by Robert Briggs

Created on: September 06, 2010   Last Updated: September 07, 2010

I would like try during the course of this article to examine, in microscopic fashion, what it is that the writer to the Hebrew church was trying to convey when he said:  Heb 11:4  “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh”.   It is clear that he is drawing parallel with the Genesis account of the offering of Cain and Abel which occurred we are told after “the process of time”

 What a way to describe it a “process of time”.  Time has a way of changing things:

• Time ages wine, increasing its value.

• It cures and refines cheese improving its taste.

•  But it also can spoils things that were once sweet.

And so it did with one of these two character references.  However let’s notice something found here in this scripture:

            “Abel offered a more Excellent sacrifice”.

Now, I am not a grammatical expert, nor am I English major, but I do know that to have a “more excellent” anything you must necessarily have an “excellent” or “good” something else;  after all the word “more” means, among other things, “in higher degree” or “further and/or additional”.  Please note that it was not that Cain’s offering here was not evil.  After all let’s remember that Cain and Abel were both:

• Worshiping God

• Both were sacrificing

The difference lay in “what” they were sacrificing.  Cain, we are told, brought of the Fruit of the Ground.  Abel in contrast, brought an animal from his Flock.  As I have already stated Cain’s offering was not evil because in the Levitical worship generations later fruit of the ground was acceptable in certain context, and at certain times.  What this shows us is that it could not be evil because what once was evil can’t be made good.  No, it was that it was not appropriate.  What we give to God must be appropriate in: time, place and circumstance.

While God did say that sin lay at the door of the man he DID not say that the offering was sinful it was only unacceptable.  No, it was how Cain acted after he was told his efforts were not acceptable that ushered

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