Sin's Wickedness

[0:00] Genesis chapter 4, beginning in verse 1. Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.

[0:14] And she said, I have gotten a man-child with the help of the Lord. Again she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

[0:24] 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.

[0:36] And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offerings, but for Cain and for his offering he had no regard. So Cain became very angry, and his countenance fell.

[0:49] Then the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

[1:00] And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it. Cain told Abel his brother, and it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

[1:17] Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

[1:33] Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you.

[1:44] You will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, My punishment is too great to bear. Behold, you have driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from your face I will be hidden.

[1:57] And I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. And the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.

[2:08] And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

[2:20] 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 to Enoch was born Erad, and Erad became the father of Mahuljeh.

[2:36] And Mahuljeh became the father of Methashel. And Methashel became the father of Lamech. And Lamech took to himself two wives. The name of the one was Ada. The name of the other was Zillah.

[2:48] Ada gave birth to Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.

[3:02] As for Zillah, she also gave birth to Tubal-Cain, the forger of all implements of bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Namah. Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zillah, Listen to my voice.

[3:16] You wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech. For I have killed a man for wounding me, a boy for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.

[3:31] Adam had relations with his wife again. And she gave birth to a son and named him Seth. For she said, God has appointed me another offspring in the place of Abel.

[3:43] For Cain killed him. To Seth, to him also a son was born. And he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.

[3:56] Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you, Lord, that your word is powerful. It is sharp. It is a two-edged sword. And it divides asunder between our thoughts and our intentions.

[4:09] It shows us our sin. It shows us our motivations. And we pray this morning that we would have our lives laid bare.

[4:23] So that we might rejoice in the grace that you have given. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Have you ever felt helpless?

[4:40] There's a certain kind of helplessness that I think about whenever I think about this. And I want to illustrate it because I think it's important that by the time we get to the end of the first point, because I have two points this morning.

[4:54] I think it's important that by the time we get to the end of the first point, for you to sit there and think to yourself, then what hope is there? That's my aim. That's my goal. I want you to feel the weight of it.

[5:05] I want you to feel almost in such a way that you almost weep because of what's going to be displayed for us in the text in the first point. And part of that comes just kind of remembering what it's like to feel helpless.

[5:22] And there was a moment in our life where there was this helplessness that we had. Years ago, we took a little vacation with friends of ours out to Rock Springs to Camp Eagle.

[5:34] And we went to this camp and enjoyed all of the various things that they had for us to enjoy. And one of the things that they had that they promoted was their zip line, which at the time was supposed to be one of the largest in Texas at least.

[5:48] And this zip line was developed on top of a cliff on one end where you climbed up a ladder that was probably 15, 20 feet to the platform. And you hooked in.

[5:58] You had a harness. The harness would come around your waist. And you would wrap it through, cover the red, wrap it around the leg, wrap it around the leg, and have a little hoop right here.

[6:09] And that's where the carabiner would go in and tighten up, and you would be connected to the cable above you and then clipped into that as well. And you step off the platform, and away you go.

[6:20] All the way off the hill, which the hill was probably about 50 feet above the valley floor below it. And then way down there, they had a little tower that they would push across in between the two lines so that once you got there, you would roll back and you could get up onto this tower, unhook, climb down, and go back and do it again.

[6:43] So our youngest daughter at the time, I guess she was actually our second youngest at the time, name is Haley. Haley, as a matter of fact, I texted her last night and I said, can I tell the story?

[6:53] And she said, yes, you can. I said, okay. So she and I had gone up onto the platform together, and I had gotten hooked in with the carabiner. They put her next to me, hooked her into the same carabiner with me, tightened it up, and the two of us stepped off the platform and, boom, made a beeline down the zip line.

[7:13] And she was laughing the whole time. She was having a great time. She's a little bit of a daredevil. Well, so we get off. We come down, and we're carrying our little things.

[7:25] We have to carry the rope and the little block that goes onto the cable. And as we get back up there, she wants to go again, and Michelle's about to go. So she wants to go with mom. So they both climb up the ladder.

[7:36] They get up on the thing. They carabine Michelle into this thing. They start to tighten it down. And she says, no, my daughter's going to come too. And so the one person starts to put Haley in there, but the boss guy shows up, and he says, no, no, no, no, no.

[7:50] She has to go down the line by herself. Well, okay. He said, y'all can just hold hands as you go down. So the thing you need to know is that those harnesses are not made for two-year-olds.

[8:11] So they step off. I know. I showed my wife that I was going to do this, and she says, because we relive this moment every so often. So Haley is on her line.

[8:25] Michelle's on her line. They're holding hands, as the boss guy said to do. And as they start to step off, because Michelle's an adult and Haley is a two-year-old, the speed at which Michelle starts to go down the line is far different than the speed at which the two-year-old's going.

[8:43] So the two-year-old is doing this. She gets completely horizontal, hanging by one point in a harness that is not tight around her waist or her legs, and she has got at least 80 feet drop.

[9:06] Everyone is screaming. They're screaming, let go, let go. Michelle's up there. I can only imagine what she's thinking. It's like if it were me, I'd be like, surely I'm Superman enough that I can jump out of my harness and grab her, or if she pulls out of her harness, I'll just swing her up and hold her.

[9:23] But here we are on the ground. I'm just sitting there watching this happen, and I'm going, like, there's nothing I can do. Now, before I tell you the end of the story, if when we're done, you don't understand sin as bringing about that feeling of helplessness, then you don't understand sin.

[9:50] The rest of the story is that Michelle let go. I don't know how she did that. The strength to let go of your daughter.

[10:04] And that little two-year-old reaches up and grabs the rope and goes, whoop, and makes it all the way to the end and gets off. She says, that was fun. Let's do it again. We're glad for the outcome.

[10:24] But we want to see sin. We want to see what this is, because if this is the disease, if this is the problem, if this is what separates us from God, if we do not have a clear picture of sin, then we can never understand fully the grace of God.

[10:40] And so my first point is where sin abounds. And I want you to see this spiral that happens in the life of Cain. There's a spiral that starts in this place, and it just spirals down as we sin.

[10:52] We see sin get compounded after time and time again. We've read the story, but let me just walk through again and just show you how this spirals down. It starts with the wrong worship.

[11:03] As Cain comes, and he brings an offering to the Lord that is not accepted, Cain brings from the produce of the ground. Abel brings from the animals.

[11:14] Oftentimes, people ask, well, why is this the case that Cain's offering is rejected? And so often, people just stay right here in Genesis 4 and won't look at the rest of the Bible.

[11:25] What does the rest of the Bible say? And let me give you a couple of thoughts here. Number one, we learn from Genesis 3 that God killed an innocent victim and took its skin and covered Adam and Eve.

[11:41] God has already set the pattern of the kinds of sacrifices that cover sin. So Abel is at least following after the example of God.

[11:52] But we also know, as we keep reading in the Old Testament, that God authorizes sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin. Right? In Leviticus and Exodus, we see that.

[12:04] But there's also a little bit of a hint in the New Testament. You go to Hebrews 11, verse 4, which says that by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain.

[12:18] Now, we could read the rest of this and describe it, but here's the big point. Abel offered his sacrifice by faith. Let me say that again.

[12:33] Abel offered his sacrifice by faith. You do understand what faith is. Faith is not a leap in the dark into something that you don't know is there.

[12:44] Faith is knowing and seeing the truth about something and entrusting yourself to it. It's like a parachute, right? If you go jump out of an airplane, and someone before you jump out says, here's you a parachute, put it on, strap it on, pull this cord.

[13:03] When you pull that cord, it will keep you from plummeting to the earth and dying. That those facts about that parachute means that as you jump out and you pull the cord, you are acting in faith because you know the truth and you entrust yourself to it.

[13:25] Abel knew the truth. Cain was probably taught the truth, but Cain did not bring his sacrifice by faith.

[13:36] We go to 1 John chapter 3. Verse 11 tells us, For this is the message which you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Verse 12, Not as Cain, who was of the evil one, and slew his brother, and for what reason did he slay him?

[13:58] Because his deeds were evil. It's saying right here that Cain, without faith, offering of the produce of the land, was doing something evil.

[14:15] And so what does this mean? This means that the beginning of sin and the wickedness of sin starts with wrong worship.

[14:26] He comes to God wanting to offer to God his worship, his way, his preferences, his desires, his wants.

[14:37] I want to come to you, God, on my terms. I want to come to you, God, in my way. I want to come to you, God, the way I desire. And that makes all the difference in the world because to come by faith is to come the way God tells us to come.

[14:53] Abel just offers a sacrifice. Cain wants to do it his own way. Well, God doesn't accept that sacrifice, so the next part of the spiral is that Cain gets angry.

[15:08] We see in verse 4 and 5 and 6 that his anger is described. It says he becomes very angry and his countenance fell. He's got a scowl on his face.

[15:20] He is angry at God. He's angry at God because his brother is accepted, but he's not. He might not would have admitted it in that moment, but he's angry.

[15:33] He just can't even look up. I mean, can you imagine being angry with God? I know a lot of people say that it's okay to be angry with God, and it's like, well, what planet do you live on where you think it's okay to be angry with God?

[15:48] Well, he's big enough to handle it. Yes, he is, but he's also holy and righteous and just. How dare we, little creations of dust, look at an almighty God and say, how dare you, God?

[16:01] That'd be like the ant looking at you and saying, how dare you knock over my home? He's getting angry with God. It goes on. The spiraling goes down even further.

[16:13] In verse 6 and 7, God speaks to Cain. I just want us to think about that for a second. How many times have you wanted God to speak to you audibly?

[16:31] I mean, I don't want that anymore, all right? So let's just clear that out. I do not want God to speak to me audibly anymore because I'm afraid. I'm afraid if God speaks audibly, a lot of times, the audible speaking of God involves judgment.

[16:46] I don't really wish to have that. He has spoken and I trust his word. That's good enough for me. But here's Cain and God is talking to him.

[16:57] Cain has done what is evil and so God hasn't accepted his sacrifice and he's angry with God. So as God comes to speak to him, God says, listen, listen, you got to lift your countenance back up.

[17:11] If you don't watch it, sin's crouching at the door. Sin's going to try to ambush you. In other words, he's saying, you've already sinned and if you don't watch it, you're going to sin some more. So what God is doing is he's giving him counsel about how he ought to act.

[17:26] Now, I just want you to think about that. God comes down, speaks audibly to Cain, like face to face, tells him what he needs to do, gives him a warning about his behavior and his attitude and what's going on in his heart.

[17:42] Can you even imagine what that would feel like for God to speak that way to us? And yet, what does Cain do? Ignores God.

[17:54] He ignores the counsel that God gives. He won't even listen to it. And it's not like he's confused about who's talking here.

[18:06] And so he spirals down a little further because in verse 8, he tells his brother, now that's what it says, he told his brother Abel. What that is is that he's inviting his brother.

[18:20] He's inviting his brother out into the field. He has set an ambush for his brother. So this is all premeditated.

[18:31] It's all premeditated. And if you go back to 1 John 3, verse 12, he murdered and slayed his brother because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

[18:44] So what does Cain do? Cain, not only does he bring the wrong kind of worship, it's rejected and he gets angry about that. God gives him counsel and says, you better watch out, something bad's gonna happen.

[18:58] But premeditatedly, he goes out and he brings his brother along and because his brother is righteous, because his brother by faith offers a right kind of sacrifice and is counted righteous, Cain hates him enough that he kills his own brother.

[19:17] It's exactly as Jesus said that from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. You see, this murdering of his brother was just a symptom.

[19:29] its wickedness is there. We see its wickedness. We see him just spiraling down. But really, Cain's problem is with the Lord. But he kills his brother because he can't stand the reminder of what's happening.

[19:51] From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The next part of the spiral goes down even further, verses 11 through 15, where he complains about his punishment.

[20:02] God tells him, here's going to be your punishment. Not only are you with your parents banished from the garden, but now, Mr. Produce Man, Mr. Farmer Dude, now that you've killed your brother, you're not going to be farming anymore.

[20:16] You're banished from the ground. So now he's going to have to raise some cattle. Now he's going to have to go hunting. Now he's going to have to do another way to find food on his own. And what does he say?

[20:28] Oh, this is just too much for me to bear. Oh, well, poor, pathetic little you. Did you not think about this before you got into this? Isn't that the way we are?

[20:42] The last part of this spiral is that as Cain finds a wife, and now let me just say this, this is totally, totally on the side here, because everybody is going to say to me.

[20:56] So where did Cain get his wife, right? We don't know. If God wanted us to know, he would have told us.

[21:16] If he didn't tell us, then he doesn't want us to spend our time and our wills trying to figure it out. So if you come up to me at the end of the sermon and say, I think I know where Cain got his wife, I'm going to look at you, I'm going to say, repent.

[21:35] I got enough trouble dealing with the things that God has really told me, not having to make up a bunch of stuff where it's speculation trying to figure something out that I don't know, and I don't have enough information to know.

[21:49] But whatever, he has a wife, he begins to have a family, and what's happening with this spiral of this wickedness is that it passes on to our children.

[21:59] That's what it means in the Bible where it says that he visits the sin to the third and fourth generation. It's not that he condemns the children for the father's sin, it's that sin is inherited from generation to generation to generation.

[22:15] And in Cain's line, we see one, Lamech, verse 22 through 24, who has inherited the sin of Cain. Listen to what he says.

[22:26] He says, Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me, and a boy for striking me.

[22:42] If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold. Lamech has done something. He's done something similar to Cain, and he's trying to compare himself to Cain, and here's how the comparison goes.

[22:59] Cain killed his brother because of the problem of eternal significance, right? Because his offering was not accepted.

[23:10] God did not accept him. His deeds were evil, so there's all kinds of evil going on there. Well, it gets worse with Lamech because he kills someone for a wound.

[23:22] You know what this wound means? It's a flesh wound. That's what it is. It's nothing but a scratch, something that in three days time would be healed, and he kills the boy for it.

[23:42] in Cain, God is the one who would avenge Cain's death, but in this one, Lamech is saying that he is going to be avenged.

[23:55] In other words, Lamech is not only saying that he's executed somebody for something, but he will be the avenger of anybody who tries to get even with him. This is how we are.

[24:09] This is the wickedness of sin. Now, before I get into application, I just want to mention that what we have in Cain and Abel is we have Genesis 3.15 beginning to be fulfilled.

[24:27] Genesis 3.15 says that the offspring, that he will put hostility between the serpent and the woman, and between the serpent's offspring and the woman's offspring.

[24:39] Cain is of the line of the serpent, and Abel is of the line of the woman. And we've just seen Cain's lineage, and we've seen this sin in him, but you need to understand there is sin in Abel's line as well.

[24:54] How do we know? Chapter 5, verse 5, and he died. Chapter 5, verse 8, and he died. Chapter 5, verse 11, and he died.

[25:05] Chapter 5, verse 14, and he died. Chapter 5, verse 17, and he died. Chapter 5, verse 20, and he died. Chapter 5, verse 27, and he died.

[25:16] Chapter 5, verse 31, and he died. But what we see in Cain is just how wicked sin can be.

[25:26] So here's the application of this, and this is where we've got to really pay attention to what we're saying here. if this is true, if what we've just described and seen, how sin works, where it starts in some sort of fountainhead way up here, some sort of headwaters way up here, of wrong worship, and works its way down, and begins to grow in magnitude, begins to grow in decay, begins to grow in its broad swath, right?

[25:59] Then it takes out a whole entire life, and it affects anything and everybody around. Then you and I must change the way we think about people.

[26:17] Here's what I believe. I believe that, by and large, most of us think that ourselves, our family, our friends, and those around us are pretty close to perfect and sinless.

[26:32] I know that you're sitting there kind of going, oh, no, I know, you used to see my spouse here at home, they're not really perfect. It's like, no, but you actually kind of do believe that they are. You actually do.

[26:45] I hear it all the time. I hear it all the time when I hear people say things like, oh, well, you know, he's a good guy. Or, you know, this person in my family, they've got a good heart.

[26:57] Listen, nobody is good. nobody has a good heart. We are all wretched, wicked sinners deserving nothing more than death and hell.

[27:10] You can hear it in parenting. Right? Your child does something and they disobey you, and when you begin that moment of correction, one of the first things that comes out of your mouth is what?

[27:22] I cannot believe you did that. I cannot, I can't believe you just did that. Why would you say, why would you say that? You absolutely can believe that they did that because you did that when you were a kid.

[27:37] I mean, what are you thinking? Did you think that your children came out as saints? And then all of a sudden they're doing something bad and you're kind of going like, I can't believe you did that. We can even say that in our marriages.

[27:49] We can look at one another and we can say to ourselves, it's like, well, I can't believe you would treat me that way. It's like, well, what did you expect? You didn't marry a saint. You didn't marry somebody who was good.

[28:02] You didn't marry somebody with a good heart. You married a sinner. What do you expect from sinners? Do you understand what I'm trying to say to you? I'm really trying to push you hard here. I'm trying to offend you if I can, because you've got to understand that that sin is so rampant in us.

[28:19] It makes us so wicked that we will take and destroy everything. Oh, look at Cain in the worship of God with evil. You think about teenagers.

[28:31] Teenagers, I want you to think about your parents. You think about your parents. You think about the last time they corrected you. And you think about how mad you got because they corrected you.

[28:42] And maybe they corrected you and you were in the right. Maybe you hadn't done what was wrong and they don't believe you and they correct you and you're thinking to yourself, well, how can they even do this to me?

[28:54] It's like, well, what do you expect? Your parents, they're sinners. They are sinners. You can see it in the church. Hmm.

[29:10] Let me just say it this way and I'll move on. I am the chief of sinners.

[29:22] If you get into an interaction with me and think to yourself, oh my goodness, I can't believe he acted that way. Then who did you think you called?

[29:34] You know, let's just pretend for a moment that Medina is a small place.

[29:47] And when somebody has a beef and they go around and they visit one of the, you know, trillion establishments around here and share a little bit of their beef, then all of a sudden everybody begins to talk about so-and-so.

[30:00] And let's just put my name in that. Let's just say, oh man, you would not believe that pastor. Pastor Brady, I'm telling you what, he did this and this and this and this.

[30:12] Here's what I'm saying to you. Take and let everybody in the whole town say what they want to about me. You only know a tenth of the wickedness that is in my heart.

[30:30] you will never scratch the surface of it. Until you start seeing people that way, you're never going to bring them the solution that they need.

[30:49] Because the solution that somebody needs who is wicked in the heart, a Christian, a Christian who's been bought by the blood of Christ and covered with the righteousness of Christ, I believe that I am, right?

[31:00] But when he saved me, he didn't remove all the sin part, right? It's still there. And even I need to hear someone say to me every once in a while, you know, pastor, I know it's hard to be kind.

[31:16] I know it's hard to keep your tongue tamed. I know it's hard to control your anger. But that's why Jesus came to die on the earth, to forgive you of that sin and to empower you so you don't have to do that ever again.

[31:32] But if you think that I'm a saint, if you think I'm okay, then you won't say that. You'll be like, oh, well, that's okay. Loving, we cannot, we cannot excuse the sin, but we must see.

[31:49] We must see it for what it is. We must see one another that way. You need to see Christians that way. You need to see lost people that way because they all need the gospel.

[32:01] Now, I'm looking at my time and I am going to march on through the sermon. So we're going to go a little bit long today. So you just hang on to your hats, okay? This last point is maybe a fourth as long as the first point.

[32:14] I promise you it's a short point. Because when we see all of that rampant wickedness and we see that sin, the question is, is what hope is there? Is there any hope?

[32:25] Is there any grace in these passages that we're looking at, chapter 4 and 5? And there are. And there's a couple. I'm going to give them to you just real quickly. Number one, there's the sacrifices that they made.

[32:37] God knew that they were sinners. He already banished them from the garden and he gave them the ability to have sacrifices to be able to draw near to him. That was his grace. Number two, he warned Cain.

[32:50] He told Cain, you need to watch out. And here's the thing that's even more amazing, that in 1 John chapter 3, verse 12, it says that Cain was of the evil one.

[33:01] It means that his eternal destiny was set. And with his eternal destiny set as of the evil one, as an offspring of Satan, God still spoke to him with kindness and warned him to walk away from his sin.

[33:16] next, the punishment that God could have meted out to Cain was to take Cain's life, but God didn't take his life.

[33:29] The punishment he gave was less than what he deserved. And then finally, the last way we see grace is in chapter 5 because we have the descendants of Seth.

[33:42] And I just want to point out a couple of these descendants of Seth. I'm not going to talk about all of them. But first of all, you have Seth himself. He is made in the likeness of his father Adam.

[33:54] He is the third son. He is the offspring of the woman who replaces Abel. Abel was an innocent who was killed whose blood screams out the righteousness.

[34:07] Then there's the offspring of Enosh. Enosh is the one who, in his time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. That's Genesis 4, 26. Then we have Enoch.

[34:20] Enoch was a man who walked with God and he was not. God took him. Right? His life was righteous and because of that, God took him.

[34:30] So he was no longer here. And then we come to Noah. And when we get to Noah, we see in verse 28 through 32 of chapter 5 that Lamech, a different Lamech than the one in chapter 4, lived 182 years and became the father of a son.

[34:46] Now he called his name Noah, saying, this one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed. In other words, Lamech believed that his son Noah was going to be the promised offspring of the woman who would give rest to them from the work and from the curse.

[35:06] Now, it's not bad that Lamech thought that. But my point is, is that they each one in every generation were looking at their children and their sons going, is this the one?

[35:19] Is this the one? Is this the one? Is this the one? And when Moses wrote the book of Genesis to Israel, he is illustrating for them out of this line what the promised one would look like.

[35:33] And so let me just lay that out for you. Number one, the one who is going to be the promised one will bring relief from the curse the way they thought Noah would.

[35:44] He is going to be one who would be of the seed of the woman the way all of them were. He is the one who was made in the likeness of his father Adam as Seth was.

[35:55] He walked with God as Enoch did. And because of him, people began to call upon the name of the Lord like Enoch. And he was killed for his righteousness like Abel.

[36:07] And because God was pleased with him, he is no longer here like Enoch. Do you understand what I'm saying? As they looked at every generation, they would begin to see the one who's going to be the promised one is going to be someone special.

[36:22] And that someone special is the Lord Jesus Christ. He came so that we might have hope in the middle of this. The helplessness we feel because of sin, we don't have to because number one, he died to forgive us of our sins.

[36:36] Number two, his death brings the Holy Spirit in which he pours out upon our hearts so that we might live according to his law. And it is by the gospel that we have the opportunity to spread the gospel to others.

[36:52] Think about this. Is there sin in your family because someone in your family has sinned? Is there sin in your marriage because someone in your marriage has sinned?

[37:04] Is there sin at your workplace because someone in your workplace has sinned? What hope can you bring to them? Talking about them behind their back?

[37:16] Getting angry at them because they're being sinners? Or bringing the life-giving message that Christ took our sin and died upon the cross for us? You see, it's kind of like this.

[37:28] Friday night, we had four different kinds of people who showed up. We had us, workers, belonging to this church.

[37:41] Some people who were workers who didn't belong to this church, there were some youth that didn't belong here, but they came and they worked the games and we had some people working different things. We also had people from the community who wanted to just kind of demonstrate stuff about what they've got, right?

[37:56] And they were here with the Lions Club and this kind of a thing. And then we had people who came in and wanted to play, wanted to hang out. They registered, right? They came up to the tables, they wrote their names and scribbled their names and made them completely illegible so we couldn't read them.

[38:13] And then we had people who actually showed up who didn't register, who didn't work, and that's fine. They wanted to just come hang out and see things. Now, I'll just tell you this, that the people who registered, once we counted them all, how many people registered?

[38:29] Right? Because those are the people we're after. 167 people registered. And I don't have Facebook, but I have a Facebook stalker who tells me things.

[38:44] And one of the things that people are saying is, great job, great job, great job. And I'm so happy about that. And you may this week encounter somebody who says to you, you know, that was a great thing First Baptist did.

[38:59] That was a great thing First Baptist did. Right here. Right here. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. What should your response be? Your response should be, well, we did this because number one, we love God, we love the gospel, and we want to tell people about the gospel.

[39:23] That seems like three, but that's all one. We love God, so we love his gospel, and we don't tell people about him. And number two, we love you, and we would love to tell you about the gospel too. Why don't you come Sunday morning and listen to the sermons?

[39:37] I mean, we could sit there all day long and go, well, thank you, thank you. Pat us on the back. No, no, we don't want to be patting ourselves on the back. We want to turn it to Jesus. Why?

[39:49] Because that's the only hope that anybody in this town has. Remember, nobody is good, and they need Jesus.

[40:06] Let's pray together.