CAIN’S LINE, OR ABEL’S?

J. Wright

Genesis 4: 17, 25, 26; 5: 21–24

The teaching of these sections of Scripture is well known to us, beloved brethren, as to the two lines; there is the line of faith, but then there is the line which springs from Cain that is not marked by faith. We know that Cain, when he sought to approach God, was not marked by faith; he was marked by human efforts. The result of Cain’s course is a solemn one; he goes from one thing to another; he slays his brother, he goes out from the presence of God, then he builds a city. Cain goes on as if nothing had happened, as if everything was all right; he builds this city and names it after his son Enoch. Things went on in Cain’s line which in themselves were not evil; there was a good deal of activity, work, music, and so on. Those things in themselves are not wrong, but it was all away from God. It seems to develop into an arrogant line in Lemech, a very boastful man; that is what marks this world’s system as away from God.

I do not want to dwell on that, but another line develops. Abel was on the line of faith, but he was slain, and “Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth—

For God has appointed me another seed instead of Abel, because Cain has slain him. And to Seth, to him also was born a son; and he called his name Enosh”, that means ‘Man, as weak mortal’. What a different line that was, beloved brethren, the recognition of man as weak and mortal. “Then people began to call on the name of Jehovah”. They recognized their position as one of weakness. It is like the believer going through those experiences in Romans. In Romans 6 and 7 he realizes the weakness, the incorrigibility, of the flesh, but he can “call upon Jehovah”.

That leads to something, and it is Enoch that I wanted to speak of. This is not the Enoch in Cain’s world, no, it is a different man entirely. This is a man who walked with God. There is great compensation in being apart from Cain’s world and what marks it; there is great compensation in walking with God. Enoch, I believe, was a man who was delivered, he was delivered from himself. It says he was the seventh from Adam (Jude 17), that is, on the line of Seth, meaning that there is some result from this exercise of calling upon the name of Jehovah, as realizing what our true position is. Here is a man who is in deliverance; deliverance from himself; deliverance from the world; one who is walking in the power of the Spirit typically, relying upon the Spirit of God. To walk with God would involve that, beloved brethren, that we find power and resource in the Holy Spirit.

I wanted to draw attention to this to seek to make it attractive to us—to walk with God.

Enoch would enjoy God’s company and God would enjoy his; God enjoyed it so much that He translated him. It

says in Hebrews that “before his translation he has the testimony that he had pleased God”

(Hebrews 11: 5). We are on the eve of translation, beloved brethren. I wonder if we all have that testimony before our translation that we please God, and do not please ourselves. If we are to walk and please God it means that in some sense we walk as Jesus walked, the One that pleased not Himself, but always did those things that were pleasing to the Father. It is possible in the power of the Holy Spirit to walk and please God, and to have God’s approval.

I just commend this; this is something to be known, it is something to be enjoyed. I am sure Enoch did not have any regrets at not going along the line of Cain and his world. He walked with God and he had the assurance that he was pleasing to Him.

Well, beloved brethren, I just commend this to us, to be apart from things here, but to move in the power of the Spirit; to enjoy God’s love and to answer to it. The Holy Spirit initially sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God, but He is the power for the enjoyment of our relationship with God. Well, I feel the challenge of it, but in any little measure that I have experienced it I know the enjoyment of it, and may we all know it in an increased way, in the Lord’s name.

Words in meeting for ministry, Redbridge
28 October 1986