Advanced Civilization, But Apart from God

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 4.
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Hold your place in verse 17.
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We're continuing with our verse-by-verse study of the book of Genesis this morning.
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Last week we did verses 1 to 16, so today the hope is that we will do verses 17 to 26.
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A few years ago the Chicago Tribune carried a brief news article that began with these words.
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A Texas mother was so intent on making sure her daughter made the cheerleading squad that she was willing to hire a hitman to kill a competitor's mother.
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Police said the woman's hope was that her daughter's 13-year-old competitor would be so overwhelmed with grief by her mother's death that she would drop out of the competition for the cheerleading spot.
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Detectives said that the first plan of the woman was to have both the mother and the daughter killed, but when she found out that would be too expensive she thought she could do just the mother and it was going to cost her $2,500.
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That was all she could afford.
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We live in arguably the most advanced civilization in human history.
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We have conditioned air, space travel, and seedless watermelons, which to me is amazing.
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Yet stories like the one I just cited are not really all that uncommon.
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There are terrible things that happen in our advanced society.
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The 20th century stood unchallenged as the century of the greatest violence in the history of the world.
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Even though it was the same time where we had the greatest increases in technological advances, we increased our ability to travel, our ability to grow food, our ability to produce wealth, and yet the modern world with all its technology has not made man any better.
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In fact, it seems to have only really made us better at getting worse.
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I'm reading a book right now.
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On our podcast I'm doing a book review.
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It's 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You.
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It talks about the cell phone.
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I haven't read it yet, so I can't endorse it.
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I'm only through the first chapter, but so far so good.
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But the hope is that it will help to understand what really is changing in our technology, in our world, and the way we see the world.
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You see, we live with all these advancements, but we don't seem to be advancing toward God.
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If anything, we are advancing in every other way except God.
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Instead of drawing near to Him, the gap between man and God seems to be ever increasing, wider and wider as the world progress increases at an exponential rate.
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And amazingly, this is what we see in the latter half of Genesis chapter 4.
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We are given a picture of a people who are advanced in culture.
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They are advanced in art and music.
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They are advanced in technology, but they are primitive, I would even argue backward, in their godliness, righteousness, and wisdom.
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Yet, as we will see, God still remains gracious in maintaining a remnant.
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Because even as the world advances away from Him, He is still active in drawing His own.
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His people, as we will see at the end of the chapter, still call upon His name.
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So with that as our introduction, let us stand and read the Word of God.
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And we will read verses 17 to 26.
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Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.
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When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.
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And to Enoch was born Irad.
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And to Irad fathered Mahuyel.
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And Mahuyel fathered Methushael.
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And Methushael fathered Lamech.
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And Lamech took two wives.
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The name of the one was Ada, and the name of the other was Zillah.
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Ada bore Jobel, who was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.
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And his brother's name was Jubal.
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He was the father of those who play the lyre and the pipe.
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Zillah also bore Jubal Cain.
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He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.
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And his sister, excuse me, the sister of Jubal Cain was Nahumah.
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Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say.
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I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.
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If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.
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And Adam knew his wife again, and bore a son, and called his name Seth.
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For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.
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To Seth also was born a son, and he called his name Enoch.
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And at that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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May it be now that you would keep me from error, that you would keep me from cowardice, and that you would fill me with your spirit as I preach your word.
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May your people be taught, encouraged, edified, rebuked, and corrected.
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And may those who do not know you be challenged by the gospel today, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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In our last sermon, we looked at the life of Cain and Abel, and we discussed how Cain and Abel represented not only two lives, but they represent, in one sense, two lines.
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The line of Cain is perpetuated in ungodliness.
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The line of Abel is perpetuated in godliness and God-fearing.
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And this is not just an opinion, this is not just something that I came up with on my own, or simply by reading the text.
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This is something that the New Testament makes very clear to us.
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When we get to the New Testament, if you were to pull out your concordance, or maybe your Bible software, and you look up Abel, you will see that in the New Testament, Abel's name comes up a few times, and every time his name comes up, it's used in the positive.
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He's called righteous by Jesus in Matthew 23, 35.
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He's called Righteous Abel.
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How is someone made righteous? By faith.
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The Bible says it is by faith a man is made righteous before God.
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So when we get to Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11, 4, it says it was his faith that made his sacrifice acceptable to God.
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He was a man of faith.
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He was a righteous man.
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In fact, the Bible tells us in Hebrews 11 that his faith still speaks.
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You know, he never said a word.
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The Bible never records one word from the mouth of Abel.
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And yet his faith still speaks.
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But in the same way, if you look up in your Bible concordance, or in your software, for the word Cain, and look at that in the New Testament, you will find that Cain is always spoken of in the negative.
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He is called, Cain is referred to as being of the evil one in 1 John 3, verse 12.
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And the book of Jude reminds us, Woe to those who walk in the way of Cain.
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So it's important that we understand there's more than two men.
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There's two lives.
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There's two lines.
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There's two types.
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There's two families.
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There's the children of God and there's the children of men.
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There's the children of righteousness and the children of wickedness.
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That's the picture here.
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There's only two types of people in the world.
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Nobody's almost saved.
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Remember I mentioned that last week? Nobody's hanging on the sides of the ark.
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Right? You're either in the ark or you're outside of the ark.
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You're either saved or you're not.
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You're either made righteous by faith, declared righteous by faith, or you are not.
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And this concept is further expressed and demonstrated in the remainder of chapter 4.
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Because what we see in Genesis chapter 4 is we see from verses 17 to 24, we see the line of Cain.
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And verses 25 and 26, we see the line of Seth.
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Now, why Seth? Because Abel is no more.
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Abel's line has been cut off.
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And you'll remember in the Old Testament, one of the things that God often did was God would tell the people that if a brother dies, another brother would take his place and raise up a family in his name.
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There would be the line would continue that if the brother dies, the line doesn't.
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So we see that sort of in prototype form here, where God has raised up Abel who was a righteous man of faith, but he's been slain.
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So God raises up another.
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God raises up Seth.
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And specifically for what purpose? To take the place of Cain.
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I'm sorry, to take the place of Abel.
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To be the juxtaposition of Cain.
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To be the righteous one.
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And so what we're going to do today is we're going to look first at the line of Cain and we're going to see what the Bible tells us about the line of Cain.
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And then we are going to, as time allows, look at the line of Seth.
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But understand this, the line of Seth moves into chapter 5.
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And next week, when we first started Genesis, I would take sometimes three or four weeks on one passage.
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Well, now I'm doing several passages in one week.
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And next week I hope to do a whole chapter.
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I want to do all of chapter 5 in one shot.
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Because it's all about the line of Seth.
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So that's the goal for next week, if we finish the sermon today.
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So we're going to look at today the line of Cain and the line of Seth.
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But the line of Seth will really just be an introduction, because next week will take us through the exposition all the way to Noah.
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Because Seth is the ancestor of Noah, the one who would survive the flood.
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Alright, so let's look at the line of Cain.
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Verses 17 to 24.
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It begins with a continuation of Cain's narrative.
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In our last lesson, we saw God cursed Cain.
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And Cain was departed from the presence of the Lord.
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We said that that was both a physical and a spiritual reality.
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He left the presence of the Lord.
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You can't really leave God's presence, because God is omnipresent.
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But he left the immediate worshipful presence of the Lord.
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He was no longer in fellowship with God.
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So this has a spiritual dimension to it when it says he left the presence of the Lord.
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And it says he went to the land of Nod.
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Understand this, the word Nod in Hebrew simply means wandering.
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So it's not as if there were roadmaps and markers at this point in time in history.
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It wasn't as if when you got outside of Eden, there was a big sign that says you're now entering Nod.
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The idea is he's gone out from God's cultivated area.
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He's gone out of Eden, and he's gone to a place of wandering.
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And so as he goes to this place of wandering, it says in verse 17, Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.
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Now, a common question, and as a person who has a heart for apologetics, this question is one I've heard a thousand times in apologetic conversations.
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Where did Cain get his wife? There's even...
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Almost every apologetics book will have the basic questions.
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And one of the most basic questions, well, where did Cain's wife come from? Because the immediate thought is people will say, well, she came from the land of Nod.
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The text does not say that.
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The text doesn't say she came from the land of Nod as if there were other people that God created.
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That's the picture often people have, right? God created Adam and Eve, and then He created all these other people in these other lands.
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And so the idea is that Cain left Eden, and he went to Nod, and Nod had its own population of people, and that's where Cain got his wife.
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That's not what the text says.
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The text doesn't say he got his wife from Nod.
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It says he went to Nod, and there he knew his wife.
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Now, remember what the word know means from last week.
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Know, in this sense, is the intimate relationship between husband and wife.
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It really is referring, in this sense, to the sexual relationship which produces a child.
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That's what it means to know.
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And so where did Cain get this woman? Well, for the most simplest answer, we have to go to the Scripture.
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If you go to Genesis 3.20, you can just probably look over on the page.
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You might not have to turn too far.
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In Genesis 3.20, it tells us this.
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Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.
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You say, well, why is that significant? It's significant for this.
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There was no other person created other than Adam and Eve.
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God didn't create Adam and Eve, and Lyndon, Jim, and Bob, and Roy, and all these other people.
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God created Adam and Eve, and everyone who is on the earth today is a descendant of Adam and Eve.
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Therefore, the conclusion must be that the first generation of children of Adam and Eve married within their family.
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So yes, I know you boys and girls may feel like this is a little icky to think about, but that means that they married their sisters and brothers.
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And you may say, well, wait a minute.
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There's no sisters.
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There's only Cain, and Abel is dead, and now there's Seth.
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Where are the sisters? Well, if you look over to Genesis 5.4, it says the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters.
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And so let's do a little math.
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He lived 800 years.
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He probably remained able to produce children throughout the majority of those years.
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It's not like modern man who only is able to produce children maybe into the 40s or 50s, you know, but miracles happened in the Bible where they were having babies into their 90s.
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But this would have been able to have generations of children.
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And so Adam and Eve would have had many other sons and daughters.
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And so therefore, Cain's wife would have been his sister.
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And somebody says, but wait a minute.
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The Bible says that that's a sin.
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The law of Moses, Leviticus 18.9, says do not marry your sister.
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Do not have relations with your sister.
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And the understanding of that has to be that at this particular time in the generational history of the world, it would not have been dangerous nor unlawful for a brother to marry his wife.
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And by the time of Moses, it would have been.
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You see, Moses is here many millennia after these events.
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We say many, we don't know how many, but certainly several thousand years have passed from the time of Cain and his wife to the time of Moses who is giving this law about marrying your sister.
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And we know today that marrying sisters is a bad idea from a genetic perspective, right? Because the genetics of humanity have been so affected through many years of sin and mutation and all these things that have come into play.
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And it's like this.
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If you think of a stream which begins at a spring, at the mouth of the spring, it's where the purest water is.
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But as you begin to go down the stream, it picks up more things as it goes down the stream.
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And at certain points, it may pick up some very grody and grotesque things and it may become unpalatable by the time you get down to the tepid pools at the end.
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Right? But at the earliest point, it's clear, pure water, right? That's coming up out of the spring.
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So this is what we have.
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And I'm spending probably more time on this than I need to.
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But again, this is the apologist coming out of me.
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There's no problem with this early generation of intermarrying between brothers and sisters.
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There's no introduction of mutation.
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There's no introduction of any issues here.
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There's no problem with Cain marrying his sister, other than the fact that in 2021, we would say, ick.
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That's really the only problem with it.
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So where did Cain get his wife? From his mother.
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That's the answer.
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He got his wife from his mother.
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And it goes on to tell us, he knew his wife and they bore a child whose name was Enoch, and he built a city.
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Now I pondered this part of verse 17 this week, because I've wondered in my heart, is this building of a city an act of rebellion on the part of Cain? Cain is already a rebel.
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He's already demonstrated himself to have an unbelieving heart.
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But God called him to be what? A wanderer and a vagabond.
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But he doesn't do that.
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He creates a metropolis for himself, right? Instead of being a wanderer, he becomes a founder of a city.
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And then what does he do with the city? He names it after his son.
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Why? To establish his own reputation and to maintain the name.
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You say, well, it's his son's name.
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Yes, but that's what men do.
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They name things after their son to establish, this is what I have built, and this is for my son, and this is for my family.
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Why did the people build the Tower of Babel? I know we're not there yet.
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We haven't got Genesis 11 yet.
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But why did they build the Tower of Babel? Some people think they're trying to reach up and touch God.
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That's not the reason.
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If you read the text, it says, so that generations would know their name.
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So that they would have a name.
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That their name would be remembered.
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It was about pride.
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And naming the city that he founded after his son, it's an act of pride.
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And, I would argue, an act of willful rebellion against God.
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In fact, I want to quote Dr.
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Kent Hughes.
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He says this, Cain's building a city at the time of Enoch's birth was a defiant, in-your-face violation of God's revealed will for Cain.
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This willful act is consonant with the record of his behavior.
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Cain had not changed at all.
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The city was probably not very much, because the Hebrew word for city here can be applied to any settlement, small or great.
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But this city was his statement to God, his family, and his replacement, Brother Seth, that in his mind, he was the captain of his own soul.
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He built a city, named it after his son, in defiance of God.
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Now we have, beginning at verse 18, the descendants of Cain.
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And from verses 18 to 22, we have the line and the exploits of the line.
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Several generations are listed before much history is given.
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There's really nothing to say about the sons of Cain, the first few generations, with exception to say that the names in this line are very close to the names that are the line of Seth.
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When we get to chapter 5, we're going to see, like, Methuselah, Methuselah.
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You know, there are some very similar things, and I think there is some significance to that, which we're going to talk about next week.
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But what really happens is, when we get down to Lamech, the attention begins to get more intense, because in Lamech, we have the first case of polygamy.
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Actually, in this case, it would be, more specifically, bigamy, because it's two wives.
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Polygamy usually means more than two wives.
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But, in any case, this is a rebuffing of God's plan for marriage.
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What's God's plan for marriage, by the way? For this very reason, the man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.
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Right? That's the goal of marriage, that a man leaves his father and mother, he cleaves unto his wife, and the two become one.
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And there's not multiple, right? It's not Adam and Eve and Lilith, or Adam and Eve and Sarah, or anybody else.
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It's Adam and Eve.
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And when Jesus is asked about marriage in Matthew 19, Jesus doesn't cite the prophets, He doesn't cite the teachings of Israel, the extra-biblical teachings of Israel.
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He cites Genesis.
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He says, as it was from the beginning, one man, one woman for life.
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But then we get to Genesis 4, and what do we have? We have Lamech, the first bigamist.
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The first one to have a second wife.
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And from Lamech, we have two lines.
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We have the line through Ada and Zillah.
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Both of those names have meaning.
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Ada actually means beauty and beautiful, and it refers to the fact that she was probably very beautiful.
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The word Zillah actually means shade, and could still refer to her beauty.
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And so, He chooses these two women, both of them who are able to give Him descendants, and He fathers four named individuals.
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The first is Jabal.
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This is the one who is the, it says, the father, and the word father there simply means the founder, the founder of advancements in agriculture.
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Essentially, the father, it says that he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.
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That would have been advanced agricultural living.
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And then Jubal was the father of advancements in music.
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Now, this is an interesting little side note here, because if you later in the Bible, you see the word Jubilee.
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And Jubilee has reference to celebration.
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And oftentimes, celebration is accompanied by music.
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And so, there is a possibility that the word Jubilee is connected to Jubal, who is the father of instruments.
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Also, this is a place where people who want to attack the Bible will attack the Bible right here.
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Because they will say, this was far too advanced a civilization for such a primitive time in human history.
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You ever heard people say that? They'll say, I heard people say, well, the Bible can't be true, because it talks about Abraham having camels, and we know that camels weren't domesticated during the time of Abraham, so the Bible is wrong.
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And then they find out later, oh wait, they were domesticated.
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They were wrong.
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You see, often the antagonists against Scripture try to find something upon which to hang their attacks.
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And one of the attacks is, well, the use of instruments, especially the instruments mentioned here, which are lyres and pipes, these are way too advanced for such a primitive part of human history.
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And you know what the Greek word for that is, right? Baloney.
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That's right, it's just baloney.
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They're making it up.
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They're saying it couldn't be.
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The Bible says it is.
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It says they had an advanced civilization.
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They had an advanced civilization in regard to agriculture.
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They had an advanced civilization in regard to music.
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And I would say that would extend to the arts.
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Tubal Cain, by the way, named after his great-great-grandfather, who was a killer, interestingly enough.
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Lamech names his son after his murderous great-great-grandfather.
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Tubal Cain is a forger of instruments.
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Now, it doesn't tell us what kind of instruments, but I'd like to propose an idea for you to consider.
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I believe that the instruments here would have included weapons.
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You say, why? Because we're later going to see that Lamech's line was a line of bloodshed.
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Lamech himself celebrates his own willingness to be vicious and vengeful.
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So when it says that they were forger of instruments, of bronze and steel, there's a very good chance that this is weapons that are being referred to.
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So, as we consider this line of Cain, what we see here is we see people who are very advanced in technology, very advanced in art, very advanced in science, very advanced in culture.
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A lot of you guys are homeschoolers, some of you aren't, though.
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Has everybody in here heard of STEAM? STEAM is getting more popular recently, especially among homeschoolers, and it's Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.
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It's like the five-fold foundation of what you need to be teaching your child, right? So it's called STEAM, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, right? And I was thinking about that as I was thinking about, because they have little, they have contests.
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Like your children can, sort of like science fairs, your children can enter STEAM contests, and they can become, you know, celebrated for how good they are at science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics.
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And I got to thinking about it.
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You know who would have been the best? Would have been the descendants of Cain.
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They're good at all that stuff.
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They're good at science.
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They're good at technology.
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They're good at engineering.
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They're good at art, music.
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They're good at, apparently, at math, because they're figuring all this stuff out.
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But I want to tell you something.
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As important as those things are, if you are spending your time with your children, concerning yourself with ensuring that they know science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics, but not God's Word, then all you are doing is creating a generation of intellectually fulfilled heathens, because that's what we have here.
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We have a generation of intellectually fulfilled heathens, because in all of this, notice what it doesn't say one time, and this person worshipped God.
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It doesn't say that.
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It says they were good at art.
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It says they were good at agriculture.
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It says they were good at making stuff.
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They were advanced but apart.
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They were advanced in every way except for in their relationship with God.
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In that, they were divided.
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And we see this most in what I call the depraved descendant, and that's Lamech himself.
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Lamech, the bigamist, sings a song.
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In fact, it is the first bit of human poetry that we find in Scripture.
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And wouldn't you know it, it's an ode to self.
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Aren't we really good at singing songs about ourself and praising ourself and exalting ourself? And that's what Lamech does here.
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You can almost hear him beating his chest as he walks out and says, Adah and Zillah, hear my voice.
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Ah.
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Listen to what I have to say.
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I have killed a man for wounding me.
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A young man for striking me.
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And if Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's revenge is seventy-sevenfold.
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This is sometimes referred to by commentators as the song of the sword.
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Or Lamech's sword song.
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Because it's a glorification of violence.
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If you spend some time really looking at it, basically what it says is that he was harmed and he returned that harm for greater harm.
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There's no grace in the heart of Lamech.
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There's no forgiveness in the heart of Lamech.
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But instead, I was wounded and so I killed.
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And notice he references that it was a young man who did the wounding.
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And by the way, who would this young man have been? It had to have been either another brother, a nephew, or a cousin.
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At this time there would have been cousins because it's several generations down, right? So it would have been.
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So we have Cain who killed Abel, the first murder in history.
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Lamech comes along and he says, I am the same if not better than my great-grandfather.
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I was hurt and I gave no grace.
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I was attacked and I gave no mercy.
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And know this, if Cain is going to be protected, I'm going to protect myself even more.
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See, God protected Cain.
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He says if anybody hurts Cain, seven times will he be retributed.
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But now he says no, if Cain gets seven times, I, I, seventy-seven times.
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When else do we hear that? When else do we hear that language? Jesus, right? Jesus was asked, how often should I forgive? Seven times? And Jesus said, no, I tell you seventy times seven.
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Could it be that Jesus is referencing the merciless heart of Lamech who said, if I am hurt, I will avenge myself not seven times, but seventy times seven times.
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You see, the heart of Lamech is the heart of hatred.
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It's the heart that lacks grace.
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It's the heart that lacks mercy.
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It's the heart of the vicious.
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The man who is advanced, but apart.
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So what we see is we see a line from Cain which is advanced, but in rebellion.
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It was advanced not only in craft, but it was advanced in craftiness.
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It was advanced not only in culture, but in cunning.
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It was advanced not only in creativity, but also in depravity.
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As the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter one, they were inventors of evil.
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The sons of Cain, the descendants of Cain, were inventors of evil.
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Look around the world today.
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Do we still see the sons of Cain? Do we see people who do stuff that you say, wow, I can't even imagine somebody came up with that.
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That was so crazy and so awful.
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I can't even imagine that someone could have come up with that.
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Think about the story I told you at the beginning.
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The lady who wanted to kill her daughter's opponent's mother just so she could have a spot on the cheerleading squad.
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And that's not even the tip of the iceberg.
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The past fifty years, we have murdered sixty million babies in the womb and we have not batted an eye.
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Oh, we have our rallies and we have our websites, but we still let it continue.
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But it's okay because it happens behind closed doors.
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Nobody has to see it.
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It happens early in the morning.
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I've stood at abortion clinics.
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A lot of people go in right when it opens so nobody sees.
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It's very, very quiet.
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Nobody can see you go in.
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Nobody can see you destroy the child.
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Nobody can see you leave and you go home.
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It's in the midst of darkness.
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See, we're advanced but apart.
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We live in the land of Cain.
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Never in the world has there been a civilization as advanced as ours, but never in the world has there been so many people so willing to live apart from God and think they're happy and think they're satisfied and think they're living their best life now.
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But by God's grace, there was a different line that also emerged and that's what we're going to spend the rest of our time looking at, beginning at verse 25.
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Another line emerges.
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The line of Seth.
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It says, Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called his name Seth.
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For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.
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Now, in your mind, I need you to do something for me.
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I need you to think sort of fourth dimensionally for a moment.
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Think in the dimension of time because most of us think of, you know, space, but we don't think in time.
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We are actually going back in time in the narrative because if you follow verses 17 to 24, you followed several generations of Cain's line, right? It's Cain and then his descendants, Irad and Methuselah and Methuselah, all those down to Lamech, which would have been several generations down.
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Now we're going back to when Seth is born and we don't know exactly when Seth is born, if there's other brothers and sisters.
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Seth doesn't have to be the third birth of Eve because others are born.
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Seth is born with a purpose and Eve knows it.
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He is being born to replace Abel.
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So whether he has brothers and sisters who come before him, we don't know, but he is born with a purpose to replace Abel and here we've gone back in time now and that's where we are.
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And so Eve sees Seth as a replacement for Abel, but it's possible, as I said, others have been born and so that answers the question, where did Seth get a wife? Because Seth has a son, right? Seth has a son and he calls him Enosh, right? Who came first, Enoch or Enosh? Doesn't actually say because we go back in time, we don't know.
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You say, why does this matter? Well, I just don't want you to think that we're still in the time of Lamech.
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We're not.
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We've gone back to the time of Cain.
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And the next week when we go through chapter 5, that's actually going to follow in more explicit detail all of those lines going down.
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But one of the things and the most important statement about the descendants of Seth is found in verse 26.
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It says, to Seth also was born a son and he called his name Enosh or Enosh and at that time, at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.
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What does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord? I didn't hear you brother, I knew you said something.
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It does mean to believe, but we go throughout the Bible, the Old Testament to call upon the name of the Lord was an act of worship, right? In fact, isn't that how salvation begins? The Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
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And so, it is faith, but it's faith expressing itself.
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It's faith expressed in a life that's been changed.
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And so, in the line of Cain, what we see, rather in the line of Seth, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.
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In the line of Seth, what we see is we see worshippers.
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In fact, I want to read from Kenneth Matthews because he beautifully captures the significance of this.
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He says, to call upon the name of the Lord, saying Cain's firstborn and successors pioneered cities and civilized art, but Seth's firstborn and successors pioneered worship.
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Cain's people pioneered art and technology and math, but Seth's descendants pioneered following God.
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And to call upon the Lord is no small thing.
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And think about this, the descendants of Cain sang songs about themselves.
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Lamech, the vicious, but who did Seth's descendants sing about God? They called on the name of the Lord.
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Pastor Alan Carn said this, he said, Cain built a city, but Seth built a church.
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Cain built a city, but Seth built a church.
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You know, in our world, we are surrounded by culture.
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But in most cases, that culture is devoid of Christ.
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Through advancements, the descendants of Cain tried to make this cursed world more tolerable.
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That's really all advancements do, you realize that? All advances in science and technology and engineering and arts and math, all it really does is take a cursed world and make it just a little bit better.
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As I said earlier, we have conditioned air, we have cars, and we have seedless watermelons.
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Makes the world a little bit better.
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But at the end of the day, while we are thankful for those advancements, we must consider that an advanced civilization apart from God is doing nothing but making us comfortable on the ride to hell.
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Consider what Cain's advancements really brought.
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I want you to think about these three things, and then I want you to think about America.
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Brother Mike prayed about our nation.
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Think about the three things that came about through the line of Cain.
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The debasing of marriage, the devaluation of human life, and the exaltation of human pride.
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The devaluation of marriage, or rather debasing of marriage, the devaluation of human life, and the exaltation of human pride.
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Is there a better description? That could be written on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty.
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Because it used to say, give me your huddled masses yearning to be free.
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Now what does it say? 60 million dead babies.
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Men and women abandoning one another, and lusting after each other, and marrying, and copulating that situation.
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The devaluation of marriage, the devaluation of human life, and the exaltation of pride.
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That is the foundation of the land in which we live.
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We are advanced, but apart.
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And you wonder why we are in the state we're in.
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And you need not wonder.
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And there is no Savior other than Jesus Christ.
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Donald Trump isn't going to save you.
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Mike Pence is not going to save you.
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And Joe Biden ain't going to save you.
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The only real hope we have is Jesus.
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The only hope we have is to call upon the name of the Lord.
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I'm not saying those things don't matter.
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I'm not saying politics don't matter.
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But don't get so invested in those things that you forget what truly matters.
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The people of Seth, I believe this.
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It doesn't say it in the text.
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I'm going to say this.
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I base this on Hebrews 11.10.
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I believe the people of Seth, like Abraham, knew there was more to this world than this world.
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Because by the time we get to Abraham, the Bible says Abraham looked forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
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Abraham knew there was something more than just this world.
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You see, that's why people become so advanced in this world, because they feel like this is all there is.
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So we've got to make it as good as we can.
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But when you understand that this world is not all there is, and that one day every single thing you have, you know that U-Haul that you...
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We just moved recently and we had to pack all our stuff up.
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And we took some stuff out of one storage shed and put it in another storage shed.
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Why? I had to consider why.
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How inane to move things from one shed to another.
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Because none of it's going in the ground when I go.
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There's no U-Haul on the back of hearses.
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This world will end.
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And I've been laboring my time, so let me finish with this.
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I'll quote Kent Hughes once again as I draw to a close.
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Our text provides us a paradigm, an outline to understand civilization and culture today, and its ostensible rise with the increase in abundance, music, arts, and technology.
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It rises impressively, but in its rise there is a demise because of sin.
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The only hope is to call upon the name of the Lord.
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This is the only hope for culture.
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This is the only hope for the soul.
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This is the only hope for the church.
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To call upon the name of the Lord, who is Jesus Christ.
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Beloved, do you call upon the name of the Lord today? Is that your hope? Are you finding your hope in advancement? Are you finding your hope in technology? Are you finding your hope in politics? Because I'm going to tell you, your hopes will be dashed.
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But if you find your hope in the Lord, you will never be put to shame.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word, for your truth, and for this opportunity to preach it today.
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I pray, Lord, that we would understand that no matter how advanced we get, if we are apart from you, it is worth nothing.
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So, Lord, I pray for our nation, that there would be repentance in the churches and in the government.
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But, Lord, I pray it would start here.
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Lord, if there are those among us who have not yet repented and trusted in Christ, that today would be the day of salvation, for only you can change a heart.
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And I pray that you would.
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And, Lord, for those who know the Lord, but maybe have gotten themselves sideways with the world, and they have begun to worry so much that they have ceased to have their faith and trust in you, I pray that you would renew them today.
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Reaffirm to them that nothing can touch the saint, save the Lord decrees it.
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So, Lord, let us trust in you today.
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And help us to know that our salvation is not found in this world, but our salvation is found in Him who overcomes the world, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.