11 - The First False Religion 2010

Last time we looked at the judgments that fell upon Adam and Eve as a result of their fall into sin. From Adam, the Bible says, sin was passed onto the entire human race (Ro. 5:12). Our teaching ended with the first couple’s banishment from the Garden of Eden.

When Cain was born, Eve likely thought he was Christ. She exclaimed, “I have gotten a man from the Lord!” Within this statement is the clear sense that God had delivered a child according to His promise. Eve no doubt assumed the promised seed had already come to bruise the serpent’s head.

Alexander Whyte writes of this: “She would have been a cold-blooded atheist had she believed anything else. Her exclamation demonstrates her saving faith in the promise of a coming redeemer.

But before long she had abundant cause to doubt that Cain was the one. The first child born into a sin-cursed world soon manifested temper tantrums, an inborn ability to lie and deceive, and was infected with pride. He worships in self-will, is angry with God, refuses to bring a sin offering, murders his brother, lies to God, and ultimately becomes a vagabond.

By the time her second son, Abel, is born she knew her mistake well. Abel means “vanity.” It had all become vanity and vexation of spirit after all.

The two boys grew up together not far from the Garden of Eden, in an agrarian setting. There were likely good times as well—stories around the evening fire, plots of ground for each of the growing boys to till. As they grew, they encountered the reality of the fall through plenty of hard work in fighting off weeds and thorns, and fending off the wolves.

On reaching full manhood, Abel had become a keeper of sheep and Cain a tiller of the ground. It is important to understand that both of the boys were well taught. They knew there was a God. They knew their parents had fallen into sin, and that sin was highly offensive to God.

It is very likely that the family had made field trips to the gates of Eden where Adam and Eve recounted the tragedy of sin and their banishment from Paradise. They knew that when coming to God they must bring an offering, for God’s anger at sin must be atoned for.

This is why we read that, “…in the process of time 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 firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.”—Gen 4:3-4

Now Cain, for all his faults, was no atheist. He came “first” to the Lord with an offering from the fruit of the ground. Abel came also with a lamb “without spot or blemish.” And this was not easy for Abel. Commentator John Phillips paints a somber picture:

“We can visualize the trusting, gentle, innocent lamb looking up at Abel. He placed his hands upon it, and the little thing trembled at his touch. Then swift and sure he seized his knife and cut its throat and watched the red blood spurt. He watched it die. Then, with a sob in his soul, we can see him lift the silent form, place it on the flames, and offer it up to God, tears running down his cheeks. It was a dreadful way to approach God. But sin is a dreadful thing.”

Cain, on the other hand, may have looked on with disgust at Abel’s bloody altar. He walked off to his own altar that was fresh with the fragrance of the fruits of the field and made an offering to God from the produce of the ground. Then God responded:

“And the Lord had respect to Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”—vs. 5

The Bible clearly reveals that the two brothers had been taught what kind of offering to bring to the Lord.

“By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.”—Heb 11:4

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”—Ro. 10:17

Abel had brought an offering that was driven by faith in the Word of God that he had been taught. His was an offering of faith. Adam and Eve had no doubt told both boys how God had replaced the fig leaves with an animal skin. They had communicated the lesson learned immediately following their own fall into sin: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”—Heb. 9:22

Abel believed; Cain did not. Abel took his place before God as a guilty, lost, helpless sinner needing an atoning sacrifice. By faith, in some measure, Abel was looking away toward Calvary. The Bible says that he “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

But not Cain. Holding to his own self-righteousness, he spurned a salvation based on blood. To him it was barbarous, offensive, and disgusting. He came to God his own way, on his own terms, yet rejected by God. This is precisely the attitude held by every person involved in a false religion, who approach God on their own terms.

The spirit of Cain has been alive and well in the human race ever since. Cain is the father of the first false religion, a religion based on works, not grace; self-righteousness rather than God’s righteousness; rebellion, and not obedience. Abel’s way leads to heaven, while the way of Cain leads directly to hell.

Note God’s word to Cain following the rejection of his offering: “Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (4: 6-7)

When we rebel against God’s way, the door is opened for sin to pounce and devour us. Soon after these chilling words, the first son committed the first murder.

“Now 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.” (vs. 8)

Cain had brought an offering but not a sacrifice; he was willing to worship, but only on his own terms. His false religion ultimately ended with his mournful cry following God’s judgment on him: “My punishment is more than I can bear…”—4: 13 The founder of the first false religion wandered the earth a vagabond and sank at last into a nameless grave at an unrecorded age.

The millions who hurry down Cain’s path only perpetuate his errors. Their self-righteous attitudes, good works, religious rituals, and social actions do nothing to garner the favor of God. He requires a blood sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. Without it, all is vanity.

Cain’s descendants built a large and thriving civilization, characterized by great social, secular, and scientific activity. But it was all sinful activity based in rebellion against God, for it ignored Christ and led directly to the Flood.

The Coming Catastrophe

A time period of around 1500 years lies between the fall and the flood. The Bible compresses the history of this time period into 140 verses and five and a half brief chapters (4-9:17). The story unfolds in three parts.

The first part deals with the causes of the flood; the second part with catastrophe itself; and the third part with the consequences of the flood.

The Lord Jesus Himself referred to the first part leading up to the flood with the words, “As the days of Noah were, so shall it be also in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.”—Matt 24:37 That statement alone motivates us to want to look into exactly what it was like before the Flood!

Following the Fall, sin quickly polluted all of humanity. Prior to the Great Flood, God summed up mankind’s abysmal condition in Gen. 6:5-6:

“The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” Only evil all the time! This was man’s heart and life.

Chapter 4 begins with the tracking of two genealogies—Cain and Seth. The line of Cain is described first, which was the line of the ungodly. The line of Seth—who was Abel’s replacement following Abel’s murder—being the godly lineage.

Cain was a restless, rebellious man, of strong character, iron determination, an independent thinker, and a man of stubborn self-will and fierce pride. God had already rejected his religion, so he was just fine with doing without God.

At the very outset, Cain’s lineage manifests an indifference toward God (4: 16-17), beginning with an indifference toward the Person of God.

“Cain left the presence of God and lived in Nod (vagrancy, wandering; literally “No-Man's-Land”), east of Eden.” Notice how casually he left the presence of God. Cain turned his back on the gates of Eden, the place where men met God.

Put simply, Cain became the first apostate. It is one thing for a person who has never known any divine truth, never been exposed to light, to walk away. But it is another thing when someone intentionally walks away from divine light and knowledge. This was Cain. And he is presented as apostate by Jude in the New Testament:

“But these people sneer at anything they can't understand, and by doing whatever they feel like doing—living by animal instinct only—they participate in their own destruction…They've gone down Cain's road…”—Jude 11

Cain went on to build a city. The Bible says that he named it after his son, Enoch. “Enoch” means “dedicated” or as some have suggested, “inauguration.” Cain inaugurated something new—a city. If he couldn’t have Paradise, if Eden were blocked from him, he would just build his own on his own terms, exactly as he had done with his offering.

As the ungodly line of Cain increased, man’s early indifference blossomed into independence from God. Much of the early history of this time is revealed in the names given to children. Several of the names in Cain’s line end with “el” (for Elohim), which indicates that, at least for a season, the knowledge of God lingered on in the memory of Cain’s race.

Yet even the casual and flippant use of God’s name soon disappeared completely. For instance, the name Irad is rendered “fugitive.” Another name, Mehujael, means “smitten of God” or even worse, “blot out that Jah is God.”

So by the time that Mehujael lived, men wanted nothing more to do with God. Another name, Methusael, means “man who is of God.” This suggests that even among the Cainites there were some who had misgivings about the way the world was going.

But even if this were true, the misgivings did nothing to stop the tide of evil. The final flickering of the candle is finally extinguished by the coming of a man named Lamech.

“When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. 26 And after he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. 27 Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.

 28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed." 30 After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.”—Gen. 5:25-31

Lamech—the father of Noah—was 56 when Adam died and clearly understood the fall of man and the curse of God (Genesis 5:29). Methuselah and Lamech heard Enoch preach and saw the example of his noble life … of Enoch it was said that “he walked with God” (Genesis 5:24).

“Lamech” means “powerful,” “conqueror,” “wild man.”

In Lamech the conqueror came, the mighty man, the first shadow on the pages of Scripture of the coming lawless one of the last days. Lust and lawlessness came to full fruition in Lamech as they will in the Beast, the devil’s Messiah.

The growing independence of God in the Cainite line came to a head in Lamech’s family. A new age was about to dawn in science, art, philosophy, and religion. But at the same time, man’s moral and spiritual condition nose-dived into catastrophe and judgment.

The world of that day uncannily mirrors our world today—great scientific, technological advancement, while at the same time a growing defiance and hostility toward God and the godly. As the Flood was headed their way, so God’s judgment is headed ours.

Next time: The Coming Catastrophe Continued