If you have your Bibles, turn
please to Genesis chapter 3. I want to read the last two verses
of chapter 3 and then read chapter 4 verses 9 through 16. The title
of this message is Exiled. Exiled. Verses 23 and 24 of chapter 3,
Therefore the Lord God sent him for, from the Garden of Eden,
to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out
the man, and he placed at 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. And over in chapter 4 and verse
9 it says, And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? And
he said, Hast thou, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's
blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed
from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive thy brother's
blood from thy hand. When thou tellest the ground,
it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive
and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto
the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. 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 whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken
on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon
Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from
the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on
the East of Eden. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank
You for Your Word. We thank You for the fact that
it sets forth the truth that is in Jesus Christ in so many
different ways that it draws our attention to and our heart
and mind to Him who is worthy of all praise and honor. We thank
You, Father, that You have been so kind and merciful to us that
you have shown grace to poor sinners. That when our representative
and federal head Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, that you
did not slay him, though the wages of sin is death, but you
slew beasts and substituted for him and covered his nakedness. Picturing the wonderful righteousness
of Christ are being saved by his substitutionary work. We're
thankful also for the clear representation of humanity as it is. We thank you, Father, that you
didn't pull any punches in reminding us over and over again of what
we are, where we come from. Father, we thank you for the
understanding of depravity as much as we do. For it gives us such a thankful
heart for grace. Father, we pray for those of
our company who are sick and going through trials. We ask, Lord,
You'd be with them. Watch over them. Heal them. Remember, especially
Dave, as he's going to have this tumor removed from the back of
his throat and his tongue. We ask, Lord, You'd be with him. be with Clora and Stephen as
they minister to him also. And Father, would you be so pleased
as to fix their hearts and minds wholly upon thee, for these trials
will be greater than they can imagine. We pray for the others
who requested prayer for those of our company who are sick and
going through different treatments. We ask that you help for them.
We pray that you strengthen them and help them, give them peace
in Jesus Christ. be with us this afternoon. Give us the gospel and dismiss
us with your blessing. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Now what I've been trying to
do in this study so far in Genesis is pick up new things that never
happened before, things that hadn't occurred. And in Genesis
chapter 3 and in chapter 4 we have two exiles represented Those
who are cast out of a certain place, never to be allowed to
return again, like John the Isle on the Isle of Patmos was exiled
there and God gave him the vision of the revelation of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now in this, what I've read to
you this afternoon, Adam was exiled from the Garden of Eden. And Cain was exiled from the
presence of God. These two are the first two exiles
in Scripture. As I said, Adam was exiled in
the garden, but not exiled from the way of life. That's the important
thing as we look at his exile. God, before it says He drove
him out, in verse 23 it says He sent him out. And they are
two different words. Therefore the Lord God sent him
forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which
he came. And he drove out the man and he placed at the east
of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way
to keep the way of the tree of life. Adam was taught of God. God had taught him by word of
mouth. God had taught him by example.
God had taught him how it was that God was satisfied for sinners
when He slew those beasts. He was taught of God in the matter
of how to worship God, how to approach God, how to bring an
offering to this altar at the east of Eden, which pictured
the mercy seat or the Ark of the Covenant with the two cherubim
and the flaming sword above it, which the word is shaken, which
is in reference to the Shekinah glory of God, as that which accepts
or rejects the sacrifice. It is the glory of God that is
the basis upon which the sacrifice is either accepted or rejected. If it is offered for the glory
of God, then it will be accepted. If it is offered for the glory
of man, or for any other, or for the partial glory of man
and the partial glory of God, it will be rejected. And that
is seen in the two offerings by Cain and Abel. We preach the
Gospel. Why do we preach the Gospel?
Because it speaks of the offering. the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus
Christ which was sacrificed, Christ gave Himself to glorify
God. Everything that happens in this
world, regardless of what it is, even in the events that take
place here and prior to this, in the beginning, all of it is
going to redound to the glory of the grace of God. It's all
about His graciousness and His goodness. When telling His glory
to Abraham, He said, I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.
That's the gospel. I will make My goodness to pass
before you. I will be gracious unto whom
I will be gracious, and show mercy unto whom I will show mercy.
So when Adam left the Garden of Eden, he was sent out from
the Garden of Eden. And he taught Abel to offer these
sacrifices. Hebrews chapter 11 says, Abel
offered these sacrifices in faith. So we know that Abel had heard
the gospel from his daddy, Adam, on how to worship God. Because
faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. You see,
Adam was sent from the garden. Now he drove out because sinners
can't be in paradise without the blood of the Lamb. Sinners
can't be there. Now, God had slain beasts for
him, but He drove him out, because he's entering into a world where
he and his wife will begin to procreate, and the world will
be populated. And those that come forth from
his loin are going to be like him, because they're made in
his likeness, and he's a sinner. He's a sinner. And they're going
to come forth from the womb as sinners. And they're going to
need something. They're going to need the gospel.
And so he went out of the garden with the gospel. He was exiled.
He was exiled, but he was exiled according to God's purpose. And we might as well just mark
this down while we're at it. The fall itself, when Adam fell
in the Garden of Eden, was for the glory of God's grace. It simply was. Had Adam not fallen,
there would have never grace been shown. No mercy, for both of those are
for sinners. Old John Bunyan said, I don't
know what it would have been like to live in a world where
Adam did not sin, but I wouldn't trade whatever he had for the
knowledge of the grace of Almighty God, for knowing what it is to
be a sinner saved by grace. Grace is for sinners and everything
redounds to the glory of God's grace. Adam's exile was the beginning
of the fulfillment of Genesis 3.15. Adam at this time had not
known Eve. Cain had not been born. A child
had not been born to this couple. Genesis 3.15 had promised that
the seed of woman, Eve's son, Eve's child, the seed of woman,
because that's what Eve means, mother of us all, or woman. That
seed would bruise the serpent's head. That was a promise of God
to the serpent. This is the beginning of it. This is the beginning
of the fulfillment of it, of Genesis 3.15. A child is born. Before he's born, he's going
to be born into a world where the gospel is. Because Adam carried
the gospel with him when he went out of the garden. Now, there's
no use to try to explain the fullness and the wonder of all
this. Just bow to it and thank God that you have some degree
of understanding that all this happened for the purpose of God's
glory. Adam's exile did not remove him
from the presence of God. It did not remove him from the
presence of God. but rather ensured that the way
to God was kept for the elect. For we read that in the last
verse of verse 24, chapter 3, this altar at the east of Eden
with cherubims and a flaming sword that turned every which
way, it did that to keep, not to get rid of, but to keep the
way of the tree of life. Where's the way of tree of life?
What is it? It's Christ. We can look at this, though I believe
these are actual places, we can look at them in the language
of spirituality, in the language of the Spirit, and see that the
way of the tree of life is Christ. He is salvation. The way of salvation
is that blood shed on behalf of sinners. That's the way of
salvation. That way was kept. Discarded. Adam was not discarded. He was sent out with the gospel.
He drove out because there's a world out here that's going
to have to have the gospel for people to come back to this altar
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the tree of life. That's an
absolute necessity. His exile was to a world, or
to the world, but the world to him was the theater of providence. And he walked upon the stage
of eternal grace. Shakespeare wasn't far off when
he said, The whole world is but a stage, and each man an actor
playing his part. Now we don't like to think of
ourselves in terms like that. We like to think of ourselves
as individuals who think and act and will in our own, according
to our own dictates of our own heart. And we do, except for
the fact that the dictates of our heart are governed by God's
will. By God's will. You say, well,
what about when I sin? Don't say when, that's stupid.
You sin all the time. The idea that people think, well,
if I do something bad, that's sin, but if I don't do something
bad, that's not. If you don't do anything but sit there and
be, you're a sinner. That's all you've got. You've
just got to be. You sit and write. You know, people look at people
in rocking chairs and they think they're good. You know, they get old,
they think they're good. No, they're just rebels. They
can't do it anymore, but they are rebels. If they had the energy
and the strength, they would be just as wretched as they were
when they were a teenager. And that's the truth, because
the heart is the same and the mind is the same. But this whole
world, all of human history, from the first grain of sand
that God made, and the first star He hung in the skies, and
the first man He made from the mud and blowed the breath of
life into his body. From that day to the end of time,
all of human history, all of prehistory, all of prevenient
grace, all of eternity out yonder, all of the universe and the stars
and the magnitude of all of that, all of it, Adam's sin, Adam's
recovery, the creation of man, and the new creation, all of
it is going to redound to the glory of God's grace. Even His wrath against the ungodly
when He cast them in the hell will redound to the glory of
His grace. You read Babylon is cast into
hell and all the religions that follow in her path are cast into
hell and finally into the lake of the fire. The song of heaven
is about how gracious Christ is. That's the song of heaven,
that He reigns in grace. Adam's exile. He was exiled but
he went with the gospel and he brought it to you and I. seed. Now Cain's exile was to the world
also, but to a bleak and uncaring place. The words you just described,
Cain, give us a sense of what his punishment was. And I know
men have tried to figure this out, and I'm not trying to figure
it out either. Let me just tell you what I think. And what it says,
and if I have an opinion, I'll say, this is what I think. Don't
mean it's inspired. Means probably not. But, you
know, it's what I think anyway. The words used to describe Cain
are, first he's called a fugitive. You know what a fugitive is?
If you ever run from the law, you know what a fugitive is.
You're a fugitive if you've ever run from the law. It implies
being on the run, always looking over your shoulder, paranoia,
having paranoia, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Does
that sound anything like you? Sometimes, I mean really, you
ever think something nice happens to us, something wonderful happens,
you're happy, you think, this can't last long. If I walk around
the corner, somebody's going to snap me over the head with a
stick or something. Because that's the way we think. You know where
that comes from, don't you? It comes from the human nature.
We're very superstitious. Adam was not a fugitive. He was
an exile, but he was not a fugitive. Adam was a refugee. A whole different
thing. Cain was a fugitive. He was on
the run. He was hiding from God. He didn't
know anything he wanted to do with God. Adam wasn't hiding
from God. He had hidden from God, but he
got discovered. Now Adam is a refugee. Why do
I say that? Because he's got a refuge. And
if your refuge is the Lord Jesus Christ, we just sang it in that
song. We just sang, If you are home of the Lord Jesus Christ,
our refuge. What a refuge we have. If you have a refuge, that
makes you a refugee. You think about those refugee
camps. I know what's going through your head. All those refugee
camps where those people have fled to a safe place outside
of Warsaw. A bunch of refugees. That's what
every child of God is. He's a refugee. Adam wasn't a
fugitive. He was a refugee. Cain was a
fugitive. He was a fugitive. Cain was called
a vagabond. That's a word that people use.
They used it a lot when I was a kid. When I was growing up,
you'd see a homeless guy or somebody who refused to work walking down
the street, they'd say they wanted vagabonds. Vagabond. What does vagabond mean? It means
a person who's aimless. Aimless. He's without purpose. Has no ambition, no goal, and
no hope. That's what Cain was. When the
Lord put him into this new place, outside the presence of God,
And I'll explain that in a minute. He was aimless, purposeless. He's just moving about. He was
doomed to wander the earth without direction, just like a person
who's lost. The earth he resided upon would
supply him with some, but not fully. That's the language that
God uses. It would give him nothing that
satisfied his soul. an aimless person. There's nothing
on this earth that will satisfy your soul. You like to buy stuff? I like to buy stuff. If I had
a lot, a lot of money, I'd be ridiculous. I would have whatever
my eyes fell upon if I had a lot, a lot of money. I just would.
Because I like to buy stuff. But I bought plenty of stuff
in my 65 years and none of it has lasted and none of it has
satisfied me. And you know, it don't take me long to get sick
of it and want to throw it away and give it to somebody else and let them
be dissatisfied with it. Here's what Cain found when he
was sent out by God into a cold, cruel world. He found nothing. He found nothing that would satisfy
his soul. What a picture of a lost man that he is. It says that God put a mark on
him. I don't know what that means exactly. It could be like the
kind of mark that says the mark of the beast. Or it could be
the mark that God puts in the forehead of somebody. Or it could
be, because the word seems to imply, comes from a word that
means sad countenance, or countenance. What was the mark of Cain? He
lived in a world, and you could tell he didn't like it. You could
tell he was just one unhappy sort. He was a sad sack. He went
out from God's presence. How do you do that? God is everywhere.
Everything is in God. How do you go out from God's
presence? This man had no access to God. If he called on God,
God wouldn't hear him. If he cried out, God wouldn't
hear him. He had no access to the grace
of God. He resided in the land called the Land of Nod. And that
again means the same thing basically as a vagabond, an aimless wanderer. That's what it is to be in this
world without Christ. You may think you have an aim. You may
think you have a goal. But when you realize it, it will
be nothing. It won't count for a thing. The distinction between Adam
and Cain was declared in the results of the respective exiles. Adam's exile is really described
with but one bit of information. What was Adam's exile like? He worshipped God. That's the
record we have. Taught his boys how to worship
God. Well, didn't he till the ground? I'm sure he did. He got
his fruit by the sweat of his face, I'm sure. All those things
that God said would happen, happen. But none of them are mentioned.
When He talks about Adam, as soon as he's exiled, as soon
as he's put out of this world, his sons bring an offering to
God. That's the first thing mentioned.
So it's not much. It's just everything. It's just
everything. What about Cain? With Cain, it
is said that he and his descendants did things that rooted them. in this cursed earth. Adam, as
far as we know, all of God's people throughout the book of
God were just nomads. They were traveling through.
They were called sojourners in this old world. Of the world,
but not of the world is how the child of God is described. But
Cain, if you read what he did, in verse 17 it says, his descendants
created cities. Verse 19, the idea of polygamy
came into existence with multiple wives. In verse 23, the cutting artificer
in brass and wood. In verse 24, entitlement and
pride when Lamech said, I've killed two men. I've killed a
man today. If God punished Cain seven times, he ought to punish
me 70 times seven, being a smart aleck. entitlement and pride,
a light view of God. This is what you read about Cain's
descendants and his descendants are listed here. And what they
did, what did Adams, what did Adams come out of the garden
with? He came out with the gospel and
a way to worship God. What did Cain do when he was
exiled? He started planting his roots deep into this world. deep into this world. Everything
about Cain says this world. This world. Adam is not said
to build a city or do things that tie him to the earth. Adam
was in the world but not of it. Cain was in the world and he
was of it. Many years ago I heard Jimmy Swagger stand on TV with
tears running down his face which he was want to do often. Begging for eight million dollars. Showed these pretty little graphic
images of flowers out in the field and wheat and the amber
waves of grain waving back and forth. Real pretty music in the
background. And he said, the fields are white
for harvest. Tears running down his face.
And then we need eight million dollars and with eight million
dollars we can get this gospel out to everybody in the whole
world. People were weeping in the audience and clapping at
the thought. He got his eight million dollars. He did. Got
it in a weekend. And two weeks later he built
a three million dollar home. Why? Because his roots are in
this world. not in heaven. One of these exiles put down
their roots here, the other laid up treasures in heaven. Two exiles. Two categories of people. The
graced and the condemned. That's what these two exiles
represent. Okay. Father, bless us for understanding and praying
in Christ's name. Amen.