Gooding, David: 4 - The Book of Genesis

Creation story in the book of Genesis. We discovered it has to tell us two major things about man. First of all, it describes the reason for his existence in his immediate context, which was to till ground. And then we found it described in great detail man's life, helping us to understand what life is, what in particular human life is, and therefore preparing us to understand what death is. We found that the Bible describes human life at many different levels. In the first place, man is so much stuff made of the dust of the ground. But then, in addition, you must understand that man is organic material. The Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, able to reproduce and pass on his life. But not only that, for animals to some extent have that, man has a very marked aesthetic sense. The Lord God planted in the garden trees good to look at. Indeed, man's aesthetic sense is highly developed, far and away beyond anything you will find in the animal creation around him. More important, we found out that human life is defined at its highest stage as a relationship with God, and that relationship is marked out by moral limits. So God put man in the garden where there was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God forbade man to eat of that tree, thereby knocking out a relationship between man and God. God was to command and man to obey. God is the creator and man but the creature. God is the great independent and man the dependent. But at the same time, God so made man, as is evident, with the ability to break that commandment if he chose. And God, likewise, as the evidence is before us, gave man a choice, a real choice, so that he could choose to obey the command. He wasn't so weak that he had to sin. He could choose to obey the command. And at the same time, he could choose to disobey the command. He was not a m- merely a machine. He didn't work merely by instinct. He was a moral being with a moral choice, and at this level related immediately to God, his creator, in a relationship that is a moral relationship. Then we notice other features about man's life. God gave him an occupation. God gave him an health need. God gave him the ability to make language, to make words for the purpose of organizing his own world, for the higher purpose of converse and fellowship with his wife and with all the human race, and supremely for the purpose of intelligent fellowship with God, experience of life that can be put into words, and fellowship with God that can be expressed in words, and an ability to receive all those communications from God that God might be prepared to express in words. Now this evening we have to proceed and consider the solid story of man's fall and what sprang therefrom. It is once apparent that after the fall, according to God's promise, on the very day that man ate of that tree, he died. And then subsequently, after many hundreds of years, but inevitably and inexorably, man died at the physical level. That is to say, when man broke the commandment and sinned, he died at the highest level of his being. He suffered a spiritual death, an alienation from God, the reflex of which was that he went and tried to hide up away from the presence of God among the trees of the garden. Then subsequently he was put out of the garden, that eventually he might return to the dust, for of the dust he came, and to the dust he must return. He should die not only spiritually, he should die physically. That last fact raises a question that may be in some of your minds. I will attempt to answer it now as best I can, though, of course, my answer must be very brief. How are we to understand the two trees here mentioned as being in the Garden of Eden? The one whose fruit was forbidden to Adam, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the other, the tree of life, the which, when Adam was banished from it, eventually he died. Someone will sure to ask, how do you regard those trees, were they little trees. Here is the point which I would prefer to be undogmatic. And if any here present think that those trees are symbols of some great reality, well, so they may be true. For my part, I see no reason for not taking them as literal trees. Let us take the tree of life. It is expressly said that God put man out of the Garden of Eden after he fell, so that he should not put forth his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever. It becomes apparent from that, that in order to live forever, physically, man had to have access to this tree of life. If you took him away from this tree of life so that he couldn't actually touch it and reach its fruit and eat it, then although he didn't die immediately, a process began inside him that eventually resulted in physical death. It is clear, isn't it, therefore, that when it comes to physical life, man hasn't now, and he never did have, essential immortality. Please try to understand what I'm saying so, so gr- such in such a poor fashion, but please try and understand it, won't you? As regards his soul and spirit, man lives on eternally. But his body never did have, and certainly hasn't got now. His body hasn't got essential immortality. It would have gone on living forever, apparently, if he had access to this tree of life. But take away his access to that tree and its fruit, and physically he begins to die, so after some centuries he dies completely. What kind of a dream was it then that would have kept him physically alive, permanently? But you know as well as I, if I were to ask the scientists, the biologists, and the medics, what is it that makes men die? They don't really know, do they? What is it that makes us age? No one knows. Various theories have in recent years been put around, and some have claimed that they're about to tell us the great secret, why do people age? But more recent pronouncements on the topic have assured the world in general that scientists are as far off discovering what it is that makes men age as ever they were. Is it some trace element that's missing? Well, let me join the ranks of the ignorant. I don't know how you can force. But if I am to believe Genesis, there was a substance open to Adam in the garden that would have guaranteed him physical immortality so long as he ended. But that being deprived, that him being deprived of that, then he slowly began to age and die. For all I know, the substance may well have been a physical substance, and the tree a very little tree. And of course, the tree of life in the book of the Revelation is used for some, a symbol for something eminently higher. I have no dispute with the idea. The New Testament uses the tree of life as a symbol of our Lord himself. But then you'll see, we also use bread as a symbol of the Lord, don't we? He is the bread of life. In a word, what is in itself a physical thing necessary for our bodies, our daily bread, our Lord takes and use and uses as a symbol of himself at a far deeper or higher level. It seems to me it is quite possible it was so with the tree of life, originally a physical and very literal thing, necessary for man's physical permanence. It becomes later in scripture a symbol of a spiritual source of life, even our Lord himself. Then you ask me, well, what about that tree of life, a tree, sorry, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Was that a little tree? Well, I don't see why not. You say, but was there ever a a a fruit in this world, like a banana or an orange or an apple or something, that if you ate it, suddenly gave you, uh, the knowledge of good and evil? Well, actually, I don't think it really matters what the fruit was. Perhaps he did. But look at it this way. You put to yourself the question, what would be necessary if man was going to develop into a mature moral creature? You say, well, if he's going to be a moral creature, he'll have to have a choice, a real choice. For if he has no choice and merely works automatically, then you can't blame him for doing wrong or praise him for doing right. If he's going to be a real moral creature, he must have a free choice. That must mean that he must be able to sin. Please make the distinction very carefully. God gave Adam the ability to sin, not permission to sin. He strictly forbade him to sin. Now he made him, so the story tells us, quite frankly, he made him so that if Adam chose to sin, he could sin. And therefore, man had a real choice to be exercised, whether he would obey God or whether he would disobey him. I will wait a minute. See what next is required. If man was to have a real choice, then in that garden, God must forbid him one thing at least, mustn't he? If God had said to Adam, hey, all right, old boy, you may do just as you like in this garden. Do anything. You like to work on that tree? Well, take it, my good man. Or do you prefer that? Well, get that as well. Or do just as you please. There isn't anything here that you mustn't do. Or man wouldn't have had a chance, would he? No, there would have been nothing that he could have done except something that was good. You know, if I come to your house to see one of these days and you say to me, now you can do just as you like in my house. You can sit in the chair and behave yourself as you like, or if you like to kick the furniture to pieces, you can, uh, uh, do just as you like. There's nothing that you can do that is possibly wrong. Well, I couldn't misbehave then, really, could I? I couldn't do anything against your will. I shouldn't have a choice to misbehave if I wanted to. And therefore, it was necessary that there should be at least one thing that the man was forbidden to do. Otherwise, he hadn't got the choice, a real choice, of doing wrong if he wanted to, had he? In that sense, then, if he has to have one prohibition in order to be a free man, free to choose to be sinful if he wants to, then it doesn't really matter what the prohibition concerns. It may, if you like, have been some great mysterious spiritual thing that Genesis talks of under the symbol of the tree, for all I know. It could have been a common or garden tree, and it was. Um, uh, just a little tree like any others whose fruit was neither here nor there. But simply a prohibition on that tree because God must put at least one prohibition if Adam's freedom was going to be a very real thing. You know, I'm tempted to sermonize here and have to get myself out of my debts. But you know, young folks, if you want to be really free, you'll have to, God will have to give you some prohibitions. If nothing is ever wrong, you're not free, are you? No wonder hundreds and thousands of young folks now don't know where they are, have lost their sense of direction, and to some extent their sense of freedom, because people who ought to have known better have removed all prohibitions and all things are allowed, and therefore man has no real morally significant choice to make is something less than a true human being. At any rate, whether the tree be literal or not, there the matter stands. God gave man the ability to sin, but not permission to sin. And man sinned. The New Testament comments that Eve was deceived. That Adam, not being deceived, but so to speak, with his eyes open, deliberately disobeying. Briefly, let us observe Satan's tactics. He's not yet out of business, and he uses his tactics with remarkable consistency. First, he came to the woman and suggested that God hadn't really provided everything that God could have provided. Deliberately overstating his case, he said, now, my woman, I hear that you may eat of any of these trees in the garden except one. Ah yes, he said, but there is one, isn't there? There is one you can't eat. With the immediate insinuation that God was holding something back. He could have provided something. I should be surprised if there were adult, an adult heart in this congregation that has not sometime or other heard those same whisperings within. When times have been rough, the query comes, couldn't God do better for you than this? But not second, the tactic that you might call alternative explanation. Uh, said Eve, exaggerating herself a little bit, that God had warned them that if they entered the tree of that, uh, uh, the fruit of that tree, they would die. And with bold and deliberately calculated to shock Shock. Denial. denial. Satan said, you shall not surely die. That was a positive lie. But the next bit was interesting. Says he, God knows that in the day you eat of that tree, you shall be as God, knowing good and evil. That bit was true. For God himself says in the end of chapter three, now since man has done this and has become like one of us to know good and evil. So Satan's lie was enforced by what was truth. But notice how he put the two things together. He made this an alternative explanation. You shall not eat of that tree, for in the day you eat of it, you shall die, says God. No, says Satan, I can explain things, you know, there's a different explanation. The explanation really is this, that you, he doesn't want you to touch it because in the day you eat of it, you shall be as God. That That was was that totally if you. true. The cleverness and cunningness of it was that though the second explanation was true, it did not cancel out the first explanation, but Satan made out it did. It was true that in the day you eat thereof you shall be as God, though it was an evil, but it still remained true that in the day you eat there are beautiful powers. Now watch it, young folks, because Satan is still at that. Let's take a little example. You go to Sunday school. Your teacher tells you that when the Israelites left Egypt, God did a miracle through Moses, and the sea parted, and And they they walk walked. through. You go out later in life and you come across some pundit in school or outside it. He said, you don't believe that story, do you? God is a miracle. When, as you see, folks were so ignorant in those days, that's what they believed anyway. We now know that in that part of the world, at certain times in the year, there comes a tremendous wind, and it blows the sea and stops it coming across the shallows. That's what must have happened that night, but see, there weren't any miracles at all. It was just a natural phenomenon. So what? Suppose it is a simple natural phenomenon. So what? Yes, it is a natural phenomenon. But what, what are you going to deduce from that alternative explanation? I know what Satan would like you to deduce from it. That the fact that you can give the thing a physical explanation somehow cancels out the other explanation, that this was a miracle performed at God's bidding. But that's just where the fallacy lies, and I beseech of you, you young folks, if you are going to think, yes, think, but make sure you think enough. Tragedy is with young folks that they start to think, but they don't think far enough, they don't think enough. And they get led away to unbelief, not because of their thinking, but because they have thought, but not thought enough. Actually, in that instance, doesn't it, doesn't it, the Bible tells us that God blew with a big wind anyway. The physical explanation is in the Bible, if you like to use for it. But if God choose to use physical means at that split second when his people stood on the banks of the Red Sea and used it and nodded it at that very moment when if they had been 12 hours, if it had been twelve hours later, they would have perished under Pharaoh's sword. If God pleased those tiny physical things like that. Just because you could explain the physical mechanism doesn't do away with the miracle. The miracle of God's providence and timing. So then beware of alternative explanations. But then notice what was perhaps far more subtle, because it's a little bit, uh, more difficult to see what's wrong with you. Satan deceived Eve, and perhaps Adam too, by getting them to think that life consists in only part of what true life really is. We are told that when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was a delight to the eyes, and it was desirable to make one wise that she took it. Look, said Satan, if you eat this tree, you shall not die. Oh. So he who had it hitherto hadn't looked much at the tree because she was forbidden anyway to to to eat it, so she hadn't concerned herself with it. Wise woman, I should think. And there ain't a lot of sense in constantly meandering around a forbidden tree and getting as near as the fruit as you can and coaxing it and admiring it and then, you know, smelling it and then perhaps kissing it and doing everything short of eating it. If God has forbidden something, we are wise people to keep away from it. But now she's still looked at the thing. Ah, they began to talk. This thing that had always had the black note of prohibition removed. You know, she said, when you accidentally did it. It isn't a bad thing, whoever said it was. It wasn't bad in itself, it was the results of disobeying God that were going to be bad. She saw that it was good food. Well, that's a very real chunk of life, isn't it? We have to have food. And if you haven't got your daily bread and butter and beef steak, well, you die. Food is an exceedingly important means of life. A real great chunk of life, real life, food. And then it was good to look at, ha, we've already seen man have that dimension too, didn't he? He had an aesthetic sense. Oh, what would life be without an aesthetic sense? The beauty of song and music and shape and color of literature. And she saw the fruit was good to look at, another real, very real chunk of life. And then she observed that it was a tree much desired to make one's eyes, not only physical satisfaction and aesthetic satisfaction, but intellectual satisfaction. Yet another big chunk of real human life. A man that has no intellectual life is, is half dead, isn't he? But Sam, what is life? God has said that in the day you eat of that tree, you shall surely die. Please, what is life and what is death? Oh, how widespread the notion is. That the sum total of life is merely these three things: physical, aesthetic, intellectual satisfaction. And so successful has that lie been that there are multitudes of men and women now that think that aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction are real spirituality. They think if they've heard a beautiful piece of music with all its aesthetic charm, that somehow that's spiritual. Or they think that if they listen to some very stirring intellectual exercise and their brains have been moved, that somehow that's spiritual. That isn't necessarily so. They're good things, of course they are, just like sausages are. Food, physical food is good, and aesthetic delight is good, and intellectual stimulus is good. These are all part of life, but the three of them put together don't, uh, sum up what real life is. What is real life? Man shall not live by bread alone, physical, aesthetic, or intellectual. By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live. For this purpose, man was given a language. God might talk to him, and he talked to God. And life really finds its heart here in their spiritual fellowship with God by means of God's word. Not just some vague sort of experience, though to be sure there are experiences at the spiritual level that surpass our expression. The Holy Spirit groans within us, the groaning, the groanings that cannot be uttered. But normally fellowship with God is at the conceptual level of words. That day when Satan got man and woman to disobey the word of God and turn their backs on the word of God. He was getting them to commit suicide. That is life. Have fellowship with God through his word at the spiritual level, and the blessed holiness and health of it would condition and beautify all the other levels of human life. But disobey that word and die at that level. And eventually, mark the adverb, eventually, not necessarily at once, eventually, man will die at all the other levels. We preach it to the unconverted. When we would remind people what is wrong with the world of unregenerate men and women, we as Christians do well to keep it in our heads, don't we? There's nothing wrong in physical satisfaction, nothing wrong in aesthetic satisfaction, nothing wrong in intellectual satisfaction. These are genuine parts of human life. Now, please let's be clear. Neither one nor tawa nor all three put together are the secret of life. Real life is that eternal life or fellowship with God through his word. We do well to remember it too in our service for God. There's some curious ideas from time to time that come around about service to God. It wouldn't preach a lot if you didn't eat sausages, would you, or any other food you'd like to mention? I think I've got to think about sausages, but then one gets fed so many. Uh, uh, you, you couldn't eat that, you couldn't preach if you hadn't got, uh, is it which going to put you off? And all those who would tell us that in preaching the gospel you shouldn't argue, manage constantly to argue themselves, for they are ever asking me reason for the platform and saying for this and for that and for the other. Indeed, when they put the Bible, they can't resist a little bit of reasoning, but they say for God so loved the world. Yeah. And those preachers that I've ever come across think it's a wise thing to have some aesthetics around the place, don't they? They don't all sing on one note all the way through the hymn, just one note all the time, or people so stiff, people think it was angry. But even when they get up to sing, they do use a little bit of aesthetics and attempt a bit of a tune. No, they won't. And they do so at all levels with great common sense. Nothing wrong with any of that. And if we're going to use any level, let's make them the best that they can possibly be. Don't imagine just because you don't eat the sausages that you're somehow spiritual, or because you have no intellectual content, you must be spiritual, or that if the aesthetics are excruciatingly bad, that is a sign of tremendous progress in faith or something. That would be nonsense. That doesn't automatically make you, um, spiritual. But we need to remember that when we've done our best at all those three levels, we still haven't tapped the spiritual side. The spiritual side is fellowship with God and God with men by means of his word. And disobeyed therefore, and he died. Died at the level of that unspoiled relationship with God, and ran off in the garden. But Satan had also represented it to man that if he took of the fruit of this tree, man would rise in the universe, usually as God. There was a sense in which, yes, he became as God, knowing good and evil. And in another sense, he fell. For in that very moment, their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. You say, what was wrong with that? Because that's how God made them. Yeah, it was. But man, you'll see, is not just angelic, is he? What ho he isn't. Man is not only spirit, man is animal. I have made the point earlier, so you now will not misunderstand me, will you? That man is not just an animal that happened to be improved by a wandering cosmic ray. No, indeed not. Man is a special creation, but it is quite evident to see that when God made man, he made him as to his physical side, with many working parts similar to the animals. Of course, in man, though physically they are the same, emotionally and aesthetically they are on a far higher level. In a dog of bone, well, dirty old thing will rag all over your actions to the rug, uh, and a terrible mess of gravy on the floor, ain't got any aesthetic sense when he eats bone at all. You'd be given a beach table and eaten on that. It's for the same physical purpose, of course, satisfying your physical body, but though you have this business of eating in common with the animals, with you, it's a much more significant thing. At the aesthetic level. And if man was going to be truly human, then not only would he need aesthetic control of his animal workings, he would need that control that comes by daily fellowship with God Almighty. So long as he had that fellowship, man had no need to be ashamed, even though he was made. When he fell and died and lost that sense of intercommunion with God, he discovered another thing, that you can't just carry on minus that level and think all is still going to be all right. Man discovers a bias in the other direction, and in a very real sense, he becomes animal and ashamed. God made man to rule, to rule the earth and all the animals in it, animals included. God made man, in that sense, to be his viceroy, made in the very image of God, whilst up on condition, a perpetual dependence upon God. Satan infiltrated the idea that man could rebel against God and still himself remain king in his castle. You can't do it. For to be king in your own human castle, you must have that other dimension to life, that is fellowship with God. And that dimension be broken. And man discovers he has a rebellion on his own hands, and even his own body and emotions will not necessarily be subject to him, but will rise up and rebel and try to drive him. He frantically tries to keep control of them all the time. He will, from time to time, find himself over with. The animal within him rises up and takes control. Oh, what a beastly mess it makes. Something that could be beautiful and pure and holy and healthy, because truly human in fellowship with God, loses the dimension of fellowship with God and becomes utterly beastly. Hear then God's word to men. Oh, how gracious of God, at once and immediately, not merely to put the blame where the blame first lies, the Satan, but in that very moment to announce the ultimate victory of the human race. Enmity between the woman and her seed and the serpent's seed. It shall bruise thy head, says God to the serpent. It, the woman's seed, shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his head. So God had foreseen it, hadn't he? Not with us to question the ways of God, or to say that there was only one way of doing things and God couldn't have done it any other at on time. The temptation is strong, isn't it? Man is going to be made into a moral being whose love for God is significant. That love must be absolutely free. And must have, man must have a real choice. It must mean a real possibility of choosing sin. God, in his wisdom, I nearly said his courage, dared the great. Because he had already seen the way of eventual triumph. God might have wiped them out there and then, in all the unpleasantness of their rebellion, and started afresh. That would have been a defeat for God. Had God wiped them out, then Satan could have claimed that though God was all powerful to create, he wasn't all powerful to attract. And the mere wiping out of man would have seen proved upon that God couldn't keep hold of a man's affections once he gave a man A a real real free rejoicing. choice. So many might not, indeed, the very first thing is to announce that there will be a victory over this earth. It shall come from one who is really human, seed of woman, and God, though really human, more than human. First man was of the earth, earthy, the second the law from heaven. The first was made a living soul, the second a life-giving spirit. I must pass quickly the other sentences. To the woman, as to man, there are pronounced certain pains. You will observe, therefore, would you not now the difference between the penalty of sin and the consequence of sin. God in his mercy slew an animal and with its skin and mane were cut. That they, fallen humans, now with a sense of shame, indecent animals, might become a decent, innocent animal, must be killed. They're two different things, aren't they? We need to get it clear, for we who trust Christ are freed eternally from the penalty of sin. There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. We are not freed from the consequence of sin. You say, what is the difference? But my humble expression will be this. A supposed father says to his ten-year-old, you are not to eat those right, unripe gooseberries. If you do, they'll give you the stomach ache. He is pronouncing upon the consequence of disobedience, stomach ache for eating green gooseberries when he was told he shouldn't do. If Father adds, and if you eat them, I should give you six of the best as well, uh, uh, on your posterior. He is now describing the penalty of the disobedience. And if the boy goes and eats them and get a raging stomach ache so that when father comes home at night, he's in bed, writhing in bed, and mum says to dad, now, now go easy with him, you know, because he's real too bad, I mean, go easy. Father might be induced to relieve him of the penalty, namely six strokes of a slipper. The fact that he was relieved of the penalty wouldn't necessarily relieve him of the consequence, would it? And you say, how cruel. Well, I suppose it is. And yet, if that violent stomach ache should, uh, help him in future not to be green with spritz again, you might even see it kind of working out to some good advantage, mightn't you, Lot? God in his wisdom, when man fell, was prepared to forgive and announce final victory, but he wasn't prepared to remove the consequences. Because man might never have come to see that sin is the wretchedly horrible thing that's in him. We are not going to end up in heaven, the great paradise of God, as a lot of innocents who never knew what sin was. You know, I got saved very early on in life, Timothy aside, I got saved very early on in life, and I have known, known times when I have said to, to myself, you know, particularly when I've been hearing somebody giving his testimony, and the testimony has been rather bright and colorful. And I get the impression that the man really enjoyed these colorful bits, but now he got saved, so he's packed it up. You know, I found myself saying, I wish I hadn't got converted quite so soon, of course. You know, well, obviously that first bit was a little enjoyable, wasn't it? And I missed all that, you see. It would be a match on my brother if you got up to heaven and you said, God, please could I have a half an hour off from singing in the choir here because there were one or two dark things down on earth I didn't get a chance to do, you see. And before I start heaven, I'd like a little bit longer of those. That's how we, some of us live as Christians, isn't it? By the time you get home to heaven, my brother and sister, God will have seen to it that you hate the very sight and sound of sin, and glad to have done with it for eternity. So the relationship between man and woman fell from what it originally was designed to be. Instead of becoming a being and remaining absolutely free thing, it becomes a matter of domineering and domination on the one side and sheer physical urges on the other. Not the best as God designed it. Keeping the Garden of Eden and daily work that should have been so interesting becomes a hard labor for discipline. And all of us have done it. God give us the wisdom to bow to it and to embrace the discipline that the kindness of God allows in order to make our heaven a sinless heaven where no for- further fault should come. And now this is the third, the fourth chapter of this, uh, book in a very few and brief ones. But if I don't attempt now, there won't even be a question of minus six now. Aaronson. Adam sinned, and the earth was cursed for his sake to bring forth thorns and thistles. Cain sinned, but it is evident that his sin was far more grave than Adam's, because not now was the earth cursed, but Cain himself personally was cursed from the earth. What was he to all about? Well, this Cain was a tiller of the ground, therefore it was only natural that Cain should bring an offering to the Lord of the fruits of the ground. Why not? Abel, well, that was his job to keep sheep, so he did what his job suggested, and he brought a sacrifice of a sheep with its blood and so on, but, uh, Cain being a farmer, he brought the fruits of the ground. And God said, no, thank you very much, Cain. And you say, what was wrong with the sacrifice? The old and famous explanation is that Cain tried to come to God without a sacrifice and shedding of blood, and merely brought the works of his own hands. In recent times, there's been a revolt against that interpretation, for some people have got as far as reading Leviticus as well as Genesis. And there they have discovered that, uh, Leviticus and other such books of the Pentateuch make provision that the Israelite could, if he wished, bring sacrifices, the fruit of the ground. Indeed, he is commanded to, on times, to bring his minkar, to use the technical term, a present to God. He will bring, I'll bring the first fruits, so you bring the first fruits of the land and bring them to God. Indeed, he's commanded to bring such fruits to God. They will say, Sandra, what was wrong then with Keynes if he brought the mink cow of the fruits of the ground? Well, good friend, there is nothing wrong in the gift itself. But there was something fundamentally wrong here. You cannot come to God, and you cannot give your gifts to God if first you ignore the fact of sin. Yes, if you are a redeemed people like Israel. Yes, if you have first been reconciled to God by the blood of the sacrifice. Yes, if first you are reconciled by blood and forgiven, then you may come and bring your gifts to God, and they are blessed, and God will accept them. But you cannot come to God on the basis of such gifts. For now, sin has taken place. If we would come to God, we must first face the problem of sin, and come God's way and have that sin forgiven. It's important. You see, now a man will say today, my good father, you know, he will say, I, I, I don't understand all this religion stuff. I just haven't got time to read the Bible, and I don't have time to go to church, the cows anyway, and anyway, those folks who do go to church, I don't see that they're much better than I am. And why can't I offer to God my life as a farmer? I do my very best. I, I supply butter, I supply the beef, I feed the hungry, and I keep the economy going, and I do my very best at it, and I've never cheated anybody. Why can't I offer to God my life as a farmer without bothering about religion? I'll tell you why, friend. You could offer to God your life as a farmer, and he would accept it. If first you had the matter of sin provide. But you can't, can't come to God on the ground of your life as a farmer. For you have sinned like the rest of us. God isn't prepared to stand by and say sin doesn't matter. Why not? He won't even. Sin matters. And God demands that sin be punished because he's cruel and because he's kind. Sin is a murderer, and God still adheres to his original description. Sin kills. And it kills life, and it kills people. And God isn't prepared to stand by and see people killed by sin, and eternally killed, and still say sin doesn't matter. Friend, if your sin doesn't matter, then you don't matter, do you? If what you do doesn't matter, whether it be right or wrong, and even if it is wrong that you've done, if it doesn't matter, then if what you do doesn't matter, you don't matter either. And God is never prepared to say any one of us doesn't matter. This is a vast wonder that, friend, God takes you seriously. You may be the tiniest little thing conceivable compared with the vast universe you're in, and God still takes you seriously. If at length you choose to go away from God, God will take you seriously. He won't say it doesn't matter. He takes you seriously. Or if you choose to go away from God, to reject the sacrifice of Christ. I would like to be able to say that God will just knock you out, but he won't. He takes your choice seriously. He won't break his heart. He lets you go. You say, what does it mean to be let to go? Well, have you thought about Cain? Cain would not come in the way of sacrifice and love, and he got angry with God. Said God, the book Abel has bought the right thing, you bring like Abel. I should do nothing of the sort, is it? If I might paraphrase his attitude, it was this, look here, says he's God. If you don't like what I bring, then you'll not only not have that, you won't even have what Abel brings either. Would Are I you to kill kidding? him? Would you do the gardener like that, so? Suppose you had a gardener and you had a greenhouse, you said, now my man, you know, I cannot bend the sight or taste of tomatoes, for I would like a cucumber. Now please plant the greenhouse in cucumbers. So the man gets busy and you come at the right season of the year, you enter the greenhouse, tomatoes, everywhere you see tomatoes, not a cucumber in sight, and you call the gardener and say, oh, Jeff, come here a minute, I thought I told you cucumbers, not tomatoes. Suppose the man turns around to you and says, look here, I like tomatoes. Now I'm going to have. I don't care if you don't like tomatoes and like cucumber, I'm going to have tomatoes. And if you don't have tomatoes that I like, well, you don't have cucumbers either, because I shall destroy the greenhouse. What would you say to a farmer like that? Say, thank you very much, my man. Now, here are your cards. Thank you. Service is no longer required. Carl said that to Cain. Oh. So, Cain, you defy me. You won't bring what I want. You're prepared to murder Abel, the man that does bring you on, aren't you? Cain, go. You might as well.