18
Confrontation
blood of beasts. He refused to acknowledge his need of a Redeemer.
This, to his proud heart, was dependence and humiliation.
But Abel, by faith in a future Redeemer, offered to God a more ac-
ceptable sacrifice than Cain. His offering the blood of beasts signified
that he was a sinner and had sins to put away, and that he was penitent
and believed in the efficacy of the blood of the future great offering.
Satan is the parent of unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion. He filled
Cain with doubt and with madness against his innocent brother, and
against God because his sacrifice was refused and Abel’s was accepted.
And he slew his brother in his insane madness.
The sacrificial offerings were instituted to be a standing pledge to
man of God’s pardon through the great offering to be made, typified by
the blood of beasts. Through this ceremony man signified repentance,
obedience, and faith in a Redeemer to come. That which made Cain’s
offering offensive to God was his lack of submission and obedience
to the ordinance of His appointment. He thought that his own plan,
in offering to God merely the fruit of the ground, was nobler, and not
as humiliating as the offering of the blood of beasts, which showed
dependence upon another, thus expressing his own weakness and
sinfulness. Cain slighted the blood of the atonement.
Adam, in transgressing the law of Jehovah, had opened the door
for Satan, who had planted his banner in the midst of the first family.
He was made to feel, indeed, that the wages of sin was death. Satan
designed to gain Eden by deceiving our first parents; but in this he was
disappointed. Instead of securing to himself Eden, he now feared that
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he would lose all he had claimed out of Eden. His sagacity could trace
the signification of these offerings, that they pointed man forward to
a Redeemer and, for the time being, were a typical atonement for the
sin of fallen man, opening a door of hope to the race.
The rebellion of Satan against God was most determined. He
worked, in warring against the kingdom of God, with perseverance
and fortitude worthy of a better cause.