Genesis 4, we said there's nobody new in
here this morning, nobody who hasn't heard these things before.
You always hope that there will be, but if not, we all You can learn
something, can't you, from the same old truths I have. The story of Cain continues in
chapter 4, what the Lord said to him and did to him, his punishment. He became a fugitive and a vagabond,
it says. Now, last Sunday we looked at
Cain and Abel. We saw that this book of Genesis
is the book of firsts, the first mention of things, first man
to woman, first order of things, first sin, first death, which
was a lamb. God slew that lamb to cover them. That's a picture of Christ, the
Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, isn't it? The first
religious observance or worship service, if you will. Cain and
Abel, these two brothers, were taught to worship the Lord and
they came. They brought two different sacrifices
and one of them was rejected. Cain brought his way. And you know, Cain is mentioned
three times. in the New Testament. And you
don't have to turn, but in Jude 11 it says that of false religion,
false prophets, they have gone in the way of Cain. Have gone
in the way of Cain. That is, works. Cain brought
his works. They've gone and ran greedily
after the heir of Balaam. And Balaam did it for money,
religion for money, for gain. Hirelings getting paid for it. And then they perished in the
gainsay, you know, the backtalking, rejection of the truth. Like
Korah, sons of Korah, despised Moses. And they wanted to be
preachers too, you know. And the Lord rejected them. So we saw this, that there's
only two religions in the world, and one is true and the other
is false. No matter what names all the
various religions go under, there's only two religions. One is the
way of Cain, which most religions in the world are. Works, man's
will, man's works, and so forth. And then there's the truth, which
is the way of Abel, or really Christ the way. Abel, remember,
brought the blood of a lamb, a lamb that God had provided
him. Cain worked real hard and brought
what he did and was right proud of it. And God rejected him and
his sacrifice. So it is with everyone who comes
any other way than the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
plain, isn't it? That's very plain. Alright, look
at Cain here. It says he was, in verse 2, a
tiller of the ground. And we saw how God had cursed
the ground. Remember that? In chapter 3,
God cursed the ground. Anything that comes from the
ground is cursed. And we will go back to the ground. We will go back. But listen to
Isaiah 45. This came to my mind about this. It says, Drop down,
ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Where does righteousness come
from? It doesn't come from this earth. It doesn't come from anything
man can produce. That which is of the earth is
earthy. That which is flesh is flesh.
And it cannot, in the flesh, no man can please God. But Isaiah
says, righteousness will come down, let the skies pour down
righteousness. What's that talking about? Who's
that talking about? And there's another scripture
that says, He, Christ, shall come down like rain on the mown
grass. Righteousness shall come down.
Cain heard and rejected the truth. He heard it just like Abel. And
we saw who it was that made Abel to differ from Cain. Who maketh
thee to differ? 1 Corinthians 4, 7. And what
hast thou that hast not received? You see, a man can receive nothing
except to be given him from above. Faith is the gift of God. Abel
received the gift of faith. Abel found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. Abel heard God gave him a heart
to receive it and a heart to believe it. He passed Cain by. Cain heard it, but rejected it. He didn't receive the love of
the truth. We're going to look at that in the next message in
2 Thessalonians. Cain heard it and rejected it.
You know, Cain represents a natural man. Cain is man. Abel is a new creature. God,
Christ in us. Cain is a natural man, and the
natural man, Romans 8 says, is enmity against God. Cain got
mad at God. The natural man, Scripture says,
receiveth not the things of God. They're foolishness unto him.
Cain liked what he brought better than what God told him to bring.
Cain was self-righteous. That's what all people are by
nature. That's what we were and still
have a problem with. Cain got angry with God and couldn't
get to God, so he took it out on his brother. He took it out
on his brother. And he slew his brother. And you know, Abel, as we said,
is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. When our Lord said in
Hebrews, Well, our Lord said the blood of Abel speaks better
things. And the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the only acceptable sacrifice. And man killed the
Son of God. And what God charged Cain with,
look at verse 10 and 11 in our text, chapter 4. He says, What
hast thou done? The poise of thy brother's blood
crieth unto me from the ground. Cain in verse 9, he totally denied
what he had done. He covered his sin, didn't he?
He that covereth his sin shall not prosper. He that confesseth
shall find mercy. The Lord said in verse 9, Where
is Abel thy brother? He said, I know not. It's a flat
out lie. And then he said, virtually,
I don't care. Am I my brother's keeper? Remember, we looked at that by
itself one time. Am I my brother's keeper? Read the article by Brother Mahan
this morning. The world is out for itself.
God's people have been given a new heart and a new mind, and
they have a love for and a concern for and a care for not only their
brethren especially, They do good unto all men, but especially
unto them of the household of faith. Well, Cain was of that
wicked one, and he said, Am I my brother's keeper? I don't know,
and I don't care. And God said, His blood cries
out from the ground. God charged him, verse 11, You
are cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive
thy brother's blood from thy hand. You killed him. And that's
what I hold you responsible for. What does God hold this world
responsible for? Killing his son. Killing his
son. That's right. Listen to this.
Of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together Peter preached at Pentecost. Everybody was there, although
some of them, if not maybe most of them, were not actually at
the crucifixion of our Lord. Yet he said, you with wicked
hands have taken and crucified the Lord of glory. But he said,
you did what God determined before to be done, because it pleased
the Lord to bruise him. And the infinite mercy and love
and grace of God is that the very ones that killed him, he
pardoned. The very ones that killed him, that very blood was
their pardon for the crime they had committed. But God charges
mankind with rejecting His Son. Someone says, I don't reject
Him. Well, if people don't come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ,
they've rejected Him. You know, to ignore someone is
to act like, I don't care if they exist. to ignore somebody. I wish you
didn't exist. I wish you weren't living. Right? That's what God charges mankind
with, and those who steal His glory especially. The Pharisees
were the chief culprits, weren't they? The religious leaders were
the chief culprits in killing our Lord. Why? Because He exposed
their evil self-glorying, vainglorying ways, and they wanted the glory
for themselves. But when all glory belonged to
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is with everyone who
steals Christ's glory. They are guilty. And they do
it in the name of Christ. And they are guilty of murder
in God's hand. A thief and a robber. A thief
and a robber, God called. Look at Cain's curse in verse
11 and 12 in our text. It says, when you till the ground,
verse 12, you curse from the earth, when you till the ground,
it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. He was a tiller of the ground
and he was cursed to keep tilling the ground the rest of his days. And he would not get from that
ground what the ground could give. The Lord, when he first
created the earth, he made it fruitful, very fruitful, which
would bring forth abundantly from man's good, but because
of sin, Man's not going to get anything that satisfies from
this earth. Nothing will satisfy, and you're
going to keep tilling and tilling and tilling and tilling and working
and working, and it will never, ever satisfy to our anger and
wrath and to our dissatisfaction. Nothing. And it's so true, isn't
it, that man keeps after the things of this earth, and no
matter how much he gets, it's not enough. Because it doesn't last, number
one. Moths, thieves, and rust ruin everything we endeavor to
accumulate, don't we? Our Lord said it's a curse. You're
going to till it, that's all you're going to do the rest of
your day. Look at this, verse 12. He said, you're going to
be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. A fugitive. What is a fugitive? A fugitive
is someone who's on the run. A fugitive is a fugitive of justice,
running from the law. Fugitive of justice. Man, the Scripture says, is of
few days and full of trouble. And this is where it started.
A few days and full of trouble. Why is it full of trouble? Because
he's in trouble with God. Because we're in trouble with
God. Until God does something about that, we're going to be
a fugitive. of justice, running, running
scared. Our Lord said there is no peace
to the wicked. And men and women and young people
tried to find some measure of peace, some measure of contentment
and happiness and some kind of rest and satisfaction in the
world and the things of the world. And God said, I'm not going to
let it happen. You're a fugitive and you're going to be on the
run. Abel was resting. Abel had entered into his eternal
resting. What a terrible thing this was
that his brother killed him. It was terrible for Cain, but
it was good for Abel. Abel has now entered into his
eternal resting. Cain is on the run. That's going
to be the rest of his life. For I don't know how long he
lived, I forget, but a fugitive of justice. watching a show, it was a popular
TV show when I was a teenager called The Fugitive.
Anybody remember that? Watched it every week, wouldn't
miss an episode of it. And what happened was this doctor
came home when his wife was murdered and he got charged with it. And
you remember, there was a one-armed man that did it. And the police
charged him, we escaped. from jail, and from that day
forward he was a fugitive of justice. He was on the run. And watching that show, he never
had any peace anywhere he went because the law was out for him.
He could never rest until the guilty one was apprehended. He
could never rest. And the difference in us and
that illustration is that we are guilty. We are guilty as charters. And
we will be like Cain on the run from God's law and God's justice
until God says, arrest that man. Almighty love, arrest that man.
Make him feel his guilt like Obarabbas. Make him feel his
guilt. Charging with the crime. And
Ben? Delivering. I found a ransom. For God hath made His Son to
be sin for us who knew no sin. He who knew no sin. That we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. Substitution. Deliver
the guilty one. And sentence the innocent one. That's what God did. And if God
ever shows us the Lord Jesus Christ, our substitute, guilty
on our behalf, and we look to Him, we'll find rest. We're no longer on the run. We're
no longer fugitives running from God's law. We run to Christ and
we find a city of refuge. City of refuge. God's people
are not fugitives, but they are refugees. They are refugees. And a refugee is one who has
found a temporary place to dwell on a refuge. And while we're
on this earth, we have a refuge. And someday we will enter completely
into that rest, free from any troubles. But Cain, man like
Cain, is a fugitive of justice. He said, you're going to be a
fugitive and a vagabond. You know what a vagabond is?
That's what they used to call people back when I was a kid,
people who were homeless. Now they call them homeless people.
They used to call them vagabond. A vagabond, the word means an
aimless person, a person with nowhere to go, nothing to do,
no purpose in life whatsoever. He's just existing. Nowhere to
go, nobody to go to, no home to go to, no nothing. He's without
hope. The Bhagavan. And Ephesians 2
says that, and you were. He says, that's what you were.
You were without Christ in this world, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of promise, without
hope, Without God, without Christ, a wanderer, a vagabond in this
earth. But he went on to say, now, but
God, but now you are fellow citizens with the household. of faith. Because we know all things work
together for good to them that love God, who are called according
to His purpose. They're no longer vagabonds,
but there's a purpose to the praise of the glory of His great. Cain was unrepentant. Cain was unrepentant. We saw
how that Abel bringing that blood, that's repentance. Anybody that
looks to Christ and trusts Christ and comes to God by the blood
of Christ is saying, here's what they're saying when they do that,
I'm guilty. And the only way you, my holy,
righteous God, can forgive me is through the blood of this
innocent substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Make the blood to be propitiation
on the mercy seat for my guilty soul. Would you cover my sins
under the blood? That's what you're saying. It's
not just believing Jesus that He's your Helper and your Friend
and all that. It's believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing
He's your Prophet, your Priest, your King, your Lamb, your everything,
your Sacrifice, your Righteousness. That's what it means to believe
and to come by faith in Christ. And it's not a doctrine, it's
a guilty soul coming to a holy God and saying, forgive me for
Christ's sake. That's what that means. It's
repentance. Repentance. Repentance toward
God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Cain was unrepentant. Look at verse 13. Here's what
Cain said unto the Lord. My punishment is greater than
I can bear. In verse 14, he said, You've
driven me out from the face of the earth, but now I face, I'll
be hid, I'll be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and
it's going to come to pass. Everyone that finds me will slay
me, kill me. My punishment's too great, and
somebody's going to kill me. That's not repentance, is it?
That's not repentance at all. He's just sorry for getting caught.
And he's sorry for the consequences. That's the difference. That's
repentance that needs to be repented of. That's the sorrow of this
world that works with wrath. The wrath of God. Getting caught
and just sorry for the consequences. Here's the difference. A child
of God, Cain said, my punishment. The child of God says, My sin
is ever before me. My sin is ever before me. Listen
here. Listen to our favorite psalm. David said this. He said in Psalm
51, he said, Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done
this evil in your sight. that thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest, and clear when you judge." Now, you're
going to be clear. If you send me to hell, you'll
be just. That's what the child of God
said. And the child of God says this about punishment, about
dealing with our sins. He says, He hath not dealt with
us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquity.
That's what the child of God said. My sins deserve far greater than you have dealt
with them. I was going to go to Nehemiah
9 and read that to you. Wonderful, wonderful. Nehemiah
prayed on behalf of the people and he said, we're getting what
we deserve. We're getting what we deserve.
That's what the child of God said. But the wicked one says,
my punishment, my punishment. Look at verse 15 in our text.
The Lord said unto Cain, Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance
shall be taken on him sevenfold. The Lord set a mark upon Cain,
lest any finding him should kill him." What is this mark of Cain? Well, I don't believe it was
an actual physical mark, as some do, any more than the seal in
the forehead. or a number, all of that, the
Scripture speaks of. Symbolic. You see, the elect... Turn quickly to Romans 9. Romans
chapter 9. The elect of God are marked for
mercy. This word marked means God has
set something on them. His purpose, God's purpose that
Cain would run, be a fugitive and a vagabond, put a mark on
him, but God's elect are marks for mercy, while the non-elect
are marked for judgment. Call it election and call it
reprobation. And boy, if there's not a more
hated I don't know what it is, but it's God's Word. Look at
Romans chapter 9. It says in verse 23, God that
he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of
mercy which he had aforeprepared unto glory. The elect of God
are marked for mercy, and they are marked with the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Just like the children of Israel,
their homes had the blood on the doorpost and the lintel,
didn't it? The children of Israel couldn't
see it. They were in the house. They couldn't see that blood.
But what God said, when I see the blood, and all of God's people,
Christ died for his sheep. He died for his people. And that
blood was shed for the remission of their sin. And they have that
blood on them, covering them. But we don't see it. The world
can't see it, but God sees it. They're marked for mercy. They're
marked with the blood. They're one of the elect. They're
the elect of God. I've told you this many times.
But someone argued with Spurgeon and said, you believe that only
the elect would be saved, don't you? He said, well, sure I do.
That's what Scripture said. And he said, then why don't you
just preach to the elect? Thought he'd trapped him, you
know. like people thought they trapped the Lord. And Spurgeon
said, well, I would if they had a big E on them. If I could see
that big E, I would. I wouldn't bother preaching to
anybody else. But I can't see it. So I preached to everybody. And I know that the elect will
hear it and believe. Did I tell you who does see that
big E? God does. The foundation of God
standeth sure having this seal. The Lord knoweth them that are
His. You go out on a playground or
something, there are several children out there, and you've
got two or one, who's your eye on? The world can look at them
all and say they all look the same to me. Not to you. Because
one of them is yours. One of them is yours. The Lord
knoweth them that are His. They are marked for mercy. Thank
God. And while the non-elects are
marked for wrath. Look at verse 22. What if God,
willing to show his wrath to make his power known, endured
with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? Men hate that note. But I didn't
say it and John Calvin didn't say it. And God said it, didn't
He? Jude, it says this, Jude 4, there
are certain men of old ordained to this condemnation, while all
that believe were ordained to eternal life. That's a fact. A blessed fact. A blessed fact. Unfair? That's not fair. Was God unfair to Cain? Was God
unfair to Cain? Was God unfair to Esau? Jacob
have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Esau hated God. Esau hated God. One day he came in from hunting.
Hunting was his life, not God. Hunting. God gave him everything
he had, and he didn't give God a thought until one day he came
in so tired and so hungry, and his brother Jacob was rotten
too. Who made him but differ? God
did. God said, I loved him. God changed
him. Now, he walked with a limp one
day from then on. But anyway, Jacob said, sell
me the birthright. Sell me your rights as the heir,
as the leader of the house, as the spiritual head of the home. All that went with the birthright.
Typical of a godly man in a home to be the priest and so forth
in the home. And Cain said, I don't care about
that stuff. Give me some of those beans." And God hated him. Because he
hated God. He hated God. It's not unfair,
is it? God's not unrighteous. The judge of the earth does right. He does right. I want you to
know this with me in closing. How quickly and violently, go
back to the text, sin entered into this world and escalated.
We talk about man's depravity, and there's the first Here's
the first men. There just aren't many on the
earth. There's just a few. There's just a few. And here this brother, because
of religion, it wasn't, you know, nobody stole anything from him
or threatened him or whatever. It was because of the truth.
And rose up, and you had the whole world that could have gone. Cain could have separated from
his brother. They didn't have to live together.
He rose up and violently bashed his brother's brains out. And Scripture says, you know,
that we are come forth from the womb. In sin did our mothers
conceive us. Eve was a sinner and she brought
forth a sinner named Cain. And buddy, it didn't take long
for that sin to come out violently, did it? And that's all of us
if left to ourselves. My brother and I were talking
last night about this, how we can get so angry within ourselves. The only thing that kept us from
lashing out was we didn't have a weapon in our hands. We didn't
have the opportunity. God didn't let that happen. Is
that not so? Awful. Awful. Cain had uttered and proved an
utter depravity. Verse 16, Cain went out from
the presence of the Lord. Now, I don't think we understand
completely the full import or meaning of that line. You can't
hide from God. Remember David in Psalm 139,
it said, "...where the shy cleave from thy presence. Thou, Lord,
seest me," Hagar said. His eyes behold, His eyelids
try the sons of men. He sees and hears everything.
Men think darkness covers them. Scripture says darkness and light
are alike to the Lord. And yet Cain, it says, went out
from the presence of the Lord. In other words, although God
knows him, He knows him far off. Far off. And if he prays, God's not going
to hear him. If he calls, God's not going
to hear him. That's what that meant. Not going
to hear him. Proverbs 1, so many other scriptures say that. He
said, because I called and he refused, therefore when you call,
I won't answer. You laughed at me, I'm going
to laugh at you. Serious, isn't it? Serious. And God spared Cain's temporal
life, didn't He? He put kind of a hedge about
him. You know, the Lord, there's a scripture, a couple of scriptures.
One says he's the savior of the world. Another in 1 Timothy 4
that says he's the savior of all men, especially them that
believe. You know those verses? I read
them. And people that don't know the scriptures twist those and
rest them as they do others to their own destruction to say
that Christ came to save the whole world. That's what it says. He's the Savior of all men, especially
of them that believe. What that means is that God spares,
and if man lives, it's because God spares their life. He's the
Savior of their life. Like Cain. God spared Cain from
being murdered. My, my. I got in an airplane the other
day, and there are so very few Plane crashes aren't it? Do you
know how many planes take off every minute? The skies are full
of them. What about cars flying by one
another at death-defying speeds and just two feet within? It's
a wonder that there aren't more crashes and deaths and all that.
Well, who's keeping that from happening? God. He spares all
men to make them accountable. I spared you. He didn't give
me a thought. But I'm a God's people. He makes them aware of it. I
remember some experiences I had as a young rebel. And at the
time, well, I'll tell you one. I was 18 years old and working
construction and crawled out on a scaffold. Sixty-five feet
off the ground and that scaffold broke out from under me and I
hit the ground flat on my back. Sixty-five feet landed flat on
my back on concrete. And at the time, a little while
after, I kind of bragged about it. But God, if I had died, I'd have split
hell wide open. But God, evidently, had a purpose
for me, that I wouldn't be a vagabond. And now I look back on that,
I see the hand of God in leading
that particle back. He used that to bring that particle
home. And men laugh at God, defy death,
they call it. God is not mocked. God is not
mocked. We mock ourselves. That's what
we do when we do that. It was spared by the Lord, and
it went on to say that he went out from the presence of the
Lord, dwelt in the land of Nod, in the east of Eden, and Cain
knew his wife, she conceived, and bare Enoch, and built, hold
it, preacher, where Cain get his wife. What difference does it make?
Go on. I had a woman the other day,
claimed to be a Christian. I was talking to her about the
gospel, and of all things, She brought up to me, where did
Cain get his wife? Did he marry his sister? Yes. Let's go on. What difference does it make?
If it made any difference, God would tell us what. That's not... You see, people are taken up
with things that are non-issues, aren't they? The serious thing
was, what did Cain do? Why is Cain banished? Who does
Cain represent? Not foolish questions. Endless
genealogy. Well, read on. It went on to
say he built a city. Now here's man and his posterity. He built a city and called it
after the name of his son. See, if this is all you have
in this earth, this is what you're going to try to hold on to. He's
going to give it your name. Scripture says man's secret thought
is that he's going to live forever. And he names things after his
name because he wants to hold on to it. This is mine. This
is mine. This is mine. Let's lay claim to this. The only thing we have any claim
to is six feet of dirt when it's all over. And he bore his posterity
and they became, and I don't have time to deal with all this,
Notice a man named Lamech had two wives, polygamy, Adel Christi. It didn't take long, did it? And then there were men born
of his family who were farmers, cattlemen, musicians, harp and
organ. The man wasn't a monkey. He's
turned into one. He didn't begin as one. He was
an upright and a brilliant creature. gave men gifts and talents and
so forth. There's no denying that. Mankind
is a marvelous creature. His ingenuity, his gifts, his
talents are marvelous. Proof that God made him. No better proof than that. But
what does man do with it? Does he give God the glory? No,
it's for himself. It's for himself. And that's
all he's got. That's all man's got is what's
in this earth. And then old Lamech slew two
fellows at once. And what he was doing there was
bragging about it. Bragging about his dominance, his power. Cain, you know, slew a man and
his great-grandson, whoever it was, slew two of them and said,
Man, I'm the man. I slew two fellas. And men have
been bragging about their oppression and their violence and their
strength ever since. Things haven't changed. This
is where it started. This is where it all started.
Proud. Unrepentant. Gifted. Talented. But cursed. Cursed by God. And the last two
verses are a real blessing. It says that Cain knew his wife
Eve again, and she bore a son named Seth. And now, they're
going to start calling on the Lord. And somebody came from
Seth named Noah. Oh, I can't wait to get to that
story. Thank you.