As you remember, last week we
were looking at the Pharisee and the Publican, two men going
to a place of worship, two men coming to God. One of them, of course, came
with his righteousness and came not to pray, he came to boast
and brag to God about his own doing. But this last week I've
been thinking much about how the scriptures are full of two
men. We have Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob
and Esau. And they are but pictures of
those two covenants, aren't they? That covenant of works and that
covenant of grace. And in Genesis chapter 4 we have
two men coming to worship. coming to a place, a place ordained
by God, and coming with completely different hearts. Before we go
there, it's a good thing to remember the Lord's wonderful summaries
of what is happening in this world around us right now. In
Matthew Chapter 13, He talks in terms of a parable, but it's
a parable about all of humanity, all of history is in this parable
in Matthew 13, 24. Another parable He put forth unto them, saying,
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man which sowed good seed
in his field, and while men slept, his enemy came, and sowed tares
among the wheat, and went his way. And when the blade was sprung
up and brought forth fruit, there appeared the tares also. So the
servants of the household came and said unto him, Sir, didst
not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then has it
tears? And he said unto them, An enemy
has done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt
thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, no, lest
while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with
them. Let both grow together until
the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to
the roopers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them
in bundles to burn them, and gather the wheat into my barn. It's a remarkable picture, isn't
it, of the great division amongst humanity. In Genesis Chapter
3 and Chapter 4, in the first evidence
of the outworking of sins in the lives of these men, we have
this remarkable picture. of these two men to come before
God, come believing that they were worshipping God, come coming
believing that they were acceptable before God. I'll start reading
in Genesis 3, 24. So he drove out the man and he placed to the east of
the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned
every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life." Verse 1 of
chapter 4. And Adam knew Eve, his wife,
and she conceived and bare Cain and said, I have gotten a man
from the Lord. And she again, there his brother
Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep,
but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of
time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground
an offering unto the Lord. And Abel also brought the firstlings
of his flock and the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering. But Cain and to his offering
he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and
his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain,
Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shall thou
not be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin
lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou
shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with his brother,
but Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they
were in the field, that Cain rose up again, and Abel his brother,
and slew him." So here we have these men, Abel and Cain. coming to God, both of them bringing
an offering to God. And it's interesting, isn't it,
even that very first family were well trained and taught by Adam
and taught by Eve. So they came, it says, to a place. In Genesis 3.24 it talks about
that place and it's really fascinating the language in Genesis 3.24
He says, so he drove out the man and the word there placed
is a word that means tabernacled or dwelt at the east of the Garden
of Eden. and there were the cherubims,
and all through the scriptures in Exodus and other places we
have the cherubim, and in that huge curtain that sealed the
holy of holies from the holy place in the temple, in the tabernacle,
there were these cherubims, and a flaming sword, a fire sword,
which turned every way. And it's remarkable that in the
original it can mean, to keep open the way to the tree of life. You can only come to the tree
of life. by a way that's kept open by
God, by the covenant of grace. And ultimately you come to the
way of the Tree of Life by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
You have to go through that veil. He was typified in all those
types and ceremonies of the law. So they came to a place of worship,
a place where God had promised to be present, a place of God's
instruction, a place of God's blessing, a place where people
meet in His name, a place where His Word is read, a place where
He meets with sinners, and a place, in a sense, where He meets between
the cherubim upon the mercy seat, a place where He dispenses grace. They both came and they both
brought an offering to the Lord. And they came at a time, in verse
3, if you look at it, in the process of time it came to pass. It can actually mean at the end
of days it came to pass. Whether that was the end of days
of a season, it was probably more likely to be the day of
rest that the Lord rested. So it seems as if they were there
at the end of the week, the day appointed in the place that God
had promised to meet with them. What remarkable privileges they
had. Even before the Sabbath law there
was appointed, people seemed to have had this day, a time
of rest from their work, a time to come and worship God. And
Christ is our Sabbath of course. The Sabbath was a picture of
a person, a picture of a finished work. a picture of rest, their
remains of Sabbath rest for the people of God. And they came
with a prescribed means of worship. If you go back in your Bibles
to Genesis chapter 3, There is remarkable, I'll just read a
little snippet that I read today from Arthur Pink. It says in
Genesis 3.15, it says, I will put enmity between thee and the
women, between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel. Speaking to Satan, speaking of
his demise, speaking of the seed of the woman, No wonder when
Eve had Cain, she says, now I've got the man, now I've got the
man. And it's remarkable that Abel's
name means vanity. She had the man, and she had
another man, and she thought little of in reference to him. But in Genesis 3.21 we have this
remarkable situation. You know well the story. Adam and Eve ate of that fruit
and they were naked and they hid from God and they sowed fig
leaves together. But in verse 21, it says, unto
Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin
and clad them. Pink says, in Genesis 3.15 and
21 we have the first gospel sermon which was ever preached on this
earth, and that by the Lord himself. Life must come out of death.
Cain and Abel and the whole human race sinned in Adam. You can
read about that in Romans 5, 12, 18 and 19. And the wages of sin is death,
penal death. Either I must pay those wages
and suffer that death, or another, an innocent one, on whom death
has no claim, must pay those wages in my stead. And in order
to my receiving the benefit of that substitute's compassion,
there must be a link of contact between me and him. Faith it
is which unites to Christ. And this was then his summary.
Saving faith then in its simplest form is the placing of a substitute
between my guilty self and a sin-hating God. It's interesting. notion,
isn't it? But here in Genesis we have this
remarkable Gospel declaration, a promise in 315 and then an
act in 321. And then Adam and Eve, as we
can assume from the pictures of what we see in Chapter 4,
taught their children. And they had no history. What
a remarkable family they had. They had no history of the world,
only a history of them and God. They had none of the entanglements
of life for us. Things were so simple. But then they would have been
able to teach their children. They would have been able to
teach their children what they had done, what Satan had done. They would have been able to
teach their children what God had done for them. He made coats
of skin, what God had promised. They would have been able to
teach them out of Genesis 3.15 and out of that picture in 3.21
that God had promised redemption. They would have been able to
teach their children that God is satisfied with a covering. God is satisfied with a covering,
a blood atonement covering. And they would have been able
to teach their children that God is to be worshipped by faith. They would have been able to
teach their children that to be accepted of God they must
have a covering, the righteousness of Christ. They would have been
able to teach their children that anything of human manufacture
must be removed and removed totally. They would have known from their
experience, this saved couple, that God Himself must provide
a covering and He must make it, he must appoint it, and he must
do the covering of them. You see it's interesting, isn't
it? If you just picture them naked and with no shame, with
sin and shame and what they do, they sew together aprons of fig
leaves. And then for God to do what he
did in Genesis 3.21, they must have stood before God and to
have their covering of skins. They must have had their fig
leaves removed from them. And God cupped them and God was
satisfied. They would have been able to
teach their children how God is to be worshipped and how God
is to be approached and how God must cover. And this covering
can only be provided by a death. The blood of an innocent must
be the covering. Let's just look briefly at Cain's
sacrifice. The scriptures talk about the
way of Cain. It's a way of all of Cain and
Cain's children. He came to God without blood. And Hebrews 9.22 says, without
the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. So in a
sense it was a denial of his need of the Lord Jesus. But Cain thought that he could
approach God on the basis of his own merit. that he could
come on the basis of his own work, of his own hands. And so
fundamentally it's a denial of sin. Cain in a sense was denying
his guilt and his sin before God and he was denying its consequences,
the condemnation and the death under the wrath of God. You see
Cain had had these privileges and more that I've just spoken
of And Cain's activities was a refusal of God's revelation,
a refusal to acknowledge who God is and how holy God is, a
refusal to acknowledge who man is, and a refusal to acknowledge
how they might be reconciled or covered. In reality, Cain
did not believe God. 1 John 3.12 talks to people to
be not as Cain, encourages people to be not as Cain, who was of
that wicked one, which is why I read Matthew 13 to you, who
was of that wicked one and slew his brother. And why did he slay
him? because his own works were evil
and his brothers righteous. As Jude says, woe unto them,
all of these false teachers, these religious false teachers,
for they have gone in the way of Cain and run greedily after
the error of Balaam for reward and have perished in the Gainsean,
perished in the rebellion of Korah. Cain was a religious man. He came to a place of worship
and brought an offering that he thought was acceptable. Let's
look briefly at Abel's offering. Let me read what the Lord says
about Abel. In Hebrews 11.4, By faith Abel
offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which
he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of
his gifts And by it, he being dead, yet speaketh. By faith, it really means in
the original. By faith, he being dead, yet
speaks. Cain, the first man to die in
this world, is a man who God says is speaking May God, the Holy Spirit, make
his lessons and his words and his testimony ones that live
in us. Abel came by faith. He believed
God. He came to God through faith
in a substitute. His offering was a confession
of sin and guilt and just condemnation, that lamb that he brought, that
lamb that he brought that was slain. You see what he says,
and Abel brought Abel brought that firstling, he brought the
best of his flock, and he brought the fat thereof. It's very hard
to get the fat out of a sheep without killing it. He brought
a sacrifice, lamb before God. That is the big question, isn't
it? How can a holy God accept and forgive guilty sinners and
declare them righteous? That's what the Lord says of
Abel, doesn't he? He talks about the blood of righteous
Abel. Abel brought to him, he brought
Christ, the Lamb of God. That Lamb of God who's typified
in the Passover, that Lamb of God who's typified in the substitute
when Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac. That Lamb that
lamb that was in the ark with Noah and was sacrificed at the
end of the flood, the lamb, the innocent dying in the place of
the guilty, the lamb, the perfect lamb, the firstlings of his flock
and the fat thereof, a lamb that's in the prime of life. As the
Lord says, it must be perfect to be accepted. and there was
a slain lamb. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins. The sacrifice was also a sacrifice
consumed by fire. We read about it in Leviticus
9.24 when they brought those first sacrifices. God consumed
them, showing that the fire of his holy wrath brings a pleasing
aroma to him when his dear and precious son satisfies his justice. In order to justify us, the Lord
Jesus must die before the justice of God. Christ, our substitute,
has made full satisfaction before the law of God and the justice
of God, and therefore enables God, as Romans 3 says, to be
the just and the justifier of those who believe. As we saw last week, these two
men typify all the religion of the world, don't they? They typify
humanity. It's interesting, from that first
family come two lines of humanity, Cain and Abel. Abel dies and
Seth is born many, many years later, and from him there is
a godly line, and from Cain's there is this line of wickedness. But it's a line that's not without
religion. Cain's response is a fascinating
one, isn't it? In verses 6 to 8, we have him
saying, our God saying to Cain, Why are you wroth? And why is
your countenance falling? If you do well, shall you not
be accepted? And if you do not well, sin lieth
at the door, and unto thee shall he shall be his desire and thou
shalt rule over him." And Cain talked with his brother Abel
and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose
up against his brother Abel and slew him. You see, it's fascinating
again, isn't it? When you think of what the Lord
Jesus did, He came to a religious world where men were bringing
their sacrifices, where men thought that they were worshipping God
and thought that they were honouring God, and in some sense as much
as they had religious animosity amongst each other in their little
sex, when He comes we find that they are all joined together.
and He exposes them. It's when the Gospel comes and
when the true worshippers are revealed by God that the religion
of works is exposed. It's exposed again and again
throughout time. when true religion of faith in
God's appointed sovereign substitute, in that successful sacrifice,
in that great and glorious gospel of who the Lord Jesus is and
how he saves sinners by himself. When God reveals His work of
grace in the hearts of people, all of a sudden, both within
us, as we saw last week, and within the world, an enmity arises
up. When work's religion is exposed,
it's only ever exposed by God. Cain became angry and depressed.
The religion of works, the religion of man's activities, man bringing
what man wishes to bring to God, man refusing the revelation of
God. Religion of works yields no comfort
because there is no communion with God. How often have we seen
and encountered people who are comfortable in their religion
until such time as you come along and speak of sovereign free grace
and a successful saviour. who loved his people from the
foundation of the world and came into this world with love burning
in his heart for them and went to the cross as a saviour and
a substitute for them and succeeded triumphantly and rules everything
in heaven for them and you declare the glories of the new covenant
where it is God who must work, I will and they shall. When you declare those things,
all of a sudden there's an enmity rises up in a place that is almost
shocking at times. You see, if your religion, if
the religion of people around us can be shaken by a simple
declaration of who the Lord Jesus is, then their religion is not
founded on a rock. If their religion can be shaken
just by reading simple declarations of who God is and how he saves
his people from this book, their religion is not on a rock. They had, like Cain, They have
no comfort because there's no communion with God. They have
their ceremonies, but they don't have peace. They have their professions
and their confessions and they have their religious duties,
but they have no rest or assurance, ultimately because they have
no reconciliation. And it's fascinating, isn't it,
where Cain's anger is directed. Cain's anger is directed against
God and against God's child of grace. The way of Cain is the
way of religion. It's the way of man. It's also
the way of persecution. It's remarkable, isn't it? The
first human blood ever shed on this earth was shed out of salvation
by grace versus salvation by works. The first murder in this
world was by a religious legalist. He'd murdered Abel in his heart
before he slew him brutally. And we live in a nicer, more
gentle and tolerant world. As I said, until the Gospel of
God's sovereign grace appears in true worship, then the realities
are exposed. and there will be extraordinary
enmity where we thought there was peace. God is the same. Sin is the same. The way of Cain
still persecutes the way of faith. The way of Cain is hardness of
heart towards God's word. It's remarkable, isn't it? Here
is God. personally speaking to Cain,
and yet Cain hardens his heart, and hardens his heart. The way
of Cain is a way of deceit. Where is thy brother Abel? And he said in verse nine, I
know not. Am I my brother's keeper? And God said to him, what have
you done? The voice of your brother's blood
cries unto me from the ground. What do we read about Abel in
Hebrews 11? Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice. Our able sacrifice is a representation
of the Lord Jesus, the most excellent sacrifice of all. Cain's way,
ultimately in verses 10 and 11, is a way of cursedness, isn't
it? Now thou art cursed from the
earth which has opened up her mouth to receive thy brother's
blood from thy hand. And Cain's way is a way of wandering. He's sent to that place called
the Land of Nod in verse 16 on the east of Eden. The Land of
Nod is a land called wandering. No rest, no rest for the wicked. There's so much more in this
passage that we haven't time to look at, but it's just fascinating
to see the big picture, isn't it? Abel's way is a way of grace,
and a way of faith, and a way of God's working, and a way where
he brings Christ. He brings that one thing that
the Father is delighted is our offering before Him. We bring
an offering of the Lord Jesus to Him. Abel was a man whose
heart was transformed by God. Cain was a man, in the words
of Romans 7, who was given over. He was given over. But as we
can see in that conversation, As Romans 2 says, people are
without excuse when God's justice falls upon those who are rebellious. Romans 2 will be true. Therefore
thou art inexcusable, O man, whoever thou art that judges. He judged his brother and found
him wanting. And he despises the riches of
his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing
that the goodness of God leads to repentance. There are just
two, ultimately two groups of people in this world, isn't it?
It's not for nothing that Christianity was called the Way for a long
time, probably in reference to what the Lord Jesus said. in
answer to that question in the upper room, isn't it? He said,
I am the way, the truth and the life. And 2 Peter, Peter before
he died, talks of the way in his last letter. He says, it's
the way of truth and it's the way of righteousness. It's God's
way. May God cause us, brothers and
sisters, to walk in that way and to bring to God the sacrifice
that Abel brought and continually do so despite all of that. God's saints, like Abel, are
still speaking, aren't they? What's Abel speaking now in heaven?
He's singing about the glories of the Lord Jesus. He's been
there for 4,000 years, 5,000 years, singing. Just a flicker of time in all
of eternity. Let's pray.