We all know the classic rendition
from children’s literature. Two brothers
get in a fight and one kills the other and is punished by God, right? Well, I’d like to protest that if this is the
story you believe, then it’s not the same story that’s in the Bible. The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 lays
the outline of our two heart attitude choices and merely uses the first two
human births of all time to illustrate this.
Let me explain.
First Cain was born. The first person ever to be born of a
woman. Adam and Eve had no nursery
rhymes or legends to tell their sweet bundle of joy. While I’m sure they sang to Cain and the
animals offered plenty of entertainment, the stories they knew to be true all
came from Eden. We know Cain was well
acquainted with The Garden (Genesis 4:16).
It was in plain view at the time, they just couldn’t go in it. Imagine telling your toddler, “There’s the
closest thing to heaven we’ll ever know and you can’t have it.” Imagine the questions about God’s goodness
Cain must have had swimming around in his formative mind! And the blame! (E.g. “Why would You withhold something You know
is good for me, Lord? Haven’t we paid
our penalty? Can’t we come back now? You’re just mean, God! You just wanted to get rid of us not redeem us. If You loved us, You would let us come back
home.”)
From the start Cain lived in God’s
presence (again, see Gen. 4:16). God was
not a well-disguised secret. We know Cain
harbored bitterness and strife in his heart.
We don’t know what it was or why.
How much of that came from his parents, we’ll never know. However, he had a choice of what he could do
with those ideas and misconceptions and experiences. We know it was a choice because of what we
see in Able and what transpired between them.
Abel had the same parents and heard the same stories and he too saw Eden
only from the outside with the fiery angels forbidding them to enter. I don’t know about you, but my four year old
boy is really into superheroes right now.
He flies around the house and off the couch in his undies and cape and
swoops in to rescue his beloved big sister from his evil big brother. He loves being the hero! What must childhood have been like for Cain
and Abel? Do you suppose maybe they felt
a little defeated knowing there were certain things no rescuer could
accomplish? Considering their options
will help us all when considering our own.
All of our choices in life come down to the two choices Cain and Abel
made.
“So it came about in the course of
time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground” Gen.
4:3. “In the course of time” could mean
that eventually Cain got around to it, or it could mean that they didn’t make
offerings at first but at some point they got the idea to do so. I will adhere
to the former since God was sure to mention that Abel’s offering was from “the
firstlings of his flock” but not Cain’s.
Cain probably waited until there was a surplus of vegetation in his
garden and then gave God a portion.
“Abel, on his part also brought of
the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his
offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard” vs. 4-5a. Why?
For many years, I asked myself this question. My husband and I observe the biblical feast
days, one of which is the Feast of Firstfruits, which occurs on the Sunday
during the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Firstfruits is when the Jews offer up the very first of their
harvest. No other harvest can be made
until the first in the land has been offered up. In the timeline of history, Firstfruits later
became the day when God’s first and only Son was raised as our perfect
atonement and only acceptable sacrifice thereafter. Mainstream Christianity calls it Easter or
Resurrection Sunday, losing the emphasis on the FIRST fruits. God is all about taking FIRST place in our
lives. He doesn’t give us His leftovers
and He doesn’t want ours!
There is a chapter in my new book,
which is still in the making, about faith in Hebrews 11:6, which says without
faith it is impossible to please God. In
the same chapter, verse one, God says, “Now faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Offering the FIRST of the fruits of our lives – money (i.e. tithe),
time, labor, possessions, etc. – is an act of faith based on what we have yet
to see. Abraham offered Isaac by faith
alone, faith in God, not in what he saw (his only son) but what he didn’t see (the
promise of many nations). Abraham didn’t
wait for many children to come from his elderly wife before he made an
offering. Faith, anything done in faith,
is what pleases God. Without it, nothing
else will please Him.
God was not pleased with Cain’s
offering. Cain’s offering “came about in
the course of time.” It wasn’t from the
first of his harvest. It was from the
surplus. Some have theorized that the
problem God had with Cain’s offering was that it was produce and not livestock,
not requiring blood. In Mosaic Law, grain
offerings and blood offerings served different purposes, but never was a grain
(produce) offering used for atonement.
Not that the Law was instituted yet, but before Adam and Eve left Eden,
a distinction was made (Genesis 3:7,21).
Part of the problem with how Cain brought his offering however, is that
it’s ok to thank God by giving above and beyond according to our surplus, but
it is not an act of faith at that point, merely a generous deed to show praise
and gratitude. It was as if Cain thought
any old offering would do, as if he could just bring a hostess gift as he
approached the Throne of the Creator of the Universe. Proud, irreverent, ungrateful, distrusting,
careless. Maybe those adjectives fit
Cain. God knew Cain’s heart attitude was
not right and that it needed to be dealt with.
He brought Cain face to face with his own heart and gave him another chance
to deal with it. God didn’t create a
situation. He knew in time Cain would
make the mess for himself. We know that,
for whatever reason, Cain brought an offering.
The second part of verse 5 is where
the heart problems become relational problems and get things rolling. “So Cain became very angry and his
countenance fell. Then the Lord said to
Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?” It’s not like God didn’t know the answer, but
being the good counselor that He is, He wanted Cain to think about the answer
to the question and sit with it in his own heart. It wouldn’t have lost any meaning to say,
“Why are you really angry? What is the real reason for your anger? It’s not really about your brother, is
it?” There are two separate questions
posed, “Why are you angry? And why has
your countenance fallen?” A fallen
countenance makes me think of feelings of shame, hanging one’s head, tucking
tail for something more than disappointment or feeling unable to look your
victim or accuser in the eye. I think
the two questions God asked were to say 1) you’re not really mad at Abel, and
2) you’re ashamed of your heart attitude towards me; you’re embarrassed that I
pointed it out by not accepting your offering (public humiliation).
Then God goes on to say, “Do well and
your countenance will be lifted. Don’t
do well and sin will consume you.” God
didn’t say “Satan will consume you.”
Satan is an outside force. Sin is
an inside choice. Also, God used the
word “well” as in wellness as in things that make people well or a state of
good health. He didn’t say “do good”
because again, that’s a superficial response, doing good things. But “do well” implies making right choices
out of a healthy, well place inside.
You can walk around being angry at
everyone around you who triggers your hurtful place with God so that you feel
better for a moment, or you can choose to make healthy choices that will lift
the burden of shame and regret from sin and offer an acceptable sacrifice to
God. God didn’t ridicule Cain’s offering
so much as He shot straight to the heart of the problem. Cain didn’t have faith. He thought God was a harsh task master
unworthy of his very best. Abel believed
in God’s deep down goodness, that God had a bigger plan than what they could
see, that God was worthy of the first and quite trustworthy for the rest. Cain harbored bitterness towards God and all
these other things followed. “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.” It never was about Abel but Cain
couldn’t kill God so he killed the trigger instead.**
We all have a choice. Will we make an acceptable offering of faith
believing that God is good even when things around us don’t particularly look
that way? Or will we give to Him only
when we see evidence that He has given to us?
The elders had to step into the floodwaters of the Jordan before the
waters would dry up and they could cross.
The Israelites had to put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts
before their deliverance. Job was given
an ultimatum to “curse God and die” or “hold fast your integrity.” How will you
live? Cain was given the choice, “Do
well and your countenance will be lifted up.
Do not do well and sin is crouching at the door.” What choice have you made? Will you master sin or has sin become your
master?
Adam and Eve lost their first two
children to sin. Cain went on to build a
city because he was cursed at farming. Sin
did prevail in the land until Adam and Eve’s son Seth had Enosh. “Then men began to call upon the name
of the Lord” (v. 26, emphasis mine). It took 235 years before people turned
back to God. Even then, society still
went astray over the next several hundred years and God wished He’d never made humans. One man’s choice. One man’s bitterness. It wasn’t just Eve to blame for sin in the
world. Cain proved it was every person’s
choices after her even to this day.
** Notice, Abel was in right standing
with God. Do you wonder why the good
people die and the bad people live?
Consider this: God is not willing that any should perish but that all
should come to repentance. The
unrepentant can’t repent if they’re dead.
The repentant are saved, but the unrepentant are not. They need to live so they CAN repent. For the saved, “to live is Christ and to die
is gain.” For the unsaved, to die is to
die eternally and God doesn’t wish that for anyone.
