When Cain saw how pleased God was with Abel, His true worshipper, he was jealous. Why did Cain slay his brother? For years I tried to find the answer to this question. I believe that Cain murdered Abel because Abel's countenance was uplifted while Cain's was fallen. The King James Version renders Genesis 4:7 as, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" However, the Hebrew here may be rendered. "If you do well, will you not be lifted up?" Cain fought against Abel because Abel's face was smiling and shining. Abel's uplifted countenance provoked Cain to jealousy. The same is true today. If you are happy and are enjoying the Lord, you will provoke the religious jealousy in others. People will say, "Why are you so joyful? Is God only with you? Is not He also with us?" The result is that they will persecute you. This, I believe, was the reason that Cain attacked Abel. He was offended by Abel's shining face, uplifted countenance, and joyful voice. In some places people warned us, "Don't do this anymore. If you continue, we will cast you out." Religious jealousy is terrible. No jealousy is as awful as the jealousy in religion. This accounts for the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has killed more genuine Christians than the Roman Empire.
Listen to what the Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees: "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar" (Matt. 23:35). Where did the religious people kill Zechariah? It was not in a theater; it was between the temple and the altar, in the place where the religious people worshipped God. The religious people murdered those who worshipped God in His way and not in theirs, killing them in the very place where they rendered, in their own way, their worship to God. On the one hand they worshipped; on the other hand they committed murder. This is the jealousy of religion. How terrible it is!
Now we come to Abel, the seed that consummates in the New Jerusalem. Abel worked and lived for God. He also lived by God. Day by day Abel lived for God and by God; he was "a feeder of sheep" for God. As we pointed out in the last message, during Abel's time sheep were primarily for God. He did not work and live for himself as Cain did, but for God's satisfaction as God desired. It seems that the purpose and interest of his life was to satisfy God in God's way.