The sacrifices and offerings of the Old Testament would have little spiritual meaning for us had we not the New Testament, for it is in the light of the cross of Christ that we learn the divine meaning of these types. Although the provision of coats of skins by God to clothe Adam and Eve may not have the character of a sacrifice, there is nevertheless indicated in this act the necessity for the death of an innocent victim to provide a covering for sinners. The fig-leaf aprons of their own devising was an attempt to cover themselves, to screen their nakedness from God, but they soon realised that nothing they could make would hide them from the all-seeing eye of God.
The Offerings of Cain and Abel
Abel’s offering is pregnant with meaning for us, especially when compared with that of Cain. “The firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof” not only indicates the excellence of quality of what Abel brought, but also that he realised that, as a sinner, he could only rightly approach God on the ground of death. This offering is clearly a burnt offering, one in which the offerer was accepted on the ground of the acceptance of the victim. The fat was the evidence that death had taken place, but it was also that which speaks of the inward excellence of the offering.
No spiritual mind can fail to discern in Abel’s offering a type of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself in death that we might be accepted in all the excellence of what He was in Himself and in His death for God. God had respect, not only to Abel’s offering, but also to the offerer, making plain that Abel was accepted in the efficacy of the offering, but also because he came before God in a way that was pleasing to Him. Although there is no mention of the blood, it is evident that the blood of the victim must have been shed before its fat could be procured. We have therefore in Abel’s offering the divine way of approach to God, and the assurance of our acceptance if we come to Him in His way.
How very different was Cain’s approach to God! Cain was not an atheist; he not only believed in God’s existence, but he desired to be in the favour of God, else he would not have come to Him with an offering. But he had his own ideas as to how God should be approached, and his subsequent behaviour shows that he was self-willed, not desiring to do God’s will. Indeed, the Spirit of God tells us through the Apostle John that Cain slew his brother “Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:12).
It was an evil thing to endeavour to come before God ignoring that he was a sinner, imagining that a sinner could be accepted on any other ground than that of death. Death, the wages of sin, rested upon the human race, and this could not be ignored with impunity. The anger of Cain, and the falling of his countenance, because of the refusal of his offering, manifested only too plainly the sinful nature of man, and the need of his acknowledging his true state as a sinner before God.
The long-suffering of God is evinced in His approach to Cain, with the words, “why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen: if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lies at the door…” Hebrew scholars tell us that the word used for sin is the same as that for sin offering. This being so, it would appear that God is offering to accept Cain, in spite of his self-will, if he will confess his sin by bringing a suitable offering to Him. This is still God’s attitude to men! Spite of all man’s evil, God waits in patience upon him, presenting His sin offering for his acceptance.
Alas! Cain had no place for repentance: instead, he laid his hands upon his brother murdering him to show his displeasure about God’s acceptance of him. He could not lay his hand upon God, so he laid his hand upon the child of God. So it was when the Son of God came! The Lord was compelled to expose man, saying, “They have both seen and hated both me and my Father;” and the evil of their hearts was exposed before the universe in the murder of the Son of God. Such is man in self-will; incorrigibly evil, hating God, and refusing His overtures in grace.
Cain’s religion, the endeavour to merit God’s favour without the acknowledgment of his sin, is to be seen all around. The heathen, who have not the knowledge of God, are less guilty than those to whom the knowledge of God has come. In spite of the plainest revelation of God’s thoughts, brought in the Gospel, Christendom is filled with those who seek to approach God with the work of their hands. They refuse and despise the only sacrifice that God will accept, often speaking evilly of those who have come to God with nothing but the merits of His own Son who died for them.
The bloodless gospel of Christendom announces Cain’s way of approach to God. They will have Christ, “The firstlings of the flock,” but not in the way of death. A Christ who lived in this world they will seek to follow; but a dead Christ, who lives in the presence of God, they will not have. Like the disciples of John 6, they will have a Christ for king who can satisfy them with bread, but a dead Christ, the Bread of God, the Bread of Life, they will not have. They are ignorant of the immense truth that it is impossible to live the life of Christ without first receiving the life by eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
Abel’s was a burnt offering; the first recorded in Scripture; telling of how the one who comes to God is accepted in all the virtue of Christ’s offering. All the offerings of Genesis are burnt offerings though, as we have seen, it may have been a sin offering of which God spoke to Cain. Abel’s offering, and Cain’s which God would not accept, are the only offerings recorded before the flood; and the faith of Abel is recalled by the Spirit of God, where it is written, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness, God testifying to his gifts; and he being dead yet speaks” (Heb. 11:4).
Noah’s Sacrifices
The first mention of an altar in Scripture is that upon which Noah offered his burnt offerings to God. From the tabernacle system we learn that approach to God in worship is by means of the altar. There was the altar of burnt offering upon which the offerings were offered, and the golden altar of incense which speaks of the communion relating to the Person of Christ. Although there were no offerings of blood on the golden altar, there was the blood put upon its horns and sprinkled upon it on the day of atonement (Lev. 16:10, 19). We shall see later that Abraham had his altar, but there is no mention of his actual sacrificing upon them, saving the altar that was built for the sacrifice of Isaac.
Abel had sacrificed the firstlings of his flock; Noah offers upon his altar of every clean beast and of every fowl that was clean. It is evident from this that God’s object in commanding an odd number of clean animals to enter the ark was to provide Noah with his sacrifices. A reason for the larger number of pairs of clean animals was no doubt to provide man with food and clothing.
In the offerings of Noah we learn that the new earth is pleasurable to God in the fragrance of the offerings, for “The Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” The sweet savour for God was surely in what the offerings signified, the introduction of a new world on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ His own Son. God would have no more pleasure in the actual death of Noah’s victims than of those slain on Jewish altars, even as quoted in Hebrews 10:6, “In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure.” God’s pleasure was in looking forward to Him who said, “Lo I come (in the volume of the Book it is written of me) to do Thy will, O God.”
The new earth upon which Noah stepped, after the judgment of God had cleansed by the flood the old world, surely portrays the new scene that God will introduce after He has cleared by judgment the present world, man’s world of its evil. The fragrance of Christ’s sacrifice will ever be before God in that coming day, when the knowledge and the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Christ’s death has opened up heaven for sinners, but it has also made possible His reign in righteousness in the very scene where He was rejected by men.
And is there not indicated in this Scripture that God is able to allow the human race to inhabit the earth, not because of anything good in man, but because of what Christ would be and would do for His glory in His death? Man on the new earth was not a whit better than man on the old earth, and this God tells us where He says “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” God did not expect any improvement in man; but He had a resource in Christ to meet all the evil that man had introduced into this world; and this is seen in the sacrifices on Noah’s altar.
There was evidently the partial removal of the curse when God said, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake;” and in the millennium there will be its complete removal, for “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now” (Romans 8:21-22). The golden age of which the prophets have written, when “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose,” when “the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid” (Isa. 35:1; 11:6), will assuredly be introduced in God’s own time; but on the basis of Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross.
Israel will then be blessed on the ground of the new covenant, founded on the blood of Jesus; and the nations of those that are saved for that day will be there as owning allegiance to Him who died upon the cross and rose again. Men have been trying long to bring into existence a world of peace and security; they will never succeed; but God has promised to bring it about through Christ His own dear Son. Those who accept the sacrificial work of Christ now will have part with Him in heaven; and they shall have their part with Him as the Lamb who was slain when He takes the kingdoms of this world and they become “the kingdom of the Lord and His Christ.”
Man as derived from sinful Adam will never improve; He is incorrigibly wicked, and only man in Christ, a new creation, will do for God. Even the renewed earth of Noah was soon polluted by man’s sin, and it reached its climax in the murder of God’s Son. Nor will the millennial earth be any better, so far as man’s nature is concerned; for at the end God will be compelled to intervene in unsparing judgment, and remove for ever the earth in which man has so dishonoured Him.
But there will be a new earth, based on the sacrificial work of Christ, yea, new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness shall dwell. The sweet savour that God smelled in Noah’s sacrifices no doubt anticipated the fragrance of the accomplished work of Christ on the cross that would enable God to bring into being the new, eternal scene where everything would be for His glory and pleasure, and where sin and death could never come.
R. 31.3.64