Abel

It is said that Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, once had captured a prince and his family. When they came before him, the monarch asked the prisoner, "What will you give me if I release you?" "The half of my wealth," was his reply. "And if I release your children?" "Everything I possess." "And if I release your wife?" "Your Majesty, I will give myself." Cyrus was so moved by his devotion that he freed them all. As they returned home, the prince said to his wife, "Wasn't Cyrus a handsome man!" With a look of deep love for her husband, she said to him, "I didn't notice. I could only keep my eyes on you- -the one who was willing to give himself for me."

Today, as we start this new series called Heroes of the Faith, that is part of the set of series under Let’s Go Fishing, we will start with talking about faith through true sacrificial worship. As in the illustration I just gave you, what are you willing to sacrifice for the One you claim to love and call Lord. Are you willing to worship Him no matter what it cost you?

Hebrews 11:4 CSB

By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was approved as a righteous man, because God approved his gifts, and even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith.

Who in here comes from a normal family? I can tell you in all honesty, my family is far from normal. Family dysfunction seems to pretty much be the standard these days. I mean, who knows what normal is anyway? But our dysfunctional families aren’t anything new. In fact, the first family was about as dysfunctional as you can get.

Adam and Eve had been banished from the Garden of Eden because they managed to break the only rule God gave them. Denied access to the life of luxury and ease they once enjoyed, they were now forced to work the land and carve out a life for themselves by the sweat of their own brows. And it wasn’t long after their eviction from Paradise that they decided to start a family.

Genesis 4:1–2 CSB

The man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, “I have had a male child with the Lord’s help.” She also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of flocks, but Cain worked the ground.

Now, life must have been very difficult for this first family—building a home in the wilderness away from the safety and protection of the garden; it’s almost reminiscent of those early American families that moved out west in their stage coaches and wagon trains. And it was during this embryonic stage of humanity that faith makes its first appearance. Let’s look at this story

Genesis 4:3–12 CSB

In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he looked despondent. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s guardian?” Then he said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! So now you are cursed, alienated from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. If you work the ground, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

Despite all the dysfunction of his family, Abel was able to become a man of great faith and enjoyed an authentic connection with God. Abel’s faith affected his life in astonishing ways—both good and bad.

Today we will look at two ways faithful sacrificial worship affected Abel and his family, and we will also look at two ways faithful sacrificial worship affects our walk as disciples of Christ in the church age.

We will start with

Reverence

The Bible says, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did”. People have argued over why God was pleased with Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. Perhaps it was because God had specifically asked for animal sacrifices—which he received from Abel but was only offered a fruit and vegetable platter from Cain. It may have been that Abel brought “the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock,” while Cain may have only brought the leftovers. While both of these are possible, neither of them seems to quite touche on the real issue.

The difference was faith. Cain may have been going through the right motions, but not with the right motive.

“Cain wasn’t rejected because of his offering, but his offering was rejected because of Cain: his heart wasn’t right with God.” Warren Wiersbe

God isn’t interested in our routines and rituals, he wants relationships with His disciples! Abel’s faith in God developed into a genuine love and reverence for God and that, translated into an acceptable sacrifice of heartfelt worship. As far as Cain was concerned, it was just lip service. Genuine worship is matter of the heart.

Matthew 15:8 CSB

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

Jesus also later explains what true sacrificial worship is.

John 4:23–24 CSB

But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

As I was studying for this messageI heard this explained as worshiping with the right attitude (spirit) and with the right actions, or according to the “biblical pattern” (truth). The term spirit refers to the human spirit—the invisible, intangible part of our being that relates to God as he really is, since God himself is a spiritual being. And the only way that we can do that is through the power and ability of the Holy Spirit. And to worship in truth, means truthfully or authentically. Cain’s worship of God was rejected because it wasn’t in faith or authenticity. Abel, on the other hand, offered worship that came from the heart and was, therefore, accepted by God.

Today, our worship doesn’t involve altars and animals, but true faith still leads to a heart of reverence and worship Spirit and truth toward God. We have to understand, though, that worship is more than just sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, singing a few songs and saying a prayer—worship is a lifestyle.

Romans 12:1 CSB

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

God wants us to give ourselves upon the altar—to give our whole lives to him as and offering. It doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing as long as we praise and magnify him as we do it. He wants faithful sacrificial worship.

Do you know what it means to magnify something? A magnifying glass is used to make small objects larger. When I was a kid, we would take this magnifying glass and aim it just right to have an intense beam of light and we use to fry ants using this beam of light. The same thing happens when we magnify and intensify our worship. God becomes bigger in our lives as we stand in awe of his indescribable beauty, and when we intensify it his inexpressible splendor and incomprehensible wonder comes further into focus. When we learn to experience,magnify and intensify God in that way, then we’ll know the blessings of faithful sacrificial worship worship.

In addition to reverence, though, Abel’s faith also led him to...

Righteousness

The LORD accepted Abel and his gift! And by his gift he was approved as a righteous man.

You see, it’s not that Abel was righteous by virtue of his own goodness or morality, but because God approved, or declared, him as righteous. Because of his faith in God, the Lord pronounced him righteous. Biblical sacrificial faith will always lead to righteousness. But righteousness shouldn’t be thought of as a way of life, being righteous means being right with God—being accepted by God.

Romans 1:17 CSB

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

Righteousness, first of all, is an aspect of God’s nature and God extends his righteousness to us, making us right with him, by virtue of our faith.

That begins with faith in the fact that Jesus took our sins upon himself, suffering the punishment we rightfully deserved and, in exchange, making us righteous before God. But it continues as our faith—or trust—in God deepens into a richer, more mature faith. When it comes to our relationship and right standing with God, in other words, the bottom line is always faith—from beginning to end.

Many of us have a hard time believing that. We think there should be more to it than that. We see our acceptance by God as performance-based, so we do our best to earn God’s approval. I used to think like that. I thought: If I read my Bible… if I teach this class… if I pay my tithe… if I go to the right church… if I believe the right things about the right doctrines… then God will accept me. All of those may be good things, but they don’t mean anything if we think that our righteousness somehow impresses God. It doesn’t. And more often than not, that kind of attitude just leads to legalism and self-righteousness.

Isaiah 64:6 CSB

All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

Many of us have a hard time believing that. We think there should be more to it than that. We see our acceptance by God as performance-based, so we do our best to earn God’s approval. I used to think like that. I thought: If I read my Bible… if I teach this class… if I pay my tithe… if I go to the right church… if I believe the right things about the right doctrines… then God will accept me. All of those may be good things, but they don’t mean anything if we think that our righteousness somehow impresses God. It doesn’t. And more often than not, that kind of attitude just leads to legalism and self-righteousness.

These two characteristics of faithful sacrificial worship ( Reverence and Righteousness) that we learned from Abel, need to be added to our lives and our worship. These next two can affect our worship our very faith if we focus on them.

The first is a warning.

Resentment

Cain had apparently grown jealous and bitter toward his younger brother Abel. He hated the fact that Abel was accepted by God, yet he wasn’t. I’m sure that this wasn’t just a one time occurrence either. Week after week, they probably brought their offerings to God—Abel brought his out of love and reverence, while Cain brought his perhaps out of duty and routine. Cain’s heart was not right with God—he lacked saving faith—and so he grew bitter and angry with his brother who was genuinely seeking God. His bitterness turned to rage and his rage led to murder.

I’d love to say that society has evolved and learned how to resolve our differences without bloodshed, but the reality is—things haven’t changed much over the millennia. During the infancy of the church, religious Jewish leaders aligned themselves with Romans officials in an attempt to completely wipe out the Jesus movement. Under the authority of emperors like Nero and Domitian, Christians were hunted, killed by the sword, thrown to the lions, crucified, and even burned alive. Unfortunately, modern martyrdom is no less frequent. It’s estimated that more people have been murdered for their faith in Christ in the past fifty years than in the first three hundred years of church history.

Show the book. This book is filled with people who had faithful sacrificial worship of the Lord and paid the ultimate price for their faith.

In 1999, an angry mob of Muslim extremists attacked a Bible camp at the Station Field Complex of Pattimura University in Indonesia. They terrorized the group of children and teenagers and dragged a fifteen-year-old boy, Roy Pontoh, before the mob. “Renounce your Jesus, or we’ll kill you,” they shouted.

Terrified and trembling, Roy answered, “I am a soldier of Christ!” At that, one of the Islamic assailants swung a sword across Roy’s stomach, tearing into the Bible in Roy’s hands and ripping it to shreds. The next swing ended his life. The last word to fall from his lips was Jesus. As C.S. Lewis once said, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

Not all forms of persecution against people of faith end in death, however. In 2004, a pastor for a Pentecostal church in Kalam, Sweden was sentenced to one month in prison for a sermon he preached, citing Bible verses that condemn homosexuality. He was tried and convicted based on a new hate-crimes law that makes it illegal to say anything negative about homosexuality. Canada and Australia have already passed similar laws, and the United States may not be far behind.

Even in America, resentment for those who love God has begun to subtly reveal itself. Just recently, a high school student was suspended for closing the morning announcements with the words, “God bless,” on a student-run daily news program broadcast on the closet circuit television system at Dupo High School in Illinois. These, and other cases like them, are becoming more and more common across the United States, as faith in God is held in higher and higher contempt.

Revelation 2:10 CSB

Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will experience affliction for ten days. Be faithful to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Now that is the warning. Do not resent another’s faith. You do not know the test and trails that they had to go through to have the strength of faith they have in their life. Do not worry about them, concern yourself with what you will be remembered for.

Remembrance

Even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith.

We don’t know whether or not Abel had any children, but he unarguably left a legacy. Today, millions of people have been affected by the faith of the first man to become a martyr for God. Children sitting in Sunday School classrooms all across the country are both inspired and terrified by the story of Cain and Abel. And he will be remembered for as long as the Bible is read.

Something I started two years ago, after I heard another pastor do this, I started to use a note-taking bible to write out what I see in verses as I study different books of the bible. When Kaelyn graduated and went off to college, I gave her my note taking bible. It is a gift of my notes and my thoughts that she has now. And now she is taking her own notes and thoughts. I am currently doing this for Karleigh. And I will continue to do this for my grandchildren. After I’m gone, when they have questions and concerns about God’s Word, they can open that Bible up and just maybe find the answers they need—in their father’s own handwriting.

What kind of legacy will you leave? How will you be remembered after you’re gone? Faith is meant to be passed down; it’s meant to be shared! Your faith is a gift from God—what you do with it is up to you! It should be shared faithfully, sacrificially and with worship focused on Jesus Christ.

Psalm 78:4 CSB

We will not hide them from their children, but will tell a future generation the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, his might, and the wondrous works he has performed.

Altar Call.

Will you be remembered because you were resentful for the faith of others or will you be remembered for the faithful sacrificial worship you did for the Lord. I pray it is the latter. It first starts with giving your life sacrificially to the Lord. And even if you a sinner (which we all are) you will still be found approved by the Lord. Not by what you did but by what Christ did for you. And it takes giving Him your life.