53:6)
What will be the end of those who go their own way and
refuse to believe God and obey Him? The Scriptures say, "They
will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the
presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power."(2 Thes. 1:9) Those who
come by the way of salvation that God has decreed will be granted eternal life.
But those who harden their hearts against the truth will face God's wrath and
judgment. However, the Scriptures say that God does not want"anyone
to perish, but everyone to come to repentance!" (2 Pet. 3:9) God
did not want Cain to perish in his sin. What He wanted was for Cain to repent,
forsake the way of unrighteousness that he had chosen, and choose the way of
righteousness.
As we saw in the last program, the Lord God had
revealed a plan by which sinners could be made righteous before Him. Abel
believed in God's plan, and slaughtered a spotless lamb as a sacrifice that
covers sin. Abel believed what God said, "The
[penalty for] sin is death," and "without
the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin!" (Rom. 6:23; Heb. 9:22)
Because of the shed blood of the lamb, Abel had a clear conscience before God.
Abel knew that he was a guilty sinner deserving God's punishment, but he knew
also that he had offered an innocent lamb just as God required. The lamb which
Abel sacrificed was an illustration of the Savior who was to come into the
world to offer up His life as a sacrifice that would cancel man's debt of sin
forever. As for Cain, he pretended to believe God, but his deeds denied it. Cain
honored God with his mouth, but his heart was far from Him. The blood of a lamb is
what God demanded, but Cain offered Him the works of his hands. Cain's worship
was absolutely worthless before God, because he did not accept God's way.
Let us now read the next verse to see what Cain did
after God rebuked him for his worthless sacrifice. The Scripture says, "Now
Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let's go out to the field.' And while they were
in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." (Gen. 4:8) What did Cain
do? Did he repent? Did he believe God and bring to Him the blood of a lamb as a
sacrifice for sin? No! Cain added sin to sin by
attacking his brother Abel and killing him.
Incredible! Cain, who refused to shed the blood of a
lamb so that God could forgive him his sins, now shed the blood of his
righteous brother! What do you think about this? Who placed within the mind of
Cain the idea to kill his brother? To whom was Cain listening? Cain was listening
to Satan. The Scriptures say that he killed his brother because Cain "belonged
to the evil one." (1 John 3:12). We have already seen how
God announced that there would be two lines (groups) of people in the world,
the people of God and the people of Satan. Abel belonged
to God because
he believed the Word of God enough to obey it. Cain
belonged to Satan because he did not believe the Word of God.
Let us now listen to what God said to Cain after he
killed his younger brother.
"Then the Lord said
to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' 'I don't know,' he replied. 'Am I
my brother's keeper?' The Lord said, 'What have you done? Listen! Your
brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and
driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood
from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for
you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.'" (Gen. 4:9-12)
Thus, God punished Cain, saying, "When
you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you." Wolof wisdom says,
"The cow kicks its calf but does not hate it." Similarly, God did not
punish Cain to condemn him, but to lead him to repent of his sin, believe the
truth, and be saved. Yet what did Cain do? Did he repent? No, he did not. The
Scriptures say, "So Cain went out
from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod." (Gen. 4:16) Cain, who
ignored the word of God, turned his back on God, shutting Him out of his life. It
was not God who distanced Himself from Cain, but Cain who distanced himself
from God.
Today, most of Adam's descendants resemble Cain,
continuing in their own way and closing their hearts to God's voice. With their
lips they say, "God is great!" but in their hearts they think,
"God is far away! No one can know Him!" However, the Word of God
shows us that God is not far from any one of us, because He is the One
who gives to everyone life and breath and everything else. He is closer to us
than our own heartbeat. God knows you personally, and wants you to know Him
personally too! (See Acts 17:24-31; Romans 10:1-13)
Why is it then that most people do not come to know
God (personally)? The Word of God answers this question. God says, "This
is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness
instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil
hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will
be exposed."(John
3:19,20)
People do not know God, because like Cain, they
have turned their backs on His Word. God's prophet David wrote: "[God's]
word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." (Psa. 119:105) If you
turn your back on the light of the Word of God, you will remain in the darkness
of sin and you will never come to know God. God will seem far from you. Yet,
God wants you to know that He is not far away. He is behind you. He is at your
side. He is right in front of you. God loves you and wants to have a close
relationship with you. But you must not be like Cain, who hardened his heart
and refused to accept God's way of righteousness. God
wanted Cain to repent. To this very day, God is commanding every
person to repent, turn to Him, and believe His Word.
Do you know what it means to
repent?
It means to change your thoughts and your
actions. To
repent is to confess before God, "I have been
wrong in my thinking concerning the way of salvation that you have
established!" To repent is to agree with God that you have no
possible way of saving yourself from His righteous judgment, and then to turn
to Him and submit to His way of salvation.
A person who truly repents is like a traveler who
wants to take the train from Thies {Senegal's 2nd largest city} to Dakar
{the Capital}. He buys a ticket and climbs aboard. Later, as he is traveling
along, he discovers that he is on the train going to Bamako {in Mali, the
opposite direction}! What must he do if he is ever to get to Dakar? He must
"repent"--that is, he must admit that he is heading in
the wrong direction, get off the train at the next
stop, and get on the train that goes to
Dakar. Thus, we see that genuine repentance has two sides: rejecting the wrong
and accepting the right. True repentance involves two
actions. First,
you must turn from yourself, your sins,
your idols and your self-efforts to gain God's favor. Then you must turn
to God
and His Word which tells you how to be saved. That is true repentance.
As for Cain, he never repented. Cain chose to continue
in his own way. He refused to submit to the
way of salvation established by God. That is why the Scriptures say: "Cain
perished on the way of unrighteousness, which caused God to reserve for him
the blackest darkness forever!" (Jude 11, 13)
Oh dear friends, may we not be
like Cain!
Let us pay attention to the solemn warning from God which says, "Unless
you repent, you too will all perish!" (Luke 13:3) God's
judgment is sure and will fall upon all those who have never been cleansed from
their sins.
Let there be no mistake about this: you will never
become righteous before God based on your own good works. Like Cain, many
people believe that they will escape God's judgment by attempting to follow the
rules and regulations of their religion. But being religious does not make one
righteous. God's Word says:
"No one will be
declared righteous in [God's] sight by observing the law…. All of us have
become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like
filthy rags…. For it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith,
and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not
by works, so that no one can boast!" (Rom. 3:20; Isa. 64:6;
Eph. 2:8,9)
Thank you for listening. God willing, in the next
program, we will study about some of Adam's descendants, including the Prophet
of God, Enoch….
God bless you as you thoughtfully consider what you
have heard today. The Scriptures say:
"God is patient
with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance….
[But if you do not] repent, you will perish!" (1 Pet. 3:9; Luke 13:3)
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