> [!Scripture] > **3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. > 4 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; > 5 but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.** <img src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/media%3Agenesis%204%203-5.jpg" alt="Genesis 4:3-5" style="max-width: 100%; height: auto;"> > [!success] Audio Commentary > <audio controls src="https://audio.mhbbible.com/Genesis%204%203-5.ogg"></audio> ## Brief Observations - **Cain and Abel: the first offerings** — Likely firstborn (possibly twins), their births prove God's grace post-Fall—blessing to multiply intact, solidifying protoevangelium hope. Cain ("acquired") brings joy to Eve; Abel follows. In time (perhaps year-end, Fall commemoration, or Sabbath), they offer to God via Adam, family priest. + **Adam as priest: grace amid apostasy** — God's trust in Adam post-rebellion tests faith, shows obedience to remedial law, reveals Heaven-Earth correspondence. Foreshadows Christ's veil-tearing atonement—grace initiating reconciliation despite sin. - **Worship: eternal institution** — Ritual devotion from humanity's dawn, predating even us via angelic host. Jeremiah's "ancient paths" call to it for soul-rest (Jeremiah 6:16). Godliness eternal; sin novel perversion. Truth/God not equals to lies/Satan—don't debase the divine or elevate the demonic. + **Abel's offering accepted, Cain's rejected** — Abel's firstlings (best with fat) show righteous heart; Cain's fruit (no "firstfruits") reveals deficient faith. God regards the giver before the gift—heart matters most (Hebrews 11:4). Cain's rejection: not arbitrary, but exposing unrepentant soul. - **God's merciful rebuke to Cain** — "Why fallen countenance? If you do well, accepted; if not, sin crouches—master it." Grace warns before judgment, urging repentance. Like prodigal's father, God pursues amid sin—offering mastery over lurking evil. + **Cain's anger: enmity with God and Abel** — Rage at "unfair" rebuke shows unbowed heart (Proverbs 19:3: foolishness ruins, rages against Lord). Hatred of Abel—unprovoked, righteous brother—born of envy: Abel's acceptance exposes Cain's lie. Unrepentant sinners despise God's favored, like Pharisees blocking kingdom entry (Matthew 23). - **Envy's corrosion leads to murder** — Resentment eats inside-out, spilling as sickness, twisted expressions, violence. Cain's "overreaction" no surprise—sin's logical end. Pharisees: whitewashed tombs, outwardly religious, inwardly rotten (Matthew 23:27). Guard against simmering envy; it kills souls and relationships. + **Lessons for today** — Offerings reveal heart: give God your best, not leftovers. Repent humbly when rebuked—don't rage or blame. Envy destroys; contentment in God's acceptance heals. Christ, ultimate High Priest, offers perfect offering—His blood speaks better than Abel's (Hebrews 12:24). ## Full Commentary Adam, being the father, was the priest of his family. As we discussed earlier, Eve probably thought this office would belong to Cain in the future. This passage gives us a look at Cain and Abel’s sacrificial devotions. Each of them brought an offering to the Lord, likely through Adam, in the process of time. This could have been at the end of the year. It could have been part of some annual fast commemorating the Fall. Or it could have simply been on the seventh day of the week, which would have been the end of the week. When they brought the offerings is less significant than what happened when they did. The first point of interest here is that Adam would be appointed priest of his family at all. It’s a revelation of God’s grace that He would trust Adam with such divine appointment after his history of apostasy. Allowing Adam into the priesthood served several purposes. It tested Adam’s faith in God’s promises. It demonstrated Adam’s obedience to the remedial law. And most importantly it revealed God’s initiative to settle correspondence between Heaven and Earth. God’s blessing Adam with the priesthood foreshadowed the good news to come when Christ’s atoning sacrifice tore the veil between man and God. The ritual worship of God is not some novel concept. It was practiced from the very beginning with the very first humans on earth. Religious worship is an institution as ancient as life itself. If you consider the heavenly host of angels and their perpetual worship of God — the institution extends even further back than humanity. God spoke about this institution to Israel through the prophet Jeremiah when he said, “"Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is, and walk in it; And you will find rest for your souls.” Of course that reprobate generation of people didn’t listen. Godliness and sin are not equal opposites. No more than God Himself is an equal opposite of Satan. I think many people get that confused and either inappropriately debase God or mistakenly elevate Satan. Truth and lies are not equal opposites. The truth is eternal and has always pre-existed lies, sin, and profanity. Scripture commands parents to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. If Adam did his job right, Cain and Abel would have been brought up in this way. The conduct parents model for their children is very frequently the same conduct the child will adopt once he or she is able to act on his own. This pattern has so much staying-power that a strong majority of Christians have Christian parents, and a strong majority of secularists were raised by secularists. It’s possible to break the pattern, but doing so takes intentional awareness and a desire for truth. Part of being brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord means learning you should honor God with what we have. We should honor God with the gifts He has given us. This often takes the shape of honoring God in accordance with our professions and our possessions. You shouldn’t feel pressure to do what others are called to. If God hasn’t given you a specific gifting, this probably means your greatest method of honoring God will come elsewhere. A worship leader honors God through his gift of singing. If you’re not a gifted singer, you’re not less of a Christian simply because you don’t lead worship. Perhaps your gift is in caring for others, so you should remained focused on pastoral care and stay in your lane with how you work to honor God. This was the case with Cain and Abel, each brother brought sacrifices associated with their own profession. God is pleased when we bring our sacrifices with an upright heart. It’s not enough to fake your offering when you don’t actually care about the beneficiaries of it. For instance, your offering may promote expansion of the kingdom of God in your community and it may provide relief for the poor. But if your own motivation for giving is to garner the praise of others and you don’t actually care about the kingdom of God or the well-being of the poor — your sacrifice does not please God and you’re better off just keeping it. The reason Cain’s offering was insufficient and rejected by God was a problem which originated in his heart. His spiritual wickedness infected the quality of his offering. Cain’s lack of quality may or may not have been apparent to a common bystander. I suspect Cain hid it well if he thought he could get away with lying to God Himself. We have reason to believe Adam accepted both Cain and Abel’s offerings without notice of discrepancy between the two. But God noticed. God sees not as man sees, and he could see the deception in Cain’s heart even if the outward quality of his offering seemed unimpeachable. This same mask was worn by the religious elite of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees and the tax collectors were hypocrites yet they seemed faithful in their religious conduct. In this way sometimes only God can tell whether a person is authentic. But God can _always_ tell whether a person is authentic. Cain’s offering may have seemed good enough even to himself, he may have deceived himself in an effort to conceal his sin. This self-deception is never exculpatory because God is One who convicts you of sin. God told Cain he was doing wrong, and God reminded Cain that he himself knows what he’s doing wrong. Cain’s offering was mentioned first, and this could indicate that Cain was even quicker than Abel to bring his sacrifice. A wicked person may hear as many sermons, say as many prayers, and be as generous as a Christian — but none of these performance displays absolve the guilt of sin. It’s actually not uncommon for an unrepentant sinner to use exhibitions of religiosity to cover up his or her own misdeeds. That was the primary offense of the Pharisees. This deception may start as a way to alleviate the shame of sin. The sinner’s calculation may be one such that if he does enough good he can offset the bad he knows he’s continuing to do. But eventually these motivations become more nefarious and soon the sinner uses religious practice in order to facilitate increases in his sin. Perhaps the most heinous example in our own generation has been that of the predator priests in the Catholic Church. These men used positions of spiritual authority and overt displays of piety to gain access to children to they could victimize them. One can hardly think of a more demonic, more evil instantiation of the sin of taking the Lord’s name in vain. So how do you ensure that your own sacrifices and religious expressions are pleasing to God. It’s simple: the motivation of every sacrifice and every act of worship should be God’s acceptance. You may make sacrifices for the well-being of your neighbor, but the all the while your focus should be on God and your motivation should be for Him. When you give money to your church, you should understand this tithe is an expression of your worship to God. The church itself may use it to pay utility bills or plant a new location, but that’s never the point of giving and so your focus should remain vertical. When you can work as unto the Lord and be generous as unto the Lord, you’ll find that the subject of your efforts no longer matters so much. You may have a terrible boss who doesn’t inspire good work, but good work is still possible for you if you remain focused on honoring God Himself through your work. Your boss becomes irrelevant in such an exchange. Paul reminded the Corinthian church that, “while at home or abroad, his ambition is to be pleasing to God.” We discussed how the difference between Cain and Abel was probably more in their character than in their actual offerings. Cain was a wicked man who walked in creative union with sin. In this way he was an inventor of evil — indeed he committed creation’s first homicide. Cain was submitted to the reigning power of the world and of the flesh. These character issues born of Cain’s godlessness made his offering an abomination to the Lord. Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.” God’s primary concern is always your spirit. Everything you do in life is downstream from your spirit. Your actions, indeed even your perception itself, is entirely predicated on your spirit. This is why it’s not possible to be Christlike without the Spirit of God inside you. Cain had given himself over to an evil spirit while Abel remained righteous. Abel’s heart was upright and his life was pious, and these attributes were the sole reasons God respected his offering. Psalm 11:7 says, “For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face.” The warmth of God’s countenance shined on Abel because of Abel’s righteousness. Abel was a holy man, as much as human beings can be, and this holiness was imparted to his offering. Jesus tells us good fruit cannot come from a bad tree, and so it’s not possible for a wicked person to give offerings or perform works that are pleasing to God. Earlier I mentioned how Cain’s spiritual maladies infected the quality of his sacrifice — and I maintain that evaluation now. Hebrews 11:4 explicitly points this difference in offerings between Cain and Abel when it says, “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.” I think in the case of Cain and Abel the difference in offerings was mostly spiritual in nature. But this spiritual nature doesn’t foreclose on the truth that wicked people very often perform worse by worldly standards as well. A person who goes to work thinking of himself as a victim of some kind of systemic oppression will not perform as well as an industrious person who is thankful for the goodness of God. Spiritual sickness and self-deceit very frequently cause actual work and actual sacrifice to be lesser-grade. Cain wasn’t giving God his best either in life or in sacrifice. Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. This means Abel brought the best sacrifices he could bring and included the very best parts of them. Abel understood God is first and God is best and so Abel’s sacrifices should reflect those qualities. Cain, on the other hand, probably brought whatever crops he had on hand. He may have even withheld his most marketable crops or the crops which would benefit him the most. In this way he pretended to give his best while knowing he wasn’t giving his best. This is the mindset Cain carried through every domain of his life. This mindset is what I call the spirit of Cain — and it’s this mindset which underwrites the narcissistic victimhood characteristic of pathological economic systems like communism. One of the most famous dictums of communisms recent iterations in the Soviet Union was this: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. People possessed by the spirit of Cain will pretend to give their best and then become angry when their offerings are rejected. They’ll accuse God and whoever their state leaders are of systemic injustice and point to this fake injustice as an excuse for their failure to sacrifice. When others within the same system, and under the sovereignty of the same God, do make proper sacrifices and see the fruit of success — these Cain-acolytes will hate them and even seek to kill them just like Cain killed Abel. They do this because successful people are living proof of their own lies. Abel was righteous and he was accepted because of his righteousness. Abel represented the ideal which Cain refused to meet. So Cain killed him rather than live under this reminder of self-inflicted failure. Scripture indicates the great difference in Cain’s sacrificial disposition was a lack of faith. Abel had an eye to God’s sovereignty as his rule and he was motivated by God’s glory. Abel made his sacrifices in such as way that caused him to be dependent on God as his Redeemer. Cain hedged his bet and gave only what he thought was necessary to redound to his credit. If scripture describes Abel as righteous, this must also mean he was a penitent believer. He was aware of his own sins and his own insufficiencies, and he depended on God’s grace to cover them. By contrast Cain remained arrogant. Imagine the hubris it must take to think you can deceive God. Cain’s arrogance made him like a Pharisees who glorified himself while remaining unjustified before God. When God rejected Cain’s offering, Cain became so angry that he couldn’t contain the emotion from his face. Scripture says Cain’s countenance fell. When a person’s countenance falls in this way it’s not an expression of sadness or despair. It’s more like the blinding darkness of rage and malice. This is the kind of darkness which controls someone who has spent thousands of hours ruminating on his own resentment. Cain resented God and Cain resented Abel. Cain was indignant that God would judge such a difference between his offering and his brother’s. Anger is an interesting emotion because in many circumstances it’s correct for being there. Cain was correct to be angry for his offering being rejected — but he was simply angry at the wrong things. He should have been angry with himself for his own infidelity and hypocrisy. Cain’s misconduct caused forfeiture of God’s acceptance and this was a good reason to be upset. But his resentment and the false prism of victimhood through which he viewed himself misdirected his anger and made it sinful. There are other examples in scripture of a person’s countenance falling in holy shame and repentance. The publican in Luke 18 wouldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven as he beat his own chest and asked for God’s mercy. Americans are correct to be angry when they witness a death at the hands of law enforcement. But many times the facts conclude their anger should be directed at the ideologues who manipulated the victim into thinking he should be afraid of the police and therefore resist arrest. The same is true for the anger we feel when we see illegal immigrant families being deported to their home countries. We have a right to be angry at this sight, but the facts conclude our anger should be directed at the derelict administration who opened the borders and allowed them to come illegally in the first place. They were deceived and betrayed for political advantages. They were called to put their lives in danger as they journeyed forward to false hopes of a better future — all the while knowing the heartbreak which awaited when the laws began to be enforced again. We have a right to be angry, but we must be angry for the correct reasons. Cain’s anger revealed his enmity with God. He lashed out at God as if God treated him unfairly. When a sinner takes umbrage with the rebukes of God brought on by our own sins, this is a good indication the sinner’s heart is not humbled. Proverbs 19:3 summarizes Cain’s problem in a single sentence: “The foolishness of man ruins his way, And his heart rages against the LORD.” Cain’s anger also revealed his enmity with Abel. What’s interesting about Cain’s resentment of Abel is that we have no record which indicates Abel ever slandered Cain or did anything to provoke him. By all accounts Abel was faithful and righteous. This probably meant he was a good brother to Cain as well. So why would Cain kill him? I think Cain’s murderous hatred of Abel was born of the fact that Abel’s life proved Cain was lying to God. Abel was the example of an ideal Cain refused to meet. Abel had the privilege of being publicly accepted by God. It’s very common for unrepentant sinners, especially once they’ve been rejected by God, to be hateful towards those who are distinguished by God’s acceptance. When Jesus is pronouncing woes to the Pharisees He points out that they neither enter the kingdom of God themselves nor suffered those that were entering to go in. So the Pharisees hated people who were covered in the righteousness of Christ because the contrast proved their own self-righteousness was worthless. When we read about Cain’s murdering Abel our first thoughts might be that he overreacted. But I think this is what envy and resentment really does to a person. These sins are corrosive and they eat you from the inside out. This is part of the reason Christ called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. They appeared religious on the outside but on the inside they were full of rottenness and dead men’s bones. Eventually, when the cup of your sin has filled up, the envy spills out on your facial expressions and in your actions. Sometimes it can even make you physically sick. For as much simmering resentment Cain harbored against God and against Abel — it’s actually no surprise his anger would end in homicide.