HEROES OF THE FAITH – ABEL
DR. JIM DIXON
HEBREWS 11:1-4
GENESIS 4:1-16
SEPTEMBER 4, 1983
They were Cain and Abel. They lived a long, long time ago. They were the sons of Adam and Eve. We know very little about them. Some people treat their lives as mythology. I believe that they were real, that they truly existed. There are, of course, questions some Christians want to know, such as where Cain got his wife. Some Christians want to know where the Land of Nod to which Cain was banished and in which he was destined to wander. What was the mysterious mark God placed on Cain to preserve and protect him in this world? Some Christians, in examining such peripheral questions, miss the true message that God is trying to give us through the lives of Cain and Abel. God was pleased with Abel and with his life and God was not pleased with Cain. There were two qualities in Abel’s life that God loved, and He wants to see those same two qualities in you and in me and the first duality was this Abel gave his best to God and God wants no less from us.
The Bible tells us that in the course of time Abel brought an offering to the Lord. He brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. He gave the very best of his sheep. He didn’t give God leftovers and God doesn’t want your leftovers. He doesn’t want your leftover time He doesn’t want your leftover devotion. He doesn’t want your leftover money. He wants your very best. When a minister mentions money, it’s a dangerous thing. Some people are kind of suspicious of ministers and of their motives.
You’ve probably heard the story of the young woman who went to a Baptist minister. Her dog had died, and she wanted a funeral service. She asked the Baptist minister if held do it and he said “I’m sorry. It would not be Biblical to do a funeral service for a dog. There’s no Biblical evidence that a dog has a soul. No Biblical evidence that a dog is going to Heaven. Why don’t you go up the street and talk to the people at the Pentecostal Church up the street. Talk to the minister there. He’s kind of a flake. Maybe he’ll do it.” So, she went up the street and she talked to the Pentecostal minister and the Pentecostal minister said, “I praise God that you loved that little animal so much, but I wouldn’t really feel free in the spirit to do a service like that Why don’t you go up the street to the Catholic Church. They have a sacrament for almost anything. Maybe they have a sacrament of burial for dogs.” So, she goes up the street to the Catholic Church and she talks to the Catholic priest. The Catholic priest says “No, I’m sorry. We have no such sacrament. Why don’t you go up the street to the Presbyterian Church. I know the minister there. That guy would do anything. I can guarantee you he’d do it.” She said, “Thank you, Sir. I will go to him and maybe you can tell me, do you think that $500 would be sufficient payment for that man’s services?” The Catholic priest thought a second and he said, “Madam—why didn’t you tell me that you had a Catholic dog!” That’s pretty bad.
Some ministers will do anything for money and some churches will do that. I don’t think our church is like that and your ministers aren’t like that. We have counsel in the Word of God concerning our finances and that which we offer to the Lord. Concerning financial stewardship, it’s part of the gospel. We’re not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. It’s the power of God unto salvation. You do not give your offerings to us as ministers. It’s not ministers that you should seek to please. You give your offering to the Lord and it’s before the Lord that you stand or fall. God has given us counsel in His Word regarding our tithes and our offerings. Our responsibility as pastors is to share His counsel with you and part of his counsel is this—He doesn’t want your leftovers, but He wants to receive your very best.
Sometimes Barb and I go to the grocery store, and we buy frozen pizza. We buy Totino’s frozen pizza. We bring it home, put a little extra cheese on the top, put it in the oven and it tastes great. Now that has nothing to do with anything, but Mr. and Mrs. Totino are Christians and they founded Totino’s Restaurant in the 1950’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It became a very famous Italian restaurant. It became very successful. In 1962, Mr. and Mrs. Totino entered the wholesale food market, and they began to sell their frozen pizzas to grocery stores. There were a few tough years when they were not making much money. Then it began to catch on and became a tremendous success, and finally, almost 10 years ago, the Totino’s sold their business to the Pillsbury Company for $20 million. Mrs. Totino became the first woman Vice President of the Pillsbury Company. Suddenly Mr. and Mrs. Totino were very, very rich. But on the very day that that sale was consummated for $20 million, Mrs. Totino gave $2 million to a Christian Bible College in St. Paul, Minnesota and Mr. Totino gave another $2 million to the ministry of their church. They gave $4 million and to this day, the Totino’s continue to give lovingly and generously in the name of Jesus Christ.
Most of you probably can’t remember the last time you gave $4 million to anything, and God understands that He knows that very few people are able to give so much, but he does demand that we give our best, that we do not give our leftovers.
I’m sure that most people in this world have never heard of a woman named Annie Miles. She lived in the State of Pennsylvania on a little tiny farm and she was very poor. She was a Christian. She was a member of a church, but she never went to the church because she was a semi-invalid. Every year the, the pastor of the church would come out to her farm, and he would give her communion. Though the new pastor at that churchhis name was George Basshe had just gotten out of a Lutheran seminary, and he was told by his deaconshe was told about Annie Miles and how the pastor every year took communion, and so that year George Bass went out to Annie’s house. He approached her house on the little dirt road and he could see that it was a once substantial old stone farmhouse, but the roof was mostly caved in now and the walls were falling down. There was only one room in which a person could still live, and Annie Miles lived in that room. She clung to her ancestral home. She was very poor. She opened the door and Pastor Bass looked in and he saw a wood burning stove that was used for cooking and for heating and he saw a little cot upon which Annie slept. There was no furniture in the room, just a small table and it was stacked high with junk. There was a little cage that was down on the floor pushed up against the wall and it was filled with chickens. There were cats just running around the room. There was a horrible odor in the room and Pastor Bass confessed that he rushed the communion service just a little bit, but when he was done, Annie Miles was very thankful, very appreciative. She said “You know, I love Jesus Christ. I’d like to give an Offering to Him.” She brought out 52 envelopes, 52 church offering envelopes. Each envelope had a little bit of change put it in every week of the year. Each week she had put a little change aside. She said, “Take this and give it to the poor.” She said, “Give it in the name of Jesus Christ.”
She lived six more years, and every year George Bass would go out to her farm. Every year Annie gave 52 offering envelopes with a little change in each one. It’s not possible for us to compare, nor should we attempt to compare, the offering that Annie Miles gave with the offering that Mr. and Mrs. Totino gave. One was rich. One was poor. Perhaps they both gave of their firstlings. Perhaps they both gave their best. Sometimes people want to know why we as a staff, don’t write personal thank you letters to people in this church who give large gifts. I think first of all you need to understand that, as a staff, we don’t even know who gives large gifts and who gives small gifts. We don’t want to know. The Session doesn’t know. The amount that you give is known only by our church administrator and our financial secretary and they would not dare compare or evaluate one gift with another. We’re thankful for every gift that is given but you’ve not made those offerings to men. You’ve made those offerings to God, and it’s God that you want to be pleased, and in His Word, God tell us this. What He wants above all else is that you give of your firstlings, that you give your best, that you do not give Him leftovers.
We’re in the midst of a fundraising program and we are seeking to build a new facility. We trust that most of you know. We do not want to build a monument. We simply want more space and wish to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. It will never be built with leftovers. We must be willing to give of our firstlings and we must be willing to give our best. Of course, God is not only concerned that we give our best with respect to our finances, but He’s also concerned that we give our best with respect to every area of our life. With our time and with our talents, He wants our very life as an offering. Paul says, “I appeal to you, Brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptable under God, which is your spiritual worship.” He wants our very lives.
This past week, I read a story about William Tyndale. Perhaps some of you have heard of the Tyndale Publishing Company. You may have heard of the Tyndale Bible. William Tyndale lived in the 16th Century. He lived in the British Empire. He lived in Britain. At that time there were no English bibles in England. The only bibles that were allowed were Latin bibles and they were possessed by the clergy. The clergy at that time did not want the common people to have bibles written in English because they didn’t want the common people to be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. They wanted to be the sole interpreter of the Word of God and so they required that all Bibles be written in Latin. But you see, William Tyndale knew that every Christian, every brother and sister in Jesus Christ, needed a Bible, that they might know the Word of God and receive His counsel by day, and so he gave his life towards that effort. And he began to translate the New Testament from the Latin to the English and the clergy of Britain, controlling the government, found out what he was doing, and they banished him from his homeland, and they sent him out of England. He went and he lived in Europe, and with the help of Martin Luther, in 1524, William Tyndale printed the Tyndale Bible, a copy of the New Testament in English. And with all the energy that was within him, he began to smuggle those bibles back into England. By the thousands he smuggled them into England and finally he was caught, and on October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was burned at the stake. He gave his best and they took his life. Abel gave his best and Cain took his life, but they did not lose life. They found it. They found the joy and the purpose and the meaning that only Christ can give, and they found eternal life. God wants the very best from us.
We sang a hymn this morning. “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee’. Abel gave his offering consecrated to the Lord and God wants us to present our very selves as an offering consecrated to Him. He wants our best. Secondly, there was this quality in Abel, another quality that God wants to see in us. Abel longed after righteous, and God wants righteous to be the desire of your heart and of mine. In the course of time, the Bible tells us Cain and Abel brought an offering to the Lord. Cain, as an agriculturalist, gave of the fruit of the earth, and Abel, as we have already seen, gave of the firstlings of his flock. Now God had regard, the Bible says, for Abel’s offering but He did not have regard for Cain’s offering. He accepted Abel’s offering, but He rejected Cain’s offering for 2,000 years and longer. Scholars and theologians debated why: why did God accept Abel’s offering and not accept Cain’s?
When I was in high school, I took a math course, and algebra course, and I remember my first or second week the teacher put a problem on the board and he asked for the answer and I raised my hand and I said, “X minus Y over 20.” The teacher just shook his head and called on someone else, and then someone else then someone else. He must have asked six or seven people. Finally, he had called on someone else and this person said, “X minus over 20.” The teacher said, “That’s right.” I raised my hand again, I said ‘Sir, that’s the same answer I gave.” He looked me right in the face and he said, “So what?'” I remember how I was just absolutely enraged. We had both given the same answer. His was acceptable. Mine was rejected and I was enraged. I felt I had this sense of injustice. Is God like that? Does He look at two offerings, both the same, and accept one and reject the other for no reason? Some people think God is like that. Abel, I love, Cain I hate. I’m sovereign. What’s it to you? Is God like that? Is God prejudice?
You may have heard the story of the Jewish man and the Chinese man that were talking. The Jewish man all of a sudden hit the Chinese man right in the face. The Chinese man fell over backwards. He got up and he was kind of startled and he said, “What did you do that for?” The Jewish guy said, “That was for Pearl Harbor.” The Chinese man said “Pearl Harbor! That didn’t have anything to do with the Chinese. That was the Japanese!” The Jew said Taiwanese, Japanese, Chinese, what’s the difference? Well, a second later, the Chinese man hauled off and hit the Jew right in the face. The Jew fell over backwards. He got back up and he said, “What’d you do that for?” The Chinese man said, “That was for the Titanic.” And the Jew said, “The Titanic?” He said “That didn’t have anything to do with Jews. That ship hit an iceberg.” The man said “Steinberg, Feinberg, iceberg, what’s the difference!”
Prejudice, of course, is ridiculous and so is that joke, but God is not prejudice. He doesn’t just say “Cain, Bain, Pain, what’s the difference.” Everything He does, there is a reason. He is a moral and righteous and just judge and He’s not willing or wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. There was difference between Cain and Abel and God saw. it. Now there may have been a difference in the content and the quality of their offering. Certainly, Abel gave his best. He gave of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. Cain, as an agriculturalist, gave of the fruit of the earth, but we don’t know that he gave his first fruits. He may have given leftovers. Some have suggested and pointed out that Abel gave a blood offering and Cain gave a grain offering, and throughout Judaic and Biblical history, a blood offering was more appropriate for atonement for sin and certainly pointed to the ultimate sacrifice of our Lord Jesus upon the cross. But the Levitical sacrificial offerings had not yet been given and Cain could hardly have been expected to have known them. The truth is that even if their sacrifices, even if their offerings were equal, and they may not have been, but even if they were, there was something different about their hearts. And if you don’t have a right heart, you can’t bring anything to the Lord that is acceptable. Abel longed after righteousness and Cain did not. John said, “Beloved, let us love one another and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, and his brothers were righteous.”
The author of Hebrews says, “By faith, Able offered to God a sacrifice more acceptable than Cain’s through which he received approval as righteous. God bearing witness by accepting his gift.” Abel had faith. Cain did not. Abel longed after righteousness and Cain did not. God warned Cain. He said if you do well will you not be accepted? But if you do not do well beware, sin is crouching at the doors, desirous for you. You must overcome it, but he went out and murdered his brother.” Abel longed after righteousness and Cain did not. And God wants a people. God wants a people who long after righteousness. And He wants to see that quality in you. There, of course, was only one truly righteous man and that man was our Lord Jesus Christ who knew no sin. When you become a Christian, and when you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Savior, the righteousness of Christ, the Bible says, is imputed to you God views you as righteous because He views you through the spectacle of His Son, through the sacrifice of His Son. He views you as cleansed. He views you as forgiven. He views you as holy. He views you as righteous, and yet, the Bible tells us in our day-to-day living, even as Christians we are not righteous. We still sin and God knows that, but He desires one thing and that is that we desire to overcome sin, that we long to be righteous in our hearts. That is the desire of God.
There are two things that God cannot stand in the heart of man. One God cannot stand self-righteousness. That is because our righteousness comes only from Christ. Secondly, God cannot stand a disregard for righteousness. Throughout history, there have been examples of both extremes. There were people like the pharisees who were self-righteous. Some of you may have heard of the Blue Laws of New England. They were laws established by the Puritans in the 17th Century and they were very harsh. Under those laws in history, we read of people such as a Man and woman—John Lewis and a woman. named Sara Chapman who were actually tried and convicted and punished because they were simply sitting and talking under a cherry tree on the Sabbath Day. That’s how harsh the Puritan laws and their Puritan standards of righteousness were. Under those laws, we’re told how in 1656, a man named Captain Kimbell was put in stocks and beaten for two hours because he kissed his wife on the front porch of their home on the Sabbath Day. He had just returned from a 3-year voyage overseas. He met his wife at the door. He kissed her He was put in stocks, and he was beaten for lewd and immoral behavior. An example of a man who went to church in Puritan New England. He fell on his way to church. He fell into a river. He went home to change his clothes and he missed church, and under the Blue Laws of New England, that man was fined 40 shillings for missing church. The Puritans imposed their standards of righteousness upon the masses. They were self-righteous and they used standards of righteousness—their standards of righteousnessto judge and condemn other people, and God hates that. He doesn’t want to see that quality in us as Christians because we’re all sinful. We all need his mercy. We all need his grace. We’re not to use our standards of righteousness to judge others, but we are to be concerned with righteousness. We are to be concerned and long in our hearts to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. When you take Christ as Lord, you’ve made a great commitment. You’ve given your life in obedience to Him, and He wants a people who long after righteousness.
Jesus told the story of two men who went up to the temple to pray. One man was a Pharisee. The other was a tax collector. You’ve heard the story. The Pharisee stood in the temple, and he said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—extortioners, adulterers or even like this tax collector over here for I fast twice a week and I give tithes of all that I have.” Jesus said, “The tax collector standing far off would not even lift his eyes toward heaven, but he beat his breast and he said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s not possible for us to understand how the Biblical world viewed a tax collector. There was no lower life form than a tax collector. They took the Roman taxes from people, and they were burdensome, and they added to those taxes that they might skim money off for themselves. They lived in luxury while they took money from the poor. But you see, this tax collector was repentant and in his heart, he wanted to change, and so he stood in the temple, but he would not lift his eyes towards heaven, and he beat his breasts and he said “God, have mercy on me,” and that’s the attitude that God seeks in us. “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” Help me to be righteous. Help me to live in accordance with your will.
A few years ago, Dr. Christian Barnard performed a historic surgery on a man named Dr. Philip Bleiberg. It was a heart transplant surgery and after the surgery, when Dr. Philip Bleiberg was beginning to be restored to strength, Dr. Christian Barnard came and sat on his bed and he said “Phil, (Dr. Barnard held in his hand a plastic box and in that box was Philip Bleiberg’s old heart) and he said “Phil, you are the first man in human history to be able to look upon your old dead heart, and he showed him how 90% of the old heart was scarred, it was clogged, it was dead. He said, “I’ve given you a new heart now.” Of course, that new heart did not last very long, but God wants to take out your old heart and He wants to put in a new heart, and He wants to give you a new heart that lasts forever. The Bible says God wants to “take away our hearts of stone” and He wants “to give us a heart of flesh” and He wants to ‘put His spirit within us” and that begins in that moment when you ask Christ to be your Lord and Savior—in that moment when He puts His Spirit in you and that’s the beginning of a new heart, but it doesn’t stop there. We hath longed for righteousness even as Abel did. We must long for righteousness so that He can perform surgery, surgery on our heart every day. Jesus said, “Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness for he will be satisfied.” Abel longed, he hungered, he thirsted after righteousness and his life was blessed and he was numbered among the faithful. The Bible says Abel “died, but through his faith, he is speaking still.” Through his faith, he has influenced subsequent generations. Through his faith, his life took on eternal meaning and eternal purpose. Abel never knew the full revelation of God through Jesus Christ. The Son of God had not yet come in the world. The Gospel of Christ had not yet been preached but Abel responded to what measure of God he was able to understand, and he gave God his life. He gave God his best and he longed for God’s righteousness.
Now as Christians, we have what Abel longed for and what Cain never wanted. As Christians, we have forgiveness of sin, we have a standard of Christ’s righteousness set before us in the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit within us. But God wants us to know that we Still must long after righteousness if indeed we will be transformed in this life. We must give our very best to God and He in turn gives to us joy„ meaning, purpose. He gives us eternal life. Jesus Christ is the only person who is worthy of your eternal devotion and commitment. In 1965, the Beatles said that “they were more popular than Jesus Christ” and they bragged about that in 1970, they disbanded. Today John Lennon is dead. He must stand before the Living God and give an account to the Risen Christ. Hardly anyone in this world quotes the Beatles anymore but we live in a world where one billion people call Jesus Christ Lord. He is the same yesterday, today and forever and He wants your total devotion. If you are a Christian, He says to you “Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness and I’ll give you everything you need” and so He will in this life and in the next. Shall we pray?