Two Kinds of Offerings on Thanksgiving Day

Cain and Abel both observed a Thanksgiving Day. After completing a period of toilsome labor, both sons of Adam and Eve had reasons for thankfulness. God’s faithful care was yet stretched out over them. The Lord had blessed the work of Cain, and he was permitted to enjoy the fruits of the field. Abel also had not worked in vain. His flock had still been able to find pasture, and they were multiplied. Both sons of Adam had great reasons to observe Thanksgiving Day.

In this month we also may again observe the yearly Thanksgiving Day. There are many reasons humbly to thank the Lord. In your life God made a difference compared to other people. There are people who gathered with us on Prayer Day for whom there is no Thanksgiving Day. They have gone the way of all flesh. Not only has the Lord spared our lives up to this moment but He has surrounded us with many benefits. He has not yet broken the staff of bread. Our tables are yet furnished with food and drink, and we yet enjoy the fatness of the earth. Millions in this world suffer hunger and poverty, but we may eat and be satisfied. The Lord gave us a house in which to live. We have clothes to wear.

When we consider the deep decay of land and people where sins multiply unto the heavens, where our people have reckoned with God in foolish pride, oh, how inconceivably great are the exertions of God. Though the powers of unbelief and revolution wax stronger and stronger, the Lord has protected our poor nation from total chaos. Our land was yet spared from the terrors of war. Oh, where must we begin and where must we end in enumerating the mercies of the Lord?

The psalmist cried out, “For mercy is great unto the heavens.” Thus, it was also in the lives of Cain and Abel. They both had abundant reasons to observe Thanksgiving Day. Both were richly blessed; both partook of God’s faithful care. Yet, between the two brothers there was a great difference. Cain and Abel were both children of Adam and Eve, born after they had fallen away from the Lord. Both were, by nature, children of wrath. Yet, our text says that Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. No, the excellence of Abel’s offering did not lie in outward matters. It was not the case that Cain gave the Lord some moldy fruit and Abel offered the fattest sheep of his flock. No, the excellence of Abel’s offering did not lie in the magnitude of his gift, but the excellence of it lay in this—Abel’s offering was an offering of faith. His thanks to the Lord was a fruit of saving faith; his offering was the fruit of true love to the Lord.

Cain was not an openly worldly person who took no account of the Lord. No, he was a decent professor who lived in the God-fearing family of Adam and Eve. Cain also wanted to be religious. However, his religion was mere formality. It was not his purpose to serve the Lord, but in his religion he himself stood in the center. We can sit in church as a Cain and do as God’s people do; yet, there can be an infinite difference.

Abel possessed saving faith; Abel believed the Word of God which said that he was a lost sinner. He believed that he was a child of wrath. He believed that through sin he had lost all rights to temporal and eternal blessings. However, by faith Abel might also, through the depth of his misery, look upon Him who was promised in Paradise. By faith Abel might embrace the promise of God. By grace he might look into the divine secret of salvation by deliverance in Christ Jesus.

When Abel offered the lamb, he looked by faith upon the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Oh, Abel might not only thank the Lord for temporal blessings but, by grace, he might climb higher to thank the Lord for His unspeakably great Gift that would descend into the manger of Bethlehem, that heavenly Bread whereby hungry ones would be fed. Abel’s offering was pleasing to God because it proceeded from faith. Only a thank offering which proceeds from the source of true faith is pleasing to God. It is this source which matters, reader. The Lord looks for truth in the inward part. He examines the inward state of the heart.

Cain offered with a proud heart, without true faith. By God’s grace Abel thanked the Lord with a humble, believing heart, as an unworthy one in himself. By this he, being dead, yet speaks to us. Without faith it is impossible to please God. If you still miss that faith, know that the God of Abel still lives. He still plants the same faith in the hearts of lost sinners. That faith is yet to be obtained in the way of true repentance. May the memory of righteous Abel also be a blessing for us.

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