Hello and welcome to our broadcast today. We're in chapter 4 of the book of Genesis. Have your Bible ready if you can. We are looking at the subject of life after the Garden of Eden. Well, we saw in our last session that chapter 3 begins with the phrase, now the serpent, and of course the devil comes on the scene and his question, his platform was to question the Word of God, verse 1, and then he right out denies the Word of God, and before we know what's happening here, Eve is guilty of sin, but we find out in verse number 6 that Adam was, notice those words, with her, and those words, he did eat. It was a choice. He had to make a choice. We all have choices to make. We have no choice but to choose every day. We're going to make choices all the time. Well, we have two things here. We have the power of authority and we have the power of influence. Now, Adam was the authority, but Eve was the influence. We see this in the story of Abraham and Sarah. You read the Bible, you'll find that Abraham certainly was the authority in that family. However, Sarah had a tremendous influence in his life, and Sarah influenced Abraham to have a child by Hagar, her handmaid, And, of course, he did, and then later God gave them their promised son. And now Abraham has two sons, and those two sons have been arguing ever since who owns the Middle East. And all of the problems that we have today came as a result of the influence of Sarah in Abraham's life. All of the problems we have today in the Middle East They came from that. But all the problems we have in the world today came from the influence of Eve, who said to her husband, you know, you need to be with me on this. And we read that he did eat. She was deceived. Adam was not deceived. Adam was influenced by his wife. Well, as you go down through the story back in chapter 3, we see, first of all, that Christ came to them, and that was certainly mercy. And then we see Christ called in verse number 9. He said, Adam, where art thou? And then Christ confronted them with what they had done. Now when we get into chapter 4, we read, And Adam knew 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 the keeper of the sheep, but Cain was the tiller of the ground. And so now we go into life after Eden. The curse is here. Problems that we all face are registered for us back here. chapter 3 well we have two boys we have Cain who was a shepherd and he of course was raising sheep and we have Abel who was a farmer and he's raising crops well Eve the Bible says back here that she would her sin would bring sorrow that she would bring forth children in sorrow and sin although it's enticing sin has certainly got its effects and we see that as we go down through life and after the Garden of Eden. Now, God has given commandments. God has some requirements, God has some restrictions, and God has some responsibilities for all of us. Well, we can do what God says to do, or we can choose not to do it. Now, we can say, no, I want to do that which is right in my own eyes, Or we can say, yes, Lord, I'll do what you say, and he is either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. Well, in chapter 3, we have the root of sin, and in chapter 4, we have the fruit of sin. And once again, it's a choice and it's a consequence that we see in the life Cain and in the life of Abel. Now Cain is mentioned 13 times in the book of Genesis. He's mentioned also in Jude in the last days it talks about those who have gone the way of Cain and we're certainly living there today and a great example here for us concerning how things are going today. Why? Because we have rejected God's way. God has requirements and restrictions and responsibilities and today the way of Cain is no, thank you very much, we'll just do that which is right in our own eyes. And so Cain, although he is very very religious, you notice, he's bringing an offering here, but he's saying I'm going to have my will and I'm going to do it my way and that's what the Bible talks about when it talks about the way of Cain. I doubt very much when Cain started down that path that he thought he was going to be a murderer, but we read in verse number 8, 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. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. He's a liar. He's a murderer. He said, I know not. Am I my brother's keeper? Well, God knew very well what had happened here. He said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother blood crieth unto me from the ground." But like when he came to Adam and he said, where art thou Adam? He knew where Adam was. He wanted Adam to realize where he was. And now he comes to Cain and he says, what hast thou done? He knew exactly what Cain had done, but he wanted him to repent. He wanted him, he was giving him an opportunity to repent, which of course we see in the story He did not do that, so he turns out to be a murderer. And not only that, you'll see that he lives a life of misery. Verse 12 says that when he was to till the ground, it will not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. Well, he said, you're going to go out there and you're going to work. But being a farmer and not having the crop yield as it should was really a problem for him. Yeah, you're going to make the wrong choices. You're going to have lots of problems. So he was a fugitive. He was a vagabond. Things are sure different from the way it could have been when he was living at home there. And Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and the family were all living together? Not anymore. Why? Choices and consequences. Well, he could have repented. God offered him that opportunity. He came to him and he said in verse 7, If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? But he would not repent. We see in verse number 13, Cain's thinking is, well, no, it's all about me. Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out of this day from the face of the earth and from the face shall I be hid. I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth and it shall come to pass. that everyone that findeth me shall slay me, O poor me. It's all about me." No, Cain, it's not all about you. It's all about God. And you have offended God with your sin, and all you need to do is repent. And the Lord said, Why is thy countenance fallen, and why art thou wroth? If they do it well, shall you not be accepted? No. No, I don't want any part of that. I want my will, my way. And repentance? Just not going to happen here. And so Cain continues his choices and of course the consequences will come. Verse 16, he made a conscious choice to go out from the presence of the Lord. He rejected the opportunity to repent in verse 7. He goes out in verse 17 and we see here that he built a city and he goes on with his life and pretty soon life which is just a vapor is all over and now he's going to face God. He has lived an unbelieving life, he has lived an unrepentant life, he has lived an ungodly life, but, sooner or later, it is appointed unto man wants to die, and after that, the judgment. Well, what we have here in this chapter is a picture of the world that is leading up to the days of the flood, when Noah, of course, will build the ark and the flood will come and destroy the whole world. We see that as you look at this portion of Scripture, if you will study it for yourself, you'll find that it was a day of a very perverted religion. Oh, they're very religious. The Bible talks about that. The Bible says that men began to call upon the name of the Lord until the flood came and took them all away. We're living there again today, the Bible says. When it gets like that, when it gets like Noah's day, God said, the Lord will be back. Well, we have perverted religious program. They've gone the way of Cain. It's talked about in the book of Jude. Not only was it a perverted religion, but it was a prosperous society. They were building a city, and it was a pleasure-seeking society. As you go down through here, you'll find they're building musical instruments, especially, and things like that. We're living in a very pleasure-seeking society today. In 2012, there was $62.4 billion spent on movies alone. It is said that the average person now spends about $2,500 a year seeking entertainment of some kind. Unless you're a little older, the 35 to 50 year old group, they're spending about $3,000 a year looking for pleasure. The Bible tells us in the last days that we'll be living in an age of pleasure-seeking And according to the surveys that are taking regarding entertainment now, there's about $81.5 billion a year spent on entertainment on the internet, and $19.8 billion spent on music, and even $16.4 billion a year spent on games. We are living in a pleasure-seeking society, we're living in a prosperous society, and we're living in a society where religion is perverted, just like it was before the flood. And so it all comes down to one word, pollution. Pollution. Society, socially, we have pollution everywhere, and unfortunately, spiritually speaking, we have pollution everywhere. Pollution is a harmful, poisonous substance that is permeating in society and even in our spiritual world. Now in the time left in our broadcast today, I want to focus on the word worship. We have that pictured here in chapter 4 of the book of Genesis. You notice that they both were worshiping. It says in verse number three that they were worshiping in a specific place. We read in verse number three that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And then in verse four we read, and Abel he also brought of the firstling of his flock. Now notice the word brought here. That is, they were worshiping in a specific place. Then not only does God have a place of worship, He has a plan for worship and we see here in verse number three there was a reference to the time. It says, in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. God has always had a place of worship, and he's always had a plan for worship, and in the Old Testament you'll find that they came to the hour of prayer, it talks about in Acts 3 and verse number 1, the time of their sacrifices, that God had a specific place and a specific plan where he was to be worshipped. In the New Testament it's the same thing, only now his plan is the first day of the week, that's the time, and the place is a local church. Not only did God have a place of worship and a plan for worship, but he had a procedure, and our procedure is a way of doing something. Now, with Abel, his procedure was accepted, and Cain's procedure of worship was rejected. That is, Cain's way of doing it was rejected, Abel's way of worship was acceptable. And now we know the basic lesson here has to do with the fact that one sacrifice was a blood sacrifice, which was symbolic of the Lamb of God who gave himself for the sins of the world. But going beyond that, we see for worship there was a place, there was a plan, and there was a procedure. I'm wondering today if we really have lost what the Bible talks about when it talks about worshiping God. What are we doing? I don't think we know anything about that anymore. We get together and we call it a worship service on Sunday morning? We call that a worship service? We should really call it a crowd-seeking service. We're going to get some music that will entice the crowd to come in. and we may preach the gospel to them, that's a good thing, nothing wrong with that, but it's not a worship service. What is worship? We have our promotions, we have our plans, we have our own procedures, but what are we doing on the subject of worship? We seem to have completely lost track of that. The Bible says the wise men came to worship him. Do you think they got together at the house that day, had a sing, pray, sing announcements, pass the offering plate, do a little sermon, and then try and beat the Pentecostals to the local restaurant? I don't think that's what they did and called it worship. Today the whole idea of worship has been lost. We have replaced it with something we call a program, which is a term that we borrowed from the world. And so we have our services, as usual, from one Sunday to another, with no clue whatsoever what real worship is really all about. Well, we're in trouble. It's time that we got back to God. The simple answer to this thing is that we need a Holy Spirit-sent revival from heaven, a true revival, not all this nonsense that's going on today under the guise of a worship service. Well, we're out of time again. Be with us again tomorrow. We'll continue this series. We'll try to make it plain and we will try to make it simple.