This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Genesis 1-4” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 9, 1993.

Chapter 2, we are beginning with verse 18. Let’s read the word of God. Then the Lord will be zealous for his land and will have pity on his people. And the Lord will answer and say to his people, Behold, I am going to send you grain, new wine and oil, and you will be satisfied and full with them, and I will never again make you a reproach among the nations. But I will remove the northern army far from you, and I will drive it into a parched and desolate land and its vanguard into the eastern sea. and its rear guard into the Western Sea, and its stench will arise and its foul smell will come up, for it has done great things.

Do not fear, O land, rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Do not fear, beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness have turned green, for the tree has borne its fruit. The fig tree and the vine have yielded in full. So rejoice, O sons of Zion, and be glad in the Lord your God, for He has given you the early rain for your vindication.

And He has poured down for you the rain, the early and latter rain as before, and the threshing floors will be full of grain and the vats will overflow with the new wine and oil. Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locusts have eaten, the creeping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the gnawing locusts, my great army which I sent among you. And you shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God who has dealt wondrously with you.

Then my people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the Lord your God and there is no other, and my people will never be put to shame. And it will come about after this that I will pour out my Spirit on all mankind, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. And even on the male and female servants I will pour out my spirit in those days, and I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth.

Blood, fire and columns of smoke, the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.” I’m returning to Genesis 4, verses 25 and 26. And Adam knew 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, for Cain killed him. And to Seth, to him also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord.”

Our Father, You are our help and our strength. Though the world be a dark place, You are our light. Even now you shine upon us with the radiance of your salvation. May we be pleased to walk with contentment in the light of the Lord. And Father, may we be then a people of light. May darkness not be found in us. And to this end, Lord, may we be gracious and kind and merciful and even place others before ourselves.

We ask, Lord, that you would hear us as we would give our full attention to your word. In Jesus’ name, amen. This very matter of the presence of the Lord that is raised for us here, very strikingly in Genesis 4, and particularly the sixteenth verse of that chapter, is indeed a further comment because, after all, this matter, the presence of the Lord, is the theme of this great portion of Scripture.

We have already commented on the parallel that exists between Genesis 4.16 and what we read at the conclusion of the third chapter of Genesis.

We marked out the parallel between these sections, making comment upon the common experience that overshadows the apparent common experience that overshadows Adam and Eve on the one hand and Cain on the other. Adam and Eve, together with Cain, experience exile. Cain’s exile is specifically described as an exile from the presence of the Lord. Adam and Eve’s exile is described specifically as an exile from the Garden and from the Tree of Life. We concluded from our observations with regard to this parallel that the exile undergone by Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life is therefore representative of an exile from the presence of God.

But this is not explicitly stated in the text. We’ll add to the veil that conceals the presence of God in the very tree that is in view. But this veil, when taken away will reveal the meaning of that tree in the paradise of God, where we who believe will delight in the fullness of that fruition that is found in God alone. So then, in a true, very true sense, Adam and Eve, being driven from that tree of life, are removed from the presence of God. communion and fellowship with God is then in a real and direct sense fractured. But the exile of Adam and Eve will prove to be more serious than denial of the vision of that tree of life.

The effect of that exile registers gradually as you move through the record given us in Genesis 4. As you move through that record, the noose of the fall and its curse increasingly tightens around the neck of humanity. even that portion of humanity that belongs to the line of God’s covenantal election, so that they feel the effects, and that severity.

Genesis 4 is meant to be horrifying. We are not to read this portion of Scripture classically. Genesis 4 is deliberately constructed in order to strike terror into the hearts of all those who read it and hear it. It is constructed so as to confront humanity, to confront all those who would read it and hear it, with the unmistakable consequences of the fall. The text itself builds towards desperation. You read the last line of Genesis 4, and if you cannot and do not perceive the note of desperation in that line, you have not understood what you have read.

Then men began to call on the name of the Lord. I understand how that text has been ordinarily treated. It has been treated along the lines of organized worship, as if here we have the beginnings of organized worship. No, that cannot be true, because it seems that with the offerings of Cain and Abel, there was some form of organization with respect to the worship offered to God. So if that is not its intention, then what is its intention?

Its intention is made plain against the background of what you read with respect to the lineage of Cain and the violence that erupts in that line, and specifically in the figure of Lambert. One then is compelled to understand this text in light of the desperate situation that exists. The violence that is described here is so pervasive, so thoroughly horrifying, that now men are driven to call upon the name of the Lord as their only source of deliverance and salvation. Genesis 4, then, is meant to be horrifying. It is deliberately constructed in order to strike terror into the hearts of all who hear it and read it. It builds towards desperation.

Now, you might miss it, because the Bible is rarely, if ever, melodramatic. But take into consideration the movement of the chapter, as if with the liberation befits the receiving of God. He is one who must be called upon now, because he isn’t apparently there. He isn’t visibly present. This chapter then depicts the receding of God, the receding of the Lord. He recedes from view, and the corollary enveloping of all into the gaping vacuum of God’s visible us. As things begin in the fourth chapter, we might not think that things are any too different than they were before.

God had made his occasional visits to Adam and Eve in the garden, and from the opening of the fourth chapter, it seems that he is still making occasional visits. Not to the garden, of course. But to his creatures outside the garden he comes obviously to Cain and Abel to converse with them, indicating by some means acceptance of one offering and the rejection of another, and then his interviews with Cain. God had made occasional visits to the garden. Those visits to the garden were a token to our first parents of a communion and fellowship with him. Now, after the fall, even though this family is outside of the garden, these continual visits or occasional visits continue.

When we read of Eve and the birth of her children. We know that Eve, because of God’s curse now, has herself been cursed in childbirth. That curse speaks about pain, but we hear nothing about the pain in Eve’s deliveries. Neither do we hear anything about the curse’s impact upon the work this family performs in the world.

The work in the field, the work with the herds. In some ways, then, it sounds as if things are continuing as they were. But incrementally, then, step by step, the descent is described for us, just in those interviews between the Lord and Cain. The Lord, in those interviews, concentrating upon the reality of evil, it’s not just a possibility now, it is a reality, that threatens Cain’s soul. This brings out the seriousness of the situation, followed by the crime, murder. the Lord’s subsequent visit and the interrogation of Cain and after that the pronouncement of sentence and Cain’s exile. We must read this exile, this exile of Cain as a reality, as much a reality as the exile locally, geographically from the garden and that tree of life mentioned in Genesis 3, and see the nature of the reality of that exile in terms of an alienation. For both now the exile in Genesis 3 and that in Genesis 4 are speaking about an alienation that comes about between God and his creature.

Cain lies beyond the edge, beyond the edge of gaining back what has been lost, left to himself, just as his parents were placed beyond the edge, incapable of gaining back what had been lost, left to themselves. Cain cannot recoup with no hope of recouping what access he had any more than his parents can hope to recoup that access to the tree left to themselves.

Such access now is portrayed as infinitely and absolutely impossible. And this accented by the disappearance of the Lord from the narrative. The Lord recedes then, he is no longer visibly present. His visitations will become exceedingly rare. and most deliberate when in fact he chooses to reveal himself in the world and to his own. But now by such action on the part of God, by this deliberate receding on his part, the Lord is making it evident But if there is to be access to him in the current situation, it can only be in terms of his invisibility, not in terms of his visibility.

And therefore, the only way to have access to him is in terms of faith. of faith. There is no other way. The need for faith is not then merely accented, it is demanded. It is absolutely indispensable. And God’s presence, the presence of the Lord, is itself made a reality only to those who believe. There will be a presence of the Lord that continues, then, for those who would call upon the Lord in faith. But this presence of the Lord is a reality that is accessible only through faith. But what trial of faith belongs to those who are brought to faith? Genesis 4 speaks volumes. What trial of faith belongs to those who have faith?

It is as if now all of culture develops with no regard to them whatsoever. Do you follow the line as you go down through the listing of Cain’s descendants? The world develops in such a way as to take them into consideration, not one whit. Culture itself develops in ways, it seems, that exclude them and exclude their God.

And with the development of this culture comes the increase of pride and violence. And who are the victims of this pride and violence but those who would place their trust in God. On the other side, the pride and the violence are perpetrated from those for whom the Lord’s presence has become a supreme matter of indifference. And the supposed threat from the Lord with respect to judgment is one grand joke. Do you read Lennox’s song, How He Mocks the Lord? Verse 24, If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lennox seventy-sevenfold.

The measurements of faith in the face of such threats is not just difficult. It is impossible. Do you realize the nature of the struggle that is going on in you day by day? As day by day there is set before you the record of violence, hostility, indifference, monumental pride, That you are maintained in faith is not to your credit, as if you were performing within yourself a difficult task.

That faith is maintained in you is to the Lord’s credit, that your boast may be of Him. That you believe at all in the faith of such things is a credit to the Lord, for left to yourself the maintenance of such things is utterly impossible. for the purpose of preserving his presence and testimony to it, thus in such ways that are accessible only by faith, sets about to work in you in this sin-cursed found world.

His action restores you, revives hope, His action works faith in you. He has not done the power in Eve’s body that conceives Seth. It is the power of God that works in her so as to revive hope in the midst of despair. It will be the Lord’s work in His people that keeps alive the memory of His name. they called upon the name of the Lord, so focusing the faith of that people that would be the Lord’s.

And this faith, what of it? Its grand supernatural power, credited to God, not to the believer. This faith is such that it grasps hold of God’s hidden presence as its lone security. And though desperate and feeling the pressure of the violence worse in the world, confident and calling out to the only one who can rescue, those who turn to the Lord for help.

In such faith the Lord is pleased, he recognizing his own work in those who believe. The Lord is pleased this one who is the God of the impossible, to bring you at last to perfect security and into his perpetual eternal presence. Seth becomes a forecast The calling upon the name of the Lord will be picked up again in prophetic literature, become a motto in Joel’s prophecy, caught hold of by the New Testament revelation, made full and complete in that one to whom Seth pointed, Jesus Christ. The wonderful words are spoken again with all force and power. He who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Draw us back, Lord, to Yourself and to the certainty of Your presence with us, accessible to us by faith, sealed to us by the work of Christ and no less by the workings of Your Spirit, that we with boldness may declare that we have called upon the name of the Lord and we shall be saved even in the midst of this barren, sin-cursed world in which violence multiplies and pride increases.

O Lord, you are the one who works the impossible, where he must stay, but also deliverance and a restoration to that which was impossible for us to gain, namely the wonders and fullness of your presence. We glory in our Savior, who is now himself called the Lord, and we have called upon you in calling upon him.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.