EDEN: ONCE UPON A PARADISE
ALTAR BOYS
FATHER’S DAY
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 4:1-8
JUNE 15, 2008
In the year 1980 archeologists discovered and unearthed a great altar found on Mount Ebal. Mount Ebal is in the region today called The West Bank. In biblical times, Mount Ebal was in the region of Samaria in the greater land of Palestine. Archeologists unearthed this great altar on Mount Ebal just 28 years ago in 1980. The question occurred to them, “Maybe, just maybe, this is the great altar of Joshua mentioned in Deuteronomy, chapter 27, mentioned in Joshua, chapter 8 where we’re told that Joshua built a great altar on Mount Ebal when he entered the Promised Land, so archeologists and scientists set about to date this great altar on Mount Ebal. They discovered that it’s Early Iron Age. They discovered that it dates back to about 1200 BC, not quite old enough to be the Altar of Joshua but it should not surprise us that there would be many altars on Mount Ebal because, you see, in the ancient world altars were virtually everywhere.
Altars were all over the Roman world and all over the Greek and the Hellenized world. If you had gone to any one of the Roman or Greek cities, cities like Rome, cities like Athens, cities like Corinth of Ephesus or Antioch, you would have seen many temples. If you had gone to any of these cities you would have found, as you walked down the street, temple after temple after temple, each temple dedicated to a deity, each temple dedicated to a different god and in each temple an altar so that worshippers could come. They would come and they would make their offering to the gods. They would bring an animal and they would burn a third of the animal on the altar as an offering to a deity and then they would give a third of the animal to the priests of the temple for their livelihood and then they would keep the final third of the animal. They would take it home and then throw a big party celebrating the fact that they had pacified and pleased the gods and were now protected.
This was the ancient world and altars like that were in virtually every city, large or small. Of course, not all of the altars were used for animal sacrifices, People brought other offerings. In the city of Rome outside of the Pantheon there was an altar called The Altar of Tears and people just came to that altar to cry. They would cry about loved ones who were dying or who were sick and they would plead with the gods. They would come to The Altar of Tears because of their sin and they would cry before their gods seeking mercy. And so, it was throughout the ancient world.
In Israel and the Middle East there were many altars also, many high places. We get the word “altar” from a Latin word which means, “high place.” There were many high places, many altars in Israel. They were built on mountaintops, on top of hills, and they were of course located in the temple and the tabernacle. In the temple and tabernacle there was the altar of burnt offering and the altar of incense, the bronze altar, the golden altar. This was part of the life of Israel. The word for altar in Hebrew was “mizbeach.” Mizbeach simply meant, “to offer” or “to sacrifice.” This was the word altar, mizbeach, to altar or to sacrifice.
The Greek word was “bomos.” Bomos meant, “to approach.” You combine the Greek and the Hebrew and you kind of get a full understanding of what altars were all about. You approach God to make an offering. So, homos and mizbeach, you approach God to make an offering.
Now, I would suggest to you that this side of Eden, this side of the Garden, nothing is more important than understanding what it means to approach God and what it means to make an offering so we’re going to look today at what it means to approach God and we’re going to look today at what it means to make an offering and what kind of offering God might be wanting from you.
We’re going to do two things. First of all, we’re going to look at Cain and Abel and the offerings that they brought to the altar. Then we’re going to conclude the service and the sermon by looking at ourselves and what we’re bringing to the altar.
So, we start with Cain and Abel, Genesis, chapter 4. You know the story. You know that they both, in the course of time, brought their offerings to God. They became altar boys. They brought their gifts to the altar. You know that the offering of Abel was accepted by God and the offering of Cain was rejected by God. You know that Cain became jealous of his brother Abel, rose up and murdered him. You know that the judgement of God then fell upon Cain. He was banished from the land. People have questions. People have questions and some of the questions that people ask have great import and great substance and some questions that people ask are kind of frivolous.
First of all, people want to know where was the Land of Nod. You read in Genesis, chapter 4, that God banished Cain from the land and Cain went to the Land of Nod. Where is the Land of Nod? We don’t know. It doesn’t exist today. The Bible says the Land of Nod was east of Eden. The truth is the Hebrew word Nod simply means, “wandering.” It may just be a play on words, kind of an allegorical element because God banished Cain and said, “You will wander the rest of your life” so he went to the east of Eden to The Land of Wandering, the Land of Nod. It might just be a way of saying that Cain fled to the east where he wandered and wandered.
The second question that people ask is, “Well, what was the mark of Cain? What was this mysterious mark that God put on Cain’s body?” The Hebrew word is “ot,” and this word can mean tattoo. It can mean to brand with a branding iron but some kind of a mark God put on Cain. People typically think that the mark of Cain was a stigma, that God stigmatized Cain so that he was an embarrassment wherever he went because of being the first murderer. And so, this was a mark that was a stigma.
There may be some truth to that but that’s not really what it says in Genesis, chapter 4. In Genesis, chapter 4, it’s “mercy.” God is having mercy on Cain, the murderer. Cain cries out to God and says, “Your judgement is too hard. You have banished me from the land. You have said that the land will no longer bring forth fruit for me and you’ve told me that I must wander and people will kill me. They’ll find me and they’ll kill me” and God said, “Not so. I put this mark on you to protect you and this mark will bear witness that whoever comes against you, I will come against them sevenfold.” So, you see, even in the beginning there is a sense in which you see the mercy of God. Of course, there’s also in the beginning a sense in which we should understand that we now are all wanderers too. We’re kind of all living in the Land of Nod. We’ve left Eden and we’re all kind of wandering.
The third question that people ask concerns Cain’s wife. Where did Cain get his wife? Have you ever heard that question? “He wandered in the Land of Nod and he found a wife.” You can pick up some Bible commentaries and some of them will suggest that the early chapters of Genesis are parabolic, that God is using the literary genre of parable to communicate and that when you’re looking at parable you shouldn’t apply questions that indicate a crude literalism. Some commentaries will say that. Personally, I believe that while there are parabolic elements in the early chapters of Genesis, there is also history there. I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask, “Where did Cain get his wife?” Of course, the traditional answer is that Cain married one of his sisters, that over the course of time he would have had many siblings and many sisters. And it was not atypical, it was not unusual in primitive times for siblings to marry.
Just yesterday I was kind of curious and I got out my Tyndale Commentaries. I have many, many different sets of commentaries. Tyndale commentaries are highly respected and they’re considered very scholarly and they’re fairly conservative theologically. I wanted to see what the Tyndale Commentaries said about Cain’s wife and where he found her. I was amazed as I read the introduction to Genesis and the commentary on Genesis. The suggestion was made that Cain had found a pre-Adamite or a para-Adamite, a woman from a race of people that predated Adam, a race of people that was not given the imago Dei, a race of people that was not given the image of God and Cain went among such people and found his wife. I was sitting there just stunned. I couldn’t believe the wild speculation in a Tyndale Commentary. They were also suggesting he not only found his wife in that pre-Adamic peoples but that’s also why he was afraid of people being a danger to him as he left and wandered. These people were pre-Adamites. That’s in the Tyndale Commentaries. Personally, I think Cain found his wife in an Internet chat room but I’m not sure. Or maybe an Internet dating service.
These are the kind of questions people ask but they’re not always that important. People want to know, “Where is the city of Enoch?” because it says in Genesis 4 that when Cain wandered and he went into the Land of Nod he and his wife had their firstborn son and they named their son Enoch and then they built a city in honor of their firstborn son and they called it the city of Enoch. So, where was the city of Enoch? But again, understand the Hebrew word here does not necessarily mean “city.” There are three different Hebrew words that CAN mean city. The Hebrew word here is the Hebrew word “ir.” It doesn’t necessarily mean a city in the sense of a metropolis or a city as we would use the word today. It could refer to any camp. It could refer to any enclosure, any encampment that was guarded. In order for it to be labeled with this Hebrew word it needed to be an area that was guarded or around which they might have built a wall. It could just be a camp and they built a wall around it and named that region after his firstborn son, Enoch.
Questions. People have questions but sometimes the questions are really important so people want to know, “Why was Cain’s offering rejected and why was Abel’s offering accepted?” Now, we’re starting to get into some important stuff. Whenever you study the Bible, whenever you study the Word of God, you should always ask, “What is God saying to me?” So, when you read Genesis, chapter 4, you should be asking that question, “What is God saying to me?” As you read the story of Cain and Abel what is God saying and how does it apply to your life.
When you look at their offerings, God rejected Cain’s and God accepted Abel’s. What was wrong with Cain’s offering? Some Bible scholars have said, “Well, something was wrong with the quality of his offering. Cain was a farmer. He was an agriculturalist so naturally as he came to the altar he brought of the fruit of the ground and God rejected it. Some scholars say that he should have brought a blood offering, particularly if this was a sin offering. He should have brought a blood offering as is in accordance with Jewish law. There are a couple of problems with that of course. One is that we don’t even know that it was a sin offering. Secondly the Jewish law had not yet been instituted so that the Jewish law had not even been instituted. You could hardly expect Cain to live by the Jewish law.
Some have said, “Maybe God spoke to Cain and Abel and said He wanted a blood offering and Cain refused to do it.” Maybe, but the Bible doesn’t say that so that’s entirely speculative. Some say, “Maybe Cain didn’t bring the best of his agricultural crop and maybe he didn’t bring enough. Maybe he didn’t bring a tithe” but again, the law of the tithe was part of the Jewish law which came later. In Genesis, chapter 4, the Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of Cain’s agricultural offering or the amount. It just doesn’t tell us so now it is possible there was something wrong with the quality of his offering. That’s possible because the quality of Abel’s offering is praised. It says of Abel that, “He brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.” That means that Abel brought the first and the best. That’s what it means so Abel brought to God as he came to the altar the first and the best.
The problem is the Bible doesn’t say that Cain didn’t do that but he might not have so it could have something to do with quality but here’s the deal we know for sure. It certainly had something to do with what was inside of these two brothers. What was in their hearts? It has something to do with their heart so you read in Hebrews, chapter 11, “By faith, Abel offered to God a sacrifice more acceptable than Cain through which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his gift. He died but through his faith he is speaking still.”
The Bible tells us that Abel had faith that Cain simply didn’t have so that’s talking about something that’s inward so something was in Abel’s heart that pleased God and something was in Cain’s heart that did not please God. So, what’s in your heart? What’s in my heart?
This leads us to our second part of the sermon and it’s, “What are you bringing to the altar? What am I bringing to the altar? How to we approach God and what do we bring?”
I would suggest to you this morning that there are at least three things we must bring to the altar and these are so important. First of all, we must bring time. You must offer your time to God. It all belongs to Him anyway. God created the time/space continuum. We’ve seen that. He’s the Creator of the cosmos and the galactic systems in the universe. He has created time itself and any time that I have and any time that you have is a gift and God wants us to bring time to Him.
I shared two years ago with some of you that Barb and I were a little bit concerned about our dog, our Yorkshire Terrier, because we thought our dog who we had named “Puddin” or “Puddy” didn’t have much time. We had found the dog at Daniel’s Park and she was running wild. Nobody claimed her and the veterinarian told us she might be about five years old. So, you recall two years ago we took her again to the vet and we figured she was about seven at that time because it was four years ago when we found her at Daniel’s Park. We had the vet look at her teeth because they didn’t look so good and the vet said that she needed to brush and floss more—no, that’s not what the vet said. The vet said, “I’m going to have to extract some teeth.” We said, “Go for it,” so he extracted some teeth.
We went and picked her up and the bill was $470 because there was an anesthetic applied, she needed a catheter, there was preparation for the operation, post op, the surgery itself. I was stunned. Barb and I got home with the dog and thinking, “This dog can’t be seven. What dog at seven loses all of its teeth?” We called the vet and asked him how old he thought Puddy is. The vet said, “She could be as old as twelve.” “Well, how long do these dogs normally live?” Some of you know the story. He said, “Maybe eleven to thirteen,” so Barb and I thought, “This dog doesn’t have long to live.” The time is short for Puddy. That was two years ago and Puddy is thriving today and just doing great. She just gums all of her food and everything is wonderful so she’s doing great but you have to admit dogs don’t live very long, do they? The lifespan of dogs just isn’t that long.
Think about the fact that as God has created the world there are different life forms and they all have different longevity, that lifespans vary. You go to California… You can go to the Sequoia National Forest and you can see the giant Sequoias. They’re beautiful, rising over 200 feet from the earth and these giant Sequoias are old. In fact, dendrologists and arborists tell us that some of the giant Sequoias are 4,000 years old. Also in California are these Bristle Cone Pines and dendrologists claim that some of them may be 5,000 years old. Now, think about that. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago these giant Sequoias were already alive and they had been alive for 2,000 years. The Bristle Cone Pines were already alive and they’d been alive for 3,000 years. When David sat on the throne of Israel those trees were already alive and had been alive for 1,000 or 2,000 years and they’re still living today. When Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees 4,000 years ago those giant Sequoias were just then rising from the earth and they are alive today and those Bristle Cone Pine had already been around for maybe 1,000 years. Pretty incredible.
Does that make you kind of want to ask God a few questions? Why trees? Why do trees have these huge lifespans? What an incredible gift of longevity and it’s given to a tree. Would you like to ask God about that? I mean trees don’t think. Trees don’t talk. You might have noticed trees don’t get around very much. They’re literally rooted to one spot. They don’t see things. Of course, people say, “Boy, if that tree could talk…” Of course, a tree can’t talk. A tree can’t think. If the tree could talk and think it probably wouldn’t have a lot to say. That tree might have been alive for 4,000 years but maybe nothing ever happened there.
It just seems weird, doesn’t it? Here we are the crown of creation, created in the imago Dei, the image of God, the human race, and our lives are so short. Three score and ten or, if we’re blessed, four score. I mean, wow! Time is precious. Time is so precious. What do you do with it? What do you do with your time? I think one of the greatest wastes in the world, one of the greatest tragedies on earth is what we do with our time. God wants us to bring our time to the altar and offer it to Him.
Think about the fact that as you look in the Bible, Exodus, chapter 20, Deuteronomy, chapter 5, you see the Ten Commandments. You come to the 4th Commandment and what does God say? “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work but the Sabbath is set apart for the Lord” so God is obviously saying, “I want some of your time” and He’s saying it right from the beginning, “I want some of your time. It’s all Mine anyway but I want you to come to the altar, I want you to offer time to Me.” So, how are we doing? Are you willing to cut out a little time to come to church each week? Are you willing to cut out a little time and serve the cause of heaven on earth? Are you willing to teach a Sunday School class? Lead a small group? Sing in the choir? Tutor an inner-city kid? Help in the parking lots? Do you have any time you could bring to the altar?
Thursday and Friday I had a 2-day board meeting for Colorado Christian University. On Thursday we had my sub-committee that I serve on. Thursday night Barb and I went to the Board of Trustees dinner and then we also had an evening meeting and then the day meeting on Friday. Why do I do that? Why do I give the time? Why do I drive over and back, drive over and back and drive over and back again? I love Colorado Christian University. I believe in Christian higher education. I want to see generations of young people raised up and live for Christ. I love Bill Armstrong and I respect him and he’s the President of Colorado Christian University and he’s a member of this church and his wife Ellen is one of our elder emeritus’s. They’re two of my favorite people. Most of all I just love Christ and I want to bring something to the altar, so I don’t get paid. I just volunteer.
Same thing true on Monday. I was at a Valor Board meeting Monday. Valor High School across the street. It’s a separate 501(c)(3). We have some shared governments and we’re friends and we try to help each other but I’m just there as a volunteer. I’m offering a little time and I love Valor. I love Kurt Unruh who’s head of the school and Shannon Dreyfuss and the staff and the faculty and the fact that they’re going to raise up generations, young people who are going to live for Christ.
I want to bring some time to the altar and how can I ask you to give time, to volunteer time, if I don’t volunteer time. Let’s come to the altar. Let’s approach God and let’s bring time.
A second thing we’ve got to bring to the altar is talent and you have a lot of it. We all have varying degrees of talent but most of us have a significant storehouse of talent given by God. The word talent comes from the Bible. Originally the word talent simply was a monetary unit and talent was a word used to describe a silver weight or a gold weight or even a bronze weight but it was a monetary unit and this was true in Israel, true in Babylonia, true in the Roman Empire, true in the Greek world. It was just money. A talent was money, but the Bible changed all that because Jesus, in Matthew 25, gave the Parable of the Talents and He began to use the word talent in a little different way. It was still money and the master gave varying amounts of money to people when he left and he said, “Use this and when I come back, I’m going to see whether or not you served me,” but the talent clearly in the parable represents more than money. It represents more than money. It represents whatever the master has entrusted to you, whatever the master has entrusted you and so, because of that the word talent began to take on a new meaning. Now, in the English language “talent” means “ability,” “gifts,” “skills” and what God has given you, what He has entrusted to you. So, the Bible has literally given us this word. Of course, whatever abilities God has given you, you need to bring them to the altar and use them in the service of God and in the service of love and in the service of the church.
It’s really not about ability. It’s about availability and when you read the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 it’s very clear that God wasn’t concerned with how much ability they had but whether or not they did anything with it, and God was perfectly willing to say to somebody with very little in the way of talent, God was willing to say, “Well done, good and faithful.” Just use it so it’s not just about ability, it’s availability.
Look at the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke, chapter 10. It’s not about ability, it’s about availability. So you see the priest and the Levite and the Samaritan walking on the Jericho Road. Two of them might have been very talented. The priest and the Levite were probably extremely gifted, very able, very talented but they were not available. They just walked right by the wounded man but the Samaritan was available. So, what do you bring to the altar? You bring time, talent and availability. I think the church of Jesus Christ isn’t doing too well. If the cause of Christ is suffering in the Western world it’s because we won’t give God time, we won’t bring our abilities to the altar.
Of course, there’s a third thing and you know you’ve got to bring your treasure to the altar. Money and mammon. You’ve got to bring that to the altar too. It’s all His anyway. We’re just stewards. He’s the owner of everything.
Just a couple of years ago Barb and I were out in Coachella Valley, California, on the desert in the region of Palm Springs. We were there with some good friends and we were playing golf. We were playing golf in the desert and as we were playing golf our friends pointed over to a house and said, “That’s Bill Gates’ house.” I didn’t have to ask, “Who’s Bill Gates.” We all know who Bill Gates is, right? He wasn’t there, by the way. At least if he was, he wasn’t in his back yard. I think Bill Gates has homes all over the nation. He probably is rarely at any of them. He’s a multi-billionaire and known by everybody. but do you know about Kristianne and Libby? Kristianne and Libby are Bill Gates’ sisters. You probably haven’t heard of them, have you? You haven’t heard of Kristianne or Libby because they didn’t make billions of dollars. They did not co-found Microsoft.
This is the kind of world we live in where we honor, we glorify, we recognize those who make a lot of money so you’ve all heard of Warren Buffett. In 1956 he established Buffett Associates and his hedge fund and he did that with the help of his sister Doris, who helped raise the first $105,000. Warren went on to make billions of dollars so you haven’t heard of Doris, but you know all about Warren because this is the world we live in. We live in a world that just glorifies money making.
Now, understand. In the Bible God turns everything on its head. Jesus has a whole different worldview and a whole different set of values so if you’re going to be great in His sight, it’s not about how much you make. It’s about what you give. It’s not what you make. It’s what you give. This is a whole different value system and of course God is looking at what you give comparing what you give with what you have. God notices the widow’s mite. Jesus notices the widow’s mite. She didn’t have much and she didn’t make much but “she gave all that she had,” Jesus said. These other people were putting leftovers and giving it to God in the temple, giving God their leftovers but she was giving all she had, and the Son of God was watching.
So, we come to the altar and we approach God and we offer our time, we offer our talent and we offer our treasure. Again, I don’t think the church of Jesus Christ is doing very well, not in the Western world. We’re very materialistic, very hedonistic and don’t give what we should. Tithing is very controversial even amongst biblical scholars. And scholars debate, “Hey! As Christians are we still bound by the tithe or was that just Old Testament? Was that just part of the Jewish law? Was it part of the moral law or was it not part of the moral law? Is it binding today or is it not binding today and the argument continues.
Personally, I don’t see anything in the New Testament that repeals the tithe and I do see Jesus bringing the tithe up when He’s talking to the Pharisees. He tells the Pharisees that they are tithing minutia, even spices, mint, dill and cumin. They are giving a tenth of that. They are tithing minutia and ignoring love and justice. He said, “You shouldn’t ignore either” so it seems to me Jesus kind of upheld the tithe but here’s what I’ve noticed. When I talk to Christians and they don’t believe in tithing, most of them don’t give much of anything. When I do talk to Christians and they do believe in the tithe, most of them tithe if they believe in the tithe. Understand this though biblically. In the Old Testament there were multiple tithes and they varied throughout the history of Israel, but tithing is just the beginning. It’s just a starting point.
For some of you a tithe, a tenth of what you make given to God would be adequate. But for others of us we need to do more than tithe because God has blessed us. It’s, “What are we living for?” We’re coming to the end of our fiscal year here at the church and we’re behind budget and we’ve only pledged a quarter of the way as a congregation on the sanctuary upgrade but we would never have to mention it if we were giving well anyway. If we were coming to the altar and saying to God, “I surrender all…” Have you ever sung that song, “I Surrender All?” If you surrendered all, God’s going to have your time, He’s going to have your talents, He’s going to have your treasure if you surrender all. The question of course is, “What are we living for and who are we living for?”
I want to tell you a little story as we close. Friday Bill Armstrong showed those of us who are on the Board of Trustees a video of an interview with Dr. Beckman. Dr. Beckman used to be the President at Colorado Christian University. In the year 2014 Colorado Christian University will celebrate its 100th year, its 100th anniversary and many presidents. One of the Presidents of CCU was Dr. Beckman. When I first came on the CCU Board for the very first-time years ago Dr. Beckman was on the Board of Trustees with me though he had retired from the presidency. Dr. Beckman, in this interview, was looking back. He was looking back at the history of the ministry of CCU and he told about a time when the school almost closed its doors. There just wasn’t enough money to pay the faculty and the teachers and Colorado Christian University was going to shut down. They couldn’t pay the faculty and they needed $10,000, which today would be about $60,000. They needed $10,000 to pay the faculty their salaries for the month and they didn’t have anything. And so, they weren’t going to be able to pay the teachers.
Dr. Beckman went to downtown Denver for a meeting on a morning and he was just depressed. After the meeting it was lunchtime and he was still depressed but now also hungry. He saw a McDonald’s in one of the downtown buildings and he thought, “That doesn’t cost much money. I should probably eat there.” But then he thought, “I’m so depressed, so down, I’m going to treat myself and I’m going to go to the Brown Palace for lunch.” So, Dr. Beckman went to the Brown Palace for lunch. He entered the lobby, and it was crowded and he bumped into somebody. He turned around and he said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and he recognized the guy. The guy’s name was Howard Kast. Howard’s well into his 80’s now and I believe he’s living in Sun City. For decades he was a great leader in the Denver area and really around the country. Howard hadn’t seen Dr. Beckman in a couple of years and here they were in the Brown Palace.
Howard Kast said, “You know, Dr. Beckman, this is strange. I’ve just been thinking. I feel like I’m supposed to do something for Colorado Christian University.” He took his checkbook out and wrote a check for $10,000. Dr. Beckman, in the videotape on Friday, was crying as he told this story and I had never seen Dr. Beckman cry. He was so moved he was crying and his joy was great. It wasn’t just great joy because of the generosity of Howard Kast. He had great joy because of the greatness of God because God cares about ministry. God cares about ministry and God is Jehovah Jireh. He is the Lord who Provides. He touches hearts. He calls people to give. The question is, “Do we respond?”
I’m not worried about God doing His part. I know God’s out there touching hearts. I know He’s doing it this morning. He’s got all the power. The only question is, “Are we willing to come to the altar and what are we bringing?” Do we bring our time and do we bring our talent and do we bring our treasure? Do we surrender all?” Let’s close with a word of prayer.