Adam and Eve could not even keep the simple commandment that He gave in its letter. I want you to notice: He informed. They sinned. And He judged. There is the pattern. God always follows that pattern. He always informs people. As we are going to see, even the heathen are informed. Those He has called into His own church are informed better than anybody else, but everybody on earth is informed enough for God to judge.
From these verses it is very clear that they were instructed regarding the offerings. Abel simply followed God's instructions. Cain did not. Look at verse 7 again, and then we are going to look at verse 13 because we want to see Cain's reaction.
How can good and bad be judged unless He instructed them? They knew what was good. They knew what was bad. Abel did what was good, but Cain, like his mother before him, shifted gears a little bit and substituted his own thinking regarding what would be acceptable to God. Verse 13 gives Cain's reaction. He was angry.
Again, God informed. Cain disobeyed. God judged. The pattern is followed. So it was Cain then, representing mankind, who was unjustly angry at God's judgment. In his eyes, he had become victimized by God. Thus we already see two patterns developing. First, God lets mankind know what He expects. His expectation is not even to the level of the New Covenant. At most it is the level of the Old Covenant. Secondly, mankind disobeys, and then feels unjustly treated in God's judgment.
There is a little aside here that we should get to before we go past it, but it will not take long. When these verses are combined with Genesis 1:28-29 and Genesis 4:1-5, it shows that this is not mankind's introduction into eating animal flesh. You can read verse 3 in chapter 9. But in Genesis 1, what God is doing is showing that all life, animal and human, ultimately depends on vegetation: I have given you all the green herbs to eat. And that is true.
Remember Genesis 4:1-5. Abel brought to God an animal sacrifice. That shows us that God had already showed them that their dominion over animals extended to the place that they were able to take an animal's life. God was well pleased with Abel's animal sacrifice. He was so well pleased that it is recorded back in Hebrews 11 that it still witnesses. So God was not overly concerned about the killing of an animal, but what we need to understand is that they understood about sacrificing, and some of the sacrifices had to be eaten. That was a requirement of God. The sin offering was to be eaten, part of it anyway, and the peace offering was to be eaten.
Here we have first example in the Bible of offerings actually being made to the Creator, looking forward in anticipation of what that sacrifice would accomplish. Now God must have instructed Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. At the very least, He instructed Adam and Eve, who very likely passed on the instruction to Cain and Abel. But perhaps God directly instructed them, because if He had not, there would be no basis for His displeasure with Cain; nor would their be a basis for Abel's belief, which God could congratulate and applaud, be pleased in, because he believed what God said regarding sacrifice. Hebrews 11 shows that Abel had faith, that he had to have faith in the Word of God; therefore God, from the very beginning, was already instructing the very first citizens of planet Earth regarding sacrifice.
We are dealing here with a subject, with an act, with a way of life that is absolutely essential to the outworking of God's purpose. No sacrifice - its purpose is not achieved.
Cain fell victim to this all-or-nothing thinking distortion.
It was not a matter of Daddy or Momma likes my brother more than me. It was a matter of variable conditions over which Cain did have some control. As John Ritenbaugh stated on Trumpets, Cain knew the preconditions. There was a wide spectrum of choices Cain could use, rather than the simple, He likes me/He does not like me.
