Genesis 4:3–5

Cain was not an atheist; he not only believed in God's existence, but he wanted to be in God's favour, or he would not have come to Him with an offering. But he had his own ideas about how to approach God. His later behaviour shows he was self-willed, and did not want to do God's will.

When Cain and Abel approached the LORD with an offering, they each came with a present or gift (minchah). It was their way of acknowledging whose creatures they were... Now, remembering that the ground was then cursed in a way it is not now, and has not been since the flood (Gen. 5:29), Cain's offering must have cost him a great deal of toil.

In Cain's offering there was no recognition of this. He brought the fruit of the ground which God had cursed. He probably brought the finest produce of his own hard work. But in it there was no acknowledgment of the death sentence that lay upon him. He was like a condemned criminal under sentence of death, trying to win favour with his judge by bribing him with something nice.

They both came to worship, and Cain brought what cost him most, what he had worked for. God had sent him out to till the ground, and he tilled it; that was right, and it was right for him to bring an offering... What was Cain's mistake? He had no sense in his heart that he was driven out of paradise because he deserved it... Think of a child who disobeyed his father one day. The next day he comes back as if nothing had happened, expecting a welcome as though all was well between them. What would that father feel?

This sets the difference clearly before us: Cain offered the LORD the fruit of a cursed earth, and without any blood to remove the curse. He presented an "unbloody sacrifice," simply because he had no faith... The penalty of sin is death. Cain was a sinner, and so death stood between him and the LORD. But his offering contained no recognition of this fact. There was no presentation of a sacrificed life, to meet the claims of divine holiness, or to answer to his own true condition as a sinner.

No doubt reason might say, "What more acceptable offering could a man present than the one he produced by the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow?" Reason, and even man's religious mind, may think so. But God thinks very differently. Faith is always sure to agree with God's thoughts.

Cain's character had nothing whatever to do with his rejection by God. He and Abel were both born of fallen parents, outside the garden of Eden. God made a difference between the brothers because their offerings were different. Their offerings expressed what each of them believed in his heart. Hebrews 11:4 makes this plain beyond the possibility of contradiction.

From that day to this, men have approached God in these two ways. There have been various forms of Cain's offering. In various ways men have brought the fruit of their own toil to Him. Sometimes they have brought what stands for their moral life. Sometimes it is their generosity, their gifts to the poor and needy. Sometimes they bring their religious offerings, their prayers, their professions and promises. But whatever form it takes, the offering of Cain has the same moral character. You find in it no recognition of man's utter ruin, and therefore no atonement. It starts with the man himself, instead of with the provision God has made.

Abel's offering involved the death of the sheep, as the words "and of their fat portions" show. Read Hebrews 11:4 at this point. It shows us that his offering was an act of faith — the first one on record. Now faith lays hold on what God has revealed. What had God revealed for Abel's faith to grasp? Only what we have in Genesis 3:21. Abel grasped the meaning of the coats of skins. So his offering admitted two things. He was a sinner under a death sentence. He could only come to God through the death of a victim.

He was accepted by blood. His offering said this: I cannot come to God as I am. I am shut out of paradise. Sin stands between me and God. So death, "the wages of sin," must stand between me and God too, or I cannot come at all. He put death between himself and God — the death God's justice required, carried out by killing the victim. Then he came into God's presence as a worshipper God accepted.

What he brought shows that sacrifice was God's own arrangement: "By faith Abel offered." It was not worship of his own inventing. No human mind could have guessed that such a gift would please God. Apart from its inner meaning, it would have had no fitness and no welcome from Him. The coats of skin were His own design. They are clear proof that the whole thought and plan came from Him.

Cain brought of the fruit of a cursed ground, the product of his own skill and labour. God turned him away, not simply because he was a sinner, but because his gifts could do nothing for him. They came from a wrong source. Cain as much as said, "I can bridge the distance between my soul and God. I can bridge it from my side to His. I can by my own efforts and works retrace my steps to God." What arrogance and ignorance! This is what thousands are doing today.

It is striking that the account names "the fat" as given to God in this, the first sacrifice on record. We know how God loves to guide those who believe, far beyond their measure of knowledge. More than two thousand years later, God kept back for Himself the fat as well as the blood. He did this above all in the peace offerings. In those offerings, fellowship with Him was the point more clearly than anywhere else in the law given through Moses. The fat pictured inward richness given to God. It stood for more than what turned away His judgment.

Abel was not accepted apart from the firstlings of his flock... Only God knew the full value of the offering. Abel stood before Him accepted according to all of that value. And Cain could see, and did see, that an accepted sacrifice had been that day presented to God. How close Cain stood to the accepted worshipper! Yet in his soul, how far he was from God!... The fact of a sacrifice having been accepted avails nothing for anyone who is not identified with it.

He brought of the firstlings of his flock, a lamb to die. It was no offering of power, not a wolf nor a lion nor a bear to fight the serpent; but on the contrary a little lamb to die. "And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering." Did He not see, as always, what was still dim to every believer? He saw the Lamb without blemish or spot, known to Him before the world was made, and later shown to us in Christ and His blood.

Cain offered the Lord the fruit of a cursed earth, and he brought it without any blood to remove the curse. He presented "an unbloody sacrifice," because he had no faith. Faith would have taught him, even at this early moment, that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." This is a great and central truth. The penalty of sin is death. Cain was a sinner, so death stood between him and the Lord. But his offering gave no recognition of this fact at all. He treated the Lord as though He were just like himself — one who could accept the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth.

Cain's worship was the worst thing he did. It was in fact denying that he had sinned. What blindness to what he had been! What hardness of conscience, to suppose he could come into the presence of God in his sins as if nothing at all had happened! ... He was a defiled sinner, driven out of paradise. Yet he brings "of the fruit of the ground," which the Lord had cursed, as "an offering to the Lord." That is, he brings into the presence of God the sign and seal of the sin that had driven him out from God!

Cain offered to God what cost him more. He was not a completely irreligious man. He offered to God, he worshipped God, and God rejected him completely. He was not one who denied God, nor an irreligious man, but a worshipper — and a rejected worshipper. His worship rested on unbelief. He was a sinner, one shut out of paradise, and he thought he could go to God as though nothing had happened! So it is with man: people think they can go and worship God, paying Him a compliment.

The question, in each case, was not as to the person of the offerer, but entirely as to the character of his offering. Hence, of Abel we read that "God commended him by accepting his gifts." He did not bear witness to Abel, but to Abel's sacrifice; and this fixes distinctly the proper ground of a believer's peace and acceptance before God.

Man must own that the judgment resting on him is just, and he must come in the strength and worth of the victim that dies in his place. Abel comes this way and is accepted, while Cain's altar denied all of it: God had no regard for him or for his offering. The offerer is identified with his offering. If God accepts the offering, He accepts the offerer; if He rejects the offering, He rejects the offerer. How important, then, to have a perfect sacrifice!

"Cain was very angry, and his face fell." And it is ever thus. God puts man on the true ground of his condition before Him. At that moment the enmity of the natural heart breaks out against God. Cain was "very angry" — extremely angry. And why? Because his heart was set against grace. He had not owned the first principle of sin in the presence of God.

Cain, like every unbeliever, was blind to the truth. He judged that he could come to God with gifts of the earth, which expressed neither sin nor death, neither judgment nor expiation. How could the Lord have regard for him or his offering? God's acceptance of Abel stirred his proud spirit to fury and unrelenting hatred. On the surface its object was Abel, his righteous and weak brother. Its real object, above all, was God's grace.

God showed His pleasure in Abel's offering. That sacrifice admitted that Abel was a sinner who could only approach God through the death of one that was innocent. God showed no pleasure in Cain's offering, and Cain was "very angry, and his face fell." Did not this anger show that he was at enmity with God? ... The violence of Cain was "because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous."