Understanding Cain and Abel: Faith, Sin, and Civilization Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has taught home-style Bible classes for twenty years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les' teaching is so interesting, people say the time seems to fly by. And now, here's Les Feldick. Okay, it's good to have you with us again tonight, and let's just pick up again where we left off, and that would be in Genesis chapter 4, and if you'll turn there with me to verse 8. Now, if you remember the last time we were together, we were talking about Cain and Abel, why Abel was accepted and Cain was rejected. It boils down to a simple matter of obedience to what God said, or disobedience. Remember that Abel brought a blood sacrifice, as God had instructed, and God accepted it, and Abel went away back in right relationship with his Creator, or with his God, rather. But Cain brings a bloodless sacrifice, that which was of self-will. God rejected it, Cain got angry, and God came back and said, but Cain, I've already provided a lamb, if you'll just go to your tent door, pick it up, bring it, and I'll accept you. And still, Cain will not. Now, just to get our minds kind of cleared as to why some people, seemingly, can never get these things to the place where they can believe it, let's go back again, before we go any further in Genesis. Go back with me, if you will, to that same chapter in Hebrews, chapter 11, the great faith chapter, and again look at verse 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice. Now that says it all. Why was Abel accepted? His faith, see? And he had a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. All right, now if you'll flip over to chapter 12 in the book of Hebrews, we're going to pick up the other individual that I alluded to in our last half hour, a man also who morally and in every other way was probably better than his brother Jacob, and I'm talking about Esau. And you all know the story of Jacob and Esau, and how that Esau was a hunter and loved of his father, and when Isaac wanted that venison meal, Esau—I'm in the right place now, aren't I? Yeah, Jacob and Esau, and Esau went out and got that venison for Isaac, but in the meantime, what had Jacob done? Oh, by trickery he had beaten Esau to it. But you see, when Esau came in from the hunt, and he was all exhausted and he was hungry, he glibly—and I mean glibly—gave up his spiritual birthright for what? A bowl of bean soup. Now why? He was destitute of faith. What God had said concerning the coming of a Redeemer through the line of Abraham meant nothing to Esau, but Jacob, rascal that he was, evidently had enough of a concept of what God said he would do that he was in the line that he could believe it. He could be a man of faith. Esau could not. All right, you got Hebrews chapter 12, where the Scripture, I think, makes it so plain. Beginning with verse 16, lest there be any fornicator or immoral person or a profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. And you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. See? Same situation as Cain. So Esau was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. That verse is hard to comprehend until you can understand, even though Esau wept that he missed receiving the blessing, he never got to the place that he could understand why he missed the blessing. And why did he miss it? Because he could not believe what God had said. He was a man who had no faith. And again, I always have to bring all these things up to our own contemporary time. How many people haven't we got all around us who are good people, morally good people, and their emotions are stirred, but they just cannot simply believe what God has said to believe. And so where are they? They're out there in disobedience. They're trying to make their own way. They are like Esau. They are like Cain. They are destitute of faith. All right, now then let's come back to chapter 4, and let's continue on. We should make a little headway this half hour. And now we see that Cain has still carried that rebelliousness. He is now filled with the four-lettered word, envy, envy. What's he envious of? Oh, the fact that Abel now is right with God, and he isn't. That's all that's wrong. There's nothing else that has come between these two brothers except this one fact. And so now Cain becomes envious. Do you realize that you cannot break a single one of the Ten Commandments without first being guilty of envy? Turn with me again, I'm sorry. Go back again to the New Testament. Go to Romans chapter 7, I think it is. Romans chapter 7. Romans chapter 7, where Paul is having this great battle. In verse 7, Romans chapter 7. And you know the concept here is that Paul makes it so plain, the things I would, I don't, and the things that I should do, I don't, and the things that I'd vice versa. And he's got this great controversy within himself. All right, but now in verse 7 he says, "...what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Is there something wrong with the law? Well, banish the thought. Nay, I had not known sin for what it really is, but how? By the law. For I had not known lust or sinful desire, except the law had said what? Thou shalt not covet." And think about it in the next two days as you go about your daily work. Is there anything, as I've already said, within the Ten Commandments that you can break without first coveting? Not a one. Everything that is in our relationship with God, that is so far as our disobedience is concerned, is always triggered by coveting or envy. Envy, jealousy. And it can just eat at the very inner being of people. And then pretty soon it comes to the surface. All right, that's exact. Now you can go back to Genesis. That's just exactly, you see, what happened to Cain. Oh, he became so envious of Abel's relationship with God, the fact that God accepted him. And instead of just simply going back to God in obedience, what does he do? He lets that envy eat and eat until finally—now the Hebrew makes it a little more clear here than our English. It's just like two young men who have probably had a controversy, and finally the more macho of the two says, well, let's just go outside and we'll what? We'll settle it. All right, that's basically what Cain says to Abel. His envy has come now to such a crescendo that he says to Abel, all right, brother, let's just go out into the field and we'll settle it. And he knew how he was going to settle it, all right, verse 8. And so Cain talked with Abel his brother. He didn't just talk with him, he confronted him. And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew—murdered him. Now over the 20 years that I've been teaching, I have a few little clichés, I call them, that I'll use over and over. And one of them is, sin begets sin. And we have to be so careful. Once we get down into that road of sin, another sin just follows so naturally, automatically. Sin begets sin. All right, that's what happened here. What was Abel's first sin? A lack of faith. He could not believe that what God said was true. All right, after that sin, what followed? Envy, jealousy. Now his envy and his jealousy actually comes to the place where he commits a still more heinous sin—murder. And so he kills his brother Abel. All right, now verse 9. Now the Lord comes on the scene. Now remember back here in the Old Testament times, it's totally different than what we can experience today. And so the Lord comes to Cain, and he says, where's Abel, thy brother? And he said, what? He lied. Now what's a lie? It's another sin. See? He just keeps piling them up. He says, I don't know. He knew where he was. And then he says, am I my brother's keeper? Is it up to me to keep track of him? Verse 10. And God said, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. Now I think there's more—I've told my classes over and over—I think there's more in this verse than I'm able to even glean from it, but there is a connection here with the blood of Abel going into the ground, which is already under the curse. There is a connection, I'm sure, but I'm not to the place where I can clarify it. So it might be something that you'd want to just study on your own. Verse 11. And now, God says, thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. Verse 12. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And now Cain comes back and he cries, doesn't he? Just like Esau. Oh, he cried bitter tears, but he was still destitute of faith. And he says, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Listen, would God have forgiven Cain even here? Sure he would have. All Cain would have had to do was just let his pride come down, and if Cain would have just said, oh God, I've sinned. I'll do what you want me to do. I'll go get that sacrifice. I'll bring it to you. But Cain doesn't. And you'll just see the man go down, down, down. All right, let's read on. Verse 14. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day. From the face of the earth and from thy face shall I be hid. That is the face of God. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth, and it shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall slay me. And God says, oh no, they won't. I'll prevent that. And so in verse 15, he said unto him, therefore, whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold, and the Lord set a mark upon Cain. Now we don't know what that mark is. I wouldn't even begin to venture a guess, but I'll tell you one thing. Everybody that was contemporary with Cain knew who he was, and they wouldn't have touched him for anything. And so God providentially puts that protection on him. Now this points up something else. Here we are in the dawn of human history, and from Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and these first families now just starting up on this side of the Garden of Eden, all the way to the flood, you want to remember there is no system of what we call law and order. There is no government. There is no law and order. In other words, everyone operated simply from conscience. There was no system of organized worship. Now they knew to approach God with animal sacrament, but there was no system of worship as we find introduced to the nation of Israel, or as we find Paul introducing to the church. But rather, every person was more or less on his own to be obedient to his God by virtue of the conscience within him. Maybe I can show that best from the book of Romans again. Go back to Romans, because as I've always tried to stress, we have to use all of the Scripture. In fact, it came up in our class last night as we were studying the book of Acts. After Paul had been driven out of the little city of Thessalonica up there in northern Greece where they refused to let him teach and preach, and he went down to the next little city south of Thessalonica to Berea, and that verse says what? Now the Bereans were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that after they had heard Paul teach, they went home and they searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And oh, that's a good admonition for us. If you don't agree with me, don't come and argue with me. Search the Scriptures. Search the book. And I would like to make it clear, you know, I don't trumpet any one denomination, and I don't try to proselyte from one end to the other. I don't try to get a person to leave where he is and go someplace else. All I attempt to do is teach the Word. Teach the Word. I just told someone at break time again, you know, very seldom do I come down on the so-called sins of society. You don't very often hear me talk about drugs and sex and gambling and all that. Hey, I don't have to. All we've got to do is get in the book, and those things will take care of themselves. All right, so now in Romans chapter 1, or maybe it's chapter 2, just a second, chapter 2. In Romans chapter 2, where Paul is now writing, of course, to the Gentile believers at Rome, and he's explaining all of this as he is preparing for chapter 3, and the chapter we've already looked at quite a bit. But he says in Romans chapter 2, verse 14, "...for when the Gentiles, who have not the law..." Now, do you see that? The Gentiles who have not the law. Now, Gentiles that he's referring to are those either contemporary with Israel while they're under the law, or that civilization coming up to the time of the law when as yet there was none. So he says, "...when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature," or do naturally, without being conformed by any outside force, "...when these Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law," in other words, they refrain from murder, they refrain from thieving, they refrain from adultery, they refrain from coveting and all these other things. They didn't do it because there was a law that told them not to, but read on, "...these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written," where? In their hearts, see? Their, what's the next word, conscience, "...their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing," or excusing, "...one another." Now that tells it as plainly as it can be told that for these people who lived before the law was given, operated on the influence of conscience, that which God had placed in the very breast of Adam and Eve and those following of what was right and what was wrong. You know, I was amazed years and years ago when we first got interested in foreign missions and missionaries would come home from parts of the world that 30, 40 years ago, I remember, were still pretty steeped in a spiritual darkness. It isn't so much that way anymore, in fact, much of what we used to call dark Africa is beginning to send missionaries to America now, I hope you know that. But anyway, I remember missionaries coming back and they would say that these pagan people, under the influence of the witch doctrine and all, yet they had a moral code. They had a moral code that would make us Americans look pretty shabby. Where did they get it? Oh, conscience. They knew deep inside that it wasn't right to murder. They knew it wasn't right to commit adultery and to be immoral. In fact, I remember one missionary, their tribal work was down in Central, no, in South America, Central South America, down along the Amazon, and that particular tribe was so hung up on sexual immorality that if any young girl was married with any doubt whatsoever that she was pure, her first child was taken into the jungle and killed. Now think of that. They had that much emphasis on a pure marriage relationship of that young girl coming into that marriage that if there was any taint on her character, they killed her first child. Now, where do they get it? Conscience. Now let's go back again, if you will, to Genesis. And so there is no system of organized law, as we know it, to control behavior, nor is there any organized system of, I'm going to call it worship, I don't like the word religion, I've said that before, an organized worship, all right? So now then, verse 16, Cain, still a rebel, he just cannot help but be the rebel. And so now Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, he didn't want anything more to do with him. I suppose after the Lord had told him, I've put a protection on you that no one can avenge your brother's death, Cain probably had a smugness, a self-satisfaction now that he had nothing to fear, and anyhow he removes himself from the place where God will have any contact with him. And so he went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. Now, the question has been coming up quite often lately, where was the garden of Eden? Well, I think most people who give any credence at all to the book of Genesis, especially out of the archaeological community, I think they would all agree that it was somewhere between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. And what with our controversy with Arak, that's just right in the cradle of civilization as we know it, right out there in that area between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. So Cain moves somewheres akin to that area, probably close to the Euphrates river, maybe on down to what later became Babylon or whatever, but it's in that area of the world, all right? And he knew his wife, verse 17, and she has a child, and they call him Enoch. Now in these verses from 17 through 24, we have the explosive beginning of that first kinetic civilization. Now, I'm saying kinetic because this civilization is going to explode technologically, it's going to explode in population, but it is totally destitute of a relationship with God. There is nothing spiritual in this civilization whatsoever, although it's going to, like I said, it's going to explode, all right? So remember now, God's out of the picture. Now when you force God out of a situation, there is a natural phenomena. Who comes in? Satan. Now, don't delegate Satan to the little monkey in a red suit and a pitchfork and a couple little horns on his head. That is not the biblical picture of Satan. Satan is an angelic personality with tremendous power. Apostle Paul tells us that he can transform himself into an angel of light. We know he has the power of the universe at his disposal with only the sovereign power of God to control him. And so this kinetic civilization now is going to be driven by the powers of Satan and not by the powers of God. All right, let's read just a few verses and it'll be time to quit. Cain knew his wife, she conceived, and Baran Enoch, and he built a—what's the next word? A city. Now, you know, I'm a strict adherent of the Genesis account. I mean, after all, this is what God says about it, and I believe every word of it. Everyone else will try to tell us that man came up, you know, in the process of evolution from that primeval soup and then finally came up through the monkeys and the apes and what have you, and then after he began to walk upright, why he began to hunt and raise a family and all that garbage, and then he lived in caves and almost like a wild animal, and then little by little he finally formed a civilization. Well, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible says the first thing these offspring of Cain did, they settled down and they built a city. Now, that doesn't mean it had to be a New York or a Chicago, but nevertheless it was not just a cave dweller or two. These are groups of people who have actually settled in one place, and they have set up a community, a society, a gathering together, somehow a society is the best word I can use. Now, if you're going to have a city, whether it's 500 or 1,000 or 10 ,000 or 20,000, I think you all realize that a good portion of the people involved in that society are in service. You ever thought of that? Most of our jobs, even today, are service -connected. Now in other words, you've got the grocer, you've got the hardware store, and you've got all these things. They're basically service, and very few jobs are really connected with production. Now, that's just part and parcel of having a city. Now, it's the same way here. Now, you go back into some of the tribal areas that I've already referred to, like down in the central part of South America along the Amazon. When our missionaries go down there and approach these natives running around out there in the jungle, see, they know nothing of a civilization as we do. They don't have villages and towns. They just roam through the forest. And as soon as our missionaries can see them converted and teach them our so-called Western ways of living, then what's the first thing these people do? They settle down in a little town, a village, a community, and they begin to work together for one common purpose, and that is to enhance their little village. All right, now, we won't have time to go into it any further than this, but this is exactly what Cain and his offspring began, is a city. It's not just everybody out there hunting and trying to make his living by what he can get off the land, but they actually set up production, they set up services, they become a community. And I want you to realize it. And even after we have finished teaching these verses, I always encourage people to go back and study what does the book say. There's nothing in here that agrees with the evolutionary process, but instead we're going to see that God said it happened in a particular way, and that's the way we're going to have to believe it. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time.