Let's turn in our Bibles to the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 11 is often called the Hall of Faith. That's obviously a play on Hall of Fame. And you know what a Hall of Fame is. It honors the accomplishments of individuals in a particular activity or field. There are a lot of sports halls of fame, for instance. The Baseball Hall of Fame, the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame. My mother is part of the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union Hall of Fame. She was a high school softball pitcher, and she was virtually unhittable. She led the small little high school, Woden Crystal Lake, to the Iowa State Softball Championship, not once, but twice. and they put her in the Hall of Fame. It's not just sports, though, that have Halls of Fame. If you go to Cleveland, Ohio, they have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Hollywood, California, they don't have a Hall of Fame, they have a Walk of Fame, where they put stars on the sidewalk to honor movie stars and TV stars and other kinds of stars. So in Hebrews 11, we have all of these Old Testament saints who were noteworthy for their faith. In verse four, there's Abel. It says, by faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, and God commended him for it. In verse five, there's Enoch. By faith, Enoch was taken up. He was commended as having pleased God. In verse seven, there's Noah. By faith, Noah constructed an ark and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. And throughout the whole chapter, there are many more. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the people as they left Egypt, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. And the writer also describes many more whom he doesn't name, but he tells us of the way that faith manifested in their lives. So it's easy to see why this is called the Hall of Faith. But it's not a hall of fame, at least not like other halls of fame. Because this recognition has nothing to do with their own accomplishments. It isn't even really about the quality of their faith, so much as about the one they put their faith in. The writer didn't just spend the first 10 chapters of Hebrews telling us how Jesus is superior to everyone and everything, just to switch now and start celebrating the greatness of the people Jesus saved. Even the greatness of their faith. This chapter is not so much about what happens when you have great faith as it is about what happens when you put your faith in a great Savior. And that is going to be our focus as we work our way through this chapter. Now, I don't know that we're going to devote a sermon to each of the people listed. In fact, I suspect that we won't. But if we did, we could title every sermon, The Object of Abel's Faith, and then The Object of Enoch's Faith, and then The Object of Noah's Faith, and so on. Because that is the purpose of this chapter. Just like every other chapter, whether in Hebrews or anywhere else in Scripture, it's ultimately to direct our attention to the Lord Jesus Christ and to His accomplishment. and His salvation, and His promises, and to admonish us to put our faith in Him, and never to abandon our faith in Him. Because Jesus, and Jesus alone, is able to save to the uttermost. And so this morning, we're going to consider Abel. Abel is the first example in this chapter of faith. And we have just one verse about him here in Hebrews 11. Verse 4 says, 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 faith, though he died, he still speaks. But before we start exploring that, let's look at the account of Abel in the Old Testament. Now, we don't have much here either. Abel is first mentioned in Genesis 4, verse 2, and by verse 8, he's dead. But let's go ahead and read, and we're going to start with verse 1 of Genesis 4. Genesis 4, verse 1. It says, Now Adam 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. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain, a worker of the ground. 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. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry. And his face fell. 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, and you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. And the account goes on as God deals with Cain, but this is the part that's relevant to our study of Abel. Now, I want to point something out in the first verse here. It says, now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. But the words with the help of are not in the Hebrew text. The literal translation of the Hebrew is this, I have gotten a man, Yahweh. In most English Bibles, God's name, which is Yahweh in Hebrew, is translated the Lord in English. And it's usually written in small caps, as you see here, to identify it as God's proper name. So here the translators added these extra words with the help of, to help us to understand what they assume it means. Because, they reason, our Eve couldn't possibly have meant that she thought her son was Yahweh. Or could she? Remember what God said after Adam and Eve fell? This is part of what God said to the serpent, whom we understand to be the devil. And Eve heard what God said. God said, 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. Now, we know now, looking back, based on what we understand from the rest of Scripture, we know that that offspring of the woman who God refers to here is the coming Messiah, who will be Yahweh himself. Did Eve understand that? That that offspring would be Yahweh? Maybe. Maybe she did. So then in chapter 4, when Eve gives birth to Cain, now Adam and Eve had suffered under the curse, brought about bison for at least the better part of a year. And the contrast between the blessings that they had known before the fall, when they were innocent, and when they were in perfect fellowship with God, had to have made their experience under the curse all the more distressing for them. So by the time that Cain was born, they were likely eagerly anticipating the fulfillment of Genesis 3.15. And it's entirely possible that Eve mistakenly believed that Cain was the prophesied Messiah, the offspring of the woman who would bruise the head of the adversary and would deliver them from the curse. She really may have thought that her son was Yahweh. In fact, I believe it's likely, based on the text, that that's exactly what she thought. We don't need to add words to make that make sense. If she thought that, she was wrong. Obviously, Cain was not Yahweh. She was 4,000 years early, and she had the wrong offspring. But it would show that she understood the principle of the prophecy, of God's promise, of deliverance, of redemption, even if she didn't understand the timing. And that's the point that I want to bring out here. I believe that Adam and Eve and their children were very much aware of what God had promised and what it meant to them. I believe they understood that God had promised redemption from sin and the curse. And given what they had lost, that would have been as meaningful a promise to them as to anyone who ever lived. So as we consider Cain and Abel, remember that these are not just two ancient men. who are broadly trying to appease their God. They are relating to God specifically in the context of the curse and sin and of their anticipation of redemption. So then, Abel was born in verse two, and he and his brother grew to be men. Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain was a worker of the ground. And in the course of time, it says in verse three, 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. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. And this is what the passage that we're dealing with in Hebrews refers to. It says, 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. So the question I want to answer at this point is why? Why was Abel's sacrifice accepted by God while Cain's was not? Now, the answer that's often given is that Cain brought the wrong sacrifice, the wrong offering, that God required an animal, as Abel brought, and Cain didn't bring an animal. He brought something that he had grown. Fruit of the ground could refer to anything. that was produced from the ground. It could be what we would call fruit, or it could be vegetables, or it could be grain, it could be dahlias. Probably wasn't dahlias. And the explanation that's given for why God preferred the animal sacrifice is that He wanted a blood sacrifice to represent the sacrifice that the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, Yahweh, would eventually make when He died on the cross to redeem mankind. It's often asserted that God must have told Cain and Abel what it was that he required, and that Abel obeyed, but Cain disregarded God's word, and that that was the issue. But even if God hadn't told them, that doesn't mean that God isn't free to accept or reject offerings as he chooses. But that's the way this is often presented today. I don't believe that's what's going on here at all. I'm going to give you a few reasons why I don't think that the problem was the content of Cain's offering, that he brought an offering of the fruit of the ground. First reason, the text doesn't say that that was a problem. Now, I don't consider this to be a fatal blow. This alone would not convince me. It's certainly appropriate to reason things from the text, to infer things that aren't explicit in the text. If I said to you, someone offered me two ties, two neckties, and I accepted the red one, and I rejected the green one, and that's all I said, it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to infer that the color of the ties had something to do with my acceptance or rejection. So it's not completely unreasonable to consider the content of the offerings as a possible reason that God rejected Cain's offering. But I think it's worth pointing out here that the text doesn't say specifically that the issue was what Cain brought. And so we're not bound to that understanding. It's not a given that that's the reason. The second reason is that God regularly and consistently commanded His people to bring fruit and grain offerings. Throughout the Old Testament, and especially in the Law of Moses, God required this kind of offering. The people that Moses was writing this for, when Moses wrote down this account of Cain and Abel, those people would have been very familiar with this kind of offering. They would have understood it to be something that God commanded of them. Those first readers wouldn't have read this and thought, oh, there's the problem. That Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground. Because those first readers regularly brought that kind of offering to God as God commanded them. If they were supposed to understand that in this particular circumstance, when Cain and Abel brought their offerings, that God didn't want an offering from the ground, we would expect that Moses would have made that clear to them. Because otherwise, their assumption was going to be that this was a perfectly appropriate offering that would please God. The third reason, and this is the one that really convinces me. The third reason is this. The word for offering in this text, the Hebrew word, always refers to a grain offering in the rest of the books of Moses. The Hebrew word that's used here is minhah. This word occurs 113 times in the book of Moses. That is the first five books of the Bible. Now, nine of those are used for when a man gives a gift to another man, like when Jacob gives his brother Esau a gift. So those don't have any bearing on this. But that leaves more than a hundred times that Moses used this word to refer to gifts that men brought to God. And outside of Genesis 4, every single one of those times refers to a grain offering. Not one single time in all of the writings of Moses does Minha ever refer to an animal sacrifice outside of Abel's offering. If Moses wanted us to understand that God required a sacrifice of an animal here, he would have used a different word. You could even argue, based on the language of the text, that Cain was the one who brought the right offering. Now, I think that would be going too far. I don't think that's what we're supposed to understand. But it's hard to conclude, based on the word that Moses used, that what Cain brought was the wrong offering. Because his offering is the one that's more consistent with the word that Moses uses. And the last reason is that God's acceptance or rejection was first of the man and then of his offering. The text doesn't say the Lord had regard for Abel's offering, but for Cain's offering he had no regard. It says the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering. But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. It's not just about the offering. It's about the man. In fact, it's primarily about the man, which is why he puts the man first before the offering. God isn't swayed by the content of an offering. David said this in Psalm 51. He said, for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices, O God, of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. It wasn't the offering that God accepted or rejected for its own value. God was responding to the man. I am compelled to say here that this does not mean that you can just worship God in any way that appeals to you and God is going to accept it based on your heart. God has a right to choose how he's going to be worshipped. And when people ignore what God says about how he wants to be worshipped, well, it doesn't go well for them. That's a message for another day. But do not think that the application of this teaching is that God accepts any kind of worship, as long as your heart is right. Because scripture is pretty clear that that's not the case. And if you choose to worship God in your own way, instead of in His way, That reveals a heart that is not submitted to him, and that kind of heart cannot produce true worship. Victor Hamilton, in his commentary on Genesis, addresses the question. Why does God reject Cain's sacrifice while accepting Abel's? And he goes through many of the explanations that have been offered through the years, and he shows why most of them are deficient. And then he offers this, and I believe that he nails it. He writes, perhaps the silence is the message itself. What he means by that is that maybe the fact that Moses doesn't tell us that there was something wrong with Cain's sacrifice is the point. And Hamilton continues, as outside viewers We are unable to detect any difference between the two brothers and their offerings. Perhaps the fault is an internal one, an attitude that is known only to God. We will see later that this is precisely the New Testament's interpretation of this event. And that's what we're finding out this morning. According to Hebrews, The feature of Abel's offering that made it acceptable to God was that it was offered by faith. 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. That is the difference, faith. is the difference. I want to explore this. I want to dig deeper here. What is the difference between an offering offered by faith and one offered not by faith? The faith involved in one offering resulted in a man being commended as righteous. So it's important. We need to know this. So let's go back to Genesis 4. I think Cain's reaction in verse five says everything. But for Cain and his offering, God had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. If we couldn't see the difference in the brothers before, we can certainly see it now. The word for was angry, it literally means He burned. In Exodus 22-24, God uses the same word. He said, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows, and your children fatherless. It's a hard word. This is an extreme reaction that Cain had. And it was obvious in his face. You could see that he was furious. This wasn't the only way that a man could react to this. Cain could have been disappointed. He could have been discouraged. He could have even been concerned or troubled that God wasn't pleased. Even repentant at his own failure. This kind of extreme reaction reveals Cain's true motivation in bringing the offering. Consider this. What is the opposite of faith? If Abel's offering was made by faith, then what was Cain's offering made by? Well, you could say it was doubt, that the opposite of faith is doubt, and that's certainly true. Faith and doubt are set in opposition to each other. But more often in Scripture, faith, and specifically faith in God, is contrasted with self-reliance, with works. By grace you have been saved through faith, it says in Ephesians 2. And this is not of your own doing, not a result of works. You can put your faith in God, or in your own works, one or the other, but not both. They aren't compatible with each other. This is the Apostle Paul's point in Philippians 3. Paul lays out all of the reasons that he used to put confidence in his own flesh for his salvation, in his own works. Paul used to be self-reliant. Then, when Paul came to Christ, he considered everything that he used to rely on as loss, he says. He gave up all the self-reliance in order to gain a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. A righteousness from God that depends on faith, he says. You can have faith in God, or you can trust in what you bring, but it can't be both. You can trust in God, or you can be proud of your own contribution. And my contention this morning is that that distinction is exactly what we see in these two brothers. And that's why Cain got so angry, because he was so in love with his own offering. He was so proud of what he grew. He brought it to God. He willingly gave it to God. And I am confident that he brought the best of what he had. And he expected approval. He expected praise. He expected applause. I believe that Cain had confidence in his work, and he brought it to God, and he thought that he was going to be commended for it. But God regarded Abel's offering He's little brother with those stupid sheep. Abel doesn't even do anything. They go out in the field, they feed themselves, they make their own babies. It's not like the ground that you actually have to work. How could God regard Abel's sheep and not my beautiful corn, or my perfect pumpkins, or my glorious grain? It was more than Cain could abide, and he burned with anger. In verse six, God addressed Cain. He asked him about what was apparent. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? And then in verse seven, he brings Cain's struggle to a head. And this is the crux of the issue. If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it. Now, it may seem natural to read this as referring to the situation that just happened with the offering, that God did not accept Cain and his offering. But if Cain changed his ways, then God would accept him along with his offering. But what's going on here is even bigger than that. The accepted in this case is redemption. It's deliverance from the curse. The sin that's crouching at the door is not just the temptation to hate his brother. to murder his brother. The sin crouching at the door is the sin that Cain was born into, that he was enslaved in, way back in verse one, when Adam knew Eve and she conceived him. The sin that he thought he could overcome by his own work, by the value of his own offering. God saying, That won't work, Cain. If that wasn't clear before, surely you can see that now. This is gonna go one of two ways, Cain. Either you will do well by putting your faith in me to save you from your sin, to redeem you from the curse, and you will be accepted by me. Or, You will continue to rely on yourself, and sin will devour and destroy you. Do well broadly means to do what pleases God. And what pleases God? Faith. According to Hebrews 11 verse 6, we should be there next week. It says, without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. What is God telling Cain? God is saying, abandon your self-reliance. Repent of your pride. Put your faith in me and I will deliver you from your sin. I will redeem you from the curse. At the end of verse seven, when God tells Cain that he must rule over sin, I believe that he's telling him to do something that Cain cannot do. Cain cannot rule over sin, not on his own, but Cain needs to come to terms with that. He needs to recognize that his own righteousness is not good enough. It's like when Jesus told the rich young ruler that he needed to keep the commandments in order to inherit eternal life. And the point that Jesus was making to him was that the rich young ruler understand that keeping those commandments was beyond his ability, that he couldn't keep them. And then recognizing that was the first step towards salvation in Christ that comes by faith alone. The sin in Cain's life needed to be ruled. It needed to be overcome. But Cain couldn't do it. And he needed to stop thinking that anything that he could do on his own could amount to anything. Cain knew what was at stake. Surely his parents had told him about life before the fall, about what sin had cost them, about the promise, the promise that Yahweh would come, that he would defeat sin, and he would deliver them from the curse. So here Cain was called to a decision, just as his brother Abel had. Will you believe Will you put your faith in God for your salvation? By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. An offering by faith is a humble offering. It doesn't think that it earns anything. It doesn't think it accomplishes anything. It doesn't put any hope at all in the offering itself or anything else that it does or that it can see. But faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And by it, the people of old, people like Abel, received their commendation by faith. But not Cain. Genesis 4 verse 8 says that Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. He failed to put his faith in God, and he was not delivered from his sin. Cain killed Abel. He rose up and killed him, but that didn't silence Abel. Hebrews 4, 11 concludes, and through his faith, though he died, He still speaks. He still teaches us about faith. Listen to what Martin Luther said about Abel. He said, he who, when he was actually alive, could not teach even his own brother by his faith and example, now that he is dead, teaches the whole world. So what is it that Abel teaches us about faith? What should we take from this? The principle that we see in the way that Abel made his offering, when contrasted with the way Cain made his offering, applies to every area of our lives. It applies to your worship, whether your public worship, as we gather like we're doing this morning, or your private worship. It applies to your service, whether that's your involvement in some formal ministry, or it's daily serving your brothers and sisters, or your family, or reaching out to the world. It applies to you living your life according to the moral standards revealed in God's Word. It applies to your stewardship of the things that God has entrusted to you. It applies when you produce fruit or when you exercise your gifts. It applies to everything you do in your life. And the principle is this, that what you do contributes nothing to your salvation. You don't earn anything and you don't pay anything back. Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Could my zeal no respite know? Could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone. That is the attitude of faith, of trust in God. And it's not just an attitude that manifests when you first come to saving faith. For the believer, this is the constant attitude every day in everything. My offering doesn't accomplish anything. My offering is the accomplishment. It's Jesus' accomplishment in my life as He is conforming me to His image, as He is making me holy and blameless and above reproach. My part is to come to Him in faith every day, recognizing that I bring nothing of value apart from Him, and I submit to Him, and I do what He calls me to do, trusting that He will make it good. That is what it is to do anything by faith. It is to do it knowing that I offer Him nothing, but trusting that He has redeemed me and that He is redeeming me. And that applies not just to my eternal state, but to my life today and to everything that I do. So as you go about your week, As you go about your worship and your service and your righteousness, your stewardship, everything, recognize that you can't please God except by faith. Don't be like Cain, expecting God to commend you for your works. Be like Abel, humble, trusting, that he will accept you based on his work accomplished by his death and now applied in your life. The offering that Cain brought had no value. It accomplished nothing. The offering that Abel brought in itself had no value either. God accepted Abel's offering because of Abel's faith. The offerings that we bring of any kind, they don't have any value either apart from faith. But the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, when he willingly laid down his life and died the most brutal death imaginable on the cross, his sacrifice has infinite worth. His sacrifice was sufficient to pay the penalty for every sin of every person that He came to save. He drank in the Father's wrath for every one of those sins. And the Father was satisfied that the price was paid. And our Lord asked us to remember His death. He asked us to remember, and he gave us a way to do it. I mentioned earlier in the service that he has a right to decide how he is going to be worshipped. And this is an act of worship, this remembrance. And he asked us to do it in this particular way. He gave us this bread, which represents his body. He gave us this cup, which represents his blood. And the purpose is to remember his death. So by faith, we do as he asked. Don't make it about anything else. He asked this of believers. If your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ to save you of your sins, then He has asked you to remember Him in this way, and you're invited to participate with us this morning. If you haven't put your faith in the Lord Jesus, then pass the elements by. If you are counting on Him for your salvation and not your own works, then this is for you. But do it in a worthy manner. by faith, remembering him. So now I'm going to pray, and then Tim and I will distribute first the bread, and then once everyone who's participating has been served, then I'm going to read a passage of scripture, and then we'll partake the bread together. And then after that, we will do the same with the cup. Let's pray.