Well, good morning, everybody. Let’s take our Bibles, if we could, and open them to the book of Genesis 4. Taking a look this morning at 4:16-24 as time allows. The title of our message this morning is Technological Giants and Spiritual Midgets. Reiteration of announcements (edited for space).
As you know, we are continuing our study here through the book of Genesis. Chapters 1-11 is the beginning of the human race. We’ve examined creation and God’s original design for man and how it got marred in Genesis 3.
Genesis 3 is the fall of man.
Genesis 4 is the after effects of the fall where we have the first murder in 4:1-15. We took a look at that first murder, went into the details about it, and it’s actually something called fratricide, where one brother murders another.
And the last time we were together, we saw Cain’s punishment. We saw God’s probing 4:9, his punishment in 4:10-12, his protest in 4:13-14. And then, God gave him a generous provision in 4:15, the mark, if you will, or the sign of Cain to protect him.
And now we move into the second major section of Genesis 4 where we discover that there is an ungodly line emanating from Cain. And this is a very interesting section of Scripture because it’s one of the few areas of Scripture which tell us the details of the pre-flood world. Sometimes these people are referred to as the antediluvians.
Genesis 6 really doesn’t give us a lot of detail about the pre-flood world other than explaining how evil things became. But if you want to know what the pre-flood world was like, Genesis 4:16-24 fills in details of it like no other portion of Scripture does. And what we see here is an evil line developing in 4:16-24. And we start to have a description of it as we get an understanding of the continuation of Cain’s line.
Cain is the murderer. He has just committed murder, slaying the innocent blood of his brother Abel. And now from Cain’s lineage, a particular line develops. And quite frankly, if you want to know where our society and our culture is today, you’ll see it portrayed very clearly here in 4:16-24. Human beings haven’t changed that much from generation to generation; human beings without God; resting or relying upon the sin nature, can be trusted to do and be involved in certain things.
So notice first of all, 4:16-18 where we get a continuation of Cain’s line, [and] the first thing we see here is a location. Notice, if you will, Genesis 4:16. It says, “Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” In Hebrew, it’s interesting, Nod means ‘wandering,’ and that would fit with the punishment that God imposed upon Cain because of [the] murder of his brother; that he would be a vagabond on the earth. He would just kind of roam from place to place, and that’s what’s captured there in this name Nod. Now, it’s also interesting that here is where you start seeing the terrible progress of sin. Sin is a lot like a rolling snowball—once it gets going, the snowball becomes greater and greater and greater, and it becomes, almost as it develops in size, impossible to reverse unless God steps in through judgment.
And you start to see the developing power of sin simply by looking at the similarities between Genesis 3, the fall of man and Genesis 4, the first murder. Gordon Wenham, in his Genesis Commentary, notes these similarities. You’ll notice that sin is mentioned in both chapters. Notice also that God says something like, ‘Where are you after the sin occurs?‘
Both chapters contain divine curses for sin. And sin, or a curse on the land or ground, is described in both chapters. In both chapters God has to step in with special protection.
In both chapters, the transgressors really don’t show a lot of remorse for what they’ve done. And in both chapters, the sinners leave God’s presence. Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden—[in] Genesis 3:24, and Cain similarly in Genesis 4:16–goes out from the presence of the LORD. And what’s interesting to note is not just the similarities between these chapters, but now things are actually getting worse in chapter 4.
In chapter 3, things are bad, but now in chapter 4, they’re worse. Chapter 4 is similar to chapter 3 in a lot of ways, but [in] chapter 4, things actually get worse. For example, there is no sin at the outset in Genesis 3; things are perfect. But sin is there knocking on the door in chapter 4. In 3:1-5, Satan had to convince Eve to sin.
But you’ll notice that Satan doesn’t have to persuade anybody to do anything in chapter 4. Sin comes naturally. There’s no murder in chapter 3. But now we’ve got an actual murder; fratricide in chapter 4. You don’t find Adam and Eve protesting their punishment the way Cain does in chapter 4, and in chapter 3, Adam and Eve are driven from the presence of Eden in chapter 4 as 4:16 indicates, they’re driven further east. So not only are they living just to the east of the Garden, but now they’ve been pushed, speaking now of Cain, further east into the land of Nod, the wandering.
And this is very important to understand about sin. Sin is of such proportions that you can’t control it. You can’t contain it. You can’t negotiate with it. But once the genie is out of the proverbial bottle, sin has a tendency to get worse and worse and worse. And that’s what we’re seeing here develop in Genesis 4. The book of Hebrews, consequently, tells us to be on guard against sin. Hebrews 3:13 says, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
When I, as a Christian, make a make a choice through volition to sin, the deception is, ‘Well, I’ve got this one under control. Everything’s okay.’ And eventually, what starts to happen is the tail starts to wag the dog. Sin, when allowed to fester, begins to dominate us when we thought we could dominate it. That’s how sin is. That’s its very nature.
I found this quote, and I’m not sure who said it originally, so I’ll just leave it as an anonymous quote. But the quote goes as follows ‘Sin will take you farther than you want to go. It will keep you longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you’re willing to pay.’ That’s the nature of sin. That’s why it’s described as something that puts human beings into bondage. And it’s not until we understand the gravity and the nature of sin that we understand why Jesus Christ, the second member of the Godhead, had to take such radical steps to enter our world and [to] absorb the wrath of a holy God against sin in our place.
If you don’t think sin is radical, look at the radical nature of the actions of Jesus and what He did. Why was the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, the horrific death of Christ even needed? Because of the nature of sin, which we have a tendency to think is really not as bad as it as it really is. ‘And I can control it. I can contain it.’ Look at the book of Joshua leading into the book of Judges as you have a triumphal generation, and then move into the book of Judges, and it has about 300 years of the nation of Israel in bondage.
And you say, ‘Well, what precipitated those things in the book of Judges?’ If you’re a careful reader of your Bible, you’ll see hints of it in the book of Joshua where the nation of Israel went into the Promised Land, and didn’t do exactly what God said [to do]: they were to eradicate the Canaanites who had been in that land for over four centuries doing detestable things.
The Joshua generation pretty much fulfilled God’s will, but not completely. They let certain groups continue to fester. They let certain groups continue to live, and eventually the Joshua generation passed away and the Judges generation came into existence. And you find a terrible condition in the book of Judges where these Canaanite groups actually got the upper hand over God’s people and put them into bondage, at least by my count, seven times, to the point where it was so bad that God had to raise up an individual judge to liberate the nation of Israel.
If the Joshua generation had done what God said, the Judges stories would be unneeded. And we are like that many times in our own lives when you think about it. There are certain habits that we develop. The Holy Spirit, as Christians, will convict us, ‘This needs to change under My power, that needs to change under My power.’
And we say, ‘Well, Lord, I’ve got this one under control; it’s not that big of a deal.’ And eventually what happens over the course of time is that we come into bondage to the very thing that we thought we could control. And that’s how sin functions; that’s its nature. Young people need to understand this because the lie or the deception which is taught to the youth, which is the same lie or deception which was taught to me and to you when we were their age, is ‘Just go out and sow a few wild oats, no big deal. Spend your college years away from the Lord. Who’s going to notice? You’re kind of out from the protective care of your parents anyway. I mean, going to church, that’s, you know, you can skip that.’ And then when you graduate from college or from graduate school or are into your career or you get married or have a family of your own, then you can get serious about the things of God. The deception is that we think that somehow moving into sin allows us to be sensitive to the things of God at a later date. That’s not the nature of sin. Sin, by its very nature, is deceitful. Sin by its very nature creates a calloused heart. And the longer you experiment with sin, the more it’s difficult to hear the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit.
And I think it is possible for people to come back to the things of God. But I think it becomes more difficult after spending all of that time away from the Lord than it would be if they had stayed with the Lord the entire time. We grossly underestimate the incredible power of sin, the snowball effect of sin, and that is what you see developing here as you move from Genesis 3 to Genesis 4. Yes, there are a lot of similarities between the chapters, but if you look at things carefully, things are actually getting worse.
And we move away from the place to the birth of Enoch. Notice what it says there in 4:17. “Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.”
Now here arises a problem. It said, “Cain had had relations with his wife. She conceived and gave birth to Enoch.” And people say, ‘Well, the Bible has a factual error in it because where in the world did Cain’s wife come from?’ In fact, in the movie, I mentioned this last week, the movie Contact with the actress Jodie Foster, she’s sort of portrayed as the smart person, the scientist. And there’s a particular line that she has in this movie where she boasts of the fact that she was always the smart kid in Sunday school and was asking the Sunday school teachers questions they couldn’t answer, like where did Cain get his wife? And that’s what allowed her, at least in this movie script, to graduate into being a sophisticated person. The fact of the matter is where did Cain get his wife? I mean, that is not a very difficult question to answer at all. In fact, if you’re going to reject the things of God on that basis, then go right ahead. But you’ve rejected the things of God for actually a very foolish reason.
Where did Cain get his wife? There’s a very simple answer to that. He married his sister. Adam and Eve lived long into their nine hundreds, Adam lived 930 years, and along the way, he had many other children than Cain and Abel. And you can see it very clearly in your Bible. It’s in Genesis 5:4,5– It says, “In the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth, were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So that all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.”
The fact of the matter is, God told our forebears, Genesis 1:28, to be fruitful and multiply. They did that into their nine hundreds, and you could imagine how many children would be born as a result. And so, the fact of the matter is the first generation had to marry their brothers and sisters, or there would have never been a second generation.
Henry Morris writes this in his commentary on the book of Genesis called The Genesis Record. He says, ”The ancient quibble about ‘Cain’s wife’ is thus been seen to be quite trivial.” [Henry Morris is a scientist.] “Long before Cain died, there was a large population in the earth. By the time of the Deluge, probably 1,656 years after Creation by the Ussher chronology, even using the above conservative assumptions, the world population would have been at least seven billion people!”
The fact of the matter is there isn’t any problem when you look at it from that standpoint—concerning where Cain got his wife, and something else to understand about that first generation, is that it was a generation that was genetically pure. You don’t have the mutations and the problems of incest leading to offspring which are physically or mentally damaged given the purity of the bloodline that early on in human history. After all, what did God say at the end of day six? He didn’t just say “It was good,” but it was what? “It was very good.”
And so a person marrying their sister or a brother marrying their sister does not cause the problems that we have today. In fact, did you know that Abraham married his half sister? Now that would be 2000 B.C., roughly 2,000 years later than when these events occurred. Genesis 20:12 says, “Besides,…” [Abraham speaking concerning Sarah, remember, Abraham had a tendency to sort of stretch the truth a little bit. He would just say, ‘Well, she is my sister. She’s not my wife, she’s my sister.’ So that’s sort of a half lie]. Genesis 20:12 says, recording Abraham’s words, “Besides, she actually is my sister, [speaking of Sarah], the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife;…” Now you say, ‘Well, wait a minute, doesn’t the Bible prohibit incest?’ Yes, it does in the Mosaic Law. You read through Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, and there is where you see that God illegalizes or prohibits incest, but that doesn’t occur until the time of Moses, about 1,500 years before the time of Christ.
Now, the human race and its genetics have been corrupted to the point where incest is problematic. But that wasn’t a problem early on. And you see, the problem people have is they assume that what’s normal today is what has always been normal. And that’s a wrong way of understanding biblical history. There are all sorts of things that were happening in the pre-flood world that are not normative today. One of those things we have been trying to explain is incest.
Henry Morris says this in his Genesis Commentary, “In order to get this process of multiplication started, of course, at least one of Adam’s sons had to marry one of Adam’s daughters. Probably, in that first generation, all marriages were brother-sister marriages. In that early time, there were no mutant genes in the genetic systems of any of these children, so that no genetic harm could have resulted from close marriages. Many, many generations later, during the time of Moses, such mutations had accumulated to the point where such unions were genetically dangerous, so that incest was thenceforth prohibited under the Mosaic laws.”
And I wish Jodie Foster would listen to this sermon because you start to see that her objection really is not the formidable objection as is portrayed in the movie, Contact. The fact of the matter is, you better start learning these things as parents and grandparents because you need to teach these things to your youth; your children and grandchildren because they’re going off into school systems and sitting under teachers who are telling them [that] the Bible is riddled with factual errors, like, ‘Where in the world did Cain get his wife?’ When the fact of the matter is, those are very easy objections to answer with a little bit of studying.
And so what we see developing here is now the beginning of Cain’s line and the birth of Enoch. Now don’t get confused because there’s more than one person with the name Enoch. There’s more than one person with the name Lamech. Enoch, a common name, just like Rich or Sam or John in our day—multiple people could have that same name; the name Enoch is going to show up later, Genesis 5, in a totally different line. And the name Lamech is going to show up in a totally different line. So we’re not dealing here with Lamech or Enoch in the godly line. We’re dealing here with a different Lamech and a different Enoch in the ungodly line.
So you’ll notice here, Genesis 4:17, “Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son.“
Now, Enoch here means ‘dedication.’ And that’s probably why Enoch was given the name He was given because there was an entire city that was dedicated to him. And the fact that Cain is involved with the building of a city shows you the manifestation of the sin nature. He was told he was going to be a wanderer on the earth. And I think what he’s saying here is, ‘I’m not wandering anywhere. I’m going to build a city right here.’
And so you see sort of a subtle form of rebellion against what God has decreed. And so what we see here is the beginning of Cain’s line. The location: 4:16, the birth of Enoch, 4:17, and then 4:18 is a description of this Cainite line. It gives you a bunch of names. And I think Ed Jones did a good job pronouncing all of these.
It says, “Now to Enoch was born Irad, and Irad became the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael became the father of Methushael, [not to be confused with Methuselah, who we’ll read about later on in our study, not today]... And Methushael became the father of Lamech.”
And so if you look at the left hand portion of the screen, [see slide on Adam] this is the ungodly line that is developing. And the reason that this line is described for us, is that line on the left side of the screen, will not be the line which will give birth ultimately to the Messiah. Genesis 3:15 is your first Messianic prophecy in the entire Bible. It’s a prophecy, and we’ve studied it, that was given the moment our forebears fell into sin. And God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you show bruise him on the heel.“
In other words, there’s coming One from the seed of the woman, the woman here being Eve, from her lineage, who will crush Satan’s head. A Messiah is coming. And as we’ve studied Genesis 4, what we have learned is that Satan thought that this Messiah was coming from Abel. After all, Abel’s sacrifice is accepted, Cain‘s sacrifices, rejected. And so Satan, who works in history to stop God’s prophecies from happening, simply had Cain murder Abel—fratricide. Problem solved. The Messiah can never be born.
And yet, what does the prophecy say? ‘You, Satan shall bruise him on the heel.‘ If your heel is bruised, that is not fatal damage, is it? If your head is crushed, that is fatal damage. Satan, your fatality is coming through a Messiah. And you’re going to inflict a lot of damage along the way. But God is always going to get around your attempts to stop the birth of Messiah.’
And what we learn at the end of the chapter is God gets around it through the birth of somebody else outside Cain’s line, and that person’s name is Seth. And so it will be through the Sethite line, that we haven’t been introduced to yet, that the Messianic lineage will continue. And this is largely how the Bible works. It’s like a chess game. Satan makes a move, and he thinks it’s checkmate, and God says ‘It’s not checkmate. Because now I’m going to make My move, and there’ll be the birth of Seth,’ and Satan will make another move through the antediluvian angelic rebellion in Genesis 6. All looks like it’s lost. But God says ‘It’s not checkmate because now it’s My turn to make a move, and I’ll get around your incursion through my work with Noah.’
And you can go right on through the Bible, and it reads like this: It’s called the seed of the woman, the seed of the serpent conflict. And as we get ready to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, that’s what we’re celebrating—that despite all of the satanic obstacles that Satan, through trying to prevent the Messiah from being born so that his head wouldn’t be crushed— on Christmas morning, Christmas Day, as we celebrate it—the Messiah was born. And He did, through His subsequent death, burial, resurrection and ascension, deal that fatal head wound to Satan.
And so, consequently, today, Satan’s days are numbered. He is a defeated foe. He is going down. We, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, are on the winning side of history. I love to quote, in this particular context, Romans 16:20, which says, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” Do you believe that as a Christian? This is how God has orchestrated history. Satan is defeated despite his counterattacks and his attempt to bruise the heel. We are on the winning side, and we get now a description in this Cainite line how the Messiah cannot and will not be born from that line. God has to raise up an independent line through the birth of Seth. ‘Well, what’s wrong with the Cainite line? Why can’t the Messiah be born from that Cainite line?’ And the answer is: just look at him. These are some of the most wicked, most ungodly people imaginable.
And what you have in 4:19-24 is a description of their wickedness. The first problem with this particular line is they were sexually immoral. And notice, if you will, Genesis 4:19, “Lamech took to himself two wives:” … [Now, there’s a problem, isn’t there? Two wives, plural. These two gals have very nice names, by the way]… “The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other, Zillah.” Why is this information included? It’s showing the godliness of that line and why God had to raise up an independent line through Seth for Genesis 3:15 to be fulfilled. This line became sexually immoral. ‘Well, gee, Pastor, who are you to call something sexually immoral?’ I don’t call anything sexually immoral. God calls it sexually immoral. When he starts to take two wives—polygamy, he’s going against what God said in Genesis 1:27-28. He’s going against the design of God in sexuality, Genesis 1:27-28, and it’s God that makes the rules concerning sexuality. ‘Well, why does God do that?’ Because He’s God, and He is our Creator. He is our Manufacturer. He knows what things are going to mess us up emotionally, spiritually, chemically, and which things will not mess us up. So it’s God’s design. It’s not my design. It’s not Sugar Land Bible Church’s design. So it is what God says. God gave the original design [before the fall], or the original blueprint for sexuality that Cain is rebelling against all the way back in Genesis 1:27-28–before the fall. God says He created humanity, “…male and female.” Now, how many genders do you see there? I see two. “God blessed them;”… and God said, to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…” Heterosexuality was the blueprint for the human family. And then later on in Genesis 2:24, God said something else. He said, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife;…” [Not wives. Wife, singular], “…and they shall become one flesh.”
The biblical position on human sexuality is one man for one woman, for one life. Now, when we begin to talk like this, some people feel guilty because perhaps the standard has not been met in their lives in one way, shape or form. And the grace of God is available to anybody that has violated God’s standards. But the fact of the matter is, there’s still a standard. The standard is not there for us to rewrite. The standard is God’s. The book of Hebrews 13:4 reiterates the standard, and it says, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” The standard is this one man for one woman, for one life, heterosexual monogamy as the basis for the human family, and any form of sexuality outside of that blueprint in God’s mind is a sin. It doesn’t matter if it’s homosexuality to men or lesbianism to women. It doesn’t matter if someone wants to cheat on their spouse; that’s still sin because it goes outside of the Divine Blueprint. Here is Lamech. He wants to be polygamous. He’s outside of the standard. The standard is God’s.
And I find this very interesting because we’re living in this time period today where everybody is trying to reinvent sexuality. The fact of the matter is human beings have been trying to do that since the beginning of time. It goes back to Lamech taking two wives. We thought the sexual revolution came into existence in the 1960s. No, it did not. It goes back a long time before the 1960s. It goes back to this Cainite line in the pre-flood world. It’s interesting, the names of his two wives, Adah, in Hebrew, that means ‘ornament’ and Zillah—that means ‘shade.’ A lot of commentators have reasoned that because of those names which seem to deal with physical beauty or physical appearance, that Lamech here was lust-driven. Lust, of course, is very different than love. Lust can’t wait to get. Love can’t wait to give. And as a young person, particularly a young woman who’s coming of age, you better learn the difference real fast between lust and love. I don’t care how many times the man or the boy or the male says he loves you. If he is in a mindset where he is seeking to get rather than seeking to give, that is not the type of person that you want to end up with as a marriage partner. And consequently, this is how Lamech began to reinvent sexuality.
Now, given the snowball effect of sin, guess what? It never gets better. It never gets corrected. It gets so bad and so perverse that actually when we get to Genesis 6, we’re going to find that even fallen angels began to have sexual relationships with human women. They left their natural abode and they went into forms of deviancy, which were unprecedented. And this is why God brought the global flood, because the sexual revolution turned into more and more aberrant forms of deviant sexuality.
You know, look at our own culture. I remember watching the old I Love Lucy shows where Ricky and Lucy, although married, were always portrayed as being in different beds. You remember that? And look at things today. I mean, male and female, those are not even considered normal genders anymore. Now we’ve got to add all of these other genders, LGBTQU, and the initials keep going on and on and on, and you watch things on TV and how how easy it is for people to just jump in and out of bed and jump [back] in bed with somebody else. And my point is we have lost the sexual standard in Western civilization the same way they lost God’s sexual standard in pre-Bible times.
And let me tell you something. You think God brought judgment via the flood because of a rebellion against His sexual principles? He’s going to do the exact same thing in the coming Tribulation. Revelation 9:20-21 is a description of the sins that will bring God’s wrath to the earth yet future in the events of the Tribulation period, and [it] lists several sins. Notice one of those sins is the sexual revolution. Sexual immorality. And the truth of the matter is, you can tell an awful lot about a culture and a society based on its view of sexuality. This is right out of Romans 1. Romans 1 beginning 1:18, Gentile humanity in unbelief suppresses a knowledge of God that should be self-evident to them through creation. And once you begin to suppress the knowledge of God, you get very, very confused about sexuality and sexual energies, and exactly how those sexual energies are to be channeled. Why would you get confused about that? Because God is the author of sexual energy. God created it. But if you have no knowledge of God because you have suppressed it, then the relationships that God Himself has created as the proper venue for channeling sexual energy get lopsided; they get skewed, they get out of focus—because they only make sense under God.
Show me somebody and their view of sexuality; show me somebody or a country and its view of sexuality, and I can pretty much tell you what they are like in terms of their own relationship with God. Paul describes it all in Romans 1 after humanity has rejected a knowledge of God through creation, Paul says, ‘Here is the outcome of these things.’ Romans 1:24, “Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.”
Romans 1:26-27 says this: ”For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”
You get out of focus related to who God is, you have no concept for understanding sexual relationships and the proper place for sexual energy because God Himself is the Author of those things as well. It’s like not consulting the owner’s manual. And so you move into the sexual revolution and so called sexual liberation, which is really no liberation at all. It’s bondage because you are living outside of the design and the blueprint of Almighty God. And look at the United States today on this issue.
You know, the fact of the matter is the day is going to come, I think more sooner than later when voices like my own that simply want to point out the divine standard are going to be censored right out of society. That’s hate speech. They say you can’t post that anymore on your website. Now, in Canada, that’s true. I know many pastors who have subbed in for people on television ministries and the substitute is told ‘Don’t say anything about homosexuality.’ And the substitute will say, ‘Why’? ‘Because our broadcast airs in Canada, and in Canada, this is hate speech, so don’t say anything against homosexuality.’ And as the United States continues its snowball into sin, it’s not going to be too long before you can’t say things like this on the Internet. You can’t post things like this on sermon audio. You can’t say things like this in your church. That’s where America is. I mean, America is so far down the road in this area of sexual immorality that now it’s to the point where anybody that disagrees with sexual licentiousness is simply going to be censored. And other than an awakening of God or a revival of God, I’m sorry to be sort of a ‘pessimillennialist’ here today, I don’t see that trend changing. Look at what Ben Franklin said. Ben Franklin, it’s interesting, he’s considered by the secularists probably one of the most, or least religious of our founding fathers.
Benjamin Franklin wrote a tract, and in this particular tract, he was encouraging people to move from Europe to America, and this was his selling point. Benjamin Franklin wrote in this tract,”Hence bad examples to youth are rare in America… Atheism is unknown there...” See, the atheists didn’t found America. Franklin says atheism is unknown there. And then he says, “…Infidelity rare and secret;...” Infidelity is not promoted. You can’t flip on cable and see it there day after day after day. It’s unknown. It’s considered a social embarrassment. And he goes on and says, “… so that great persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either Atheist or Infidel.”
‘Come on over to the United States, Europeans. It’s great. You can live to an old age in the United States. You may not ever even run into an Atheist the whole time, and you certainly would never run into an Infidel because whatever sin they’re committing, it’s not socially accepted. They’re doing it in secret.’
And look at today. Today it’s flouted. It’s touted. It’s the new normal. And the person that is removed from the marketplace of ideas is the person that simply wants to call society and God’s standards back to God’s standards. This is why the Cainite line is no candidate for the Messiah because they are captivated by the sexual revolution.
Now, something else about this Cainite line I want to communicate is they were technologically sophisticated, but ethically and spiritually, they were mere midgets. How do I know that? Look, for example, at 4:20, they were involved in livestock. Genesis 4:20 says, Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock.” Jabal, actually, in Hebrew means ‘wanderer.’ And that’s a good example or name, I should say, of someone involved in the livestock profession or trade. They also had musical instruments. Notice, if you will, 4:21, “His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and the pipe.” Jubal in Hebrew actually means ‘sound.’ So that’s a fitting description of someone that’s involved in music.
Henry Morris says this concerning 4:21, “Musical instruments, another important aspect of modern culture, were also an early development. All of these things, in addition, confirm the necessary coexistence of a written language for formal communications. [Kind of hard to play music if you don’t have written notes, is what he’s saying]. This is further intimated by use of the word ‘book‘ in Genesis 5:1. More and more modern archeological discoveries today are verifying the high degree of technology possessed by the earliest men, thus indirectly validating the Biblical testimony.”
These people were not just sophisticated in livestock, they were not just sophisticated in music. They were sophisticated, I hope I pronounce this word right: ‘metallurgy,’ metallurgy, which is basically working with metals. Notice 4:22, it seems to describe this. It says, “As for Zillah, she gave birth to Tubal-cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron;… [You should underline that. That’s very interesting. Bronze and iron. They were working with bronze and iron simultaneously] … And the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.” Now, why is that so interesting? Iron and bronze. Bronze and iron. Because if you study secular anthropology, what they will tell you is from about 3000 to 1200 B.C., post-flood obviously, was the Bronze Age. And then man finally caught up, and he started to use iron—not until 1200 to 331 B.C. You have a Bronze Age because man is not sophisticated enough to use iron. The Iron Age develops later. That is secular anthropology. And look at what your Bible says. Your Bible says that in Genesis 4, they were using both iron and bronze at the same time. Now that will just blow to pieces most of our anthropological models, which largely come from evolutionary theory, which is the idea that early man was just a simpleton. Early, man—he couldn’t even speak. He just kind of grunted. And it took, I don’t know, a million years for him to even work out a language. And finally he scribbled a few things on the cave wall. And over this long process of time, language developed—the poor guy, he didn’t even know what fire was until lightning struck. He probably never took a shower, by the way. He had hair all over him. Some of you ladies are saying, ‘Well, you’re kind of describing my husband right now,’ but this is what we are force-fed all of the time: man is an idiot. Man is a simpleton. And it took him millions and millions of years to catch up to our sophisticated level. I’m here to tell you that the Bible is saying the exact opposite. Man, just after the fall, was able to do things in a technologically sophisticated way that we may not even know how to do today.
Henry Morris says “Not only did the population increase, but the technological and cultural level, at least of the Cainitic civilization, seems to have been very high. Metal tools and implements of all kinds were available to produce creature comforts, as well as musical instruments to stimulate the emotional and esthetic senses.”
Morris goes on and says, ”The ‘standard of living’ of the antediluvians, [pre-flood], especially the Cainitic branch, was elevated tremendously by these talented sons of Lamech…Once again, it is significant to note that the elements which modern evolutionary archeologists and anthropologists identify as the attributes of the emergence of evolving men from the stone age into true civilization—namely, urbanization, agriculture, animal domestication, and… [And here’s our word again]… metallurgy—all were accomplished quickly by the early descendants of Adam and did not take hundreds of thousands of years.”
You’re dealing with a group of people that were technologically sophisticated. Doesn’t 4:17 say, “Cain had relations with his wife and conceived and she gave birth to Enoch and he built a city.” Have you built any cities lately? I mean, building a city—think about all that’s involved in that process. They knew how to do it. By the way, Noah built an ark. And when you talk to some of the guys on our Chafer Theological Seminary Board, some of our professors like Charlie Clough, for example, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, not exactly a village idiot, he will tell you that when you look at the dimensions of the ark that Noah built, they are perfect for sustaining a global flood and not capsizing. Now there are pagan accounts of the flood, which we will talk about in our sermon series, although not today. And they have their own version of Noah’s Ark. And they have their own dimensions of something that looks like Noah’s Ark. And engineers have looked at their dimensions and said, ‘That boat ain’t going to float. It’s going to bobble over and over again in a capsized fashion because it’s not built right.’ Isn’t it interesting that Noah built the Ark perfectly? Does that not require some sort of knowledge of mechanical engineering, drafting? All kinds of things.
And that was early man. They were sophisticated, alright. I don’t know if they had all the gadgets we have. But the problem is when it came to the things of God, they knew next to nothing. Because they had no room for a knowledge of God. Genesis 11:4 tells us that after the flood, they were building a tower whose top would reach into heaven. Have you ever done that? They were doing it. And this is the exact opposite of evolution.
Evolution says that everything started off simple, and now it’s very, very complex today because after all, we’re the smartest people that have ever lived. Why am I the smartest person that’s ever lived? Well, you have a microwave oven and you have this phone. I don’t have my phone here. Oh, here it is. I have this phone, I can communicate with people all over the world. And this makes me smart. Have you gone out and watched people at restaurants? They’re all sitting around the table, and they’re not looking at or talking to each other. They’re all going like this. And we’re smart because of that? Why do I have this phone? Why do I have a microwave oven? I didn’t invent any of them. Prior generations have bequeathed to us knowledge capital.
We are living off the knowledge that has been transferred to us through prior generations, and we are deceived into thinking that because we have all of these gizmos, we are the smartest people that’s ever lived. No. Or the latest generation in human history living off knowledge capital. But the fact of the matter is, the way it looks to me is they had a great deal of sophistication and understanding prior to the flood, and on the History Channel, or A&E, or National Geographic, for that matter, you’re not going to hear a word of this. But why is that? Because those institutions have bought into evolutionary thought. Evolutionary thought is the idea that we go from the simple to the complex over billions of years. From the goo to you by way of the zoo over billions of years. So any type of archeological evidence demonstrating the sophistication of ancient man is suppressed because it’s outside the evolutionary model. I mean, if early human beings were that sophisticated, then we’ve got to throw out evolutionary theory, and we can’t do that. So let’s suppress the data.
Henry Morris again says this concerning the city, “It is interesting that one of the identifying marks which evolutionary anthropologists use to denote the emergence of a ‘stone age’ culture into a civilized city is the development of urbanization. According to the Bible, the first such ‘city’…is the city built by Cain in the first generation after Adam. No long, million-year development here!”
We took our youth to visit the Ark exhibit in Kentucky. And I spent a lot of my time in the restaurant reading a book. And the reason I read this book is [because] I found this fascinating article by Don Landis. The title of it is The Genius of Ancient Man. And I was so interested in what he was saying because you never hear things like this. These are things that never get discussed because we want to portray early man as a simpleton. But the fact of the matter is, you go back in history even after the flood and you see a level of sophistication that we have no explanation for. He mentions the palace [at Knossos] on Crete; the La Bastida in Spain, the Great Pyramids of Egypt. How did they build those exactly? The Stonehenge of England; the Great Wall of China; the architecture of the Incas.
I mean, why is it that when we keep traveling backwards into time, we find a level of sophistication in ancient man? The reason for that is the Bible has spoken. Evolution is false. We are not the smartest people that have ever lived. We think we’re smart because we have inherited knowledge capital. Man did not start off as a simpleton. He started off as very technologically sophisticated, and anything like this that you discover in archeology gets suppressed because it’s outside the evolutionary paradigm.
But let me tell you something. You better come up with an explanation of these things. Because if you don’t have an explanation which is biblically based, you know what you’re going to move into? Space aliens, and I’m not kidding. These civilizations were ceded by space aliens. Google it. Do some work on it. You’ll find people believing in this and using space aliens as an explanation for these sophisticated developments. The fact of the matter is, I don’t need space aliens. Do you need space aliens? I don’t need space aliens. I just need the biblical record, which shows us that early man was far more sophisticated technologically than what the modern evolutionary paradigm allows.
What’s the point? Henry Morris says this: “Although these and other facets of of civilization can be used for good purposes, they can easily become an end in themselves and can even be used as a means of further rebellion against God. The latter seems to have been their effect, and perhaps even their purpose, among the descendants of Cain.”
What happened to the line of Cain? They became so technologically savvy that they lost a focus on God and their Creator. In fact, in this entire line, which we haven’t even completed yet, we haven’t even gotten to Lamech’s violence. You see no reflection of God at all. Their whole focus is on their development and their abilities and their talents and their sophistication. Now, when you go back, for example, to Genesis 4:1, I believe it is, you’ll see there the name God. It says, “Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, ”I have gotten a man child with the help of [the what?]…the LORD.” She had a God-consciousness.
And then when you look at the line of Seth, which won’t be developed until later, if you look at 4:25, you’ll see the name God. “God has appointed me another offspring in the place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” And then you look at the very end of the chapter, it says, “…Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” So the chapter starts with a God-consciousness, Genesis 4:1, and when God creates the alternate line through Seth, the chapter ends in God-consciousness. But in this line of Cain, there’s no God-consciousness at all. They were so technologically savvy that they had become ethical and spiritual midgets. Not that the two are always the opposite of each other, but they had made livelihood, technology, industry, sophistication their own god where they had virtually no need for the true God.
What did Jesus say? “As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.” Is that not a perfect description of the end-times generation? Is this not a perfect description of the United States of America today—enraptured with technology, and having almost no knowledge or no sophistication in the things of God?
You know, it’s interesting. You go you can go out and eat. Sorry I use so many eating illustrations. I ordered this big, big plate of ribs. And I used to say to the [You can’t say waitress anymore, can you? The helper, whatever; Server—got to use a gender neutral term]. I used to say, ‘Well, this is my Ezekiel 37 plate here.’ And the person used to just laugh hysterically because they knew what I was talking about. Ezekiel 37 is the gathering of the bones. ‘So I’m going to eat this plate. There’s going to be a bunch of bones left. And this is my Ezekiel 37 plate,’ and the person would just laugh and laugh and laugh. Now, that was 20 years ago. Today, I try to use the same joke. No one even knows what I’m talking about. They think I’m half crazy. And then you try to open the Bible and show them something in Psalms and they can’t even pronounce Psalms. They say, ‘What does that, “psalms?” This is how the level of spiritual intelligence has deteriorated at a time in history when we are the most technologically sophisticated. And this is the reason the Deluge came. And this is the end-time generation that will exist, I believe, at the time of the return of Christ, the same type of thing.
And it’s all foreshadowed here in this Cainite generation. They were immoral. They were technologically sophisticated to the point where they had no interest in spiritual advancement or understanding.
And the next time we’re together, we’ll look at the final problem with them is [that] they became very, very violent. And you see that in 4:23-24. You say ‘This is such bad news.’ Well, the good news is coming. It’s in 4:25-26. And what you learn about God in verses 4:25-26 is in the darkest times in history, God is still at work. God was going to raise up a new line. And through that line, the Messiah would be born. And our world today is very dark. And it’s so easy to dwell on the darkness and [to] forget the fact that God is still working. And we believe that you being here today is evidence of God’s working. And people listening online is evidence of God’s working because the gospel is just as real today as it was 2,000 years ago. The gospel is good news, which simply means that Jesus, through his death, burial, resurrection and ascension accomplished everything in our place. And all He asks us to do to be right with him is to trust in what He has done for us 2,000 years ago. Stop trusting your religion. Stop trusting yourself. But place your trust exclusively in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who said, ‘It is finished; the work’s been done.’
And yes, humanity and human history today is very dark spiritually just like it was before the flood. But the gospel is still good news, and it’s still available to anyone who wants it if they will simply trust in what Jesus has done for them on the cross. Trust is another way of saying faith. It’s another way of saying reliance or dependance. It has nothing to do with donating money or even walking an aisle. It has everything to do with an attitude or a condition of the heart which says, ‘I can’t save myself. So I will trust in the One who can save me.’ And becoming a Christian is that easy. It’s something you can do now, even as I am talking. Without raising a hand, joining a church, walking an aisle, giving a financial donation. It’s a matter of privacy between you and the Lord, where you come under that conviction, and you respond to it in your heart of hearts, with faith, alone, in Christ, alone. Anybody within the sound of my voice that’s hearing this, we invite them to do that right now. And if anybody here needs some more explanation on it, I’m available after the service to talk.
Shall we pray? “Father, We’re grateful for this record of the pre-flood world and the warnings that it gives us today. Help us to be people that walk with you in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. We will be careful to give You all of the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, and God’s people said, AMEN!”