Gooding, David: 4 - Cain: An Unregenerate Worshipper

It's pleasure to be with you once again, and to prepare ourselves for our topic, shall we read a number of passages, first from the Old Testament and then from the New. Old Testament passage is to be found in Genesis chapter four. If you have a text with you, you may care to consult it, but if you do not, never mind. Listen, if you please, while I read. Book of Genesis, therefore, first of all, and chapter 4. Verse three: And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground, an offering unto the Lord. And Abel he also bought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very raw, and his countenance fell. The Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin couches at the door, and unto thee is his desire, and thou shouldest rule over him. And Cain told Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. The Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? He said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy head. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth. 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 ground, and from thy face shall I be hid. And I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth, and it shall come to pass that whosoever findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. The Lord appointed a sign for Cain, lest any finding him should smite him. That then is our basic story, and we read now comments made in different parts of the New Testament on this very ancient story. The first comment comes in the Epistle to the Hebrews and chapter eleven. The Epistle to the Hebrews and chapter eleven, verse four. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gift, and through it he being dead, yet be dead. Another comment from the First Epistle by the Apostle John. One John chapter three, Verse seven. My little children, let no man lead you astray. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he that is God is righteous. He that doeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain was of that evil one and slew his brother. Therefore slew he him, because his brother, his works were evil and his brothers were righteous. And finally, back to our epistle by Jude, that we have been studying over this weekend. We read again verse eleven of Jude's epistle. Woe unto them, for they went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for high, and perished in the gains paying of corpse. God speak his word in all our hearts. No, I have no idea whatsoever how the elders and deacons of this assembly advertised the meeting this evening, or whether indeed they advertised it at all, who can tell? But this I know, that if they had only betaught themselves, they could have filled this hall to overflowing. Had they put an announcement, an announcement in the press that a brother of the Lord Jesus was to be here and to preach to us on Sunday night next, I guarantee the whole of the countryside, more or less, would have turned out to listen to a brother of the Lord Jesus. Well, you say they couldn't do it more of the pity. Although we cannot tonight produce here in homage the brother of the Lord Jesus, we have the next best thing, surely. For we are to consider together a letter written by a man who was a half-brother of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know how you picture him in your mind's eye. The brother of the Lord Jesus, I picture him as a most delightful person, a personal brother according to the flesh of Jesus Christ our Lord. I bid you remember it, if you will, because if it should be that in the course of this meeting you've come to think that your present preacher is a little bit gruff, one is old, of course, and crotchety. But then pray remember that the basic sentiments you hear are not the sentiments of the preacher before you. Tonight we are to listen to the words of a brother of the Lord Jesus. As we have been discovering in these previous sessions, we find that the burden of the message of this good man to us this day is that religion is not always a good thing. In his loving fashion, as the Lord Jesus himself would have told us, religion there is the thing called true religion. The Bible describes it, true religion. The very fact that the Bible has to make the distinction and say, now true religion is this, reminds us that there is a thing that is false religion. And it is possible to be deceived by false religion, to let religion lull us to sleep, imagining that we are all well with God, when all the time the religious attitude we might be adopting could be false in the extreme. Here then, in the center of his little letter, Jude quotes to us three examples of men from the ancient world who lived before the time of Christ. He mentions these three men because all of them were, in their different ways, interested in religion. There was the man Kay. We meet him early on on the page of Holy Scripture. We meet him as he comes with his beautifully presented offering to give it to God, the very first fruits of his toil. I think I picture the beautiful apples in his basket, all rubbed and beautifully shining red, and the oranges and the figs. Oh, what a delightful offering it was, and had you stood by him, you would have seen every mark of devotion and reverence and solemnity as he came and offered his offering to God. He was exceedingly religious. But his religion was basically flawed. The second man in that little sentence by Juld was by the name Balaam. He was religious, in fact, more religious even than Kay. For Balaam was a prophet, a professional prophet indeed. And so renowned in many a country was Balaam the prophet, that the king of Moab no, uh, of Moab no less, called him to come and advise him and, uh, perform his rituals for him for the benefit of the state of Moab. World leading figure of his day in the profession of religion. And he stands as a beacon in the page of Holy Scripture, both old and new, as a religious professional who was utterly wrong. The final case quoted to us is that of Korah, and as we found in our study last night, Korah is perhaps the worst of the three. For whereas Balaam was a prophet and Korah was a minor priest, Balaam, it could be said of him that he was, after all, but a pagan, worshiping his false god. Korah was a minor cleric in holy orders in the Jewish church. And the Bible holds him up to us, both Old and New Testament, for all the facade of his religion, a rebel against God, against God's apostle and high priest, standing in the page of scripture to remind us that religion itself can be an expression of the heart's rebellion against God. Tonight, for we have been studying these men back to front, we come to the third example, then the first in Jude's list. It is the story of Cain. Cain, as I say, came with his brother Abel to God in those far off days to offer his sacrifice to God, and his sacrifice was rejected. What we ask ourselves was so fundamentally wrong about the sacrifice of Paris that God had to repudiate it to the man's face. There we shall have to hold ourselves in and make sure we listen to the comments of the New Testament and not run too soon to our own deductions on the matter. Cain's sacrifice was wrong. Why was it wrong? So why pray did God accept Abel's sacrifice and reject Cain's sacrifice? The answer the New Testament gives in the Epistle to the Hebrews and the epistle by John is this, that Abel's sacrifice was accepted, by which God bore testimony to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness about his work. Why was Cain's sacrifice rejected? The Apostle John tells us, say, his works were evil. In this gospel, that first point in the deficiency of Cain's sacrifice. You see, Cain had fallen into a mistake that multitudes of people have fallen into since his death. He thought that by coming to offer sacrifice for God, he was winning God's favor, and that when the sacrifice was over, he might continue to live as he always had lived, in his own selfish and sinful way. It is a mistake, of course, that the pagan world falls very easily into, where people don't think of God as concerned with morality. They think of the gods as being powerful beings, and you can get them on your side. You can persuade them to help you against your enemy. Never mind how you're behaving, you might as be the biggest rogue unhung, the worst businessman in town, cheating the income tax inspector and weighing your thumb on the scales as you sell Mrs. Jones her meat, so your thumb weighs as well as the meat itself and puts the price up conveniently for you. The biggest roll gun hunt. But in the ancient world, they thought you could still get the gods on your side if you gave them a decent enough, uh, sacrifice. And if you'd been making a lot of money, uh, you could afford to give the gods quite a decent sacrifice. And if you gave them a good sacrifice, the gods would be on your side, and they would be against your opponent and enemy. A pagan idea indeed. Sacrifice is merely a way of bribing the Almighty. I wonder why it is that sometimes, even in our own day, men and women who have no faith at all, whose lives are the standards of the unregenerate, can be moved sometimes to give great contributions to churches of various kinds. Let's hope there doesn't nestle in their minds the idea that they are putting God on their side. But you'll know Christendom itself has not been altogether guiltless, has it? In the medieval ages, there was widespread throughout Europe the idea that the very sacrifice of Christ itself was a means of saving us, so that we could, uh, escape the wrath of God, even though we continue to live in sin. People got the idea that the sacrifice is a kind of a fine. You know how it is. Well, you surely don't know how it is. You've never thought of it even, but there are some men. They go into Belfast and they can't find a place to park, and here is a double line, and they're in a hurry, and they want to go into the shop and have a haircut or something. Well, they say, what my chances are, look, uh, I can't see any traffic warden here nor there. Let's risk it this time. And in they go, and they do it so many times, and then the last time they come out, there's a traffic warden, and there's a thing under a piece of paper under the window screen wiper, and there's the fine. Well, they say, you know, it's worth it, we'll say, and uh, they pay up. You wouldn't suppose that just because they pay the fine, they'll never park on a double line again. If it became necessary again, they'd park again. They'd say it's only going to cost me ten pounds, twenty pounds, I can afford that, you see. It's only a fine. As I say, in medieval Europe, the idea was widespread. You partook of what they thought was the sacrifice of Christ. You had not the slightest intention of breaking off your immorality or your sin or your cheating in business or your murderous idea. This was a kind of a fine you paid to God that then allowed you to carry on and behave as you always behave. It will not mean me to say that such religion is absolutely bogus. Why did Cain, uh, think that way round about religion? The answer comes once more from the Apostle John in his first epistle, chapter three. He says, you know, the trouble with Cain was that he was of the evil one. Now, the third chapter of the first epistle of John is a delightful chapter, is it not? Fit to raise one's heart to glory. For John begins by talking to Christians and saying, oh my dear brothers and sisters, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God, and such we really are. This is the lies at the very heart of the Christian gospel, that through faith in the Lord Jesus, we can become the very children of God. That very fact now reminds John to remind us that this world, in this world, there are two families. There are, you see, two fathers. And because there are two fathers, ultimately, there are two families. There are two groups. There are two kinds of people. On the one side is the Father God. On the other side, there is he of whom our Lord said to certain people, you are of your father, the devil. There's a group on the one side that John refers to as the children of God. Amongst themselves, he calls them brothers and sisters. They are, uh, fellow children, fellow members of the family of God. On the other side, there is what John calls the world. Marvel not, says John, if the world hates you. Or if on the one side there is the family of God, on the other side there is the world. It seems to me that solemn as it is, we must take seriously what this brother of the Lord Jesus tells us. Cain's mistake sprang from the fundamental flaw of his being. He was of the evil one. He was of his father, the devil. He was one of the world. Never, never, never had he crossed over from the one family to the other. Never had he become a child of God. Now let us, uh, let us take steps not to imagine that we're talking here of something lurid when we say that people are of the devil, and we think of the devil as having horns and hoofs and lurid tails and what have you. The devil, according to Holy Scripture, is the highest creature in all God universe. Sophisticated indeed, and so concerned with religion that the Bible even calls him the god of this world. The god of this world, it his object- it is his objective to blind the eyes of those who believe not, and he does it most effectively when he does it with religion and uses religion to blind men's eyes against the reality of their spiritual need and against the great possibilities of God's salvation. It is so important that we need to stop and ask ourselves some questions, surely, ladies and gentlemen. If according to Holy Scripture there are two families, and the one is the family of God and the children of God, and the other is the world and the children of the devil, must I not ask myself tonight, to which family do I belong? To raise that question, of course, contradicts, as you can see, the widespread notion that all people are the children of God. It's very widespread, wasn't it? I was listening in the early hours of Monday morning, I think it was, to somebody commenting on the BBC and telling us to lift up our hearts, or whatever it is they do, message for the day. And he was explaining how we ought to love everyone, and of course we ought to love everyone. And then he added, you'll say, because as our Lord said, in as much as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it unto me. And said the learned professor, do see, there's our Lord Jesus saying that all men everywhere are his brothers. And if we help any s- any human being anywhere, Christ will count it as though we have done that to him, because all men are his brothers. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not true. We have it on our Lord's own authority, do we not? Well, there was a time in his ministry when his mother and his brothers thought he was getting beside himself, and they sent to call him from the crowd and bring him home. And somebody said to the Lord Jesus, your mother and your brothers are standing outside there, they want to speak to you. And the evangelists tell us that he rose and he said, and who is my mother, and who are my brothers? These are my brothers, these is my mother, they that hear the word of God and do it. It is utterly false. It is sentimentalism of the most dangerous sort. To say that every rogue, every murderer, every child abuser, every criminal, every man, woman, and child is a brother of the Lord Jesus. It is not true that we're all creatures of God, isn't it? It is true that God loves everyone and in a fatherly fashion tends all his creatures and desires not that any should be lost, that all should be saved. That is perfectly and delightfully true. It is true that God has so loved the whole world that no man, woman, boy, or child stands outside the scope of his divine love. And it is also written that he would have all men to be saved. Here is no narrow exclusivism. The same Savior that taught us that, taught us that if we would be children of God, then we must become children of God. For we are not automatically children of God. We are born into this world, creatures of God. But Holy Scripture puts it this way, if we would become, notice the verb, if we would become children of God, then we must go through the process of becoming what we never were before. And the process is this. It is written how that on our blessed Lord came to Bethlehem. He came to his own, his Jewish nation, and they that were his own did not receive him, but, and we listen with both ears. We're now about to hear how to pass out of death to life, how to pass out of the family of Satan into the family of God. Oh, my friend, we listen with both ears, not now merely to a brother of the Lord Jesus, but to the blessed Lord Jesus himself. He says, you'll see, but as many as received him. To them he gave authority to become children of God. Oh God, save us from being deceived by the archenemy of our souls, by sloppy sentimentalism in religion that comforts us with the idea that all men and women are children of God. As you love your soul, refuse to believe that lie. Listen rather to the Lord Jesus and his apostles. Yes, he's open to us all to become children of God, but we have to become. We're not born that way. We become children of God by receiving personally the blessed Savior. Follow the illustration that our Lord Jesus used when he spoke this lesson to the famous Nicodemus. He said, you know, just as Israel were dying in the wilderness, Rabbi, and our fathers had to look to the serpent of brass lifted up, and when they personally looked, they that looked were individually saved. So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And I emphasize these things in my turn tonight, in all friendliness of heart, I trust. It is possible to enroll in a Christian course and never to have been born again. Is it not? The gospel by John in chapter eight, John himself tells us that there were certain Jews which believed on the Lord Jesus, and because they said they believed, the writer of the gospel takes them at their faith. So our Lord Jesus said to these Jews which believed on him, now gentlemen, said he, if you continue in my word, you shall, uh, be really my disciple, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So David Scoob asked, what exactly did you mean by being free? Free from what? We must have been in bondage as far as we ever knew. What do you mean free? Said our blessed Lord, I was talking, ladies and gentlemen, about being free from the bondage and slavery to sin. You see, he says, everyone who constantly practices sin is a slave of sin. And I was pointing out to you the glory of salvation, that if you continue in my word and you really are my disciples, you shall get to know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Their face fell. They said, who do you think you're talking to? Did we ask you to come and preach in our street? Get you round the corner. To those filthy living people round the corner, to those abominable Gentiles. Who do you think you're talking to? We are children of Abraham, said. Come here insulting us to suggest that after all these years of sincere religious effort, we are children of the devil. Get you going, they said to Christ. Presently, they picked up stones to stone. They discovered what their religion amounted to. They would have begun by saying they were believers in the Lord Jesus. When it came to the realities of being saved, the word of God releasing us progressively from bondage to sin, they were not interested in it. Ah, what a deceiver is sin. You are, says Christ, of your father, the devil. It is like, you know, in the old days when there were gloomy prisons. Imagine, if you can, a prince now incarcerated in a prison ever since he was a little boy. He's never known anything else but the prison. The man who stands at the door is the jailer, but the jailer has convinced the little boy that he's his friend. He brings him his food, doesn't he, from time to time. And he tells the boy that outside it's a wicked world, and there are people seeking his life and his friend, and he mustn't ever go outside. One day comes the great deliverer to deliver him. He comes right into the prison cell and now tells the boy, grown up a young man, why not opt for freedom? You are a slave here. The boy doesn't know what to believe. No, he said, I'm not a slave. This man here is my protector. He guards me from all the evil things outside. Says the deliverer, no, but the man is a liar. He's not your friend. He's not your guardian. He's your jailer. And the lad would have to believe, wouldn't he, somebody or other. Many a man and many a woman is precisely there. Satan has them in their grip. The pleasures of this world, he has persuaded them, are real, genuine pleasures. They are your protectors. But if they be sinful pleasures, they are not your protector, they are your jailer. Blessed Lord Jesus has come to set us free, to show us the truth, to expose the fact that the very father of lies who has masqueraded as though he were our friend, is indeed our jailer. But there is freedom. Walk free out of prison. Be delivered, as the Apostle Paul put it, from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear son. Two families there. The reason why God would not accept Cain's sacrifice was in the first place because the man's deeds were evil. He had no repentance within him. Religion was sort of paying a fine, that's all. But in the second place, there was a deeper reason. As we would put it nowadays, the man had never been born again. He was still in the kingdom of darkness. He was still a child of the devil. What we might ask as we pass by, are we to make of the statement that Cain's sacri- uh, Abel's sacrifice was accepted, and thereby it was shown that he was righteous, God bearing witness of his works? It would be important to understand exactly what the writer is saying, wouldn't it? How and on what grounds can I be accepted? I submit to you that the first thing that we have to notice is this, that the Bible says that by faith Abel offered his sacrifice. And that tells us volumes, because, you know, when the Bible talks of faith, it isn't simply talking of confidence. A lot of people got on the Pan Am airliner at Heathrow just before the end of the year, didn't they? With absolute confidence, not a flicker of doubt in their mind. Their faith was unjustified. There was a bomb on board. Their faith being misplaced brought them to disaster. You'll see faith by itself is useless, isn't it? You can believe with all your heart, but if what you believe is wrong, then are you in dire straits. Faith to be any use is the kind of faith that the Bible talks of. Faith that comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of the Lord. When the Bible tells us, therefore, that Abel by faith offered his better sacrifice, we must deduce the obvious fact that by, since it was by faith he did it, it was faith in some word of God. You ask me, when did God tell them? I cannot tell you for sure, for the Bible doesn't tell us. I do read that when God Almighty met Adam and Eve in their sin and brought them to repentance and faith, he made a coat of skins for them that would involve the killing of an animal and the shedding of its blood. Whether on that occasion or some other occasion, in those far off days, he taught them as much as they could bear of the way of salvation. Surely he did. But now they were sinners, the way back to God must be through the way of sacrifice and atonement. Abel offered his better sacrifice by faith. It was Abel's response to an explicit word of God. You'll see that again marks a very big difference, doesn't it, between Abel and Cain. You may say that Abel was a keeper of flocks, and he naturally brought a little kid for his present to God. Cain, being by profession a farmer, he brought of the fruit of the ground. How wouldn't he? But that is to make a very serious mistake. No, ladies and gentlemen, you cannot come to God on the ground of your daily work or your profession. You say, why not? Didn't God make us so that we should work? Of course he did. But you'll see we live in a fallen world, don't we? Is it not so that all of us, when we have done our best at our daily task or any other task, we find we have fallen short? Yes. You know, we cannot come to God on the ground of our profession. Here's a dear lady who's a wonderful mother, absolutely devoted to her family. You talk to her about the Lord Jesus and the need to find salvation. Oh, she says, see, but I'm all right. I, I, I'm sure I'm all right. I have the faith to feel I'm all right, you know. I do. I'm, I'm as good as mother as I can be, and God has put me on this world to be a mother to my children and a wife to my husband, and I honestly do the best I can as a mother, and surely God will be pleased with what I do. Oh, I have no doubt, if I speak to one such mother tonight, what tremendous gratitude we all of us owe to mothers like you. Yes, I'm sure in one sense God is pleased that you love husbands and children. A mother, isn't it true that even you would have to say, I've not always been the mother I should? And you, sir, in business, and I in things academic. Must we not all admit that when we've done our best, we have fallen short? We cannot come to God on the grounds of being a good doctor or a good cabinet maker or a good farmer or a good member of the public. We should be all those things, but first we need to be reconciled to God, and God has shown us in his word there is a way back to God on the dark paths of sin, a door that is open that all may go in. It's Calvary's cross where we must begin when we come as a sinner to Jesus. The New Testament is not, if the Old Testament doesn't tell us exactly when and what God told Abram, Abel, the New Testament speaks clearly enough to us, does it not? It is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, that cleanses us from all sin. We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin. And I must sing with top lady. I am not s- I am not preaching some curious, narrow-minded little sectarian gospel. Let's hear what the great singers of the church have always said. Let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed be of sin, the double cure, cleanse me from his guilt and power. Friend, would you let me, no, would you let a brother of the Lord Jesus just gently ask you in this solemn evening love, how have you come to God? On what basis do you stand? Oh, God granted that you'll see there is no way to God, save through the sacrifice of his beloved Son. God bring us all there. We say nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. And if so, we come. We may be accepted as ca- as Abel was. Yes, it is said that God bore witness by his sacrifice that he was righteous. Doesn't mean that Cain, uh, that Abel was sinlessly perfect, but this is true. He was right with God. That is the glorious gospel, that when in true repentance and faith we put our trust in Christ, God justifies us. We are right with God. And it wasn't any pretense either. Abel was not sinlessly perfect throughout his life, but as he lived on, his life bore witness that here was a man whom God had redeemed. Salvation was no paying of a fine that the man might go on and live as he liked thereafter. The man had come to personal faith, repentance and faith, and the man's life was changed. He bore witness to the fact that salvation is real. Final thing that we must notice, surely, is what Jude says of Cain. He says, our false teachers in his day and of false teachers that will arise in ours, woe unto them, for they went in the way of Cain. And in our closing moments, we fasten our thoughts on his way. What do you mean by the way of Cain? Had you noticed when we read the passage from Genesis four, Cain's way was described, and here it is. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. That was his way. What a way. He went out on the presence of the Lord. He might have been saved, my K. He chose to reject it and went out on the presence of the Lord. I read nowhere in scripture that he ever came back. Oh, I feel sorry in my heart for Cain, don't you? For this is not some mere fairy story. Cain was a man like you, sir. A hu- human being like you, madam. He came that day with his sacrifice and was expecting God to be well pleased and to compliment him, in fact. And he was met with rebuff. Worse than that, he saw Abel's sacrifice accepted, and there rose in that man's heart at that moment, oh, a tremendous feeling of resentment. Can you not understand it? Have you never felt that way, like that, like that yourself? I think I can understand. Why even a dog, if you put your hand right on its nose, uh, resents it, doesn't it? You shame it. When God accepted Abel and didn't accept Cain, and told Cain to his face that Cain's life was evil, his sacrifice could not be accepted, then Cain found an enormous upsurge of resentment in his heart. God, in his fatherly kindness, spoke to Cain. Cain, he said, you know, Cain, if you don't do well, sin couches at your door. The ancient Hebrew verb is a very pictureful verb. It pictures sin like a leopard, so to speak, strung ready to pounce, tense and alert outside the door, waiting only for Cain to come out to pounce on him. Sin coucheth at the door. You must rule over him, Cain, said God. You must get the better of it, Cain, so destroy- else it will destroy you. Cain did not manage to overcome his resentment, did he? Let it boil over. And in his resentment, he not only killed his brother, but rejected all offers of mercy and went out from the presence of the Lord. I trust this at least tonight that I have not caused resentment in any heart by my plain speaking. That was not intentional. But if it should be to you, sir, or you, madam, my insistence that if you are not born again, you are not an authentic Christian. If that has caused you resentment, well, what shall I say? I didn't mean to hurt you, but I must tell you, you must, you must control that resentment, or it will master you, and it will bring you down at last to where salvation can no longer reach you. Or if we're feeling sore in our hearts or resentful, let the very Lord himself, who gave his son to save us, speak to our hearts. If tonight you do well, you can be accepted, and to do well, all you need to do is to come in genuine repentance that acknowledges that you, like the rest of us, are a bankrupt sinner and receive the Savior and his sacrifice that God has supplied for us. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, said he to God, I'm afraid that when somebody meets me, they'll kill me. Oh no, they won't, says God. I've put, I've put a sign on you. Nobody will ever kill you, Cain. Cain lived to discover there are some things worse than death. That is to live in the conscious knowledge that you have rejected God and have passed beyond the bounds of salvation. Then there is a very big eternity ahead. What shall it be for those who pass beyond time out into eternity, realize they must exist forever? They've gone out from the presence of the Lord. They've gone in the way of. Oh friend, it mustn't be, must it? Let's one and all, if never before, let's rise up tonight and receive the Savior. Learn to live for him now and to enjoy the prospect that when he comes, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. The Lord bless his word to all our hearts, for his name's sake.