Now Adam slept with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant. When the time came, she gave birth to Cain, and she said, "With the LORD's help, I have brought forth a man!" Later she gave birth to a second son and named him Abel.When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain was a farmer. At harvesttime Cain brought to the LORD a gift of his farm produce, while Abel brought several choice lambs from the best of his flock. The LORD accepted Abel and his offering, but he did not accept Cain and his offering. This made Cain very angry and dejected. "Why are you so angry?" the LORD asked him. "Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you respond in the right way. But if you refuse to respond correctly, then watch out! Sin is waiting to attack and destroy you, and you must subdue it." Later Cain suggested to his brother, Abel, "Let's go out into the fields." And while they were there, Cain attacked and killed his brother. Afterward the LORD asked Cain, "Where is your brother? Where is Abel?""I don't know!" Cain retorted. "Am I supposed to keep track of him wherever he goes?" But the LORD said, "What have you done? Listen--your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground! You are hereby banished from the ground you have defiled with your brother's blood. No longer will it yield abundant crops for you, no matter how hard you work! From now on you will be a homeless fugitive on the earth, constantly wandering from place to place."

We now see that Adam and Eve produced two sons named Cain and Abel. We see here that Abel became a shepherd and cultivated livestock for a living while the other brother Cain was a farmer that cultivated vegetation and grains. I find it interesting that Abel became a shepherd. I feel that this is parallel to the shepherding mentality that God commands his pastors to perform upon their congregations and their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I also find it interesting that Cain followed after his father's footsteps to cultivate what God had already cursed. The harvest time came and Abel offered up some Lambs for sacrifice. Cain came and offered up some of the cursed farm produce as a sacrifice to the Lord. We then see that the Lord accepted the offerings of Abel and rejected the offerings of Cain.

Why did the Lord accept Abel's offering and not Cain's offering? Very simple, Abel brought unto the Lord a sacrifice of atonement and the shedding of blood to obtain remission of sin. This was a forerunning of Jesus Christ being the sacrificial Lamb of God and shedding his blood for us as atonement for our sins. If you recall, God created the birds, fish, and livestock supernaturally and they reproduced and multiplied. But man and the vegetation was created from the dust of the earth and multiplied. Cain's sacrifice, being from the ground that is cursed was a insult to the Deity of God. Cain was offering up a cursed thing as a sacrifice unto holiness. Even the apostle Paul recognized Abel's sacrifice as pleasing unto God in Hebrews 11:4. You can not offer a cursed thing in the name of holiness. It is impossible to do this for God is a God of holiness.

After the Lord rejects Cain's sacrifice, the Lord went and spoke to the angry Cain wondering why Cain was angry and dejected? In fact, the Lord told Cain that You will be accepted if you respond in the right way. But if you refuse to respond correctly, then watch out! Sin is waiting to attack and destroy you, and you must subdue it." Therefore, the Lord told Cain that here was only one correct way to offer up a sacrifice unto God, and that was to offer up a Lamb as a sacrifice. In fact, based on the words of the Lord, the Lord was giving Cain a chance to rectify this mis-sacrifice by still offering his acceptance of Cain's sacrifice pending that the sacrifice was done properly. All Cain had to do was to procure a Lamb and offer it up as a sacrifice. In fact, I will go out on a limb here and state that I think Abel, in the name of brotherly love and being "my brother's keeper" would have probably given Cain a Lamb to sacrifice. Cain was at a point of choice whether to rectify his standing with God or not to rectify his standing with God. The Lord warned Cain that if he chose not to respond to the sacrifice, then Sin would be waiting to attack and that Cain must conquer it.

As we see in verses eight through thirteen, Cain chose not to humbly admit that he was wrong and rectify the situation. Instead, Cain chose to indulge a resentment against Abel and to harbor anger, discontent, and enmity against God. We then see the sin that came in again offering Cain another choice whether to sin by killing his brother or not to sin by still rectifying the situation at hand and offer an acceptable sacrifice unto the Lord. We see the unfortunate tragedy of a poor choice where Cain tricked his brother by taking Abel into the fields and attacking him and killing him. After Abel was killed, God asked Cain "Where was Abel?" Again Cain made another choice to lie and state "I do not know" and "Am I my brother's keeper?" We see Cain sin by refusing to offer up the proper sacrifice when the Lord was extending his hand of mercy to Cain. We then see Cain attempt to deal with the problem by not rectifying the problem, but sinning again by killing his brother. When God questioned Cain about Abel, Cain chose to sin more by lying to cover up sin. How illogical is this, but all of us have done this very same thing at one time or another in our life. We sin and then sin some more in the name of cover up from getting exposed.

The Lord stated to Cain that "your brother's blood cries from the ground. You are hereby banished from the ground you defiled with your brother's blood. No longer will the ground yield crops no matter how hard you work. From now on, you will be a homeless fugitive wandering from place to place." The Lord knew what happened. The murder of the obedient brother had to be dealt with in the life of Cain. Cain then went on to be a wandering fugitive that wondered to and fro around the earth for the remainder of his days.

It was not until Jesus came back to earth as a baby born of a virgin that the ultimate sacrifice was made. It was when Jesus was crucified at Calvary and arose on the third day that the curse of the law was broken and we went into the era of grace. It took another blood sacrifice from the Lamb of God to defeat sin, death, hell, and the grave and break the curse of the ground off from the earth. Though he was murdered like Abel by a people who displayed Cain mentalities of sacrificing humans and temple prostitution and vegetation to the fertility gods, Jesus broke that curse to where all who wanted to be free could. The blood that cried up from the ground was vindicated by the blood of Jesus on Calvary that dripped from the Cross to the ground. Life in the flesh was now defeated to where Life in the Spirit could begin to manifest on earth through the willing and obedient servants that allowed the infilling of the Holy Spirit to enter their lives.

Please Click here for part two of this article.