Well, if you have ever read the book of Genesis, you will know that you are not too many pages into the book before you witness the first murder ever committed in this world. What a sad commentary on the effects of sin in the lives of human beings! Today's message examines the story of Cain and Abel in some detail and finds that it actually reveals to us the origin of the world's first religion - the way of Cain.
Well, if you have ever read the book of Genesis, you will know that you are not too many pages into the book before you witness the first murder ever committed in this world. What a sad commentary on the effects of sin in the lives of human beings! Today's message examines the story of Cain and Abel in some detail and finds that it actually reveals to us the origin of the world's first religion - the way of Cain.
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Speaker 2:Well, if you've ever read the book of Genesis, you will know that you are not too many pages into the book before you witnessed the first murder ever committed in this world. It was the murder of a young man by the name of able at the hands of his own brother Cain, what a sad commentary and the effects of sin in the lives of human beings, but this murder was not a random act of violence. It was committed out of hatred and rebellion that was really against gone. You see, Cain had seen his brother Abel accepted by God through the sacrifice of a lamb, but his own offering that represented the fruit of his own Labor had been rejected and killing Abel was his way of getting back at gone. In today's broadcast evangelists, Mr Phillip Colson examines this story. In some detail and finds that it actually reveals to us the origin of the world's first religion, the way of Cain, a religion that was not God's way, but rather appeal to man's pride in doing something for God. Yet God had provided a way for Cain to have his sins forgiven, just as able to put cane refused. It would be his way or no way. Does that sound familiar to you? We hope that as you listen to the Gospel preached from this story in Genesis, that you will obey God's requirement to repent of your sins and to receive the sacrifice that he himself provided in the person of his own beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ
Speaker 3:that are the Hebrews chapter 11 and verse four of the Chapter says by faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than cain through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts and buy it by faith he being dead, yet speaker, the word of God lays emphasis on the fact that it was by faith. Abel did what he did. You see abel on his brother Cain, where young men brought up together. You would see that there were times when they had already come before God to give to God an offering that would be satisfactory and pleasing to God. The very fact that they needed to do that, the very fact that they needed to approach God was recognition that there was something wrong with them and so far so good. The two boys are of the same mind. God is the eternal God of heaven. They are merely men and there is a claim that God has upon them. They have to approach God and give to him something that God requires, but then came this occasion, the one we've been hearing off and on this occasion you can almost see the thought process of cane. You know, every time we come and offer to God, we have to bring a lamb. Oh No, that's easy enough or able. He's a shepherd. He's got plenty of lamps. It's easy for him. All he has to do is go to his flock, take a lamb and bring it and slay it. Maybe it was even within sight of or near to that angel that was keeping guard over the way back into the garden of Eden. They would make an altar. They would put the slain lamb upon the altar and God would indicate his acceptance of that gift by consuming it with fire. They didn't light the fire. That was the way things worked in those early old testament days. God would signally show his acceptance of that offering by consuming it with fire from above and the day came when came thought to himself, well, you know, God surely would be more satisfied if I brought to him something I had done and what was happening was that there was evolving in the heart of this first man born into the world. There was evolving in the heart of this man, the world's first religion. You see, it wasn't because Abel was a shepherd that he offered alarm the verse we have red tells us it was by faith Abel offered. It wasn't simply that he was bringing what he had, therefore, Kaine should bring. While he had. That wasn't the thought at all. There was something underlying it, something much deeper. It was by faith that Abel did this. Clearly God's word had been transmitted to these men and if God had spoken and that's what God required, well able simply took God's word and he acted upon it. That's what faith is, but you see to cane and the arising humanistic, rationalistic kind of thinking that mark's fallen man today. He said, well, you know, God will show you respect if I bring something which I have done full marks to cane for understanding that he needed to approach God, but now there comes a parting of the ways. He's not content to come. God's sway now, that's the first whole mark of every religion in the world. Doesn't matter what their religion is, doesn't matter what it's name is at. Back of every religion in the world is this concept. What must I do to please God? There is something within me, something off me, something that I can do that God must respect the division of the two ways between these two men came when by faith Abel was content to come, the way God had ordained, and Kane who said, I'm going to come my way and really in in Cains, mine through pride was the idea that God would have to conform his will to keynes. You see that really not. No cane may be, I don't know, but maybe if we could have spoken to cane, maybe king would have been shocked at that idea, but you know that's really what he was doing. This is the way pain saw it so God will have to see it the same way and every religion can be summed up in the thought of man seeking to do something or be something that will command the respect of God effectively. They are seeking to make God indebted to them. There is a point blank refusal in the heart of many men and women to acknowledge that in the sight of a holy God who created them onto holds their very life in his hands. There is a refusal to acknowledge that they are spiritually and morally bankrupt before God, wholly dependent upon His mercy and His grace. King says something I can do and God will need to respect it. You can see them coming now, coach you on this occasion. Now there's alarm. I don't know if that same alter was used time and time again, able comes. It's not a pretty sight visit just to slay alarm like that. Here's this mound of rocks, maybe staying with the blood of many lambs before and there's something kind of a. something naturally distasteful about this site of of alarm being slain. Blood dripping down those rocks have a body of this creature being put on the thing and the same altar, maybe blackened with the smoke that is ascended from it before enable stands back and wins. This divine fire comes and devours that lamb and in devouring the lamb as our versus sand able obtained witness that he was righteous. That was the witness. That was the evidence. That was the divine demonstration that Abel was counted righteous before God. God accepted is offering, visibly consumed it with fire, and the point is made that the witness he obtained to being righteous was God's witness. God witnessed him. You see, so that able could turn away from that altar and he could say with assurance that he was accepted before God. He was righteous before God. He could say that with assurance because God himself had borne witness to it. God himself at testify of the two alters keynes was the one much more attractive. I can see it in my mind's eye. Maybe you count as well. I would have no doubt that when cain brought of the fruit of the ground people at the very best and you know the earth newly under the curse was still producing things far more abundant and far more beautiful family spectacular in size than anything we can produce today. That would have been a variety. There would have been an abundance. They would have been all the lovely colors. I don't know. Was it just fruit and maybe there was vegetables, maybe there was even flowers. The whole thing would have looked so good. It just appealed to the human eye. Look at the two alters this one, loaded, plentiful, fruitful, beautiful. This one, smoke, blackened and bloodstain. This has got to be the right one, has an see that would appeal to men, but you know when God signified his acceptance of ables offering and consumed by fire, King stood back and he waited. He was just like those prophets of Bale many years later who waited for their false gods to answer their cries and he waited and he waited and nothing was happening and increasingly pain became angry and his countenance changed. The Voice of God came to him. Okay, bye. You Roth. If I do as well, wilt thou not be accepted, and if they do, it's not well. The whole sin offering lies at the door came. Your brother has provided alarm for you there. His desire is until the cane, he's looking out for your good mind you, you will rule over him. You'll dominate him or how quickly that came through even while able, so willing to see his brother accepted, I can see that younger brother pleading with his brother came the proud, angry man cane. Just do it God's way. Just do what God says Cain, here's the time and cost you nothing. Offer it. No, God will accept me for what I am. He will accept me for what I have done and God speaks to him. You know, because cane couldn't strike back at God. He struck out at the godly man came in whose heart world religion originated was a man who despise the thought of slaying a lamb, but didn't think twice about slaying his brother as world religion, isn't it? That's world religion down through all those ages. Since cain was there in the name of religion, this world has been soaked in the blood and the tears of mounted men and women all in the name of religion. Crusades, inquisitions right up to the very modern day, right there in the province as part of my own home country. Men and women slaying each other in the name of religion and God has got no time for religion. Men still have you see, they prefer it in the message of the Gospel. The scripture says, we preach Christ crucified. We have the solemn responsibility of bringing men and women guilty before God. In that sentence, we have the solemn responsibility of bringing them face to face with a son of God crucified in agony, unopened. Shame upon a cross and men say, no, no, we don't want that. No. Give us a big cathedral. Give us the stain glass windows every bit as colorful and beautiful as that first altar of cane. Give us things that will inspire all in us, yes, but don't give us that cross, but my friends, the gospel of the grace of God centers upon the Cross of Christ. There was a time when Paul, the apostle was preaching to men and women in a place called Antioch in Presidio. You'll read about it in acts chapter 13, and as Paul is preaching, he's preaching to men and women absolutely steeped in religion and like everybody else steeped in religion. They were proud of their way and they despise the ways of others, so the way of it isn't it? That is the way of Cain. I traveled extensively in India and Hinduism is the main religion in that country and it's all embracing. Nobody can calculate how many deities there are in the Hindu Pantheon. There's just so many of them. Hundreds of millions of God's very happy to speak about them and they're very happy to hear about yours. Hinduism is so wide and it's embrace. I sat on a train one day and I was speaking to three men and we were talking about these things and I said to them, would you tell me? So the first mount, I said, tell me what you believe. Well, you see, he was a pantheist. That means that God is in everything. If he wants to worship a sunrise, he wants to worship at river and he wants to worship at tree. God is in all of these things, so he'll just worship them. The man sitting next to him was a polytheist, not his. He had many gods and according to the order of the heavens, all this straight from Babylon and genesis chapter 11, and he looks at the older of the heavens and the alignment of planets and the words of the soothsayers, and in turn, he will worship Ganesh, the elephant, God and Hanuman, the Monkey God, and I go to the snake God, and he has this many gods. These principal deities, he's a polytheist. Third man was an atheist, a Hindu. He doesn't believe in one supreme being. He believes in forces of good and forces of evil. They all have this in common. These forces, these deities, these people, these things, they worshiped all required something off them. So to use an English expression, I hope you understand it. I threw out a Sprat to catch your macro, you know, you put out a small fish to catch a big one. I said, tell me gentlemen, all of these guns you've spoken about, tell me, what did they ever give you? Well, they laugh. They laugh so much to bust. They always do hand through his laughter. One man said to me, he said, did you say this was your first visit to India? I said, no, no. There'll be many times when he said, you've been many times to India. This is exactly how he said it. You said you'd been many times to India and you ask a dumb question like that. He said, you should know that, that we have to give to our gods. They don't give to us. We have to take them chickens and coconuts and rice and money and and we have to take to them constantly. They are taking from us. Oh, I see. Can I tell you about my God? Oh, yes. Yeah. They're very interested to hear about Michael and I said, well, you know, not like your God's mind. God is a God who has eyes and he can see his ears and he can hear he's not a painted God. He's not a god of wood or a stone. He's the Living Eternal God of heaven and he sees and he knows all that's going on, but you know this, I've got a god who gives and God so loved the world. He gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. All they said, yeah, that is a nice way. That is your way to heaven. No Sir. No, no. It is. It is my way, but listen, it's the way. In fact, the one in whom this whole gospel centers, the one whom God gave, he said himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Oh No, no, no, no. He's your boy. He's a way. No, he's the way and you see, as soon as you say that the Lord Jesus Christ crucified is the way for men to be right with God. You automatically are saying that every other way is wrong. If he's the way, there is no other way, do you know? That's when they get angry. That's when all the friendship disappears. That's where the animosity arises because there are millions and millions of different ways that men have devised and they all come under this one heading that we've read from the epistle of jude the way, so once your way, what is your way? The very fact are in the Gospel meeting would presuppose to me that you have an interest in seeking after God and knowing that you're right with God, so which way wave cain will God's way. The way of cain follows men's own rational thinking. The way of cain follows men's on pro desires. The way of cain involves my thoughts and God having to conform to them culturally demands faith. When Paul was speaking in acts chapter 22 men in the city of Ephesus and it reminded them what he'd been preaching about, he said, my preaching boiled down to this repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The same kind of faith by which able was made righteous before God is the same kind of faith that you and I must exercise tonight. It's faith that takes God at his word. It's faith that surrenders human, intellect and human pride under knowledges. God is God and I am a sinner. That as a senator, I've outraged God and I am worthy of his judgment and if God and mercy would have anything to say to me at all, I listen and obey it by faith. When Paul was preaching to those men in Antioch, in Presidio, those religious men who despised all the other different religions around them, whole set to them, men and brethren, listen to this. He'd been speaking to them about the Lord Jesus Christ and he said through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins and through him you can be justified from all things from which it was not possible, that you could be justified by the works of the law. What Paul was telling them was this, there was one religion that was instituted by God and only one, it was the religion of the Jew. It was Judaism, but God had finished with that when his beloved son was offered as a sacrifice at calvary and the only religion that God ever sanctioned, that religion was not capable of making a man right with God. Now, if the only religion that God ever sanctioned can't make a man right with God, how can any other religion do that? Do you know? One of the most wonderful things about the gospel, it started releases men and women from every opinion and every religion of this world because it is not through this religion or that religion or that way of thinking or that theology. The Gospel is through. This man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. The Gospel is all about. It's all about the man Christ Jesus, the son of God who came from heaven to die for sinners like you and me. What a wonderful message of the Gospel is. It doesn't require me to know a philosophy or theology or to study things online life or to do some great thing or to pay some great price. Someone has summed it up like this, so simply religion is all about doing, but salvation is done and it was done by the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary and God says, now remember it was God who testified, availables gift, able didn't have to go away, wondering whether he was righteous, whether he was accepted with God or not able knew with absolute assurance that he was righteous before God and men and women. Tonight, here you can know that also you can know it on the authority of God's word, that the whole matter of your sins and your guilt before God is dealt with once and for all and that you are eternally saved from the penalty of them. You can know that immediately how on the authority of God's Word and God's message to send us tonight through the Gospel is this repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not something that says, come to Jesus, learn about Jesus and then everything will be fine for you. That's not the gospel. The Gospel is about the solemn claims of an offended God against his creatures who have sinned and God has the right and God demands that sinners repent and that's what the Gospel message is tonight. My friend to you is repentance. A turning away from the mindset that says, I'm on my thoughts are chief said, turning to God. It's a preparedness to take God at his word. Does God say, I am a guilty sinner, condemned before him. Then I'm aspiring my knee and accept that I must confess my sins. I must cast myself upon the mercy of the everlasting God and when I'm prepared to do that, God points me to Christ his beloved son who died at calvary. I said, there I provided the lumber for you. I provided the alarm for you. Take it by faith. Take it by faith. Just as with Kane, a sin offering lay at the door. It was right where he was. Can you see that man soaking in his home? The goodness of God took the solution right to his door and God in His mercy does that in the Gospel for you tonight. My dear friend, he brings the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ right to where you are, and he says now by faith, by faith, you accept that and go says, if you repent toward me and exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved from the penalty of your sin. Yes, says the human heart, but what else? Nothing else, nothing else. The work has been done. The sacrifice has been made. The price has been paid. Golden, wonderful. Mercy and grace has provided in the work of Christ at Calvary, a foundation upon which he a holy God can move out in grace toward the repentant center and the sinner who repents and looks to God alone for his mercy, puts faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only savior of sinners is the center who is safe. The moment our center is safe, the moment a sinner repents and puts faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, immediately they are sealed by the holy spirit of promise and God gives witness. He gives us assurance that I am right with God and right for eternity and right for heaven. Now, I never preached the Gospel without. I tell the men and women I'm speaking to, but it's a wonderful thing to be saved. It's wonderful to know with assurance, not because of what I am, not because of what I have done that because of who Christ is and because of what he did at calvary and because of the authority of God's word. I know that my sins have been dealt with. I know that my sins are forgiven. I know that I'm on the road to heaven your way. We'll call it spray. It has to be one or the other, doesn't it? You will know that there was a man famous for singing. I did it my way,
Speaker 4:the way of Cain, the Lord Jesus Christ who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No Man Cometh unto the father.
Speaker 2:Yes. By faith, you must lean the entire weight of your soul upon Christ in order to be saved from the penalty of your sands. The sacrifice has been made. Christ the perfect lamb of God has laid down his life for sinners. Repent of your sins and trust Christ today and know for sure that all is well for eternity. Don't try to come your way. My friend don't come in the way of Cain. Cain lost his soul for all of eternity would come God's way. True the land provided at calvary and rejoice in the grace of God for you. If this or any of our Bible messages here at Anchor Point has made you aware of God's interest in you or if you'd like some literature or visit that would help you to understand these important truths. Why don't you drop us a line at email, at anchor point radio.com. We'd love to hear from you. We're glad that you were able to join as an anchor point today. Anchor Point, a sponsored by Christians who are meeting and various gospel halls. Each of these Christian Assemblies Holds Gospel services every Sunday night as well as regular prayer and Bible study throughout the week. No collections ever taken and the very warm welcome awaits you. And if you've been challenged by today's message, would like to know more about the truth of the Gospel or gathering under the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Following new testament principles, please feel free to check out our website@anchorpointradio.com. There you will find more information as well as the location programs and meeting schedules for the Gospel Hall nearest you. Also, feel free to take a look@otherliteratureandaudiooffersatanchorpointradio.com where you can also subscribe to our anchor point podcast. My name is John Sharp and thank you once again for listening and we invite you to join us again next week at the same time for anchor point where we believe that in times like these you need a savior and in times like these unique and anger,
Speaker 4:too vague. No switched, right stan? No, no stinky cheese. Sure. Hi, pass.