Cain and Abel - Genesis 4:1-15

Kootenai Church

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You can tell that our guest speaker speaks with a British accent, but he doesn't sing with one. And I asked him about dubbing the subtitles across the screen up here while he's preaching, and that wouldn't work.

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So as long as he sings his message today, we'll be all right. Paul Taylor comes to us from the

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Mount St. Helens Creation Center in Castle Rock, Washington, where he has been the director there for I think five years or so.

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And he is here with his lovely wife, Jerry Taylor. Paul specializes in creation apologetics and equipping

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Christians to defend the faith. And that is what he's been doing at our spring conference. And today he's preaching to us from Genesis chapter four.

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So you need your Bibles open there, if you will. And with that, I will introduce and welcome

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Paul Taylor. As you say, as Pastor Jim has said, we need

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Genesis chapter four in front of us. There we go.

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Just to start with the word of prayer, shall we? Lord God, we know that all your word is true.

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From beginning to end, and all this word speaks of you, speaks of our sin, speaks of our need for you, and speaks of a wonderful Savior.

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And so Lord God, we pray that so we might learn from your word and submit to your word this morning for the honor and glory of your name.

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Amen. Genesis chapter four, we read, and now the man had relations with his wife

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Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and said, I have gotten a man -child with the help of the

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Lord. I've gotten a man -child with the help of the Lord. Now, I found that the accounts of Cain and Abel is very familiar to many people.

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And sometimes, unfortunately, familiarity breeds contempt. I knew about the accounts of Cain and Abel long before I became a

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Christian, because I was brought up in a church home, and I went to Sunday school, and I remember having

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Bible stories, and there were a lot of Bible stories. So the Bible stories were Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den,

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Jesus, various parables of Jesus, the Good Samaritan, the conversion of Paul. I didn't really understand, though, at that time, what the connection was, because nobody ever made the connection.

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So Cain and Abel seemed like a story from long ago, and there were certain aspects of that story that didn't seem to make great sense to me.

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And as the years have gone by, having been saved and having been talking on the subject of Genesis, it's very important to understand the context of Genesis chapter four, and to find out exactly what was going on, because this is not a story, at least not in the modern use of that word.

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This is not a fairy tale. This is not a myth. This is a historical account.

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And as a historical account from God's history book of the universe, it therefore tells us something very important.

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But of course, we recognize that we're reading it in English. And therefore, there are a couple of things where we're going to need to pick things out and just understand what they're saying, because it was not written in English.

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It was written in Hebrew. Now, I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I can't read the Hebrew here. I just know what

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I've looked up and what makes sense here at this point. But this first verse will help you understand the context of everything that's going on.

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So the man had relations with his wife Eve. She conceived and gave birth to Cain. But in the

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Old Testament, all names meant something. These days, we look through books with lists of names and we pick a name that sort of sounds nice for our children.

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Maybe you did a little bit more work on the meanings of names than I did. I remember somebody questioning my oldest son,

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Adam, on this after I'd given a talk. He said, your father's just said that there was a first Adam and a last Adam, so which are you?

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Cain means something. It actually means gotten. Literally, a better English word might be the word acquired.

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But it actually means gotten, okay? I don't know whether any of you thought, any of the young couples here have thought of calling your children gotten.

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It never occurred to me. Gotten Taylor. I don't know how that sounds. But Adam and Eve thought this was a perfectly sensible name to give.

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And there is a reason why they gave him this name, which we will come to. The man had relations with his wife

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Eve. She conceived, gave birth to gotten, and said,

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I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord. I will come back to that point in a minute, but I'm just gonna go on to the meaning of the word able before I come back to this.

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Second verse says, again she gave birth to his brother Abel. I don't believe in the gap theory when it comes to Genesis chapter one, but I think it's pretty obvious that there are some historical gaps here.

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For a start, there must be a gap of probably nearly a year between the first verse and the second verse here in chapter four.

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And I don't know how ever long Elsa there is, but she's given birth to his brother

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Abel. And immediately after that, it says Abel was a keeper of flocks. Well, I very much doubt, even in those days, when people perhaps had a few more abilities than today, that he was keeping flocks the moment he came out of his mother's womb.

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So there's another gap. And these things are important. You need to understand this because so many people actually do deliberately misunderstand this.

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They say, well, Adam and Eve only had two children at this time, Cain and Abel. You will need to remember to sort of glance forward to chapter five, verse one, where it's telling us that Adam and Eve had a son called

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Seth, and it's telling us that they had other sons and daughters to their name. So before Abel and Cain were adults, keeping flocks, growing crops, it is very likely that there were plenty of other sons and daughters to Adam and Eve as well.

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So by the time we get to the second half of verse two, it is very likely that there were a number of people on earth, not just Adam and Eve.

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Does that make sense to you? It's quite important that we understand that, that we get that context. So what does the word

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Abel mean? Well, actually, the word Abel means a vapor, and that's a very strange thing to call him.

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What do you call, why are you calling him vapor? That's an even odder name, Vapor Taylor. No, that doesn't work.

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Well, in actual fact, the word can also be translated meaningless because you will get the word frequently in other parts of scripture.

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One of the main places where you get this word a lot is in the book of Ecclesiastes, where it frequently says,

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Abel, Abel, all is Abel. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Or meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless.

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Everything is just a chasing after the wind. That's not to say that Abel's life had no meaning.

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What it is saying is Abel's life was going to be short. He was going to be here like a vapor on the earth, and a vapor will quickly go, and therefore his name was prophetically given.

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I think Adam and Eve may have thought that they were prophetically giving Cain his name too, and that context is gonna be important to us.

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Why are they here? The story so far before we get to this point is that Adam and Eve have been expelled from the

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Garden of Eden. In the previous chapter, Genesis chapter three, they've been expelled from Eden.

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Why have they been expelled from Eden? Well, they've been expelled from Eden because they have sinned.

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And what does it mean to have sinned? Well, it means that they have broken the one commandment.

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The one commandment? God expects us to be obedient. And today,

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God has given us 10 commandments. He gave

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Adam and Eve just one commandment. How easy is that? It was so easy to obey

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God's commandment. All they had to do was basically do nothing, and instead they did something.

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They tried to work it out for themselves. The one commandment they had been given was that they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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And they were told that the day that they ate that fruit, they would surely die.

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And again, as a child learning this in Sunday school, I thought, well, that's odd because they didn't die, did they?

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They ate the fruits and they didn't die. God seemed to change his mind. No, God didn't seem to change his mind.

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English translations usually use the phrase surely die. In Hebrew, it doesn't actually say that they will surely die.

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What it actually says is they would die, die. It actually repeats the word. They will die, die.

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And the reason for that is because when you repeat a word, it actually refers to a process beginning.

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So as soon as they ate the fruit, in contradiction to God's law, the process of death started.

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They didn't drop dead then, but they were gonna die. 930 years later, and you might say that's a long time, but Adam and Eve were created to live forever.

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They were meant to be eternal. So 930 years is a short time compared to eternity.

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The process of death began immediately because they broke the commandment.

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And for us, if we have broken the 10 commandments, then the process of death begins.

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But God hadn't left them in their sin in that way. Immediately after that first sin, he promised a savior.

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Speaking to the serpent, and in the hearing of Adam and Eve, he said that one day there would be the seed of the woman, and the seed of the woman would come to crush the serpent's head while the serpent bruised his heel.

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Who would be the seed of the woman? Biologically, the seed comes from the man, but also in the

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Hebrew language, the seed is the descendant of a man. And we talk about Abraham's seed.

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So if you have the seed of a woman, that is immediately implying that there is no man involved.

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In other words, this was the prophecy that one day there would be a virgin birth, a man born of a woman with no earthly father.

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Who could that possibly be? It is the first prophecy of the coming of the

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Lord Jesus. And what's especially even more significant is that when God was telling them that, which person of the

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Trinity was it? You see, I believe that if God's walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, it's the second person of the

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Trinity that's doing that. And it's Jesus himself that prophesies to Adam and Eve that he will one day come in human form, born of a virgin.

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And somebody asked me yesterday, do I believe Adam and Eve were saved? I think it is possible they were, particularly

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Eve, because I honestly think they believed that. Why? Because of Genesis chapter four, verse one.

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Look at it again. Eve said, I have gotten a man -child.

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She's called Cain, Cain, because she said she's gotten a man -child. And what's more, it's very helpful in the

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New American Standard Bible that the words the help of are in italics. Can you see that?

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In most of your paper versions, it should have the words the help of in italics. That's because that's helping us to understand it, but it's not there in the

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New American Standard Bible. In the Hebrew, it is possible, therefore, and only possible that she actually said,

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I've gotten a man -child, the Lord. I've gotten a man -child, the Lord.

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Cain was not the Messiah. I'm not saying he was, and nor was he meant to be as far as God's concerned, but maybe

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Eve believed that there was going to be the seed of the woman, and she thought maybe

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Cain was him. Maybe Cain was him. I think that's possible.

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Obviously, she was wrong. If I'm right about that, then obviously she was wrong, but at least it shows us that she believed that there was a

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Savior coming. Does that make sense? She got it wrong. We have too many ambitions for our children.

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Eve's ambition for her child was a bit too big, a long way too big, but at least it showed that she believed

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Messiah was coming. I think by verse two, by the birth of her next child, she'd realized that she was wrong, and therefore,

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Abel wasn't going to be on the world long, and therefore, Adam and Eve call him Vapor.

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So what happens then? Abel is a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

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Now, Cain's task was tilling the ground. He's set to planting things and growing them, presumably for food.

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It doesn't say they were for food, but I think we could guess that they were probably for food. What's wrong with that?

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Cain, we know, is the villain of the story. We know because we've read this before.

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So what's wrong with tilling crops? The answer is absolutely nothing at all.

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Cain's task was a completely honorable task. He's there to till the ground.

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It's not the fact that he grew crops that was ever going to be the problem. It's what he did with those crops because of his heart that was the problem, as we are going to see.

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Are you okay with that? Because sometimes we misunderstand this. Abel was a keeper of flocks, Cain, a tiller of the ground.

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It sounds like being a shepherd is better than planting potatoes. And that's not a very good theological point to make in Idaho, is it?

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So the significant point here is the very next verse. 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 the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.

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The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.

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Well, that sounds very mean. And this is the bit that I didn't understand when

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I was in Sunday school. God shows favoritism. God accepted what

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Cain did. I need, sorry, God accepted what Abel did and God rejected what

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Cain did. Abel was his favorite. Abel was his favorite.

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That's not good, is it? Those of you who are parents know you're not supposed to tell one of your children that they're the favorite, are you?

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It's usually the quietest one. You're not supposed to say that, though.

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God just shows favoritism. Why would he do that? Surely Cain's right then to feel aggrieved.

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Surely if I was looked over like that, I'd be angry. Well, there's a bit more to it than that.

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Perhaps we'd better ask why was Abel keeping flocks? And it's so important you get this.

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Believe me, I very much doubt, well, I know for a fact that Abel was not keeping flocks so that he could do business selling lamb chops.

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Why not? The answer is this. Because in Genesis chapter one,

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God had instructed Adam and Eve that they were to eat only plants, only vegetables, only plants.

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They were not given permission to eat meat. Of course, sin has come into the world, but we know from the context that Abel is a man who was following God.

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So Abel was not going to be the man who was breaking that law. I think it's unlikely that he would do so.

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So Abel's flocks were not for the sake of eating meat. Just as an aside,

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I had some thin strips of salted pig this morning. And do you know what?

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I was not sinning. After the flood, because of the genetic deterioration of people,

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God gave permission to eat meat. So if you want to be a vegetarian, God bless you, but God has given me permission to eat meat, and I'm going to do so, okay?

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But at this point in Genesis four, they did not have permission to eat meat.

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So to eat meat at this point was a sin. Eating meat today is not a sin. And I need to emphasize that because I do get

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Christian vegetarians who tell me that it's a sin because they didn't do it in the first place. I'm sorry, the world's moved on.

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There is a reason why God has changed those things. Eating meat today is not a sin, but eating meat then was a sin.

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Abel was not keeping flocks for the purpose of eating meat. What was he keeping flocks for then?

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Because back in Genesis three, Adam and Eve, having been told about the

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Messiah, were then given skins to wear, clothes of skin.

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They tried, remember, to wear fig leaves, and fig leaves was not satisfactory clothing because that was their attempt to get themselves right with God by their own efforts.

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Do you remember that? I mentioned this to those of you who were here yesterday. It was their effort to try and make themselves right with God by their own efforts because they were covering their own guilt and their own shame.

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And we do that all the time, but it doesn't work. We have to come to God, and without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

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So God kills an animal and gives clothes of skin to Adam and Eve because the covering there did give remission of sin.

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Not perfectly, but it was a type of what was to come. Adam and Eve lived 930 years, or at least

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Adam lived 930 years. If he would change his clothes just once a year, he still would not, that would still not stop him from dying.

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So this was only pointing to the blood of the Messiah, the seed of the woman who was to come later.

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But Abel was therefore in a sense a priest because it was his job to keep flocks so that there could be clothes of skin to cover the guilt of the people who are born in sin.

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They're born in sin from Adam and Eve. They have that imputed sin from Adam and Eve.

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Abel is keeping flocks for that purpose. And Abel's gift, his offering to God was the first fruits of his flock.

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He brought to God the blood sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God on sin.

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Do you see now the point of Abel's gift? And that brings us to why it is that Cain's offering was rejected.

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And your children's Bible storybooks will not usually tell you this, though actually

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Jerry and myself did write a children's book that does tell you this, but your children's

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Bible books will not normally tell you this. Cain brought to God his crops.

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I would suspect he probably brought the best crops he had. I remember teaching when

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I was a school teacher, a public school teacher, the second school I taught in when it came to the

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Harvest Festival. Harvest Festival is something that many churches and also schools do in England where they have a service, a religious service, because of course there isn't a separation of church and state there in this sense.

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You'll have a service of worship in the public school and the children brought in gifts and they were collected up and they were usually then distributed, tins of food and so on, distributed to all people in the area.

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And I remember the head teacher saying in that school, maybe we could get them to offer some of the best work that they have done, because surely the best that they ever do brings them to God.

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And I wasn't in a position to say anything against him at that point, but that is theologically wrong.

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You see, the best that we can ever do for God is still not good enough. What do we read in scripture?

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Our righteousness is as filthy rags when nothing we do is ever good enough for God.

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We can't make our own way to God. That's what Adam and Eve did when they made clothes of fig leaves.

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That's what Cain did when he brought his crops to God. Reading between the lines, you can see what

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Cain should have done. He should have taken his crops to his brother Abel and swapped them for another lamb that he could sacrifice to God.

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Because if there's no shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Cain's offering could never please

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God. Doesn't matter if he brought the choicest vegetables, the most wonderful Idaho potatoes possible.

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They would never get him to God. There has to be sacrifice.

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There has to be blood. But Cain didn't get that. And therefore he was angry.

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God speaks to Cain. Verse six, why are you angry?

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Why does God ask people questions anyway? Why does he do that? God knows the answer.

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God knows the answer. He knew why Cain was angry. He even told him in a moment why he was angry.

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And this is a very important point. God does ask questions and he asks questions of you.

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But it's not to give him information because he's got the information, he knows. So if it's not for the benefits of God, then who's the question for the benefits of?

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It's for Cain's benefit. And when he asks you a question, it's for your benefit, not for his, he knows the answer.

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This is for Cain's benefit. Why are you angry, Cain? Why are you angry? Can't you see that your goodness is never good enough?

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Even the best you do is like sin in my sight. But the shedding of blood will turn away sin.

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Can't you see that, Cain? Why are you angry? You've got to do what's right. What's right, of course, would have been to swap some crops for the lamb and be able to do that.

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You've got to do what's right. You've got to master the sin that's in you. Cain is given the opportunity to repent and to trust in God and to trust in the

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Savior to come. Instead of that, we know what he does.

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He takes his brother and they walk out into the field and Cain kills

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Abel out of jealousy because God hasn't looked at his offering, he's accepted

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Abel's offering, and out of jealousy because Cain has not repented, he's not turned from his sin, he's killed his brother, he's multiplied his sins.

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And this is the first ever death of a human being. And this point

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I will have to emphasize fully and you need to get this point. If you believe in the theory of evolution, that there were millions of years of ape men gradually evolving to become human, there's already been death.

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But if you believe what God says in his word, that he made the world in six literal 24 hour days, then

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Adam and Eve of sin, and then you've got Cain and Abel and Abel has just been killed, that means that Abel's blood is the first ever human blood shed.

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Can you remember that point? Abel is the first human to die and his blood has been shed.

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You need to remember that point. We will come back to that in another 90 minutes.

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Don't worry, it won't really be 90 minutes, okay? It'll just seem like it. So what does

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God do? He asks Cain another question. Cain is a murderer and he asks

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Cain another question. Where is Abel your brother? We've already said why

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God asks questions because God knows where Abel is, God knows what

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Cain has done. So again, the question must be for Cain's benefit. And I tell you that brings us to an important hypothetical point.

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And I'm not gonna disagree in any way with the doctrine of God's sovereignty because I know this is all part of God's sovereign plan.

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But it's also a theological point that it is possible for murderers to repent and be saved.

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Can you accept that? It is possible for murderers to repent and be saved.

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And that does not mean I'm making any points about what human justice should be. My personal view is that the correct human temporal punishment for murder is a capital punishment.

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That's my personal view. But that doesn't alter the fact that there will be some murderers in heaven. You know that, don't you?

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And there's some quite nice, pleasant people who will not be in heaven. Do you believe that? It's a tough thing to believe, but it's what the

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Bible says. It's what the Bible says. Please understand me respectfully saying this.

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There is a sort of human sense in which you could say it could have been possible for Cain to have repented and gone to heaven.

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Or there may be other people in a similar circumstance who could repent and go to heaven. That does not mean that I'm not saying this is not

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God's plan. Of course it is. I'm not leaving things to chance here. This is what God had planned. But you know that there are murderers who can repent and go to heaven.

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That's the point that I'm making. And that's why God asks questions. And he will ask questions of people all the time.

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For some murderers, the answer will be, Lord God, forgive me because I've sinned.

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Please help me. I want salvation. I need salvation because I have sinned.

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That will be the answer that some murderers give and they will be saved. It's important to remember the principles of the gospel when we're going through passages like this, even at the early chapters of Genesis.

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So, then God says this. He says, what have you done?

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The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground.

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Wow. Having given that there are murderers in heaven, we need to be aware that there are other places in the

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Bible where characters like Cain and Abel are referred to. If you keep your finger in Genesis four, because we need to be there, but turn quickly to Luke chapter 11, verses 49 to 51.

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It tells us there about Abel. Jesus actually mentioned

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Abel. Jesus mentioned

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Abel. Please forgive me because I don't wanna lose

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Genesis four. So I'm gonna read this in the version I've got in front of me. It's very similar to what you've got. Please just bear with me.

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I'm sorry, I apologize. This is English standard version. Therefore also the wisdom of God said,

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I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.

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Yes, I tell you it will be required of this generation. Jesus said that Abel was a prophet, a prophet.

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What's a prophet? A prophet is someone who brings forth the word of God.

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Is that right? That's what a prophet is. Jesus says Abel's a prophet. So where is the prophecy of Abel?

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Where are Abel's words? In the whole of Genesis four, you can't find anything that Abel actually says.

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Now I'm not telling you that he was a mute. I'm just telling you that there's nothing reported. I'm sure that he and Cain had conversations and I'm sure that other brothers and sisters were around.

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I'm sure there's plenty of conversations, but there is nothing reported in the Bible of what

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Abel said. No record of his prophecy. Nowhere else in the Bible do you find that.

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So how could Jesus say that Abel was a prophet? What is the prophecy of Abel?

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Back to Genesis four. The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

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The voice of your brother's blood. Whose blood? Abel's blood.

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There is the prophecy of Abel. His blood shed on the ground is the prophecy.

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It's prophetic that one day that seed of the woman who is to come would shed his blood on the ground to turn away sins.

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Abel, the type of Christ who keeps flocks so that they can be sacrificed to produce clothes to cover the unrighteousness of the people.

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He, his blood is shed on the ground and it's the voice of his blood that cries out to God and tells us that there is a

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Messiah to come. Now, do you see why you've got to believe that there was no theory of evolution?

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There was no millions of years. This has to be the truth. Because if it wasn't the truth, there is nothing significant about the blood of Abel.

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He's just one more semi -evolved ape man, Simeon, who has died in battle of some sort.

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But if we believe that those first three chapters were true, then Abel's is the first blood, the first blood.

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And the first blood is significant because the first blood was a prophecy.

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And hence, Abel is a prophet. And Jesus himself commends Abel as the prophet whose blood points to him.

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Isn't it exciting being a Christian and understanding these words of scripture? You see, you can't get this.

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All these Christians who claim to believe God's word and yet want to add the theory of evolution, it doesn't matter what you believe about Genesis, just preach

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Jesus. They miss this. I feel sorry for them because they don't get it. They don't know what the prophecy of Abel was, whose blood points to blood to come.

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Hebrews chapter 11, verse four. Look at that. Hebrews chapter 11, verse four.

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By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous.

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God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

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The writers of the Hebrews understood this. Abel was a prophet and he still speaks today.

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Even after the death of Jesus, the blood of Abel still speaks that it is pointing towards Jesus Christ.

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The first blood, the first human blood ever shed on the ground was shed so that there may be a prophecy, that we may understand that one day there is the second

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Adam, the last Adam to come. Whose blood would be shed on the ground for our sins, to turn away the wrath of God.

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Not just once, like the death of any of the animals whose clothing, whose skins were gonna be used for clothing, but to turn away

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God's wrath, the Father's wrath forever. Once for all.

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And it's because of that that Abel was commended as righteous. Because of his faith, his works didn't make him right.

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It was his faith in the shed blood that points to Jesus Christ. It was through Abel's faith that he still speaks, even though he died, because his blood points to Jesus Christ.

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This is just so exciting, to know that this is what the scripture says. The prophecy of Abel is in his blood.

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Now you go back to Genesis four, please. We'll look at verses 11 and 12.

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You're cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you.

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You'll be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. Then Cain said, my punishment is too great to bear.

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At last, Cain was struck by lightning. Sorry, Cain was sorry for what he's done.

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My punishment is too great to bear. But does that read like a repentance?

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No, Cain was sorry. He was sorry for the effect that was coming upon him. He believed that God was gonna do what he said, but this is not repentance.

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He's sorry for the punishment he's getting. My pain's too great to bear.

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My punishment is too great to bear. This is sorrow, but it is not repentance.

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And it's so important that we understand this. Repentance is required. If there is going to be salvation, then there has to be repentance.

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Cain did not repent. The Bible is replete with examples of people who did repent. There are many occasions, there are many other people we can go to.

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You know that there are plenty of passages we can go to where you will see repentance, but not here.

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Cain does not repent. And it's important that we have that contrast. We have a man whose faith was in that Messiah to come even before he died, and whose blood becomes the prophecy that's pointing to the

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Messiah. He's a man of faith. Abel will be in heaven when we get there. Cain will not, because he refused to repent.

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And therefore, what we have here is both the good news, which is the gospel, and the bad news.

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And the bad news has to be part of the gospel as well. This account in Genesis 4, a true historical account, contains the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And that's why it's so important that we understand it. The Bible contains a history of death.

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There is a history of death. Death was never part of God's creation in the beginning.

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God created a world that was to be perfect, where there was to be no death. We start with a world where there's no death.

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But now we have a world where there is death. But one day, we look forward to a world, because of the work of Jesus Christ, where there will be no more death and no more curse.

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If you look in the last two chapters of Revelation, you will find those two phrases. There will be no more death.

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There will be no more curse. The curse was put on Adam. And we've got more curse here put on Cain.

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The curse is there for sin. The ground became tough for Adam to work because of his sin.

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Everything about Adam's life, and more so now in Cain's life, was difficult because of sin.

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So that sin leads to death, that they were going to die one day.

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Cain may have killed Abel, but Cain is not gonna be immortal. God will shield him for the time being, but there comes a day when he will die.

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But one day, there will be a world in which there is no more curse. That curse is undone. There'll be no more curse, no more death.

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And our exception into that kingdom is based purely on the fact of Jesus Christ's death on the cross, and our repentance and faith.

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Because without that, there is no future life. But you see, the world has a different history of death.

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And they have a history of death in which there was millions of years of death and disease and bloodshed that led eventually to man.

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I read one commentary where someone said that the death of the eight men beforehand was the dust out of which

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Adam was made. And that the word dust implies death. That's a lie. And yet that man's commentary is the one that's used in most

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Bible seminaries today, which turn out most of the men who go on to pastor most of the

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Bible -believing, so -called Bible -believing churches of this nation and others who are being taught that the dust out of which

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Adam was made was the death of eight men for millions of years beforehand. That's a lie.

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There was no death before Adam. But if you'd believe that, that there was millions of years of death, then what hope have you got for future?

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Because if there wasn't a world in which there was no death, but death came into the world because of sin and the curse came because of sin, then what hope have you got that in the future there will be an undoing of that curse and an undoing of death?

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You have no hope. And those of you who can't get this, who think that there's something wrong with these early chapters of the

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Bible, you don't have a hope. You may think you do, but you don't.

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Your hope is based on sand. Believe it. God made a world that was perfect and it's our sin who destroyed it.

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But there is a Savior and it's the blood of Abel that prophesies that bringing of the

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Savior. Romans 6 .23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Wages are things that we earn, aren't they?

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When you work, you earn wages. Wages are what you earn. And the thing is that what you earn for your sin is death.

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Because you have sinned, you die and everyone here has sinned. We've got those 10 commandments.

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We know that if you look at even just one commandment, how many lies have you told, for example?

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How many lies have you told in the last week? We've broken, even if that's the only commandment you've broken,

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James tells us that if you've broken the law in one point, you've broken it in all points. You're a lawbreaker, which means you're a sinner, which means you deserve death and you deserve eternal hell.

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But the good news is that there is a Savior who has shed his blood and the blood of Abel is the one that points to it.

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Because remember the second half of that verse, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. It's a free gift. It's a gift. You can't earn a gift. You don't deserve a gift.

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You just get given it. It's eternal life in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. Eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That's why the history matters because you're not gonna be saved apart from the history.

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You need to know that these characters at the beginning of Genesis were real. They were real.

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That's why in Hebrews 9 .22, it says, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood.

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Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And it's that, remember, that Abel's sacrifice points to.

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Abel's sacrifice points to the coming of the Messiah and the giving of his blood in order to provide that complete and total remission of sins.

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Turn to Hebrews 10 .16, please. Hebrews 10 .16.

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This is where a paper Bible would be so much better. I just, it doesn't seem, I'm having trouble with electronics this morning. It's not selecting it for me here.

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So again, I'm afraid, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to read it out of the ESV. I can't get it to in the NASB. Hebrews 10 .16.

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This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds.

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And then he adds, I will remember their sins no more and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

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Where there's forgiveness of these, there's no longer any offering for sin. There is no longer a need for an able to kill one of his flock in order to provide you with clothes of skin to shield you from the wrath of God, no longer.

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Pastor Jim did not begin this meeting by sacrificing a goat for you, did he? Because it's been done.

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The perfect Lamb of God, his blood has taken away sin completely.

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And if you've repented and put your trust in him, there is no longer an offering for sin. You've done it.

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Or rather, no, you haven't done it. Jesus has done it completely and perfectly.

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And there are no longer any need for repeated sacrifices. And again, it's what the blood of Abel points us to.

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And that's why it's important to understand these early chapters of Genesis, because it's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Hebrews chapter 12, please have a look at that. Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12, this is the summary of everything that we have just been saying.

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In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22, we read, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living

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God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

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In Genesis chapter four, the blood of Abel was the most significant word we could have.

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In that moment in society, when society was just a few people, Abel's blood was the first blood ever shed on the ground.

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And God says, that's the voice of your brother's blood crying out to me. It's the prophecy of Abel that his blood points to a better blood to come.

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And that's what this verse in Hebrews tells us. Yes, Abel's blood spoke a good word because it reminded us that there is a way to God.

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There is a way to be acceptable in God's sight. And it's not Cain's method.

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Cain's method was to work hard. Yes, that's good. There's nothing wrong with working hard.

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There's nothing wrong with digging the ground. There's nothing wrong with doing the very best that you can.

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And what's more, out of gratitude to God, you should do the best you can. There's not even anything wrong with trying to bring a proportion of your gifts to the

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Lord. But Cain did it thinking that's what would make him right with God, and that doesn't work.

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You cannot make yourself right with God by bringing the sweat of your brow, your work, your effort.

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It's not because of your effort. And the prophecy of Abel tells us that. Abel brought the blood sacrifice, and he also shed his own blood.

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His own blood was not a sacrifice, but it was a prophecy that one day better blood would be shed.

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And the writer to the Hebrews says that the sprinkled blood of Jesus tells a better word than the blood of Abel.

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We talked about Adam and Eve breaking the one commandment. We know that we have 10 commandments. I've already explained that you've sinned by breaking the ninth commandment.

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You shall not lie. You've lied. I'm sure that there's no one here who will say that they've never lied.

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So that makes us liars. Eighth commandment says that you mustn't steal anything, and maybe you've taken something at one point that doesn't belong to you.

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And before you say, no, I haven't, don't forget we've already established that you're a liar. So maybe you're a liar and a thief.

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And the seventh commandment says you don't commit adultery. And you say, phew, I've never done that. But Jesus said, whoever looks at someone with lust has committed adultery in their heart.

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So maybe then you're gonna say I'm an adulterer at heart. Maybe you've taken the name of the Lord in vain, broken the third commandment.

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So you're a lying, blaspheming, adulterer at heart who's a thief.

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And that's just four commandments. And so am I. And therefore we deserve hell.

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But you know what? I'm not going to hell, praise God. If it were down to my abilities,

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I would be, because that's what I deserve. But you know what? I'm not treated as I deserve, because the blood of Abel points to a better thing.

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The sprinkled blood of Jesus, which is a better thing, a better word, because it's a word that says this blood takes away the sins of the world.

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Not once to be repeated, but forever. And if you've never understood that before, and you've never understood how this gospel of Jesus Christ is in the context of the whole panoply of scripture, then don't leave this place without speaking to me or without speaking to Pastor Jim or one of the elders or some friend that you trust.

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And make sure that before you leave here, you repent so that the blood of Jesus speaks a better word over your soul.

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And you will spend eternity with God, not because you deserve it, but because he does.

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Let's pray. Father God, I pray that every single person here will hear this in their hearts and will echo it in their souls.

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Lord, I pray that every single person here will bow their knee if they have not yet done so and repent of their sins and put their trust in you.

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Oh God, how we thank you for the prophecy of Abel, how we thank you for the shed blood and how it points to the proper shed blood, the shed blood that provides us, gives us the remission of sins.

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When we bow the knee and we repent. We love you, Lord God. Be in this place, we pray.