God’s Word for You

Genesis 4:3 Cain’s sacrifice

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, September 29, 2026

3 Sometime later, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.

This verse begins with an unusual phrase, “At the end of the (or those) days.” Our Hebrew lexicons suggest “Sometime later” for this verse, and there is a similar phrase (“While this was going on”) in Nehemiah 13:6.

We learn other things here in this verse, simply from the act of Cain’s offering. First, it shows us that Adam was preaching to his family about God, as a father should. Also, the family was in the habit of worship, and this worship already included the idea of making a sacrifice to the Lord. Finally, it also shows us that within the visible church, there will be those who have doubts, who struggle with their faith, and even some who may appear to be within the church but who are in fact unbelievers (this is the difference between the visible church and the invisible church).

Are we certain that the sacrifices of Cain and Abel were pleasing to God? Professor Gerhard writes that alongside the worship which was in connection with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil “are the sacrifices of the fathers: those of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4:3-4), of Noah (Genesis 8:20), of Abraham (Genesis 22:13), etc. These were types of the one and only truly propitiatory [appeasing] sacrifice which Christ would offer on the altar of the cross” (“On the Law of God,” Vol. XV §18). Offered in faith, these sacrifices were a way to worship God and fall under the proper obedience of the Third Commandment. We should not imagine that these sacrifices were thought up by the patriarchs apart from the word of God or the will of God. There has never been a time in the whole history of the church when self-chosen acts of worship have pleased God, but we are told in Hebrews 11:4 that “by faith Abel made sacrifices” and “God spoke well of his offerings.”

So we have an impression of worship in the earliest days, two thousand years before the great Flood, that involved remembering God’s word and family preaching, prayer, and sacrifice.

What would Adam’s preaching have been like? He would have taught his family about God and God’s holy word which was spoken to him and to his dear wife in person in their time in the Garden. We can imagine him joyfully retelling the account, first going from low to high, beginning with water and mud, to seas and skies, the land and the trees above and then the glory in the heights of the heavens: the sun, moon and stars! Then, calling this wife and children’s attention from high to low, the creatures of the sky, then of the land, and then he and his wife.

He would have described their first meeting and quoted his love song, described their holy marriage, and God’s promises and commands to them. Those commands would have led to Adam’s sermon about the temptation and the fall into sin, and a warning about the devil, but this would also have included the first Gospel promise about the coming Savior. Finally, there would have been the account of their having to leave the Garden, but being allowed to remain in the world, and the many ways that God had blessed their lives ever since.

It is certain that the ancient pagans who made grain and animal sacrifices got those ideas from these first people and their acts of worship. But as some groups lost their faith, lost the true meaning of the sacrifices, and then finally came up with the idea of pacifying or manipulating God or the gods that after this, there was no true faith left for those poor people.

In a sacrifice, what is really being accomplished? Is God pleased that a man picks up a bunch of flowers, or wheat, and burns it on a pile of stones? Or that a man take a portion of a catch of fish, or a brace of coneys, or a lamb, and after slaughtering, lays the flesh on an altar and roasts it? Does God need burned roses or rabbits? No. But God reinforces the promise of our salvation with signs and symbols. The idea of a sacrifice does nothing to appease God’s appetite, but rather shows to man that God was going to provide an offering in the place of man’s sins. Luther puts it this way: “God had this in mind from the beginning of the world: Men were to have signs by means of which they might comfort themselves in their sins and gain courage through their reliance on divine grace” (LW 1:250). It is not the work performed by the man that means anything at all, but the mercy and power of God that is foreshadowed by the sacrifice. “For we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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