Now, dear children, do you see the lesson in these offerings? Do not bring your good works to God as an offering for sin. Jesus is the only offering for sin that God will accept. He accepted Abel’s slain lamb, for it pointed to Jesus, and blood was shed. Believe in Jesus as the One who has borne your sins. He is our offering.
Cain’s offering was the fruit of the ground which God had cursed for man’s sake; and the good works of one who does not believe in Jesus are like the fruit that Cain brought.
Come to God then, not on the ground of “doing,’ but, believing in Jesus who has done all, and God will accept you in Him.
Cain got very angry when God did not accept his offering. God asked him why he was angry and He let him know that He would accept him, too, if he would bring the right kind of offering, but this did not satisfy Cain. One day when he was talking with his brother Abel in the field, he rose up against him and killed him. By this act Cain showed how dreadful a thing it is to allow anger to have a place in the heart, and to what it may lead.
And because of this great sin, God’s curse rested upon Cain. He told him that the ground should not from that time yield its strength to him, and that he should be a wanderer in the earth. Cain thought his punishment was very heavy, but He went out from the Lord’s presence, and dwelt in the land east of the garden of Eden.
He built a city and tried to make himself happy; but there is no true happiness apart from God. R.
ML 11/12/1899