The contrast between the ways of Cain and Seth, highlighting that true acceptance with God is not based on religious observance but on acknowledging sin and receiving God's provision for it. While Cain was religious and brought an offering, God rejected it because it did not acknowledge his sin, leading to Cain's anger and eventual murder of Abel. In contrast, Abel's sacrifice, understood as a foreshadowing of Christ's atoning sacrifice, was accepted because it signified reliance on God's provision for sin. The sermon emphasizes that genuine faith requires confessing oneself a sinner and accepting salvation through Christ, not through self-righteous works or religious rituals, and contrasts this with the godless civilization that developed from Cain's line.
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read a little more in the fourth read again in the fourth chapter of Genesis as I read yesterday and we'll take a closer look this morning at the story of Cain and Abel and then move on through the fourth and into the fifth chapter Genesis four verse one and Adam knew he his wife and she conceived and bore Cain and said I have gotten a man from the Lord and she again bore his brother Abel and Abel was a keeper of teeth but Cain was a pillar of the ground And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground and offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought of the first things of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect under Abel and to his offering, but under Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. Now there's nothing in this story to suggest that Cain as a young person was a bad boy. and Abel was a good boy. We are so familiar with the story of Cain and Abel that we become very careless with it in our minds. We probably subconsciously visualize a very bad son named Cain, a very good boy named Abel, and there's nothing whatsoever to suggest that. In fact, you just try to reverse that thinking in your own mind and conceive of the possibility that Able was a scoundrel and King was a very good fella. And you'll have to admit that it's not impossible.
You know what boys are like. And there's no indication here that one of these fellas was a nice fella and the other one was a wild kid. But if one of them was a wild kid, it could very well have been able. And you know your own experience in coming to know the Lord Jesus. You know the truth that it's ungodly people that God saved. He doesn't reach down generally and fix the good people. He fix the bad ones. Some of us were rather on the religious side, I suppose, and others of us were rather on the wild side. So you can't really make a flat statement and say, well, God saved Abel, he was a good boy and Cain was bad, or you can't really reverse it and say Abel was a bad boy and Cain was a good boy.
Let's be honest, we just don't know. We don't know what these fellas were like. We have nothing to indicate that one of them was good and one was bad and if we did, we wouldn't know which one. Secondly, in verse three, there's no suggestion here that Cain rejected God. On the contrary, Cain was religious. Cain acknowledged God. He was a worshiper of God. He brought an offering to God. He came to worship. He was not irreligious. not atheistic certainly not bad in that sense and a real lesson here for us the problem was of course that God rejected Cain not that Cain rejected God and so we see we notice that as we look at the third verse that we must have get the idea that Abel was a religious fellow and Cain wasn't and therefore that's the basis on which they were accepted we've got to make an assumption to understand the story of Cain and Abel That is the assumption that Adam and Eve taught their boys what the relationship with God was all about.
They taught their sons how to be right with God. It's only a reasonable assumption. After all, Adam and Eve had had the experience of sin and rebellion, but they had also had the experience of getting straightened out with God. Remember that God made them coats, clothing of skins. They had made their own clothing of leaves. And this wasn't acceptable, and God had made them clothing of kin, and they had accepted that. Now, that's sort of salvation implied there. You don't get saved by the kind of clothes you wear. But the implication here is that because sin came in, man sought to clothe himself with something that was not acceptable with God, and God provided a different clothing.
And you know the book of Isaiah in the New Testament teaching that... Our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. That's what we do to make ourselves accessible with God doesn't work. And we're still sinners within and changes on the outside. Don't change it. And then God comes along and He provides salvation through the blood of Christ. And in the Old Testament, it is prefigured by the animal sacrifice. And even before the animal sacrifice, which Abel offered, We have God prefiguring salvation by providing clothing that came about through the death of an animal. Now that was the first recorded death, I suppose, in the Bible.
It isn't even recorded. God provided clothing made of skins of animals which would require a death. And Adam and Eve became acceptable to God or were able to fellowship with God through a provision that came about by the shedding of blood. Just a little glimmer. I'm not drawing the doctrine of salvation from that. I'm reading back from the New Testament into it, into it the suggestion that Adam and Eve were saved. Let me see if I can find that passage that's been referring to it here, and it might just as well point it out. I don't even know where the reference is for the quote.
It'll be in chapter three, wouldn't it? Verse twenty-one is it? Yeah, they made coats of skins and clothes of them. All right. Now, you don't have a lot of detail here, but apparently you have the implication that Adam and Eve were saved people. God saved them. I've heard others say they weren't, you know, but the very story of they're making clothing of leaves and then God providing a different clothing and they accepting that clothing and applies to me. that they knew what salvation was all about and that they were the first-day people. And I assume from that that they also taught their boys. That Abel just didn't happen to stumble on the sacrifice of a lamb.
It wasn't just a pure turn of the lottery wheel or something that Cain brought the right sacrifice and Abel brought the right one. I assume that these fellas knew what they were doing, that they had been taught by Adam and Eve, who had been taught by God, that the way to be paid was to bring to God a sacrifice that said, I am a sinner, and somebody's got to die in my place. No, they didn't know anything about the Lord Jesus, no details about his death, and they could hardly understand why a lamb dying would pay for their sins. We understand that, that the lamb didn't really pay for their sins, but that the lamb provided a sort of a pledge until the time Christ should die.
And God accepted in the Old Testament the death of an animal as a pledge or an act of faith doing whereby the person did the best they could to acknowledge that Jesus Christ was going to come on their behalf. They didn't understand about Christ coming, but the Lamb, they did understand that they were guilty and somebody else bore the punishment, even though it was just a little lamb. So Abel had the truth that belongs to the gospel. that substitution is necessary. And Abel brought a sacrifice that said, I am guilty, I am a sinner, and someone else has to die on the altar in my place and I might be saved. Cain was religious, but he brought a sacrifice that said nothing about sin whatsoever.
It was wonderful to bring these fruits and vegetables to God. It was an act of worship and reverence and awe. But the lesson is that you can't come to God without dealing with a sin question. And people who will not acknowledge that they are sinners and not deal with sins can go to church. They can join every church in their community. They can perform all the religious ceremonies and still be lost and go to hell, not because they rejected God, but because God rejected them. God would not accept the person who will not acknowledge his sins. It will not come by the way of the cross, no matter how religious they are. All of us that we all know that. That's the great lesson of the gospel. And every one of us that's ever witnessed to a religious person knows how hard it is to get people to see that you can be religious and still lost.
You've got to start out by acknowledging that you're a sinner. And that's what the blood sacrifice does. It acknowledges that we are sinners and that punishment is required for sin, that God will punish sin. And then your religious person today says, oh, a loving God would never punish sinners. And why did Jesus die on the cross? Even the statement that God wouldn't punish sinners is a rejection of Christ. God will punish sinners. Because he will punish sinners, and because he loves us, he sent his son to die for us. It takes the punishment that we deserve. That's the gospel. We are sinners, and Jesus died for us. Abel's sacrifice serves that, and King's sacrifice denies that. So when I say that King didn't reject God, I want to qualify that, of course.
He rejected the idea that he was a sinner. He was willing to accept God on his turn, but not willing to say, I'm lost, I'm a sinner, I've got to come by way of the cross. So these fellas knew what they were doing, and they knew right from wrong in this. Now remember the essence of sin, as I said yesterday, is independence of God, rebellion against God, refusal to bow the knee to Him. And when I come to God without an acknowledgement that I'm a sinner, I'm really coming on sort of equal terms with God. I'm not bowing to him and saying, thank you, Lord, for saving me. I submit to you as my Lord and Savior. I'm rather coming and saying, God, you ought to be sort of glad that I'm willing to admit that you're okay.
And there's an element there even of pride in that thing. A change was not rejected by God because he murdered Abel. See, he didn't murder Abel until he got down to verse eight. He was rejected by God in verse five, before he murdered Abel. It was very, very important to understand that. Cain was not lost because he was a murderer. He was a murderer first because he was lost. He was lost first. He rejected the truth of the gospel and God did not receive his religious sacrifice and he got angry about it. And he should have gotten right with God, but he said he got angry.
there again is something you can experience if you ever try to deal in a very strongly religious community and try to give out the gospel and tell people they need to be saved the stronger the religious community is the more likely you are to be persecuted you want to study that in the new testament go through the gospel and the book of acts and notice that persecution almost always comes from religious people not from the irreligious i suppose there's a bartender sometimes it might get mad if he loses some customers And there were in the book of Ephesians those manufacturers of idol shrines that were losing customers. Of course, that was religion again. There may be times when the immoral wicked sinner persecutes the Christian, but generally it's the moral sinner, the religious person.
And in the New Testament, persecution almost always comes from the religious crowd, even in communist countries that deny religion. They set up their own religion. The emperor, the chairman of the party in communism, who was the emperor, chairman male, it's with a different name now, chairman instead of emperor, you know. If you won't bow to him, well, then you're going to be persecuted in China. And that's just another form of religion as far as I can see. So here in verse six now, if Cain is angry, and it's not God that's angry, And I want to modify that word rejection a bit, because I said that God rejected Cain, and I want to tone that down a bit.
God didn't reject Cain, he rejected Cain's sacrifice. But he was very gentle with Cain. And he appealed to it in verse six. He said, why are you angry? Why is your confidence falling? God asks questions first, before he judges. Now, we ought to take a lesson from that. that we're so quick to judge people without asking questions. I remember this vividly if I can use a little personal illustration. When we were in Prince Edward Island working with the Charlottetown Bible Chapel, someone made an arrangement for Billy Graham to come to Prince Edward Island to have a campaign. And our assembly wrestled with the question of whether we should join in as one of the sponsoring churches in that campaign.
And that's not an easy question if you've ever been an elder in a meeting who has to face that question. That's a difficult question to know whether to commit the assembly and the sponsorship of the thing or just to stand up for another project. Two different courses you can take. And none of them were completely satisfactory by any means, as I learned by experience. So we wrestled with the question. We made the decision. We would jump into the thing and we would become one of the sponsoring groups and we would support it. We had some reservations, but that was a decision we made. And, you know, the campaign was held and We had a good look at it and we were part of it and we were involved and afterward and before even we received a lot of criticism from other evangelicals in other places.
We were very strongly criticized by some preachers and by some other assemblies. But the thing that I noticed is that no one ever said to me, now you have tried this thing, what is your conclusion? Would you do it again? Or would you take a different course? We were judged. We were condemned. We were told where we went wrong and what we should have done. And we were always judged by people that have never tried it, you know, never had the experience. And nobody ever stopped to ask, what is your conclusion having tried it? Everything was sort of prejudged. And this is a characteristic that we can, a trap that we can easily fall into.
Some other Christian tries something, and instead of asking him, instead of picking his mind and finding out what we can learn from his experience, we judge him. You shouldn't have done that. Well, maybe he would say that, but he's got more right to say than we would be if he tried it. So let's learn to ask questions before we pass judgment. It doesn't hurt your bit. Ask questions and talk to the person that did a thing and see what they think about it. And it's interesting that God does that, isn't it? And of all people that shouldn't have to ask questions, it's God. He says, God knows everything. And yet, what does he do? Does he come to Cain and say, Cain, you did wrong?
No. He says, Cain, why are you angry? Question mark. Why is your countenance fallen? He asks questions. And let's just turn back to Genesis three for a moment to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And you know, Adam and Eve had sinned. They had deliberately disobeyed God. In verse seven, after they had disobeyed God, they sewed these fig leaves together and made themselves clothes. In verse eight, they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. That's interesting. You know, we say that sin separates between man and God.
That's true. But in this particular case, it was not God that was in hiding, but it was Adam and Eve that were in hiding. God was walking in the garden, and Adam and Eve were hiding from it, out of sight. Sin separates without a doubt. And there are times when we sin, and God won't hear us, because we're walking in disobedience. But it often works out this way, that we're the ones that go into hiding. And then verse nine, the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto them, Where art thou? Now here's God asking the question. Before he passes a judgment. God, to me, that's an amazing thing. God had every right to come and say, Adam, you sin. And he's going to.
But before he does anything else, where are you, Adam? What's gone wrong? What's happened? And our God is a God who judges righteousness. Because you know, a judge in a court, he listens before he passes judgment. He hears the evidence. He may ask questions. So I think that probably we'll discover that even on the day of the final judgment, when God judges sinners and casts them into the lake of fire, as it says in the book of Revelations, the books are going to be open. And the evidence is going to be presented. And no, I don't believe anybody's going to go into the lake of fire without a trial and with all the evidence is laid out. And God may even ask questions of the person that's on trial. It's not impossible. So he doesn't need to because he knows everything.
But to me, there's a lesson. here that if God can ask questions before he judges, then you and I also learn to ask a few questions before we pass judgment. All right, that's verse six of Genesis chapter four. Why are you angry? Why is your countenance flawed? What's the matter, King? And verse seven, if you do well, aren't you going to be accepted? Another question. If you do well, now remember, this is the dispensation of conscience. call that. The Bible doesn't call it that. But it's a good name because it's a word directly related to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After all, that's a pretty good definition of what conscience is.
Knowing right from wrong. A little voice inside of us that tells us that something is right or something is wrong. You can certainly trick your conscience and distort your conscience. But basically we have that voice inside of us. Eve ate the fruit of a tree. And that puts something inside of her. Physical fruit, yes, but also its symbolic fruit. And that she now had within her the knowledge of right from wrong. And so the dispensation of conscience takes place in which men are to be guided by that inward knowledge that there's a difference between right and wrong. And so God appeals to Cain on this basis. If you do well, you're going to be accepted. You know what's right.
You can do the right thing. You don't have to do the wrong thing. You know what's right and what's wrong. And in this particular case, you know what kind of a sacrifice you have to make. I think that's implied in here. It's not stated. And so God did gain another opportunity. Let there be any misunderstanding about it. He gives him another chance to do the right thing. And he's done that for a lot of us. I wonder how many of us were saved the first time we heard the gospel. Some people say no to God a lot of times. No, no. They walk out of gospel meetings. They turn down. personal testimonies and they harden their heart against God and they fight him and resist him. Some people get saved when they first hear it. Maybe they've been through a battle before they ever heard the gospel.
But other people just push it off and push it off and then finally come to Christ. Some never come to Christ. But for you and I, I don't know, maybe I should ask the question. May I put up your hand if you were saved the first time you heard the gospel? Well, how many put it up, resistant for a while? Most of you did. All right. Aren't you glad God gave you another chance? Some saints people ask me if I believe in a second chance. Yes, sir. Lots of chances. Not after you die, though. That's a different thing. God gives men lots of chances in this life. Not always, but many times. Another opportunity. If you do well, you're going to be accepted.
Now you've heard the gospel, you've said no. Now you hear it again. We pray for people that have rejected Christ. And we pray for them and ask God to soften their heart. And so this is the patience of God. People can say no to him and he doesn't just turn and walk away. But he appeals to them. Now what's the trouble? Why not do the right thing? You know what's right. You do what's right and you're going to be accepted. Because doing what's right here involves accepting the Lord Jesus or in King's case offering a sacrifice that admits that he's a sinner. And then King made a choice. a deliberate choice not to do the right thing.
He would not deal with the sin question. But even so, there's one more thing I should mention here in verse seven. God also gives him a warning. He says, if you do not well, sin lies at the door. If you don't do well, sin lies at the door. Now, this is an expression that has been subject to different interpretations. I frankly... Just can't see the interpretation that's given by the Schofield Bible in the footnote, where it says here, or, quote, sin offering, unquote. In Hebrew, the same word is used for sin and sin offering. And so the interpretation that's given in the footnote is that a sin offering lies at the door. In other words, you can go out and make a blood sacrifice.
Well, then if that was the case, what does he mean by if you do well? Is he teaching salvation by work? If you do well, you're going to be accepted. If you live a good life, you'll be accepted. But if you don't live a good life, you can offer a sin offering. That's what this passage is saying. And frankly, that's the interpretation just doesn't make sense to me. I prefer to just leave the word sin. If you leave the word sin, just leave it. And then it becomes a straightforward statement that if you don't do the right thing, that if you rebel against the truth, then you're heading for a life of sin. And it's the principle that we've that we dealt with yesterday that rebellion against God leads to corruption.
The rebellion against God comes first and then the corruption follows. We use the example of pantheistic religion. False religion says all is God. It starts out very pious and very moral and very upright and ends up in idolatry and prostitution and all kinds of corruption. As for example the comparison between Christian science and the religions of India. One is new and the other is ancient. And the new one seems moral and upright, and the ancient one is full of decay and corruption. The rejection of the truth of God leads to a life of destruction. And so God is simply saying to Cain that if you don't do right, if you refuse the true religion, you are going to end up in a sinful life.
Sin lies at the door. What was the sin that came to me that was murdered? That's what lay at the door for him. Say no to God and walk out your door and discover you're doing something you never intended to do. Satan didn't intend to kill Abel, but King was very angry. He was mad. God rejected him. God wouldn't accept his sacrifice. So he responds in violence and hatred against his brother and kills his brother. I would think personally that Satan was disappointed here that Satan had no intention of King killing Abel. That ruined the whole thing. ruin the whole program of Satan's religion, where you can be good without God. You don't need God. You don't need the blood. You don't need the cross. You can be good without God. And then, of course, you'll learn that you can't be good without God.
When you turn away from the truth and destruction follows. And I don't know any better example of this than North American society. When I was a boy, we'd be Protestant churches and gone liberal and modernistic. I was raised in the Methodist church. particular individual Methodist church I was raised in didn't preach the gospel. You know, if you live a good life, that's all right. There was modernistic roots in so many of the theological seminaries, the denial of the blood of Christ, and the denial that there was a hell, and that men needed to be saved. And so the generation, my generation, and my parents' generation too, I suppose, were rejecting the fundamental principles of the Bible.
And they were still telling people to live a good life and be moral and be upright. Now that generation can't understand why the younger generation of today goes all haywire. Why they're throwing out marriage and morality and Ten Commandments. Well, I understand it. If you throw out God, you can't teach the Ten Commandments. Send it. Once God's gone, the Ten Commandments are gone with them. Anything goes. And this one generation throws out the truth of the Bible and says the Bible is an out-of-day book, but let's keep the morality of the Bible, and the next generation throws out the morality of the Bible too. And the nation just plunges downward in the violence and immorality.
But you've got to go back to my generation to place the blame. Because you reject the principle of the scripture, and then pretty soon the morality of the scripture goes out too. So this is the lesson here that we have from Cain. that the religious rebellion comes first and then the murder comes afterwards. Let's get that straight. Cain was not rejected because he was a murderer, but rather he was a murderer because he chose a path of rebellion against the truth of God. He didn't intend to be a murderer. He got mad and murdered his brother, killed him. Sin lies at the door. If you don't do well, sin lies at the door. And he refused the truth of God, and he discovered it there indeed.
Like a lion outside the door, ready to gobble him up with sin. And when I'm committed, murdering his brother. The refusal of the blood sacrifice brings out the true nature of the sinner. He's a child of disobedience. The road of rebellion leads to destruction. Well, now Abel is dead. He came now... goes out in the presence of the Lord. Verse fifteen, God puts a mark on him. Anybody that slays Cain, God's going to take vengeance on him. That is, there's no government. There's no police force. There's no court. There's no judge. There's nobody to put Cain to death. This is the dispensation of conscience.
The dispensation of government is yet to come. God has not yet provided men with the right to put the murder to death. And instead he forbids putting this murder to death. Nobody can do anything with him. If you murder the man, he goes out, it's not free. He says there is no provision yet for government. But these early dispensations teach some lesson about man. And the first of these, this dispensation of conscience, the lesson is that man, if he's governed by his conscience, will not choose right. But he'll choose wrong. Here's the Garden of Eden again. He doesn't go right back to it. the serpent saying to eat wouldn't it be wonderful to eat of that tree then you'll be of God you'll know right or wrong you can make your own choices you'll have the knowledge of good and evil and you can make your own choices okay fine but what happens if man makes his own choices he's chosen wrong because he's once he declares independence of God once he says I want to make my own choices I want to be independent once he's made that declaration of independence then the nature of the human being is a rebellious nature, and the principle that God has built into the universe is that rebellion is going to lead to
destruction, and man makes the wrong choice. In conscience, when we're governed solely by our conscience, in nothing more, we go on a downward path, because we know right from wrong, and then we choose the wrong. And so, in this dispensation, there is no government to put the murder to death. And the thing goes downhill. When we get to Noah, we'll see that God made us a change. A very remarkable change after Noah came out of the ark. So keep this verse in mind. Verse fifteen here. God set a mark on Cain and forbid anybody to kill him. He was not to be put to death. And that's all changed after Noah came out of the ark. Verse sixteen.
Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. And he dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife. Where did he get his wife? Well, Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. We'll see that very shortly. And he might have married a sister, or he might have married a niece, Pluto. Anyway, a long time span is encompassed here because we have now from here to the end of the chapter the descendants of Cain. And they are in order... Do you want to mark this circle? I like the circle names like this in the Bible and just link them together by the lines. And then I have the whole genealogy. In verse sixteen, chain. Second generation, if you count Adam as the first.
In verse seventeen, Enoch. Not the Enoch, it was caught up to heaven. Different Enoch. Third generation. In verse eighteen, I-R-A-D. Fourth generation. In verse eighteen, Mahujail. The fifth. And the who jailed he got? Methushael. That's the sixth. And Methushaeled he got Lamech. Lamech is the seventh generation. Pony Adam is the first. He's the sixth from Adam. He's the seventh Pony Adam. Lamech. Another Lamech in the other line that we haven't got in yet. Then Lamech had two wives, their names. In verse twenty, one of his sons was Jabal.
verse twenty one he had another son named Jubal now if you're if you're encircling these names you don't link these all together in a chain now you start with Ramech and you draw several lines out from him because four of his children are named and the family three is branching out here Jabal Jubal in verse twenty one Jubal Cain in verse twenty two and at the end of verse twenty two Nehema Nehema a daughter and daughter we had other children well probably had other daughters but there are only four of them named, only one daughter. So four of Lamech's children are named. And the twenty-third and twenty-fourth verses end up with a poem, first poem in the Bible, first poetry in the Bible, first poetry in human history.
Lamech composes a song, and he sings it to his two eyes, Ada and Zilla. Here, and this is set up in Hebrew poetry. Now, Hebrew poetry is translatable, you know, because it doesn't rhyme. We've got a lot of letters in the magazine. Every now and you get a letter to somebody who doesn't like the poetry or use the magazine. You don't like modern poetry. I won't ask you how many write the modern poetry. One of the things about the modern poetry is that it doesn't rhyme. Some poems that do rhyme, but a lot of the modern poetry doesn't. Don't get too critical, because remember, the Hebrew poetry didn't rhyme either. The book and the Psalms. For instance, it's poetry and doesn't rhyme. If it did rhyme, it wouldn't be translatable because you can't translate the rhyme into another language.
In Hebrew poetry, you have a rhyming thought instead of rhyming syllables. Parallel expression, for instance, hear my voice, hearken under my feet. You have a repetition of a thought instead of a repetition of a sound. That's nice because that means that Hebrew poetry is translatable into all the languages of the world. Sometimes the parallels are opposite, and sometimes they repeat the same idea. Usually it's a repetition of the same thought. Hear my voice, harken unto my speech. Once you get the feel of that, you can recognize poetry when you come to it, even in the King James Version, which doesn't set poetry out as poetry. Some of the modern translations pick it out and they set it in line.
But the King James doesn't do that. You soon get the feel of it. If you're aware of it, you can pick out the poetic sections. You get a lot of them in the New Testament. especially when they're quoting the Old Testament. Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech. For I have slain a man who wounded me, next line, and a young man, for hurting me, slain a man, a young man, for wounding me, for hurting me. I'm reading the New Schofield here, it's a little different in the King James, to my wounding and to my hurt, but you can still see the parallels. And even verse twenty four has a certain amount of parallelism in it. So this is definitely a poem, which is a song. Now notice what it says.
Another murder. And he's bragging about it. I've killed a man. I've done what my ancestor Cain did. I killed a man. I killed him. Why did I kill him? He wounded me. He hurt me. I don't know what he did. Whether he took a knife or a club or just used his fist. Or whatever he did, somebody hurt Lamech. Lamech got mad and killed him. Now Cain wasn't taking vengeance. Cain had no vengeance against Abel. Abel hadn't done anything wrong. This man has hurt Lamech. And so he's boasting. I killed him. He hurt me. Well then, if Cain will be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech will be avenged seventy and sevenfold.
Real boasting, please. Cain didn't do it and didn't do it. He killed a man without being hurt. So if he's going to be revenged seven times and anybody touches him, then I'm even more justified than Cain. He says, that fellow hurt me. So I will be avenged seventy-seven times. Very, very boastful. Well, this is a course, though, of the dispensation, you see. Violent and vengeance. characteristics that developed in the line of chain and developed in our society as well well you go down through these things you find in verse seventeen I'm just going to point out here several things that are mentioned here and I'm picking them out because they are not mentioned in the next chapter when you have the line of Seth in verse seventeen they build it a city no mention of cities in the next chapter In verse nineteen, two wives, the beginning of polygamy.
No mention of that in Crestline. In fact, no mention even of women at all. They're not even named. In verse twenty, they dwell in tents. They have cattle. There's agriculture coming in. In verse twenty-one, such as handle the harp and the pipe. There's culture, music. You see, this was a cultured, but godless civilization. Verse twenty-two, craftsmen in bronze and iron. And then in verse twenty-three, it's verse poetry and music and songs. So what developed is civilization, as we know it today, culture, the beginnings of commerce and agriculture and music and science and industry, bronze and iron and so forth, and to build the beginnings of cities.
Now when you turn to chapter five, you have the generation of Seth, Adam's third son. And you have all through the chapters, this is one of those Enish lived ninety years and begot Canaan as the chapters know, and there's nothing about cities, there's nothing about culture and civilization. So you have the genealogy of the people that follow God here, led down to Noah, and nothing about developing musical instruments and being great with agriculture and industry. I'm a little concerned about the trend that we have in the evangelical world today about pointing out that so-and-so is a great industrialist, and he's a Christian, and so-and-so is the greatest quarterback in professional football, and he's a born-again Christian, and here's an outstanding musician in the commercial world, and he's a Christian, though we have a tendency to put such a stress on the very type of thing that's mentioned in the line of Cain, if not mentioned in the line of Cain.
And I don't want to say too much about it. It's just something that sort of troubles me. And I'm not sure just what conclusion to draw from it. The line of set is the pilgrim character of the people of God, who are in this world but don't really belong to it. It would be pretty hard to find neither the Old Testament or the New Testament the context that the Christian is the outstanding person in his field in this world. It's often the other way around. God has chosen the poor the world and the foolish and the unwise. God has chosen these to compound those that are mighty and those that are powerful. So maybe some of the emphasis that we're getting today in our evangelical world is not the most healthy.
There are some things that are mentioned in the genealogy in chapter five that are not mentioned in the genealogy in chapter four. They can go to both things. First of all, let me start at the beginning of chapter five. This is the book of the generation of Adam, in the day that God created man, in the lightness of God made he him. Male and female created him and blessed him and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And Adam lived in hundred and thirty years and begot a son in his own likeness after his image, and he called his name Seth. Now if you are wanting to follow the name, circle names, you can do that in this chapter too. Seth is the second generation. verse six, that begot Enish. Verse nine, Enish begot Canaan.
Enish would be the third, Canaan the fourth, and so forth. You can track them down. It might be easier to put circle Enish in verse nine, and Canaan in verse twelve, and so forth, and you can track that through in your own. Notice verse four here. The days of Adam, after he begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begot sons and daughters. How many were not told? Anybody ever ask you that foolish question about where Cain got his wife? Don't start handing them around. Start asking questions. Say, where did Cain get his wife? Well, now, how many, by the way, how many children did Adam and Eve have? That he had two, Cain and Abel. Yeah. Which one are you descended from?
Well, let's see. Well, Abel died, didn't he? Abel got killed, and Cain... Well, are we dissenters from Cain? No, we're not dissenters from Cain. The person who asked that question, you know, shows their obvious ignorance. You know, you can bring that out by just asking a few questions that started out with how many children did Adam and Eve have, you know. And then you say to the person, well, instead of asking me where Cain got his wife, why don't you study the Bible and find out? And you don't even look at it. Why don't you be scientific about this thing? Take the offensive when you get that type of a person. And it sure shows up the validity of those who ask that type of thing. So I still don't know where Cain got his wife, but I do know the Bible says that Adam and Eve had sons and daughters.
I'm not told how many. There's a lot of times, Cain, he lived eight hundred years. Cain might have waited fifty years. Might have married some granddaughter, even great-granddaughter of Adam. Obviously, he married some descendant of Adam sooner or later. And now the line goes on here. In verse five, or let me say one more thing about the two genealogies. In verse four, you have the genealogy of Cain. And in verse five, you have the genealogy of Cain. And the characteristic of the book of Genesis is that the genealogy or the descendants of the rejected line are always given before the descendants of the Messianic line.
You have Esau before you have Jesus and so forth. You have Ishmael before you have Isaac. You have Cain before you have Seth. The historian who wrote the book of Genesis gives you, first of all, the line that does not follow on to Jesus Christ. He gets that in the record and sets that aside, and then he comes to the line that leads to Christ. So Cain's line is given in chapter four, then in chapter five the line is set. And the differences are well worth studying. And one of the things that's mentioned in chapter five not mentioned in chapter four, is death. References to death, also references to God, those two things. There's no references to God in Cain's line, but we get them in Seth's line, a number of them.
Enoch walked with God, and so forth. But there are also references to death in chapter five, and everyone ends up with, and he died. Verse five, Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. Verse eight, all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. Verse ten, all the days of Enish were nine hundred and five years, and he died. Verse fourteen, and he died. End of the verse. Verse seventeen, and he died. Verse twenty-four, there's an exception. Enish walked with God, and he was not, for God cooked it and didn't die. One break in the same. Verse twenty-seven, all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years.
It is the longest lifespan of anybody recorded. And he died. And verse thirty-one, all the days of Lamech, this is a different Lamech, were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died when he came to Noah. So you have this repetition of death. And again, it is in character that the people of God don't have to cover up the fact of death. We're on a pilgrim journey. We're looking for a better land and a better city. And so there's a much more of a down-to-worth nature in chapter five. In chapter four, it's civilization. All the marvelous things that the line of king did. In chapter five, there's nothing about cities. There's nothing about music. And there's no policy.
And there's no culture. And there's no industry and agriculture. But these men lived their lives. And they died. They were looking for a better land and a better city. They were the people of God making a pilgrimage through this world that really didn't count looking on to a better land and a better day. Our modern world covered death, too. When we got close, it was a little illustration. My daughter last year, she was a senior in high school, Becky, and she started working at the four-season nursing home in Wheaton. And she was a high school senior, which was September last year, in the next year, and on her first day there, somebody died in the nursing home. She didn't say anything about it. And the next day in the paper, my wife Betty read it in the paper.
Somebody died there. And Betty called me. And so when Becky came home on her second day of work, I said, did you know that someone died there in the nursing home yesterday? No, they didn't. Yes, they did. No, they didn't. Yes, they did. Mom read it in the paper. Becky says, nobody dies there. They expire. Well, that's the characteristic, you know, of the funeral parlor and all that. It's sort of pretend this doesn't happen. But it's not the characteristic of the people of God. Of all people in this world, we should be the least afraid to acknowledge that death exists. And here in chapter five, and he died, and he died, and he died.
It's a monotonous refrain. But it says to us, there is something better. All of Cain's people, their lives were wrapped up in the civilization of this world. But we are the people of God. We are pilgrims and strangers. We are going on to another world in another day and looking for a better city that has foundations, whose border and nature is God. And we're not afraid to admit that this will light ends in God. Oh, we've got something to lie. Praise the Lord. May God bless you with us. Shall we bow in prayer? Our Father, we're not afraid to talk about death because we have the resurrection. To the godless of this world, there is nothing beyond.
There is, of course, hell and the lake of fire. But to us, there's Jesus. There's the glory of heaven. There's the reunion with those that have gone before. We shall see Jesus someday. And in the meanwhile, we walk with him by faith, looking for a better day, looking for the blessed hopes and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ.