Cain vs. Abel: Why God Accepted One Offering and Rejected the Other

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Okay, let's pick up where we left off last week and turn back with me again to Romans chapter 3, and we're going to pick up a little more discussion on that word redemption or redeemer. Before I go any further, I want to encourage our television people to sit down and use your Bible, compare these Scriptures along with us, even as we do in our class. I'd also like to let it be known that these programs can be purchased on videotape. We can put 12 programs on one 6 -hour tape, and we can sell them for $20. Now, that won't give us anything left over, but if you're interested in a video, you write to us and we'll do all we can to get them to you. All right, if you'll turn with me now then to Romans chapter 3, and again verse 24, where it says, "...we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." In other words, there is a way whereby God will purchase back that which He lost back there in the garden. Now, you want to remember, and we were talking about it after our last class when we had a question come up, when Adam and Eve were first in the garden, they were gods, and they were in perfect fellowship with Him, weren't they? But then sin entered, and that fellowship was broken. And then God lost control of Adam and Eve. They had now come under the control of the god of this world, old Satan. So immediately God institutes a way whereby He can buy the human race back to Himself, and we call that redemption. As I alluded to last week, remember, it's all the way through the Old Testament. God purchased Israel out of the slavery of Egypt, and that is the beautiful picture of our own salvation. We too, as sons of Adam, were slaves of sin. We're in the slave market of Satan. And God is, I guess you can say, His hands are tied because He has given us that free will. Now, He'll do everything He can to bring us out of the slave market, but we have to want to. He cannot force us. And see, this is the whole idea again of when we were created, we were created with a mind and a will as well as a set of emotions. And then as we pointed out to the individual that had the question, the whole idea between God and man is when God extends His love to us, what can He rightly expect? Love in return. But we don't have to. We're free agents. We don't have to do anything, but He's made it all possible. All right, now Paul here in this word redemption, actually as he does so many times in all his letters, will go into a physical, literal setting, and he uses a word that was so common in the days of the Roman Empire in the slave market. Now, I think if you know anything about ancient history, slavery was just part and parcel of everyday living. And so as these Roman legions would make their excursions on up into Europe and wherever they went into their conquering hordes, they would always bring back what? Slaves. And you see, this is what made the Roman Empire so corrupt finally. The actual Roman citizens never had to work. They never got their hands dirty because the slaves that were constantly being brought in did all the manual work, and for little or no wages, it was slavery to the utmost. And, of course, that gave rise then to the softening of the Roman physique and everything else, and they finally fell apart. They became victims of then the conquering hordes from Gaul. But all right, here come these, and I like to picture just by virtue of making it a little more interesting, let's picture some young teenagers that have been taken prisoner, maybe up in France or Germany or even all the way up into Scandinavia. And then they bring these back to Rome, and they go into the slave market. Now, again, I like to just make this as visible as I can, and here is the slave market. And these people are constantly being brought in. And the end result, of course, is to be made sport of with the lions in the Colosseum. You remember that much of Roman history. All right, so for a person coming into the slave market, if someone didn't come along and buy them out, the end was death. There wasn't much to look forward to. All right, let's take, for example, an attractive—let's take a brother and a sister. Maybe they were both captured at the same time. The Roman legions bring these two teenagers back to Rome. Let's say they're just the prime of life, 18, 19-year-olds. And here's this brother and sister. Lovely kids, but they're slaves. They've been captured. And so they're in the slave market with nothing to look forward to but death in the Colosseum. But along comes a benevolent Roman. Well to do. Now in the Roman slave market language, there were three words, and it doesn't hurt to remember them. The one was agorazzo, A-G-E-R -O-Z-O. The second one was ex-agorazzo. And then the third word was latreau. Now those are the Greek words that were constantly in use in that Roman slave market. Now, I'm not up on the stock market or any of their language. I know a few of their terms, but they too, they have their own language. You can sell short, you can buy long, and you can take options and put options and all that. But they have a language all their own. Well, so did the Roman slave market. All right. Now, if they wanted to agorazzo someone who is in this slave market, they could do just sort of like our stock traders do daily in the exchange. They'll buy stock in the morning, and maybe it goes up two or three points in the afternoon while they do. They sell it. In other words, they have no intentions of really hanging on to that sale. They're just playing the market. Well, they could do the same thing back in Rome with slaves. They could buy a slave at 8 o 'clock in the morning, and they could leave it in the market, hoping that maybe later in the day the market would go up, and they could resell the slave and take a profit. It was just kind of sport to them. But the next word, ex agorazzo. What does ex mean? Exit means out. Now they also had the prerogative that if this rich Roman would come down to the slave market, he could pay the price of redemption, but he could also say, I'm going to take that slave out of the market. I'm going to take him home with me. All right, let's take our brother and sister now. These two beautiful kids, but they're slaves. They're in the market. And this rich Roman comes, and he pays the price, but he takes them out of the market, and he takes them home. But he's a benevolent Roman. He's got a big, beautiful villa. And so he takes these two kids, and he gives them each a beautiful room in his villa. He gives them a whole wardrobe of nice, beautiful clothes, and he gives them maybe just the light labor of taking care of his landscape. And he's just a good master, and he's done everything for these two lovely teenagers. And then one day he comes along, and he says, Tell you what, kids, I have also gone one step further. I have given you la true. What does that mean? Freedom. You are now totally free. I have brought you out of the slave market. I have paid the price of Roman citizenship for you. And so far as I'm concerned, you're free to go any place in the Roman Empire and do whatever you want to do. I have paid the full price. Now, under those kind of circumstances, here are a couple kids fresh out of the barbarian nations up in northern Europe. They have never had it this good before. Here they've got a beautiful room and a beautiful home. They've got clothes like they've never had before. They're eating like they've never eaten before. And now this master says you're free to go and do as you please. What do you suppose these kids would say? They'd say, Master, I've never had it this good before. I'll be your slave. I'll be your servant for the rest of my life if I can just stay right here and serve you. Now, you see, isn't that exactly what God has done? See, God went into the slave market of sin. And even though, like I said in the last hour, it's a constant invitation. I like to put it this way. All along this river of life, there's doorways of escape that we can get out of that slave market. We can let some benevolent individual, the Lord Jesus himself, we can let him buy us out of the slave market. But we have to agree to want to get out. He can't force us. Now, all along the riverbank, if I may continue to give that analogy, we've got these doorways, and I like to put it this way. Across the top of these doorways is a statement that says, Whosoever will may what? Whosoever will may come. Constantly. The redemption price has been paid, and all we have to do is take the way out. And then when we understand, as these two teenagers I used in my illustration, when we understand all that God has done for me, what should be our logical reaction? The same thing. Lord, I want to be your servant the rest of my life. After all, you've done all this for me. I've never had like this before. How many Christians do that? Precious, precious few. But see, this is again our whosoever will. Then, again getting back to what we mentioned a week or two ago with regard to Calvinism and as to whether or not we do have a choice, I like to put it this way, that on the front side of this doorway of escape on the slave market is whosoever will may come. But after we walk through that door, we have chosen to take our freedom. If we could look back, then we would see that over the door on the back side is chosen since when? Before the foundation of the world. You know the rest. That says it all. I had a lady in my class who has been a missionary all her life. She retired now. And I gave that illustration. She came up afterward and she says, You know, I have never heard it put any better. Because see, for a lot of people, it's a problem when we point out the fact that God has chosen us. Long before the world was created, He knew that you and I tonight would be His. But we can't cancel out that whosoever. And so this just kind of covers it. From the front side, it's whosoever will may come. Nobody is left out. But when we decide to go through that door, we decide to stay with the Lord, and we decide to accept His remedy for our sin, then what can we see? Oh, He chose us before we were ever born. Now, just think about that. And the more you think about it, the more thrilling it becomes. All right, now let's go back to Genesis. And again, for anyone tuning in on television, in case you haven't heard us before, we started in Genesis 1, verse 1, and we're just going verse by verse. And even though at times we go back into the New Testament, we're going to little by little be making some headway up through the Bible. And if the Lord tarries, and seemingly I'd have to say it won't be long, but if He does, we'll be making some headway going all the way up through the Old Testament and then on through the New. All right, so now if you're back in Genesis again, in chapter 4, after she realizes, and I imagine the Lord made it plain, that Cain certainly was not the Redeemer as yet, although she had the right concept. This is the way the Redeemer would come. Then you see in verse 2, she has another child, and she calls his name Abel. Now, one of the first, I guess you can call it rules of thumb in Scripture, is that all the way through the Bible you'll always have first the appearance of what we call the natural, and that is always followed then by the spiritual. Now, for example, Cain, as you well know, never became a spiritual individual, was he? He remained the natural, but he was born first. Abel was then the spiritual of the two, and he came second. You follow that all the way up through. You've got Esau, who was the unbeliever, and then you've got Jacob, the believer. First you've got King Saul, who was not a believer, and then you've got King David. And so all the way through. Again, when we come now to the finalizing of God's program, first we're going to have the appearance of the antichrist, the natural, and then the appearance of the true Christ, the spiritual. And so remember this as you study your Bible, that it's always the natural and then the spiritual. So Cain is the natural, and Abel now is going to be the spiritual. All right, verse 2, reading on. Abel was a keeper of sheep, a shepherd, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. He was a farmer. He evidently had no livestock. Now verse 3. And in the process of time... Now stop right there. The Hebrew indicates that what happened, that God had instructed this little family, Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, He had instructed them on how to approach Him. In other words, He didn't just send them out of the garden and let them fend for themselves. He still has their spiritual needs at heart. And so after the process of time, or after a time of instruction, when He had made it so plain as to what they must do to gain fellowship with Himself. And again, remember the premises that we've been holding up. There had to be a blood sacrifice, and it had to be accompanied with faith. Now I'm always reviewing, what's our definition of faith? Taking God at His Word. All right, now let's look at these two young men. They are now young men. Now you see in Scripture, a punctuation, a comma, can flip you over many, many years. And so Cain and Abel are now young men. Cain is farming, raising things from the ground, and Abel is a herder of sheep. And so in the process of time, after they had been instructed, God had told them plainly what they must do, Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. In other words, the things that he had worked for by the sweat of his brow. Whether he brought a bundle of grain, or whether he put a bouquet of sorts together of various flowers and vegetables, we don't know. But it was definitely a sacrifice of things that he had raised from tilling the ground. All right, now we've got to go on to the next verse. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings, or the best of his flock, the fat thereof. And then again, that just meant the very best. Now, do you see those two different sacrifices? Cain's is a sacrifice that cannot shed blood. It is something that grew from the ground. Abel, on the other hand, brings the best of his flock, a blood sacrifice. All right, now let's drop down to verse 5, and then we're going to have to quickly go to the New Testament again. Verse 5, But unto Cain, and to his offering, he that is God, the Lord, had no respect. He didn't accept it. And Cain was wroth, and his countenance fell. Well, I skipped the last half of verse 4, I'm sorry. That when Abel brought the best of his flock, the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering, but Cain's he rejected. All right, now let's go back to Hebrews for just a moment. Go back to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. Drop down to verse 4. Hebrews 11, verse 4. Everybody got it? All right. Hebrews 11, verse 4 says, By what? Faith. Now put the definition in there. By doing what? Taking God at His word. By taking God at His word, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, and by that faith, not by his sacrifice, but by that faith, he obtained witness that he was now what? Righteous. Now, that word righteous, too many people, I think, they shrink from it because, oh, they think, you know, then I've got to be holier than thou, and I've got to walk around like I've got some kind of a halo around my head, and no, that's not what the word righteous implies at all. Righteous just simply means that now we've been put on a footing with God that we can communicate with Him. He has declared us righteous or right with Himself. See? All right. So he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying. See, Abel didn't have to go back and brag, but God had now made it clear that Abel had made himself accepted with God, and by it being dead, yet speaketh, and even though sin had made its mark, yet by virtue of his faith and his obedience in sacrifice, Abel was right with God. All right. But now what about Cain? Come back to Genesis chapter 4, and I'm always amazed at how many people who have been in church all their life have never caught why Abel's sacrifice was accepted and Cain's was not. I mean, I just have it come up constantly. All right? Verse 5 again, Unto Cain and to his offering God had no respect. And now, just like human beings today, see, the human race hasn't changed one bit. When people are shown from the Word of God that they're out in left field with whatever they may be practicing, what's their first reaction? Oh, they get mad. They get angry. It's no different. The first thing that struck Cain when God rejected his offering was what? Well, why not? And he got angry. See? All right. But you see, God is so gracious. God is so kind. He doesn't just zap Cain. What does he do? He pleads with him. And so look at it now. Verse 6, And the Lord said unto Cain, Why are you angry? And why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? You know what God is saying to Cain? Cain, if you would just listen to what I said and do that which I told you to do, I'd accept you. See, now here we boil down to a man of faith and a man destitute of faith. Abel remembered what God said to do to be accepted. What? Bring me a blood sacrifice and I'll accept you. Abel did it. Why? He believed God. Cain, on the other hand, and I always use the word rationalized. Cain rationalized. Here he's a farmer. He doesn't have a flock of sheep. And I think here in Oklahoma, we can picture very readily that maybe on the other side of the mountain was Abel with his sheep. And old Cain said, Well now, there's no reason I should make my way over the mountain and barter with my brother Abel for one of his sheep. Surely, if I do the best I can, if I put together the best beautiful sacrifice for God, surely He will accept it. That's rationalizing. That's not doing what God said, but that's rationalizing. Now think about it. Isn't that what the vast majority of people are doing today? Instead of coming into the book and seeing what God clearly says we have to believe, they rationalize and say, Well now look, if I do such and such, if I live in such and such a behavior pattern, surely God will accept me. Listen, God's not going to accept that person any more than He did Cain. It had to be God's way. And it had to be because that person believed that this is what God said was His way. All right, now let's quickly finish verse 7. God even goes one step further as He always does. And now He tells Cain, If thou doest not well, in other words, if you don't yourself go and find a sacrificial animal and bring it to me, I'll go you one step further. He says, a sin offering. Now it's unfortunate that the King James doesn't make that plain. But the same Hebrew word for sin is also the Hebrew word for sin offering. Now if you put that in there, and I'm not the only one that puts it this way, if you'll read it like this, the Lord says, If thou doest not well, a sin offering lieth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. Now the best illustration I can always give here is, you remember when Abraham was going to offer Isaac and God stopped him? But he had to have a sacrifice. But what had God provided right behind him? A ram in the thicket, see? God had provided it. He did the same thing here. He's telling Cain in so many words in planning, Cain, if you'll go back home, right at your tent door I've provided a lamb. He's not going to argue with you. He's not going to run from you. See what it says? Unto thee shall be his desire. That lamb will succumb to you, and all you have to do is go pick it up, bring it to me, and I'll accept you. Now isn't that plain? But does Cain do it? No, Cain is self-willed. Cain doesn't believe a thing God says. And I use the same word for Esau as Cain. They were destitute of faith. They could not believe what God said. So now, did I make it plain? Why was Abel accepted and Cain rejected? Because Abel brought a blood sacrifice and Cain brought a bloodless one. Cain brought what he thought God would accept. And now again, bringing in to our own present time, look at people all around us. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, you can ask ten different people why they think God should let them into heaven, and you'll get ten different answers. Some will say, well, I'm doing this, or I've joined such and such, and I'm the best that I can. They're rationalizing, and they are refusing to just simply consider what has God said. And when we do what God says, that's what? Faith. Okay, see you next week. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Through the Bible is a partner-supported ministry. If this program has been a help to your study of the scriptures and you'd like to see others enjoy the teaching, your support would be greatly appreciated. Write to us at Les Feldick Ministries, 30706 West Lona Valley Road, Kenta, Oklahoma, 74552, or call 1-800-369-7856. Remember, all programs are available in printed form, audio cassette, and videotape.