You believe what God has said. This is not some kind of nebulous faith. This is the faith that says, "I have heard God speak, and I believe it is true, and I will obey." Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I am your host, Phil Johnson. Today, we are continuing John's series on a faith that pleases God with a look at history's first example of a true believer, and that would be Abel.
What lessons can you learn from Abel? How does your faith compare with his? Stick around; John will help you answer those questions from Hebrews chapter 11, a chapter often called the Hall of Faith.
So, turn in your Bible to the book of Hebrews, or use the MacArthur Study Bible app, and follow along with John MacArthur as he begins today's lesson. We're going to return to our look at Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. As we embark upon the study of the power of faith, look at verse four. I'll read it to you.
By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous. God testifying about his gifts or receiving his gifts, his sacrifice, and through faith. Though he is dead, he still speaks. Here we meet the first man who came to God by faith. This is the man who is called Abel.
The whole point of the chapter is to let the Jewish people know that salvation by faith is not something new. It is something very, very old. In fact, it goes all the way back to Abel. He is the first one who exercised faith in this way. You say, "What about Adam and Eve?" Well, Adam and Eve aren't examples of faith because.
They had the privilege before the fall of sight. You remember it says in Second Corinthians five that we walk by faith and not by sight. But the fact of the matter is that Adam and Eve walked by sight. They walked and talked with God in the cool of the day. They had the presence of God, the Shekinah glory of God, with them in the garden.
Abel, on the other hand, was conceived and born outside Eden. He was conceived and born after the fall. He was expelled; his family being expelled from the presence of God. He himself was raised in that expelled situation. He had not seen a manifestation of the invisible God.
Adam and Eve had seen and believed, and I believe were saved. Abel had not seen and yet believed, and that is why Abel is the first in the list of faith examples, the first man of faith.
Now we look at this verse. It's just one verse, verse four, and there are three progressive. Identifications here that are tied to Abel. First of all, he offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Secondly, he obtained testimony that he was righteous—testimony from God who gave that testimony—and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.
So he is a model of faith in the sacrifice that he brought. He is a model of faith in the righteousness he received, and he is a model of faith as a preacher of faith. Even though he is dead, he still speaks. You could call this a sermon from a dead man, because he believed he offered a better sacrifice. Because he offered a better sacrifice, God testified that this was evidence that he had been made righteous.
Because he had been made righteous, declared righteous, he is for all ages a living voice affirming the great truth of chapter ten, verse thirty-eight of Habakkuk two, four: "The just shall live by faith." So let's look at those three things. He offered a better sacrifice. He was declared righteous by God. That's a better word than saying he was made righteous. He was actually declared righteous.
There was evidence that there was more than just a declaration, but the declaration was complete as righteousness was imputed to his credited to his account, and he then becomes a model of faith, a preacher of faith, to all who know his testimony.
Now, in order to see the elements that make up this model of faith, we have to go back to Genesis four.
So let's do that. Back to Genesis four. We'll dig a little deeper into the story, which is told at the outset of this fourth chapter, and we'll go back to Hebrews as necessary. Chapter four begins.
Now, the man that would be Adam. Knew his wife. The man knew his wife Eve. I wish the translators had left that alone, because in the original it says he knew his wife Eve. It doesn't say he had relations with her.
Those are different words than the Hebrew words. Hebrew says he knew her. Obviously, what that means is that he had sexual relationships with her, but that's for the commentator, not for the translator. It's much better to leave the translation of the actual terms in place.
So, Adam did know his wife in an intimate way, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a man child." With the help of the Lord.
Now here we're introduced to the first child born, whose name is Cain. Cana, as the root of his name means to get, to get. I have gotten a man child. Pretty simple name, indicating that she had gotten a child. Remember now, Adam and Eve had been thrown out of the garden, but there was a promise given to them before they left back in chapter three, verse fifteen.
Behold, it says there, or rather, it says, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." This is the promise that the woman would have a seed who would bruise the serpent's head. The promise essentially is that the seed of the woman would come defeat the enemy who had interrupted fellowship with God, and the implication is would then win back the right for men and women to have fellowship with God. The seed of the woman would be used for reconciliation, restoration, and recovery.
So, before God ever acted in judgment, God displayed mercy. Before He banished sinners from Eden, He gave them this blessed promise that a woman would have a son who would crush the serpent's head and bring about reconciliation. The very restoration of fellowship that had been forfeited through Satan. Satan had brought the fall of man. God promises that one will come to bring about the fall of Satan.
By a woman had come sin. By a woman would come the Savior. By a woman paradise was lost, and by a woman paradise would be found. There would come the seed of the woman. This is a prophecy concerning Jesus Christ, of course, and the virgin birth.
Because no woman ever had a seed, the seed is in the man. The seed of a woman is a very, very unique promise that there would be a woman who would have in her a seed. We know that to be Mary, and the seed being our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But I'm sure Eve didn't understand all the full implications of that, and it's very possible that when she was pregnant, she assumed that this was the fulfillment of that prophecy. This was the one who would be the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head.
The reason we think that could be true is because when the son was born, she gave him. The name Cain. The name Cain. I have gotten, or another way to translate that, he is here.
Some commentators suggest.
So she may have been thinking, he's here. I've gotten the promised seed. Didn't happen to be true, did it? Far from it. Cain turned out to be the first criminal.
Cain turned out to be the first murderer, and Adam and Eve, of course, could never produce the ultimate deliverer. the The ultimate deliverer had to be God, and that's why the only one who could fulfill this would be the virgin born, Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, carried in the womb of Mary, none other than the Holy Child, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So it wasn't Cain. After all, although she may have thought this was the one that was promised again, verse two, she gave birth to his brother Abel. Again, Abel is an interesting name to give to a child. It it really reflects a simple word. It's the word breath, breath.
Certainly, metaphorically, it would mean brief. Weak, and sometimes is translated that way. It is the word hebel, and it's a fitting name for this man's life. Was like James said, a vapor that appears for a little time and vanishes away. It was but a breath.
Job spoke of life. Job seven sixteen is but a breath. The psalmist in Psalm one forty four four speaks of life as but a breath, and Abel is a model of that. His life was just a very, very brief breath. Abel, it says in verse two, was a keeper of flocks.
That word flocks is big enough to include other than sheep. Cain, on the other hand, was a tiller of the ground.
So we could conclude one was in animal husbandry; the other was in farming. Both were sinners. Both were conceived by fallen parents, Adam and Eve. Both were born after the fall. Both were born outside the garden.
And this is this is human being number three and four. The third and fourth people to live on the earth. And I just want to remind you that they are functioning in the full capacities. Of full humanity. Say, why are you saying that?
I just want you to know that they weren't missing links. It's amazing how evolutionists and even so-called Christians tamper with the account of the book of Genesis and deny that Adam and Eve are real people, or that Cain and Abel are real people, as we would know them—real human beings as we would know them. But they would like us to to believe that they are some form of our animal ancestry. It has been suggested that. Genesis can't possibly be true.
You can't trust the book of Genesis because the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, would be blubbering, barbarous, animal-like oafs. They would be incapable of developing tools or skills. They would be living by wild berries and perhaps killing animals or ripping them apart for food. They would be going around banging into each other, grunting and saying "ugh," while the man would be. Smacking the woman in the head with a rock and dragging her off to a cave by the hair.
However, that is utterly incompatible with the text of Scripture, which tells us that in six days God created everything, and He created it good and He created it complete. And Adam, of course, was eminently intelligent. He was intelligent enough. That he could, according to chapter two, verse sixteen, eat from anything in the garden, and in order to make that wonderful food supply everything it should be, verse fifteen says he had the ability to cultivate the garden and to keep it. He was also intelligent enough to name every.
Single animal that God created, with a name that was in some measure consistent with that form of life.
Now these are intelligent beings, fully human. In fact, I'm convinced that they were far more intelligent than we are. I mean, the accumulated effects of the fall over these thousands of years since Adam has to be a diminishing effect. The law of entropy says everything's breaking down. Evil men grow worse and worse.
We probably have diminished brain faculties. What do they tell us that the the most erudite person uses less than ten percent of his or her brain? What what in the world are we doing, wasting the other ninety percent? Perhaps in this culture, people are using about one percent of it. We are watching the dumbing down, the intentional dumbing down of culture, humanity.
But it's very likely that they were extremely intelligent. When you stop to think about the fact that those people lived to be almost a thousand years old, their accumulated knowledge would be beyond our comprehension. Beyond our comprehension, knowledge accumulated by years and years of experience, empirical, pragmatic experience. These two sons lived in a civilized home. These two sons had the knowledge of tools.
They could domesticate and care for animals, slay animals, provide food. Make sure they perpetuated their herds, flocks. They had the skill to make tools and to plant, and harvest, and grind, and produce grain, and make food products. There are critics who have said that Abel could never have had vessels to carry milk, nor means of shearing or killing sheep. Nor means of spinning wool, Cain could never have had a hatchet.
Hatchets didn't come until far down the evolutionary process. Never could have cut or fashioned timber. By the way, no animal does that except in a very primitive sense. Cain, the critics say, could never have developed tools for plowing, could never have developed a mill to grind corn or skill to preserve it when harvested, store it, turn it into all kinds of food. But that, in fact, is exactly what they did.
One of them cared for animals, and the other was a farmer, and they did it the way it's done today. Only, probably, did it. A lot better. When Cain and Abel arrived in the world, just as when Adam and Eve arrived in the world, they knew all they needed to know. Fully developed human beings with all their faculties, in the image of God.
I sometimes think that that faculty which is most unique to God is creativity, a faculty that doesn't belong to anything in the plant or animal kingdom. Belongs exclusively to human beings. They were not howling, drooling, hairy, peanut-brained, wild people grunting around Eden, or even outside of Eden. Scientist Hardy from Canada said the search for the missing link is Mister Hyde at its best. If the evolutionist was using a scientific approach, he would be looking for at least three million missing links, for that's the estimate of how many are needed to prove his theory.
Dead or alive, they can't produce a single scientifically acceptable trace of intermediate life.
Well, they've tried, haven't they? You went to school. Did you hear about the Nebraska man? They found out that the Nebraska man was the composite from a pig's tooth. Or maybe you read about the Colorado man.
It was the composite from a horse tooth. They finally admitted. Or maybe the Colorado Ape Man, who was the man composed of the head of somebody's pet monkey, or the Piltdown Man, Mister Piltdown. It turned out had borrowed the skull of a modern ape. Or maybe you heard about the Heidelberg Man, who was three million years old, and it was finally conceded that it was a jawbone of a quite human man.
Or maybe you heard about the Java Man, who was half a million, or Neanderthal Man, or have you been listening lately to the findings about Lucy and all the other people that they supposedly offer as missing links? There are no missing links. These are fully functioning human beings. That takes us then to verses three and four, which is where we get into the real story.
So it came about in the course of time. Literally, it says at the end of days, and it's a kind of definite expression. And I'll come in that in a minute. It came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part, also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.
And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering.
Now the testimony of Hebrews chapter eleven and verse four is that Abel is a model of faith. He is a model of faith, and now we're coming to where that obedient act of faith occurred. He comes to worship God, and he worships appropriately, demonstrating faith that is. What Hebrews eleven four says, he by faith offered a better sacrifice. Before we look at the reason that is an act of faith, let's kind of back up a little bit and get the full picture.
In regard to the act of worship that is described here, there are some components to it that I think are very interesting. First, there was a place where God was to be worshipped. There was a place.
So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord, and Abel also brought his offering. They brought an offering to the Lord. There had to be a place identified. Where exactly is this place? We we don't know.
We know they are somewhere east of the Garden of Eden, verse twenty-four of chapter three, and they are kept out of the Garden of Eden, having been expelled from the Garden.
However, God has established a place. I guess you could say this is the first mercy seat, the first mercy seat. You know, it may well have been that it is being described to us in verse twenty-four. He stationed the cherubim and the bim and the flaming sword, which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. It may well have been that on the east edge of Eden, where the Lord sat up the cherubim with the flaming sword, was the mercy seat, was the place of meeting.
Maybe the sword, the flaming sword, was the symbol of divine presence. Maybe that's where they went, and God had provided an altar there. But somewhere, that's the likeliest place. God had provided a place where the sinner could meet Him. It is interesting that there was also a time for worship.
Verse three is a very specific phrase. It came about in the course of time, at the end of days. Perhaps it was the end of a certain week, or the end of a certain month, a certain set day for atonement to be made. God is a god of order. And apparently, he had prescribed a specific period of time for them to come to the mercy seat, to the place where they would meet God and offer their sacrifices.
So there is a place, and there is a time, and there is a way. There is a way to worship. Abel understood the way. And obeyed it on his part. In verse four, he brought the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions.
And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering.
On the other hand, but for Cain, who according to verse three had brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground, he felt no regard.
So there is a place and there is a time. Which God has identified as the time of atonement, and there is a way to worship. God is to be approached only by sacrifice. These two sons of Adam and Eve had been definitely instructed that there was a place, and there was a time, and there was a way. How would Abel have known to bring an animal sacrifice?
If it had not been revealed, and why was Cain rejected when he brought other than that? If it was not an act of self-will and disobedience, neither Cain nor Abel could have known anything about sacrifice unless God had revealed that to them. And when Hebrews eleven four says, "By faith Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice," faith in what? Faith in the revelation of God. Faith comes by hearing, does it not?
You believe what God has said. This is not some kind of nebulous faith. This is the faith that says, "I have heard God speak, and I believe it is true, and I will obey." It was not a whim. It was not a self-styled sacrifice. He had been told by God that God required a sacrifice.
He believed that, and he evidenced his faith by obeying God's revealed will. And that is why he is a model of faith. He heard the truth. He believed the truth. He obeyed the truth.
He worshipped the way God had ordained worship to be done. You are listening to Grace to You, the Bible Teaching Ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is called "A Faith That Pleases God." Now, friend, something I trust you're seeing in this study is this: God's word has power. It strengthens your faith like nothing else can. That's why we do what we do: proclaim and teach life-changing biblical truth through radio, online, and in print resources.
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Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You Television this weekend. Check your local listings for Christian stations and times, and be here tomorrow as John MacArthur shows you how the story of Cain and Abel can help stimulate your faith in Christ. It's another thirty minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
