GENESIS 4
We have to learn that all is vanity on the natural line. Eve called her firstborn Cain (Acquisition), and said, “I have acquired a man with Jehovah”. No doubt she thought that Cain was the promised seed who would bruise the serpent’s head, but she had to learn that on the line of nature all was ruined. We all have to learn the same lesson: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”. If there is to be “A man with Jehovah” from amongst the children of men it must be the fruit of divine generation — spiritual birth — which brings about spiritual exercise. The necessity for the new birth was as great in Genesis 4 as in John 3, though the plain truth as to this was not declared for 4000 years. If we attach any kind of importance to the natural man, whether in ourselves or in others, we shall be bitterly disappointed. God always blows upon it. I think we may conclude that Eve had [p. 43] learnt her lesson by the time her second son was born, for she called him Abel (Vanity). She had learnt the vanity of her expectations in Cain; it did not take long to convince her that he was not Christ. She had to find out that he was only a naughty little boy — nothing of God in him!
Abel comes before us as one who had divine exercise. Cain had none; there was no righteousness in him; no recognition of his own state, or of what was due to God. He brought an offering of the fruit of the ground. The ground was cursed; that in itself was a solemn thing to consider, but it did not enter his mind. He was satisfied with himself and his own works, and he thought God ought to be satisfied too! He sinned first God-ward in the character of his approach, and in being angry when God did not accept his offering, and then he sinned man-ward in killing his brother, whose offering God had accepted.
Abel, on the other hand, had learned through deep exercise the truth of his position and state. He was outside Paradise, a fallen sinner under sentence of death. But he brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat. He maintained righteousness — what was due to God. He owned that death was upon him, but he took his place with Jehovah on the ground of the death of one that had not sinned. And he also brought the fat. His faith apprehended a personal excellence outside himself on the ground of which he could be with God. How precious to God those first bright discernments and actings of faith! It attracted God’s attention. “And Jehovah looked upon Abel and on his offering”.
God always gives the light for faith to act on. He had met the deep exercise that came in through the [p. 44] fall; He met the terrible consciousness of nakedness by providing coats of skin. Death had come in; animals had to be killed; God thus taught Adam and Eve that they must be clothed by the result of the death of another. And Abel said, as it were, ‘If that is the way God has approached us in grace, we must approach Him in the same way’. In the coats of skin God approached man. But in Abel we see the other side — man approached God.
The Lord spoke of him as ‘righteous Abel’, and “He obtained testimony of being righteous, God bearing testimony to his gifts”, Hebrews 11: 4. There was something very excellent in his sacrifice, and in the faith that offered it. No doubt he went through much travail of soul to reach it, but his faith brought in Christ, and he approached God in the excellence of Christ. And though it might seem that his testimony was soon cut short, it was not really so, for he has been speaking for six thousand years! His voice has been heard through all succeeding ages. “Having died he yet speaks”. That is God’s answer to the enemy. Satan had said, I will silence that voice. But he was defeated. God has caused Abel’s voice to sound through the ages, so that he is speaking still in tones as loud and clear as ever. And God will eventually bring all Satan’s devices to nothing. However great the triumph of evil may appear to be outwardly, Satan’s devices will all be crushed.
It is blessed to see a righteous one introduced so soon. Abel is a very interesting man, for he is the first of the line of witnesses mentioned in the roll of honour in Hebrews 11. He was not only a very precious type of Christ, but he was a righteous man as having the Spirit of Christ. The light, the sun, the tree of [p. 45] life, Adam, the animals killed to furnish the coats of skin, were all types of Christ, but there was more in Abel; he was a man in whom was the Spirit of the righteous One. He was a shepherd too; he gave himself to the care of sheep like Moses and David, and that is a beautiful characteristic of Christ. Jehovah Himself is the Shepherd of Israel.
It is beautiful to think of him offering the fat; the fat was what God afterwards claimed entirely for Himself. It is remarkable that nothing is said about the blood; only the fat is mentioned. It is to be noticed that we do not get the blood sacrificially in Genesis, though the prohibition of it being eaten in Genesis 9 reserves it, as it were, for God in view of atonement. The actual offerings in Genesis are all burnt-offerings, and so also in Job, which is contemporary with Genesis. God seemed to give the richest thoughts first to faith — the thought of the personal excellence and delightful acceptability of Christ. The blood is necessary, indeed, to cover sin, but to be acceptable to God in the excellence of Christ goes much beyond this; in the fat we have what is excellent. It must have been delightful to God to see Abel’s countenance look up with confidence as he acquired a sense of the personal excellence and blessedness of Christ, and that he could be with God on that ground.
But Cain was very angry. He is a striking picture of the Jew — the religious man after the flesh. For God to salute that blessed One from heaven as His beloved Son, and to attest who He was by a thousand miracles, and to gather to Him the faith of the godly remnant, was all gall and wormwood to the priests and scribes and Pharisees. The birthright was theirs.
[p. 46] Genesis 4: 7 suggests that the birthright was with Cain if he had done well. But, like Esau, he lost it. All the inheritance of promise was there for the Jews in Christ, but they lost their birthright for a mess of pottage. They preferred their own righteousness, their own religiousness and place and reputation, to Christ; and every time He brought home to their consciences that He was God’s anointed and accepted One their hatred of Him deepened until it culminated in the dark deed of Calvary.
Cain was satisfied with his own works. There are myriads of that generation in the world still. He brought his best, but not what God could accept.
It is touching the way God reasons with Cain; it reminds one of the way He reasoned with the Jews. He said to them, You will not let me be as good as you are yourselves; if your ox or ass falls into a pit on the Sabbath you pull it out; and yet you will not let me heal one of my poor creatures on the Sabbath day! He says to Cain, Why are you angry? If you were right you could lift up your face with confidence like Abel. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you are wrong there is a remedy, the sin-offering lies at the door. God says, as it were, to Cain, You ought to have taken the lead, and to have been the one to enlighten Abel. You ought to have been so in the light of the promised One that Abel’s desire would have been to you to get help as to Christ, and you would have ruled over him in guiding him to blessing, Cain had the birthright, the first opportunity of inheriting the blessing that had been indicated in chapter 3; he might have partaken of blessing on the ground of mercy, but he despised it. And so it is with the Jew; he had the birthright — that is, the [p. 47] first claim to Christ; he ought to have been the one to receive Christ and make Him known to others. God had made blessed proposals by the prophets, and then all was presented personally in Christ. He was the verification and fulfilment of all the promises, and the birthright of the Jew was to receive Him, but for a mess of pottage they sold it.
It is astounding what bitter enmity is in the religious man. There is not the same in a wicked worldly man. Religious reputation is what man clings to more than anything, and the religious man would kill Christ rather than give it up, and have the blessing of God on the ground of mercy. The firstborn constantly lost his birthright; Esau, Reuben, and Manasseh all lost the birthright. The Jew had it, but has lost it; he has murdered the One in whom all the promises were centred. So God might well say to the Jew, Where is Christ? What have you done with Him? It is because of what they did with Him that they are driven out as fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth today. The wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. But God will not have them destroyed. The Jew is providentially preserved, and on whoever kills him vengeance is taken. There is always sevenfold vengeance on those who ill-treat the Jews. What a picture we have here of events which have been going on for long centuries! Russia today is perhaps paying the penalty of her cruelty to the Jews.
Someone was asked to give a proof in two words of the truth of Scripture, and he said, “The Jews”. The Jews, having killed the righteous One, are driven out, and yet providentially preserved. They live on, generation after generation, but they are wanderers;
[p. 48] they have no country or settled dwelling-place; they are always being persecuted, and yet God preserves them, and takes vengeance on their enemies. They are under God’s curse; it is a most solemn thing — “The wrath has come upon them to the uttermost”. They filled up the cup of their iniquity to the brim when they not only refused the blessing for themselves, but would not allow the Gentile to have it. It is a marvellous thing when a Jew is converted; it is wonderful evidence to the sovereignty of God’s mercy.
God shows at the end of this chapter that He will bring the Jewish generation to own their wickedness in slaying Christ. In Lamech we see a picture of what He will bring the Jew to in the last days. Lamech says, “I have slain a man to my hurt”. They will own their guilt in killing Christ, that it has been to their own hurt and ruin. In the last days, in the time of the great tribulation, the Jews will have such suffering as they never had before. God will render to them double for all their sins. He will take up every question with them — the controversy about breaking the law, and about idolatry, and about their persecution of the prophets, and, above all, their rejection and murder of Christ. And yet those who persecute them will suffer seventy-and-seven-fold vengeance. In the end they will own to one another that they have killed Christ, and that all their sufferings and misery are because they have killed Him. Their sins will come before them, and, like Joseph’s brethren, they will confess and mourn over them. When they own they have killed Christ, and that they have done it to their own hurt, they will be brought into blessing. God will work in them to bring this about. The elder brother will come in after all! The Father will come [p. 49] out and entreat him to come in! What we have here is a gleam of prophetic light as to what will happen in the last days.
We find all the elements of the world in Cain’s family. He builds a city, and we get men increasing in wealth and inventing musical instruments and tools, and becoming artificers in brass and iron. The arts, sciences, manufactures — all going on without God.
In Seth we return to the line of the divine seed. Eve seems to have had faith that there must be another to take up the faith line in succession to Abel. It must have been an exercise with her that it should be so. As each generation of saints passes off the scene it becomes an exercise that the line of faith should be continued, and this is true in measure whenever a saint is removed from the place of testimony. It would be a serious matter for faith to disappear from the earth, and it looked like this when Abel was cut off, but Seth was brought in as ‘appointed’ to continue the line of faith. He comes in on the line of the woman’s seed, and in the ways of God it is ever so. God will see to it that faith will be preserved. “When the Son of man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?” Of course He will, but it will be through the faithfulness of God. Everything that is good comes in on this line.
What marked Seth’s faith was his recognising the true state of things. It is instructive to see the contrast between Seth and Cain. Cain gave his son quite a good name — Enoch — which means ‘Tuition’; it is a fine name, but all his tuition was in the world, not in the school of God. Seth calls his son ‘Enosh’, which means “Weak, mortal man”; that is, he owns the truth of the position. “Then people began to call on the name of Jehovah”. If men own they are weak and mortal they must turn to the mighty One. Salvation is connected with calling on the name of the Lord; it means that men have no confidence in themselves; they recognise that they are weak and mortal, and they turn to God. In 2 Timothy we are exhorted to follow righteousness, faith, love, peace with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.
The name of the Lord sets forth all that He is, and faith is entitled to bring it all in on behalf of weak, mortal man. “Whence shall my help come? My help cometh from Jehovah” (Psalm 121); it does not come from within or around. In Romans 7 a man finds out his own miserable weakness — “I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell”. He has no power either, so he comes to, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?” He looks outside of himself; in principle he calls upon the name of the Lord, and deliverance comes in, so that he can say, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”.