(Through The Bible) Genesis – Part 1: Zac Poonen (Transcript)

What you find on the surface is grass and mud and dirt — cheap stuff.

If you read the Scriptures superficially, you won’t get the real riches of it. It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter. And if you’re going to be a king… a king one who’s reigning in Christ… it’s your glory to search it out, to dig out, and find it.

As God sees that wholeheartedness and eagerness in you, the Holy Spirit will reveal to you the meaning of Scripture.

Jesus said, “I thank You Father that You have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and you have revealed them to babes.” (Luke 10:21) You don’t need to be clever, but you’re going to have a clean heart: the babe’s got a clean heart.

It’s your heart condition that determines whether you understand Scripture, not your head intelligence. It’s hidden from the clever and the intelligent.

You can’t understand Scripture by getting a doctorate in theology. You can understand Scripture if you’ve got a humble heart, and a good conscience. That’s how we understand Scripture.

Scripture gives us promises and commands that we have to believe and obey, words to rebuke us, and words to comfort us.

So having said those words as an introduction, let me move straight away, we’re going to go right through the Scriptures starting with Genesis chapter 1, and God willing, complete it in 70 sessions, in Revelation 22.

GENESIS CHAPTER 1: “In the beginning God…”

Genesis chapter 1, there are three things I want to say here. We’re not going to finish Genesis in this session, but because Genesis is a very important book… Genesis, you know what that means… is an English word, speaks about beginnings. And here we read about the beginning of creation, the beginning of man, the beginning of sin in the human race, the beginning of the message of redemption, the beginning of two streams of religiosity and spirituality: the beginning of Babylon, the beginning of Jerusalem; the beginning of that which is counterfeit religion and true religion. It’s all here… beginnings: it’s a book of beginnings.

And it’s wonderful that the Scripture begins with the words: “In the beginning God…” that’s how it must be in our life every day: in the beginning God… not man, not my cup of coffee; God.

“In the beginning God…” it must be like that in every area of my life. My goal in life, ambitions, everything it must be: In the beginning God…

And when God finds a man or a woman like that who will put Him first in every area: in his business, in his daily life, and his finances and everything, I tell you there’s no limit to what God can do through such a man or a woman.

So there’s a lot in those first four verses of the Bible. And here it says that ‘In the beginning God…’ you know we have a description of creation here, and there are two words that occur in this chapter. One is the word ‘created’ and the other is the word ‘made’.

Now there is a difference between ‘created’ and ‘made’: it says “God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) and then it says ,in verse 7: “God made the firmament or the expanse…” And many times thereafter you find ‘God made’; He created man, but He made the beast of the earth, verse 25. You noticed that difference?

Verse 25: ‘God made the beast…’ but verse 27: ‘God created man…’ There is a difference.

See, ‘made’ is from something that already exists. ‘Created’ is from something that doesn’t exist.

So it says: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…’ That could have been millions and millions and millions of years ago.

And then something happened which is not described in Genesis chapter 1. And that was the fall of the angel Lucifer who became the devil.

Now the reason it is not mentioned here is because this book was not written for the devil; it was written for man. So therefore man is prominent, and so the creation of man comes first and in later chapters it’s described about how the devil fell.

But something did happen before man was created, and that’s how we find the devil suddenly entering in Genesis chapter 3. And that happened between verses 1 and 2.

When God created the heavens and the earth, God always makes everything perfect. There’s nothing that God does which is imperfect. When God created the world with a spoken word, Bible says that, what we see has been created by the Word of God. God spoke and it was created. It was perfect.

How is it then in verse 2 that it says ‘the earth was without shape, it was empty, it was dark’? God never creates anything empty, dark, and shapeless. It became like that. Because something happened between verse 1 and 2 which is not mentioned here, because this book is written for man. It’s about man’s history; it’s about man’s relationship with God. And what happened there was the fall of Satan.

And that’s why, when sin came into the world, this beautiful earth and heaven that God had created in verse 1 became… the earth became shapeless; it became empty; it became dark.

And what we read in Genesis chapter 1 is the remaking of that corrupted, spoiled, dark empty earth. And by the time you come to the end of the chapter, you find it has become a beautiful heaven and earth again that God Almighty Himself could look at it and say, “It is very good.”

Now this chapter has got a message for us, because we also… Satan has come into the human race and made us exactly like verse 2. Human beings are like verse 2: empty; dark; shapeless; lost the image of God. And God didn’t create us like that; God didn’t create Adam like that.

The creation of Adam is like God created the heavens and the earth; perfect but the devil came in… what happened there between verse 1 and 2… came into Adam, spoiled him, and God began to remake. That’s the message that comes in the first chapter of the Bible that God is in the business of remaking ruined situations, ruined humanity, ruined earth. And it doesn’t matter how shapeless you are, how dark you are, or how empty you are, the first chapter of the Bible says God can remake you and make you so perfect that at the end of it… what does it say? He made man in His image. That’s what happens at the end and He can make you in His image too.

That’s the message of the first chapter of the Bible. But how did it happen? And that’s important, and if you understand how it happens, and you submit to it, the same thing can happen to you too.

HE’S A GOD WHO SPEAKS… EVERY DAY!

Every day God spoke. God said something the first day. He said something the second day; He said something the third day. He went on saying: He’s a God who speaks. That’s the thing you see in the very first chapter of the Bible. And the most important thing that you need is to hear God speaking if you want to be transformed.

You can’t be transformed if you don’t hear God speaking: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) That’s how man is supposed to live.

And if we don’t listen, we are not going to be transformed. We have to develop the habit of listening. God is speaking. Like He spoke every day, He is speaking every day. Most people in the world don’t listen. Most believers don’t listen. Even people who read the Bible every day don’t listen to God speaking to their heart every day.

Don’t think listening to God is just reading the Bible. You can read the Bible to ease your conscience and not listen to what God is trying to say to your heart.

The other thing we see is not only God spoke, it says, “the Spirit of God (verse 2) moved upon the face of the waters.” Even if you hear God speak, you will not be transformed unless you allow the Holy Spirit to move upon you. The Holy Spirit comes right there in the beginning… the Holy Spirit is the One who changes man; the Holy Spirit is the One who cooperated in this work of remaking man, along with the Father.

God spoke and the Holy Spirit moved, and it’s the combined working of the Word of God which God spoke and the Holy Spirit that brought transformation.

GREAT NEED: ‘Balanced’

And so the other thing we learned right in the beginning of Scripture is we must always be balanced. The great need in Christendom today is balanced. There are people today who emphasize the study of the Word of God… I’m all for it. But if you have the study of the Word of God without the Holy Spirit, you’re going to be dead dry as a bone.

And then there are other people who emphasize the Holy Spirit… oh the Holy Spirit and very often they’re like train that’s gone off the rails just blowing the whistle and making a lot of noise… a lot of steam there but no rails; no Word of God; they’ve gone completely astray. And ultimately what they have is not Holy Spirit but some other spirit, because they did not allow the Word of God to guide them.

See, all these things are there in the first page of Scripture: ‘Blessed is the man who meditates…’ in the first page of Scripture, you can get correction, training, instruction in righteousness, so that you can be perfect, thoroughly equipped for every good work. That’s how we must study the Scriptures.

And you realize that we can’t study the Scriptures in 70 hours. I find that even after 40 years, I’m discovering new things today.

I’ll tell you something I discovered just today, even though I’ve read this book 40 years. I noticed only today that in Genesis chapter 1, twice… I knew it said it once but I discovered today it said it twice that ‘God separated the light from the darkness.’ Now how many of you knew that that was written twice there.

You know, that teaches me something that when God created light, He didn’t want the darkness mixed up with it. The first day God created light, and He didn’t want the darkness mixed up with it, He brought a division.

Some people think all division is from the devil? No, the first Person who divided something was God in the very first paragraph of the Bible. What fellowship has light with darkness? When light comes into your heart, the very next thing that God wants to do in your life is to separate you from all darkness. You read that in Genesis 1:3-4, God said ‘Let there be light.’

In 2 Corinthians 4, it says that is a picture of the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ coming into our hearts. That’s a commentary on that in 2 Corinthians 4.

And what’s the next thing God did? As soon as light comes into our heart, it must be separated from everything that is darkness. The world is in darkness. There must be nothing of that in my heart. And when Christians don’t do what God wants to do, to separate the light, there is confusion.

And it says the second time in verse 18 about God placing the sun and the moon in the skies, in the middle of that verse, to separate the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good. He separated the light from the darkness in verse 4 and He saw that it was good. And He separated the light from the darkness in verse 18 and He saw it was good.

When He sees the light separated from the darkness in your life, He’ll also say that’s good. Otherwise He won’t say it’s good.

A lot of people have got light, but they haven’t separated from the darkness. That’s their problem.

And we read here further then… I want to ask… I don’t have time to go through the whole thing; I’m just trying to whet your appetite so that you will go and dig into the Scripture and find out some things.

I want to ask you something: Man was created on the sixth day; we all know that. On which day where the beasts of the field created… the lion and the dog and the monkey… when were they created? Most people don’t know. Beasts of the field, the animals in the field were also created on the sixth day.

Isn’t that interesting? On the same day that man was created, the animals were created. The fish and the birds were created on the fifth day. And on the sixth day, it says, in verse 24: the living creatures were brought forth… the first part of the sixth day. And the second part of the sixth day, God created man and breathed into him. And that’s why you see in animals, the same internal organs that you find in a human being; they’re made from the same dust that human beings are made from.

But there was one thing that distinguished man: God breathed into him. And it’s only the breath of God… the Spirit of God that distinguishes us from animals.

And what the Lord was saying through that was: when you stop listening to the Spirit of God and stop living by the breath of God in your life, it’s very easy to sink to the level of the animals for they were created on the same day. Please keep that in mind.

And on the seventh day, we read that God kept it as a day of rest. It was the seventh day for God, but it was the first day for man. Man was created towards the end of the sixth day. And his very first day was a holiday. Isn’t that good? God was trying to teach man: you don’t have to work first. You’ve got to have fellowship with Me first. You fellowship with Me for one day and then go and work in the garden for six days. That is the order.

God wants you to fellowship with Him and then go out and serve Him. Always come back and fellowship with Him; go out and serve Him. Come back and fellowship with Him. That’s why He ordained a day of rest for Adam. It was a day when he was to walk with God, forget about the garden, forget about all the work that has to be done, and walk with God.

In the beginning God….

Those are the lessons we learn, and that’s why God taught the importance of the Sabbath to Israel. It was a picture… like many other things in the Law were a picture, and it applies to us. The spiritual reality of the Sabbath is walking with God and being in rest.

Think about that and I believe that God will have much more to say to you.

I want you to see here that when God blessed man, it says here in verse 28, he says: “Be fruitful and multiply…”

HOW DID GOD EXPECT MAN TO MULTIPLY? By having a sexual relationship with his wife. God created that sexual relationship, and said that they were to exercise that function in their marriage and produce children. And He looked at it, and He said it was very good (verse 31).

You know that sex in marriage God Himself has said it is very good. And it’s very bad and evil outside of marriage. I just mention that because some people have got a wrong idea about this. They think you can be holier if you don’t get married; it’s not true.

And the other thing I want you to notice here, is that when God created man, He blessed them (verse 28) and said not only be fruitful, He said subdue everything under you, rule over everything. God created man to be a ruler, not a slave. God created man to have everything under his feet, to be an overcomer.

Here it speaks about ruling… you come to the end of the Bible, Revelation it speaks about overcoming, overcoming, overcoming. That’s God’s will, and he finally accomplishes it in Revelation with a few who become overcomers. But that was God’s purpose for Adam; it’s His purpose for you: to rule over everything; to rule over sin in your life; to rule over your anger; to rule over your lusts; to rule over your passions; to keep them under your feet. God has not created you to be a slave; He created you to be a conqueror, a ruler.

But that can only come, like it says, when God blesses you… God blessed them… and that’s how we became.

EXAMINE EACH DAY’S WORK IN YOUR LIFE

The other thing I want to say about Genesis 1 before I move on, is you know, it says here, He examined each day’s work and He said it is good. And it’s good for you also to examine each day’s work in your life. Many people don’t have that habit. If God did it, can’t you do it?

Look at the work you did during the day and judge yourself and examine yourself: is it good? So many lessons from that first chapter.  

GENESIS 2

And when you go to chapter 2, you’ll find here that God was the one who… there’s a greater detail given here about the creation of man… but the wonderful thing we see here is that God is the one who gave man a work to do, the job in the garden. God’s the one who gave him a home in the garden, and God’s the one who gave him a marriage partner.

Now these are three very important things that people look for today: they want a house to live in, a home to live in; they want a job and they want a marriage partner. And you have all three in Genesis chapter 2. God provided it for Adam: He gave him a home; He gave him a job; and He gave him a marriage partner. And Adam didn’t even ask for… that teaches us right in the beginning of Scripture that those needs of yours of a house, a job, a marriage partner God is interested in. If you walk in fellowship with Him, He will provide all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

MAN IS WORTHLESS APART FROM GOD’S BREATH

God made man from the dust to teach him that he is worthless apart from God’s breath.

There is just one interesting thing I want you to notice here in Genesis 2. It says here about the rivers that flowed out of Eden (verse 10) and it says in one of those places, in Havilah (last part of verse 11) ‘there is gold. And the gold of that land is good.’

In paradise, gold is good; on this sin-cursed earth, it’s a snare. You got to be careful. That’s just impossible.

The other thing I want you to notice in verse 19: out of the ground… now I want you to notice that… read this very carefully: “Out of the ground God formed every beast and brought them to the man and man named all these animals….

verse 20: ‘give names to all the birds… But for Adam (verse 20) there was not found a helper suitable for him.’ And I get the picture when it says there… ‘But for Adam…’ in the same sentence that he was looking at the animals and say which of these will be my partner. The lion has got a lioness, and the elephant has got its partner, and the cat has got its… and which is the one for me, and he looks by all of them, and he says no… that one won’t do, that doesn’t fit with me, that doesn’t agree with my nature.

And when he said no to all of them, God said okay… verse 18, He said ‘I’ll make a helper suitable…’

And He caused a deep sleep… (verse 21) and He made him a wife. Now the spiritual application of this is when you’re a child of God, and you’re looking for a partner, God will allow a lot of pretty handsome people to go by you who don’t have your nature. And He will see whether you’re going to pick one of them. And if you pick one of them, you miss the one God has planned for you.

Adam passed the test. He looked at the pig and he said no, I don’t want that one. And he looked at the lion, he said not even lioness, I don’t even want a lioness. None of these got my nature. Then God gave him the best. Honor God and He’ll give you the best.

Say no to that: “Don’t be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” (2 Corinthians 6:14) It’s all there in Scripture.

The other thing I want you to notice in marriage is it says (verse 24) something which all Indian Christians particularly need to listen to that when a man gets married, he must leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. In other words, it’s not talking about physical leaving primarily as much as that from now on his wife must be more important than his father and mother. That’s the essential message.

I wish I could go up and down this country proclaiming that message… that when you get married, your wife must be more important to you than your father and mother and all your relatives.

I believe there’d be a lot more happy marriages if they just follow that simple rule which was written before sin came into the world. Do you know that’s the first commandment in the Bible for us.

Which is the first commandment in the Bible for man today? Leave your father and mother, and cleave to your wife. (Genesis 2:24)

WHY DID GOD PUT THAT AS THE FIRST COMMANDMENT? Because He knew there’d be so many people who wouldn’t obey it, and whose lives and married lives will be miserable.

It’s amazing what there isn’t just two chapters of Scripture…

GENESIS CHAPTER 3 AND 4

TWO MEN WHO LISTENED TO THE DEVIL

Okay I want you to see here further in Genesis chapter 3 and 4, I want you to see here about two men who listened to the devil. One was Adam in Genesis 3, and the other was Cain in Genesis 4. Two men who listened to the devil.

Now notice God had allowed Adam to go into this garden, and He did not send an angel with him to check up whether he is sinning or not.

WHY? Because it’s only in an atmosphere of freedom that God can test us. He tests you when you’re alone. When other believers are not there… and nobody knows what you’re doing when you’re all alone. Adam and Eve were all alone; they would sin as much as they liked.

And they went alone and they saw this forbidden tree. There were 10,000 trees, their beautiful fruit and all that, they ignored all that. They went after knowledge. There was another tree of life.

Now if you had a choice between knowledge and life, which would you go for? I’m sure you all will give the answer: life. But wait a minute. You people are studying the Bible; tell me honestly. Are you studying the Bible for our knowledge or for life? And you have the answer there.

Are you studying the Bible to get a degree or to get life? You’re going for the tree of knowledge too. The Bible was not given for knowledge; it brings death. Knowledge of good and evil brings death.

Life… God wants us to know good and evil through a connection with Him, not by study. You know you can get a knowledge of good and evil without reference to God, and that’s how you go astray; that’s the sin here: Getting a knowledge of good and evil without God. A lot of people in the world are like that. I don’t want it.

I want a knowledge of good and evil that comes from the Holy Spirit telling me in each situation that’s wrong, through my living contact with God. That’s how you must know good and evil. And if you don’t know good and evil like that, it brings death into your life.

So that’s what the devil was trying to tempt him. The devil tempted Eve to say, and told her: ‘you can be like God’. That was the temptation.

‘If you eat it, (verse 5) you will be like God.’

Now it’s interesting that Jesus also came with a message saying: you can be like God. Isn’t that interesting? The devil comes and says: you can be like God. Jesus comes and says you can be like God but completely opposite.

The devil says, you can be like God in knowledge, authority, power, position, and a lot of people go for that. Even a lot of Christians, they want to be like God in knowledge, authority, leadership in the church, position.

And Jesus says you can be like God in character, in humility, in love, in goodness. How many people want that? This is the difference between the voice of the devil and the voice of God. It sounds so similar. Temptation is so subtle. The devil is a deceiver; it’s like somebody giving you a 500 rupee note, it looks like a real thing: you shall be like God. In what way? That’s the quest.

So you see temptation is very very subtle, and when the devil was tempting Eve, what he insinuated, what he put into her mind was that: God doesn’t really love you. If God loved you, He’d have given you this beautiful tree to eat of it. And that’s very often the way the devil gets into our hearts by making us doubt God’s love.

When Jesus said to Peter, “Peter, Satan has decided to sift you and has asked for permission. It’s been given permission.” (Luke 22:31) Just like God gave permission to Satan to sift Adam and Eve here, He gave permission for Peter also to be sifted.

But Jesus said, “I’m praying for you, not that you won’t fall; I’m praying that your faith will not fail. I’m praying that in that moment of temptation, even if you do fall, I’m praying that you will not doubt the love of God.” That’s the thing, brothers and sisters in the time of deepest trial and temptation, whatever may happen, don’t doubt the love of God, even if your prayer is not answered, even if you find something that you want is not being given to you.

Some deep trial, perhaps like Job’s… your children dead, your property gone, don’t doubt the love of God. That’s the message that comes from Genesis chapter 3. That’s what the devil…

See, faith… what does it mean to live by faith? To live by faith means: I know one thing: God loves me. That’s what brought the prodigal son back to his father’s home. I know I’ve done a lot of… made a mess of my life, but I know my dad loves me. I’m going to go back. So that’s faith.

And this tree which looks so attractive, God made it attractive, because God wanted to test Adam and Eve to see: will they get more attracted by My creation or by Me the Creator?

In every temptation… essentially the temptation is this: the Creator or creation? Are you tempted by a pretty woman? What is the temptation? Your Creator or what He created.

Are you tempted by gold and silver? What is the temptation? Your Creator or what is created? That is the essence of every temptation.

And essentially to overcome temptation means just this: that I choose my Creator. I don’t choose what is created.

When you are interested in the honor of men, the approval of men, the other choice is the approval of God, which do you want? All temptation is basically between these two things: the creation versus the Creator. You either worship the creation, and say oh, this beautiful face, oh this gold, oh this man’s approval I wanted.

Or you say, this is all garbage. The face of Jesus and His approval… and my Creator is more important to me than everything created. You just make that choice in every decision in life, and I tell you, you will be a man of God, you’ll be a woman of God and you will have understanding of Scripture more than anybody can ever teach you with any amount of classes that you attend.

You’ve got to make a choice to say, ‘Lord, in every situation I choose You, my Creator above all created things.’ That’s the essence of overcoming temptation.

I want you to notice… I don’t have time to go into everything here. I want you to notice further down in…

WHAT WAS ADAM’S SIN? Was it just that he ate of the fruit of the tree that was forbidden? No, it was more than that.

It says here that the Lord told Adam in (verse 17) not because you ate of the fruit, that was second… “Because you listened to the voice of your wife…” Is that a sin to listen to the voice of your wife? God says it is. Why? Because He says I made you the head of your house and you did not exercise authority as the head of your house. You saw your wife talking to the devil and you just kept your mouth open and stood there watching the whole thing instead of stopping her. You should have put your foot down and say, ‘Come away Eve, don’t listen to her.’

You know there are a lot of white husbands like Adam today. They’re not the head of their homes. And exactly the same thing God has to tell Adam.

So you see Adam’s sin was he did not assert his headship and God is a good God; He did not curse Adam. It says here: He cursed the serpent and the ground but He did not curse Adam.

And you see the tremendous love of God that He kills an animal… this is the first death that you read after Genesis 1. An animal is killed… because that’s the way God made these garments of skin (verse 21). An innocent animal is killed for Adam’s sin, and that animal’s skin is taken off to cover Adam and Eve. A picture of what God was going to do one day on Calvary’s cross. It’s there in Genesis 3:21.

And then we read that God put a ‘flaming sword’ (verse 24) in front of the tree of life.

In those days in Eden, there was no flaming sword. Adam could have gone straight and eaten from the tree of life. But today there’s a sword in front of the tree of life. If you want to partake of the tree of life, you have to let the sword fall upon your flesh. It fell upon Jesus.

And the Bible says I am crucified with Christ, then I live. (Galatians 2:20) When that sword… when I unite myself with Jesus on the cross, and that sword falls upon my flesh, I can partake of the tree of life again. There is no other way. That sword guards it even today.

And I just want you to notice one more thing in this Genesis chapter 3. There are a number of words that come in this chapter as part of the punishment God is inflicted on man: curse; sorrow; thorns; sweat; dust; death…. all words associated with Calvary. Everything Jesus took upon Himself so that we can be free from that curse that came upon Adam.

And Adam’s fellowship with God was gone. You find immediately his fellowship with his wife is also gone: he accuses her. Whenever you accuse other people, it proves your fellowship with God is gone.

When you are in fellowship with God, you judge yourself. Please learn that lesson from Genesis 3.

Here’s another man who listened to the devil: Cain. It says here that Eve gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have given birth to a man with the help of the LORD, I have created a man.” (Genesis 4:1)

The first human being ever born into the world! And Eve said, ‘Boy this is wonderful. God made Adam, and I made a man, too.’ That’s what she’s saying. I made one out of my own body. And it’s that spirit that became God: I made, I created something. I can do something. Yeah God helps me a little bit, but I can do it.

And it was the wrong spirit with which that man grew up, that child grew up. And we read here that God… now many people read like this; they don’t read Scripture properly as though God said that He accepted Abel’s offering and therefore accepted Abel. But please read Scripture carefully.

It says in Genesis 4:4 the last part: “The LORD had regard for Abel first and then for his offering.’ It’s not the other way around.

And the LORD did not have regard for Cain and therefore for his offering.

Proverbs 21:27 says: “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.” No matter how good the sacrifice is. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. That’s why He didn’t accept Cain’s offering. Cain was a wicked man, and you could see that in his face.

The first question God asked is: “Cain, why has your face fallen?” (Genesis 4:6)

See, God is the one seeking after man. When Adam sinned, the first question God asked was: “Adam, where are you?”

Think of that. That’s how Jesus came to the world: “Where are you fallen man?”

“Cain, why has your face fallen?”

God is the one who’s always seeking us when we have gone astray from Him. That’s a great encouragement for us. But He does not respond… God warns Cain but He doesn’t respond, and he goes and goes still further, allows that sin that was crouching at his door to come inside and kill him, destroy him.

And it’s interesting that jealousy is the first sin mentioned in Scripture outside Eden. Jealousy of a younger brother who is more blessed than I am. Do you see somebody younger than you, more blessed, more anointed than you? And be careful that you don’t go the way of Cain.

And when Cain is punished, I want you to notice here the attitude of a sinner. Notice when God says to Cain that you are cursed, (verse 11)…

Why did God curse Cain and not curse Adam?

Genesis 4:11 He says, “you are cursed…” God never told Adam: you’re cursed; He said the ground is cursed. The first time God cursed a man was not Adam; it was Cain. And I believe the reason is this: when Adam sinned, it was a sin but he hurt only himself. When Cain sinned, he hurt somebody else.

When you commit a sin like smoking or drinking when you destroy your body, you hurt only yourself. When you gossip, you hurt another person.

How many of you believe that gossiping is worse than smoking? I don’t know how many Christians believe that. There are sins that hurt other people which are worse than sins which hurt only yourself. That’s why Cain was cursed. Take it seriously, and when you hurt another person, this is what happens the Bible says (verse 10): “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to Me.” That person whose reputation you spoiled with your gossiping is crying out to God, and it will never stop crying till you go and settle it, till you ask God for forgiveness, ask that person for forgiveness, apologize; otherwise it’ll keep on crying till the day of judgement when you’ll have to answer.

Be careful about sins with which you hurt other people. That’s what we read in Genesis chapter 4.

And when this punishment is given to Cain, Cain says (verse 13): “My punishment is too great to bear.” This is the language of people who go to hell. They don’t say: “Oh God, my sin is so terrible!”

Not my sin; my punishment! Are you more worried about sin or punishment? That’s the difference between a Godly man and an un-Godly man. An un-Godly man is worried about punishment. A Godly man is worried about sin. Keep that in mind.

And Cain goes away from the presence of the LORD, and his children become like him: one of his descendants becomes a murderer. They go into multiple marriages. You read in Genesis chapter 4: they go into music, and you have the beginning of rock music there in the end of Genesis chapter 4. They invent all these different musical instruments, and they go into all types of things. That’s what happens when you go away from God.

What you see in Genesis chapter 4 is the beginning of two streams: Cain and Abel… Cain was not an atheist. Remember he was a very deeply religious man. He was the forerunner of the Pharisees. He was the forerunner of this Babylonian system… false religion.

And Abel… Jesus spoke about righteous Abel. He is the forerunner of the Godly. Both religious… false religion and true.

TWO MEN WHO WALKED WITH GOD

And now I want to speak for the rest of the time on two men who walked with God. We saw two men who listened to the devil, that’s Adam and Cain. I want to speak about two men who walked with God in Genesis chapters 5 to 9. One is Enoch, and the other is Noah.

GENESIS CHAPTER 5

Now in Genesis chapter 5, we read this expression eight times. And he died… (verse 5) and he died… and he died… and he died… and he died… and he died… and he died… and he died… and in the middle of that, one man who didn’t die. How does he know? Who walked with God… it was like a resurrection; in the midst of all this death, there was a man who lived in resurrection power, who walked with God and overcame death and got raptured… a picture of the church that lives in the midst of spiritual death and lives by resurrection power waiting for the rapture when we will be taken up just like Enoch was taken up.

And Enoch… it says for 65 years, he didn’t walk with God. He didn’t walk with God for 65 years. But then he got a son Methuselah, and in the margin of my King James Version, it says Methuselah means at his death the waters will come forth. That means God gave a revelation to Enoch when Methuselah was born, when his baby was born, said named him Methuselah, because when this baby dies, I’m going to judge this world with a flood. That revelation came first to Enoch, not to Noah. And he named his son Methuselah.

Now when you get a baby, how long do you think that baby’s going to live? I think every time that baby got sick, Enoch got a bit scary. Is judgement now going to come?

And can you imagine a baby being called at his death the flood will come? You say, “Hey ‘at his death the flood will come’, come here.” Every time you call him, you’re reminded of this fact: at his death, the flood will come; the judgment will come. And that fear made Enoch walk with God and realized that the things of eternity are more important than the things of time.

The Bible says: “The world and its fashions will pass away.” (1 Corinthians 7:31) If you believe it, like Enoch believed what God said about Methuselah: at his death the judgment will come, it will give us also a seriousness to live for the things of eternity. That is the crisis that made Enoch walk with God.

Enoch walked with God… Methuselah. And the interesting thing is, you see God’s tremendous long-suffering here in the fact that God allowed Methuselah to live longest of all: 969 years, showing God’s tremendous long-suffering. Wherever he went people heard Methuselah… Methuselah… at his death judgment will come. For 969 years people heard that message, and they rejected it.

It was not just Noah who preached it; Methuselah’s name preached the message much longer than Noah, that a flood will come. They didn’t know the details, but they knew some type of judgment: the waters are going to come when he died.

And that’s how we find that it says in the book of Jude that Enoch prophesied against all the ungodly people about the way they were living. He was a prophet we read in the book of Jude: he walked with God and one day God took him.

See Enoch and Adam lived together for 308 years; if you count those ages you can find out that. And he must have talked to Adam a lot:

“How was it in Eden, Adam? How is it you walked with God there? Tell me about it. And Adam would have told him, and Enoch would have had a great longing to walk with God and he became the first man to demonstrate that you could walk with God outside of Eden also. Not only in Eden, even after sin came, you could walk with God.

I’ve sometimes met Godly men very rarely in my life. I’ve met a lot of preachers, but very few whom I’ve met who walked with God and such men have produced in my heart a tremendous longing for my younger days to walk with God in the greatest longing of my life, and that’s how I believe Enoch…

And then we read that Enoch was taken up and Methuselah and finally his great-grandson… Methuselah’s great-grandson was Noah and he talked to Methuselah for 600 years, because Methuselah… if you calculate those years, you know that year Methuselah died, Noah was 600, and the flood came. So 600 years he must have walked with Methuselah, and he must have asked Methuselah about Enoch. He’d say ‘Tell me how your dad walked with God; tell me more about it?’

GENESIS CHAPTER 6

And in Noah’s heart came a longing, and we read in Genesis chapter 6 that Noah (verse 9) walked with God. He walked with God too. And as he walked with God, God could find one man on the face of the earth to whom He could reveal His purposes. And He could tell him: ‘I’m going to do something, Noah. I’m going to judge this world’ just like he told Enoch.

You know it’s interesting that the first two people who walked with God, what God told them was He was going to judge the world for its sin. And every true prophet of God that’s what they have always preached: God’s going to judge believers for their sin; He’s going to judge the world for sin. Enoch preached it, Noah understood it as they walked with God, and that brought a seriousness in their life.

And they told others, and hardly anybody believed them. God told Noah to build this Ark, and Noah’s job was only to do what God told him to do. He used his own money to do God’s work. He didn’t ask God: who’s going to pay for it? If he had asked God, God said, ‘you of course; who else?’ Have you ever heard God say that: you’ve got to pay for God’s work that you’re doing?

We live in a country where everybody thinks that if I do God’s work, somebody else must pay me for it. Noah didn’t think like that.

Where was Noah going to get… who’s going to support Noah? He had to support himself, work extra hard to earn more money, to build the ark, to do God’s will. And he built that ark.

People asked: how did these animals come into the ark? That was God’s job. God brought the animals in; Noah’s job was to build the ark. You got to do only what God’s told you to do. He’ll take care of all the other things which look impossible.

And He brought the animals in, and He did all that God had commanded him… and we read finally: when the time came, God shut the door. Genesis 7:16: It was God who closed that door, not Noah. And God is going to one day close the door, and say, “The time is over for all those who want to come into God’s kingdom.”

Well they got inside the ark; I’m sure it was inconvenient inside the ark but it was safe. And that’s sometimes how it is in the church; we mingle together in the church with people who are of different types, and they rub us. And sometimes it’s not very convenient, but it’s safe. And I’m happy to be in the church; I hope you are. And that’s where we invite people to come in.

And we read finally the flood was about to subside, and Noah sent out a crow and a dove, a picture of the flesh and the Spirit. And that crow, the raven never came back. The raven found all the dead bodies of animals, and said ‘Boy, this the feast for me.’ That’s how it is when men of the flesh go out into the world.

And then he sent out a dove, a picture of a man of the Spirit, he goes out into the world, sees all the dead stuff; he says, ‘I want to come back to God’s people.’ Comes right back. He doesn’t find a home in the world; that’s how you know you’re a man of God or a woman of God, you’re a man of the Spirit. You go out to the world, you don’t feel at home.

I want to say to you, if you feel at home like the raven, that’s the clearest proof that you belong to the world: You’re a man living according to the flesh.

Finally, they come out, and the first thing Noah does: we read in Genesis chapter 8 verse 20.

Genesis 8:20: ‘He built an altar to the LORD and offered the clean animals.’ That’s why God had told him earlier: the clean animals and the clean birds, you must take seven pairs; the others two pairs, because he was going to offer sacrifice at the end, these clean animals.

The first thing he did was: kneel down and say ‘Thank you Lord.’ We see a wonderful example here.

One last thing I want to tell you is: even Noah was a weak man. He got drunk, and he lay naked in the tent one day, and his son saw him and reported it to others: dishonored his father, and a curse came upon Ham. Two of his other sons went backward and covered him, and they were blessed.

There is a very important message there for us. That’s the first place where we find God punishing a son and even a son’s son for dishonoring their father.

God takes it very seriously when we don’t respect authority. When you see a weakness in your father or in someone who is your spiritual leader, don’t talk about it like Ham, unless you want a curse. Be like Shem and Japheth, and have that love that covers a multitude of sins, and Noah blessed Shem and Japheth and said, virtually at the end of Genesis chapter 9, he said, let them have fellowship and that’s a lovely word there at the end of Genesis 9…

Genesis 9:27: ‘May God enlarge Japheth, let them dwell in the tents of Shem.’ A fellowship of those who have learned to cover the sins of others. Those are the people who really build fellowship and build the church. Those are the people who live together in the same tent who have learned to cover the sins of others. Let’s pray…

Resources for Further Reading:

Zac Poonen Sermon: The Fear Of God And Humility (Transcript)

(Through The Bible) Book of Romans (Part 1): Zac Poonen (Transcript)

(Through The Bible) Book of Romans (Part 2): Zac Poonen (Transcript)

A. W. Tozer Sermon: The Deeper Life (Transcript)

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