Abel: The Worship of Faith, Part 2

A great God deserves great worship.

He deserves all the gusto you've got. Dr. Tony Evans talks about the consequences of not giving the Lord the kind of worship He really wants. You're off because your worship was off.

Making you off, God didn't get involved with you because of that cheap worship you gave Him. Celebrating 40 years of faithfulness, this is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative. Two men each seeking God's approval through worship.

One gets it, the other doesn't, and the consequences are deadly. What made the difference and what does it teach us about the link between faith and worship? We'll find out as Dr. Evans brings us today's lesson.

Let's join him. We're going to look at the heroes of faith. We're going to walk personality by personality through Hebrews 11 and learn the lesson that each hero wants to teach you about why God is to be trusted, the scenarios in which you should trust Him, and how you express that trust in practical terms. And he says, let's go on a tour of what I call the Hall of Faith.

Let's visit the Museum of the Heroes and find out the lesson of faith. We start with Hebrews 11, verse 4, the first personality given to us because he's the first man who had to live fully by faith, because he's the first man born in sin. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous.

God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. We now want to talk about the faith of Abel, and Abel is going to teach us today what it means to worship by faith. The Old Testament story of Cain and Abel is found in Genesis chapter 4. Abel is the first man of faith because, unlike his mother and father, Adam and Eve, he didn't get to live in a perfect environment and see God face-to-face, because initially sin had not entered the world.

But when Adam and Eve sinned, they were removed from the presence of God. The Bible says in chapter 4, verse 1, that Adam knew Eve and she gave birth to the first son, and his name was Cain. She gave birth again, verse 2, to his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of flocks. Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Here it is, verse 3. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part brought the firstlings of the flock and their fat portions, and the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. When it came to their worship, this showed both boys believed in God because they came to worship. Neither was an atheist. Both desired for their presence to be accepted by God, and you'll see in a moment Cain gets ticked off when his isn't, because Cain ran into the problem that many of us run into—watch this—and that is wanting to worship God our own way.

Wanting to worship God like I want to worship Him, not like He expects me to. It says Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the ground, verse 3. Verse 4, Abel on his part brought the firstlings of the flock and their fat portions, and the Lord regarded Abel's offering. He didn't regard Cain's offering.

Something was wrong with what they brought. You see, God had already told Adam and Eve, and therefore through them Cain and Abel, that to come in my presence you must deal with sin. And the only way to deal with sin is through sacrifice.

I slew an animal to deal with the sin of your mama and your daddy. Abel brought a sacrifice to deal with his sin, and you're bringing me fruit. You want to worship me without dealing with sin. You want to come into my presence without dealing with your rebellion or whatever it is in your life that keeps you constrained from me.

You just want to show up at church, skip sin, and want me to be happy. Brothers and sisters, the whole reason Jesus died on the cross was because of our sin and our need for atonement. You worship without atonement, and your worship is not regarded.

That is why we center our worship on Jesus Christ, because He is the sin-bearer. So the first thing that Cain did not do, that Abel did, was worship God in a way that recognized the reality of sin, his need for forgiveness, in order to be accepted by a holy God. It says, Abel brought the firstlings of the flock and their fat. He didn't give God junk and leftovers.

Firstlings meant the head one, chief one of the flock. The fat meant he found something juicy, found something with a lot of blubber on it to offer up to God. One of the reasons that God rejects so much of our worship is because it's leftover. We're just throwing something together. You say, here God, it's leftover, but at least I'm here. Cain said, at least I'm here. I just brought you some fruit.

Didn't look to see what was right and what was good. And first of all, it's the wrong thing, but on top of that, I just brought you some stuff. But when it talks about Abel, it says, wait a minute, Abel brought him the first and the best. Let me ask you in your worship, is God getting your best? When it comes time for you to sing to God, are you shout to the Lord Psalm 100 with a loud voice? Do you give glory to his name or are you mumbling? Or better yet, are you not singing at all?

You're letting the stage do the singing for you because you don't feel like it right now. So you give him leftover worship. Cain showed up and his worship was rejected because it was not a worship that was based on faith. And faith is in your feet.

His feet did not fulfill what God had commanded nor the level of what God expected. If he has a great name, he ought to get great worship. You ought to be bursting from your lungs to give him praise. You ought to not be ashamed to give him recognition.

You ought to prioritize his place in your life. If he's a greater God, as you say he is. But we have a generation today that's satisfied to give God junk food and say, God, you ought to be happy with this because I could have stayed home. A great God deserves great worship.

He deserves all the gusto you've got. Watch this. This is deep. This is deep. Verse 5, but for Cain and for his offering.

Why? Because your offering is never detached from you. The Cain and his offering, because God is seeing your seriousness by what you display with your time, talents, and treasures. So Cain, here it is, here it is.

You don't want to miss this, folks. Verse 5 says of Genesis 4, but Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Cain became extremely angry, very angry, ticked off, and his countenance fell. He became angry and depressed. His worship affected his emotions. His emotions have gone south because his worship wasn't right. A lot of us, our emotions are off.

We mad all the time, depressed all the time, discouraged all the time, ticked off all the time, frustrated all the time, can't get along with nobody. We're just off. And we want to know, why am I so off?

Could it be? You're off because your worship was off. Your worship was off making you off because God didn't get involved with you because of that cheap worship you gave him. You gave him junk on Sunday so you're an emotional wreck on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, man.

You come back next Sunday and give him some more junk and you wonder why you off all week. Because Sunday was rejected because you gave him junk. You didn't give him what a great God deserves. And the reason you didn't give it is because you don't believe him. You believe in him, but you don't believe him. You don't believe what Zacharias says. It says when they worship, the rain came.

You don't believe worship brings rain, brings God's involvement in your life. Verse six of Genesis four, then the Lord said to Cain, God's talking to Cain because Cain is emotionally down, why are you so angry? Why are you mad, boy? And why has your countenance fallen? Why are you so depressed?

Okay. Verse seven, if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? The reason why you so depressed, you ain't doing right. You not doing right. Well, what did the boy do wrong? Not worship right. He didn't do right because he didn't worship right. He didn't address sin.

His emotions took over and began to dominate him. And God wasn't going to fix it until he changed his worship. And if you do not do well, if you don't change what you're doing, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it.

Oh no, he didn't go there. He says, sin is crouching at the door. That means that's a picture of an animal that's getting real long, ready to, okay, walk with me now. Your worship not right, Cain. Your not right worship has affected your emotional stability.

So now you're mad all the time and now you're depressed because your countenance is falling. And we got an animal at the door ready to pounce on you. The animal at the door is called sin. He calls sin like an animal crouching.

He gives it a personality. He says, this thing called sin is crouching at the door. But wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought you already sinned when you worship. Well, yeah, you did. You sinned against me when you worshiped because you gave me junk worship. But I'm talking about a personality called sin.

Sin is crouching at the door. This lion tiger is getting ready pounce on you and he going to eat you up. But this animal has a pattern and Dr. Evans will be back to tell us how to beat it in a moment. First, I'm excited to tell you about our current featured resource. It's Tony's brand new book, Kingdom Heroes, and it dovetails with a two-volume, 13-part audio series we've been listening to today called Heroes of the Faith.

These two resources explore what it's like to live out the conviction that God can be trusted as we make the discovery that real faith is more than a matter of just what we believe. And if you contact us right away, we'll send you this extended series on CDs and MP3s along with one of the first copies of Dr. Evans' latest book, As Our Gift, when you help us keep Tony's teaching on this station with your generous contribution. We'll also include as a bonus the addition of the Kingdom Heroes Bible Study to help you dig even deeper into these stories and their important concepts.

Don't miss out. Call us today at 1-800-800-3222 so we can make the arrangements to send you all three of these Kingdom Heroes resources. Again, that's 1-800-800-3222 or visit tonyevans.org. I'll repeat that information later after part two of today's teaching and this.

Are you hungry for more of God, more of His truth, more of His power, and more of His wisdom applied in your life? Then you need to connect with a community of passionate believers who are growing in God's Word through the Tony Evans Training Center. With exclusive video and audio teaching from Dr. Tony Evans, this interactive online study experience allows you to explore theology, biblical history, and real-life application of the Kingdom agenda anytime, anywhere. Visit tonyevanstraining.org to get started today.

That's tonyevanstraining.org. When you get angry and depressed, sin has got an open door that it didn't have before to now dominate you, jump on you, and eat you up. So now an argument becomes a divorce. Now a little problem becomes an addiction because sin is now jumping all over you and it is creating havoc with you and it all showed up because you ain't going to church right. It all showed up because your worship was wrong, your emotions got wrong, so your spirit got wrong, and now you're under the control of sin. It's dominating you, controlling you, owning you. You're now addicted. You now can't control your emotions. You now can't control your violence. You now can't control your cussing. You now can't control your immorality.

You now can't control it because what? Sin is eating you up. All because your worship was off. It all started because you got detached from a God who couldn't use the junk you were throwing His way. And God says, I'm not going to change it until you change. Change what?

I don't have the power to change. No, change your worship. Let's change your worship because then I'll receive your offering so that now you can control your emotions so that you can now hold sin at bay. He goes on and He says in Hebrews 11 verse 4 that though dead, He speaks. Abel speaks though dead. Cain is ticked off in Genesis chapter 4 and he finds his brother and kills him in verse 8. In other words, a bad worshiper becomes a murderer because when sin is crouching at the door, it'll make you do things you didn't think you'd ever do. A bad worshiper becomes a killer. He can't take it out on God, so he takes it out on another person. Because he's mad at God because God didn't accept his offering, he loses control of emotions, sin takes over, dominates him, and now he did something he never planned to do. He becomes a first-degree murderer. But it says, even though dead, Abel speaks.

Wait a minute, watch that now. Even though dead, Abel speaks. So if Abel's dead and he's talking, he's still alive.

So he died, but he's still living because he's talking. So Abel is now talking. What does Abel have to say? God says to Cain, where's your brother?

Verse 9. His brother says, I don't know where my brother is. I'm not my brother's keeper. God says to Cain in verse 10, the voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. Me and your brother have him talk. You're not gonna tell me where he is, but we've already had a conversation about his location. He is having a conversation with God.

Now watch this. Cain's life from that point on would become a lifetime of misery. He says, you're gonna wonder the earth, and I'm not gonna let nobody kill you. I'm gonna let you live the rest of your life miserable. Folk who gonna want to kill you, I'm a block them from killing you, because I want to let you live in a living hell. Anybody in here living in a living hell all because your worship was off? You're not gonna die.

You gonna live, and you gonna wonder, and he says, this is too much for me. But in the book of Hebrews, it says, though dead, Hebrews 11 verse 4, watch this, Abel still speaks. But that's in the New Testament.

That's you and me. So what is he trying to tell you and me? Because he's still talking. The next to the last book in the New Testament is the book of Jude. Jude only has one chapter, and the one chapter in Jude, around verse 11, talks about the way of Cain. Talks about the way of Cain. Abel still speaks, Hebrews 11, 4, Jude, the way of Cain.

Cain created a chain reaction. His chain reaction is false religion. False religion is coming to God like you please, not like He requires.

False religion. People who don't go to heaven are going to hell, many of them while coming to church. Now I hope there's nobody in here, but you could be coming to church but not going to heaven.

That's because you're using your own way to get there. God has prescribed that there is no other way to salvation other than through Jesus Christ. You're trying to work your way to heaven and trying to make heaven your home. Well, you're going to be duly surprised when your worship was rejected, because no man is saved by their works. They're only saved by the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

You come to God through Christ, not through being a better, nicer person. So if you go the way of Cain, you're going to wind up wandering forever. That is the biblical definition of hell. The biblical definition of hell is to live forever in an unfulfilled reality without God.

Okay? But Abel still speaks. And what is he saying to you and me today? Abel is saying to me and to you and to us today, you come to God by revelation, not by human reason.

Let me say it again. His message is the only way God will accept you coming to Him is by what He reveals, not what you think, not how you were raised, not what your mama said, not what your daddy said, not what your friend said, not what the media says, unless what they said is what He says. You ought to make your decisions by revelation, not by what you can conjure up or I can conjure up in my puny, finite mind, because the only thing I conjure up in my mind is what my mind can partake of, human reason. But what God, what faith is, are things that are not seen, are things that are beyond me.

But because God has integrity, I move on what He says, not on what I feel, not on what I think, not on what I heard, not on what my reason tells me unless it is consistent with what He's revealed. That's the message of Abel. And it starts with your worship. Dr. Evans will be back in a moment with a final illustration about the problems we run into when our worship starts to resemble a popular breakfast cereal. First though, today's lesson was part of Tony's current two-volume series called Heroes of the Faith.

As I mentioned earlier, it explores the lives of biblical characters who took God at His Word and went on to see Him change their lives and change the world. Don't forget if you can help us out right now with a contribution to keep this program coming your way, we'd like to say thanks by sending you all 13 messages in this series on CD and MP3. And in addition to the audio messages, we'll also include Tony's just-released companion book, Kingdom Heroes, along with the comprehensive Bible study that accompanies it. This special Heroes of the Faith offer won't last long, so be sure to make the arrangements right away at TonyEvans.org. That's TonyEvans.org. Or let one of our team members assist you when you call us at 1-800-800-3222. Our resource center is always open, so there's never a reason to wait.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. As we've been learning, real Christianity isn't just something you believe, it's something that you are, something that's expressed in every aspect of your life. Dr. Evans will paint a picture of what that looks like next time. Right now, he's back with this final challenge for today. Are you giving God the time, the talent, and yes, the treasure that He's asked for, and are you giving it to Him first? Or are you throwing in some Froot Loops?

What's left over? By the way, let me tell you something about Froot Loops. Froot Loops are a bunch of different colors, but they all taste the same.

No matter what the color is, the Froot Loops all taste the same, because they're made up of the same stuff. I don't care what you throw in God's way and what color it is, if it's not what He requires, it all tastes the same. It is unacceptable to God. But let's close by reversing it. You give Him the worship He requires, your emotions stay intact. Sin has to stay behind the door, because it doesn't have emotions to piggyback on. And you won't wind up worse than you started, because God will have regardage. The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative, celebrating 40 years of faithfulness thanks to the generous contributions of listeners like you.