WORKING ON HIS SAINTS FROM ABEL TO NOAH

After Saving Adam, God Continuing 
to Work on Some of His Descendants 
Who Took God’s Way of Life

After saving Adam, God continued to work on some of his descendants who took God’s way of life based upon the principle of the tree of life and became God’s saints according to God’s election. These particular descendants of Adam were separated people, sanctified unto God according to God’s election, God’s choosing.

We saw in the previous chapter that Genesis 3 reveals that God works to save lost and fallen sinners. Following that, God continues to work on His saints who take His way of life. Abel lived a model of the Christian life as a full-timer who was absolutely for God. But do you believe that without God’s moving on and with Abel, Abel could have been a person who was living God full time? Abel could be such a person only because God moved and worked on him, through him, and with him. He was a fallen person, a fallen descendant of Adam, yet he could live such a life. It would have been impossible for him to do this by himself without any kind of support. Abel’s doing was not by himself; it was God who worked on him and made him such a person.

We cannot serve the Lord as full-timers by ourselves. In ourselves and by ourselves we cannot make it. In ourselves and by ourselves we would already have given up long ago. Paul said, “By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10). Paul was what he was because of the sufficient grace of Christ (2 Cor. 12:9). It is the grace of Christ that has made us what we are in Him. If Abel were here today, he would say that the very God whom he worshipped made him such a person. This is God’s work. God produced people who would take His way of life based upon the principle of the tree of life. Otherwise, God would have no testimony on the earth. The beginning of the Bible shows us a person named Abel who can be considered as the first full-timer on the earth to live God. This was God’s work to produce such a person.

God Having Regard for Abel and for His Offering

God had regard for Abel and for his offering (Gen. 4:4). The word regard is a weighty word. If we regard someone, this means a lot. God, the Creator, had regard for a person, His creature. If the president of the United States has regard for a person, this is an honor to him. Genesis shows us God’s work in having regard for Abel, one of His creatures. Such a fallen person received the salvation and the sustaining power from God to be a person living for Him. Abel was the first person to be honored and regarded by God. At that time he was the most glorious person on earth. All of us should aspire to be like Abel. All the full-timers should be Abels.

We want to continue to see God’s history in time in the book of Genesis. We have seen that in time God worked to restore the judged universe and create man (Gen. 1:2—2:25). Then He saved man from his fall (ch. 3). In this chapter we will see how God worked on His saints from Abel to Noah and judged the world from Cain to Babel. The record of this history is from Genesis 4 through the first part of Genesis 11. This portion of the Word is only about seven and a half chapters, but all the items recorded in this short part of the holy Word are very, very crucial. My burden is to help us to know, to realize, to enter into, and to experience the Christian life. Actually, this line on the history of God in His union with man is still on the Christian life.

If we do not know what God did with Abel, with Seth, with Enosh, with Enoch, with Methuselah, and with Noah, we still do not know what the Christian life is. All these persons lived the Christian life. We may ask, “Was Abel a Christian?” He was not a Christian, but the life he lived was a Christian life. His life was a model, a type, of the Christian life. Abel was a shepherd of sheep, and sheep at Abel’s time were used for sacrifices. They were not used for food, because at that time God had not ordained that people eat animal meat (1:29). It was not until after the flood that God said that man could eat meat (9:3). Sheep at Abel’s time were not for food but for offerings to God.

Have you ever realized that the first full-time co-worker was Abel? He raised up sacrifices for God’s offering. This was his job, his work. This was also his kind of living. Abel was a person doing nothing on the earth but offering to God. Genesis 4:4 says that God had regard for Abel and for his offering. How good it was that Abel was a full-timer doing nothing but living for God! Abel was not in the line of good and evil. He was in the line of the tree of life, living for God and living to God.

Those of us who are serving the Lord full time should compare our full-time service with Abel’s. When we compare ourselves with Abel, we probably need to say that we are part-timers, not full-timers. Abel was living a life that was absolutely for God; his living was for God, not for food, for eating. Abel’s elder brother Cain was the opposite. Cain was living for his daily necessity, for food.

Abel lived on God in a spiritual sense, and he lived on what God did, on what God provided, in a physical sense. If we are full-timers, we should live as Abel did. We should not live on anything worked out by ourselves. Cain was different from Abel because he lived on what he did. He was a farmer producing food for himself. Thus, we can see that it is not too much to say that Abel lived a Christian life. If we live the Christian life merely according to what the New Testament teaches, that is not adequate. We have to come back to the Old Testament to see the first typical full-timer for God—Abel.

CHAPTER FIVE

GOD’S HISTORY IN TIME 
(FROM THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE 
TO THE FINAL JUDGMENT 
AT THE GREAT WHITE THRONE— 
GENESIS 1:1—REVELATION 20:15)

(4)

WORKING ON HIS SAINTS FROM ABEL TO NOAH 
AND 
JUDGING THE WORLD FROM CAIN TO BABEL

Scripture Reading: Gen. 4:4-5, 10-22, 25-26; 5:21-24; 6:1-22; 8:20—9:27; 11:1-9

OUTLINE

1. Working on His saints from Abel to Noah:
   1. After saving Adam, God continued to work on some of his descendants who took God’s way of life based upon the principle of the tree of life and became God’s saints according to God’s election:
      1. God had regard for Abel and for his offering—Gen. 4:4.
      2. God appointed Seth to replace Abel—v. 25.
      3. God began to have His name called upon by Enosh—v. 26.
      4. God prophesied concerning the deluge through Enoch naming his son Methuselah, which means “when he is dead, it [the deluge] will be sent”—5:21.
      5. God gained Enoch to walk with Him for three hundred years and took Enoch away from the earth before the deluge—vv. 22-24.
      6. God gained Noah to walk with Him and to prepare the ark for the salvation of him and his whole family from the corrupted age through the deluge—6:9-22.
      7. God was pleased with the satisfying fragrance of Noah’s burnt offerings to keep the earth with its systems and to covenant with Noah and his descendants and with all the living creatures that they all would not be destroyed anymore by a flood but would be multiplied and replenish the earth—8:20—9:17.
      8. God prophesied through Noah concerning his three sons that Ham’s son Canaan would be a servant to Shem and Japheth, that Shem would have God as his God, and that Japheth would be enlarged by God and dwell in the tents of Shem—vv. 18-27.
   2. The above are the works that God did before His calling of Abraham.
2. Judging the world from Cain to Babel:
   1. While working on His chosen saints positively, God was judging negatively the rest of Adam’s descendants who took Satan’s way of death based upon the principle of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and became the world under God’s condemnation:
      1. God had no regard for Cain and for his offering—4:5.
      2. God judged Cain, causing him to become a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth to invent the human, godless culture—vv. 10-22.
      3. God judged the corrupted world, composed of men who had become flesh, by the deluge to terminate the age of Cain—6:1-7, 11-13.
      4. God judged at Babel the world, which had abandoned Him and had joined Satan as one, to terminate the race of Adam—11:1-9.
   2. God’s judgment on the world is a strong evidence that the God-created yet rebelling world is still under His sovereign ruling.