Beyond the Cherubim

See, you open up God's brochure for testimonials of living faith, and the first man of faith you encounter gets killed for it. How many books do you think Abel would sell? Here's faith, walk in it, die, okay?

Sign up. I mean, how many decision cards are you going to get filled out after Abel delivers his personal testimony? See, ladies and gentlemen, as we explore the life of Abel, let me remind you that Hebrews chapter 11 is not looking for decisions.

It's looking for a disciple. The story of Cain and Abel provides us with a lot of firsts in history. Those brothers experienced the first sibling rivalry. Cain committed the first murder. The story provides the first account of true and false religion. Now, Stephen mentioned a moment ago, Abel was the first human hero, and he's listed in Hebrews 11, the Heroes Hall of Faith.

Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. Today, Stephen Davey continues through his series called Heroes by looking at the brief amount of information we have about Abel. Abel's life shows us what obedience to God requires. I find it fascinating that the very first human being brought to our attention in Hebrews 11 is a man who suffered because of his demonstration of living faith.

His name is Abel, and he not only suffered, but he paid the ultimate price because he died for it, right? Open the 11th chapter of Hebrews, and you're almost immediately confronted with the fact that God will break every rule in a marketing campaign. Do you want people to sign up for Christianity? Promise them a life that guarantees a long and healthy and a happy and a rose-strewn path of prosperity in their journey, and they may sign on. See, you open up God's brochure for testimonials of living faith, and the first man of faith you encounter gets killed for it. How many books do you think Abel would sell? Here's faith, walk in it, die, okay?

Sign up. I mean, how many decision cards are you going to get filled out after Abel delivers his personal testimony? You see, ladies and gentlemen, as we explore the life of Abel, let me remind you that Hebrews chapter 11 is not looking for decisions. It's looking for disciples.

Take a lifetime. See, Hebrews 11 is going to show us faith that is genuine over and against the artificial stuff that you can say promises every good thing. So if you have your Bibles at chapter 11 in verse 4, by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain.

We'll find out why later. Through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. He was declared right before God. God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. Now, this text immediately takes us to the beginning of human history, and it informs us of some rather dramatic things that are taking place. So I want you to turn back to the fuller account of Abel's testimony all the way back to the book of Genesis, and you'll discover the Bible giving you a number of events.

We don't have time for many of them, but I want to look at some very appropriate events. If you go to chapter 3, this is just after Adam and Eve are exposed. They are confronted by God in the garden for having eaten the forbidden fruit, and God delivers several curses on his once innocent creation. He curses the serpent there in verse 15. He says, And I will put enmity between you, Satan, that is, and the woman, between your seed, that is all who follow you, and her seed, that is all who follow, the one who will come from her seed.

That's a reference to the virgin birth, the coming of the Messiah. He goes on to say that he shall bruise you on the head, literally crush you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. You're going to bruise the Messiah, but he's going to crush you.

That's what he's saying. Satan will be able to bring about damage and destruction to the followers of this coming Redeemer, including the Redeemer himself, but it'll only be temporary bruises. But he, the Redeemer, will mortally wound, crush the head of Satan in defeat. And then in this chapter, God delivers his punishment upon Adam and Eve, and I know you may be familiar with this. We can't spend a lot of time here, but he informs them that they're now going to be barred from the garden. They can't go back in into what effectively was paradise. It represented intimate worship and fellowship with God. They're barred. Now, just before he sends them out of the garden, notice verse 21.

Look down there. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. This is the very first acting out of atonement. This is the first death which effectively covered the guilt of sin. It was the first picture of the coming Redeemer who would become the final sacrifice for sin. Now, you know, Adam and Eve had attempted to cover over their guilt with fig leaves. That's the first attempt of false religion.

Man-made effort to hide a guilty conscience. The problem is God can see through fig leaves and the sin remains. So instead, what God does is he provides for them clothing from the bloodshed of an innocent animal. He effectively then teaches Adam and Eve that through the blood of an innocent animal, their sin would be covered temporarily while they waited for the seed of the woman, the coming one who would permanently atone for the guilt of all of the sin of all mankind for all time. Everyone in the Old Testament then looked forward to the cross, we look back to that final expiation as it were of sin. So how did Adam and Eve respond?

Though they are shamed and cursed and fallen and dejected and sorrowful, they trusted in the atoning work of God and they choose to trust him as they are expelled from the garden. And we know that because of the very next chapter, notice chapter four and verse one. We read, now the man had relations with his wife, Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain and she said, I have gotten the man child with the help of the Lord. In other words, what that informs us is instead of rebelling against God in anger, instead of rejecting the atoning plan of God, she's maintaining a trust in God and here in the delivery room, she is praising God for the birth of her son and more than that, she's naming him Cain, which means to get, to get something or even more woodenly, he's here, the one I've gotten. In fact, many Old Testament scholars believe she's actually referring back to the earlier promise of the man child coming to redeem them and she is right here effectively thinking, he's it, he's here. The redeemer has come and she praises God that she has delivered him.

Well, she's not exactly right, is she? In fact, unfortunately, Cain will not be mankind's redeemer, he will become mankind's first murderer. He won't give life, he will take life. Soon after the birth of Cain, we're not told how long, Eve bears their second son, Abel. Now Abel and Cain grow up, verse two, basically if we summarize it, they grow up and one of them decides to get his major in animal husbandry and the other son decides to major in agriculture and keep in mind, they're growing up outside the garden, fully aware of their parents history, they're fully aware of God's system of sacrifice and atonement, fully aware of the promise of the coming sacrifice, the redeemer and we know that because of verse three, notice, so it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Now it came about in the course of time. That phrase is an expression for an annual event. You could write in the margin of your Bible the word yearly or annually. The end of days can literally be translated the revolution of days, the end of the year. Now we would love to have a lot more information given to us, but we take the implications and what we can read and we can put some of these clues together.

This was evidently standard procedure. Cain and Abel did not come up with the idea of atonement. It was handed down to them by Adam and Eve.

Again, we're not given the detailed curriculum of their religious education at home, but the actions of these two sons are consistent with an awareness of what God has done, what God is requiring in this post-garden existence regarding sacrifice. You see, it wasn't man's idea to come up with an altar. It's not man's creation. It wasn't man's idea, hey, let's heap some stones up on top of each other and let's kill an innocent animal and burn it on an altar.

Hardly. God had obviously given to mankind the way to approach him, and it was through blood sacrifice. So if I could just stop for a moment and give you a very, very quick four point overview, here's what's happening in early human history. In Genesis chapter one, if you're taking notes, you have the creation of man by God. In Genesis chapter two, you have communion between man and God. In Genesis chapter three, you have corruption away from God. And in Genesis chapter four, you have confession toward God, creation of man by God, communion between man and God, corruption away from God, and confession toward God. Now that confession is nothing less than a statement of faith.

Don't miss that. It's a statement of faith in God's mercy by way of blood sacrifice, the innocent dying for the guilty. Now notice verse three again. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.

That lets us know the animal was already dead. He's already separated it out. There's already instruction given to him on how to offer fat and how to offer the rest of the animal. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering, but for Cain and for his offering, he had no regard. Now, frankly, most people unfortunately believe that Cain got the short end of the straw.

I mean, how unlucky can he get? He went into farming and his brother went in the livestock. And wouldn't you know it, God preferred livestock to vegetables and fruit. Cain must have been thinking, what a bummer.

I chose the wrong career. That isn't Cain's problem. And that isn't God's problem with Cain's offering. Now based on the collation of events found in the first five chapters of Genesis, and I'm not going to put you to sleep with all the details, but we have enough clues regarding the age of Adam, the ages of his sons, at least fairly closely, Cain, Abel, and Seth. Old Testament scholars place Cain, get this, at around 120 years of age when this event occurs in Genesis chapter four.

That is really significant to understand. Cain was at least 120 years of age and Abel not too far behind. Now keep in mind before the flood, these early forefathers lived hundreds of years. In fact, Adam died when he was 930 years old.

That's a lot of candles, isn't it, on your pancakes. Well here you got Cain and Abel relatively than young. They're in their hundreds. That's young. That'd be good. And the point is, and this is significant, that Cain and Abel have offered individual sacrifices to God for at least a hundred years.

This isn't their first time. Only this time recorded here, Cain effectively says, I'm tired. I'm getting animals from my brother. You know, I don't want to go out to his ranch again. I'm just as significant to God.

I'm working just as hard as anybody else. I mean, what's the big deal? This year, I'm gonna do it my way, and I'm gonna bring my blue ribbon vegetables and fruit, and I'm gonna offer them on the altar to God. Listen, you know what this also tells us? It tells us that that Satan, the deceiver, has not been on vacation. He's been working for more than a hundred years with the same strategy he used on Cain's mother. Cain eventually falls basically for the same line used a century earlier when the serpent whispered into the ear of his mother, did God really mean that? Come on, aren't you taking God's Word a little too seriously? Why would God bother? You've got a perfect attendance record at the altar.

A hundred years. Never mind its fruit from the ground that God, by the way, has cursed. This time, do it your way. So after approaching God, perhaps for a hundred years earlier, this time Cain says, I'm going to approach God with the work of my hands, never mind is from the fruit of ground cursed, I'm sure God won't mind. You know what we have here? We have in this text the beginning of the history of world religions.

This is where it all starts. I mean, they all look good too. It all kind of looks the same like syrup until you taste it. You can look at it and you can't really tell the difference.

I mean, think about it. Here you have in Genesis chapter 4, both Cain and Abel are coming to the prescribed place of sacrifice. They both seem to want to please God. They both seem to want to worship God. They both come at the prescribed annual season of worship.

They both come to use the altar. They both demonstrate faith in an invisible God that he would be pleased, but one of them is artificial and the other one is genuine. So you take a closer look here and Abel is obedient to God's plan of forgiveness and atonement. Cain is disobedient to God's plan. Abel is bringing what God wanted.

Cain is bringing what he wanted. Abel is following divine revelation. Cain is following human reason. Abel is, this is the most important part, is coming by way of the promise of a future cross and Cain is ignoring the way of the cross.

In fact, Jude 11 all the way over nudging right up against the book of Revelation. Jude refers to religious systems categorically by saying they are the way of Cain. They're the way of Cain. Cain becomes an example throughout human history, not of genuine faith, but of religious works, religious systems. They say we believe in a higher deity. We want to worship this higher deity.

We're committed to religious practices and religious works, but in the meantime we're going to deny the specific satisfactory atoning work of the Messiah on the cross for our sin. That is the way of Cain. Let me bring to God what I've produced. Listen, Cain is simply offering his version of fig leaves to God. The problem is you can't get back to God your way. In fact, the way to God is barred from the Garden of Eden and the fall of man all the way through the Old Testament and up to the cross of Jesus Christ, God will clearly illustrate that the way back to him is under lock and key, and you got to have the right key.

Let me show you what I mean a little further. What you see here in Genesis 4 is Cain and Abel coming with their offering. Now there's no need of building an altar here, and you don't find them doing that. That's because the altar already exists.

They've been using it for a hundred years. Cain and Abel did not only have a prescribed time for worship at the end of days annually, they not only have a prescribed manner of how to approach God through animal sacrifice, but they also had a place to worship him. We're told that when Adam and Eve left the garden, God assigned a pair of cherubim, you remember? Warrior angels they were, and they were assigned to guard the garden, and we're told specifically in chapter 3 and verse 24 of Genesis that they guarded the entrance to the garden on the east side, preventing mankind from re-entering. Many believe it would be at that place, right there in the presence of those cherubim or nearby, with their flaming sword, it would be at that place where Adam and Eve and later their sons, the place that marked their exile, the place where the curse was delivered of a promised redeemer, the place where they would long to regain fellowship, it would be that place where they would come to offer God, God prescribed atoning sacrifices. Frankly I don't find it coincidental at all that the priests would later approach worshiping God both in the tabernacle and the temple by entering from the east side. Now we're not told how long these cherubim guarded the Garden of Eden, they may very well have stayed until the flood of Noah wiped mankind off the face of the earth just a few chapters later, Genesis chapter 7, and that flood reshaped the topography of earth and that catastrophic event and of course caused the garden to be no more. But get this, even after the flood, the memory of the fall of man and the exile of mankind from paradise, that garden, the memory of the cherubim which guarded the entrance of the garden and the presence of God, God wanted kept alive, God did not want mankind to forget. And so as Israel departs from Egypt years later during the time of Moses, God gives instructions related to the construction of the tabernacle, this is that movable meeting place, and in the center was the Holy of Holies, where in rested the Ark of the Covenant, a golden box containing the law tablets delivered by Moses to the people. It was a place of God's unique presence.

Priests could come into the room just outside the Holy of Holies, a place called the Holy, a room called the Holy Place where they performed a number of sacred duties. But a heavy curtain separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, and God prescribed in Exodus chapter 26 that Israelite seamstresses were to embroider into the fabric of that curtain the figures of cherubim. To deliver the message, the cherubim are still guarding the way back.

It's under lock and key effectively. At best the people could sacrifice to God at a distance, not far away. Later the temple was built and once again huge cherubim were sewn into the curtain leading into the Holy of Holies to signify once again access is restricted The idea of God walking with you in the cool of the day, that's over. God doesn't want mankind to forget why and how to approach him. In fact in the temple I have read that they had sculpted cherubim standing guard in the inner sanctuary, 1st Kings 6, 15 feet high with their wings spread out 15 feet wide. When you walk in there and you're struck with those warrior angels are still guarding the way.

How do we ever get past them? Imposing, impressive. You see the message from the Garden of Eden is alive and well you can't come in here but you can sacrifice nearby as I've prescribed it. Even now as Horatius Bonar wrote a poem that said it so well he said this, not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul not what my toiling flesh is born can make my spirit whole thy work alone O Christ can ease this weight of sin thy blood alone O Lamb of God can give me peace within no other work save vine no other blood will do no strength save that which is divine can bear me safely through. Jesus paid it all. Beloved everything else is fig leaves everything else is religion everything else is the way of Cain and Abel by the way begins this legacy is the first person in Hebrews 11 he practiced outside the garden what Jesus would submit to in the garden. You see Abel's sacrifice was one lamb for one person later came Passover it would be one lamb for one family then later came the annual sacrifice on the Day of Atonement it would be one lamb for one nation and then came the Messiah the seed of the woman virginborn the Redeemer and it would be one lamb for the entire world. What is Mr. Abel this hero of faith saying today I think he would gladly sing with us the lyrics my faith has found a resting place not in device or creed I trust the ever-living one his wounds for me shall plead I need no other argument I need no other plea it is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. I hope the lyrics to that song resonate with your heart today our faith rests totally and completely in Christ there's nothing else we need I'm glad you joined us today this is wisdom for the heart with pastor and author Stephen Davey the lesson you heard today is called beyond the cherubim and it comes from our series out of Hebrews 11 called heroes by now many of you have received copies of our new magazine heart to heart we'd be really interested to learn what you think and hear any comments or feedback you have send an email to info at wisdom online org and if you haven't received a copy include your full mailing address so that we can add you join us again tomorrow for our next lesson here on wisdom for the heart.