Well, we come to our time in the word of God and, as always, this takes us as it were into the divine presence. And we hear God Himself speak to us. We are in Genesis Chapter 4, Genesis Chapter 4. I confess to you that I usually am pretty good at making a transition mentally from the morning message to the evening message, and they are almost always very divergent subjects. And this is certainly the case today. But this is one of those times when such a transition has been somewhat difficult. I have been so preoccupied and so devoured by the theme that we have been dealing with in the morning, that it’s a challenge to be able to sort of unthink all of that and replace it with the matters before us tonight. But we’re going to seek the goodness of God to allow us to do that as we come to this most significant and important chapter in Genesis Chapter 4.
For those of you visiting with us, we are in a study of origins, and Genesis is the book of origins. There are the origins of the material world here, and there are the origins of the spiritual world as well. And we’re in Chapter 4. And the story is the famous story of Cain and Abel. Cain is presented here as the prototype of the doomed. He is the classic model of an unconverted, undelivered, unsaved, lost sinner. He is the original apostate who, when confronted by God with the opportunity for forgiveness and the opportunity for deliverance, refuses. He is the first unbeliever who ever lived. Adam was a believer, as we’ve learned. Eve was a believer. This passage indicates to us that Abel was a believer. These are the only four people on the planet. Here is the first unbeliever; the original rejecter, the first fool, the first man utterly without God, without hope, without blessing. Cain’s history is a tragic, tragic story. Let me remind you of it by reading the text to you.
“Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, …she said, ‘I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.’ And again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. “So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. And Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. And the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” “Cain told” his brother Abel or spoke, rather, to his brother Abel. And as a result of that conversation, we read on:
“It came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ And he said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ And He said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you; you shall be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.’ And Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is too great to bear! Behold, Thou has driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Thy face I shall be hidden, and I shall be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and it will come about that whoever finds me will kill me.’ “So the Lord said to him, ‘Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.’ And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, lest anyone finding him should slay him. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
That’s the story of Cain. Its history, as I said, is a sad tragedy. There are several points that I am pointing out to you as we look through these 16 verses. We began last Lord’s day. Let me remind you that only the first point is positive.
1. The first point is this: The doomed have hopeful beginnings.
Cain shows us that even the lost and the damned have hopeful beginnings. And in his case, it was very hopeful.
Verse 1: “The man had relations with his wife.” The actual Hebrew word, he knew his wife Eve. “And she conceived and gave birth to Cain. And she said, ‘I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.’” She knew that this child was a gift from God, as are all those precious little ones that come into the world, some of whom we have celebrated even tonight in our parent dedication. It is the Lord who allows us the privilege of having that life come into our family. Eve recognized that with the help of the Lord, she had been given a son. As I pointed out last time, she may have even believed that this son was the fulfillment of the promise back in Chapter 3 Verse 15 that she would have a seed who would “bruise the serpent’s head.”
Maybe she believed that this was the fulfillment of that promise from God; that this was the one who would come and would “bruise the serpent’s head,” that terrible, dreadful, disastrous, deadly serpent who had led the human race into sin needed to be destroyed. He needed to be overturned. His power needed to be vanquished, and paradise needed to be regained. And God said there would come a seed out of the woman who would do just that. And it may well have been that she believed this was that fulfillment in her son.
Cain, Qayin in the Hebrew, means a formed thing, a creature, something made. The word can even mean a smith or a refiner or a craftsman who makes something. And so she names her son that one that was made with the help of the Lord. What hopeful beginnings she must have felt in her heart when that first child was born. Perhaps that child was to be the one who would bring the end of Satan and restore paradise.
And then again in Verse 2, she gave birth to another son. Some believe they were twins. There’s no real, compelling indication in the text of that. But again, at sometime she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel’s name, Hebel, means a mere breath. And certainly, he was aptly named, because his life was so very brief. It’s reasonable to assume he died somewhere in his teenage years, when everybody else potentially lived to be eight or 900 years old. So his life was very brief. Soon after these boys had reached adulthood, all of those wonderful, hopeful beginnings for Cain came to an abrupt end, and his real spiritual condition was clearly revealed. And it was revealed in an act of worship. And that took us to the second point.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
