Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the author of Hebrews has unlocked for us the moral of the Cain and Abel story.  He says this: 

Hebrews 11:4 (ESV): 

4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

So the Cain and Abel story is ultimately a story about faith.  Specifically, Abel’s faith, contrasted with Cain’s lack of faith. 

As it turns out, all of humanity falls into one of these two categories typified by Cain and Abel. Either we come to God in the way of Abel (the way of faith), or we attempt to come to God on our own terms, which is the way of Cain. 

Last week, we defined faith as belief plus trust.  

• Belief in the true, biblical Jesus

• Genuine trust for Him when it comes to your salvation

Today, we see that Abel was a tremendous example of trusting in the atonement that God alone can provide for us.  

In order to fully appreciate the faith of Abel, we have to go back to the original story in its context. 

The beginning of the Cain and Abel story in Genesis reads like this: 

• Genesis 4:1–5 (ESV): 4 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” 2 And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

Why is it that the LORD rejected Cain’s sacrifice but accepted Abel’s?

To answer that question, we need to look at what Cain and Abel would have understood about the nature of sacrifices…

The Cain and Abel story comes in Genesis 4… but what happened right before that, in Genesis 3? 

The Fall. 

In Genesis 3, we find the first humans God created, Adam and Eve (Cain and Abel’s parents), in the serene and perfect Garden of Eden. Free from sin and the effects of sin, living in perfect communion with God just like God intended. 

Then the serpent comes along (Satan), tempts Eve to disbelieve and disobey God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  She does, and gives it to Adam as well, who also sins and before they know it, everything has changed. 

The world is now going to be marred by sin and evil, death is going to reign, but most significantly, their relationship with God is immediately fractured. 

All at once they realize their nakedness. They realize that they are unclean and have no business in the manifest presence of holy God.  

So they hide themselves and try to cover themselves up, with what? Leaves. It was their best attempt at covering their sin.  

Then God comes along and calls out to them. Which is how it always works, isn’t it? In our sin, we don’t seek God––He seeks us.

• Romans 3:11 (ESV): 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 

• Ephesians 2:1-5 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins … But God, being rich in mercy… even when we were dead… made us alive…

And what does God do when He finds them? 

God turns to Satan and pronounces a curse, and gives a prophecy:

• Genesis 3:15 (ESV): 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

That may not look like much at a glance, but that statement is what theologians refer to as the protoevangelium, or first gospel, because it’s a foreshadowing of what Christ would do: He would come as a descendant of the woman, and would effectively crush Satan and free God’s people from the curse of sin. 

So… 

Adam and Eve ran away from God, God chases them down.  

Adam and Eve need forgiveness and deliverance from Evil, God promises He’ll take care of it. 

Adam and Eve still need to be clothed…  

So what happens?  God clothes Adam and Eve. 

With what? Animal skins. 

• Genesis 3:21 (ESV): 21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

How’d he get the animal skins?  The text doesn’t say, but we know what would have had to have happened… 

God himself kills an animal, sheds its blood, and clothes our first parents with a blameless, sacrificed substitute.  

What is that conveying to them?  That their sin needed to be covered… that it could only be covered by God Himself, and that death had to occur in order for that to happen. 

• George Whitefield said this: What were the coats that God made to put on our first parents, but types of the application of the merits of the righteousness of Jesus Christ to believers’ hearts?  We are told that those coats were made of skins of beasts…. Those beasts were slain in sacrifice, in commemoration of the great sacrifice, Jesus Christ, thereafter to be offered. 

• R. C. Sproul: For God to make garments of skin, an animal had to die. Here we see the first shedding of blood, pointing forward to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ. 

The stage for redemption has been set by God just moments after sin entered the world.  

Then, immediately after this episode, comes perhaps the most heart-wrenching part of the story. 

• Genesis 3:22–24 (ESV): 22 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Their way back into Eden was guarded by The Cherubim: huge, terrifying angelic guardians with swords, who were barring sinful humans from coming into the holy presence of God. 

This image would reappear later in the Old Testament in a very significant way. 

When we look at the Tabernacle and later the Temple, the formal place of worship under the Old Covenant, which was to be an earthly representation of heavenly realities (per Hebrews 9), what do we see? 

• On the Curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, Cherubim.  

• On the Mercy Seat, where the blood from the sacrifice would be sprinkled, Cherubim. 

• Later in the Temple, carved into the doors and inner walls of the Temple, Cherubim.

• We see Cherubim symbolically guarding the presence of the Lord.   

The message is clear: The presence of God is off limits, except by blood sacrifice.

• Romans 6:23 tells us the wages of sin is death.  So we understand that death had to be paid to atone for sin.  

We’ve talked extensively from Hebrews about how the thousands of animal sacrifices under the Old Covenant system were just a dress rehearsal for the real event: the sacrifice of Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, on the cross.  The fulfillment of all of those sacrifices going all the way back to those first animals killed by God in Eden.  

• The One who has crushed Satan and redeemed fallen humans from sin and death.  

• The One who, by His death, tore the curtain in the Temple with the Cherubim on it, opening up for us access yet again into the very presence of God.  

• The One who clothes us in His righteousness and covers up our guilt, so that we can stand before Holy God blameless.    

So with this backdrop, we come back to the Cain and Abel story.  

And we again ask the question, why is it that the LORD rejected Cain’s sacrifice but accepted Abel’s?  

Hebrews 11:4 (ESV): 

4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. 

Abel’s sacrifice was accepted by God because it demonstrated  that Abel was willing to come to God on God’s terms.  

• It showed that Abel had faith in God’s prescribed way of approaching His holy presence. 

• It showed that Abel was looking ahead, by faith, to the sacrifice of a greater Substitute.

• It showed that Abel had tapped into the only true way of being made righteous before God: faith. 

And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

This is a clever twist, because in the Genesis account, it is the blood of Abel that is crying out to God, metaphorically speaking; the unjust death of Abel cries out for vengeance.  

But here, we see that it is Abel’s faith that continues to cry out as an example of how to gain true righteousness. 

Even though Abel is long gone, the way of Abel continues to be instructive as an example of how to rightly approach God.  

The way of Cain, by contrast, is an example of how not to approach God.  

The way of Cain is the way of self-righteousness.  

Rather than trusting God’s way, Cain tried to earn his way through his own ingenuity and strength.  His faith was not in the death of a substitute, his faith was in his own abilities.  

• You can picture him with his harvest of fruit and veggies, proud of his hard labor and his abilities.  Sure that his way is the best way. 

• It’s hard work to till the land and produce crops! 

  • God Himself had just cursed the ground back in Genesis 3, saying, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you… by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread…”  

So Cain’s offering is a monument of his own hard work, of pride, of self-righteousness.  

Unfortunately, the way of Cain is still alive and well today. 

Even among Christians there is sometimes a sense that we need to perform and work our way to God.  There is pride in our own achievements.  There is a sense of self-righteousness, and a feeling that our religious performance is somehow going to earn more favor from God.   

• We go to church often out of a sense of duty rather than delight in the presence of God. 

• We do our quiet time so that we can check the box and feel good about our dedication.

• We share the gospel with a friend because somewhere in the back of our minds we think that it will score us points with God. 

These are good things on the surface, but if our hearts are seeing them as a means of gaining righteousness, they are simply ‘the way of Cain’ in disguise. 

The way of Cain is the way of self-righteousness. 

The way of Abel is the way of faith in our substitute, Jesus Christ.  

Just to be clear: the way of Abel doesn’t mean we do nothing for God… it means when we do things for God… when we offer our sacrifices to God… when we come into His presence… we do it on the basis of what Christ has done for us.  Not on the basis of what we have done for Christ.  

Romans 12 tells us that as Christians we are still called to worship God through sacrifice… the sacrifice of our whole lives lived for the glory of Christ. 

• Romans 12:1–2 (ESV): 12 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

That word “therefore” is very significant.  It points back to everything Paul has developed for 11 chapters, which has been all about how we are saved by faith in Christ, not by works.  And so, on the basis of our salvation, he then says, “therefore… present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” 

Not a dead sacrifice—those are no more; Jesus’ death was the last dead sacrifice we’ll ever need––but a living sacrifice.  A life lived in sacrifice unto God.  A life that no longer conforms to the patterns of the world… a life that is lived in accord with the will of God… NOT because we are trying to earn God’s favor, but because we HAVE God’s favor on the basis of Christ’s finished work on the cross. 

As you worship God with your whole life this week… through song, through time in His Word, through prayer, through fellowship with other believers, through generosity, through hard work at your job, through discipling your children, through loving your spouse, through exercise and fitness, through fun and recreation… Resist the urge to do it in the way of Cain… instead, take a page out of Abel’s book… Come to God on His terms… come through Christ. 

• John 14:6 (ESV): 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  

In our next chapter of Hebrews we find this statement: 

• Hebrews 12:24 “Jesus [is] the Mediator of a new covenant, and [His sprinkled blood] speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” 

The way of Abel is ultimately the way of Christ, the greater Abel, who was killed to atone for our sins.  

Abel’s blood cried out for revenge; Jesus’ blood cries out for forgiveness and redemption, and for access into God’s presence to be granted once again for humanity. 

If it weren’t for Jesus, we’d still be barred from the presence of God, staring at a flaming sword held by Cherubim.  

Now, because of Jesus (and ONLY because of Jesus), we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need”. 

As the line from the famous hymn Rock of Ages says… 

Nothing in my hand I bring

Simply to the cross I cling