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.
Abel could be called the first martyr in the Bible. He made a stand for the message of forgiveness only by the blood. Cain and Abel had both been taught by their father Adam about the importance of blood sacrifice. He shared about the promised seed that would bruise the serpent’s head and also about the importance of blood sacrifice. Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain because he offered his offering by faith in the promise of God for a Redeemer, Cain chose to ‘worship’ his own way. The conflict between Cain and Abel ended up in Abel being killed. He died because of his faith in the sacrifice of blood. Here is how Andrew Murray describes this.
“We know what the double meaning was of Abel’s sacrifice. It was, on the one hand, his offering to God of a life to be given up to death, and so in his stead to bear the death which is in its very nature the punishment of sin. It was an acknowledgment of the righteous judgment of God against sin; the confession that without blood-shedding there could be no remission of sins. It was an act of faith; he counted that the sacrifice would be acceptable, and that with it he would be accepted too. On the other hand, the sacrifice was the offering and yielding up himself to God and His service. He knew it was something that lay in the very nature and spirit of a true sacrifice, that it could not be pleasing to God if he offered the lamb, and kept back himself.”
So that brings us to our modern world and what we believe about the blood of Jesus. Today there is only one way to worship God and only one way to have fellowship with God. It is our faith in the blood of Jesus that takes away our sins and enables us to walk with God. Like Hebrews says, “But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God…And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel”. So let’s follow Abel’s example and come to God by our faith in the blood of Jesus.
