Two Paths - [Genesis 4:1-8]

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Two keys for a visiting preacher. There are two things that ensure success. The first one is to be truthful.
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Amen? Amen. And the second one is to be genuine. If I'm the new guy here, and many of you know this is my first Sunday here at Bethlehem Bible Church, one of the things that is really important is that I kind of open myself up and allow you to come in and kind of intersect my life and my journey and what
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God has shown me, what he's been teaching us as a family. So hopefully we've been able to do those two things.
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And again, I want to stand before you and be truthful. So if you have your Bibles, you can take them and turn with me to the book of Genesis.
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Let's turn it to Genesis chapter 4, and we're going to read verses 1 through 8 in just a second. But I also want to be genuine or open before you just to kind of pick up a little bit of our story from this morning.
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As many of you know that we're here, this beginning of this
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Lord's Day, one of the things that has caused me to consider deeply the
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Psalms, the message of the Psalms, has been the rebellion and the restoration of my daughter
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Emily. In just a few moments, I want to tell you a little bit about how she came out of that and then how that caused me even to segue into my thoughts for this message this
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Lord's Day this evening. When she was rebelling, one of the things that caused me to sit back and kind of evaluate all of that was we did not raise her to be rebellious.
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We did not hide everything from her as far as the world was concerned.
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But when the world was evident, when we intersected the world, we were able to explain those things to her and give her an explanation of, this is the way the world lives, this is the way that unbelievers or unregenerate people live, and this is the way that we live.
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And I remember early on in her life when she understood the Gospel and confessed Christ, passing through a grocery line and coming to the clerk there, she started pulling on me and she said,
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Daddy, Daddy. And I go, yeah. She said, and this is right after her repentance, her confession, she says, does that lady know
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Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior? And I said, I don't know. Probably not.
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She said, Daddy. I go, what? You need to tell her. You need to tell her right now.
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She understood the implications of what it meant to be in Christ and what it meant to be without Christ, what it meant to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ and what it meant to be clothed in the righteousness of human merit.
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And she understood at the end of the day that it would only be the value and supremacy of Christ that would get her into heaven and nothing that she did.
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And she understood those things. And so she began to explore worldly things and she began to test the world and prod.
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And as I said, she was an artist and she loved living outside of the box. She loved checking things out and examining things and testing things and all that.
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We had a very open and honest relationship and she wasn't living in deception. She was very open and she would say things like,
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Daddy, I'm exploring. I understand what you've taught me my whole life and I just want to see if it's true.
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And so it was in the context of that, I just engaged my daughter and felt very helpless as she was moving quickly to the darkness.
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And yet at the same time, understood really in reality, there are only two paths at all that we could go.
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There's the path toward God, if you will, and there was the path of self -merit or self -religion or self -centeredness.
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There really is only two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. That really we were either in Christ for all eternity and able to long and to live for the glory of heaven or we were somehow just on that path of humanity that was apart from faith, that was apart from Christ.
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And we would talk about those kinds of things in the context of her rebellion and she understood. She understood the difference between those two venues, those two paths, those two roads.
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And I would point to her to scriptures like Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, where Jesus would say,
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Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction.
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And many are those who enter by it, for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life.
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And few are those who find it. And I told her about the fact that this represented two destinies of people and she understood that.
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But she needed a miracle at that point and God in His sovereign grace hadn't intervened. But she also understood as we were talking, now watch this, and this is where it gets real personal before we get into our message tonight, our study.
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She says, Daddy, one of the things that really concerns me is that I understand your message,
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I understand the clarity and I understand the truth of what you're presenting here. But she says,
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Daddy, I look around and there are many, many people in the church that are really just pursuing what
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I'm pursuing. I mean, Daddy, I like art,
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I like music, I like smoking pot, I like my friendships that I have, they're very meaningful to me.
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What's the difference? What's the difference between so -and -so and their love for their big houses?
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What's the difference between what I'm doing and so -and -so's love for their car? Or their enjoyment of their airplane?
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Or their Coke and their DVD watching every
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Sunday after church? Daddy, what's the difference?
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And she was a thinker. She loved
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Bob Marley. She loved the philosophical arguments about pot smoking and that.
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She loved to engage. And really, I had to say to her and I had to think to myself, really, there are two paths.
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When Jesus says broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life, it really isn't the church is on the narrow way and the world is on the broad way.
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It's not as if we can actually take a look at what Jesus is saying, oh, I get it, Jesus. It's the people in the bars that are on the broad road.
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And everybody that is entering into church on Sunday morning, they're the ones on the narrow road.
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The more that I begin to think of it in my own comprehension of the Gospel and the study of the Gospels, I realized that Jesus is speaking to a very religious audience.
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He's speaking, and oftentimes, to His own disciples. And He says, no, no, listen, there are many, many people that think they're in the way and yet they're not.
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And I had to ask myself, well, what is the difference? What is the difference then between the irreligious and the religious that are on the broad way?
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What is the difference between those that claim to be Christians that go through all the motions, and what's really the difference between the direction of their life and the direction of fill in the blank, another person's life?
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And as I began to think that through biblically, I realized that really this is the story of the
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Bible. From Genesis all the way through to the end of the book of Revelation, there are only two paths.
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There is the broad road, there is the narrow road. The broad road is made up of irreligious and religious people, some very religious.
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And yet the narrow road, watch this now, is made up of those who have been saved by faith alone, grace alone, to the direction of Christ alone.
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That there is no, as Jesus would say, there is no ability to love me, to love
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God, and to love the world. You either will hate the one and love the other, or you'll love the one and hate the other.
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You can't have both. You either need to see my son Jesus, as Jesus proclaimed, you either need to see
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Jesus as the soul -sufficient Savior, the soul -sufficient treasure, as we read about this morning in our scripture reading.
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It's either Christ alone or it's nothing. And what is it that we put on display that shows the direction of our lives?
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What is it that people around us, what are they seeing? What do they see as precious in our lives?
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What is it? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
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In marriages in this room today, let me ask you, are your marriages pointing to the singularity of the gospel?
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Do your families and everybody around you, husbands, see the way that you love your wives a reflection of God's faithfulness to us in Christ?
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I'm pointing to myself now. What do my children see in me?
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What distracts me? As a small business owner now, six employees, what do my employees see in me now that robs
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God of glory? That robs Jesus Christ of His majesty and His supremacy?
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To make it even more practical, if there are only two ways to heaven, or excuse me, one way to heaven, two paths, if there are, as we've said, two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men, then really even this
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Lord's Day there are only two ways to worship. You're either worshiping here this evening in Christ alone, or in your works, in your self -achievement, in your self -sufficiency, in your own personal merit.
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We're going to explore that in Genesis chapter 4. We're going to go back to what
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I believe to be the first worship service. As we see two young men worshiping
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God, entering into the presence of God and worshiping God. And we're going to be able to see this evening how
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God examines the heart. The Bible says very clearly that God is the one that looks to the heart.
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The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth to see whose hearts are truly
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His. This evening, God is examining the integrity of your worship.
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And He is either being pleased right now with what He sees, or He's putting a red
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X over your life right now and says, you're on the broad road.
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Sufficiency in Christ, or sufficiency in your own religious activity. Let's take a look through the lens of Genesis chapter 4, and see if we can examine this exegetically, and pull out a theology of worship for us this evening.
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Let's read it together. Genesis chapter 4, starting with verse 1. Now the man had relations with his wife
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Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. And she said, I have gotten a man -child with the help of the
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Lord. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
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So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the
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Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock of their fat portions, and the
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Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.
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So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the
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Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?
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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you.
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But you must master it. Verse 8, Cain told
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Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.
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Two boys, two offerings, and two destinies.
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Two boys, verses 1 and 2. Verse 1, we just see here that the man has relations with his wife
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Eve, that's Adam. She conceives, she gives birth to Cain, and she says in this statement,
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I have gotten a man -child with the help of the Lord. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
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Here at the beginning of Genesis chapter 4, we see a very, very normal thing. We see the sexual union and the bounds of marriage of a husband and a wife, and we see the births of two children.
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The firstborn son was named Cain, and the secondborn son was named Abel. We notice right away there's a birth order.
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We notice also here, if you follow through the context of this passage here, in the beginning of Genesis, we know both boys were conceived in sin.
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But what else do we see here? We see in their name something unique.
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We see that for Cain, it comes from the Hebrew word kayan, which means to get. We can translate this simply as the gotten one.
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Cain's name is tied to Eve's testimony, as you'll see there in verse 1, where she says,
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I have gotten a man -child with the help of the Lord. Cain's name means to get.
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It means the gotten one. Here in Eve's testimony, when she expresses this, she says this in a way that we find in our
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NASB, or maybe possibly your ESB. It's a translation that we see the additional words with the help of.
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A lot of times when the translators, when the Hebrew scholars add words like this to the text, to the
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English translations, it can be helpful for us in our English language to understand the meaning of what was being written here.
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In this case, though, I don't believe so. It's almost as if we were to take it the way it's translated here, for example, in my
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Bible, in the NASB, that we would see that God is some type of midwife. I have gotten a man -child with the help of the
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Lord. But notice the help of is in italics, and really that is not a part of the
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Hebrew text. Literally, we might say that Eve's response then, if we were to take it more literally, she is saying,
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I have gotten a man with the Lord, or I have gotten a man, insert, equally with the
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Lord. Eve is pointing to the significance of what she has done in the aftermath of the fall.
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She believes that God has blessed her. But in what way? In what way is
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God's hand and the significance of this child, in this context, what does it mean?
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Why does she make such a bold statement? Well, if you turn back, you can see that in the aftermath of the fall, there was a judgment.
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If you turn back just a page or so in your Bibles there, she is pointing to the significance of what she has done in relation to the tragic consequences of the fall.
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What is that significance? Look at verse 15 of chapter 3. In the judgment that came in the aftermath, notice what
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God says here. He says, And I will put enmity between you and the women, and between your seed and her seed.
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He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.
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So here we see that in this verse of judgment, in the consequences of the fall, with this epic battle between these two seeds, as I'm sure you've heard many times from this pulpit, really is the first gospel message of coming hope and Messiah.
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And what we see here is that Eve is grabbing onto that judgment and that promise of redemption, that promise of victory, and she no doubt believes that she is bringing forth that promised seed.
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She's bringing forth that promised seed. Who will crush the head? In her rebellion and in her failure to believe in and trust in the promises of God, no doubt she's gripped with the guilt and the choices that she has made, and she believes that she will now, in that promise, offer the world a solution.
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Her son would be God's man to turn back the curse of the fall.
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So as she was birthing that son, and as she and Adam were naming that son, she was lifting that son up as the guy.
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This was the man. This was to be the deliverer. This is the one that would live strong and die hard, or whatever the phrase is.
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This was to be the man's man. This was to be the redeemer. This was to be the one that would turn back her poor choices.
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But there was a second son. We see that his name here is
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Abel. Abel actually comes from the
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Hebrew concept of vapor or breath. It refers to someone or an individual that is going to be frail, powerless, insignificant, meaningless, just for a short while.
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And so from birth, we see that Cain is to be the promised one, the gift from God, while Abel is seen as frail or weak.
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And both of them had professions. One was, as we see here, one was the tiller of the ground.
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Cain was the one who went out and dug deeply and sweated profusely and watered faithfully and grew tremendous, colorful baskets of fruit and vegetables.
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And Abel dealt with shearing and the waste of animals.
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One is seen as very significant. One is seen as very frail. So we see these two boys in the first two verses, but we also see two offerings in the next couple of verses.
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Verse 3, So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground.
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Abel on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.
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Here we see in verse 3, as much information as we have here designed by God, we see that they both brought offerings in an act of worship.
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We don't know if this was just a natural expression of being raised by Adam and Eve, parents who walked with God.
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We don't know if this just came out of that, or maybe there was a planned time. Maybe they were commanded to do this.
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It says in verse 3 that in the course of time, and you can translate this at the end of days, which may have been a prescribed period of time, whether it's at the end of the year, or at the end of a season, or at the end of a month, whatever it may be, we know that Adam and Eve had instructed their boys in the disciplined admonition of the
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Lord, in as close to perfect communion with God as possible, and it was in that upbringing of no
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TV, of no MTV, of nothing. They really were brought up in a pristine environment except for their sin nature, that they were expressing their worship to God.
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But notice here in verse 4, it says that there was a crucial difference.
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There's a crucial difference between these two offerings. It says in verse 4, and the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard.
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Now as you know, as you study the Old Testament, both fruit grains and grain offerings were acceptable as well as obviously animal sacrifices.
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This had nothing to do with the offerings. There was nothing inherently good about one and inherently bad about the other.
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At all times, God says, bring the bountiful provision that I've given you.
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Bring it back to me. And the nation of Israel would have done that. So it wasn't in the offerings itself.
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In fact, the way that it's written, you can see that the offerings were not the issue here. It was not the offering that was the issue in this first worship service.
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It was the heart. In fact, the way that this is emphasized is really quite striking.
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God first and foremost accepts Abel, period. In his person, he accepts
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Abel in what he was doing, and he rejects Cain. God examines
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Cain's offering. He saw that it was unacceptable because God examined
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Cain's heart and saw that his heart was unacceptable.
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Cain was the mask -wearing deceiver of Jude 11 where we read here,
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Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain. They have gone the way of Cain.
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They were the prototype unbelievers expressing in their own self -sufficiency an offering to God.
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God looks at their heart, sees that it wasn't out of faith, but a mixture of human merit, self -sufficiency, works, and rejects it.
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Cain was unrighteous. He brought an unrighteous offering because he was worshipping in the strength of his own accomplishments.
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He was trying to make a name for himself. And we see that being fleshed out in just a few chapters further in the
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Tower of Babel. What was this in there? It wasn't the building. It wasn't the structure. If you read carefully that passage in just a few chapters, the problem in all humanity is that they want to make a name for themselves.
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They want to rival the name of God in what they do as God's creation.
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Cain, the mighty firstborn, had brought an offering in self -righteous sacrifice of his own human achievement, no doubt fostered by his mother.
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Abel, on the other hand, brought an offering offering in humility and dependent faith.
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God looks at Abel in his heart and says, Pleasing, I accept you,
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Abel. Cain looks good on the outside.
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I do not accept what you're bringing to me. Two destinies.
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The next set of verses beginning with the second part of verse 5. So we see here,
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Cain became very angry. Sometimes when we read words on a page like his countenance fell, we're tempted here to say,
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Okay, he just simply was pouting. It says here in verse 5,
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So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry and why is your countenance falling?
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This is not just pouting. Cain, he was mad.
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He was angry. The prodigal son this morning, as we were brought to that Scripture reading, and in which our mentor,
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Dr. John MacArthur, our pastor and friend, preached a powerful message a couple of years ago on that.
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The issue was that the prodigal son's brother was very, very angry to such an extent that if we had read further, he probably would have sought a way to destroy his brother.
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This is not I'm bummed out I didn't get first place.
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This is I in my human effort and my human achievement.
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I spent months and months and months. I did the hard work.
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All my brother did was throw a little grain and clean a little wool and scrape a little, you know what?
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And you know what? What I've done is I have taken and tilled and weeded and picked and pruned and washed and waxed and put it in a basket and displayed it.
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And this is not pleasing to you? This is wrong.
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And he was angry to the point as we see here of murder. Verse 7
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Oh, the graciousness of God in his love for Cain. He draws him to himself and he speaks to Cain.
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In verse 7 he says, If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted?
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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it.
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I suppose if we were to take verse 7 out of context, we might say that God is saying, well,
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Cain, just do your best and try harder. Bring me another offering tomorrow and it's going to be okay.
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No. What God is telling Cain here in verse 7 to do, He's saying to repent.
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To think rightly. To change your understanding of what worship is all about.
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It's not about you, Cain. It's not about you. This is about me and my promises to you.
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God is addressing his heart issue. He's calling Cain to repentance. To change his way of thinking.
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To trust in something other than himself. And so he says at the end of verse 7, Sin is crouching at the door.
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God knows that tragedy will strike. God knows. God understands the anger of a self -righteous
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Pharisee. He would one day experience it at Calvary. He knows that one day he would send his son with a message of Christ's sufficiency and they would reject it and be angry enough.
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Mark chapter 3 verse 6, And from that day on, the Pharisees and their
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Hodeans sought to destroy Jesus. The very beginning of Jesus' ministry.
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The religious establishment hated it as Cain was hating his brother.
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But God realized that this was happening. Tragedy would come. He seeks to restore back favor with Cain.
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He calls Cain to repentance to think rightly. Cain tragically disregards
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God's warning. He refuses to repent. He nurses his jealousy. And soon his mind conceives a diabolical plot.
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So we see here in verse 8, another interesting translation that doesn't really help us much. It says here, verse 8,
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Cain told Abel his brother, in other words here, Cain was watching for his brother.
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Carries the idea of watching someone else's activity.
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And it came about that when they were in a field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.
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So Cain waits for Abel. Sets a trap. Has never seen any movies.
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Has never seen any killing. Has never seen one human being's act of violence, at least from what we know, against another human being.
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And so, right here, without going into any detail, a rock, stone, a limb, a branch, a bone, something is used.
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Cain raises up and kills his brother.
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Flowing out of the sin of human achievement, flowing out of the sin of pride. And here we see, we find two choices for all of humanity.
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Two paths, two kingdoms, two destinies, two ways to worship.
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There really are only two choices. And my daughter got it. Emily got it. She understood.
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And she said to me, she said, I can't change it. I can't do anything right now in my life to change the direction of my life.
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Two destinies. The destiny of either dying to self and becoming alive in Christ, or the destiny of crucifying
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Christ and becoming alive in self. Those are the two choices that we have.
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And it all boils down to the issue of faith. If you have your
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Bibles, let's leave Genesis and flip ahead to the book of Hebrews.
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And we'll spend the rest of our time in the book of Hebrews. I want to take you to a passage which actually mentions
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Abel in the great chapter of faith, Hebrews chapter 11.
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And as you're turning there, many of you know this passage of Scripture.
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For those of you new to the study of Hebrews, there comes a point in just the discussion of the superiority of the
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New Covenant over the Old Covenant, and just the superiority of Christ as fulfilling all of the types and shadows of the
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Old Testament and seeing really the exaltation of Jesus in the Gospel. There is a transition of sorts which talks about how this
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Gospel has impacted different people throughout the Old and into the
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New Testaments. It's a wonderful chapter on faith, the nature of faith.
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And if you read it here, you can see this, that verse 1 defines faith.
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Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. We see here in verse 2 that by faith the men of old gained approval.
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In other words, they were justified or declared righteous by their faith. A very biblical concept seen defined clearly in the book of Romans.
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We see when we flow into verse 3, after linking faith with creation, the author of Hebrews writes in verse 4, by faith
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Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous,
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God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.
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In other words, in the testimony of verse 4, we see that the issue boiled down to faith.
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That even in the Old Testament, looking through the promises of God and the unrolling of God's revelation,
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Old Testament saints, going all the way back to Abel, were saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
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We see here in verse 4 a testimony that he was righteous. It wasn't as if Abel was somehow the epitome of perfection in the sight of God.
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Yes, he did the right thing, but it wasn't as if Cain did the wrong thing. God was looking at their heart.
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Abel, through his faith in God and the testimony of whatever it was in the content of what he knew about God, he had placed his faith in the promises of God and the character of God and God had declared him righteous.
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Just a few chapters later, Abram believed in God and was what? Abram believed
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God and was declared righteous. An Old Testament saint believed in the promises of God, whatever revelation
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God had revealed to that point, and were saved. Looking ahead to Christ, Abel, we see here, was that individual.
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Through Abel's faith, his offering was acceptable to the Lord. That's why it says in Hebrews 11, verse 6, jump down to verse 6, and without faith, it is impossible to please
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Him. Without faith, it is impossible to please
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Him. Why does faith please God? In other words, what is so special about faith?
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Because really, if you've been following this message, narrow road are those that have been crucified with Christ.
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It is no longer they who live, but Christ lives within them. It's those people that have died to self and through the gift of faith, through the direction of their hearts, that it is
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God alone that brings victorious salvation in Christ their Savior. What is so special about it?
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Verse 6, jump down to verse 6 again. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who seek
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Him. Faith alone leads to a reward.
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Question this evening. What is the reward? What was
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Abel rewarded with? What was the gift that Abel received that Cain did not receive?
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How was Abel able to come into the presence of God and be accepted?
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And how did Cain come into the presence of God and be rejected?
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Well, it boils down. Look at the next verse. It keeps flowing. Watch this. By faith,
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Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence, prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
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Beloved, the gift that Abel had received by God, the free gift, was the gift of righteousness.
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The righteousness that Christ achieved for His people.
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In all of the ways that Jesus Christ obeyed what
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His Father sent Him to do. In His life, and in His death, and in His resurrection, and in His ascension.
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Jesus Christ is our righteousness. And at the moment
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Abel put his faith in the limited understanding of the
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Gospel, the moment that Noah put his faith in the limited understanding of the
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Gospel, the moment Abram put his faith in the limited understanding of the
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Gospel, at that moment, and you see that traced all the way through the Old Testament, at that moment, salvation.
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I declare you righteous. That is the
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Gospel. Undeserved merit. The righteousness of Christ being credited to our account.
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Through the vehicle of faith. What is the difference between people who come in here and make up, stay here, and those of us that will one day stand before God, what is the difference between those of us who will say, well done, my good and faithful servant, come in to me.
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The difference between the Cain's and the Abel's worshiping here this evening, and on every
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Lord's Day throughout the world, the difference is what we truly are trusting in.
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Are we trusting in our own merit? Or are we trusting alone in the merit of Christ?
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There's a book, and I think, I believe, and I'm speaking now, I haven't talked with Mike about this,
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The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges. Good book? Thank you.
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Good book. It's not a burner, it's a turner. Yeah, I'm a no -code junkie.
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Okay. Gospel for Real Life. There's a chapter in there by Jerry Bridges entitled
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Preaching the Gospel to Yourself Daily. Very helpful, I think, in making sure that we examine ourselves on a regular basis in light of what we truly are putting our strength in.
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And in that chapter, I believe he says, if we put our heads on our pillows at night and say, hey, what a great day,
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I love my wife, I didn't get angry at the children, and so yada, yada, yada. And we go to sleep, you don't understand the message tonight.
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Zero, you weren't paying attention. But, if at the end of the day, you loved your wives, and you were patient with your children, and the list, and you say, thank you,
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Jesus. Thank you for working within me. Hallelujah.
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You get all the credit. That's a good day. And God accepts that offering.
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Spurgeon was asked, excuse me, Luther was asked, Martin Luther, you know,
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I understand this Reformation thing, and we had to get out of the church, and we're so glad you're our pastor, but I've been coming now for a few months, and I forget exactly how the story goes, but somebody came to Luther and said, you know, why every time do
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I come, every single Sunday I come, and you're always preaching the gospel, why do you preach it every week? And which
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Luther said, because you forget it every week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, we thank you that you've been gracious to us, so loving, so tender, so compassionate, that even tonight you offer the gift of repentance.
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Lord, I pray that if there are any, like I've lived myself, any canes here that have gone the way of Cain, where we realize that our self -sufficiency is at best filthy rags.
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And may we, this Lord's Day, only exalt the supremacy and the majesty and the obedience and the faithfulness of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. In our worship, may the gospel be contagious as it works itself out.
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May it be seen in tangible ways. Lord, all to your glory and praise.