“Why did God turn his nose up at Cain’s offering?”

Steve Brown:
Why did God turn his nose up at Cain’s offering? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey. Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Are you speaking anywhere Sunday?

Steve Brown:
I don’t, since we’re recording these in advance, I have no earthly idea.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Okay. You had that blank look on your face when I asked that.

Steve Brown:
And if I do this Sunday, I’m not prepared, so would you do it for me?

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Hey listen guys, check out Forge Ministry website. It is an incredible website, ForgeTruth.com you get a lot of teaching. You can listen to the Forge podcast, you can listen to videos and audio and read stuff and you’ll be glad I told you about it. It’s designed for men, but they let women do it too, so it’ll be helpful to you. By the way, Pete and I love your questions, and you can ask a question anytime you want by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE and you could do it anytime. You follow directions, record your question, and sometimes we put that on the air. You can send your question to

Key Life Network
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can send your question to [email protected] and all of those places are touch places where you could help us financially if God leads you to do that. We promise that we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And we certainly understand if you can’t, do say a prayer for this ministry. It is an expensive one, and so far, bills have been paid, but given my proclivity and my nature, I worry about tomorrow. So, help us if you can, if you can’t, pray for us. Pete, you pray for us, and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Our Great God, we come to you on this Friday, and we pause just for a minute, and we remember who you are. We worship you. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune God, the only God, who is immortal, invisible, wise, and powerful, and loving, and kind. Thank you that you are wise, that you make plans, and yet you use all of your power for our good and for your glory. And Lord, at the end of this week, we do ask for perspective, for some time off, and a time to Sabbath and experience your shalom, your peace, that we can have our minds set on you. And Lord, we look forward to going to church, to worship with your people, to talk with your people, to hear the word of God read and explained. And so, we pray with our earthly spiritual leaders. Use them Lord, fill them. Even in these last few hours before church that they would have your message to give to us and that you would continue to shape us by your grace. Thanks for Steve, for Key Life. Thank you for our listeners. Thank you for how generous they are. And Lord, we ask that you would bless each and every one of them. We commit this time to you now in your Holy Name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail. Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering? Listen, tell us that story. What’s that question about?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, Cain and Abel, right? They were two, God apparently because there’s a lot that we don’t have there. Apparently they were told what offerings to bring. Abel brought an offering from the flock and Cain did not, he brought fruit and veggies or veggies anyway. And it was simply, you know, it’s like, are one better than the other? Well, it sort of just falls into the category of obedience. God said, this is the sacrifice I want you to bring. And we don’t have a record of that ahead of time, but he must’ve. Cause he would never.

Steve Brown:
But God accepted one, but didn’t accept the other.

Pete Alwinson:
And that’s really the point. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
That’s the Biblical theme throughout Scripture. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s why it was established way early, before even written down.

Steve Brown:
I know.

Pete Alwinson:
And so Jesus is the fulfillment of that, of course, in a powerful way.

Steve Brown:
And by the way, every culture we know about has understood that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s right.

Steve Brown:
It’s something that’s built into the human DNA that every culture knows that blood is sacrificed for sin. And God built that in so that he could prepare the world for the cross of Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Pete Alwinson:
See, we all know that when blood is spilt, something really significant has happened. You cut yourself badly. You can’t deny that, death in an accident scene with blood. Yeah. It’s serious. And when you shed the blood of an animal, serious. And God has established that historically.

Steve Brown:
And so, early on, he was teaching that.

Pete Alwinson:
Before the law and the sacrifices were given.

Steve Brown:
Good stuff. This is, what does righteousness mean? Does it mean that Abraham was seen to be without sin because of his faith in the promise?

Pete Alwinson:
Hmm.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s what it means.

Pete Alwinson:
Even in the Old Testament times. And that’s why he is our father, that’s why he is an example for us today.

Steve Brown:
You read Hebrews 11, Jesus isn’t mentioned.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But faith is counted as righteousness.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So, no matter who you are or what you’ve done or how much you’ve sinned, when you put your faith in God, Father, have mercy on me, a sinner. When you lean on Him, He not only takes your sin, He gives you something, and that’s the righteous clothing of Christ.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And incidentally, T.M. Wright taught me this, in the Bible, when you read righteousness, it means faithfulness.

Pete Alwinson:
Yes. Doesn’t mean perfection.

Steve Brown:
No, it doesn’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s right. And so, and that’s very helpful when you look at all the Psalms too, that go on and on about how God blesses the righteous person as if there are some people that were perfect, and it’s only those people that he blesses. No, they were faithful, they were following, they still messed up and had to give sacrifices for their sins.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. But it is a sense of great peace to me to know that every time I go before a holy God, who scares the spit out of me, because I’m not holy. I can dance, because I’m perfect, because I have the righteousness of Christ given to my account. That’s good. Okay. Is there any scripture reference that explicitly states whether the rapture comes before the tribulation, starts or in the midst of the tribulation, or when the tribulation ends?

Pete Alwinson:
So…

Steve Brown:
Well, that question kind of presupposes something that neither of us are sure about.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, I Corinthians, I Thessalonians 4

Steve Brown:
mentions it

Pete Alwinson:
It mentions it, and it really puts it on the timescale of the second coming. So, the question, the bigger question is what is the rapture for? And it’s to meet the returning King in the air. That’s what it is. And that’s why one person said this about Revelation.

Revelation is not about rapture out of this world. It’s about faithful discipleship in the world until Jesus comes back again.

See, that’s what the Book of Revelation is about. Rapture, if you use rapture in any way, shape, or form to escape persecution or to run away, you’ve misunderstood rapture and the role of Christians.

Steve Brown:
And you need to know that from our perspective, which is a Reformed one.

Pete Alwinson:
And the right one.

Steve Brown:
Well, but of course. But from our perspective, that is not an issue, a pre trib, post trib, mid trib question. That’s just not an issue we deal with. But a lot of believers that we love and know who love Christ, some of them a lot more than I do, do teach things about that. So, be informed.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And we do need to study the Book of Revelation. William Hendrickson’s book, More Than Conquerors is an exceptional book. Encourage people to get that.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. And I sat at your feet while you taught Revelation for weeks and weeks and weeks. One of the best series I’ve ever heard. This is, the answer to this question is duh. Can a Christian go 24 hours without sinning?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, can you?

Steve Brown:
Well, maybe I haven’t yet, but maybe. You know, you’ve got to be careful in answering this question because you can almost say that obedience doesn’t matter because nobody can do it. And that’s not what God teaches, He teaches we’re sinners that we fail and we all fail a lot in obedience. But there’s a long road that a lot of people walk of obedience that is quite good. And so, I don’t want to be flippant about it, but so far, I haven’t, but I’m still hopeful.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I think we can be sometimes so negative about our own lives, and the power of the Holy Spirit. If we say, no, I couldn’t go 24 hours. However, I know that there are sins of omission, sins of commission, and sins of, that I just, I don’t know, I didn’t even see it, you know, blind spots. So, I know that I’m flawed and I’ve never gone 24 hours without a, have I gone an hour without sinning? I don’t know?

Steve Brown:
Maybe.

Pete Alwinson:
Maybe, with you in here.

Steve Brown:
A quick question, in Mark 5, why did Jesus send the demons into the pigs?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Why? Why?

Steve Brown:
Because they were there, dummy.

Pete Alwinson:
Can I, is it okay to eat pork now?

Steve Brown:
Now it is.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. Alright.

Steve Brown:
Unless you’re Jewish.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. Right. Okay. Alright. So yeah, because they were there, but, it was really a demonstration of power, wasn’t it?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really was. And I, you can go, I’ve done that when I’ve taught that passage and gone in a lot of different directions. But you can make too much out of it. The pigs were there and it was a cool demonstration of God’s power. So, that’s sufficient.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow. I feel like, I feel like having a piece of ham right now.

Steve Brown:
Guys, we’ve got to go. So, Pete can have some ham, but first Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.