5. The three leading characters of evil in Christendom.—” Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.”
Cain is the symbol of a very large class of professors. Indeed Cain and Abel divide mankind—the man of faith, and the man of the world. Still, Cain was a religious man, and a worshipper of the true God, but without faith to see his own sin and ruin, and without faith to apprehend God’s judgment against sin; this is the state and character of multitudes who profess to worship the true God. He offered that which he had been toiling for in “the sweat of his brow.” He “brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto Jehovah.” But though he was a religious man, he was utterly without conscience before God: he thought not of His claims nor of His rights. Self was his governing object. There was no love in his heart to God, and no faith in His word.
Abel came as a worshipper in the way of faith, acknowledging his ruined condition, and the judgment of God against sin. He knew he was not in paradise; sin had come in between God and him, and what was he to do? He could not approach God as he was; the wages of sin is death. He thus took the ground of a lost sinner, and placed by faith the blood of a spotless victim, judicially slain, between himself and the God of holiness. Faith never fails to see that “ without shedding of blood there is no remission.” “ And Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” Here we have death, blood, and the fat, or excellency of the victim, which typically represent the full forgiveness of sins, through faith in the precious sacrifice of Christ, and acceptance in the excellencies of the well-beloved Lord and Savior. This is God’s perfect love to the lost sinner; to meet his desperate need He has spared nothing, not even His only-begotten Son. “ For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor. 5:2121For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21).) Hence the grand conclusion of faith: “ He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Rom. 8:3232He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32).
We have the painful contrast of all this in Cain—natural religion, the world, and opposition to the truth. He had no faith in God. He came to Him as a worshipper in the way of nature, not of faith. Being utterly insensible to his own condition as a sinner, and to the character of God, he thought that by his own toil and labor he could produce something that God would accept. His offering must have cost him more pains and toil than that of Abel. But, alas, it was a bloodless offering! His worship was the denial of the condition he was in, and that the blood of the sacrifice was necessary, in order that he might approach unto God. He thought, as many do in our own day, that by his toil and labor, his liberality, his painstaking with his offering, he could find acceptance in the presence of God. This was the daring, the blindness, and the hardness of unbelief. He believed not the testimony of God as to all the great things that had just happened, with their effects and consequences. This was his sin—the root of his false worship, of his estrangement from God, of his hatred of the man of faith, and of his reckless ways in the world. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord; and we learn that he used all his efforts to make the world, in which he had been made a fugitive and a vagabond, a pleasant dwelling-place, without God. But here we have chiefly to do with Cain as a worshipper—a professed worshipper of the true God, yet denying the testimony of God as to his own ruin, the only way of salvation, and the character of the God he had to do with. This was the greatest and worst of all Cain’s sins, although there is no reason to believe that he was insincere; but human sincerity is a poor thing when the ways are contrary to the mind of God, and formed chiefly to please ourselves. Saul of Tarsus was sincere when he was a blasphemer and a persecutor.
How little this is thought of, that a man’s religiousness may be his worst sin in the sight of God! Man feels uncomfortable at the thought of God coming near to him, and, Sunday after Sunday, he goes to his place of worship, willingly goes through a form of religion, carries his offering to the altar as a duty, and all for the express purpose of appeasing God, and keeping Him at a distance. He cannot trust God, he would do anything to hinder Him from breaking in upon his repose. Like Cain, he has settled himself down in the world; he may have surrounded himself with the sweet sounds of music, and the cunning work of artificers; he is doing his utmost to make himself happy, and the world a beautiful, a delightful, place, without God. A millennium without the Lamb, was Cain’s idea, and is it not the idea of every natural man today? Man’s boasted progress is not one step in advance of Cain’s character—and this goes on, goes on, till death and judgment overtake him. Yet withal he is a most religious man, after the order of men, and liberal in his offerings; but he is an enemy to the true testimony of God, sets aside the work of Christ, and greatly dislikes His faithful witnesses.
Balaam, the covetous prophet. His name stands before us here as the type of ecclesiastical evil, selling his services for reward, and one of the darkest features of the apostasy. We cannot think of a character more sad than Balaam’s, or of iniquity worse than his. His heart was set upon money—” he loved the wages of unrighteousness.” He was the hired instrument of the enemy to preach or prophesy that which was contrary to the mind of God, and against His people. But he wished to do all in a religious way, with a certain owning of the power and intervention of God, that he might have the credit of His name. He was going to seek enchantments—the inspiration of Satan, yet professing to get his light from the Lord. Nothing could exceed the wickedness and perverseness of this miserable man. Yet Jude refers to a certain class in Christendom who partake of his character. “ Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward”—teaching error for reward, and knowing all the while that it is so. But God will in due time vindicate His truth, and preserve His people. His history is a solemn warning to all professors, as well as to all teachers, to beware of covetousness, which is idolatry.
Core, the leader of the revolt against the true servants of the Lord, Moses and Aaron; and typical of the open rebellion of apostate Christendom against the authority of God in His true King and Priest at the end of this age, and also of the terrible judgments that will speedily follow. Of the melancholy history of Korah and his company, it does not fall in with our object to say anything. In Cain we see natural wickedness; in Balaam, religious corruption; in Core open infidelity, or audacious rebellion, which brings destruction. “ Jude treats of results, and the end reserved to the corruption and the corrupters of Christianity. The gainsaying of Core is a revolt against the authority of Christ, and the necessity of His priesthood—a revolt excited by a man who, occupying the position of a minister, pretends that God can be approached without this priesthood.....
“ At the end of a dispensation based on any knowledge of God, when faith is lost, and profession retained, this last obtains a renown of which men glory, as now, of the name of Christianity, “ This is not only true, manifestly true, at the present moment, but it is truly the history of the professing church in all ages; nevertheless, the people of God—true believers—are preserved in Christ Jesus, and will be presented in due time faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.