THE fourth chapter of Genesis is of very painful interest. The silence in the narrative of the childhood and training of Cain and Abel is of itself significant. After mention of their birth and occupations, they are introduced to our notice as worshippers. It is on this point that the Spirit of God fixes our attention. Here the first stage of “the way of Cain” commences. “In process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” “Cain was a tiller of the ground;” he had toiled hard and sweated his brow to eat his food and to present his offering. But there was no recognition in his offering wherefore it was that he ate his meat in the sweat of his brow. There was no acknowledgment of sin in the way in which he came before God. He acted as though he thought God was bound to accept the best he could give. He was on wrong terms with God. Sin had come into the world, and God could not accept an offering from man as a sinner, till the sinner was personally reconciled to God. The way of God is first to accept the person (Eph. 1:66To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. (Ephesians 1:6)), and then to accept his work. The way of Cain is to make his own work the ground of the acceptance of his person. He offers the best he has, he does the best he can, and then he is indignant if God regards him not.
“The way of Cain” is further illustrated by the case of Abel. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” Such is the after-comment of the Holy Ghost on His previous narrative. “And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fatlings thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” “By faith Abel offered.” God’s word had gone forth, that the sentence of death was passed on matt, and the ground cursed for his sake; and Abel in his offering acknowledged this truth, ere death had actually asserted its presence. By faith, therefore, Abel in his offering acknowledged both the sentence of death, and the necessity of mediation. “And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” “The way of Cain” is to ignore the fact, that sin has made fearful and impassable separation between man and God; and to act as if man could approach God with acceptance apart from mediation. And further, “the way of Cain” is anger against God Himself for graciously accepting a sinner in His own appointed way, and envy against the sinner so accepted. The eye of Cain is evil, because God is good. “Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” Remonstrance, gracious remonstrance, on the part of the Lord Himself, fails to remove the evil eye of Cain; and though the Lord Himself opens to him the way of acceptance, he will not “submit” to it. “Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” This is the first chapter in the sad history of religious persecution, and of man’s hatred of the way of grace. It has been followed by successive chapters, so that “the way of Cain” is a dark thread in human history, connecting the earliest age of man with the closing scene of the present dispensation.
Does not our Lord mark very prominently “the way of Cain” in “the elder brother?” (Luke 15) His father had graciously received back the long-lost prodigal; the fatted calf was killed; all were merry in the house. “Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry and would not go in: therefore came his father out and intreated him.” It is “the way of Cain.” “Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?”
Again, was not the Lord Jesus Himself the Abel of His day, and “the chief priests and elders” the Cain? Sagacity in Pilate could detect that “for envy they had delivered Jesus.” God’s approval of Jesus (Acts 2:2222Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: (Acts 2:22)) made them wroth, and their countenances fell, for it stamped vanity on their religious pretensions. It was to the scribes and Pharisees so exactly walking in “the way of Cain,” that the Lord Jesus uttered the withering denunciations of Matt. 23; and thus He concluded them “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers.... That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.”
The same “way” we find in the persecution of Stephen; and Saul the Pharisee, who had so long walked in “the way of Cain,” but had been snatched from it by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, thus marks his countrymen as walking in that “way,” “who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” (1 Thess 2:15, 16.)
To trace the way of Cain would be to go through the dark pages of the history of the nations professing Christianity; but it is well to notice that Jude the apostle, presents “the way of Cain” as one of the characteristics of the last days.
But there is a second stage “in the way of Cain” very worthy of consideration. “He went out from the presence of the Lord.” He withdrew from the only source of satisfaction. His soul felt the void; and he tries to fill it from another source. “He builded a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch.” There Cain stands at the head of that long line, reaching from his day even unto our own, of those who “worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever, Amen.” Man, “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in him,” vainly “rejoices in the works of his own hands.” But he is not satisfied; the aching void is not filled; for nothing but the presence of Him from whom Cain went out can satisfy. It is the glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which alone meets the need of man as a sinner and a creature. In the deep knowledge of what He Himself is, Jesus says, “He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.”
The family of Cain, like their father, “out of the presence of the Lord,” followed on in his “way.” “They sought out many inventions;” but they returned not to God. The useful and ornamental arts are to be traced up to Cain’s descendants, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal Cain. These arts may indeed conduce to make human life bearable, or enjoyable, if conscience can be lulled, but they do not satisfy.
“The way of Cain” finds its full manifestation in the Babylon of the Apocalypse; so marvelously does the Spirit of God connect together the earliest and latest history of man. Everything is found in Babylon which conduces to ease, convenience, luxury, and the exaltation of man; but “in her was found the blood of the prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” (See Rev. 18) The highest state of civilization, and utter hatred of God and contempt of His grace, meet together in Babylon. “Come out of her, My people, that ye receive not of her plagues,” and find your joy in that “city which hath foundations,” which has “the glory of God,” and where the presence of “God and the Lamb” are the all-satisfying and everlasting portion of all its citizens.
‘They flourish as the water’d herb,
Who keep the LAMB in sight.’