Are You Abel

Are you Cain or are you Abel?

You can learn a mountain of things from  chapter 4 of Genesis.
But the most important things to learn from it I will briefly summarize

The wording in verses 1 and 2 of Eve conceiving and then bore Cain and then bore again Abel without a second reference to conception seems to indicate that they were twins because they were born in the same conception.

Cain the firstborn became a farmer which requires hard work and labor because of a cursed ground due to his mother and fathers actions.

Abel the younger became a herder of sheep which required no hard labor because the livestock was not cursed as the ground was, but it did require a heart and desire to protect the weak from the strong and the diligence to do it continually.

Hiding under these text when we unpack them all, we have an older prideful brother who thinks of himself wise enough to subdue the cursed ground and overpower the thorns and the thistles because he believes that his hard work and effort can overcome the curse of the ground and force fruit to grow where it would not have grown without his wisdom and effort.
By his hands alone he would produce a crop worthy as an offering of fruits to the LORD.

Where as the younger humble and simple shepherd understood that he was powerless to subdue anything, and instead put his trust and faith in God to protect him as he had protected his sheep.

Abel understood that he was powerless to redeem himself and offered to God a sacrifice of his livestock that he did no hard labor to raise and produce but instead had faith that God would provide for him the forgivness and redemption that he was incapable of providing for himself by his own effort and labor.

But Cain feeling that his work and effort justified his sacrifice and should have earned him redemption and favor over his brother created the path for him to become jealous when God was pleased with Abel’s sacrifice of faith and not his own of hard work .

All of this goes hand in hand with the age old argument of is salvation through faith or works.
Faith without works is indeed dead because it produces nothing that demonstrates the presence of faith for others to see and cause faith to grow.
For example Abel did not need to offer a sacrifice at all he could have only had faith that God would redeem him but he chose to demonstrate his faith by offering a sacrifice that was symbolic of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus in order to redeem us and save us from the eternal death that was required of sin.
But at the same time the thinking that works can save you or earn you favor with God is taking on the mind and heart of Cain which is a most dangerous thing and can only produce evil fruits from a cursed ground because it will always involve pride in one’s heart as Cains did.

Yep, its very complicated but this is the first time that this simple truth was displayed and it deserves our study and contemplation and eventual understanding to the fullest that we are capable because the end results of this error of pride in our works and ourself is displayed in the next verses of 5-8 when even after the LORD warned Cain that the spirit of evil and sin was trying to trap him and rule over him and that he must recognize it and regain control of himself and rule over sin instead, he did not heed this warning and instead let his anger and jealousy grow until he eventually plotted against and killed his brother.

Murder of the innocent is the underlying theme of the entire bible so we would do well to take this first example of it to heart because it is the event that set the stage for all of the following murders of the innocent to come and it would be a huge mistake to not attach to it the spirit of evil that was behind setting Cains heart against his brother.
This spirit of evil that was described in verse 7 as lying in wait at the door is the devil or satan himself.
Many people miss the association between the serpent and satan but Revelation 12:9 is quite clear that the serpent is the dragon and satan they are one and the same in spirit and purpose.
Just as the serpent plotted to destroy God’s plans for man by tricking man into killing himself by eating from the tree of knowledge that God warned would cause their death.
The very same serpent was responsible for causing Cain to grow prideful and angry and kill his innocent brother, because satan believed that through Abel might come Gods plan for the salvation and redemption of man.
So once again he set out to destroy man and Gods plans for him, but this time he did not embody the form of a visible serpent but as a spirit of evil, by speaking through Cain’s pride and confusion instead.

To be clear and avoid any possible confusion, the devil and his spirits can not make anyone do anything but just as he lied to Eve to convince her to eat from the tree, he can also lie to other people to convince them that they are not good, not worthy and that God doesn’t care about them.
Whether they listen to him and take his lies to heart instead of rebuking him with the words of God that burn him like fire and send him running like a beast aflame, is a choice that they make.

By choosing to listen to his pride and anger, a voice which was whispered to him by the devil himself.
And allowing the voice to grow to the point of plotting and then carrying out the murder of his brother.
It could be said that Cain just as the serpent in the garden became the embodiment of satan himself when he carried out the murder of innocent Abel.
Which would appear to be evident when the father of lies would decieve and  convince Cain to lie even to God himself when the LORD asked him where his brother was in verse 9
A lie which could not be hidden because even the blood itself cried out to him from the ground.

The death of Abel was not just the death of a single man but his life and blood carried with it every possible potential for those who would have been born from countless generations that had now been reduced to blood soaking into the ground and crying out to the LORD because of the tragedy of this loss of life never to be realized all due to the actions of one man and his pride.
The result of which is now that not only would the ground be cursed but Cain himself would be cursed from the ground. A meaning which carries much deeper implications then simply farming.

God did not punish Cain with immediate death but allowed him a chance to repent and learn from his mistake, and he set a protective mark on him so that others would not take vengeance on him.
But this very same spirit of evil was very quick to take this as something to exploit as later portrayed by Lamech who also killed a man but declared himself as being justified and beyond punishment or retaliation.
This same line of thinking no doubt led to the eventual self justification that allowed for men and their hearts to become so wicked that God destroyed them and the earth with a flood.
And again when the pharoh of Egypt enslaved the children of Israel and began to murder their infant sons by casting them into the Nile river but God destroyed pharoh with a flood.
Even the israelites themselves fell victim to this great deception of satan when they began to sacrifice their own children to the canaanite gods.

The meaning behind this one chapter of the bible that very briefly tells us of Cain and the murder of his innocent brother Abel has so many countless layers of meaning to it
But by far the most important of them is that the murder of the innocent because of the spirit of evil and pride and jealousy is exactly what was done to Jesus the son of God himself.
He was Abel and Judas was Cain
He was Abel and the priests were Cain
He was Abel and the Romans were Cain
He was Abel and we who sin and allow sin to continue to overpower our hearts and rule over us without changing and seeking forgivness from the only one who died for us so that we could be forgiven
Those all are Cain
So everyday you should ask yourself am I living my life as an Abel or am I living my life as a Cain?
Because one day will be the last day for you to decide and if you chose to be a Cain then mercy will no longer be offered to you because all of the murders of the innocent from the wrath of the father who’s innocent you murdered will be upon you without an end.

You are able to change
You are not cursed to be a Cain
You are Able to become an Abel
The choice is and was always yours and the father who loves you as he loves his own son wants you to chose him and not the devil who wants to see you suffer with him.