Someday you'll hear God's final call to you. This may be it, my friend. Those are solemn words, aren't they? I want to talk tonight about someone whom God called, spoke to, invited. We turn down that call. I want to talk about Cain. Let's start out by talking about Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter four. We have in these messages of this conference talked about some pairs of people in the early chapters of Genesis. First there was Adam and Noah. More about Noah in that one. Then we talked about Adam and Eve and had a good deal to say about both of them and how they applied to us. That was chapters two and chapter three. Now in Genesis four we come to the story of Cain and Abel. These were the first two people born on this earth. We are not descended from either one of them. Abel was killed by his brother Cain. And Cain was not the only other child that Adam and Eve had. The Bible says they had sons and daughters, and they lived for hundreds of years. The skeptics have that famous atheistic question, where did Cain get his wife? And I don't know. I haven't heard that asked for a long time. But if anybody asks you that question, why, you just say to them, well, what does the Bible say about it? Well, I don't know. Well, how many... Which one of those two fellows are you descended from? And I guess the person who asked the question will probably start him and hawing around. He says, Abel, I thought he got killed. He says, Cain, and you say, it's not much wonder you ask a question like that. You're here, aren't you? Doesn't that prove it? So, actually, what you do with a mocker of the Bible is you expose the fact that he hasn't done his homework by asking questions. You don't go on the defensive and try to defend the Bible. It's pretty good at defending itself. You just say, what does the Bible say? How many children did Adam and Eve have? And which one are you descended from? And of course, we're descended from the third son, Seth. And then beside that, Adam and Eve had sons and daughters and many, many of them. So ultimately, Cain married a sister or a niece. And that was no problem in those days because there was no breakdown of the genetic lines. Today it's illegal to marry a brother or sister. Maybe you can marry a cousin. It depends on the laws, I suppose, where you are. but there are genetic problems when there's intermarriage. But that wasn't true in those days because there had been no harmful mutations to come along. So there really was no difficulty about that. And the Bible stands all right. But I'm getting a little beyond the story here. We begin in Genesis four, verse one. Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep. But Cain was a pillar of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground of the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door, and its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Now Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him. I'm going to stop the reading there. You know the story how God spoke to Cain and said, where is Abel your brother? And he said, am I my brother's keeper? That's one of the most famous Bible lines, judging by the quotation of unsaved people, if you listen to. People in the secular world, this line, in mind my brother's keeper, is widely quoted, probably by people who don't even know it comes from the Bible or where from the Bible. But it's one of those sentences that has gone into our culture and so forth with the story. Cain and Abel brought offerings to God. Abel was a shepherd, and he brought, I used to say he brought a lamb, but as I look at this passage more closely, it says he brought of the firstlings of his flock. He might have brought several lambs, the firstborn lambs from some of his flock. And Cain brought fruits and vegetables. He was a tiller of the ground, a farmer. And the Lord did not accept Cain's offering. He did accept Abel's. And Cain got very angry about that. And God asked him why he was angry, and then God said to him, if you do well, will you not be accepted? We'll talk about that in a moment. First of all, a word about the boys. And I heard this story when I was a child, and I think that I jumped to the conclusion that Cain was a bad boy and Abel was a good boy. As they grew up, I was raised in a church where the gospel was not proclaimed, at least not clearly that I understood it. It was easy for me to assume that God accepted Abel. He must have been a good boy because I was taught that if you live a good life, don't worry about it. If there's a heaven, God will take you there. If you're bad, well, maybe he won't, but there wasn't too much concern about an afterlife in the church I grew up in. Nevertheless, I think that as a child, I assumed that Abel was a good fella. Kane was a bad boy. As I have come to know my Bible and thought back about this story, I realize, first of all, that the Bible says nothing like that. It gives no suggestion whatsoever that Cain was a bad, hard-to-handle kid growing up, and that Abel was a nice guy. In fact, if there's any suggestion in the Bible at all, it is just the other way around. That Abel was the difficult child, and Cain was the good one. I can't prove that, but I think it is somewhat implied by the fact that Abel brought a sacrifice that says, I am a sinner and I need to be forgiven. Cain's sacrifice didn't say that. At any rate, we know nothing about the badness or goodness of these kids. We do know that they were religious. They both believed in God. They believed in worship of God. They both came to worship God. They built altars and they offered sacrifices. They were not irreligious, atheistic kids. They were both religious. I'm calling them kids. And we don't really know what age they were by the time this happened. They had both become industrious and farmers of one type or another. And so maybe they're pretty well-grown men as you come to this story. They're usually described as boys, but maybe men would be a little more appropriate. At any rate, they brought offerings, and the offering of Cain was not accepted, and the offering of Abel was accepted. The story makes no sense without making the basic assumption that Adam and Eve had taught their children something about God. It's not detailed here in the Bible. These are very condensed stories, and there's not a word to say that Adam and Eve had even taught them that God existed, but why not? Don't parents teach their children those things? And didn't Adam and Eve know a great deal about God, having walked so closely with them, and having had the experience of falling into sin and then being forgiven? and getting clothing provided by God. The story becomes very logical and very sensible if you make the assumption that Adam and Eve had told these sons of theirs how to relate to the living God and had explained to them that when you bring a sacrifice to God you have to deal with the question of sin. We are all sinners by nature and when you bring a lamb to the altar you are saying to God, I am guilty, I deserve to be punished, and, Lord, I bring you this lamb, letting the lamb die, and then be put on the altar, in my place, taking my punishment. Paul Sapp last night described the judgment of God falling on the Lord Jesus on Calvary's cross. And Abel's lambs are sort of a far and advanced picture of Jesus Christ coming to die for us. Indeed, John the Baptist said of the Lord Jesus, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You see, Abel's sacrifice says, first of all, I am a sinner. I deserve to be punished. Now, the Lamb was not punished in the sense of being whipped or put into pain, but it was put to death. It was not burned to death. Animal sacrifices were not burned, animals were not burned alive on Jewish altars. They were slaughtered the way a farmer kills an animal, maybe with a knife to the throat or whatever, and they were killed as the normal ways of butchering. And then they were butchered, cut up, and put on the altar, generally in pieces. And much of animal sacrifices were actually cooked on the altar, roasted or whatever in pots, and parts of them were taken and eaten in meals. Certain sacrifices were completely burned on the altar and offered to God. In this case, he brought of the firstlings of his flock, and he brought the fat of the animals, and that part was probably completely consumed. But the animal sacrifice says, first of all, I am not right with God. I have done wrong, and I need to be forgiven. And the animal sacrifice not only says that Abel has done wrong, but it says that God will forgive provided a sacrifice is offered for sin. God doesn't just write off sin. He said, oh, I know you didn't mean to do that, or I know you're sorry for it. We'll just forget about it. Now, God doesn't just forget about sin. You're dealing with a righteous God. He cannot overlook sin. He has to deal with it. He has to have that sin punished. And the love of God is not that he says, let's forget about it. The love of God is that he says, I will accept the blood of Jesus Christ as the payment for your sin. And then he says to you, will you accept it? Will you accept the Lord Jesus who died on the cross? He's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and that can include you. If you let it, if you'll accept it, but God leaves you with part of that decision. Just like Cain and Abel had to make a decision about the sacrifice they brought, so you have to make a decision about what you'll do with the Lord Jesus. God does not force his salvation on anybody. And you can say yes or no to Jesus Christ. Abel's sacrifice was a sort of a pledge. Abel didn't know about Messiah coming four thousand years later, dying on a cross. He had no concept of that at all. but there was just this little glimmer that had been given to Eve that somehow through her descendants salvation would be provided through her seed the Satan would be defeated and Abel did understand that the lamb could take his place on the altar and he could be set free from his sin now what about Cain's offering Cain brought of the fruit of the ground it says in verse three and that means probably fruits and vegetables. He was worshiping God. He wasn't intending to get into trouble with God. And he brought what might seem to be a very nice offering for God. Indeed, the Bible does indicate later on that bringing fruits and vegetables from your garden is an appropriate offering to God. At least it was for the Jewish farmer. And in Deuteronomy chapter twenty-six, let's look at that just to establish the real nature of the real problem with Cain's offering. Deuteronomy, don't lose your place in Genesis. Deuteronomy chapter twenty six. And in the book of Deuteronomy, almost the entire book is Moses talking to the children of Israel before they crossed the river into the promised land. And now he's come to the subject of worship. And he says in verse one, when you come into the land, once we've crossed over Jordan and got into the land, Verse two, that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground, which you shall produce, which you shall bring from the land that the Lord your God has given you, and put it in a basket, and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. You take your crops, your vegetables, your fruits, take the first. When the vegetables first start coming in, when the apples first get on the trees, or the oranges, just pick some of the first ones and put these things in a basket and take them to Shiloh where the tabernacle was going to be put and offer them to the Lord. In verse ten, now here's the Jewish farmer praying as he brings his basket of fruit. And now behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me. Then you shall set it before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. Now he used to put it in a basket. Now if it was me, if I was the farmer, I'd ask my wife to arrange the fruits and the vegetables in a nice arrangement because I'm not very artistic at that sort of thing, and my wife would do a very nice job of it. And she'd have a hand in it, no doubt, too, because she probably does some of the gardening in our family, not too much of it. But we'd bring this to the Lord. What's the matter with a sacrifice like that? Why was Cain in trouble? God asked the Jewish farmers to do just this thing. Nothing wrong with bringing your crops to the Lord. carrots and peas and oranges and bananas, however they grew. Now we have an allusion to this in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews, right toward the end of the book of Hebrews. Chapter thirteen, the last chapter. Verse ten. We have an altar, it says in verse ten. We have an altar. This is the book that tells us all about how the Jewish altar is done away and all the sacrifices are finished and no more sacrificial system because Christ has died on the cross. And then at the very end of the book, it says, we have an altar, talking about a spiritual altar. It's not made out of bricks, blocks, stones, wood. It's a spiritual altar. We bring spiritual sacrifices. Verse fifteen. Therefore, by him, by Jesus, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is, the fruit of our lips. giving thanks to His name, the fruit of our lips. That is, your thoughts. First thing in the week, early in the week, we start out and bring our thoughts to the Lord, don't we, at the Lord's table, and offer them to the Lord. Sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips, undoubtedly an allusion back to the Jewish farmer in his basket of first fruits. Now, we're living in nineteen eighty-eight, and let's say you read this verse, and you've never received Christ as your Savior, but you're a church member, and you go to church. And you sing the praises and the worship songs and the church service. The Lord is in his holy temple. The minister says that all the earth keeps silence before him. And you sing the hymns and you put money in the offering basket and you're very proud of the fact that you're religious. And then you discover that God does not accept your worship. Even though you have done what this verse says, you are like Cain, you can't do this until you have been forgiven by the blood of Christ. That's the point. There was nothing wrong with Cain's offering to God except that's not the starting place. He had to start with forgiveness. You cannot worship God acceptably to God without first coming by way of the cross. The way of the cross leads home. There's no other way. And it's presumptuous to go to church and to worship God without finding forgiveness and salvation. by the blood of the Lord Jesus. That's why a lot of religious people get mad at those of us who preach the gospel. They don't like to be told that. That's why a lot of the religious people got angry at the Lord Jesus. It wasn't the sinners and the wicked folks that got mad at the Lord Jesus. It was the religious people that got angry with them because he was saying to them, as he said to Nicodemus, you've got to be born again. You've got to come to the place where you confess that you are a lost soul needing forgiveness and you cry out to the Lord for help. And you find salvation in the blood of the Lord Jesus. So the lamb, you see. You start with the lamb. Now what Cain would have had to do is go to his brother Abel and say, look, I've got lots of fruits and vegetables and you've got lambs, but I need a lamb to offer to God. How about selling me some, swapping me here, some fruits and vegetables for the lamb? And Abel would have said, no, I'll give you a lamb. Oh, no, Cain could have been like David. I don't want to give the Lord that which didn't cost me anything. I want this to be my gift, not your gift. And he could have bought a lamb from Abel, and he could have brought that lamb, and God would have accepted him. And back in Genesis four, that's what it means in verse seven, where it says, if you do well, will you not be accepted? Again, that's a verse that has no meaning unless we assume that Adam and Eve had taught Cain and taught Abel the kind of sacrifice they had to make. But you see, Cain was not willing to bring an offering that said, I am a sinner. His offering said, I am a good person. I am a religious person. I worship you, God. I acknowledge you. I believe in you. And here's my offering. But it stopped completely short of saying, I am a lost soul that needs to be forgiven. And you can't get through to God without that recognition of wrongdoing and sin that calls on the Lord Jesus for salvation. You'll notice in this passage that when, let me tell you the story the wrong way, just to make it vivid in your mind. Cain and Abel brought their sacrifices, and God accepted Abel's sacrifice, but he got angry with Cain because Cain was doing the wrong thing and not acknowledging his sin, and God was very angry at Cain. Now, that's not true. I have mistold that story quite different from the way I read it in the beginning, just to emphasize what I think is a beautiful truth in this passage. God did not get angry at Cain because he did the wrong thing. God is slow to anger. God is long-suffering, Paul Sapp told us this afternoon. Very slow to come down hard on us, even when we do the wrong thing. We saw it in the Garden of Eden, and we talked about Adam and Eve. They had eaten of the tree. God had forbid them to eat up. And we said that God did not come storming into the garden, angry and mad, and saying, What did you do that for? You did wrong. I told you not to do it. He came in the garden in the cool of the day as he had always come, as if nothing whatsoever had happened. And where's Adam? Where are you, Adam? As if he didn't even know that they'd eaten the fruit of the tree. And they were in hiding, not God. God didn't go into hiding because of their sin. Now I know that if we persist in sin, then the face of God is darkened against us. There are many promises in the Bible not to answer prayer. If we consistently go on in rebelling against God, we will find the face of God turning against us. But it doesn't start out that way. God is very gentle with the wrongdoer. And it was Adam and Eve that went into hiding. God did not get angry with Cain. He made it known that the sacrifice wasn't right, but there was no anger. It was Cain that got angry. And that's a significant thing. When you disobey God knowingly, and then refuse to do the right thing, you are likely to get angry with God. That's, again, the same story why religious people are the ones who almost always do the persecuting of Christians. There are some exceptions to that. Sometimes people whose businesses are threatened, like the makers of the golden idols of Diana the Ephesians, they were mad at the preachers because the preachers were ruining their business by converting the idol worshippers. But generally speaking, persecution comes from religious people who are angry because the message of the gospel is telling them that they're not accepted by God, and they don't like that. Now, Cain got angry. He was very angry. And his face fell. He'd probably been a nice, smiling, happy fellow, but now he looks sullen and unhappy. And then you have these very tender words from God. They are very tender, aren't they? The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen, countenance fallen, it says, a face we say today? Why is your face downcast? Why are you angry? And God is pleading with him. That's the call. Someday you will hear God's final call. This may or may not have been the final call for Cain, but the preliminary calls at least are very gentle and very loving and very appealing. Cain, why are you angry? Are you angry at me, Cain? If you do the right thing, Are you not going to be accepted? You know what to do. Go and get the right offering. And let's start over and do it again. And I'm sure going to accept you because I want to accept you. God wants to accept us. God doesn't want to send us into judgment. God wants to have us with him and belong to him. He sent the Lord Jesus to die for us. And so you have this soft response from God. If you do well. And then God sets before Cain an alternative. He says, if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. This verse, coming way back from the Old Testament, has created some problems of translation for the translators, getting at the meaning. Some Bibles, I have a Bible that has a footnote that says, oh, it's not talking about sin here, it's talking about the sin offering. and you can go and make a sin offering, but that's not what it says. It says sin. And I doubt very much if that's the intent of the passage. I think what it is saying here is that you are really going to get into sin if you reject the right path here. The New International Version has a very interesting translation here. It says... Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it. See, that's the imagery here. Kane, you're in a house. You're going to go outside the door. If you don't do the right thing, there's a lion or a tiger crouching in the bushes just outside your door, just waiting for you to come out. And when you step out that door in your disobedience, that animal is going to leap and pounce on you, and you're going to get into a wrestling match with it, and you're going to have to conquer it, but you're likely to lose the battle. Of course, that's exactly what happened. You see, Cain was not a murderer. Not yet. He did not get into trouble with God because he murdered his brother. He got into murder because he would not do the right thing. When a person rejects the will of God regarding salvation, they can be heading into the worst disasters imaginable. Sin is crouching at the door, just waiting to get an advantage over them and to destroy the life. So it's very important when you face a matter of salvation that you receive the Lord Jesus. And if you turn your back on Christ, there's no telling where you're heading. Now I'm not talking about judgment. I mean, when we talk about judgment, we know where you're heading and we could preach on that. And last night that was preached on. Hell lies ahead of the Christ rejector. But I'm saying there's something else beside that here in this life. Disaster can lie ahead of the Christ rejector because of what's inside of you. That sin nature that's inside of you is like a wild animal and the grace of God keeps it restrained. But when you say no to God, that animal gets unleashed. And you can make a disaster out of your own life just because this animal is crouching at the door, desiring to have you. And so comes the warning to Cain. Corruption is the fruit of rebellion. Murder and violence arise from independency of God. Satan probably didn't want Cain to become a murderer, but the flesh took over. Anger instead of submission to God proved the reality of his decisions. And the refusal of the blood of Christ brings out the true nature of the sinner. He becomes a child of disobedience. The road of rebellion leads to destruction. You have a choice. And what happens if you choose the wrong way and reject the Lord Jesus? The judgment of God may not suddenly fall upon you. It may, of course. It does sometimes. But... your own sin nature may take control of you and drive you into further problems. It's an interesting thing, I think, that God gives us the freedom to make our own choices. If you do well, he says to Cain, if you do not do well, and he's talking about making the right kind of a sacrifice, if you do well, if you do not do well, God does not force on Cain the decision. God enlightens us, but He does not enforce His will on us. And one person has called this the self-imposed weakness of God. That's a very interesting expression. God in His sovereignty has chosen to give us the freedom to say yes or no to the Lord Jesus Christ. In this matter of making choices, we have become sovereign. The ultimate decision to love God and obey Him rests within the human heart. God stands there like a great guide pointing the right road. The Lord Jesus said there's a narrow road that leads to life and few there be that find it. And there's a broad road that leads to destruction and many go down it, pointing the way and telling you what lies ahead. But then you have to decide which of those roads that you're going to go down. And that's one of the factors of the life in which we're living. And God leaves the power of choice with us. What are you going to do with the Lord Jesus? Are you going to say yes to him or are you going to say no to him? Maybe you've been religious and you've gone to services in your assembly or to some church and you think, well, probably you're living a half decent life and everything's all right, but you've never come to the place where you say, Lord, I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. I'm guilty. I need to be forgiven. My soul is not right with you. And I want to trust the Lord Jesus right now. You can do that right now. You can do that right while I'm speaking. Or while Brother Nicholson is speaking, you can bow your head right where you are and talk to the Lord and say, Lord, here I am. And then don't tell God what you're going to do for him. Don't make any promises about how you'll live for him. Because that's only offering him more fruits and vegetables. Say to him, I have nothing to offer, Lord, except the blood of the Lord Jesus. And he died for me. And I trust him, and I ask for your forgiveness based on what Jesus did for me. I make that choice. Joshua said to his people, choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my family, he said, we will serve the Lord. Joshua made a choice. You have a choice to make. If you do well, you are going to be accepted. And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and you're going to have to battle with it. May God bless His word to us.