In the sermon titled 'The Religion of Cain,' Chris Hayzlip reviews Genesis chapters 1 through 4, focusing on the story of Cain and Abel. The speaker discusses the creation account, the rebellion of man, and the resulting change in human vocation from gardener to farmer. He highlights the significance of names in the Bible, noting that Cain means 'treasure' while Abel means 'vanity' or 'worthlessness,' which foreshadows their roles and fates. The sermon contrasts Cain's offering of fruit from the ground with Abel's offering of a sheep, asserting that Abel's sacrifice was accepted by God due to its alignment with God's requirements and its symbolic portrayal of humility and faith. In contrast, Cain's offering, a product of his own labor, was rejected as it symbolized pride and independence from God. The speaker draws parallels between Abel and Christ, noting that both were rejected by their kinsmen despite their righteousness. The sermon concludes with a reflection on human value, illustrated by Adam and Eve's third son, Seth, whose name means 'compensation,' underscoring the theme of redemption.

Chapter 4. Before I get started, I'll give a brief review of what has happened up until this time. In Genesis chapter 1, the Lord goes into detail about His work of creation and the six days he spent creating the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. In Genesis chapter 2, God tells us of the origin of the day of rest. Then he goes into detail about the creation of man and woman and the commission that he gave them in the Garden of Eden to tend the garden that he had planted there.

And then in Genesis chapter 3, we learn of man's rebellion against God. God had given mankind one law to obey. Just one. And we couldn't keep it. He said in Genesis chapter 2 verses 16 and 17, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." But we broke that law. And therefore, in chapter 3 verse 23, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. This was something new to Adam. Before all he had to do was tend the garden. He was, by calling of God, a gardener.

But now he became a farmer. He had to till the ground. Which brings us to our text. We're going to read the first eight verses of the fourth chapter together. And then I'm going to go back and review them in greater detail.

Let's begin in verse one of chapter four. And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord, And Abel he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fact thereof.

And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted.

And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." And Cain talked with Abel his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him." Let's go back to verse one. It says, And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare Cain. Genesis. It's a book of firsts.

There's a lot of firsts in this book. A lot of the foundations of everything we know and understand today. The first marriage, the first child born on earth. We almost take it for granted nowadays. So many millions of children are born.

And I love that when they are, so many times it is monumental occasion for us. But This was truly groundbreaking for Adam and Eve. They were the first people ever to walk the earth, but Cain was the first one ever born. And I don't know whether it was just the information God had given Adam and Eve, or if God actually attended the birth and showed them how to do live childbirth, either way it must have been a magnificent occasion for them. I was talking to our sister Faye before church and I said it's fascinating to me the names in the Bible.

I often wonder these names that parents would give their children in the Bible were these names given at birth Or is it something that as the parents saw their kids grow up and how they behaved, they said, you know, we're changing your name. This is what you really are. Or in this case, was it that God told Adam and Eve what to name them? Only God knows. But what is in a name?

Well, come and find out In this fourth chapter, the names are very significant. The name Cain means a possession, a treasure. Eve said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she's right. Children are a gift from God.

But even in the very name Cain, they named him a treasure, a possession from God. They believed he really was a gift from God. But then she goes on to say and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. It's much more significant than just being the first child because just in the previous chapter after the fall of man, God gave a prophecy. He said that, he told Adonai that the Messiah, there would be a Messiah coming.

The serpent would bruise his heel, but he would bruise the serpent's head. Now it could be that Adam and Eve thought that this curse that was upon them was going to be short lived. Maybe they thought that this prophecy would be fulfilled through Cain and therefore their excitement. In Genesis 3.15 what God actually said was, and I will put an enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel." One of the things God did with that prophecy was declare war between him and Satan. We were talking earlier that there's both a spiritual and a physical meaning to everything.

There's been a war going on between mankind and serpents ever since the Garden of Eden. Physically, yes, we still have to be wary of snakes, and snakes have to be wary of us. We're not good friends. But throughout the Bible, there's been a spiritual war going on between mankind and serpents also. Throughout the Bible, Satan and his angels are called serpents.

John the Baptist called the Pharisees a generation of vipers. And in Revelation, God calls the devil the great serpent. That war is going on today. But Eve may have misunderstood the prophecy and thought that through Cain, the promise of the Messiah was about to be fulfilled. Hope springs eternally.

Within in verse 2 it says, And she again bare his brother Abel. Something I hadn't noticed before was that there's no mention of her conceiving again. And it got me thinking they could have been twins, born right after the other. Don't know that for sure, but possible. But the name Abel was very interesting also.

It means vanity, worthlessness, nothingness. Broke my heart when I learned that. Can you imagine being born being called worthless? Vanity means empty, worthless, having no substance, value or importance, fruitless and ineffectual. How'd you like to grow up with that name?

It was the worthless son. It's the same word that's used in Psalm 62 verse 9 which says, surely men of low degree are vanity. That word vanity is able in the Hebrew. And men of high degree are a lie. To be laid out in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

Again, able. They're lighter than nothing. Indeed, all the occurrences of the word able in the Old Testament were translated in English as vain, vanity, or some derivative thereof. There's a significance to being worthless. Do you realize that before you intentionally destroy anything, you have to deem it worthless in your mind.

Before anybody can kill another person, their life has to be worthless too. Goes on in verse 2 to say that Abel was a keeper of sheep. Why sheep? Never crossed my mind before to think about why did Abel keep sheep. Think about the time.

This is a time just right after creation. The earth was at its most bountiful at the time. It was hard to find food or water for the sheep. Nobody ate meat at the time. That's not until Genesis chapter 9 after the flood.

Everybody and every creature on earth was a vegetarian. They didn't keep them for meat. There were no predators on earth to guard the sheep from. Abel didn't have to keep them, but protected from wolves. The only thing I can think of was that he had to keep them convenient for the sacrifices that had to be made as an atonement for their sin.

But think about that job now. You don't have to find food or water for them. You don't have to protect them. This is a low-skilled job. Abel didn't really have that much to do except for sit there, watch the sheep, and fetch one now and then to make a sacrifice.

Matthew Henry says that Cain and Abel, their jobs were their calling. I think he misses the mark here. Adam and Eve, their jobs were their calling. God called them to their work. It appears to me that the evidence in Genesis 4 indicates Cain and Abel were assigned their jobs by their parents.

You have a worthless son, you've got this worthless job taking care of worthless creatures whose only value comes after they're slain. Sign the worthless son to that job. And Abel was a keeper of sheep. Kind of foreshadows what's coming. But Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Here you have Cain, the treasure, the gift from God, God's gift to man, possibly the promised Messiah. Well son, You're going to take over the family business. I'm a farmer, you're going to be a farmer. This is the skilled job. This is the job that puts food on the table for the family and has required a lot of skill to get right since we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Now that the curse is on the ground, son, you better pay attention. Learn this job because if you don't do it right, we're going to go hungry. I'm going to put my best son on this job. You think Adam and Eve were playing favorites here? Skilled labor given to the valuable son.

And in the process of time that came to pass, that came brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. Treasured son, learn the family business, plight his skill, raise all this food, gathered it up, harvested it in, and brought it before the Lord. What did he bring? He brought a trophy. A trophy showing off his work.

You know, it demonstrated how well he had learned his trade from his dad. It demonstrated how well he applied his skill to overcome the curse God put on the land and how well Cain was providing food for his family while they were in exile from God's garden. Here Lord, see what I did? I'm living up to my calling. I think I'm ready to be the Messiah.

It represented his independence from God and perhaps in his mind his fitness to serve as the promised Savior. Now notice Adam and Eve did nothing to stop him. It was Adam and Eve that taught him that God required a sacrifice. Why didn't they say, no Cain, that's wrong. You're doing it wrong.

You know Abel was keeping the sheep and Abel was the one providing the sacrifices. But if you think about it, that had to be abhorrent to Adam and Eve's mind. The idea of taking an innocent sheep and slaughtering it. The sheep did nothing. That had been hateful in their minds because it constantly reminded them of their failure, their sin.

So maybe Cain had a better way. And Abel, verse 4, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof, you know one thing about Abel's name, it prepared him to make this offering. To approach God in a state of humility, thinking of himself as nothing and God as everything. Coming before the altar, knowing that he was in need of a savior. He approached God in strict obedience, submitting himself to God's will, trusting God would be pleased with his offering.

Something that he had no part in. Here came, had all this magnificent work to bring before God and Abel, well, I didn't do anything. But this is all I have. What you produced, God, Here it is. And Abel had to slay that innocent sheep and offer it up.

It was a dirty job. I just introduced my kids to that old TV show, Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. They're delightfully disgusted with it. This was the first dirty job. Slaughtering sheep, bringing for the offering.

Nevertheless, it's recorded in Hebrews, by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Continuing in verse 4, and the Lord had respected Abel and to his offering. There's a reoccurring theme throughout the Bible where it is the humble, the underdog, the one that's considered worthless, whom Christ uses, whom Christ honors. So many times man goes over, goes after the glorious one. Think of Saul, he stood head and shoulders above everybody else in Israel, but it was little David whom God wanted.

Christ, the chief cornerstone is the stone the builders rejected. Abel, the son Adam and Eve rejected. Can you imagine what a welcome reprieve it was for Abel, who had lived with that name all of his life, lived with that job, while his brother got all the glory, got to spend all the time with his father learning the family business while he sat off onto the side just watching sheep, and then to be accepted by God. What a reprieve. Verse 5, But unto Cain and his, to his offering, he had not respect, and Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

God could not respect Cain's offering. Number one, it was not what God asked for. It's not what God required. Cain disrespected God's requirements. Therefore, God could not respect his offering.

Many people today teach that, well, you know, God does his part, but you have to do the rest. Well, folks, that's exactly what gardening demonstrates. Gardening, God has a part in it, but so do you. And if you don't do your part, nothing's going to happen except weeds. That is not the offering God accepts.

This is the offering God rejected. The one that he accepted was Abel's offering where Abel had no part in it whatsoever. All Abel did was sit around all day, watch sheep do their thing, do what God created them to do until it came time for a sacrifice. This demonstrates the difference between God's religion and man's religion. We are not at liberty to deviate from what God tells us to do.

We're not at liberty to add anything to it. We're not at liberty to take anything away from it. God has very specific reasons for prescribing how he wants to be worshipped. You see, his prescription for worship is a picture, demonstrates to us the work that he did on the cross at Calvary. And anything we do that deviates from what he told us to do changes that picture.

He corrupts that picture. Says Cain's countenance fell, and the English countenance means facial expression. And in the Hebrew, behind that, the word meant a turning of the face. In other words, Cain walked in to offer his offering and he had a very happy, probably very proud look on his face. And then his worthless brother came in and his sacrifice was offered, something he did no work to produce.

Here Cain had worked all his life, put all his labor into reproducing what God gave them in the Garden of Eden and had something to show for it and it was rejected. And here his brother Abel did nothing and he's accepted. Imagine how Cain felt and his face turned to expressing anger and contempt for being rejected. Understand this. Cain was not angry at Abel.

Right. When Cain slew Abel, it wasn't for anything Abel did. Abel never bothered Cain. They had two entirely separate jobs. Now Cain slew Abel because he was angry with God and because he couldn't hurt God directly, he attacked the one he loved.

People do a lot of that today, don't we? That's right. Let's contrast the two religions of Cain and Abel. Cain's religion was lifeless. Plants, biblically speaking, aren't talked about as having life.

The Bible says the life is in the blood and plants don't have blood Because the life the Bible is talking about is the breath of life. Plains don't have that. The breath of life lives in the blood of all creatures. And the Bible states that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Abel's religion, he brought an offering that had to be slain.

The blood had to be shed. They were alive, they were innocent, but they had to be slain. And more importantly, they were the prescribed picture of Christ who portrays himself as being the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the earth. Cain's religion is proud. His offering served as a trophy to testify of his accomplishments.

Abel's offering was humble. He had no part in the production of his offering. Cain was willful. Adam And Eve knew what offering the Lord required, therefore Cain and Abel should have also. But Cain thought he had a better way of serving God.

He served God the way he wanted. Abel's religion was submissive. Abel sought to please God by obeying him. Cain's religion was faithless. He didn't trust God that God knew best.

His worship demonstrated trust and faith in his own works. Cain's religion, I mean Abel's religion was faithful. Abel's worship demonstrated his trust and faith was entirely in God alone. Cain's religion was rejected by God as being totally inappropriate, painting a bad picture, disrespectful. Abel's religion was accepted because it painted the perfect picture of what Christ would do in Calvary.

In this account, not Only is the Lamb a picture of Christ, but so is Abel. Abel, like Christ, was rejected by his own kinsmen. Like Abel, Christ was hated because of his righteous works. And only after his death did mankind realize his value. I gave you the meanings of the names of Cain and Abel And I'll close with this thought.

Nobody's entirely worthless. And Adam and Eve learned that lesson. You see, You don't get compensation for anything that has no value. I recently burned down my mower, the leaf rake, and an eighth of an acre of my land. I turned it in on my insurance because it had value and they compensated me for it.

Adam and Eve had a third son and they named him Seth. That name in the Hebrew means compensation.