His World, and His Worship. Gen. 4
And mark further the faculty man has of making himself happy in his estrangement from God. We find amongst the family of Cain not only “the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle” (ver. 20), but “the father of such as handle the harp and the organ” (ver. 21), and “the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron” (ver. 22). Now there is nothing wrong in working brass and iron; neither is there any harm in sweet sounds (we read in the book of Revelation of harpers in heaven); but what Cain was doing was this he was making the world pleasant without God.
These are the efforts of man, who has settled himself down in a world where judgment has placed him, and who is trying to make himself as happy, and the world as pleasant, as he can without God, till death and judgment overtake him. If I saw a man, who had committed some wicked crime against his father, the next day playing on musical instruments, should I say there was no harm in that? Such was Cain's world.
And is it not like your world? Is there any difference between your world and Cain's world? Is it a better world because God's Son has been crucified in it? Has that act on the part of man made it more acceptable to God? (because that has happened since the days of Cain.) Where is the difference? They had their “harps and organs;” and so have you. They had their “artificers in brass and in iron;” and so have you. It was Cain's world then away from God; and it is Cain's world still. The like tree produces like fruit. Man is carrying on the world by himself, and for himself, endeavoring to keep God out of sight, as much as possible to do without Him, lest He should get at his conscience and make him miserable.
Can you find any difference between Cain's world without God and your world without God?
You may object that you are not without God, that you are called by the name of Christ—are Christians, and have a “religion” also. Cain had a “religion.” He was a religious man, as religious as Abel. But he had no love to God; he had no faith. He was a religious man, but not a godly man.
It is a strange introduction to this picture, the setting forth of Cain as a worshipper, and a worshipper moreover of the true God. We read, “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah” (vers. 2, 3).
There is no mention made of false gods before the flood. Cain was a worshipper of the one living and true God. Soon after the flood there were idolaters; and then God called out a separate people as witnesses of His character to make good His name and grace. But there is not any mention made of false gods before Joshua 24:6-8, “Your fathers worshipped other gods:” a fresh crime, a fresh snare of the enemy, which called for new measures on the part of God. Satan had come and slipped himself in between man and God, and was the one that was really worshipped though under the name of gods; and the call of Abram was the call and witness of “the most high God.”
Your “artificers in brass and iron” are worshippers of the true God. So was Cain.
And he took some pains too. He offered that which he had been toiling for in “the sweat of his brow.” He was a “tiller of the ground,” and he “brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah.” He did not bring that which cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24); nay, his worship cost more of toil than that of Abel. He came in the way of nature, offering the fruit of his toil and labor; and you have done the same. This is ever the character of false worship. Religiousness does not take a man out of the character of Cain; it the rather brings him into it. So that you have not got one step in that way out of the character God has marked as that of Cain.
Observe, I do not charge you with being hypocrites, for I do not say that Cain was not sincere. There is no doubt indeed of his sincerity; but then his sincerity only evidenced the hardness of his heart. Human sincerity means nothing; it is often but the greatest proof of the desperate darkness in which a man is. Those were sincere of whom Christ said, “He that killeth you will think he doeth God service.” Saul of Tarsus was thoroughly sincere when he thought he “ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” He consulted moreover the chief priests and elders, the religious authorities of the day. He was zealous for his religion, and thoroughly sincere as a man, but totally blind as to God and the things of Christ, thinking to do God service by fighting against and slaying His saints. Cain in his sincerity brought to the Lord that which cost him something, that which was the fruit of his toil. He came to God as a worshipper, and in so doing offered to God that which he had brought honestly as a man, but which proved him to be ignorant of his state as a sinner.
“What then is man to hope for?” you will say. He is to hope for nothing. Did he not get out of paradise because of sin? what possible ground can he have as a sinner for hoping to get into heaven?
What ground had Cain for hoping that God would accept either himself or his offering? God had driven man out of paradise because of sin: what ground had he to expect by the works of his hands to get back into the presence of God? You may say, “It was not the works of his hands, but the fruits of God's creation.” —But what would you think of the man who was hoping to get into heaven by offering his corn and his wine to God, supposing like Simon Magus (Acts 8), that the gift of God may be bought? Why, it would show that his conscience was as hard as the nether millstone, utterly insensible to the condition he was in, as well as to the character of God. The very worship of Cain proved the desperate utter insensibility of his heart to the judgment of God against sin, and to those mighty things which had just happened, the effects and consequences of which he was now experiencing.
How came man to be toiling there in the sweat of his brow? Their very toil told the tale of the curse. They had been driven out of Eden for sin. But in Cain we see utter recklessness to the judgment of God. He had forgotten the very nature and being of that God who had set man perfectly happy in the garden at the first, to keep it and to enjoy its fruits (fruits yielded to his hand without toil or labor); and supposed that by toil and labor (the judicial consequences of sin) he could produce something that God would accept. There was utter desperate recklessness to the judgment of God.
Cain's worship was the worst thing he did. It was in fact the denying that he had sinned; such blindness to what he had been, such hardness of conscience in supposing that he could get into the presence of God in his sins as if nothing at all had happened! such wretched assumption that because he was a “tiller of the ground,” tilling of the ground was all right! But how came it to be all right? Because God had cursed the ground. He, a defiled sinner driven out of paradise, brings “of the fruit of the ground” which Jehovah had cursed, “an offering unto Jehovah;” that is, he brings into the presence of God the sign and seal of the sin that had driven him out from God!
And how comes a man to be going Sunday after Sunday, as he says, to “worship God?” What is all this toil? To make “peace with God?” God is “the God of peace;” He “preaches peace” —a made peace through “the blood of the cross;” yet man goes on seeking to carry something into God's presence as “a duty,” “to make peace” without once asking about God's way of peace.
Cain was a worshipper of God; but there was no faith in Cain. There was no faith to recognize his own ruin and sin, no faith to apprehend the judgment of God against sin: he had no presence of God as he was, no title to be a worshipper of God. He had not a bit of faith to recognize his own condition as driven out of paradise, his sin and estrangement from God, or, that blood—death—was necessary, in order for him to approach God.
This is just the world's worship; and are you any the better for it? Are you any the nearer to God?
Tell me, dear friends, what if God does not receive your worship? Suppose that, after all your well doing and toil for God, God rejects it, for that is what Cain's toiling met with from God— “unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect” (ver. 5), would you be content?
How was it with Cain? “Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” And it is ever thus. The moment God puts man on the true ground of his condition before Him, the enmity of the natural heart breaks out against God. Cain was “very wroth,” exceedingly angry; and why? Because his heart was opposed to grace. He had not owned the first principle of sin in the presence of God.
And you, when the sovereign grace of the gospel comes to you, are “very wroth.” “What! a man do his best,” you exclaim, “and not be accepted!” So thought Cain. And so thinks every man naturally; that is, he thinks that God must accept him just as well as he accepts God, bringing down God to his on n measure of holiness. And then the wrath of man breaks out, and he rejects the righteousness that God holds out to him; he will not have His Son.
There is not a principle in Cain that is not found in you. There is no evil in brass and iron, nor is there any harm in sweet sounds; the evil and the sin is in this, that men are using these things to hide God from them. If you are worshippers of the true God, so was Cain. We may put a terrible name on that which we see in Cain, and yet approve of the very same thing in ourselves; the light tells us that was sin in Cain which the spirit of self-love tells us is not sin in our own case. What difference is there between you and Cain? Take the Bible and see if you can make out any difference. The only real difference is this, that you have a further and more developed knowledge of the Seed of “the woman” (Christ), and therefore that of the two you are the more guilty.
Having sinned against God, abused His goodness, and refused His Son, man turns to please himself as if nothing had happened. It is more terrible to a spiritual eye to see insensibility after sin has been committed, it is a far deeper shade of sin, than even the commission of the crime. The returning of a soul to God, is just in the being awakened to a sense of the awfulness of this state.
(Continued from p. 16)