True (and False) Worship

We’re going to be in the book of Genesis 4 tonight, so if you want to open up your Bibles to the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, and find chapter 4. The title of our message tonight is, “True (and False) Worship.” We’ll be looking at Genesis 4:1-10 mainly.

You know, Genesis is the book of beginnings. In fact, that’s what the word “genesis” means. Our English word “genesis” literally means to be born. “Genesis” means origin or beginnings, and we don’t even get out of the first verse before we find reason why it is named that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And, because it is a book of beginnings, there are a lot of firsts that are found throughout the book of Genesis. We find the first man and the first woman. We find the first marriage taking place. We find the first occurrence of sin in the world. We find the first birth of a human being; we find the first death of a human being. And, we find the first promise that God gives of a Savior who would come to this earth; and because mankind had sinned, this Savior would set us free from our sins and give us the opportunity to be restored in a right relationship with God and be given eternal life.

Here in Genesis 4, we’re also introduced to a first, it is the first time recorded in the Bible of an act of worship. Now, it is probably not the first time worship was occurring, there’s no doubt that Adam and Eve worshiped God, but this is the first occasion where we are going to see worship enacted, and it’s going to challenge us. I will tell you, because it is the first mention of an act of worship, we ought to pay attention to it because in it we are going to find a contrast between what true worship is and what false worship is—what worship ought to be and what worship should avoid.

Let’s dive into this passage. We will read it in its entirety, and then we’ll backup and look at it a little bit more closely. Follow along with me beginning with verse 1. It says, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, ‘I have acquired a man from the LORD.’ 2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD. 4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the LORD respected Abel and his offering, 5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 So the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 ‘f you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.’”

Verse 8, “Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel you brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ 10 And He said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. 11 So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’”

Before we begin to dive into this passage, I think we need to really take a look at the backdrop of this story, to look at what has already taken place back in Genesis 3, because Genesis 3 is where God has placed Adam and Eve in the garden and has given them some instructions in that garden—they are to tend the garden of God, and there are many trees that they are free to eat from, but as you know the story, there is one tree that they are forbidden to eat from. Satan comes along and tempts them, and they both fall into sin listening to the serpent rather than listening to the voice of God.

God begins to pronounce curses on them. There were curses for Adam, there were curses for Eve, and there were also curses for the serpent. But in the midst of God pronouncing these curses, He also gives us the very first promise of a Savior because in Genesis 3:15 He says these words as He is pronouncing the curse on the serpent. He says, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” That might sound obscure, but I will tell you this is the first occasion in a very poetic way that God describes that one day He is going to send His only begotten Son into the world who would give His life on the cross to give an opportunity for mankind to turn from their sins, believe upon His atoning sacrifice, and have eternal life. Why do I say that? Because of the mention of the Seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent, though the serpent himself will bruise the heel of the Seed of that woman.

Now, what we learn from that, and what no doubt Adam and Eve understood from that, is that from Eve was going to come this future Savior who would one day redeem them from the sin that they had just committed which separated them from God and actually brought death into the world. Before sin had entered the world through Adam and Eve, there would be no death; but because of their sin, mankind would begin to wear out and would eventually die. We’re going to find the first death, which is actually a murder, only one chapter away here in Genesis 4.

That brings us up to our passage. Sin is in the world now, but God’s promise of a Savior through Eve has been given as well, and then we read verse 1, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, ‘I have acquired a man from the LORD.’” These are Eve’s words, “I have acquired a man from the LORD,” so she named him Cain, which literally means, “I have gotten him” or “here he is.” It’s very likely that by naming him Cain and describing him that way that her assumption was, “Cain is now the fulfillment of God’s promise. God promised that through my seed a Savior would be born, someone who would redeem us, now I have born a son,” and so it’s very possible that her assumption was that Cain is going to be that Savior, "He is the One that God is providing for us.”

Now, I wonder how long it took her to realize that Cain was not Him. I imagine it was probably during the “terrible two’s” that she began looking around the house and seeing how he was acting up and thinking, He can’t possibly be the Savior. This kid needs saving himself. She would’ve been right. You see, though she thought that maybe God’s promise would be fulfilled immediately, it would be thousands of years before Jesus would come into the world. In fact, Cain would become the exact opposite of what a Savior would be. He himself would desperately need saving.

As verse 2 carries the story on, Eve gives birth to a second son and names him Abel. We find out as these boys grew up that they each chose a career. Cain chose the career of being a farmer, and Abel chose the career of being a shepherd. It tells us, “Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” In the process of time, there came a time for them to express their worship of their Creator, and that’s what we find in verses 3, “And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the LORD. 4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat.” It tells us, “ . . . in the process of time.” The literal rendering of the Hebrew is, “at the end of days,” which seems to indicate that there was a certain time of the year that this offering was made.

Interestingly enough, we don’t have anything recorded in the previous chapters from God about how to worship Him. There isn’t any instruction that we have in which God spoke to Adam and Eve and told them how He wanted to be worshiped and what would be a part of what their worship was, but no doubt God had given some sort of instruction that we were not privy to because where did Cain and Abel even get the idea that they were to bring an offering to the Lord, if in fact their parents had not brought them up that way, that this was something that they would do. Apparently, there was a time of the year that this offering would be brought, and now that they are old enough, maybe it is that they are bringing their own offering and it’s no longer part of their parents’ offering. Some of those details are not directly given to us, but at this point we don’t have any specifics about how to worship, when to worship, or in what manner to worship, we just are told that Cain and Abel, at that particular time, brought their offerings to the Lord.

Their offerings were a little different. Cain’s offering was from the fruit of the ground. Because he was a farmer, he was growing crops; so when he brought his offering to the Lord, it was from his crops, it was from the produce of the ground. Abel, on the other hand, because he was a shepherd, it says that he “ . . . brought of the firstborn of his flock,” and that was his offering. The second part of verse 4 tells us this though, “And the LORD respected Abel and his offering, 5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering.” Abel’s offering was respected; Cain’s offering was not respected.

It goes even beyond that. It was not just the offering itself, I want you to notice the way that it is worded. It does not speak about the offering, it actually speaks about the offeror as well because it tells us, “And the LORD respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering.” It’s not just the offering itself, it literally was a rejection of Cain’s offering as well as Cain himself; it was an acceptance of Abel’s offering as well as an acceptance of Abel himself. So, one worshiper, their worship was accepted; the other worshiper, their worship was not accepted.

Now, that could be hard for us to understand why God would reject a worshiper. Here is a man who is coming to God to give an offering to God. He’s giving a portion of what he had labored to produce, and then God does not accept it. More than that, God doesn’t just not accept his offering, God does not accept the offeror himself. At a minimum, this is showing us that not all forms of worship are of equal quality. We’ll get into that a little bit further, but that can be very unsettling for certain people.

In fact, I would say that some people would be very bothered by that idea that God accepts certain worship and He does not accept other worship because there are many, especially in our society today, that believe that worship can be offered in any way that the worshiper desires to worship, and it can be to whatever deity they conceive in their mind as an accurate depiction of who they think God is. We live in a pluralistic society, so many people have different ideas about God, have different ideas about what our purpose is here on this planet, different ideas about the kind of God that He is and the way we ought to serve Him. They believe that not only is their way a totally adequate way to express their worship for the God that they believe in, but other people can worship as they see fit, and your way is as good as my way, and it really doesn’t matter all that much.

Well, apparently it does, according to Scripture, that God is to be worshiped but it’s not just in any willy-nilly way. In John 4, in the New Testament, Jesus is having a conversation with the woman at the well. You recall that conversation. We won’t dive too much into what that conversation consisted of other than the fact that it eventually led to a discussion about worship. The woman was wondering where the right place to worship was, “Is it in Gerizim, where my people are from, or is it here in Jerusalem, where the Jews choose to worship?” Jesus redirected her, and He made this statement. He said, “ . . . true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” Jesus identified that there are “true worshipers,” and that there is a certain way that “true worshipers” worship, and it is “ . . . in spirit and truth.”

We will talk about that a little bit later in this message, but I want to take a closer look at Cain’s offering because if God did not accept Cain and his offering, we ought to consider why is it that God did not accept Cain and his offering. There have been a handful of different things that have been suggested by different Bible scholars and different commentators and so forth, and I want to share several of them with you. Many of them have some root in this passage itself, and one in particular from the New Testament, but let me share with you the four main things that are brought up as to why God may have rejected Cain and his offering.

The first is that Cain did not bring his best. If you look closely at the way that it is worded, it tells us, “Abel also brought the firstborn of his flock,” but when it mentions Cain’s offering, it does not mention that he brought the first fruits, it just mentions that he brought, “ . . . the fruit of the ground.” Later, when we were given the law of God through the writing of Moses, there was description of how worship was to be done, and often it was mentioned that when bringing an animal as a sacrifice, it was to be the firstborn that was to be brought. And, when you brought a grain offering, an offering of the produce, it was to be the first fruits. In other words, that was a way to describe the best. You give to God first, and you give God the best. But when we read this passage, it’s clear that that’s what Abel did, he brought “the firstborn.” But it does not say the same about Cain. What that would indicate is that Abel brought his best, but Cain did not bring his best, he brought maybe what was left over, so some believe that that’s why God rejected it because He felt like Cain was bringing the leftovers.

There’s another suggestion though, that is, that Cain did not bring a blood offering. Abel, we know, because he brought the firstborn of his flock, he had to kill that animal, kill that lamb in order to bring his offering before the Lord, which meant that there was a shedding of blood. But, if you’re giving from your harvest, there’s no blood being shed. On the surface that might seem like a trivial point, but if you understand Scripture, you understand that the shedding of blood is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. We see that in the Old Testament law in the way that worship was to be done, the covering for their sin, the shedding of blood was necessary, and it was a way of looking forward—those Old Testament saints looking forward—to the future promise of God that one day a Savior would be born, and that Savior would become the sacrifice for our sins. And, for us, as New Testament saints, we in our worship we’re looking back because Christ has already come. He once and for all has offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, but it is the blood.

The Old Testament lambs were looking forward to the Lamb of God that would take away the sin of the world, and Abel brought that type of a sacrifice, but Cain did not bring that type of a sacrifice which would indicate that Abel had his eyes set on the future cross of Christ as he was worshiping; Cain instead had his eyes on his own labor because that’s what he was offering to God, “ . . . the fruit of the ground,” which he himself had labored for, now he is offering it to the Lord. So, Abel’s eyes were on the cross, and Cain’s eyes were on his own abilities.

Then, there’s another suggestion that Cain was in simply not living right, that though he was bringing an offering to the Lord, his lifestyle was a sinful lifestyle and so essentially he was living this life of hypocrisy. During the week he was sinning up a storm and then he would come and bring his offering to the Lord as a way to express faithfulness to God, but in reality he was a hypocrite. He was not living right, and there are some indications right here in this passage that give credence to that because God asks him in verse 7, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” In other words, he had not been doing well. Something that he was doing was not well. Then, God goes on and exhorts him to not let sin overcome his life. That’s a good indication to us that Cain was not living as Cain should have.

We even find some of his bad attitudes and bad actions recorded here because God mentions his anger—that’s a bad attitude—it mentions his lies, and eventually in the passage we see that it leads to murder. So, yeah, things were not right in Cain’s life. In fact, in the New Testament we’re told in 1 John 3 that Cain’s works were evil. So, Abel gave his best, Cain did not give his best; Abel had his eyes upon the blood, Cain had his eyes upon his own efforts; Abel was living his life right, Cain was living his life in rebellion against God.

Then, there’s one more, and we don’t find this in the passage but we do find it mentioned in the New Testament in the book of Hebrews 11:4. If you want to turn there, you can. I’m only going to make reference to what the verse has to say. You might jot it down and look it up afterwards. In Hebrews 11, which we know as the chapter about faith, is the chapter that says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him,” we call it the “hall of faith” because it goes through many of the Old Testament saints and shows how they had victory and sometimes even suffered because of their faith and dependence upon God. It tells us in verse 4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” So what distinguished Abel’s sacrifice from Cain’s sacrifice according to Hebrews 11:4? It was his faith, that he offered in faith and apparently Cain did not offer in faith.

Now, which of these four are it? Was it that Cain wasn’t living right? Was it that Cain didn’t have his eyes upon the blood that would be required for forgiveness? Was it that Cain didn’t have faith? I believe all of them are part of it, but it begins with faith. In fact, everything else that we are going to talk about now stems from whether a person has true faith or a false faith because true faith will lead to true worship and false faith will lead to a false worship. I believe that true worship will always begin with true faith.

Some of you might be thinking, Well, wait a minute. Cain, did he not have faith? I mean, why is he even bringing a sacrifice to God if he’s a man that does not have any faith? Well, I want to draw a difference between believing in God and believing God because there’s no doubt that Cain believed in God, in the existence of God. Why would he bring an offering at all if he did not believe in the existence of God? So, there was an element of faith in his life in that he believed in God’s existence, but you know that only takes you so far because the Bible tells us that even Satan believes in God. Obviously, simply believing in the existence of God is not enough, and it’s not what God requires. He had a belief in God, his problem was that he did not believe God, and true faith is not just belief in the existence of God, it is believing God and the things that God has said—what God has said about Himself, what God has said about good and evil, what God has said about how a person can be saved. All of these things are things that God reveals in His Word, and so it’s not just enough to believe that there is a God that exists out there somewhere, it’s that that God has spoken to us and do we believe what God has said. When we read what God has put in His Word, do we believe those very things?

It’s interesting, just one chapter before when we see the fall of man, sin being brought into the world, we listen to the words of that serpent who is tempting Eve. I want you to realize that he never questions the existence of God, what he questions is what God actually said. He didn’t try and convince Eve that God does not exist, what he tried to get her to question is, “Did God really say that? Did God really mean that?” and then he substitutes his own lie once he has placed that seed of doubt. You see, true faith not only believes in the existence of God, but it is going to hold on to what God has said because it believes that these are the very words of God, and so it speaks to me about what is right and wrong, and what is true and what is false, and God is not who I say He is, He is not who you say He is, God is who He says He is. When you understand how God reveals Himself, true faith says, “That is what I will believe. I will trust in what God has to say about Himself.”

Let me tell you why this is so important because the root of the tree determines the fruit of the tree. If the root of the tree is in true faith, the fruit of that tree is going to be good. If the root of the tree is in a false faith, the fruit of that tree is going to be bad. That’s really what we find when we compare the fruit of Abel to the fruit of Cain. That is where everything separates.

Let’s walk through that really quickly so you understand what I am saying because it is in total contrast. True faith trusts in the blood for forgiveness; unbelief, on the other hand, trusts in itself. Remember, in the previous chapter God had given the first promise of a Savior, but that’s not the only thing that happened. Not only did God say the seed of Eve will one day crush the serpent’s head, we also find a few verses later in verse 21 that God wanted to place a covering on Adam and Eve, so He took animal skins to clothe them, to clothe their nakedness—their nakedness which had been exposed because of their sin was now going to be covered by God by animal skins. Where did those animal skins come from? Do you realize that God made the first sacrifice? God shed the blood of an animal so that He could cover Adam and Eve indicating that their sin would be atoned for.

God has given that promise and Abel trusted in that promise. When he came to offer to God, his eyes again were on the blood; where Cain, on the other hand, did not give that a consideration. Why? Because Cain didn’t believe that that was necessary. In fact, maybe he thought it was kind of messy, and so he brought his own accomplishments as his offering to the Lord. Do you see how it stemmed from the fruit of what their belief was? Abel believed what God had already revealed. Cain was just shoving what God had revealed to the back burner and deciding, “I’m going to offer what I feel like I should offer. I’m going to give to God what I want to give to God,” and then we find that true faith changes a person’s behavior. Like I said, when it came to Cain, Cain made some pretty bad life choices. He was an angry man, he obviously was a violent man as we’ll find out here by the end of our story, and he had a struggle with sin, but that was because the root of his tree was bad so now the fruit of that tree is exposing what it actually really is.

On the other hand, Abel was living right. We find in the New Testament that he is identified in the book of Hebrews as a righteous man. Again, we find that the root of the tree is determining the fruit of the tree. Then, again, we find that Abel gave his best. Why? Because he understood the greatness of the grace and the mercy of God. If God would so love us that even though we as the human race have failed Him, and we have chosen to walk in our own way rather than in His way, He has still given us the promise that He is going to rescue us. He is going to send a Savior. He is going to be one of our descendants, and He understood that if blood must be shed, then that Savior is going to suffer. On the other hand, Cain again just thought that his own way was good enough.

Jesus, in the New Testament, was in the midst of a dinner with a Pharisee by the name of Simon when a sinful woman came in and fell at Jesus’ feet. You remember the story, she began to wash His feet with her tears, dry His feet with the hair of her head, and Simon the Pharisee was there disgusted by the whole scene thinking that if Jesus was really a Prophet, He would know what kind of woman this is, and He wouldn’t let her touch Him. He’d probably cast her out, if He was a righteous Man. But Jesus explained to Simon that her act was an act of true worship. Why? Because she recognized who He was. Jesus went on and spoke these words, “He who has been forgiven much, the same loves much.”

That was Abel. Abel loved God and His mercy, and that’s why he brought his best. He brought the best that he could possibly bring, just as the woman brought that alabaster flask of fragrant oil that was worth a ton of money, but that was nothing to her in order to break it onto the feet of Jesus and anoint His feet because He was worthy. Cain, on the other hand, I guess didn’t think it was that big of a deal and so decided not to bring the best, just what he felt like bringing at that particular time.

If you put this all together what you see is that true belief sets its eyes on the blood, changes its behavior, and gives its best. Let me say that again. True belief that results in true worship sets its eyes on the blood, changes its behavior, and gives its best. Do you know what the word “worship” actually means? It means ascribing worth, “worth-ship”, we could say. It is placing supreme value on God, so we worship Him. We recognize that there isn’t anything, anyone, that is more worthy of my adoration, of my love, of my devotion because of who He is and because of what He has done. Abel, because he had such a high value of who God was in his life, he came to God on God’s terms. Cain, on the other hand, didn’t place supreme value on God, so he came to God on his own terms. That is why Abel’s offering and Abel himself was accepted and why Cain’s offering and Cain himself was not accepted.

We get to the point in the story where God speaks to Cain, and it’s interesting. You would think at this point that God would turn His back on Cain and say, “You know what? You just don’t get it. You’re not here for the right reasons. You don’t have eyes for Me. You kinda have eyes to do your own thing, and that’s not what I’m about,” so we might think that God would turn His back on Cain, but God does not turn His back on Cain. God actually reaches out to Cain, which shows us again the character of God. The character of God is to seek and to save the lost, not to cast them off, but to seek them and to save them. This was a teachable moment in Cain’s life. Okay, he messed up. He wasn’t doing things right, he wasn’t living his life right, but notice what God says, verse 6, “So the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.’”

God mentions the fact that Cain is angry, and we have to ask ourselves, why is he angry? I think he was angry because God’s ways were not Cain’s ways, and Cain was all about Cain’s ways; and God’s ways were getting in the way of Cain’s ways, but he was finding that his ways weren’t acceptable to God and that made him angry.

Timothy Keller said this: “If your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.” If your idea of who God is never disagrees with you, maybe your concept of God is just a reflection of yourself, and if your God is a reflection of yourself, that ain’t God. God isn’t who I think He is, and God is not who you think He is, God is who He says He is. That made Cain angry when he realized that he couldn’t just do what he wanted to do and stylize his own form of religion or worship or dedication or lifestyle, that somehow he had to conform if he was going to please God.

God gave him two options. The first was to allow God to be his Master. He could allow God to be his Master if he would choose to “ . . . do well.” To “do well” meant to fall in line with what God expected of him, to look forward to the time when a Savior would be given, to know that God had a plan to rescue them, and to live a life that to the best of his ability was trying to honor God and not live his life his own way. All those in the Old Testament, if they did their best to walk in the ways of God showing that they had faith in the God of the Bible, and they looked forward to the time that He was going to fulfill His promise and send that Savior, they were considered the people of God. But if Cain decided that he did not want God as his Master, what he would end up with is a different master, and that master was going to be sin ruling over him. That’s what God says in verse 7, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you. . . .”

Sin is always trying to take us down, but God wants us to be overcomers. We’re not overcomers in our own strength. We’re not overcomers because we figure it out. We’re overcomers when we fall upon the grace of God and trust in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand.

So how did Cain respond to that? This is where it gets really tragic, verse 8, “Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’—that was a lie—‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ 10 And He said, ‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. 11 So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’”

Why did Cain kill Abel? We might think that it was because he hated his brother, but I don’t think he did hate his brother. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it was because he hated God, and I would agree with that. It wasn’t that he hated his brother, he hated God; and he hated God because Cain wanted God to bend his way and God said, “No, you need to bend My way,” and he did not want to bend God’s way and so hated God for it. But he’s only a man, how can he get back at God? He can get back at God by unleashing his anger on who God accepted. That’s why he killed his brother because his brother was accepted and he was not accepted.

I want to finish by going back to that statement that Jesus made to that woman at the well when He said to her, “ . . . true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” What does that mean? What does it mean to, “ . . . worship the Father in spirit and in truth”? First, we are to worship Him in truth. What that means is that our faith is placed in the truth of who God says that He is and what God says that He has done for us. Our confidence is not in ourselves, our confidence is in who God is and what He has revealed about Himself. It is believing what God says and how He says that He will save an individual from their sinful lifestyle and what God says how we are to live. That is what it means to worship in truth because worship isn’t just about the songs that we sing, it’s about all of our life.

Really, what we’re seeing here is just a description of all of the fruit of each of their lives. It stemmed from whether their faith was true or their faith was phony, and it included not only their offerings to God, their acts of worship, but also their lifestyle—how they lived their life. Was it to the best of their ability to bring glory and honor to God and to conform their lives to the image of Jesus? That’s what it means to live your life in truth.

What does it mean to live your life “in spirit” because it says, “ . . . in spirit and truth.” Well, if you consider the context of that story where the woman was wrestling with, “Do we worship here; do we worship over there?” Jesus essentially was saying, “It’s not about where you worship. It’s not a certain location. It’s not exterior at all. It’s inside.” It’s not about just conforming yourself to do these rites and rituals—to show up to church every Sunday, to open up the Bible when the pastor says to open up the Bible. If your heart is not in it, if your heart is not right, then you’re not worshiping Him in spirit. If your understanding of who God is isn’t accurate according to what the Bible has to say, then you’re not worshiping Him in truth; and we must worship Him “ . . . in spirit and in truth.”

When we compare Abel and Cain side by side, we find that there was one true worshiper, and that was Abel because he believed God—not just believed in Him, he believed what God said. Cain, on the other hand, was more concerned with his own ways.

I think we’re living in a time when in our world for those that do believe in God, there’s a significant number that are wanting God to bend their way or the way of society rather than getting us to bend His way to how God has revealed Himself. We’re seeing it even in many churches where they don’t seem to have a problem bending towards what society accepts, but they don’t want to bend towards what God has revealed about Himself. If we want to be true worshipers, we need to bend towards Him and not expect Him to bend towards us. Amen?