Let's open our Bibles together
to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. Beginning at verse 1, Paul, an
apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God and Timotheus, our
brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ. When God gives the miracle of
faith, we just believe God. That's what faith does, believes
God. Every word. When the Philippian jailer asked
the apostle Paul, what must I do to be saved? Paul didn't say,
well, pray real hard and try to figure out what God's will
is for your life. He did not give him a work to perform. He did not give him a doctrine
to believe. He did not say to him, beg for
mercy. He didn't say that. You know
what he said. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Believe on Christ. Rest all the
hope of your immortal soul on the glorious person and the finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is salvation. believing
God, trusting Christ, relying upon him for all of my righteousness,
all of my justification. If I'm going to be found, and
notice in our text that the believers are identified as being in Christ. I hope I can bring a message
maybe next Sunday on that. We've been in this second verse
now for about three weeks. We looked at what it means to
be sanctified, set apart, and made holy in Christ. We looked last Sunday on what
it means to be faithful in Christ. And this morning, I want us to
consider this word brethren. Brethren. What does it mean to
be a believer in Christ? If we believe God, or to be brethren
in Christ. The word brethren means to be
birthed from the same womb Jude refers to our hope as a common
salvation. We have the same hope as brothers
and sisters in Christ. Titus calls it a common faith. We believe the same thing. We have the same word from God. We have the same spirit to teach
us what that word means. Paul asked that rhetorical question
to the church at Corinth when he said, is Christ divided? No, Christ is not divided. These
are brethren. They are birthed into the family
of God through the womb of the church, the bride of Christ. as Mary conceived the Lord by
the Holy Ghost. So Christ is formed in us, miraculously,
in the womb of the gospel, in the womb of the church, by the
power of the Holy Spirit. This is what it means to be brethren. cast out the bondwoman and her
child. This is for the child of the
promise. This is for the miraculously
born brethren in Christ. That's who the message is for. If the Lord gives us faith to
believe, we will not only believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but
we will see what he has done in making us saints and faithful
and brethren, brethren in Christ. I'm sure that you have religious
friends like I do, who desperately want you to call them brother,
and they will call you brother all the time. or sister, and
what they're looking for is some affirmation of their religion. If they desperately need our
approval, and we're very careful, we're very careful about who
we call a brother and who we call a sister. That term is reserved
for those who are in Christ, those who believe the gospel, Turn to me to 1 John chapter
4. 1 John chapter 4. I want us to believe God today.
I want you to believe God. I want to believe God. And who he has revealed Christ
to us as, and how he sees us. Because how he sees us is how
we are. I mentioned this a week or two
ago, each and every one of us are three different people. You
are the person that you see yourself to be, you are the person that
others see yourself to be, and you are the person that God sees
yourself to be. And the last one's the truth of who we are.
And here's what God says, saints, faithful, and brethren. in Christ. Don't forget that
in Christ part. 1 John chapter 4. Look it with me at verse 7. Beloved,
beloved brethren, let us love one another for love is of God
and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that
loveth not knoweth not God for God is love. Now look over in
verse 20 of that same chapter. If any man say I love God and
hateth his brother he is a liar for he that loveth not his brother
whom he has seen how can he love God whom he had not seen this
is the commandment that we have from him that he who loveth God
loveth his brother also now we spend a lot of time trying to make something happen
between men. We try to fix hurt feelings, we
try to patch up misunderstandings, and oftentimes we try to force
unnatural affection. And I don't want to bring a message
this morning that causes us to leave here with a new determination
to those efforts, because this is the commandment. If we love
God, we're going to love one another. And so, you know, rather than
us talking about what we can do to kind of, you know, be more
loving towards one another, Let us consider God's love for us. And I am just certain, I am certain
that two believers who are in Christ, who both love Christ,
are gonna love one another. You know, my right hand loves
my left hand. It just does. And my left hand loves my right
hand. I mean, anything gets stuck in my right hand, my left hand
is right to the, and vice versa. Why? Because both of my hands
are connected to my brain. They're both being operated by
the same source of intelligence. And so it is in the body of Christ.
If we're looking to him and being found in him and having some
understanding of him, then we'll love one another with unfeigned
love. Unfeigned love. We won't have
to force it or pretend it or try to make something happen
that's not really there. It'll be the natural result of
loving him. The Lord often refers to us as
brothers. And as I said, we're careful
about how we use that term. But I, in preparation for this
message, looked up the word brother, and I read a lot of passages
in the Bible where God in his word uses the
word brothers to describe his people. And then I went back
to Genesis chapter four, which is the very first place that
brother is mentioned. And I got stuck there. I got
stuck in Genesis chapter four. I couldn't get away from it.
It was like the more I read it, the more clear it became that
this is really a story of Christ and his church. It's the story
of Cain and Abel. It's the first time that we have
brother used in the Bible. And heretofore, I mean, as long
as I can remember, I've always considered Cain and Abel a picture
of the believer and the unbeliever. And they are, they are. Cain,
a tiller of the ground, brought the labors of his work and God
had no respect for it. A picture of the unbeliever who
tries to earn favor with God and make sacrifice based on his
works. Cain, I said Cain, did I say
Cain? Abel on the other hand, a tender
of sheep. and that word means feeder of
sheep, brought the firstling of his flock a blood sacrifice,
a blood sacrifice. And God had respect for Abel's
sacrifice, accepted Abel's sacrifice because it was a blood sacrifice. And what a clear picture of how
it is that you and I must come before God. not with the fruits
of our labors, but with the blood of the Lamb of God. And that's
the only hope that we have. And the jealousy on the part
of the self-righteous works, free will, religionist over us,
moves them to murder. That's what Cain did to his brother
Abel. They hate. They hate Christ. They hate his church. They hate
the gospel. And all of that, all of that
is true. But I want you to go with me, if you will, now to
Genesis chapter 4. And I want us to consider Cain
and Abel not as picture of the believer and the unbeliever,
but a picture of Christ and his church. And if the Lord reveals to us
through the story of these two brothers the love that our brother,
the Lord Jesus, has for us and what he's done for us, then you
know what? Oh, we'll love him. We will love
him because he first loved us and we will love one another
as a result of his love for us. Verse one, and Adam knew Eve,
his wife, and she conceived and bear Cain and said, I have gotten
a man from the Lord. Turns out he's gonna murder his
own, her next son, her brother, his brother. But her first thought
was that this was the fulfillment of the promise that God had made
to them in the garden. They had been out of the garden
now long enough. to see that the earth was bringing
forth thorns and thistles. They weren't walking with God
in the cool of the day like they did in the garden there. All
the comforts and the joys of the garden were past and they're
only wanting to get back into paradise. And the Lord told them
that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And so as soon as Eve gives birth
to a son, she thinks, this is it. I've got the man. Cain's name means possession.
It means to acquire, and that's what she called him. I've acquired
from God that which I need to get back into paradise. You and I, she had her hopes
misplaced. The seed of a woman would not
come for thousands of years. The seed of the woman was Christ.
In Adam, we all died, but in Christ, we're made alive. He's
that promised seed that would come, but she misplaced her hopes. She thought that this man will
deliver us. This will be our savior. This
will be our Messiah. This will be the one that will
destroy the devil, the one that deceived me and reunite us with
God in paradise. You know, that's how every one
of us come into this world. We come into this world with
a works mentality. We come into this world believing
that there's something that we can do to restore our fellowship
with God. There's something that we can
do to atone for our own sins. If I just work hard enough, if
I just till the ground enough. Notice that, Verse two, and she again bear
his brother Abel and Abel was a keeper of sheep. And that word
actually is the word feeder. That's how we keep sheep. That's
how a shepherd keeps sheep, he feeds them. So Abel was a feeder
of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground. That's how we come into this
world. I don't know if this is a good illustration. I've talked
to Chris about this because he's been a farmer and he knows about
nematodes. I've got a little plot in my
backyard and it has nematodes in it. Root knot nematodes. And I have watched YouTube videos
and I've talked to experts. What can I do to get rid of these
nematodes? They sting the roots of the plants
and the plant cannot bear fruit because it dies from the roots
up. And everything I've read about
it, if somebody knows something that I don't know, please tell
me, but everything I've read about it says you can't get rid
of them. You can't get rid of them. They're just, they're in
the soil. You can, you can toil the soil every couple of days
and bring them to the surface and the light of the sun will
kill the ones on the surface, but the ones underneath are still
going to be there. And these things are microscopic. You can't
see them. And so you just keep tilling
the soil and bringing it to the surface and hoping that they're
going to die. Or you can cover the ground with
plastic and let the heat of the sun bake the soil. Not only will
it kill the nematodes, it'll kill everything else in the soil
and you'll have dead soil and that won't produce anything either.
So I guess I'm just stuck with these nematodes. But I thought
about that with cane, a tiller of the ground. Isn't that what
we do? Sin's like these nematodes. You can't get rid of it. And
we just keep tilling the soil, bringing it to the surface in
hopes that the light will somehow kill the sin, but there's still
sin in the ground, in the roots, stinging the roots of the plants
so that they cannot produce fruit. Oh, that Christ may dwell in
you, Paul said in Ephesians chapter three. in our hearts by faith,
that being rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend
with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the
depth and the height of the love of God. Christ in you, that's
the only destruction of sin. Christ standing in our stead
before God is our righteousness. Jehovah said, can you? But that's
how we come into the world. We come into this world like
Cain, thinking, you know, if I just work a little harder,
I till the ground a little bit more, we'll get those nematodes
to the surface and we'll get rid of them. And the ones underneath
are still, still alive and multiplying. We need Christ. We need the blood of our brother
to cry out from the ground for us. Abel's name translated means
breath. You and I need a brother. There
is a brother. There is a friend, the scripture
says, which sticketh closer than a brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who laid down his
life. He's the feeder of sheep. He's
our breath. Abel's name means breath. You
remember when Ezekiel was preaching to the valley of dry bones and
the Lord says, son of man, can these bones live? Ezekiel's looking
out at these dead, dried bones. The remnants of a battle that
had been fought years before. The birds have pecked away all
the flesh. The marrow of the bones has dried
out. These are sun bleached, dried bones in a valley of a
battle. You and I, in our father Adam,
raised our fist to God, and we ended up like those bones. Couldn't
find enough marrow in those bones to do a DNA test. We are dead,
dead in our trespasses and sins. And we come into this world like
Cain, thinking, well, I can do something. And Ezekiel begins
to preach to these bones. And the Lord says, prophesy to
the bones, preach Christ to them. And as Ezekiel preaches, the
bones come together. They start miraculously linking
themselves bone to bone and sinew and flesh and skin. And they
start taking shape into a body, into men. Yet there was no life
in them. No life. And the Lord said to the prophet,
prophesied to the wind as God had to breathe life into the
nostrils of Adam. I think that's significant. He
breathed it in his nostrils, not in his mouth. You know, we
speak through the mouth. We just breathe through the nostrils,
don't we? We smell the sweet savor of,
you know, a lot of bad stuff comes out of the mouth, but the
nose, that's a different organ, isn't it? It senses smells and
it takes in life-giving oxygen and God breathed life in Adam's
nostrils. And when the Spirit of God came,
which is what that wind was, he was to prophesy to the wind.
He was to pray to the Spirit of God to come and empower the
gospel so that these wouldn't just be a bunch of zombies walking
around looking like men, but that they would actually have
life in them. And the wind of God came, just
like he came on the day of Pentecost. breathe life. That's who Cain
is. I mean, that's who Abel is. You
forgive me if I get the names, you know what I'm talking about.
That's who Abel is. He's breath, and he's the feeder
of sheep. That's what you and I need. The
Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want of anything. If we've got Christ as our shepherd,
we're not in want of something to recommend us to God. He recommends
us to God. We need nothing. We have Christ,
we have everything. Everything. I was talking to Chris Cunningham
this week and he reminded me of something that Henry Mahan
once said. He said there's four kinds of
people in the world. He said there's the profaner
who has absolutely no interest in God and has no shame in standing
against God. Then there's the person who might
become religious if they have a need, and they'll cry out to
God in their difficult times. And then there's the person to
whom the gospel is very important, very important. And they will
be faithful in services and they'll need to hear and they'll want
to hear. And then there's the one to whom Christ is everything,
all. That's what I want to be, don't
you? Don't you? That's the person I want to be.
That Christ is all. He's all in my salvation. He's
all in my life. Christ is all and he's in all.
I need forgiveness. Christ is all. I need hope and
joy and peace and Christ is all. He's all in all of that. We need him to feed us. We need him to be our shepherd.
We need him to make us to lie down in green pastures. We need
him to lead us beside the still waters. We need him to feed us
with his flesh and give us his blood to drink. For my flesh
is your meat indeed, and my blood is your drink indeed. And if
a man eat not of my flesh and drink of my blood, there's no
life in him, no life in him. That's who Abel represents here. He's the feeder of sheep. Listen to Hebrews chapter 11,
verse four. By faith, Abel offered unto God
a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness
that he was righteous. Now I'm not denying the fact
that Abel represents the believer who's coming to God on behalf
of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I want you to see
Abel here as the feeder of the sheep, as the brother of his
rebellious brother who was born into this world thinking that
he can somehow find a place of standing before God based on
his own tilling of the soil. based on his own works. And that
this jealous brother by nature hates the one. And we are, we
come into this world, the Bible says we come into this world
at enmity with God. But here's the good news. The
father said to the son after he ascended into glory, he said,
sit thou here at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy
footstool. Those who are by nature like
Cain, who think that they can recommend themselves to God by
tilling the soil, I'm gonna make them to sit at your feet and
be like Mary, who chose that one thing that was needful, the
one thing that was needful, to listen to the voice of God. God, Hebrews 11, verse four,
God testifying of his gifts that by it he being dead yet speaketh. Abel being dead yet speaks. Christ died as the breath of
our life. We have no breath outside of
him. We have no feeder of the sheep outside of him. He's everything
to us. He's everything in our salvation. Turn to me to Hebrews chapter
12. Hebrews chapter 12. Verse 22. Hebrews 12, verse 22. But you are not come to the mountain
of the law, but you are come to Mount Zion. and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels, to the general assembly and the church of the
firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God, the judge
of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to
Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of
sprinkling that speaketh better things than Abel. Abel's a picture here. He's a
type. He's a foreshadowing. He's a
road sign. He's pointing to the destination,
which is Christ. Go back with me to our text. And in the process of time, verse
three, It came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground
an offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought of the
firstlings of the flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord
had respect. He looked, that word respect
means he looked with favor. He looked with favor. Now that's
what I, I need a God who looks on me with favor. And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering,
he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth and his
countenance fell. He was angry at God. I mean,
he had competed with the nematodes. He had tilled the ground. He
had planted the seed. He had weeded the garden. He'd
work day and night. All Abel did was stand around
and lead a flock of sheep from field to field. Cain had done
a lot more work, I'm sure, physically speaking. And he was wroth that God was
not looking on his offering with respect, but he didn't. He didn't. And the Lord said unto Cain,
why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance fallen? Why are you angry? What reason
do you have to be angry with God? If thou do us well, shalt thou
not be accepted? And if thou do us not well, sin
lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou
shalt rule over him. You got a sin problem, Cain.
And if you're gonna come to, here's what this verse is saying.
If you're gonna come to God based on the law, then you're gonna
have to rule over your sin. You're going to have to have
complete dominance over all sin. If you're going to come to God
based on your law works, based on your good deeds, based on
your tilling of the ground, you're going to, God will meet you on
whatever grounds you come to him on. You come to him based
on the labors of your hand and God will meet you there. They've
got to be perfect. They've got to be perfect. Sin lieth at the
door. You're going to have to rule
over it. You're going to have to rule over your sin. If this
is how you want to come to me, Cain, if you want your offering
to be looked on with respect, it's going to have to be perfect. It's going to have to be perfect.
I mean, perfect in the sight of God, not perfect in your eyes
or perfect in another man's eyes, but perfect in the sight of God.
Cain, you want to come to me based on that? If that's your
standard, here's my standard. You're obligated to keep the
whole law, and not just in your outward appearances before other
men. You're obligated to keep the whole law in your heart,
in your thoughts, in your mind, in your speech, in your actions. And God's saying to Cain, You
want to be accepted with me based on the keeping of the law, then
you got to keep it all. How are you doing with that?
I don't want to come to God based on that, do you? Verse eight, and Cain talked
with Abel, his brother, And it came to pass when they were in
the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him. Zechariah says that when the
spirit of grace and supplication comes upon the house of Israel,
they shall look upon him whom they have slain, whom they have
killed. Yes, it was the sword of God's
justice that took the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it
was required because of our sin. You and I killed Christ. You know, among men, the severity of a crime is determined
by the innocence of the victim. If a man on death row kills another
man on death row, it's not even going to make the local news.
Nobody's going to even think twice about that. Get rid of
the body and let's move on. That's just one more we don't
have to kill. But if a teacher or a parent or an adult responsible
for the care of a child takes the life of that child, the full
fury of the law will come down on that person. And it'll make
national news, won't it? The severity of a crime. is determined
by the innocence of the victim. Who was more innocent than he
that was holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners? He who
never had a thought, never committed a sin, never violated God's law
in any way. The meek and mild sweet son of
God is the most innocent man that ever lived. More innocent
than that young child who cannot defend itself. They came into
this world with a sin nature. The Lord Jesus Christ was innocent
who killed him. Who killed him? You see, we often
look at our sin and we think, well, if I can just be sorry
enough for it. And when we look at the consequences
of it and the shame that we feel and the separation that we experience,
don't do that. Look to what sin did to the sinless
son of God on Mount Calvary. There's the picture that God
gives us of our sin. Don't wallow in your guilt or
keep bringing up your old past sins, thinking that somehow you're
going to atone for it. That's just nothing more than
cane tilling the ground, trying to get the nematodes to the surface.
That's all that is. It's penance. And it's never
been successful in atoning for one sin. We look to the Lord
Jesus Christ, the innocent one, and we know that it was our sin
that put him there. And if that doesn't break the
heart, if that doesn't bring repentance and faith and hope
and joy, nothing that we do to till the ground will. Nothing. That's why the Lord said, and
I, if I be lifted up, I'll draw men to me. When Moses made that
brazen serpent and put it on a pole, that's a picture of Christ
who knew no sin being made sin for us. And God said, everyone
who looks to that is going to live. Verse nine. And the Lord said unto Cain,
where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? Oh,
here's the good news, brethren. We're not our brother's keeper. We can't keep him. He's our keeper. He's our keeper. And left to
ourselves, we have to say the same thing that Cain said. I
know not. I can't keep my brother. I'm
not my brother's keeper. I know we're to be one another's
keeper and we're to love one another and we're to care for
one another and pray for one another. I got all that. But if we can ever see this as
our brother Christ shedding his blood for us and that we killed
him and that his blood cries out to God, not in judgment,
but in justice. satisfying everything that God
requires. Love for one another, that'll
take care of itself. It will. Your right hand loves
your left hand, and your left hand loves your right hand, doesn't
it? Why? Because they're both connected
to the same brain, same spirit, same life. And he said, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood
crieth out unto me from the ground. We need the voice of the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ to cry out for us, don't we? We murdered
our brother. We killed the innocent one with
our sin. God demands justice, and here's
the only justice that he's pleased with. When I see the blood, I'll
pass by you." No amount of sorrow, no amount of repentance, no amount
of good works, no amount of anything that we do will atone for our
sins. It's only as our brother and
his blood cries out from the ground to God for us that God
will be satisfied and that our offerings will be acceptable
in his sight, that he will look with favor upon us. Do you want God to look in favor
upon you? I love what the Lord said to that
man. He said, what would you have me to do for you? What would
you have me to do for you? Lord, I need you to look on me
with favor. I need forgiveness. I need grace. I've got to have Christ. What hast thou done? We don't
really know what we've done, but we believe because God said
so. You say, well, I, you know, I
just don't know if I experienced, I don't know if I, if I know
that I'm a sinner or not. God says you're a sinner. God says you have no righteousness.
You see, faith is not, it's believing God, isn't it? It's just believing
what God has said. In verse 11, and now art thou cursed
from the earth. Now the law requires life for
life, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. I want you to notice with
me here that God doesn't kill Cain. Yeah, every law required it,
every right to. The Lord says to Cain, the earth
is gonna be cursed because of you or because of this sin. And
it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. When you till the ground, it's
not gonna produce fruit like it will for everybody else. Child of God, you've never been able to be
satisfied with the things of this world, have you? The unbeliever is. They till the ground, they produce
the fruit. They're completely content with the fruit of their
labor and with the happiness they have. God's people cannot,
they cannot be content. I mean, we enjoy the things that
God gives us, but we can't find satisfaction in them. We can't
find fulfillment and we can't find peace with God through them.
We can't find hope and salvation and joy. We've got to have something. We've got to have Christ. And
the same thing's true about a works religion. Why is it that you
have friends and family members that can go every Sunday and
sit and listen to people tell lies about God and be perfectly
content with that? They don't think about it, they're
satisfied with it, they will insist on their salvation, they
will demand you call them brother, and you can't go there. Thou art cursed from the earth,
not from God, but from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to
receive thy brother's blood from thine hand. And when thou tillest
the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto you her strength,
for you are going to be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth the
rest of your life. Is that not what we are? Sojourners, strangers, pilgrims. Is that not the language that
God uses to describe His people in this world? This world has
been cursed to us because of the blood that cries from the
ground. You know, in one sense, believers
are the only ones that can really enjoy the things that God gives
them because they're not anticipating it to give them more than it
can. You know what an addiction is,
right? An addiction is anticipating some behavior giving you something
that it can never produce. And so you just keep going back
again and again and again and again to the same thing, expecting
something that it never can deliver. And that's what the world does.
They're just addicted to everything in the world. And the child of
God says, you know what? This world's not my home. And
the things that God's given me in this world, you know what?
I'm gonna enjoy that. I'm not gonna look to them for my fruitfulness
before God. These things have been cursed
to me. But only to you, not to them. They can be perfectly content
with everything this world and the religions of this world have
to offer, and you can't. You've got to have Christ. You've tried everything else.
Nothing else meets the need of your soul. God has created you
with a Christ-shaped a void in your heart and you've got to
have him to fill it and nothing else will do it. Nothing else. And Cain said unto him, look
at verse 13. Cain said unto him, my punishment. Now you can look these words
up. The word punishment is the word, it's only translated punishment
I think four times in the Old Testament. It's translated iniquity
220 times in this verse. So Cain says, my iniquity is
too great for me. I cannot bear it. cannot bear it. That's a work
of grace. Come unto me all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. That means you've labored to
try to to try to get those nematodes to the surface and try to get
them out and they just keep coming back and you can't bear your
iniquity anymore. God has let you Indulge in your iniquity until
you realize this is not it. I've got to have Christ. I can't
bear my iniquity any longer. I've got to have a savior. I've
got to have the blood of my brother crying out from the ground to
God on my behalf. Now very quickly, I want you
to notice, and behold, Thou hast driven me out this day from the
face of the earth, and from thy face shall I be hid, and I shall
be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and it shall come
to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me.' And the Lord
said unto him, therefore, Whomsoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall
be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon
Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." Child of God, the Lord set a mark on you, and
he's hedged you about. You remember when Satan went
to the Lord and he said, he said, I can't touch Job because you've
hedged him about. God marks Cain, sends him out
in the world, says the world's never gonna satisfy you, Cain
goes to the land of Nob and builds a city. And the word Nob means
wandering. And the city that he builds is
the city of Enoch, named after his son. And Enoch means possession. And so here we have Cain as a
believer, wandering in the world, and everything he owns belongs
to God. And he's been marked. by God
and God sets a special protection on him and says to the rest of
the world, you touch my, you touch Cain and seven times Cain's
judgment will come upon you. There's our hope, brethren. The
Lord has put a special protection on his people. We slew our brother Abel. The earth opened up for his blood.
We're the worst murderers of all. Worst murderers of all. God has marked us and he's been
gracious to not allow this world to satisfy us. How would you like to be perfectly
content with everything you have in this world and not need God?
That's where the vast majority of people are. They're just fat and happy, enjoying
what they have. No thought for tomorrow. No thoughts
for God. You can't be there. You live
in Nob, don't you? You live in a land of wandering.
And your sons and your children and your Enoch possessions. And you can't bear your iniquity.
You've got to have the blood of your brother cry out for you. What love? What love? We killed our brother and he
loved us in return and atoned for our sins with the very blood
that we shed. And he says, this is my commandment. As I have loved you, So love
you one another. Brethren in Christ. Our heavenly father, bless your
word. Forgive us of our unbelief. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. 36 in the spiral hymnal. Let's stand
together. Behold my soul, the love of God,
behold the grace most free. Before all worlds His purpose
stood, His love was fixed on me. Elected by eternal love,
A covenant firm and sure, The Triune God agreed in love, Salvation
to secure. My soul was given to the Son
He promised to redeem By blood and righteousness His own He
would my soul reclaim In the due time Emmanuel came To live
and die for thee He lives today and bears my name. Christ is
my surety. In love He sent His Spirit down,
Who gave me life and grace. He drew me and I followed on,
My Savior to embrace. Now I rejoice in Compton's love,
amazing grace I see. I now am conquered by his love,
my Savior is my King.