Old Testament – Genesis 4

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Genesis 4

Outside of the garden, out of the continual presence of the Lord, without Him beside them providing for them, answering their questions, making his thoughts known to them, they are on their own. They have to plant and grow their own crops, and they keep flocks of animals that they also eat and use their skins for.

Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. It doesn’t say why, but one day Cain brought an offering to God from his harvest, and Abel from his herd. For an unexplained reason here, the slain animal sacrifice with the fat portion was pleasing to God, while the plant offering was not.

I have heard it suggested that Abel’s offering was pleasing because it was a blood sacrifice, and as we learned in Chapter 3, there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood, as God did to provide clothing for the rebellious Adam and Eve.As I read this section, I notice 2 things
Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground. It doesn’t use any adjectives to describe the offering, to say it was something of value.
Abel’s offering, however, mentions that it was from the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions.
That tells me that he brought an offering of great value. Later, when God clarified what type of offerings the priests were to bring him, the portion of the sacrifice with the blood and the fat were reserved for God.
Firstlings is important, because offerings given from the first harvest or the first flock were isky offerings, because there is no guarantee that there will be another harvest or more births in the flock. It takes more faith to make an offering to God out of your provisions before you have paid your bills than waiting to see what happens and only giving to God of what you have left over.
Hebrews 11: 4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks.
If faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of God, the only way Abel’s offering could have been by faith is if someone (his parents, or God) had told him that it must be a blood sacrifice with the fat portions that would please God.

However, for all we know, it was not the substance of the offering, but possibly the attitude of the offering.  Perhaps Abel’s offering was done with a grateful heart and Cain’s with a begrudging heart.  1 John 3: 11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, 12 not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous.

What is righteousness? It is being in right standing with God. How do we get to be in right standing with God? By believing and obeying what God says. It is by faith. Here John says Abel’s offering was righteous, which means it was by faith and expressed through obedience. That means that Cain’s offering was not done out of faith and obedience to God.  Chances are, he gave God what he wanted to give God, NOT what God asked for.

How many times does God ask for something from us, and we don’t want to give it up, so we try to barter with God and tell Him we will do something else nice for Him instead, like giving something else up, or doing something for someone else. But as Jesus said, we are supposed to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, in other words, we are to live by faith in what God says, and prove that faith through our obedience and actions.

When God didn’t accept Cain’s offering, Cain became very angry, which God made clear was not appropriate. If God had told him what to offer, and Cain decided to give God something else, what right did Cain have to be angry? God told Cain that if Cain did what was right (in other words, in faith and obedience to God’s instructions), his offering would have been accepted.

That’s also when God made it clear that now man’s desire is mainly to do whatever he wants, be his own god, making his own rules for himself regarding what is good and evil, right and wrong (and obviously, his own rules for what God should accept as an offering). Basically, man wants to live without having to place his faith and trust in God.

But Romans 14:23 says that anything that is not of faith is sin. And sin, man’s bent in his nature to go his own way instead of God’s, is always there and wanting to control him. However, God says that we must master sin, not give in to that desire to do and get things apart from God.

Verse 8 is interesting to me because Cain repeated to Abel what God said – that his offering wasn’t acceptable, that his sin of doing things his own way was his downfall.  He heard God’s words, and he even shared God’s words.  However, when they were in the field together at a later date, Cain “rose up against” and killed his brother. It seems to warn me that people can hear God and even share about God but still not live in faith in God, and honestly, still perform great evil.

Cain’s heart is very evident. When God confronts him, as God did with Adam and Eve, Cain lies, and then responds with a sarcastic remark – Am I my brother’s keeper? He follows up evil with more evil, just as Adam and Eve did. They tried to cover up their sin of disobedience and blame other people. Here, Cain tries to cover up his sin by lying, saying that he doesn’t know where his brother is. Then he says that it is not his responsibility to keep up with his brother, basically saying that is God’s responsibility and problem.

Cain’s curse is that the farmer will no longer be able to get any vegetation to grow. Everything that he was, his very identity of being a farmer, is taken from him. Now he will be a wanderer, a nomad, and his identity will be that he killed his brother – his sin will become his identity.

Yet even in his punishment for Cain, God is merciful. Cain is afraid that he will be killed because everyone will know he is a murderer. So God somehow protects him from being murdered himself. How many times has God protected us from the consequences of our actions simply out of love and faithfulness toward us?

The rest of Chapter 4 talks about the lineage of Adam and Eve’s remaining children, including the birth of Seth, the father of the Israelites. Remember that the Bible is not an encyclopedia of everything that ever happened in the world. It is a history of God’s chosen people who he created for a relationship with himself, but who continually choose to go their own way, and yet He still loves them.

The most important thing to realize is that the lineages all point to Christ.  In Luke 3, the gospel writer shows how Jesus was a direct descendent of Seth. (As an aside, all lineages don’t name every single descendent, but their intention is to show the origins of their family.)

New Testament references:
Jesus himself, in a long prophetic word he spoke in Matthew 23, references Abel’s blood while condemning the Jewish rulers for being hypocrites and murderers.

Hebrews 12:24 refers to the blood of Abel. I’m not sure if it refers to the acceptable blood sacrifice that Abel brought before God, or Abel’s own righteous blood because he was a man of faith. But it compares Abel’s righteous blood to Jesus’ righteous blood, and says that Jesus’ blood is better and more righteous, because Jesus was sinless and God.