That song Bobby just sang, Not
What These Hands Have Done, is a perfect introduction to my
message. We read the account of Cain and
Abel, their offerings in Genesis chapter 4. Two men, brothers,
two offerings and two results. Cain offered what those hands
had done and God said, no way, no way. He didn't have respect
for the king's offering because it was the work of his own hands. But Abel, as Bobby's saying,
what he offered that lamb with that spotter blemish is a picture. It portrayed the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what God saw when he looked
at Abel's sacrifice and he was well pleased with it, well pleased. Back in chapter 11 of Hebrews,
look at the definition of faith as it's given in verse 1. And
then I'd like for us to take that definition and place it
right here at verse 4, our text. Now faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. After Paul
gives this definition of faith, he goes on, I think 17 times,
and gives example after example of the definition of faith that
he just gave. He showed it in action. And in
each and every case, we're told of things done in faith, things
not seen. All these Old Testament believers
acted by faith, giving, as Don says, shoe-leather illustrations
of verse 1. It shows faith in action. They did this. This is what these
illustrations are. Rather, this is what they illustrate,
what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. While we look not
at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen. Just as he said in verse 1 here
in Hebrews 11. For the things which are seen
are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Again, verse 1, Paul tells us
faith is the substance. The substance, that is, it's
the ground, the foundation of our hope of eternal salvation
in our faith in Jesus Christ, or by our faith in Christ. He
goes on to say, and faith is the evidence, the evidence of
our everlasting salvation. It's not the cause of salvation.
No one is saved without faith. But faith itself is not the cause
of salvation, but it's the evidence of salvation, the sure and certain
fruit of salvation. Faith is the verification. There's a good word. Faith is
the verification of things not seen. The word faith, as it's
used in the Bible, in the scriptures, refers to that God-given confidence. Now there's a distinction. Not a profession of hope without
any foundation. Everybody we know just about
has that. But faith is a gift of God. It's that God-given confidence
believing sinners have in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what
Abel had. That's what his sacrifice demonstrates. He believed that. Anything other
than this, this God-given, God-given, it would be easy to pitch tent
there. Faith is not a leap in the dark. Faith is a gift of
God. By grace are ye saved through
faith, and that's not yourself, the grace, the faith, the salvation,
it's the gift of God. In another place, Paul tells
us that faith is the operation of God. God works faith in those
that the Holy Spirit regenerates. It's His gift. And anything other
than that is not faith. It's only a delusion. A false hope by those who've
been deceived or the hope of a hypocrite, but it's not the
gift of God. Notice what Paul says in verse
6 here in Hebrews 11. But without faith, it is impossible
to please him. God was pleased with Abel's sacrifice
because Abel offered it by faith in Christ. But without faith
it's impossible to please Him, that is God. For he that cometh
to God must believe that He is, that God exists, and that He
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Paul tells us there
that the only way to be saved, the only way to be accepted by
God, the only way to walk with God is Enoch did. The only way
to please God as Abel did is by faith. Faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because after all, Christ is
the object of faith. Isn't that what we sing? My faith
has found a resting place. And faith, which is the gift
of God, always does. It doesn't float around looking
for some place to light. Faith always has Jesus Christ
as its object. It looks to Him. It looks to
Him and is saved by a look at the crucified one. Now let's
take, as we said, the definition of faith as it's given in verse
1. And place it before verse 4. This is one of the many examples
that Paul gives of exactly what genuine faith is and what it
does. Let's read the text again. By
faith, verse 4, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice
than Cain, by which he obtained witness. God witnessed that he
was righteous. God said so. God testifying of
his gifts, and by it, he being dead, yet speaketh." My message
is this, Abel's more excellent sacrifice. And first know this,
Abel's faith enabled him to offer that sacrifice. because he believed
that sacrifice would be accepted by God. He believed it would
be pleasing to God. Abel understood some things his
brother didn't. He understood that the only way
a guilty man, underline that. In your mind, underline that.
Highlight that. Circle that. Whatever it takes
to bring your attention back to that again and again and over
and over, do it. understand it, or rather, Abel
understood that the only way, the only way a guilty man could
approach a holy God is by blood atonement. That's it. God said
without the shedding of blood, there's no remission. God said
when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. Moses, tell him to
sprinkle that blood, and when I see that, I'll pass over you. Why? Why? What was so special
about the blood of that man? It pictured God's son in whom
God is well pleased. Now I'm sure that Cain and Abel
were both instructed by their father Adam in the worship of
God. Adam told both his sons who God
was and what God requires. If you read Genesis chapter 3,
you'll see, and I thought this was very interesting, you'll
see four specific things God told, revealed to Adam and Eve
in the garden after they fell. And all four, this is what I
like, all four of those things are manifest in Abel's worship. He did all four of those things
that God demanded and God required. Abel proved that he really did
believe God and how God was to be approached. The first one
is this. In order for a sinner to stand
accepted before the thrice holy God, he must have a covering. He dare not stand before God
with the labor of his own hands. He must have a covering and there
is only one. There is only one covering that
God Almighty accepts. There's only one covering by
which a sinner stands before a holy God accepted and that
is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me get wrapped
up in that robe that perfect robe of perfect righteousness,
and I have nothing to fear from God. No, not at all. He's my
Father. Christ said, I'm going back to
my Father and your Father. He's my God and He's your God
too. Christ, our elder brother, has
gone to that place, the Father's house, to prepare a place for
us as well. Second thing that God taught
Adam after the fall is that which is of human making. His fig leaves,
Adam's fig leaves, are worthless before the Lord. Really. Now those fig leaves
represent, picture every work of man that he tries to perform
to be established, accepted before God Almighty. God said, it won't
do, it won't do. They're fig leaves. They're worthless. All of your righteousnesses,
plural, are filthy rags. They're worthless. They're an
insult to me. They're a dishonor to me. That's
what our works represent. The third thing, God himself,
Adam found this out, didn't he? Thankfully, God himself must
provide the covering. God himself must provide that
perfect righteousness in which sinners are clothed. The sinner's
only righteousness before God is the righteousness God gives
us by imputation in his son. The fourth thing, the covering
God requires can only be obtained experimentally by faith, by faith,
by bloodshedding, by the blood of an innocent victim. Abel believed
that. All four of those things can
be seen clearly in Abel's offering of the land before God. He acted
on that belief. Remember what James wrote. He
says, show me your faith without your works. And I'll show you
my faith by my works. You say you believe God. You
do no more than devils. They believe and they do more
than you. They tremble. He says, my works, although they
are not the cause of my salvation, they're the fruit of salvation.
They're the evidence of my faith. So it was with Abel. Faith, as
we read there in verse 1, is the evidence. of things not seen. Not seen. Faith is the litmus
test. Examine yourselves, Paul wrote,
whether you be what? Examine yourselves. Self-examination. Oh, we shun that. But examine
yourselves whether you be what? In the church, in the water,
in the doctor? No. Examine yourself whether
you be in the faith. Meaning, whether you truly believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith, as we said, is God's gift
and God's operation. You remember how Martin Luther
learned that, how God taught him? Ah, so if ever there was
a man, and he said this himself, he said, if ever there was a
monk that could have been justified by their works, by their sacrifices,
by their labor of their own hands, he said, I was that man. My,
so he punished himself, starved himself, and all these things
he did he thought was appeasing God Almighty. And one day, in
the very process of doing that ignorant stuff, a light shone
from heaven. God shot his word into Luther's
heart and it was this, the just shall live by faith. And Martin
Luther got up off his knees and said, The just shall live by
faith? Then why am I doing all this? Oh, and he, God by that man set
a fire that went through the Catholic Church, and I would
dare say they haven't recovered from it yet, but I'm afraid they
have. Oh, may God be pleased to light
such a fire again. Oh, the just shall live by faith. That sounds a lot different,
doesn't it? Doesn't that sound so much different? then I made
a decision for Jesus. What does that mean? And I'm
not trying to be cute. No, I mean, search the... The
Lord never talked that way. He said, come unto me and you'll
find rest. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. But a decision for Jesus, what
does that mean? I read an article, perhaps you
did too, in Clay Curtis's bulletin the day, for the day, from the
text, for the love of Christ constraineth us. The title was,
The Constraining Love of Christ. And Clay asked this question,
does the love of Christ really do that? Does it really accomplish
this in his people? Did Christ's love for Paul really
make him forsake his will, works, religion, and publicly identify
himself with the church of our Redeemer? Did the love of Christ
really constrain Paul to never forsake the assembly together
with his brethren under the preaching of the gospel? Did Christ's love
really constrain Paul to hazard his own life as he preached the
unsearchable riches of Christ? Christ's great love for us, as
with Paul, constrained his people to persevere in faith and to
love. Endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Let folks say we're crazy,
Clay wrote, like they did of Paul. Paul, you're beside yourself. Much learning has made you mad.
Let them say he's too serious. But Clay went on to write, we
say with Paul, the love of Christ constraineth us. Doesn't that
sound so much different? Doesn't that sound almost extreme
in the light of today's easy believism? When everybody claims
to be a Christian regardless of whether they serve God or
not, worship God or not, support the gospel or not, have any love
for his word, his people, his glorious gospel, whether they
do or not, they claim to be a believer. And I know it's tough. I experienced
this, and I'm sure you do too, with our loved ones. It takes
grace, because as we said, about everybody's made a profession
of faith. And it takes grace not to go along with that. Not
to give them the impression, people who obviously don't know
God, but profess to, God give us grace not to give them the
impression that we believe that they're saved when they're not.
That's the last thing they need. No, no, don't prop them up. Pray that God Almighty will kick
those props out from under them and show them their need of Christ. It is to be even more importantly,
not only does it do them no good, It is to be untrue to that one,
the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have claimed allegiance to. Paul said, do I now please men
or God? If I pleased men, I wouldn't
be the servant of Christ. Remember, able shows faith, cometh
by hearing. That's the second thing. We're
not fatalists. You know, people hear that you
believe predestination, don't they, Billy? as a cuss word in
most Baptist churches today, but they hear you believe in
predestination and they start thinking all kinds of crazy things.
Nothing according to God's word, nothing what you actually believe,
but all kinds of imaginary boogeymen just pop into their heads. Oh,
you believe babies go to hell, you believe it doesn't make any
difference, we're predestined through one or the other, there's
nothing that we can do. I wish they would apply that
same logic, for example, to eating. I mean, did anybody here get
up this morning and think like this, well, I'm hungry, but I'm
not going to eat because if God's ordained that I should live,
I'm going to live whether I eat or not. Nobody thinks that way. They only think that way when
it comes to God's Word. Make such foolish decorations
concerning God's Word. If anybody thinks that way, I
would be tempted to also think, if I did, that God must have
ordained me an idiot and I made my calling and election sure.
No, God who ordained the means, ordained the end of that means. I live, God ordained that I should
eat to do so. Faith cometh by hearing. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how
shall they believe in him, Romans 10, in whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they
preach except they be sent? This is how God sends them. How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace, that bring glad tidings
of good things. I heard a man preaching years
ago. I was in the congregation, heard
him with my own ears. He was preaching from Acts 16,
the Philippian Jailer. Remember that? And he said concerning
that Philippian Jailer, he said, that man was a rank Arminian. Well, he probably was. We all
are by nature. We're born that way. But he based
that belief on the question that the man asked Paul and Silas.
That is, what must I do to be saved? He said, that shows he
was a rank Armenian. He thought he could work his
way to heaven. And I looked at that text again.
I said, I don't see that. I don't see none of that. Where's
he getting that? John, I would love to hear, and I know you
would too, when we preach or teach or as we witness, I would
love to hear somebody cry out, Larry, what must I do to be saved? I would love to hear that. Wouldn't
you? Wouldn't you? And Paul, I think,
knew a little bit about election, don't you? I think he knew something
about God's purpose to save and man's inability, but you notice
how he answered? He said, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house as well,
if they believe. And that's exactly what Jesus
Christ told us to do. Go into all the world and preach
the gospel. He that believeth, what shall be saved? In Acts 16, that same passage,
we read these words. The jailer took them the same
hour, that is Paul and Silas, the same hour of the night, and
washed their stripes and was baptized he and all his house
straightway. And when it brought them into
his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing
in God with all his house. Can you imagine some doctor of
theology walking in and saying, now, just wait a minute, wait
a minute. Hold the fort. You shouldn't be rejoicing like
this. You don't have a right to rejoice like this. You don't
understand enough. You've not experienced enough.
You've not felt enough. That's like the story I know
that you've heard it. I think I've told you before. You've
heard it from other preachers about the wealthy farmer who
invited two scholars to his house for supper one evening. And he
served a roast beef with gravy and biscuits and all the fixings. And these two wise acres sat
down and they said, They asked the guest, how was this, or asked
their host, how was this cow raised? What was he fed on? And how was this roast prepared?
And on and on and blah, blah, blah. And while they were debating,
debating philosophy and all this nonsense, here come a farmhand
that worked for the man, for the host, and sat down and filled
his plate up and just started eating away and enjoyed every
bite. Even so, child of God, even so,
believing sinner, rejoice. Rejoice in God's unspeakable
gift of Jesus Christ, that free grace, and that free grace that
he has poured on you, wow, on you. Of all people, God had mercy
on me. Of all people, God chose me. Christ died for me. In the fullness
of time, God called this sinner out of darkness and revealed
himself to me, my soul. I don't have any right to get
over that. No excuse to get over that. That
should be the greatest wonder to this soul in the world. Jesus
Christ loved me and gave himself for me. Rejoice in that great
salvation. I'll bet that Jeller and his
family, sitting around the table with Paul and Silas, were probably
singing something like this, Oh, happy day, happy day, when
Jesus washed my sins away. Happy day, happy day. Here's
the second thing. Why did God, we've mentioned
it, but more particularly, why did God declare Abel righteous? And why did he reject Cain? Robert Hawker answered that better
than I can, and let me just quote from his commentary. Where we
read in Genesis 4 these words, the Lord had respect unto Abel
and his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had not
respect. Hawker wrote, now we should not
have known with that clearness we now do through the divine
teaching what made the vast difference in those men and in the Lord's
different acceptance of their persons and offerings, but from
God the Holy Spirit's teaching in Holy Scripture. But when the
Lord said that it was by faith Abel offered a more excellent
sacrifice than Cain, we discovered the reason. Abel had an eye by
faith to Christ, the promised seed. Abel knew himself to be
a sinner, sprung from the fallen race of his father Adam, and
therefore he came with the firstlings of his flock in token of his
consciousness of sin, and that he looked wholly for acceptance
in the blood of Christ. On the other hand, Cain, in his
offering, the labor of his hands, as Bobby sang, had respect only
to God as a creator, neither confessing himself a sinner or
having a need of a Redeemer and therefore old Hawker said he
was in reality the first deist in the world. Now a deist is
someone who has a rational belief in God based entirely on reason
and not revelation. A belief in God based on reason
alone and not the gift of saving faith, revealing his son in the
heart of a sinner. A deist in our day would be somebody
that you have probably heard say something like this. Oh,
I worship God. You go on the church. I don't
need that. I don't need to gather with God's people. I don't need
to hear the gospel. I worship God up here on the
mountain or down at the lake while I'm fishing. That's my
church. Poppycock. Poppycock. Not so. In Romans chapter 1,
Paul tells us the result of such nonsense is that The invisible
things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal
power and Godhead, so they are without excuse. Professing themselves
to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the
invisible God into the image made like unto corruptible man.
like birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore,
God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own
hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served
the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever." That's
what they say when murder the newborns, but save the trees,
save the planet. God have mercy. Cain's offering
was one of his own works, was the result rather of his own
work. Somebody said he must have offered a bushel of turnips,
because you can't get blood out of a turnip. Cain, in reality, in his offering,
had no reference whatsoever to Jesus Christ. Cain was a hypocrite. He refused to comply with the
revealed will of God, and yet he attempted to pretend to worship
God. And his so-called worship was
an insult to God Almighty. It was the way of self-will,
self-righteousness, unbelief, disobedience, and religious hypocrisy. Oh, but Abel's more excellent
sacrifice? God himself said, Abel was a
righteous man. God testified to that man and
he said, he being dead yet speaketh. Are you listening? Are you listening?
Abel is dead yet his faith and example speak loudly. Believers
today receive witness of the righteousness before God in exactly
the same way that Abel did. As we believe God We have the
witness of the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that
we are the children of God. We dare not try to come to God
like Cain with the labor of our own hands. But we come. We come. How do we come? Same way Abel did. We come trusting
in and pleading and believing in the righteousness of Christ
knowing that, knowing that With His holy garments on, I am as
holy as God's own Son. Jesus Christ is that more excellent
sacrifice. More excellent than what? Everything. Everything. God saw His Son in
Abel's offering and He could not have been more pleased. He was pleased. He had respect
to Abel's sacrifice. He could not but respect Abel's
sacrifice. If we are in Christ Jesus, God
is well pleased with us too. I love that verse in Ephesians
4 where Paul says, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven
you. For Christ's sake, child of God,
when the storms of life are raging, you can rest right there. for
Christ's sake. This is the place of rest, the
place of peace, the place where I find all that I need. Oh my
soul, stay put. Stay right there in the beloved. God's marvelous grace calls me
to dwell in this wonderful place. God sees my Savior and then he
sees me in the beloved, accepted and free. Let me stay right there. Stay right there. Let me wrap this up. Cain and
Abel, who do you identify with? Who
do you stand with? Whose shoes do you want to be
in or are you in? I tell you what, I don't want
to stand in Cain's shoes and receive Cain's judgment. Let
me stand together with Abel and every believing sinner in Christ
alone, rejoicing to tell anybody who will listen, my hope is built
on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not
trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. When he shall come with trumpet
sound, and men cry for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them
and hide them from the face of him that set it upon the throne
and from the wrath of the Lamb, then in Christ shall I be found. Dressed in his righteousness
alone, for us to stand before the throne." One preacher in
his message one time quoted that hymn, the solid rock, and he
said, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other rocks are
shamrocks. I suppose he meant they're fake. They're not real. They're no
true foundation. Thank the God of all grace if
you can say on Christ, the solid rock I stand, all of the ground
is sinking sand. God bless you. Thank you for
your time.