Or, The Peril of Sinful Sacrifices
Scripture: Genesis 4:1-7
Date: August 30, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
After Genesis 3 we don’t really learn anything new about man. We see man’s sin exposed in growing and greater ugliness, but fundamentally all the things we need to know about him are in the first three chapters of the Bible. God created man in His own image; anything great done by any man falls under the umbrella of the glory of his created purpose. Man disregarded God’s Word to seek his own benefit and disobeyed God; all rebellion today is an echo of that original rebellion. Man felt guilt over his sin, he tried to hide from God and blamed someone else for his sin. Then God judged man’s sin with death. Work on earth is painful, relationships intended for intimacy (such as marriage) are strained, there is ongoing battle with the serpent, and eventually man returns to the dust from which he came. This is how it’s been since God drove Adam and Eve out of the Eden.
Chapter 4, which focuses on two of Adam and Eve’s sons, is the final act in the section starting in 2:4, the generations of the heavens and earth. The next “book of generations” starts in Genesis 5:1. Cain and Abel are important branches in the family tree physically and, more importantly, spiritually.
We see here not only the multiplication of offspring and new generations, but also the multiplication of sin and its effects across generations. More than the history of humanity, this is the history of hamartia (sin). God promised offspring, but He also promised a clash between two types of offspring. Little did Adam and Eve know how quickly, or how deeply, they would be faced with the consequences of their sin.
It’s also interesting that this story of sin starts in the setting of worship. Cain’s wrong worship, even of the right God, results in jealous murder of Abel. He didn’t love God so he hated his brother. Cain’s sinful sacrifices put him in peril, as have all sinful sacrifices since.
God commanded the first couple to be fruitful and multiply, He also promised them offspring (they heard about it when God judged the serpent and also in the fact that Eve would have pain in childbirth), so the man and the woman must have eagerly expected kids. At the same time, though they perhaps had seen animals give birth, they had no experience whatsoever with pregnancy, labor and delivery, or newborns. Here is the first mother and the first baby.
Now the man knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” And again, she bore his brother Abel. (verses 1-2a)
And the man knew Eve his wife is the typical and delicate way that the Old Testament speaks about marital, sexual relations. It means Adam and his wife were “intimate.” “Knowing” is never used of animals mating, yet they are fruitful and multiply. The idea is that sexuality is personal, it is more than the meeting of reproductive organs.
Cain’s name is a wordplay with the verb in Eve’s comment. He is Cain—cayin that she had gotten —canati, meaning “to get, to acquire.” For her, the significance of his name was Got; for him, he became Grabby.
Eve exclaims, I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD . Man is not the word for baby or child but for a mature man. She had high hopes for this man in light of the good news in Genesis 3:15.
The name Abel is the same Hebrew word that dominates Ecclesiastes: hebel which means “fleeting, vanity.” Perhaps something happened to discourage Eve after the birth of Cain. Perhaps it was prophetic foreshadowing. All our lives are as a vapor that appear for a little time and then vanish (see James 4:14). When the curtain opens on the next scene (verse 8), Abel, the righteous worshipper, will be killed by his brother.
Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. (verse 2b)
Both brothers had jobs and both jobs were respectable and part of fulfilling the cultural mandate. They are obviously older now and, though they both learned their skills from their father, they are defined by their specific work, not merely assigned to it as if it were a boyhood chore.
It is possible, even probable, that Cain already had a wife by this point. Certainly there were other brothers and sisters around, and there’s a slight chance Cain even had offspring of his own by this time. The first thing that happens after the LORD curses Cain and sends him away is that Cain’s wife gets pregnant. But even before that, Cain complains about his punishment that “whoever finds me will kill me.” Who on earth would find him? Who else was on the earth?
Whatever else other siblings were doing, however many others there were, Cain and Abel were employed in honorable reputable work. Abel was a keeper of sheep ; he was a shepherd, a pastor. Cain was a worker of the ground , a nice way to translate “a servant” or “tiller of the ground,” a gardener or farmer. But both occupations were well-regarded. Neither was inferior to the other.
Before we go on, it would be great to know so many things before verse 3. What was it like for Eve to be pregnant? Did they use diapers? What sort of home did they have?
In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. (verses 3-4a)
In the course of time is a way to say “it came to the end of days,” probably the harvest time.
Both brothers brought…an offering . A reasonable question is, why did they bring offerings in the first place? Where did they get the idea? If God instituted or commanded Adam and Eve to make offerings, we don’t know about it because Moses doesn’t mention it. That would have been convenient and helpful information. We read no instructions about how or when or what or where to sacrifice. Yet in how Moses says what he does say, we get the impression that this was probably not the first time the brothers brought an offering. Apparently there was an established place to bring the offering, along with a customary time.
It’s also reasonable to assume that they understood what to offer. The word offering “in human affairs was a gift of homage or allegiance and, as a ritual term, could describe either animal or more often cereal offerings” (Kidner, 80). Each brother brought an offering related to and appropriate for his occupation. Cain’s fruit provided food, Abel’s sheep provided clothing (since eating meat wasn’t officially authorized until after the flood in 9:3).
And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. (verses 4b-5)
The LORD had regard for one but … He had no regard for the other. How did they know? In what way did they recognize God’s approval and disapproval? Even more importantly, why did God accept Abel and not Cain?
Possible answers could be:
Abel brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. The firstborn , the firstlings, were the choicest and best of the flock, the cream of the crop. The fat of anything meant the best part of it (such as the fat of the land, Psalm 147:14). “All fat is the LORD’s” (Leviticus 3:16). Abel offered the foremost and finest of his flock by faith.
Cain had not brought the firstfruits. He went through the motions, but God knew his heart. His effort was external, half-hearted, routine. He offered to God his leftovers, his whatevers.
The offering and the offerer cannot be divided; God regarded Abel and He did not regard Cain.
So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. (verse 5b)
Cain responds like a true hypocrite; he went through the motions for himself and, when God did not reward him, let alone receive him, he was very angry . “The original implies an inflamed and burning anger, or fierce resentment” (Bush, 98). He believed God should have accepted his offering.
Why get angry? If you didn’t give the best, if God didn’t like it, then you still got to keep the best. Anger came because he didn’t get what he really wanted: glory for himself. Cain was honoring himself, not God. He was jealous for his own name’s sake, not for the name of the LORD. As sin is prone to do, it blinded Cain from seeing that 1) joy comes from worshipping God, not being God, and 2) it was his own fault in the first place. Sinners blame anyone or anything they can.
Cain’s anger was not only wrong, it was also foolish. He, and he alone was to blame for the poor offering. Not only that, God could have killed Cain for this wickedness but graciously warns him instead.
The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” (verses 6-7)
The question itself implies that Cain understood the principle. It was his fault, and his fault alone. Also, the question, like those to the man and woman in chapter 3, is not a question God didn’t already know the answer to. He asks to elicit a change of heart.
Why are you angry? If Cain would have taken that question seriously, he might have realized not only that he had no reason to be angry, but actually, that God did have the right to be angry with him and his weak-sauce sacrifice.
If you do well , that is, if your heart is right. God doesn’t say, “If you offer a blood sacrifice then it will be accepted.” The heart is always the issue, and in Cain’s case it came out in his meager whatevers-offering. So, if you do not do well , if your heart is not right.
It is ironic that Cain offered a sacrifice of communion when his heart was disengaged. There is nothing in the context that requires or even suggests that this was a sin or guilt offering. On the contrary, “in the course of time” (verse 3) implies a harvest/thanksgiving offering. The rest of the Old Testament clearly holds a place for, in fact commands, such celebration/communion sacrifices.
Will you not be accepted? God is not impulsive or partial. His standard is knowable and fixed. More than that, He always receives those whose hearts are right. The word accepted is translated “lifted countenance” by the NASB, “If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?” The connection between the two ideas (accepted and lifted countenance) is that our heads are lifted up by God when we worship Him with the right heart. It is our joy to commune with God.
The opposite is true as well. If we do not do well , the result is worse than sadness, we become slaves. Worse than despair, we are in danger of being destroyed by sin. Wrong worship of the true God, or worship of any other God for that matter, keeps us from being accepted. Heart distance from God puts man in a high-risk condition.
Sin is mentioned by name for the first time in the Bible; hhatat, missing the way, deviating from the standard, failing to meet expectations. Here sin is personified, crouching at the door , ready to pounce and overcome its prey. Sin is not a mild or harmless threat, but a wild and menacing beast. Its desire is for you , it is after your blood (Leopold, 201). It waits, ready to attack.
You must rule over it . Man is required, for his own good and protection, to watch for and tame sin. However, that man has responsibility for this does not mean that he has the ability in and of himself.
The point here is that we will serve God or sin. We will be devoted to Him or devoured by sin. “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.”
As Moses tells the story, Cain is silent. He does not respond in repentance or in thankfulness for the merciful warning. It seems, based on the following paragraph, that God’s warning made him more angry, and as he stewed in anger it soon boiled over.
That Yahweh engages Cain at all, rather than annihilate him on the spot, is a mark of God’s mercy. That Yahweh encourages and exhorts and warns Cain is an ever greater display of mercy (while also making Cain more accountable). That God already knew Cain’s next step, the cold-blooded murder of his brother, tells us that the battle between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent is real and deadly, while still being part of God’s bigger plan.
Cain used his image-bearing responsibility for his own gain, not for worship. And that sin soon assaulted a fellow image-bearer, destroying his immediate family relationship.
The New Testament commentary explains that Cain “was of the evil one” (1 John 3:12). And Abel is the first in the long line of godly, faith-driven men in Hebrews 11 (verse 4).
From the beginning, God has had no pleasure in merely external worship. Though our worship today does not involve animal sacrifices, there are visible, external ways we show what is internal. We are in peril if we offer our leftovers or whatevers instead of the first and choicest parts, be that our attention and energy, our eagerness to serve others, our singing, our giving, and so forth.
Sinful sacrifices are:
Even if no one sees, even if the externals look fantastic, God sees. Sin is as menacing and dangerous and real and deadly as it was in Cain’s case. It seeks to destroy you. You must, by God’s grace, kill it before it kills you.