- Well, we're gonna continue our series,
The Greatest Stories Ever Told.
I'm excited about this morning.
Pastor Ronnie is going to bring the Word.
Would you guys welcome Pastor Ronnie?
(congregation applauding)
- I'm five foot eight, 215.
(congregation laughing)
Woo!
And I'm under no illusions
about what I can and cannot bench press.
Yeah.
Actually, I don't have a clue
what I can and cannot bench press.
But that doesn't really matter.
That's irrelevant, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Okay, I just wanted to be sure
we're getting off on the right foot.
We're gonna talk about Cain and Abel today,
and we're gonna read the first nine verses
of Genesis chapter four,
and then we're gonna read one verse
out of the book of John.
Would you stand with me?
Adam made love to his wife Eve,
and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.
She said, "With the help of the Lord,
"I have brought forth a man."
Later, she gave birth to his brother Abel.
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.
In the course of time,
Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil
as an offering to the Lord.
And Abel also brought an offering,
fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.
The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering,
but on Cain and his offering,
he did not look with favor.
So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
Then the Lord said to Cain, "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 rule over it."
Now Cain said to his brother Abel,
"Let's go out to the field."
While they were in the field,
Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"
"I don't know," he replied.
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
And from the book of John.
"Very truly, I tell you Pharisees,
"anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate,
"but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber."
Father, I thank you for your word.
I thank you for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit
to impart life to us through your word.
And I pray that that's what you would do this morning
in Jesus' name, amen.
There are two or three things that I would definitely
like for you to, would like to serve as a takeaway today.
And one of them is simply this.
And it took me quite a while to learn this,
and so that's one of the things about getting old.
You learn some stuff.
But it's simply this.
Not every question needs an answer.
In fact, the wrong question is often worse
than the wrong answer.
I mean, the wrong answer can be corrected.
It can be like a bad tooth.
It can be pulled, and especially if it's replaced
by the right answer.
The wrong question is like Lyme's disease or something.
It just kind of hides in there,
and then it masquerades as other things,
and it pulls you farther and farther
and farther and farther from the truth.
And so we're not here today.
I'm not planning on answering any questions like,
well, where'd Cain get his wife?
Or what was the mark of Cain?
Or any such needless speculation.
If you get an email from me,
then I don't know if you ever read all the way down
and read those postmarks that people put on it.
That's not the right term, but anyway,
you know what I'm talking about.
I'm old, give me a break.
I've postscripted mine with 2 Timothy 2 23,
which says don't have anything to do
with foolish and stupid arguments
because you know they produce quarrels.
Do you know if the church, if believers,
throughout the centuries would just stop having
anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments,
a whole lot more people would come to Christ.
And the reason why we engage in that
is because we try to answer questions
that really don't need an answer.
They really don't need the dignity of an answer.
We're here to answer, I'm gonna try to answer
a couple of obvious questions
and to see the necessity and the beauty of the gospel.
But first, we have to go back to that fateful day
in the garden, Kevin talked about it last week.
You know the story, God said the day
that you eat from this tree, you will die.
And the first question I have is did they die?
In the natural, they didn't,
and that's what we tend to think of.
When we think about death, the first thing
that we think about is physical death,
but let's dig a little bit deeper.
There is biological death, but the Bible doesn't treat
biological death as something final.
In fact, the couple of times that Jesus actually addressed
someone who is dead, he said, they're not dead,
they're sleeping, 'cause that's really all
that biological death is according to the Bible.
And they don't treat, it doesn't treat it as something final
and it doesn't even treat it as something to fear
or something to be concerned about.
It's basically, it's a passageway is what it is.
Matthew 10, 28, Jesus said, do not be afraid of those
who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in hell.
Now that's called the second death.
And the second death is treated as being final,
and it is marked by one word,
and if you've been here for years and years
and heard me teach you, you already know this,
that word is separation.
In physical death, we experience physical separation.
If you've lost a loved one, if you've lost somebody
that you're close to, there's pain, there's a physical pain,
and over the years, that pain dissipates a little bit,
but the separation is just, it's there.
This last week, actually, I went to visit
the gravesite of my wife who passed away
five and a half years ago, and actually,
a couple of weeks ago, Michelle went and visited
the gravesite of her husband who passed away nine years ago.
And we do that, I went to go talk to her.
She wasn't there.
But we do that because we kind of feel their presence
maybe a little bit more, but nothing physical.
Nothing, all I could do is kiss that cold gravestone.
It was there.
There's a separation.
And in spiritual death, we experience separation from God.
And some of us might think that's not necessarily
a bad thing because God tends to mess with my stuff.
When God comes around, I don't feel, I feel uncomfortable.
I don't feel like I can do just whatever I wanna do
and in fact, that kind of makes me,
he cramps my style.
But consider this, when you think about
being completely separated from God.
First of all, he is the source of all light.
You ever been in complete darkness?
Well, maybe you have, maybe you haven't.
Most of us haven't.
I have a friend who had, you know, you've heard of
deathbed conversions?
He had a lost in a cave with no light conversion.
Now if you've ever been in a cave,
God love you, I have been in a cave and I ain't going back.
Caves are dank and dirty and messy and they're dark
and if you don't have a lot, can you imagine?
What this guy was in college, he went spelunking.
He went into a cave and he got back in the cave,
quite a ways and he was by himself and his light went out.
Can you imagine that?
You can't see anything in a cave and they're like,
you know, rocks and stuff.
He decided to pray.
And his light came back on.
And he said, thank you Jesus.
And God saved in that cave.
Isn't that a great thing?
Yeah, you don't want to be in total darkness.
God is not only the source of all light,
he's also the source of all joy.
The scripture says that in his presence
is the fullness of joy.
And so the closer we get to him,
the more we experience joy.
You know, I know it's not everybody's cup of tea
to sing Saved by the Blood of the Lamb,
which is what we started with today,
but I knew it would get Wayne Berry up on the platform.
[audience laughing]
Isn't this true, Wayne?
I mean, you know, once that started,
Wayne had the joy, joy, joy, joy down in his heart.
And the closer we get to, yeah,
and the closer we get to God,
but the further away we get from God,
the less we experience of joy.
And for there to be total separation, no joy.
He's God of all peace.
Anxiety, you know, and let me just say this,
I think the opposite of joy is depression.
Nobody enjoys that.
He's a God of all peace.
The opposite of that is anxiety.
Just being worried and worked up
about what's gonna happen and stuff.
And you know, I've heard people say,
well, I hadn't heard people say,
I used to hear my dad say when he was preaching,
he said people said, so this is third hand.
You know, people go, well, you know,
if I go to hell, at least I'll have a lot of company.
No, you won't.
God is a God of all comfort.
And if there's total separation there, there's no comfort.
And most importantly, he's a God of love.
He's the God of all love.
So I don't know this idea about being separated from God.
You might wanna let him mess with your stuff.
It might be better.
And after the fall, the separation came
because we hid from God.
Now, it wasn't like, what are those things,
those fire curtains that just boom, wham,
come down and everything?
But the veil dropped and this God
who had created mankind to have fellowship with him
and had been having fellowship with him on a daily basis,
when he came that day, they ran and hid
because the separation had started.
It had come.
And it would have been permanent
if we had eaten from the tree of life.
So that's why God banished us from the garden
so that it would not become permanent
because God had a plan.
God had a plan to take care of this.
We were now sinful and as such,
we could not exist in the presence of a holy God.
Now, think about that for just a second.
Have you ever wronged somebody?
All six of us have.
Yeah, yeah, of course you have.
And maybe you've been wronged by somebody.
I mean, and oftentimes it kind of goes both ways
and as time goes by, it might get a little better,
but as time goes by, sometimes it doesn't get any better.
It just gets deeper and maybe months or years later,
you see that person in the grocery store
and you know what you do?
You kind of, no, I don't want to go down that aisle.
You all pretend like you don't see each other.
And that's just the tiniest sliver of a fraction
of what it would be like to stand in the presence
of a truly holy God as a sinful being
because God is the one that we sin against,
his image in our lives.
And this is a problem.
It created a big problem because God created us
for fellowship and now that couldn't happen
because God cannot be other than himself.
He revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush.
He said, "I am that I am."
And that means I can't change.
God couldn't just go, you know, I really like
this Adam and Eve people here and I'd really like
to spend some time with them, so what I need to do
is I just need to, you know, notch that holiness down
a few steps so that we can actually hang out together.
He can't do that.
He is holy and we need him to be holy.
And he is just and we need him to be just.
So he couldn't just say, hey, you know, yeah,
you messed up, you sinned, don't worry about it.
Just, it's okay, just come on.
No, because that would be unjust.
And he is a just God.
So we got a big problem spiritually.
And then there was still the matter of physical death,
which they didn't necessarily die that day,
but it was now inevitable.
And it could be forestalled and we decided,
oh, we got a way to forestall it.
We got a way to delay it.
We got a way to cover our sins.
Give me some fig leaves.
And let's sew these things together and cover ourselves up.
But that wasn't gonna work.
The scripture tells us that God,
even on that day, had a better plan.
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve,
Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Now, some claim, I got to,
I got to going into Google this week
about what some people think about this,
'cause you pull up this Cain and Abel stuff,
or Adam and Eve stuff, and you're gonna find
all kinds of weird ideas.
And it's my belief that God killed an animal, okay?
And made garments of skin,
'cause you gotta get that skin from somewhere.
You don't get it from a fig leaf.
Get it from a living creature.
But some people claim that an animal wasn't killed.
He didn't have to kill an animal,
because some animals molt their skin.
And he found one of those.
In fact, it was probably the serpent
who had molted its skin,
and he made garments for them and clothed them.
And I'm kinda, I mean, I think some rabbi
from the 15th century or something
came up with that theory.
And I'm kinda going, what?
You telling me God clothed us in the skin of Satan?
Oh, hallelujah.
And that doesn't fit anywhere
in the redemptive narrative of scripture.
God killed an animal, and there was blood,
and he made skins to cover Adam and Eve.
And surely the parents shared this story with the boys.
We don't know how old they were.
They were old enough to have jobs.
One of them worked the soil.
One of them tended flocks.
They knew what was required to come before God
and come into his presence.
So the first question, really, that I have here,
and that most people would have is,
why was Abel's offering accepted
and Cain's was rejected?
And if you've been listening to the songs
we've been singing this morning,
or if you've been listening to anything I've said so far,
which I'm sure a third of you have,
you've probably already figured it out.
The only acceptable offering to bring to God for sin
was a blood sacrifice.
From the beginning, atonement for sin,
it always required blood.
And in Genesis, God said,
on the day that you sin, you will die.
Ezekiel said, the soul that sins will die.
Over in Romans, Paul says, the wages of sin is?
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
So what are you gonna do about that?
But the life is in the blood.
And so God spoke through Moses over in Leviticus,
and he said this, the life of a creature is in the blood,
and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves
on the altar, it is the blood that makes atonement
for one's life.
The psalmist says, the price for a life is costly.
In fact, no price is ever enough.
And in the psalmist's day,
there was no price that was ever enough.
But that kinda changed.
God says, it's the blood.
Now I don't totally understand this.
I mean, I get it, I get the idea.
Death, life, life's in the blood, sin, death, you know.
I get it, but I don't totally understand it.
I can't fully explain it.
But it's what God has said, and I believe it.
And you know who else believed it?
Abel.
And that's why he brought the offering that he did.
You know, we don't really know much about this guy, Abel.
We don't know what kinda guy he was.
We don't know if he was a good son,
if he was a good brother, if he was a,
you know, I'm an only child,
so I'm kinda flying blind here.
But if any of you ever had a little brother,
is your little brother a stinker?
[audience laughs]
Has he ever been a nuisance?
Said, you are the little brother, quit shaking your head.
No.
You know, I know little brothers can be pestering.
That doesn't mean you should kill 'em, okay?
But there are times when, be honest,
you kinda thought, hmm, hmm.
Yeah, my mom and dad, they didn't know what they were doing.
But we don't know anything about him.
We don't know what he did.
The only thing that we know about him
is that he was Cain's younger brother.
We know that he tended flocks,
and we know that he brought an acceptable sacrifice
to the Lord from the fat portions of firstborn of his flock.
That's all we know.
And yet for centuries,
the scriptures have called him righteous.
We also know he was righteous,
because we know enough stuff about him already
to know he was righteous.
Not because he was a little brother,
not because he tended flocks,
but because he came to God, God's way.
He came the right way.
And so, you know, that's not really a tough question.
Why was Abel's sacrifice accepted and Cain's wasn't?
That's not a tough question.
Here's the question I really want us to consider,
because I think it really applies to us,
and it says, why did Cain not bring a blood sacrifice?
And you may go, well, he was farmer.
He tilled in the land.
You know, I mean, for Abel, it was real easy.
He was a shepherd.
He had access to that stuff, you know,
and Cain didn't do that.
No, there's something more going on here.
I said one of the things that I would like you to have
as a takeaway today is not every question needs an answer.
Here's another takeaway that I would like for you
to carry with you.
Today it's a phrase, it's found in scripture
over in the book of Jude,
and it's a phrase that hopefully you'll understand
by the time this day is over, and you kind of go,
oh, yeah, that's something I need to know.
And the phrase is simply this, the way of Cain.
Jude says of the sinful, those doomed to destruction,
woe to them, they have taken the way of Cain.
They have rushed for profit into Balaam's era.
They have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.
Now, if you don't know these other two guys,
I'm gonna do just a little, and even if you do,
I wanna explain their story just a little bit.
This guy Balaam was a prophet,
and when Israel was getting ready to go
into the Promised Land, Balak, the king of Moab,
and since one of them is named Balak
and one of them's named Balaam,
I'm probably gonna get him confused
as I get to talking about him.
It's kind of like Elijah and Elisha.
Just don't worry about it.
But Balak called on Balaam to come and curse Israel
'cause he was afraid of him.
Balaam knew that God had blessed Israel.
And so when Balak sent people to Balaam
to get him to come and say, you know, come on,
I've got the price, I'll pay for it,
Balaam goes to the Lord, and the Lord says, don't go.
And Balaam comes back and says, well, I can't go.
Lord told me not to go.
And so the people go back to Balak, and he goes,
well, we'll just send more people.
We'll send more important people, and we'll up the ante.
We'll make a bigger offer.
And so they come back to Balaam,
and they make a bigger offer,
and they're more important people,
and Balaam, instead of going, ah, the Lord said not to go,
goes back to the Lord and goes, can I please go?
And the Lord says, you can go,
but you better only say what I tell you to say.
And so he's going, and you may know this story.
It's, well, if you know the Bible, it's kind of famous,
because Balaam's donkey started talking to him.
There's an angel who is standing in the way
to keep Balaam from going, and Balaam can't see the angel,
and the donkey can.
And so the donkey's trying to get out of the way
of the angel, and the angel finally stands
in a place in the path where the donkey can't do anything
but lay down, and that's what the donkey does.
And Balaam goes postal.
He starts beating the donkey,
and the Lord opens the donkey's mouth,
and the donkey says, why are you beating me?
I'm a good donkey.
[audience laughs]
Now, I don't know if any of you own a donkey.
Some of you, a lot of you probably have dogs,
and some of you have cats.
I wouldn't trust anything a cat says.
[audience laughs]
A dog, maybe.
But if your animal starts talking to you,
what are you going to do?
I'm going to freak out.
Balaam, no, Balaam started arguing with his donkey.
The donkey says, I'm a good donkey.
No, you're not.
You're just sitting down here, and you're making me mad,
and you hurt my foot and everything.
And then the Lord opened his eyes,
and he could see the angel.
He goes, whoa.
And the angel says,
your donkey's smarter than you.
And I'm in this path because your path is a reckless one.
Okay, now you're going to go, you go ahead and go,
but you only say what the Lord tells you to say.
And when he gets there, sure enough,
he blesses Israel four times, I think.
Three, I know for sure.
He blesses Israel, and Balak is upset with him,
because I called you here to curse these people,
and you're just blessing them,
so you're not gonna get anything.
Now, we find out a little bit later on in scripture
that after that chapter closes,
Balaam goes, hey, Balak, come here.
You still got that money?
Okay.
Let me tell you, let me show you the back door.
Let me tell you how to get Israel to curse themselves.
And that's exactly what he did.
In other words, what he said was,
let me show you how to pervert the way of God
and get your own way instead.
And he did that for money, for profit,
and he's got a lot of descendants today.
Korah was a guy who led a rebellion against Moses,
and basically he brought all of his guys up to Moses.
Yeah, I'm looking at the clock,
'cause I got a lot to say today.
Don't worry about it, it's all interesting.
They, he brought his guys to Moses and he said,
you know, you made your brother the high priest.
Actually, God made his brother the high priest.
But you know, he's not holy just 'cause God said so.
We're all holy, we could all be priests.
And Moses goes, well, okay, I'll tell you what.
Bring your sacrifice, you bring your fire,
and we'll bring ours, and we'll present it before God,
and we'll see what God decides to do.
And so they did, and Korah and all his guys
were burned up by the fire that they brought.
But what Korah's rebellion was was it went,
God wants that, but I want this.
And so Cain knew what the sacrifice was that was required.
There's God's way and there's our way.
There's God's way and there's the way of Cain.
And Cain brought the offering that he did
because he thought he had a better idea.
Cain had a better idea.
I mean, what's up with this blood sacrifice thing here?
Look, look, mine doesn't require any innocent suffering.
We don't have to kill an animal.
All right, the fig leaves aren't good enough.
Let's find a molted skin somewhere.
We don't actually have to believe what God has said.
There's another way.
There may be even a better way.
And my sacrifice, it's a lot prettier.
Seriously, I mean, this produce that Cain brought,
you better believe.
It was good looking.
You know, when you go into the grocery store,
I know when Michelle goes grocery shopping,
she likes to go to places that have good produce,
looks good.
So they sprinkle it and they kind of pile it up just right
and put the light on it.
Cain's, hands down, Cain's offering looked better.
And it didn't require blood.
I mean, come on, people.
You know, we sing songs about the blood,
the blood, nothing but the blood.
Saved by the blood, oh yes, blood is yucky.
Blood doesn't smell good.
We don't like to be around or touch or see blood.
You know, there's some of you in here right now,
if somebody started bleeding, your first thing would be,
ooh, I can't even look at that.
And whenever, you know, when I go to the doctor,
I don't, and they take, they draw blood.
I mean, okay, they got the little needle thing
and okay, I've gotten over that.
I'm a grown man, you know, but I don't go, hmm.
No, I go, yeah, well, whatever, you go ahead.
Not interested in seeing that blood coming out.
And Cain's offering didn't require blood.
And it was the best he had.
You better believe it was the best he had.
Cain, you know, he felt of the firmness of those fruits
and you know, we're not gonna have any ugly potatoes here.
We're gonna have some pretty potatoes we put up here,
those golden potato things.
And you know, and I'm not much for vegetables.
I'm just gonna admit that right now.
I'm 5'8", 215.
[audience laughing]
I'm not much for vegetables, but I like apples.
And if there are 10 apples left of the kind that I like
and I want five and you want five
and I'm in line ahead of you,
guess who's gonna get the best five?
I'm gonna feel those things and yeah, get her.
I don't want any bruises on these apples.
Come on, man.
See, you know, he brought the best that he had.
And he labored to produce his offering.
I mean, he had to plow the soil, he had to plant the seed,
he had to pull the weeds,
he had to work through the heat of the day.
I mean, what's wrong with this?
This is a good idea.
This should be something that God ought to go,
oh wow, I never thought of that.
You really got it going on, Cain.
The only problem was it didn't work.
The best we have is never enough.
Never, never.
I'm not saying it doesn't matter what we do.
I'm just saying you can't do anything to earn God's favor,
to escape death, to have eternal life.
Proverbs tells us twice, there is a way
that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
And there we are again, right back where we started
with death, but God had a plan.
Jesus had a rich man come to him one time,
and the rich man said, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?
And Jesus said, well, first of all,
sell everything you've got and give it to the poor,
and then come and follow me.
And we look at that and we tend to focus on the,
well, sell everything you have and give it to the poor.
Well, there's two problems with that.
First of all, God was touching on the thing
that this man found his identity in.
He was a rich man.
It doesn't say his name, doesn't tell us
anything else about him.
His identity was the fact that he was rich.
And so whatever your identity is,
that's what God would touch and say, uh-uh,
let's get rid of that.
And then the second thing, the thing
that was really important, he said, come follow me.
Come and follow me.
And the man went away sad 'cause he was rich.
And Jesus said, wow, how hard it is
for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.
And the disciples, it kind of blew their minds
because at that time they were thinking,
well, the only people who really have the leisure
and the time and the resources to keep the law of Moses
are those who are rich.
And so they said, well, who can be saved then?
And Jesus said, oh, that's impossible with man.
But all things are possible with God.
It's impossible man's way.
It is possible God's way.
And so the way to God, on the night he was betrayed,
Jesus said, you know where I'm going
and you know the way.
And Thomas went, oh, Lord, we don't even know
where you're going.
How can we know the way?
And he says, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
So that creates a question.
It's a little bit of a bunny trail,
but I feel like I need to go there.
Creates a question.
Well, what about those who've never heard?
They've never even heard the name of Jesus.
And that's a question that a lot of people use
to keep from surrendering, giving their lives to the Lord.
And it was a question that I used
to leave for a while when I was younger.
I remember, it was in my late teens
and going down to the altar at a Christ Ambassadors Convention
to get saved yet again.
But I wasn't sure I wanted to be.
And the pastor came down to pray with me
and I said, well, what about those people who never heard?
And I don't remember what he said,
but it didn't satisfy me.
And so I went for a hike in the wilderness
for the next six years.
And when I was in my mid-20s and the Lord revealed,
hey, I mean, it became very clear,
His word is real, it's true.
What are you gonna do about it, big boy?
And I still had that and the Holy Spirit said,
let me tell you what to do about that.
Trust God.
Oh, okay.
I trust God to do what is right.
He's the judge of the universe
and He will do what is right.
And so that was one of those questions.
One of those questions that we tend to go running after
that leads us in the wrong direction.
I mean, the answer to that question is trust God.
Trust God.
Don't lean on my own understanding, but trust Him.
We don't do missions and share our testimony
because oh yeah, you guys can come on out
and make them feel better.
We don't do missions, share our testimony
because the world's lost and we've got to go and save.
We do it because Jesus is my Lord and He said, go do it.
That's why we do it.
Jesus is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world.
John the Baptist was the one who was given the privilege
of introducing this title.
The next day John saw Jesus coming and he said,
look, the Lamb of God.
Let's go back to the garden.
There was an animal slain.
Let's go when Abraham took his son Isaac up to sacrifice him
and Isaac goes, well, we got the fire and we got the wood
and you got the knife, but where is the sacrifice?
(soft music)
My son, God will provide a sacrifice.
And He did and He has.
He's also the Lamb who is worthy to open the scroll
in Revelation.
In Revelation chapter five, there's a scroll
and no one can open it and I don't know what the scroll is,
but I know it upset John enough that he begins weeping
and crying and an elder comes to him and says, stop crying.
There's somebody been found worthy.
He's the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
Oh, there he is over there.
And John looked and he says, I saw a lamb stand,
looking as if it had been slain, but it was standing.
Standing at the center of the throne,
encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.
(coughing)
At the center of God's glory,
at the center of the heart of God,
there's a lamb that was slain,
but he's standing and he's worthy.
On the day that we fell, the death of an animal
provided a way for Adam and Eve to continue to live
temporarily, biologically,
but it couldn't provide eternal life.
The Lamb of God was required to bring eternal life.
There's one more question here that we'll look at
and obviously we'll be fairly brief about it.
And it's one that'll preach all by itself.
Where's your brother?
And when we look at that question,
the first question that God asked us is, where are you?
And then the second major question is,
where's your brother?
When we look at that question,
let's think about this for just a second.
When God asked that first question, Adam, where are you?
We were still close enough to innocence
that Adam was just so straightforward.
It was great.
He was like a two-year-old.
Where are you?
I'm over here.
I'm hiding from you.
Why are you hiding?
Well, because I'm naked.
Well, who told you?
I mean, every question, straightforward answer.
But by the time we get to Cain,
and God asked him, where is your brother?
Cain tried to change the subject.
And so do we.
I mean, when God gets really close in our business,
we wanna change the subject.
We wanna deflect it.
Where's your brother?
Well, am I my brother's keeper?
Yeah?
Nice try, Cain.
This is actually about you.
I'm gonna deal with you.
When God comes to deal with us, I mean, we go,
we wiggle and squirm and go wherever.
Well, you know, where'd Cain get his wife, huh?
Well, was it really six 24-hour days?
What was the mark of Cain?
Are you expecting me to believe a story about him?
A garden with magic trees and talking serpents and, stop.
It's not about that.
Do you really believe that life has no meaning?
Do you really believe that all of this
came from nothing and means nothing?
You know, I think that takes more faith than believing God.
Do you really believe that your soul is satisfied
and has all that it was created for?
The way of Cain is to try and come by our own way.
Jesus said to the Pharisees,
those who were experts at keeping the law,
coming their own way.
Anybody who climbs in any way other than me
is a thief and a robber.
But God has made a way.
Abel came with the right heart.
Don't know anything else about him.
I just know, he went, oh, that's the way God says to do it?
Let's do it that way.
And Cain, for whatever reason, went,
no, I think I like this way better.
If you don't know Christ,
hopefully you know where I'm going with this.
Hopefully the Holy Spirit has really been dealing with you.
If you do know Christ, we still have a tendency
to go our own way.
Oh, God, yeah, I don't wanna do it that way.
I'll do it this way.
That's the way of Cain.
Doesn't work, God has to deal with it.
He has to deal with us.
I don't know, is anybody else coming out?
Yeah, this is enough.
Well, those who are gonna pray with people, come forward.
We don't normally do necessarily salvation sermons.
I mean, obviously the Holy Spirit can take any sermon
and turn it into a salvation sermon.
And I don't have the gifting of an evangelist if I did.
I'd just say, hey, y'all, come on, let's go to Jesus now.
And you would, but I don't have that anointing.
But the Holy Spirit may still be talking to you.
It's not about me and what I've said.
It's about what He's saying to you.
And if you need to give your life to Christ,
there's a wonderful opportunity this morning
to come and do that very thing.
And if you're not in that position, I know life happens,
and I know that people come in here
with all kinds of stuff going on, you may just need prayer.
And you're welcome to come forward as well.
We're gonna worship for a few moments,
and let's let God do some work, okay?
Would you stand with me?
His way is better.
Yeah.