Genesis 4

Genesis chapter 4 beginning in verse 1, and Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.

And she said, I have gotten a man-child from the Lord.

And she again bare his brother Abel.

And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Now, what we have beginning in chapter 4, we see the two lines that come out of Adam and Eve.

Eve was tempted by the devil.

The liar deceived her and she took of the fruit and did eat.

She introduced it to her husband Adam knowing that it was wrong and disobedient.

He took the fruit and he ate.

And sin and death came upon the entire human race.

We know from the New Testament book of Romans that in one man, sin, Adam, brought sin and death into the world.

And thus, God allowed that so that in some wonderful way, He designed that through one man, Jesus, who is the last Adam, that life and righteousness would come into the world.

Sometimes people protest the idea that one man's sin could bring sin upon an entire human race.

But God designed it so that one man's righteousness, that is Jesus Christ, could bring salvation and He could impute righteousness on all those that believe.

So if you get a chance, you read the book of Romans.

I think it's the end of the third and then end of the fourth chapter there.

The end of the third chapter, He talks about one man's sin, Adam, bringing condemnation and death on the entire human race.

And then one man's righteousness, Jesus, bringing salvation.

But what we really see beginning in chapter 4 and then on into chapter 5 is the effects of sin in society.

The effects of sin in the world.

So Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain.

And she said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

Now, you remember that God had instructed them in chapter 1, verse 28, Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply.

And fill the earth.

So they are doing that.

Now, some get into a dispute as to whether Cain was the first child of Adam and Eve.

And it's kind of a fruitless dispute because the Bible doesn't really say.

We do not know.

The Scriptures seem to support the idea, and I think it's fair to believe, that Cain was their first son.

And that Abel was their second son.

So I think the natural flow and interpretation of the text seem to indicate that.

But an important thing to remember, and it'll develop this more as we go along, that the Bible is basically a sacred story of redemption.

Man's fall thus results in God's giving us the story of the coming Redeemer.

And that in the story, the focus is on primarily the individuals that relate to that redemptive plan and purpose.

Not everyone that lived is listed or named in the sacred story.

You've got to understand that, especially when you get to the question of where did Cain get his wife and stuff like that.

So there are many other children that will be born.

They're not named.

They're not listed for as in this because it's kind of like the line of redemption.

So we're going to follow tonight beginning two lines.

The lines of Cain.

And we have the beginning of the Canaanite civilization.

And then we're going to follow the lines of Seth.

And we'll have the line of Seth or the Sethites, which through their lineage would come ultimately the Redeemer, the Messiah who would be the Savior of the world.

But we see first of all, Cain's unbelief in verses 1-5.

Now, Eve said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

It's possible that she was thinking that immediately right off the bat, the fulfillment of chapter 3, verse 5, or verse 15, excuse me, where the Lord had promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent.

So when Cain is born, it's possible that Eve's thinking this is the Deliverer.

This is the promised one.

I've gotten a man from the Lord.

This is the promised seed.

And then again, she bear his brother Abel.

And Abel was a keeper of the sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Now, these two boys represent righteousness and unrighteousness.

They represent the righteous lineage or seed and the unrighteous seed.

And what we're going to see is that the unrighteous seed of Cain persecutes the righteous seed of Abel.

That the righteous suffer at the hand of the unrighteous, and that is basically consistent all the way through the Bible.

We have the persecution of the wicked or the unrighteous toward the righteous.

So they represent the two kind of groups.

The righteous group and the unrighteous group.

Now, it's not necessarily indicated by the fact that Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Some make a deal out of that, you know, that Abel was the first shepherd and sheep are spiritual for some reason, or that God would use the sheep to slay and sacrifice for blood, and that Cain tilled the ground with the sweat of his brow and so forth.

But I don't think that's necessarily the full story there.

But they do kind of represent the unrighteous and the righteous.

Now, in the process of time, verse 3, it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

And Abel, he also, brought of the firstfruits of his flock and of the fat thereof, and notice the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.

But unto Cain and to his offering, he had not respect.

Now, in the process of time, how much time?

We do not know.

Again, the Bible doesn't say.

It could have been some great deal of time.

Or the phrase could actually refer to an appointed time or a situation where the family got together to congregate for a form of worship.

The process of time in the Hebrew could refer to not necessarily an amount of time, but just an appointed time when the family would congregate and they would have some form of worship.

So, they get together, and we find that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

Now that in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

Later on, there were fruit offerings and grain offerings and meal offerings that the people of God could offer to the Lord.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that this represents the fruit of His own labor.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it represents the flesh.

As you study the New Testament that sheds light on these offerings that these two boys offered, we discover that the real issue was that one offered unto God in faith, and the other one offered to God in unbelief.

And that Cain was characterized by a wicked heart, an unrighteous lifestyle.

And the Bible is very clear that God does not delight in the sacrifice of the wicked.

And the issue wasn't so much the fact that he offered the fruit of the ground.

The issue was that his heart was not right with God.

Whereas Abel offered a lamb sacrifice, and yes indeed, it was blood, but that's not the issue.

He offered it in faith.

If you come to church and you sing songs, and you raise your hands to the Lord as a form of sacrifice, and the ushers come by to receive the evening offering, and you take out money and you put it in the offering plate, and you take pride in the fact that boy, aren't I a wonderful person, and aren't I a great guy, and look at how wonderful I am, and yet at the same time, you're practicing sin in your own life.

In your daily life, you really do not seek to honor God.

You don't really seek to be obedient to His Word.

Maybe in your thought lives, maybe in your thought life, you are allowing yourself to entertain sinful thoughts.

Maybe you are maintaining sinful attitudes.

Maybe it's a sinful action.

Maybe you are lying.

Maybe you're stealing.

Maybe you're doing things that are wrong and sinning, and yet you come and you sing and you give your money to God, and maybe you even serve some way in the church.

You know that God is not pleased or delighted with that sacrifice.

It doesn't win you brownie points with God, merit points with God.

God looks at your heart.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.

The psalmist says, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

Let us remember that when we come and we sing and we worship and we serve, that we make our sacrifices to God.

That if we have ought in our heart toward a brother, Jesus said, leave your gift there and first make amends with your brother and then come and offer Thy gift before God.

You know, one of the neat things about just simply coming to church is it forces you to face issues in our own lives.

As we sing, you're going to sit there.

And you're either going to sing and do it with a wrong heart, or you're not going to sing.

That's why sometimes people stay away from church because they don't want to be subject to that kind of situation.

I don't want to go to church.

Why?

Well, I just don't want to.

Why?

Because they're going to be singing and I'm mad right now or I'm rebelling right now or I don't want to obey God right now.

My heart's not right right now.

How many times I've sat in song services and struggled and thought, oh, Lord, I don't want to forgive them.

Lord, they ripped me off.

Lord, I'd like to beat them up.

Lord, you know.

And you can't really sing songs of praise and worship to God when you have hatred in your heart towards someone else.

And then as the worship starts and the Holy Spirit begins to move and He begins to work in your heart, oh, Lord, Lord, I'm sorry.

Please forgive me.

Lord, I just give it to You.

Lord, cleanse my heart.

And then the cleansing and then the worship flows.

Or maybe you make it through the song service and then the words open.

And we're in some bizarre place like Genesis 4.

And Pastor John gets up and talks about what I'm talking about right now.

And you're thinking, I know I shouldn't have come tonight.

Why couldn't he talk about spiritual warfare or something like that?

What's this stuff about the heart?

Worshiping God with a wrong heart.

But yet, being in fellowship, being in church tonight, worship and the prayer and the hearing of the Word has an opportunity to really convict our hearts and to bring us back to repentance.

Convince us of sin and say, Lord, I can't offer praise to You because I can't lift my hand.

They're not clean.

I can't worship You because, Lord, my heart isn't right.

You know, I always like to think of church as a spiritual foot-washing ceremony.

Now, we don't do foot-washing ceremonies.

But when you come to church like Jesus told Peter, you've had a bath, all you need is your feet washed.

You may not need to get born again.

You may not need to be regenerated over again.

But tonight, you may just need your feet washed.

And you may need to just say, Lord, before I leave tonight, I just pray that You'll deal with this attitude, deal with this action, deal with this thoughts of mine.

Lord, just cleanse me.

And as I worship and give to You sacrifice, that it may be acceptable and pleasing unto You.

Here we find worship, one with a right heart and one with a wrong heart.

And Abel brought verse 4 of the firstlings of the flock and of the fat thereof.

Now the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.

" God in some way, and many Bible commentaries feel that there was some public way that everyone could see God manifested something publicly that really caused Cain shame that his sacrifice of fruit was not accepted before God's.

And so God had respect unto Abel's offering, but unto Cain, verse 5, and to his offering, he had not respect.

So we have God's way of worship and man's way.

We cannot create our own approach to God.

We cannot.

God is the One that ordains the means by which we may approach Him.

We can't dictate to God how we're going to worship and how we're going to approach Him.

By the way, you might write down Hebrews 11, verse 4, for there is one of many texts that clearly say that Abel offered in faith a more excellent sacrifice than that of Cain.

So the message of Hebrews and that of faith showing that Abel's sacrifice was done in faith whereas Cain's was done with a wicked, sinful, rebellious, unbelieving heart.

So we see how it affected Cain.

We see his hatred.

Verses 5-8.

And so, and Cain was very wroth.

King James, for very angry.

And his countenance fell.

Isn't it interesting how sin affects one's countenance?

It does indeed.

You can see sin written all over a person's face.

It affects their countenance.

You can do yourself all up nice and fine.

But something about sin taking its toll upon a person's countenance.

Something about a godly life that just radiates a beautiful countenance.

And indeed, it does make a difference.

You meet somebody that has given themselves over to sin all of their life and it just takes its toll on them.

You meet somebody that has walked with the Lord all their life, and there's just this sense of a godly countenance upon them.

But in this case, you know, Cain just became depressed.

His face showed his hatred and his discouragement.

And so the Lord said unto Cain, why are you wroth?

Questions God asked early on in Genesis.

Adam, where are you?

Now we find God saying, Cain, why are you so angry?

Why is thy countenance fallen?

If thou doest well, thou shalt thou not be accepted?

And if thou doest not well, then sin lieth at the door.

And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

Now God is patient and longs suffering with Cain.

He gives him opportunity to repent, but Cain is filled with pride.

He's filled with hatred.

Listen, many times we feel justified to harbor hatred toward another person.

But hatred is like a cancer.

It destroys no one but the person who is harboring it.

It doesn't do any good.

It brings destruction.

It doesn't change the situation.

Someone may have wronged you.

Someone may have even sinned grossly against you.

But for you to harbor hatred in your heart toward them is wrong.

You know that Cain is used as an example in the epistles of John?

Where John says that if we are really born of God, we will love others.

Not like Cain who was of the wicked one and hated his brother and slew his brother because the love of God did not dwell in him.

How can you say the love of God dwells in you and you hate your brother?

You say you love God.

You've never seen Him, but you hate your brother which you have not seen.

That's inconsistent.

So again, tonight, if you're here and you are a professing believer, a professing Christian, but yet you actually harbor hatred in your heart toward someone, and maybe they have wronged you, but yet that harboring of that hatred in and of itself becomes sin.

It becomes a cancer.

And it will destroy you.

It eats away at you.

So we find here that sin was lying at his door.

God patiently said if you would do well, then you'll be accepted.

But sin lieth at your door.

Now, most Hebrew scholars point out that the end of verse 7 in the King James Translation is not really the best rendering here.

Sin lieth at the door.

And the King Jimmy has, and unto thee shall it be its desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

But the idea literally there is sin lieth at the door, and it desires to have you or to master you, but you must master it.

And that's so very true of every one of us here tonight.

When we allow hatred to enter into our heart, then we're allowing sin on our doorstep.

And sin wants to master us.

It wants to control us.

But we must conquer it.

We must be victorious over it.

Interestingly, it's the same Hebrew phrase found in chapter 3 verse 16.

And unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.

And here's the same phrase.

Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

So just as sin lies at the door and it wants to control you, so the woman would have this desire unto her husband.

Now, when you read that, you almost read it like, oh, she's just going to want to serve her husband and help her husband and submit to her husband.

It's just going to be the most wonderful, natural, easy thing for her to do.

But that's really not what the Scriptures is saying there.

It's actually saying that you're going to fight against your husband.

Their natural sinful inclination is going to be to try to dominate him or to try to control him.

Thy desire shall be unto thy husband.

You're going to try to rule over him just like sin would try to rule over us.

But he, that is your husband, will rule over thee.

And in the Genesis 4 passage, even as sin tries to dominate us, we should actually rule over it or control it or dominate over it.

And so Cain talked with Abel, his brother.

And again, many believe that what Cain said was come with me into the field or let's go into the field to talk.

And it came to pass that when they were in the field, that Cain arose against Abel his brother and slew him.

And again, I would encourage you to read 1 John 3 10-12 where John there points out that we are not to be of the wicked one like Cain who hated his brother and slew him indicating that the love of God did not dwell in him.

Now, this murder of Cain to his brother Abel, sin comes into the world.

And the first thing we find is that a man's heart is not right.

And notice that attitude leads to action.

You go, oh, hatred's not that bad.

It's no big deal.

It resulted in murder.

And I would point out to you that this first murder or homicide is premeditated.

Abel, let's go out into the field and talk.

Why?

Because he actually plotted and planned to kill his own brother.

What a horrible, horrible, horrible thing.

This is not the way God intended it to be.

Murder is a horrible, horrible sin.

And what a sad thing today that in the devaluing of human life because of the lack of Christian influence in our society today, we see murder and homicide running rampant.

It just absolutely boggles my mind and horrifies me how easily one human being can take the life of another human being.

And isn't it sad that we hear of people murdered so commonly today in the news that our hearts have almost become calloused?

I want to hear of young children being shot randomly in maybe a drive-by shooting.

It's just so sad.

You can never bring back that human being.

Nothing that you can do can restore that person that you've taken from this world that you've taken from their loved ones and you've taken from their family.

I can't think of a more horrible thing.

Crime.

And would to God that we lived in a world and in a society today where people feared God.

One of the reasons why again that we have so much homicide is that there's no fear of God before their eyes.

Maybe they'll go to prison for a few years.

Teenage boys can lure a young girl out into the foothills and murder her purposely and intentionally.

You know, plea bargain, confess to the crime and go to prison for life.

Others go free.

And we see such a laxity and such an abundance of this crime.

And this is the very first murder.

This is where it started.

Is God to blame?

No.

It's man's own sin and man's own hatred.

But Jesus said if you even have hatred in your heart towards someone, you've already committed murder.

Well, I haven't done it, but I'd like to.

In your mind, you're beating them with a club.

Your heart is filled with anger.

We need to be careful because many times our thoughts will lead to actions.

Cain's hatred broke out in his premeditated murder of his own brother.

Now, the Lord said unto Cain, verse 9, here's another question that God asked.

Where is thy brother?

Or where is able thy brother?

And he said, I know not.

Am I my brother's keeper?

No sense of remorse.

No sense of shame.

No sense of repentance.

And here commits a bold-faced lie.

Hatred leading to murder leading to lying.

He tried to cover his sin.

And whoever covers his sin shall not prosper.

Now evidently, God met him as he was actually coming back out of the field.

Blood still on his hands.

And God says, where is able thy brother?

He almost acts like kind of insulted that God would ask or kind of cocky.

I don't know.

Am I my brother's keeper?

How sad.

Cain showed, as we're going to see a little later when God judges him, he showed no godly sorrow.

Again, today we see people murder others.

Sentenced to death or life imprisonment or whatever it might be.

And they have no sense of remorse or repentance or no shame or no sorrow.

It's amazing.

Am I my brother's keeper?

What's the answer?

Yes.

We are our brother's keeper.

We are to love others.

Remember the commandment that we should love others even as we love our own self.

Later when God gave the decalogue, the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not murder.

And if we love God and we love others, we would never commit a crime like this.

What a sad thing that is.

Am I my brother's keeper?

The answer is yes.

You are your brother's keeper.

But he tries to lie to God.

So he said, what hast thou done?

And the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

And now thou art cursed, God said, unto Cain from the earth which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood and from thy hand.

And you will till the ground till it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength, a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

So, sin brought death.

It brought destruction.

It brought lying.

It brought a sense of loneliness and isolation.

Whenever we sin, we find ourselves that we are kind of separated from God.

And there's that sense of loneliness.

You're going to be a vagabond and you're going to wander around.

So, God's judgment of Cain was both merciful and long-suffering.

He didn't kill Cain.

Why?

We don't know.

Why God didn't just eliminate Cain, we do not know.

But for some reason known to God, He allowed Cain to live.

But He did bring a judgment upon him.

Now, Cain said, verse 13, unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth, and from thy face, referring to God, shall I be hid.

Sin separates us from God.

And I shall be a fugitive or a restless wanderer and a vagabond in the earth, and it shall come to pass that everyone that finds me shall slay me.

And so the Lord said unto him, Wherefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken upon him sevenfold.

And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

Now, notice again when God drives Cain out and judges Cain.

In verse 13, He says, My punishment is greater than I can bear.

Oh, poor guy.

Isn't it funny that people today feel sorry for the victims of crime?

I mean, not the victims of crime, but the perpetrators of crime.

You know, someone kills people and he's sentenced to be executed and everyone marches around with signs.

You know, how we should spare his life.

They're more worried about the one who commits the crime than the one who has been the recipient of the crime.

That's wrong.

Absolutely, totally wrong.

And we find that even in our culture and society today that we're feeling so sorry for the ones that commit crimes.

Oh, well, we shouldn't lock them up.

Boy, that's really a mean thing to do.

I believe swift and harsh, thorough punishment is a deterrent to crime.

What else are you going to do?

Become lax and lenient?

And let crime become rampant?

So here he is.

There is no godly sorrow.

There's no true repentance.

Just like so many today, they're only sorry they got caught.

They're only sorry they got busted.

And they're just bemoaning the consequences of their own sin.

Oh, this is too hard.

Oh, this is a bummer.

Wow, God, this isn't fair.

It's just more than I can bear.

It's not a godly sorrow that works repentance.

It's a sorrow of the world that leads to death.

Now, he was also driven from the face of God.

This is a type of judgment that is yet future for unbelievers.

Read 2 Thessalonians 1.

9 how the wicked will be separated from the presence of God.

Now, the mark that was placed upon Cain is not described.

So do not ever let anyone tell you what the mark of Cain was.

Don't let anyone ever tell you what the mark of Cain was.

The church of Jesus Christ or the Latter-day Saints known as the Mormons claimed for years that it was black skin.

I mean, that was something that they taught.

Of course, they've tried to retract that and pull away from that and try to explain that away or dance back.

But it is right there in their history or in their records.

It's a horrible, horrible, wicked, foolish, unscriptural, wrong thing to say that it's black skin.

That is absolutely not true.

The Bible doesn't say that.

Certainly not the case.

What this mark was, we simply do not know.

But God put it on Cain so that no one would try to bring retribution on him.

If they did, they would be killed or they would have seven times more the judgment.

Now, beginning in verse 16 down to verse 24, we have the Canaanites or the beginning of the family of Cain and the results of sin and the death of Abel.

And they're being driven from others.

And their beginning of civilization is what we have.

They tried to fill the void for their emptiness.

We were made for God.

And since they were driven from God, so they had to group together in a city and get into these things to try to fill the void in their lives.

Some interesting things.

And bear with me as I try to read some of these names as we go through these verses.

Cain, verse 16, went out from the presence of the Lord.

And he dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.

The name Nod means wandering.

Some feel that it might not have been an actual spot, but just a whole vicinity or area where he just kind of wandered around.

And they called it Nod.

And Cain knew his wife.

She conceived in Baraenic.

And he built a city.

So what we have here is first Cain and Abel after Adam and Eve were the first people that were born and inherited sin.

And now we have this next generation beginning to start.

Cain knew his wife.

And she conceived in Baraenic.

And he built a city.

And he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.

Now, the big question that critics of the Bible and those who are, I don't know, what would you call them?

Despisers of Christianity and antagonists of Christianity that like to try to disprove that Christianity's not real, the Bible's not the Word of God.

One of their real big questions is where did Cain get his wife?

And boy, do they think they really got you on that one.

I had a barber that cut my hair for years and he wasn't really a Christian.

He knew I was a pastor and every time I'd get a haircut, he'd say, well, what are you preaching tomorrow?

And I'd give him a little sermon.

I'd always try to zero it in on him.

He didn't really like that.

And I'll never forget that one time he says, well, I can't believe that you really trust the Bible.

He goes, where did Cain get his wife anyway?

Classic.

It's like what do they do?

Get together and exchange these or something?

You know, to pass around?

Okay, this is how you're going to get to Christians.

Where did Cain get his wife?

That is why I mentioned as we begin tonight that not all the individuals that existed at this time are named in the Bible.

Adam and Eve had many other children.

Many other sons and daughters.

And by this time, they are well up in years.

As we get down to verse 25 when Seth is born, Adam according to chapter 5, verse 3, is 130 years old.

And he's still having kids.

Makes me want to go home and sit down right now.

Man, Lord have mercy.

So before the flood, when longevity was great, men lived a long time, several hundred years in some cases.

No doubt Eve was having a baby a year.

I mean, she could have had every year.

She could have had a child.

Now remember, God said that in sorrow, I will multiply thy sorrow in childbearing.

But she was having many children and the population was growing.

And that at this time, He would indeed have taken one of His sisters.

Now there's no direct prohibition to this at this time yet.

Nor is the gene pool polluted by sin for some length of time.

And still, it's before the flood.

This is pre-Diluvian.

It's before the flood.

And man was healthier and lived longer.

And this kind of an intermarriage wasn't really a problem.

It wasn't really an issue.

So the simple answer to what they feel to be a very difficult question is where did Cain get his wife?

There were other sons and daughters born.

And that among them, Cain took a distant sister and they began to have children.

This is the beginning of civilization.

And so they built a city.

Verse 17, you might make note of that.

That this is the first thing that man does is he builds a city where everyone can have a good time together.

A big city.

Someone said a city is a place where thousands of people are lonely together.

I'm not a big city kid.

I was raised right here in San Bernardino.

And I've only been in a few big cities.

The first big city I ever went to was Hong Kong.

Big city.

And I went several times to Hong Kong and spent quite a bit of time there.

But being in just Chicago a couple of weeks ago amazed me.

A big city where thousands of people are all lonely together.

All coming and going.

And so man groups together.

Builds himself a city.

And we find that unto Enoch was born Ired, or Ired.

And Ired begat Mehejilel.

And Mehejilel begat Methuselah.

And Methuselah begat Lamech.

And Lamech, verse 19, took unto him two wives.

Polygamy.

Sin came into the world and it affected marriage.

What is God's design for marriage?

For this cause, a man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.

And the two, not three, become one flesh.

That's God's design.

Like never before in history, we are seeing a redefining of marriage.

At least in the United States history.

For sure.

And here we find that He took two wives.

And polygamy starts.

Break down the family.

The name of the one was Ada and the name of the other was Zilda.

And Ada bears Jabel.

And he was the father of such that dwelt in tents and of such that had cattle.

Now this is all first time, okay?

You know, you like history?

You like to see the first automobile and the first airplane and the first boat?

Well, this is the first tent.

Can you imagine that in a museum?

So this is the first guy to develop a moving house.

He develops a tent, you know, and he becomes the first nomad.

And he roams around.

And he breeds cattle and has cows.

And he's a nomad.

He designs himself a tent.

And he goes cruising around.

And his brother's name was Jabel.

He was the father of all such that handled the harp in the Oregon.

So we have the city.

We have polygamy.

And we have the tents.

We have the nomadic life and the raising of the cattle, the herdsmen.

And now we have Jabel.

Take note of that verse 21.

He was the one that invented musical instruments.

At least at this point.

Wouldn't you like to see the first instrument made here in a museum?

Radical.

I mean, that would be worth something.

So he created first a stringed instrument, the lyre, and then the organ, or what we would call the flute.

It was a wind instrument.

And Zilda, she also bare two-ball cane, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.

And the sister of two-ball cane was Nema.

Now, this two-ball cane was the first to invent metal works.

So he invented this brass and iron and he began to do artistic works with metal and so forth.

So this is very early in man's civilization or man's existence.

And it was way before, of course, the flood and so forth.

And then it says, that Lamech said unto his wives, Ada and Zilda, hear my voice.

Verse 23, ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech, I have slain a man to my wounding, a young man to my hurt.

Now, if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech, seventy and sevenfold.

Now here we have again violence coming into the world.

And when he says, I have slain a man to my hurt, that means in self-defense.

So this individual, this young man, wounded him, and he, defending himself evidently, killed him.

So the first murder was premeditated.

And this one was self-defense.

So God does make a difference very clearly in the Scriptures.

And so if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech, seventy-sevenfold.

So anyone tries to take revenge upon Lamech, then there'll be a retribution seventy-sevenfold.

Interesting, because Matthew 18, when Peter asks the Lord how many times should I forgive someone who's sinned against me?

Seven times?

He says no, seventy times.

Seven.

Interesting, the same number.

And so, that's the line of Cain.

The Cainites.

Now we have the Sethites in closing.

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and she called his name Seth.

The name Seth means appointed.

And there's little doubt in anyone's mind but what she believed, and for sure, that now this is a godly line and a fulfillment of the promise in chapter 3, verse 15, the seed of the woman.

So it says, For God hath said that He appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

And to Seth and to him also there was born a son, and she called his name Enos.

Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.

So now we have the second family group.

And in the second family group, we have the godly line of Seth.

And notice it says there that they begin to call upon the name of the Lord.

Now Seth, as I pointed out earlier, he was born when Adam was 130 years old.

Chapter 5, verse 3.

Adam lived 130 years and begat a son in his own likeness after his image and called his name Seth.

But in verse 26, we have the beginning of public worship.

And someone pointed out, and I think it's interesting, that it's kind of the first revival.

The first revival.

Men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

Oh, that men today would call upon the name of the Lord.

Let's pray.