Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 4 and we are going to read Genesis 4:3-7:

And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto JEHOVAH. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And JEHOVAH 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 JEHOVAH 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.

I will stop reading there. We have already noticed that it says verse 3, “And in process of time it came to pass,” and we noted that it literally should read: “And at the end of days it came to pass.” We spent some time discussing God’s plan at the time of the end of the world, beginning in 1988 which was the 13,000th year of earth’s history, which was to make a separation between the saved and the unsaved or between the righteous and those that simply professed to be His people but were not saved. God brought about the end of the church age and He commanded His people to come out of the churches at that time, thereby separating the wheat from the tares. We have covered this fairly well in the last couple of studies.

But there is also something else that the Lord brought to light at the time of the end of the world. It is interesting when we look back at the time of the Great Tribulation period that one of the main truths that God opened fairly early was a truth that involved God’s salvation program. It had to do with how God saves people. God had long let it be known that He saves only His elect and, of course, people fought against that down through the centuries during the church age. But in 1988 the Great Tribulation period began and it was then the Bible was unsealed and God began to reveal very important truths that had been hidden until the time of the end. One of the earliest truths that came to light was the information that we are saved by the faith of Christ and not by our own faith. In other words, God saved His elect people through the work and faith of Jesus Christ and not through the work or faith of the individual believer.

Since this has been stressed and emphasized for many years now, the people of God understand it and, yet, many of us can remember that before this information came to light in the 1990s it was a very controversial and mysterious subject as to exactly how God saves. The people of God recognized it was by grace, but there was thought to be an element of “belief.” The Reformed seminaries taught that we are saved by grace but the person has to exercise “belief.” After he does that, he recognized it was all by grace. There was a saying: “You teach Calvinism, but you preach Arminianism.” (Calvinism teaches that salvation is all of God by election and Arminianism is a “free will” gospel.) This was common practice in Reformed congregations. No wonder people were so confused when it came to understanding salvation. How are we saved? What is man’s role? What do we contribute? Again, they would say, “It is all of God. It is all by grace.” Then they would either imply or directly state, “But you have to believe.” During the time of the early part of the Great Tribulation after God had opened the Scriptures, an important verse came to light in Galatians 2:16:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Here, God very plainly says that we are justified by the faith “of” Christ, or belonging to Christ. It is His faith that saves us. We saw that and I also remember Mr. Camping did a study on the word “faith” and he showed in a few places that “faith” is called a “work.” One verse that says that is in 1Thessolonians 1:3:

Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love…

This verse combined with Galatians 2, verse 16 strongly reinforced this truth that was coming to light at that time. A man cannot be saved by his own faith because any act of faith is a “work.” As a matter of fact, God commands us to believe. It says in 1John 3:23:

And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ…

So many refer to the verse, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” and if I respond, “I believe,” I am obeying His commandment. So my belief is an obedient act to the commandment to believe and whenever anyone obeys a commandment it is a work of the Law. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son and Abraham’s obedience was a work. Since man is not justified by the works of the Law, there is no way that I or any other person could be justified by our own faith or act of believing. That is why God says we are not justified by works but by the faith of Christ. It is explained in Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

If it were of ourselves, we could boast or glory, but the faith that saves is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God and Jesus is the gift of God – it is the “faith of Christ.” As a result, it is not our work and we cannot boast or glory in anything we do. This is the wonderful truth that God brought to light when He opened up the understanding of His people at the appropriate time of the end. As it says in our verse in Genesis, it was “in the end of days.” That is when two brothers brought two offerings. Cain brought his offering of the ground and Abel brought his offering of the firstlings of his flock. God had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but did not have respect unto Cain and to his offering. You see, at the time of the end God finally made it known what was the “acceptable sacrifice” and what was not an “acceptable sacrifice.” And what was acceptable was the work and faith of Jesus Christ and what was not acceptable was the work and faith of man. This truth and right doctrine is really a very grievous and horrible thing to the modern church world of hundreds of millions of people that profess they are Christians. They have been told and they have been taught, “Here is how you become a Christian. Here is how you become saved: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Accept the Lord.” In church after church all over the world pastors have been preaching, “Here is how you get yourself saved.” They have been giving altar calls. What is an altar call? It is where you point out what the Bible says about sin and you point out what the Bible says about the punishment of God against sin. Then you show people the blessings of God about eternal life for those that are saved and then you address your congregation and you say, “This is the choice God has placed before you. You are a sinner under His wrath, but you can be saved if you decide for Jesus today! Make a decision for Christ. Come down that aisle and you will be a child of God. You can be saved.” They will go to verses that say, “Believe and you will be saved.” This is happening in one church, but multiply that by the thousands of churches in the United States and multiply that by the tens of thousands of churches all over the world and you will have enormous numbers of people coming into the congregations based on their own work and their own faith. They were repeatedly assured by pastors, bishops, popes and everyone that had authority within the church structure that this is what saves you. “You have done well. You have done right and you are a child of God.”

But then came the “end of the days.” God had “winked at” many, many things the world was doing and even what the churches were doing. God saw their errors and it grieved Him and, yet, the Lord determined to give the churches space for repentance. They did not repent and God came at the “end of days” and one of the first things He did was to clarify and make straight how people become saved and born again.

Another verse that came into the light of day was in John, chapter 1 where God is speaking of how people become born again. He explained in John 1:13:

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

No man has ever been saved by their own will or by their willful action, which means through their belief. Not one person in the history of the world has become saved by “accepting Christ” and exercising their will and making a decision for Christ, walking down the aisle, saying the Sinner’s Prayer, deciding to become baptized or partaking of the Lord’s Table. None of these things has ever saved a single person, according to the Word of God. According to God’s Word, we not born of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.

Then how are we saved? The last part of the verse explains that we are born “of God.” We are born again and we become a new creature and we receive a new resurrected soul by the action and will of God, as God tell us in Romans, chapter 9. He explains in Romans 9:15:

For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

Notice the word “I will,” in regard to God. It goes on to say in Romans 9:16:

So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

How much more information does man need in order to understand that they cannot be saved by their own will? It is just like what it says in John 1, verse 13, where it says it is “not of the will of man, but of God that sheweth mercy.” It is the faith of Christ. It is by His work at the foundation of the world when there were no humans. That is when the sins of His elect were laid upon Him and that is when He suffered and died for those sins and that is when He rose from the dead, declared to be the Son of God with power. At that point He created the world, having already finished the work (of salvation), according to Hebrew 4, verse 3. The works were finished from the foundation of the world and that is the “work” that saves and that work is the evidence of the faith of Christ that saves. Christ did the work through faith in saving His people and this is what God made clear at the time of the end of the world. Therefore, we read concerning our study in the Book of Genesis, in 1John 3:12:

Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

Let us think about this. What works of Cain were evil? The work of thinking that since God commanded him to do something, he could do it. Again, God had made it known somehow to these two brothers that He desired an offering. Out of a desire to obey, Cain brought forth an offering and there was nothing wrong with the offering itself; it was of the fruit of the ground and that was in itself an acceptable offering. Cain was responding to what he believed God had commanded, but what made what he did evil and corrupted the sacrifice and caused God not to accept it was that Cain was trusting in the “work” or in the act of offering.

God had let it be known what he wanted and Cain set about to do it. You know, we have this image of Cain as some terrible and evil man, a ruthless murderer. And, yet, he was of the family of God because Adam was the son of God and Cain was the son of Adam and, therefore, had a relationship of some sort with God. In all probability, he was zealously trying to keep the Law, just as the Israelites later did. Cain was probably full of excitement; he was eager to perform the work he thought God required of him. He gathered together his offering and he presented his offering, but it was refused. It was not respected. God was not pleased. Cain probably could not understand why his offering was not accepted. He probably looked at it and he could see nothing wrong with it: “God required an offering. I gave an offering, an acceptable offering. What is wrong with what I did?” Then there was his brother Abel and God also required an offering of him. He gave a different type of offering, but it was still within the spectrum of acceptable offerings. It could be that Abel did not put as much thought into his offering. Maybe he let it go until the last minute and he saw that Cain was working hard and doing everything he could to make his offering. Cain could have been looking at his brother and thinking, "Well, my brother’s offering is not going to be accepted. Look at him – he does not even seem to care and he is not involved all that much in his offering. Perhaps, right before the time of offering Abel went out and slayed one of the firstlings of his flock for his offering." Cain may have been thinking, “I did much more work. I put in a great deal more effort. My offering is a better offering. God will be more pleased with my offering than with Abel’s offering because Abel hardly did anything.”

Just think of the attitude of the elder son, as we look at two other brothers in Luke, chapter 15. In this case, one brother wasted his inheritance with riotous living, but the elder brother did not leave and he stayed with his father. When the younger son returned the father gave him a kid and made merry and the elder brother was jealous and envious of his younger brother. He was angry. It says in Luke 15:25-29:

Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick 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. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:

When we look at it from the world’s perspective, it seems like justifiable anger, is it not? Who could deny that this elder son had a point? He had stayed there and was working hard and he never transgressed his father’s commandment. He did the work and, yet, he does not have a kid slain for him.

We will have to pick this up in our next study.