Hey everyone!
I'm Rachel and today on Crack Your Bible, we are going to be talking about Genesis 4
with Cain and Abel.
Now, I'm still sick right now, so I really didn't do my makeup very well today, because
I'm so crusty on my face.
(Music plays)
Okay, so if you remember from my last video, last week on Genesis 4, remember,
Adam & Eve, they had sex and they got pregnant
(Genesis 4:1 on screen) and Eve gave birth
to Cain.
And she thought that this was going to be the Messiah.
Like, this is the baby who is going to save us!
He's going to step on the serpent's head.
We're going to go back to Eden.
Everything's going to be right with God.
Here's the Messiah - baby Cain.
And it didn't work out like that.
You have Cain, first baby ever born.
It's a son, and they think he's going to be the Messiah.
So, not only do you have like, a bad situation, you also have these parents that are just
helicopter parents on steroids.
Like, this is their golden child.
Can do no wrong.
It's Cain, he's going to save them!
Like, so you know, Cain, his head is probably like this big.
Because he's going to fix everything and he's the Messiah.
Now remember, he also had a younger brother, Abel.
And I know I didn't mention this but the verse was up, that Abel, his job was tending flocks.
(Genesis 4:2 on screen.)
So we have domestication of animals right off the bat.
These people weren't living in caves, hunter gatherers.
No.
And then you have Cain, who was a tiller of the fields.
We have domestication of animals and we have agriculture, right off the bat.
Cain and Abel, what did they do?
(Genesis 4:3-5 on screen.)
They went to go offer a sacrifice to God.
God accepted Abel's sacrifice but he did not accept Cain's sacrifice.
And, this upset Cain.
Because remember, his whole life, he is the golden child.
He is the Messiah.
So, God accepts his younger brother's sacrifice.
But not Cain's.
Cain is ticked.
Like, he's furious.
(Genesis 5:6-7 on screen.)
God tells him, like, you know, if you just present it the right way, I'll accept your
sacrifice.
But, no.
Cain isn't happy with that answer.
Does Cain go back and do what God tells him to do?
Offer the sacrifice correctly?
No.
Instead, he tells Abel, like, yo, let's go.
(Genesis 4:8-9 on screen.)
They go out to a field.
Cain murders his brother Abel.
And then God is like, "Cain, where's your brother Abel?"
Cain's like, "Why are you asking me?"
Like, "I'm not his babysitter.
I'm not my brother's keeper."
And God's just like....
No.
Your brother Abel's blood is crying out to me.
(Genesis 4:10-12 on screen.)
Cain gets in a whole heap of trouble and he is basically told, like, you're done.
And, you're no longer even going to be able to farm.
You're going to get out of here.
(Genesis 4:13-16 on screen.)
And Cain is just like, you know, "People are going to try to kill me for this!"
And "this is just too much for me to bear."
So God puts a mark on him so that nobody will kill him.
I don't know what that mark is.
Whatever.
That's irrelevant in the big scheme of things.
And then it just goes on and on to tell the lineage of Cain.
But I want to go back to this offering that Cain and Abel had because so many people will
be like, and I was one of them, "oh, well, God didn't accept the sacrifice because it
was grain and his brother Abel sacrificed, um, meat for a burnt sacrifice."
But you have to realize that sometimes grain, grain offerings are an acceptable sacrifice.
(Leviticus 2:1-2 on screen.)
With a sacrifice for an atonement of sin, you would have the blood sacrifice, which
would be an animal that was sacrificed.
You'd have the fat, you'd burn the whole thing.
But in addition, many time you would offer a grain offering as well.
And, a grain offering didn't atone for sin.
A grain offering was meant for worship.
To thank God for the provisions that He has provided.
And it was just a way to say "thank you for the things that You've given us."
It's just a form of worship.
It does not atone for sin.
Because only the shedding of blood can atone for sin.
We don't know why Cain and Abel were giving an offering.
The Bible doesn't say, so we can only speculate.
I think that when you look at the text, there's a lot of things that you can kind of piece
together.
So, Cain and Abel were offering a sacrifice to God.
And it says that God accepted Abel's sacrifice.
Well, how would we know that it was accepted?
Many times in the Bible, the way God accepted a sacrifice was He was an all consuming fire
and just burnt the entire thing up.
For example, when we have Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal, God came down and consumed
an entire bull and all of the water and even burnt the dirt around the offering (1 Kings
18: 36-38 on screen.)
So the way God accepts a sacrifice is He just burns the entire things up.
But, it says that He did not accept Cain's sacrifice.
So we can assume that the way that Cain and Abel, and probably everybody watching this
sacrifice knew that it was accepted was, it wasn't burnt up.
And for somebody who has been told that they are the Messiah, they're the golden child,
and to be rejected publicly like that, you can understand why Cain would just go off
the rails.
Because he has never lived a life where he's told "no" or that, you know, he wasn't the
favored, first son, first child ever born.
I think, again, this is all speculation, but people can be sincere but be sincerely wrong.
And I think the issue with Cain is that he wasn't relying on God for his sacrifice.
It was all about Cain.
Look what I can do.
Look what I've produced.
Oh, and now I'm just giving it over to God.
First of all, you aren't giving anything to God.
(Matthew 5:43-45 on screen.)
Like, you only have what you have because of God.
God brings down rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
So it has nothing to do with you and your works.
You're nothing special where it's like, oh, i'm providing something for God.
No.
God provides everything.
People can be sincere but they do it with the wrong heart.
And that's how it was with Cain and his, his sacrifice was not accepted.
You'll see people, especially pastors in the charismatic movement, where' they're like,
"oh, you need to give this, this money to God.
And you're going to earmark it for you know, whatever you're asking for."
Whether you're asking for a new car or a new house or this is so I can get more financial
blessings.
That's not why we give.
We give because God gave to us.
We thank God or we're doing the work of the ministry to take care of the widows, and the
orphans, the indigent.
This is why we give.
We don't give, expecting anything in return.
It's not about us.
Wow, you're so great.
You've donated so much money.
Let's put your name on a building.
That's not why we donate.
That's not why we give offerings to God.
We don't tell God what He's going to give back to us.
We give and that's it.
You have people (Acts 8:18-23 on screen.)
"I'm going to keep donating to this ministry in hopes that God heals me."
We don't buy blessings and favors from God.
He will not accept it.
So if things are going to garbage in your life, but you've been giving and giving and
giving, you need to look at your attitude and your heart.
Why are you giving?
Are you giving because you're trying to buy favor from God?
Look at yourself and really search your heart for why you give.
Are you giving because you're like Cain?
"Oh, God needs to accept it because it comes from me."
Or are you trying to buy favors?
Because in Hebrews 11 it talks about how Abel's sacrifice (Hebrews 11:4 on screen.) was credited
to him as righteousness.
Like, he did this faith.
It had nothing to do with who Abel was or Abel getting something back.
It's all about worshiping and trusting in God.
So anyway, I'm going to see you on Wednesday.
Hopefully I'm better where I don't have busted makeup because I'm sick and I'm just going
to toss it anyway.
But, yeah, I will see you on Wednesday and I would like you to like, subscribe and share.
And I'll talk to you later.
Bye!