Genesis 4-5 - God’s Sovereignty Over Human Evil
Main Idea: We have the freedom to choose between the path of God’s grace, or the path of our own wisdom.
GOD ALLOWS YOU TO CHOOSE YOUR PATH (vs. 1-16)
You’re free to act & speak how you’d like. (vs. 1-7)
You’re free to determine others’ worth to you. (vs. 8-9)
You’re not free to select your consequences. (vs. 10-16)
GOD ALLOWS OTHERS TO CHOOSE THEIR PATHS (vs. 17-24)
God’s patience allows time-limited rebellion. (vs. 17-22)
Don’t mistake God’s kindness for apathy. (vs. 19, 23-24)
GOD INVITES EVERYONE TO HIS RIGHT PATHS
He will forgive the sinner. (vs. 4:6-7)
He will restore the broken. (vs. 4:25-5:32)
He will befriend His followers. (vs. 5:22-24)
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
We are continuing in our study in the book of Genesis, chapters one through 11, looking at our sovereign God.
And we, over the past, well, I say over the past two weeks, but now it's been over the past three weeks, we've been in the study, and we saw how God created this world, how He designed it, and it was very good that God did not create our world with
sickness, or disease, or death, or cruelty, or any human evil. But because of the actions of our ancestors, actions that we have followed as well, sin entered into the world.
And because we chose to take God's good design and make a choice to go an entirely different path than the one that He had for us, which led to life and flourishing, instead we embraced sin and death and all that that entails.
Do you know that the direction you choose to go, the path that you walk on, that it has consequences?
So I would love to, and Owen, you don't have to worry about tracing me with the camera because I'll be, I think, out of the way of where that can be.
If I told you that I wanted to go and I'm really looking forward to playing the piano, there is a song that God has put on my heart, and I can't wait to play the piano here at Tabernacle. And it's such a great piano.
I do not play it nearly as well as Randy, but I would just, I'd love to play that piano. And maybe I'd love to as well go to my office and grab one of my Bibles.
And do you guys think that if I continue on this path that I'm on right now that I am ever going to get to the piano? No. The path that you choose has consequences.
And as we continue our study in the book of Genesis, we're going to see that that exact same truth stands not just for the actual physical paths that we walk on, but the choices that we make.
Today, we're going to look at God's sovereignty over human evil. That as we have walked a path that is in defiance of God, we can never arrive at what God has designed for us by following our own path.
Human choices determine both a path and a destination that inevitably lead to one of two ways.
God has allowed us the freedom to choose, but we can only choose the path that we go down, and we cannot selectively choose the end result of a path that we did not walk down.
Today, we're going to see that we have the freedom to choose between the path of God's grace or the path of our own wisdom.
Adam and Eve chose to define good and evil on their own terms, and that path led them straight out of the Garden of Eden and into a new world with sin and pain and death.
But even on that path of destruction that they had chosen, God loved them and wanted them to know him and follow him. Let's see what Adam and Eve and their descendants chose to do with this new freedom that they have.
And as we do that, we'll see some truths for our week. That God has allowed us free will to choose our daily paths, but he invites us to consider what that means both for us and for others.
As we dive into Genesis 4 this morning, we're going to see first that God allows you to choose your path. God allows you to choose your path.
And we can see this first in the passage in verses 1-7, where we can see that we are free to act and speak how we'd like. The passage says this, The man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.
She said, I have had a male child with Yahweh's help. The name Cain is the word Cayen in Hebrew. And she says, I, she named this boy Cayen because I have canad, I have Cayen because I canad a child with Yahweh's help, with the Lord's help.
She, verse 2, she also gave birth to his brother Abel. His name is a breath or a vapor, which if you know Hebrew as you're reading through, you go, uh-oh, all the names in the Bible, they tend to mean something.
So this person is just a breath, just a vapor. I sure hope nothing bad happens to Abel. It says, now Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground.
Now, as we've been going through the story, we saw in Genesis 1 that some of the first instructions that God gave to mankind was, I want you to rule over the earth and over the animals, and I want you to subdue it.
I want you to bring order to this world that I have created. And that's kind of the role that Abel here has. He works with the sheep.
But then if you'll recall, as Adam and Eve sinned and were sent out of the Garden of Eden, then God said, you'll toil through working the ground through hard farm labor. And that's kind of what Cain is doing.
He's planting crops and taking all of that. Verse number three, we can see what happens with these two boys. In the course of time, Cain presented some of the land's produce as an offering to Yahweh.
As you would read through and you'd get to the book of Leviticus, you would see why would someone offer something to God? And this would be in the book of Leviticus, what is a freewill offering? That is, it's not something God necessarily asked for.
This was just something that came out of someone's heart. However, verse number four lets us see a little bit clearer picture. It says, and Abel also presented an offering, some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions.
Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering. Okay, now we see there's a difference in the offering. So Cain presents produce, he presents crops, and Abel presents here the first of his flock.
Again, as you read through the rest of the Old Testament, you'll see this is what would be a burnt offering or a sin offering. This is something that someone takes.
They come to God and they say, Lord, I know that I have sinned, that I have done wrong, and I am in need of your forgiveness. And I want to be right with you.
And so how God outlines it in the Book of Leviticus is as a picture of Jesus who would one day be the sacrifice given on our behalf so that all of our guilt was put on him and all of his righteousness and goodness was put on us.
And so here you have these two boys, this one offers crops. Here's what I can do. And here Abel offers this thing that God wants.
And it says that the Lord had regard. He gazed at it. He looked with favor on Abel's offering.
But then we see in verse number five, but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering. He didn't look with favor on the offering of Cain. And it says Cain was furious, and he looked despondent.
Now, the whole point of freewill offerings, as you look at the Book of Leviticus, is this isn't something that necessarily atones for you before God. This was just something that you said, God, I love you. I am grateful for you.
And I'm giving this out of the abundance of my heart. But here, as Cain gives this offering, he's furious and despondent. He's crest falling.
He's downhearted about the fact that God has not looked with favor on his offering. The passage doesn't elucidate for us what that might have looked like for God to look with favor on Abel's offering.
But here, if you're giving an offering to God, it's not something that you say, God, I'm going to do this so that then you are happy with me, especially with a free will offering. This is, God, I'm thankful for you.
And instead, as Cain offers, he almost says, God, I am owed something from you because I've given something to you.
Instead of an offering to God, he wants a trade, as opposed to Abel just has this heart that says, God, I know who I am before you, and I am offering this sacrifice because I know that I need your forgiveness. Verse number six.
Then Yahweh said to Cain, the Lord speaks to Cain. The last time we saw God speaking, it was in the Garden of Eden.
As you read through scripture, there are at times hundreds of years or even sometimes thousands of years in which God does not communicate with mankind. And here Cain gets a personal conversation with the Lord.
And God says to Cain, why are you furious and why do you look despondent? He says, if you do what is right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door.
Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.
Here he says, if you do what is right, if you offer a sacrifice that is acceptable to God, a valid offering from a pure heart, one that is not saying what can I get from God, but what can I give to God, or as I come to God, I realize that I am a
sinner in need of salvation. I am not someone that is owed anything from God. I owe everything to God of my best. He says, if you do what's right, won't you be accepted?
So Cain is listed as being crestfallen, downhearted, and he says, you will be accepted, you'll be lifted up. There will be exaltation for you if you simply obey. He says, it's not that I only have one blessing to give, and I gave it to Abel.
He says, there's blessing enough, there's favor enough for both of you. All you have to do is come with a genuine heart. As 1 John 3 looks back on this passage, the Apostle John writes that Abel's heart was good towards the Lord.
He wanted to obey, but it says that King's sacrifice was rejected because his heart was evil. He was not right with the Lord, as we'll see. As God here in verse number 7, he says if you do what's right, won't you be accepted?
But he says, but if you do not do what is right, it says sin is crouching at the door. The language here is that of a predator. It's the croucher is out, is at the door.
That snake, if you will, that was in the Garden of Eden, that tempter to evil, the devil, he's waiting for you. And he wants to, it says there, his desire is for you. His desire is for you.
He wants to dominate, to rule, to control you. He says, but you must rule over it. There is no such thing as the devil made me do it.
You decide how you act. He says you can choose whether to listen to the voice of God, to do what's right, to follow what is good, or you can give in to the serpent that says, hey, God's holding out on you. He's not giving you his best.
You deserve more than what God has currently given you. God does not kill Cain for his offering, his attitude, his unrighteous thoughts and anger or his sadness. He speaks to him personally and tells him that he has a choice to make.
Aren't you glad that God puts up with you and with me? The absolute worst things that we've ever done, our most shameful moments, he didn't pour out his justice and his wrath on us.
And if that's how he's treated you, how do you think he wants you to treat others in your life? Like Cain, you have the choice today and this week between obeying God and caving to the wishes of sin and Satan. You do not have to be unkind.
You don't have to lie. You don't have to be sexually immoral. You don't have to fall anymore.
As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, you are a new creation in Christ, where the old things have passed away, and everything is new for you.
As Paul tells us in Romans 6, that you were the slaves to sin, but now you can be a slave to righteousness, that you can't help but follow the Lord. That's the new identity that God has for you.
But you are free to act and to speak how you'd like, even as we see in Cain's life.
And if that's true for you, and many of us enjoy that privilege of not being struck with lightning every time we say something unkind or every time we do something that is sin, that is a failure to obey God's law, other people have that freedom too.
And many times we can begrudge God for the freedom that others have to act and to speak, but realize that it cuts both ways. That God has given you freedom.
And here the choice that he gives to Cain is you can follow me or you can follow the croucher waiting at the door for you.
Not only are you free to act and speak how you'd like, but in verses 8 and 9, we can see that you're free to determine others' worth to you. Verse number 8, Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field.
And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Here you have this bitterness in heart that says, the only reason I didn't get the best was because God gave it all to Abel, which is not what God said.
God set the definitions of good and bad. And he says, if you do what's right, you will be exalted. And here Cain's acting as though getting rid of the person that has God's blessing will somehow give the blessing to him.
There, that bitterness evolved into hatred, which evolved into murder. And at the end of it, he still didn't have God's favor. Then, verse number 9, he always said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel?
As we mentioned two weeks ago, was God just like kind of oblivious? Was he bad at hide and seek? Did he not know where Abel was?
No. Here it's the examination, the exact same thing that God did when he came to Adam and Eve. He says, Where is your brother Abel?
I don't know, he replied, as scripture would tell us that Satan is the father of lies.
Here, if you'll remember from Genesis 3-15 about you have God saying to the serpent, there's going to be enmity between the descendants of the woman and the descendants of the serpent.
Here you have this one who is acting just like the serpent, the one that caused death to come into now this family, just as the initial serpent had brought death into the world at large. He says, I don't know, he replied, am I my brother's guardian?
Am I my brother's keeper? And frankly, yes, he was. You are responsible for how you treat others.
Here Cain devalued Abel's life. He viewed his brother's life as not worthy of existing anymore because of the slights that Cain felt because of the lack of his own relationship and obedience to God. Can I encourage you today?
You might feel as though you could have more blessing, more happiness, if it weren't for this other person in your life. But God wants you to value others as being made in his image, just like you are.
We are called to love others as Christ has loved us. And God doesn't put in their exception clauses for, but they will really mean to me one time.
God, the maker of all, the definition of good and right, has put up with every evil thing that we've ever done or said or thought or felt. And we are called to give that same love to others.
They might not deserve it by human standards, but by the standards of a holy God, we are called to value the lives of others.
Cain had the freedom to choose whether he valued Abel as an image bearer of God, as his own brother, and as a person that had not done anything to stop Cain from receiving God's blessing.
And given that freedom, Cain chose to hate Abel, be bitter against him, and kill him. I'm certain all of us would be staunchly against Cain's act of murder. But do you recognize that that's not where it started?
It didn't start with murder. It started with frustration and despair and hatred and bitterness.
And while we think that we'd love a world where God does not allow mankind to have freedom of choice, do you realize that that means God would not just judge the murderers, but the murderers at heart?
That a thoroughly just punishment for sin would mean that the moment that disobedience or lust or unkindness or unforgiveness entered into our mind, that we would have to be eradicated.
God's patience, his kindness, his forgiveness, his long suffering allows for us to exist in our world. We're given the freedom to determine if others are worth our time, our attention, our care, our help, our words, or our love.
You might not yet be, hopefully, where Cain was in his murderous hatred, but do you value other people as God values them? So we're free to act and speak how we'd like.
We're free to determine others' worth to us, but we are not free to select our consequences, as we see in verses 10-16. Cain says, I don't know where Abel is. Am I my brother's guardian?
Then God said to him in verse 10, what have you done? He says, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. It's a call for justice to be executed on Cain.
He says, so now you are cursed, alienated from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood you have shed.
He says, you gave yourself to crops, and you did so to the neglect of your soul and to the bitterness of your soul because you refused to follow in my way.
And so now that ground that you cared so much about above your relationship with me, he says, now the ground is going to reject you. Verse 12, if you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield.
You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. He says, you're going to have to be a nomad, you're going to travel to where you need to go. Verse 13, but Cain answered Yahweh, my punishment is too great to bear.
He killed a man. God has not killed him. God has not sent him straight to the pit.
God allowed him to live and he doesn't say you're going to starve. He just says, you can no longer do farming. And Cain complains about the mercy of God.
How often do we do that same thing? That we have been sinners in a variety of ways and sometimes there are consequences for our actions. We lie to people, we mistreat people.
And then when there are inevitable consequences from our actions, we complain to God and say, God, I just wish that this marriage relationship would be better right now.
God, I just really wish that me and this sibling could have a better relationship. Why aren't you doing something? And God goes, I have given you grace and mercy, and you are still alive.
There is still time for you to act, but there are natural consequences for your behavior. And here Cain instead of saying, I was wrong, I have sinned, I need forgiveness, he complains about the consequences of his actions.
Verse number 13, sorry, so Cain says, my punishment is too great to bear. Well, if he hadn't killed his brother, there would be no punishment. It's his fault.
Verse number 14, he says, since you are banishing me today from the face of the earth, and I must hide from your presence and become a restless wanderer on the earth, whoever finds me will kill me, which would obviously be justice.
As you look at the rest of the Pentateuch, the rest of those first five books of the Bible, the punishment for taking life was your life was to be taken. It's a life for a life, justice that was done.
And he says, people are going to look for justice. And God doesn't say, then you shouldn't have killed him. Instead, he says this in verse number 15.
Then Yahweh replied to him, in that case, whoever kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over. And he placed a mark on Cain so that whoever found him would not kill him.
And God is so merciful that the murderers, those with hatred in their heart, the embittered, the unrepentant can find God's grace. I think of the verse that says that he causes it to rain on the just and the unjust.
He gives supply for crops to those that deserve it and those that don't.
If you're breathing today, it is God's gift of mercy to you, that he cares about you and he loves you and he's given you opportunity to be right with him, to be right with others, to pursue Jesus, to love him and to declare him.
God is gracious and merciful to those who emphatically do not deserve it. Verse number 16, Then Cain went out from Yahweh's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
While God does allow us to choose between good and evil, between accepting his definitions and our own, between valuing or devaluing what he values, he does not allow us to choose our consequences.
Instead, we naturally receive the results of our actions. If you rob a bank today, you don't get to choose not to be prosecuted and thrown in jail.
If you demean your family or friends, you don't get to choose that those relationships aren't affected by your words. If you reject Jesus and his way, you don't get to choose the end result, heaven, of a path that you did not walk down.
As we heard from Pasaraw on last Sunday, from Galatians 6, don't be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows, he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh.
But the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Or as Proverbs 14-12 puts it, there is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.
And as Jesus says in Matthew 7, be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes?
Are figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit, neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, so you will recognize them by their fruit. What are the consequences of the actions that you are taking right now?
Every day, you are sowing seeds through your words, through your actions, as we see in the story of Cain, even in our emotions and our thoughts, the anger and the crestfallenness that he had, what are the end results, the consequences of the seeds
that you're planting? What trees are going to grow in your life from the actions that you are taking? So we see first that you are allowed to choose your path. God has never stopped you from doing what you intend to do.
But we can see also that God allows others to choose their paths. You can see this in verses 17-24. First, that God's patience allows time-limited rebellion.
We can see this in verses 17-22. It says Cain was intimate with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Then Cain became the builder of a city, and he named the city Enoch after his son.
If you'll recall when God said, hey, here's the punishment for you. You are to wander. Even as Cain is relaying back to God what God had said to him, he says, oh, great, I'm going to be a restless wanderer on the earth.
And here we find Cain not wandering. Instead, he's building up a city. This would be a place of commerce.
Sometimes in the ancient world, this would be a place of safety. More often, it would be a place where oppression would take place. Most of the time, one person on their own couldn't build a city or upkeep a city.
You would have people that were under you, that you would say, okay, so-and-so and so-and-so, you have to build the wall. You guys are working on irrigation or on bringing in food or plants, and here you have this city that takes place.
He says in verse number 18, I-Rad has some name semblance to Erida, the first Sumerian city. He says, I-Rad was born to Enoch. I-Rad fathered Mahusael.
Mahusael fathered Methusiel. And Methusiel fathered Lamech. So here's these generations following Cain, father and son and son after that and son after that.
It says in verse number 19, Lamech took two wives for himself, one named Ada and the other named Zilla. If you remember from Genesis 1 and 2, this was not God's design.
This is the first act of polygamy or of sexual immorality that is mentioned in Scripture. This is someone that is accumulating wives for himself. It's not the design.
God never said, Hey, you should do this. You should pursue this. Sometimes people have mistakenly looked at the Old Testament and said, Ah, you guys talk about biblical marriage between one man and one woman for life.
And that's just not true. You look at the Old Testament and David and Abraham and many others, they all had multiple wives. So, that's biblical marriage too.
The difference is, God does not prescribe that, and every time it happens, there are horrible consequences that come about as a result of the polygamy.
He says in verse number 20, Ada, one of the wives, bore Jebol, and he was the first of the nomadic herdsmen. His brother was named Jubal. He was the first of all who play the lyre and the flute.
Here, there's music, so we're seeing some culture take place. There's music. And then verse 22, Zilla bore Tubal Cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools.
Tubal Cain's sister was Naima. Here you have forging and metallurgy that is happening during this time period. So there's lots of technological advancements that are taking place, but it's coming truly from a place of spiritual emptiness.
We might wonder, why does God allow time-limited rebellion? Why does God not punish every evildoer today? It's because he is patient and loving and does not want anyone to be destroyed, but for everyone to come to know him.
Why didn't God destroy Cain or Lamech, for reasons we'll look at in a second? It's because he loved them, even in their wickedness and evil, and he wanted them to turn to him.
And he wanted to love Enoch and Irad and Mahusael and Methuselah and Adah and Zillah and Jabal and Jubal and Tubal Cain and Nehema.
If God destroyed Cain, then none of the others would have existed, and God would never have gotten a chance to express his love for them and invite them to know him.
Does that opportunity of time-limited rebellion, does that mean that sometimes evil will take place? Yes. But only for a blip in the span of eternity.
In 100 billion, trillion years, we will have no qualms with having experienced a hard day or year or even a decade. But a person that dies without knowing the Lord, they're gone from his presence and his goodness forever.
God will punish evil completely, but God doesn't want anyone to go without the opportunity to embrace his good design. Look at the Apostle Paul, a kidnapper, a persecutor, a blasphemer, a person that facilitated the murder of Christians.
But because of God's patience and his love, he turned his life around so that the greatest persecutor became the greatest propagandist of the gospel.
2 Peter 3-9 says, The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but he is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
Romans chapter 2 says, Do you despise the riches of God's kindness, restraint and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed. He will repay each one according to his works.
Eternal life to those who, by persistence and doing good, seek glory, honor and immortality, but wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking, and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness. So God's patience allows for time-limited rebellion.
And then lastly here, don't mistake God's kindness or his apathy. God cares about evil and wickedness in this world. And just because he has patience during this time does not mean that there are no consequences.
Verses 23 and 24, Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zilla, hear my voice. Wives of Lamech, pay attention to my words. For I killed a young man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.
Here there's an inequitable punishment. He says someone hit me and so I killed him. It is disproportional justice.
There's this wickedness. And then verse 24, he says, if Cain is to be avenged seven times over, then for Lamech, it will be 77 times. In essence, he said, my killing is good.
And I am entitled to God's protection and approval of my wickedness. Some people assume that because God doesn't punish the people, they think he should right now, that he is neither all good or all powerful.
But as we just went over, that is not the case.
And in fact, though wicked people may justify their actions to themselves, as Lamech does here, and flaunt their evil, there is coming a day when God will punish all sin, from the smallest to the greatest.
2nd Thessalonians chapter 1 says, It is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted along with us.
This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don't know God and on those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from his glorious strength on the day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by those who believe.
Hebrews 10 says, if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, after we know what God wants from us and we say, I don't want God's way, I don't want the gospel, I'm leaving.
He says, there no longer remains a sacrifice of sins. He says, who are you going to turn to for a relationship with God other than Jesus?
He says, there's no more sacrifice but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries. Anyone who disregarded the law of Moses died without mercy based on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
So someone murders someone, if two or three people witnessed the murder and they testified, a person was put to death.
He says, how much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, who has regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
God says, if you choose the path that rejects my mercy, that rejects Jesus, that rejects forgiveness, free and full forever, he says, where are you going to go? What do you think is at the end of that path of saying, Jesus is not enough for me.
I don't want the Holy Spirit. I don't want God's people. He says, what do you think is at the end of that path?
He says, for we know the one has said, vengeance belongs to me. I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people.
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
In Revelation 21 says, the cowards, faithless, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
God will one day come in judgment. Do you know Jesus? Do not put it off.
The call from God's word is there is a path to life. The path is Jesus accepting his payment for your sins, welcoming him into your life, receiving him as Lord. That is the way to life.
And there is no other way. As Acts 4 puts it, there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. I've seen the phrase before, no Jesus, K-N-O-W, no Jesus, no life.
And then no Jesus, N-O, no Jesus, no life. Today, don't gamble with your eternity. Do not gamble with your soul.
God loves you. He is patient for you. You are breathing today because of his love and patience and mercy and desire to have a relationship with you.
Don't spit in his face. Don't reject the call of Christ, the, oh, come to the altar. The father's arms are open wide.
He wants to forgive you. You can come as a sinner. You don't have to come when your act's put together, but he invites you to come.
Walk down that path because the only other path leads to the destruction of your soul. You can see lastly today, God invites everyone to his right paths. In chapter 4 and verses 6 and 7, we can see that he will forgive the sinner.
As Yahweh said to Cain, why are you furious and why do you look despondent? If you do what is right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door.
Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Psalm 32 says, How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How joyful is the person whom Yahweh does not charge with iniquity, and in whose spirit is no deceit.
When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was drained as in the summer's heat. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity.
I said, I will confess my transgressions to Yahweh, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. God will forgive the sinner. There is no sin that you can bring to Jesus that will be new to him.
He's been at this a long time, and he has forgiven sinners far worse than you and made lives new. That's what he wants to do in your life. Then we can see that he will restore the broken.
I'm going to summarize this passage. We'll read through it. In a broken world, with now a broken family that has experienced the death of a loved one for the very first time, God is still there for them.
He gives them another son, Seth. And he makes it so that his people, whoever wants to call on him, they can't. They can hear from God.
They can worship God. They can follow him. Verse 25, Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth.
For she said, God has given me another offspring in place of Abel since Cain killed him. A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time, people began to call on the name of Yahweh.
Notice here, it doesn't say that happened in Cain's lineage, that family. Though Cain knew about God, he had had conversations with him, he did not follow him, and none of his descendants did either.
You can make a difference in your family lineage from my point on, my kids, my grandkids, my great grandkids, they're going to know about the God of the Bible. So then God in chapter 5, he kind of reviews and restates his original design for mankind.
He says, this is the document containing the family records of Adam. On the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created the male and female.
When they were created, he blessed them and called them mankind. He says, God, people are made in my image. I have made them male and female, and I have blessed them, and I made them a family.
Verse 3, Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son in his likeness according to his image and named him Seth. Adam lived 800 years after he fathered Seth, and he fathered other sons and daughters.
So Adam's life lasted 930 years, and then he died.
Something interesting here that I do want to note, as we look at our lifespans, just celebrated the life of Dale Goins yesterday, and he was 90 years old, and for many of us, we'd say, man, that was a long, full life.
I don't even know if I'd want to make it all the way to 90, and so a number like 930 or 130 might shock us a little bit.
In some of the writings around this time period in Israel, they had ancient accounts of kings that they said were descended from the gods or co-mingling between gods and humans, and they write of kings that lived for tens of thousands of years, and
that was the documents around Israel at that time, that Babylon says, hey, here's our history. But as God writes history in the book of Genesis, for a number of reasons, if you have any interest in talking about it, I would love to talk with you
either after or this week about some of the elements of it. But God says, hey, here's a, if you will, more realistic timeline, that yeah, people lived longer.
It was closer to God's original design, which there wasn't as heavy of decay or death as we experience today. He says, but these are not like the semi-immortal demigods that all of the nations around you are talking about.
Yeah, there were some longer lifespans, only a fraction of what they purport them to be. And he says, instead of being powerful kings, we read death after death after death. This was not the triumph of the demigods.
This is what God has said. The natural consequences of sin are comes on generation after generation. We're not getting better and better.
We're slowly degenerating. Verse number six and on, we have this continual formula that I'll abbreviate. You have Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and lastly Noah, and then his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
And, Owen, I'll have you skip down to verse number 29. Thank you for bearing with me. We could read those 30 verses of the genealogy, but you get the general gist of it.
People lived, they had children, and they died. There's no triumph here, there's no snake stomping, like we'd expect from Genesis 3. Instead, death comes on generation after generation.
Do you feel a little bit like this list? Generation after generation of monotony, where all just seems to be death after death after death. Realize that God wants to bring your soul, life, and rest.
The name Noah is very similar to the Hebrew word for rest. Noah says he wants to bring rest to you. He wants to restore you, your family, everyone you know, to a vibrant, living relationship with him and with others.
For all these generations, it's just sadness. There's no victories. There's no real walk with God that's mentioned, except in verses 22 through 24.
And we can see this, that God will befriend his followers. Verse number 22. After he fathered Methuselah, Enoch walked with God.
It's a phrase that's only said of Enoch and of Noah. He spent time with, he spoke with, he cared about what God had to say. He wanted to walk the path with God.
It says, Enoch walked with God 300 years and fathered other sons and daughters. So Enoch's life lasted 365 years. And then verse 24, Enoch walked with God, then he was not there because God took him.
Here we can see that sin and death are not the only way. For every other person that you read about chapters 4 and 5, that's all that was there for them. They lived, they had children, and they died.
But for the one that walks with God, death is not the end. Or here as with Enoch, our hope as well is that the Lord would return, and we would be with him, and that we would not die.
There you have Enoch walk with God, and then he was not there because God took him.
I've heard it phrased before that Enoch every day was walking with God, and God one day said, hey, you know, Enoch, it's been a long day, instead of going back to your place, why don't we go to mine? And he went up to heaven with him.
This is our hope, that Jesus will return and take us, or even if we die, we are in his presence, that just as we saw with Dale yesterday, though his physical shell was here, his spirit is in glory. He is not dead, but he lives.
Because Jesus lives, we can face tomorrow, whether life or death, whether Jesus comes or whether we pass and are joined to him that way, whether we live or die, we belong to him.
One other thought from Enoch's walk with God, where God goes, do you go? No, God has a care for people. He values people.
He loves people. He wants you to walk in righteousness and kindness and forgiveness and generosity. He has all of those things for you.
He wants that life for you. Are you following it? Are you walking his path?
Are you walking the path that leads to destruction? Today, which path will you choose? God's path that leads to life, restoration, forgiveness and friendship, or this world's path that leads to death, isolation and the destruction of relationships?
Do you know Jesus? Have you chosen His forgiveness for your wrongs? God's given us the freedom to choose between the path of God's grace and the path of our own wisdom.
God's sovereignty over human evil is I have patience, I have love, I'm inviting people to my right paths. You're free to choose another path, but it won't take you where you're intended to go by God's good design. The path you walk is your choice.
No one can force you to follow God, and no one can force you to abandon God's path. What will you choose today and this week?
