A Better Offering

Those Given New Hearts and New Spirits!
Those Who’s Offering Is Accepted!

Now Abel kept flocks and Cain worked the soil. Genesis 4: 2

God said that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.
And I have often wondered why.
What was better in Abel’s offering?

It would have cost him more—at least emotionally—since lambs were living with the breath of God and more rare than crops would have been.
And it was always foreshadowing of Jesus’s sacrifice to come.

I thought maybe the job duties was why.
But we are all called to plant, working the soil, planting seeds of faith in others.

And we are all called to be shepherds, shepherds of people, leading them to Christ, discipling them in the ways of Jesus.

So what was better in Abel’s offering?
I’m sure there is a parallel in the Bible to show us this.

God looks at our hearts.

He tells us in 1 Samuel that God looks at the heart of man, not the other things that people look at.

And since it was our heart that needed to be replaced by God with the perfect Holy Spirit—Jesus Christ’s heart living inside us—I imagine the reason was God’s understanding of the heart of Abel that brought the offering.

That His heart was truly keen on worshiping God.

And given that Cain murdered his brother Abel right after this, that Cain’s heart probably wasn’t in right state of love that God was hoping for.

The Bible says that God is searching the whole world for those whose hearts are for Him.

So it matters, not just what we are doing, but our hearts, our motivations.

So God made provision for our hearts.

He sent His one and only Son—Jesus— to die on the cross, to give us His Heart to live inside us.

And yet we see God’s heart through this.
For God in His mercy, does not desert those who have not received Jesus.
We can see that through Cain.
God did not desert Cain.
God still provided for Cain and protected Cain throughout His life, though Cain was lost to and was banished from God’s presence.

It’s what sin—the corrupted heart of our nature given to us by Adam and Eve—has done for all people.

It removed us from God’s intimate presence.

But if we believe and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then we are reunited with God’s presence.
Given the new heart, the right heart, that is the heart of worship, the clean heart, the uncorrupted heart full of Gods love for Him and for others.

May we know that we know that we know that it is our heart that God is after, not our sacrifice.

May we know that we know that we know He has made provision to give this to us through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross.

May we know that we know that we know we just have to ask Him for it and we will receive it.

love kathlynn