Two Offerings

  

      So, tell me... did you ever secretly feel a little bit sorry for Cain?  It kinda makes sense for him to offer a vegetable offering since he was a tiller of the ground, right?  I mean, it hardly seems fair... unless you notice that God had already given instructions on the requirement of a blood offering.  The first thing to die should have been Adam and Eve, but God had mercy on them and instead killed an animal and made clothing of skins to cover their nakedness.  He established a pattern which would have been well known to the first family.  He pointed them to a time in the future when the seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan, or cause a fatal blow.  Until that first messianic prophecy came to pass, the sacrifice of clean animals would be the requirement; foreshadowing the ultimate sacrifice planned by God from before the beginning of time.  

     Cain knew the requirement.  This was not likely his first experience with sacrifice.  He deliberately and presumptuously changed the pattern and engaged in the first man-made religion.  Like all religions, Cain's offering was a testament to his own efforts, an attempt to bargain with God, "I'll give you this, and you give me that."  He and his offering were disqualified unlike Abel whose righteousness was declared by God on the basis of faith as it's still done today.  Cain neither recognized God's mercy, nor his need for righteousness.  He was bullheaded, disrespectful, disobedient and ungrateful all the remainder of his days.  

     What a terrible legacy he left to his offspring who populated the world with monstrously wicked people.  They were apparently just as deviant as Cain in their religious inventiveness.   To this day, Romans tells us that God's wrath is especially provoked by people who deliberately ignore His truth in exchange for the idols they've invented.  From the beginning until now, there have only ever been two ways:  the narrow way of faith, and the broad way of man made religion.