The Seed of The Woman

0:05Well, good morning. Once again.

0:08Hi.

0:08Hello, preacher man. Yeah, there it is. Okay, there it is. Welcome back to Genesis. We're we're going back to the beginning once again, and we'll be for the next twenty weeks, I suppose. Turn with me to Genesis chapter 4. We're going to cover the entire chapter 4 this morning. This is the story of Cain and Abel. And as we get into the text this morning, I want to make certain that we're all clear on something. One thing. I hold to and am preaching from the stance that all of these stories we read in Genesis are true, right? These actually happened. Not just true in a spiritual sense, but true in a historical sense. We're not even debating as to whether or not these people actually lived, or that perhaps these characters are just allegorical to their personalities that they represent. No, these people actually lived. Cain and Abel, right, actually lived. And we take this stance because of chapter 5 in Genesis that we're we're actually going to kind of blaze through next week. And that lays out the genealogy from Abraham to Noah. And then later in Genesis, we get Noah sorry, did I say from Adam to Noah? I said Abraham and Noah. From Adam to Noah. And later in Genesis, we get from Noah to Abram or Abraham. And then in Matthew, he lays out Abraham all the way to Christ. So we have given to us in the scriptures this direct physical line from Adam all the way to Christ, that is the seed of the woman. So if the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, was an actual person who actually lived, then the people from which he came must also be actual people who actually lived. If it troubles you how the entire world could have been populated from just two people, or how there were other people on the world when Cain was cursed, and we're going to read about that in just a minute, just know that this is entirely possible. A study was done in England a while back, and they traced the genealogy from people born after World War II. Okay, this is in England. What they found was that if you went back 700 years, you would discover that 80% of the entire country of England came from a common ancestor. 700 years. Meaning in just 700 years, two people could populate nearly the entire country of England, which presently is about 55 million people. So Adam lived to be 930. And it would seem from Genesis 5 that Adam was having kids potentially for hundreds of years. So could have there could there could have there been? Could there have been? Could there have been thousands or even millions of people on the earth even before Adam died? Yeah, absolutely there could have been. And I think even the most basic math and genealogy proves that out. So, with that firmly settled, like kind of keep that way back in the recesses of your mind, we'll move on to the text. And what I want what I really want you to see here is the provision of God to maintain his people. The provision of God to maintain his people. The text will show this morning, and what is evident throughout all the scripture is that no matter what the seed or the seeds of the serpent do in their attempt to crush or cut off the seed of the woman, our God always provides. Our God proves over and over again that he will maintain his people. He will not let his plans fail. In fact, he cannot fail because he's God. Not just a God. Our God is the God. So what should you take away this morning? Maybe more than one thing, but certainly this. God will maintain his people until the victory is complete. God will maintain his people until the victory is complete. Until that victory is fully realized in our time and our space. That victory which was already promised and confirmed before the ages began, our God will maintain and he will provide. So let's read our text this morning. Genesis chapter 4. Please, yes, stand, sorry. Starting in verse 1. Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of the sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the food of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their flat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in a field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your bul brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me to-day away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Then the Lord said to him, Not so, if anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest anyone who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, uh he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mahujael, and Mahujael fathered Methusel, and Methusel fathered Lammoch, and Lammoch took two wives. The name of one of those is Ada, and the name of the other is Zilla. Ada bore Jabel, he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock, and his brother was Jubal. Uh, sorry. Whew, I got it. He was the father of all those who played play the lyre and the pipe. Uh Zilla also bore Tubal Cain, and he was the foreigner of all the instruments, the forger of all the instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubalcane was Naema. Lamech said to his wives, Adel and Zillah, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him. To Seth also was born, a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time the people began to call on the name of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray once more. Thank you, Lord, again, for your word. We pray and ask now that you would speak for Christ's sake, and it is in his name that I pray. Amen. Man, that is a mouthful. Sorry about all of that, but it's hard to find a place to stop and not read, and sometimes it's best just to read it all. So I listened to a sermon a while back that Brother Fox sent me as he is walking out the door, and I can't look at him, and he cannot confirm that he sent this to me, but he did. There he is. Brother Fox sent me a sermon a while back, and I listened to it, and this is by, of course, this man just keeps coming up all the time. It's weird. Joe Joe Rigney. So Joe Rigney, and in this sermon by Rigney, uh he talks about the naming of Adam and Eve, right? And the significance of their names. I'm going to summarize very quickly and very poorly his point in this idea of the naming aspect, specifically with Adam and Eve. The word, the Hebrew word for ground is Adama, right? Adama, A-D-A-M-A-H, for our English translation. So when God takes from the ground Adama, and he creates Adam, he calls him Adam, right? When he creates man from the ground, Adama, he calls him Adam because he was taken from the ground, right? In doing that, God is showing Adam not only how to name things, because he is showing them how to name things, but he's also showing him the significance that's wrapped up in a name. Okay, a name, or a word, for that matter, isn't just a collection of letters and sounds and syllables. It means something, right? It says something, it communicates something. And Adam took this lesson well because when he took, uh when God took from Adam and made Eve, Adam got the opportunity to name her, right? And what does he say? Well, he does what God did. He says, She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. The name from Adam consisted of that same play on words that God did, right? Again, there is a significance to a name and to a word. So that's a very quick summary of Rigney's kind of intro to his sermon. So fast forward then to our text today, kind of with that as the backdrop in your mind. So in our text today, we see that the first person born to Adam and to Eve is Cain. And the name Cain is a play on words for the Hebrew I have produced. So when Eve declares canita, which means I have produced, she calls what she produced Cain, right? This idea of producing something. So the play on words is there, clearly. And further, she doesn't say that she has produced a baby, she doesn't say that she has produced a boy. She specifically says that she has produced a man with the help of the Lord. So what do you suppose then is on the, if you understand the play on words, and that she says, I've produced, names him that, names him, calls him a man. What do you suppose is on the mind of Eve? And again, this is somewhat conjecture, uh, when she is thinking about the joy in her heart over the fact that she has produced a man with the help of the Lord. What do you think she is thinking? What did God promise her would crush the head of the deceiver? The seed of the woman. A man. It is this thought that makes the Bible to me so real in a sense, picturing Eve still broken in her sin, bringing forth with the help of the Lord a man, and looking upon this child, and thinking, surely this is the one to undo what I have done. And we see that in her words. And in one sense, it's it's utterly heartbreaking, given the fact that we know that he wasn't the one. And the one was still a long way off, right? And we get this sense of a longing even there for this promised Redeemer. Imagine then how much more humanity was longing or should have been longing for the seed of the woman thousands of years later. Many lost that hope. And turned from their faith in the promise of God. But what God always maintained the seed. And as we talked about this morning providentially, he always maintained the hope of this promised deliverer. And we get a glimpse of that also in Abel as well. Abel was the second to be born, right? And his name, Abel, means breath. That's the same Hebrew word that is translated as vanity that we talked over and over again in Ecclesiastes. And Abel certainly lives up to his name, right? Breath, vapor, mist. Abel is vulnerable, right? He's passive. He's meek. And also providentially in scriptures, we don't get a word from him at all. He never speaks in all of scripture. He was only there briefly. From our perspective, then he opened not his mouth. Providentially, Abel was also a shepherd, an innocent man, devoted to the will of God, whose blood was spilled on account of jealousy and rage. Does that sound at all familiar to you? Here are the words of Isaiah 53, 7 and 8. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generations who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the privilege, sorry, out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgressions of my people. That sounds eerily like Abel, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. And the story of Abel sounds eerily like Christ, doesn't it? And this happens all throughout Scripture. And I think we'll see this continually as we go through Genesis, is we get these prophetic bridges that connect the history of God's plan and purpose with the future promise that is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. So when we read the story of Cain and Abel, we totally miss the point if we don't recognize that bridge and walk across it ultimately from Abel to Christ. The first hope that Eve felt, right, when she named Cain. That first hope, that first longing when she produced Cain, that first hope that was ultimately crushed when her hope, right? Cain crushed another. This is the same hope found in the person of Christ. Christ is the man who came from Eve. Christ is the better Abel. The truly innocent one who offered an eternal and perfect offering to God, which ultimately cost him his life. We must see Christ in Abel. And we must see a better offering and a better sacrifice in Christ. And that brings us to this whole idea of offering and more specifically the first offering that we see and read in our text this morning. We read that Cain and Abel both brought an offering to the Lord, right? And while it doesn't say that Abel, uh excuse me, it does say that Abel brought the firstborn, right? And I'm putting that in quotations for us. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock, and Cain, it says, just brought an offering. It does say that. And while it does say that, we don't get specifics about the quality of their offering necessarily. Like we have to kind of read into the text just a little bit. We can assume, right, that Cain's offering was not of the same quality as Abel's, but I don't think we can say much more than that. Well, so if that's the case, then why didn't the Lord, or sorry, maybe why did the Lord regard Abel's offering and not Cain's? It's a fair question. And I think just reading the text in Genesis, I'm not sure that we can get a definitive answer. And many would steer towards the idea of the quality of the offering. And I've heard it done a lot. Saying that the Lord rejects less than our best. Have you heard that using this idea of Cain and Abel? The Lord rejects less than our best. If you bring less than the best, right? If you bring him less than the first fruit, the Lord will not regard it. I think we've probably all heard that. I know I have. But is that what the text is telling us? Make certain that you always give the Lord your best, or he will reject you and your offering. Is that what the text says and what scripture teaches? When we get to unclear passages, the rule is always that scripture interprets Scripture, right? We don't get to force our interpretations on Scripture. The word has to interpret the word for itself. So what else does the word then have to say about this otherwise potentially unclear passage? I'll give you three verses if you're taking notes or you have a copy of the notes. It's 1 John 3, verse 12. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one, and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brothers righteous. Why was that? Because he was of the evil one, it says. It is not, right, as though he was of the evil one because he did evil deeds, but he did evil deeds because he was of the evil one. It turns out that Cain was not the seed of the woman, as she had hoped. But rather he was the seed of the serpent. A child of the deceiver, he was. We also get Jude 11, right? There's only one chapter in Jude, so this is Jude verse 11. Woe to them. For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain. Walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain. So not only was Cain of the evil one, but he sought selfish gain. Didn't he? He was bitter and jealous. He didn't want to share an inheritance, potentially. Right? He didn't want to support his brother. That does sound a lot like the evil one, doesn't it? Bitter, jealous. Finally, Hebrews 11, 4. By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteousness. Sorry, as righteous. God commending him by accepting his gift. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. What then was the good in Abel's offering that was not present in Cain's? Faith. Faith is the answer. Abel was commended as righteousness, righteous, not because of the quality of his offering, but by his faith in the one in whom he was presenting the offering to. And this is the point of the writer of Hebrews, and what the writer of Hebrews is making throughout the entirety of Hebrews 11. It's the same point that I hope I knocked into your head over and over again as we went through Ecclesiastes. Without faith, all is vanity, useless, worthless. Through faith, our God will accept even the most humble of offerings as delightful in his sight. What is a fattened sheep, really? Even the best one. To the eternal God of the universe. What does he need sheep for? What does the Almighty really need with the blood of goats? Or is the point to lead us to Christ? The only worthy sacrifice ever given. The only offering that was ever truly good enough to be pleasing in the sight of God. Really? The only shedding of blood or first fruit that actually did something. And now we come to the table with empty hands. Saying, what more can we give? What more can we give? God, you can have all the money if you want it, right? You can have the house, you can have the cars. Aye, we can all grow all the fruits and the vegetables, and we can raise all the cattle in the world, and he can have it all. What value is that? What value is any of that if we don't have the faith of Abraham, who was willing to give his only son, but while he did that, he confessed, God will provide for himself a lamb for this burnt offering. My son. And provide one he did, right? And God doesn't care about our stuff. The physical aspect of it. He doesn't care about your money any more than he cared about Abraham killing his own son. What he desires is that we trust him. That we have faith in his offering, right? His provision. That we know and we depend on him and his provision. That's the reason why he's done all this, right? It's why he chose Abel the younger.

24:41Right?

24:42It's why he chose Isaac, the secondborn of Abraham. It's why he chose Jacob the younger and not Esau. It's why he chose Joseph, the youngest of the brothers, Epaphrim and not Manasseh. It's why he chose David, the youngest, out in the field with the sheep. That's why he always uses the weak to shame the strong. She was told the older will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. God does what he does, so that man would fall before him in faith, knowing that it is God who has done it. We exist because of him. We are sustained because of him. We live and breathe because of him. We are regarded because of him. We are accepted because of him. And we are saved only because of him. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, so then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. Romans 9, 14 and 16. Abel and his offering by faith points to Christ and his mercy on us. His grace. And that brings us to this topic of mercy and specifically the first mercy. It's really not the first mercy. I needed to say the first, though, to kind of go along with my outline, right? Because it's the first offering and it's the first mercy. So it's not the first mercy, though. But the headings work, so there you go. They match anyway, and I'm kind of obsessive about that. I am, of course, talking about the mercy that God showed Cain, right, when he pushed him further out, away from his presence. But still allowing him to prosper and still preserving his life. It was the custom of the day, and we uh we see it carried all throughout uh scripture, specifically the first five books of the Old Testament. If you killed someone, even accidentally, a kin, a family member of that person uh who was killed could could kill you, right, in return as a matter of justice. This person was called the Avenger of Blood. If you've read that all throughout, specifically, I think most importantly in uh Deuteronomy and Judges, but um, the Avenger of Blood. Okay, so when Cain is expressing concern that he is going to be killed for his crime, that is why, because he was very likely going to be killed for his crime. So not only is God himself not going to immediately avenge the blood of Abel, but he is going to protect Cain so as not to allow anyone else to take his life. God is extending mercy to Cain as opposed to justice. He is receiving mercy and not justice. And it is true that God is pushing him further out, right? We read that. He's pushing them out to the edges, further away from his presence, but he is still presumably sending rain on him and his family, his kin. He still allows him to prosper, as we read, and then I'll talk about a little more in a minute. If anyone thinks that the God of the Old Testament is not loving and merciful and a personal God, they just haven't read it. In fact, the only reason why there is an Old Testament, or that any of us that we're even here to read it, is because God is at least equally merciful as he is just. At least equally, right? For a God of justice only would have crushed us a long time ago. So even in Cain, a child of Satan, a murderer, a liar, we see a beacon pointing back to Christ, who is mercy. We see the mercy of God that supersedes our customs, offers mercy instead of justice. This is precisely what Christ does for us, right? Make no mistake, though, the day of justice is coming. The avenger of blood will ride his white horse, right? We read this in Revelation. He will strike down all who side with the evil one. There will be a day of justice. When the prayers of the martyrs, martyred saints will be answered, O sovereign Lord, holy, and true. How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Revelation 6, 10. Justice will be done. But today is a day of mercy. As we'll see next week, the door of the ark is still open wide. Cry out to him for mercy. And it will surely be shown to you. How long will you test the patience and the kindness of our God? Turn from evil. And he shall surely receive you. Our final point then, and we'll close, is that we see the real world hardening of those who do not turn from evil. We see this on full display. And by the end of the first complete generation, which we'll say a complete generation is seven generations, right? Seven is this number of completion. So the first complete generation, by the end of that, we see this evil on full display. And here again the words of Lammech. He is seventh in the line of Cain. He says, Ada and Zillah hear my voice, the wives of Lammock, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. The corruption of the line of Cain has reached its zenith here in Lammock. It is no longer blood for blood as a matter of justice, but Lammock is now bragging to his wives that he killed a man for wounding him, for hurting him. And this is also coincidentally or providentially the first time where we see the corruption of God's original design for marriage, with Lammock taking multiple wives instead of just to the one, which had been the case before that. So within this first seven generations from the line of Cain, we see the complete corruption of man. Destruction of life, destruction of marriage, and mockery of God. If Cain's revenge, he says, is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold. There's no fear in Lamac here. This is Lammock looking at all of the prosperity that he has, all of the things that he has now gotten away with, and said, if this is Cain's revenge, then keep it coming, God. If this is what I got coming to me for what I've done, looking around at all of his prosperity, I'm okay with that. If this is all you've got, God, I'm good. Do we still see such mockery today? One other side note here. We see that in the line of Cain, those who are, I guess in the line of Cain, we see are those who are gathering together and building cities, right? We read that. This is verse um uh starting in verse 17. He says, when he built a city and called the name of the city after his son Enoch, right? Uh sorry, I'm gonna get my back to my spot. Yeah, so uh all these the line of K and these people they're they're building cities. They're gathering together, they're making uh instruments, it says, but don't think of instruments like this instrument. Um it more means like uh implements, maybe is a better word. Uh of bronze, they're working with iron, they're making tools and weapons potentially. They are playing instruments, they're making flutes and lyres. We might say that those in the line of Cain are the cultured ones. These are the ones that are building Vanity Fair, as we read in Pilgrim's Progress. They're trading their goods without any regard for God. These are the ones who are puffing themselves up as modern, perhaps, or progressive, right? They're they're doing that kind of thing. I'm sure they were also doing splatter art and listening to heavy metal music. That's a joke. That's a joke. We had a talk this week about heavy metal music, so it's inside joke. Which all laughed, so it's good. There's another kind of culture, though. The one we see from the line of the seed of the woman, our savior. God provided another way, a better way. He gave our first parents another man whose name was Seth, and providentially Seth's name means weakness. Through the line of Seth, we see not a people who mock God and who don't need God because they have cities and stuff, but we see, quote, at that time people began to call on the name of the Lord. On the one hand, we see a people defined by their sin and their stuff. And on the other, we see a humble people defined by their worship of the Lord. We see that through the true seed of the woman, in and through the line of Christ, there will always be a people who call upon the name of the Lord. Always. The biggest question then of application is what kind of culture excites you? What kind of culture stirs your heart? I hope and I pray that above all we desire to be a people who are defined by and known for our worship of God. Seven generations from today, when there are literally tens of thousands of people on this earth, think about the genealogy. Seven generations from today, when there are literally tens of thousands of people on this earth as a result of this group right here, this very humble group, may it please the Lord for that generation to look back upon this one and say, at that time, people begin to call on the name of the Lord. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word, uh, for the promises and the hope that you give us, Lord, and then through your word that you will provide for us, that you will maintain your people, Lord. Help us to be a worshiping people, Lord, who calls upon your name. Help us to be remembered for that, Lord. For our worship and service to you. May we be defined by that, Lord, not anything else. Lord, and now as we open up uh this time of supper, Lord, may we proclaim that we believe in Christ. That we believe that he shed his blood and broke his body for our sins, Lord, and may we confess our sins to you and know that he is just and faithful to forgive us of those sins. We love you so very much, Lord. I thank you for Christ. And thank you for all the pictures that you give us in your word of him. Ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.