Close associations

Cain says, “Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.”

Jordan explains, “Notice when Cain says ‘every one that findeth me shall slay me,’ according to the Law of the Near Kinsman the people who could slay a man were his near kinsmen. So what he’s saying is everybody out there is his relative. Everybody on the face of the earth at that time was a relative of Cain, being a descendant of Adam and Eve.

“They would either be Cain’s brothers and sisters or his nieces, nephews and cousins. Evidently, there’s a lot of people out there because he says ‘every one.’

"At this time the population of the earth has grown considerably and just because you’ve seen Cain and Abel (thus far in Genesis) and that’s all you’ve seen, doesn’t mean Adam and Eve don’t have other children because chapter 5:3-4 indicates they’re having children all along. You’re just getting a representative history in these individuals.

“So the population of the earth is increasing. This could possibly be as far along as 130 years after they got out of the Garden. The population of the earth keeps increasing and growing, so the problem with where did Cain get his wife and those kinds of things are found in the Bible text.

“Psalm 59:11 says, ‘Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield.’ That’s the principle in Genesis 4. God’s determined Cain would live before men and carry out his sentence, visibly executed before his kinsmen.”

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Luke was Paul’s companion toward the end of the book of acts are three “we” sections (16:10-40, 21:1-18 and 27:1-28:16) where all of sudden Luke’s describing what’s going on and says, ‘We did that.’

Jordan explains, “That means he joined up with Paul and, for that period of time, he’s with him. The way it goes is there will be ‘they did, they did, they did’ and then comes a ‘we did.’

“Three different times he travels extensively with Paul, and in Paul’s later life, Luke is with him all the way. The beloved physician.

“Now because of that close association he had with Paul, Luke’s writings would naturally have an interest for us. Paul would know Luke’s gospel the best of all of them. If you asked me which of the four gospel accounts did Paul read and carry with him, no doubt it was Luke’s.

“I’m sure that long before he died he had the other accounts because they were collecting together the Scripture. But he’d know Luke’s best because he had the author with him so much and it’s fitting that the Apostle of the Gentiles would have a record of the earthly ministry of Christ written by one who was himself a Gentile.

“Not, again, that the mystery is found or even hinted at in Luke’s gospel, but you see under the guidance of the God the Holy Spirit, as Luke was writing down his gospel, he would be led by the Holy Spirit to include and exclude those features that are different from what Matthew is--those things that are exclusively focused on Israel, and he would put things in that would open things up.

“When you come to Acts, you come with a man who’s looking out here and seeing the Lord and Word and the broader purposes that God has in the earth and he sees the Lord (first) working in Israel to bring salvation to the nations and then in Paul to bring salvation to the nations.”