Sarah's Death and Burial

0:00Good morning.

0:01Good morning, there preaching.

0:02There it is. Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Genesis. You already knew that's where we were. We're going to be covering in chapter 23 this morning, verses 1 through 20, which amounts to the entirety of chapter 23, and we will read that together in just a minute. It is somewhat of a longer text, but it's important that we read that whole story. This is the story of Sarah's death and the subsequent purchase of the land on which she will be buried. And the first thought might be how in the world could we possibly get to Christ from a story about Sarah dying and Abraham trying to find a place to bury her. God willing, I will show you this morning. We live in a fast-paced world, don't we? It is difficult enough to slow our minds down just to focus on the daily tasks, much less anything beyond this year or the next or the next. We want the quick, cheap, short-term solution. So that we can check off that box and move to the next task. The same is true for our spiritual life. Modern worship is geared towards the flash in the pan kind of worship experience. Trying to extract the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows from the worshiper compressed into this one short hour most of the time. Further, we get impatient about the things that we see around us, right? Wondering when God is going to fix it all. Didn't He promise us happiness, joy, and peace? When am I going to experience those things, God? When is our country and our world going to express those things? That's not what we see right now, right? And all of this contributes to us having a very nearsighted vision. Does our text this morning have something to say to us with respect to that? To answer that question, I'll ask you another. What does your vision of God working powerfully in your life look like? What does your vision of God working powerfully in your life look like? When you consider God showing up in your life and blessing you and fulfilling his promise to you, does it need to be some grand immediate display? Like a Pentecost style revival or a windfall raise or something like that? Can a blessing and a promise fulfillment be something as simple as mourning, as a mourning husband buying land to bury his wife? And how you think about those things is important because it determines whether or not you will see Christ. And may it please the Lord to show us Christ this morning. So let's stand together then, and I will read the lyric-the lyrics. The words won't be on the screen, so follow along in your Bibles. This is Genesis 23. Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah, and Sarah died at Kiryath Arbah, this is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep with her. And Abraham rose up before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreign among you. Give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The Hittites answered Abraham, Hear us, my lord, you are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land, and he said to them, If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat for me Ephron, the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpila, which he owns. It is at the end of his field for the full price. Let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place. Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites, of all who went in at the city gate, No, my lord, hear me, I give you the field, I give you the cave that is in it, and the sight of the sons of my people, I give it to you. Bury your dead. Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land, and he said to Ephron, in the hearing of the people in the land, but if you will hear me, I give you the price of the field, accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, My lord, listen to me. A piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? Bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. So the field of Ephron in Macpilah, which was the east of Mamre, the field, the cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who were at in at the city gate. After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field at Machpelah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray once more. Lord, thank you again for your word. I pray and ask now that you would speak for Christ's sake, and it is in his name that I pray. Amen. If you had to guess how many women in the Bible have their lifespan recorded for us, how many would you guess? Small number, right? Stephen says one. Maybe only a few. Would it surprise you to know that Sarah is the only woman in the Bible who dies with us knowing exactly how old she is? Maybe it was a courteous thing, I don't know. Does that mean that there's a significance to Sarah's age? Maybe. But I also think that her age could have been given because there is a significance to the amount of time that passed between the call from God that made Abraham and Sarah exiles in a foreign land and Sarah's death. This span of time was not a short length of time. Sixty-two years is that time frame. Sixty-two years, Abraham and Sarah were nomads, sojourners, without any ownership of any land, any home, no place to settle down. They were for 62 years without a place to call their own. All those years the Lord made promises to them to give them land to possess and to bless them with this large family, right? And nearly 23,000 days go by, and the fullness of these promises remains unfulfilled. Might as well have been 800 million days, right? It's a joke.

8:19I got it.

8:20Yeah, I got it. Took up a second there. Can you imagine the patience that it requires to wait 62 years for God to deliver something? If I have to wait more than 62 seconds to get my lemonade at Chick-fil-A, I want to speak to a manager about this. Right? Our nearsightedness has no concept of waiting on the Lord. We don't know what diligent patience looks like. And consider the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. This massive cathedral that at the time of its completion was the tallest structure in the world. The completion of this cathedral took more than 600 years. To put that into perspective. Imagine a construction project that began on the day that America was founded, and now today that project still has 400 more years before it's completed. The scope of that project is staggering. But even more than that is the thought that those men who began that project did so knowing that nobody they knew would see it completed, and that those who enjoyed the finished work wouldn't have any clue who they were, nor would they really care who they were. It's only by God's grace that we remember and that we even care about the beginnings of the cathedral that God is building, namely the true Israel, his church. It is only by the grace of God that Abraham and Sarah plodd on for 62 years, trusting in the Lord that he would deliver on his promise, even if they never saw it come to pass. Sadly for us, looking back, Sarah died never having seen those promises. Fulfilled, not really. And never really having a place of her own. That being said, while Abraham was weeping and mourning over his loss, I'm sure that there was great rejoicing in heaven as Sarah was welcomed into her heavenly home. So our text continues then after telling us how old Sarah was and the span of her life and what was happening after that. The text tells us that after Abraham mourned for her, he got up and went to buy a gravesite for her. And this is where our story gets interesting. Even more interesting. Maybe it was before. Abraham goes to the Hittites, who are the leading people of this region, right? Where they are in Canaan. And we know from verse 10 that they are at the gate of the city, which was where all the business transactions occurred. So Abraham is approaching the Hittite leaders to work out a business deal here. Specifically, he wants to purchase some land with a cave on it so he can bury Sarah there. Further, he knows exactly which piece of land he wants, exactly where it is, who owns it, because he calls all that information out by name and the owner and all that information. The problem for Abraham is that he is a sojourner in this place, an exile. This is the place which God has promised to give him, but he is still an exile, a foreigner. And as a foreigner, he has no property rights. And these Hittite leaders are under no obligation to sell him anything. And I think that's important to know how big of a deal it would have been for Abraham to ask a foreign people to buy land right in the middle of their territory. Similar to if you, anybody in this room, owned a large ranch and someone came to you who is not in your family and you have no connection to whatsoever and asks to buy a chunk of property right in the middle of your land, would you sell it? Probably not, right? But God. I suppose it maybe it depends at least a little bit on who is asking, right? And we read in verse 6 that at the very least, Abraham, he is highly respected among these people, because they call him a prince of God or a mighty prince. The Lord has greatly blessed Abraham during this time of exile, even though he is a sojourner, he doesn't have his own place. But he has blessed him such that he is a wealthy man, Abraham is, with means and a solid reputation amongst the people. Abraham has spent a long time as a foreigner building up this reputation and the means, through the blessing of God, to make such an ask and a transaction even possible. Okay? And we see that despite his solid reputation and his obvious means, they are still very hesitant to sell him the land. Don't worry about buying anything from us or acquiring land, they say. You're happy to bury your dead in any one of our tombs. Just go ahead, take it. This is their response. Just bury Sarah wherever you wish. The choicest of tombs, it's yours, bury her. And if you try to picture yourself as a witness to this exchange, this is kind of the awkward part where you could definitely cut the tension a little bit. As Abraham rose and he bowed courteously to them, and he says, If you're so willing to let me bury my dead, reveal to me Ephron. He has a little place with a cave on it that will be perfect for me. Right? And providentially, Ephron is sitting there with the other Hittites, and his reply is, just take that cave and that field, you can have it. It's yours. Sounds like a good deal, right? It's not because then Abraham would not own it legally. Right? He would essentially just be staying there for free, and what would happen in a generation if Ephron's son is not as willing to let Abraham stay there? What if he took it back? This is Ephron's kinder way of trying to get out of selling the land to Abraham by just offering it to him. Abraham is persistent, right, as we read. Name your price, he says. So Ephron names his price, and it is a very steep price. We don't, our minds don't understand, right, shekels. But 400 shekels of silver is the price. This is roughly the equivalent of 400 pounds of silver. Like imagine 400 pounds of silver. That's a staggering amount of money for such a small piece of land. But uh actually, given the land prices today, it's probably reasonable, maybe. To put this into perspective, though, David will only pay 50 shekels of silver for the land on which the temple was built. So this is certainly at 400 shekels. This is a grossly inflated price. Without hesitation, though, Abraham weighs the silver, like, which is no small task in and of itself, if you can imagine weighing that much silver. And the transaction is complete. Abraham has purchased the land. And remember the promise that God made to Abraham at the beginning of his call, some 62 years previous to the story that we're reading this morning. Just in case you don't remember it, I'm going to read it to you again. You can turn there if you want, but this is uh, I think this is chapter 15, I think. I don't write it down on my notes, I don't think, but it says this after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, O Lord, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have uh Behold, you have given me all children, and a member of a of my household will be my heir, sorry. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them. And then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteous, righteousness, and he said to him, meaning the Lord, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. To possess. Which land is God talking about there? The land of Canaan, the promised land, the very land where Abram has Abraham, Abram, and Abraham has been sojourning, and the very land which he now owns a little piece of. And did you catch the connection from the text this morning? And verse 17 from our text. So the field of Ephron of Machpelah, which is to the east of Mamre, the field with a cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area, were made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went in at the gate of the city. For 62 years, Abraham walked with God by faith, that God was going to do for him all the things that he said he was going to do. And now, by God's providence and Abraham's persistence, he has a possession in the land that the Lord has promised him. It's a small and rather humble slice of the promised land. But it is his to possess. He has a home, a land, and a place to bury Sarah. We talked at Link last week about how we should view the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, right? Primarily as a means to communicate to us that the Lord will provide. That ultimately the Lord did provide with the sending of his son to make the final atonement, the final sacrifice for our sins. And I want us to continue in the same way this week. Abraham was certainly familiar with the concept of a first fruit offering. In such an offering, the first fruit is representative of the whole. This is the concept behind the first fruit offering. And the goodness of God operates within that same framework here with Abraham. Only this time, as we saw back last week with Isaac, it is God who is providing the first fruit offering. God has promised the fullness of the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, and finally, after much labor, the Lord provides Abraham with the first fruits of that promise. And Abraham would not have seen this as this land, as just a little plot of land, right? He would not have seen it like that. Nor would the people who originally read this have seen this as just Abraham buying a little piece of land to bury Sarah, but rather as God making good on his promise to provide and securing that promise after teaching a measure of patience with a humble deposit of land. That was clearly intended to represent the whole of the promised land. God is providing a Abraham with the first fruit to communicate that he will surely add everything else that he promised to it. It was God who provided the ram for the sacrifice, right? That ultimately pointed to Christ, and it was God who now provided the first fruit of his promise that also points to Christ. In the words of 1 Corinthians 15, 16 through 23. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have also fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we hope for this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits, and then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Just like with Abraham. God has made a promise to each of us in Christ that the grave will not hold us. This is a promise. That each of us in Christ, the grave will not hold us. And to secure that promise, he gave to us a first fruit offering that is representative of the whole. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Not as a ghost, not as a spirit alone. The words of Christ, see that I have flesh and bones, but as a person. Just as before, only resurrected and glorified. Will he not do the same for you? Will he not do the same for you? Did he not fulfill every promise he made to Abraham? Did he not give his people the fullness of the land which was representative of that first fruit that he gave to Abraham? Will he not also raise you from the grave, just as he has raised Christ from the grave? Further, will he not also give to you all of the same promises that he gave to Abraham? Romans 4, verse 13, for the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be the heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. And what was that promise that was repeated again by Christ himself in its fullness in Matthew 5, 5? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Inherit the earth? Really? The provision of God by offering us his son makes good on his promise to crush the head of the serpent, right? To reconcile us back to himself through the covering of our guilt by his atoning sacrifice. This was foreshadowed in the old, many times we've talked about completed in the new. This first fruit offering of God in Christ makes good on his promise to take away the curse of death, to restore us to a land and to a paradise that was originally promised. Again, foreshadowed in the old as we've seen, and completed in the new. So when Christ says that the meek shall inherit the earth, this is not just hyperbolic wordplay. The promise of God is that all who are in Christ will in fact inherit the earth. If you are in Christ, you don't stay in the grave. You will breathe fresh air again. Only the second time it will be perfect air. More than that, you will be given a place, a land in paradise. You will have an eternal home in paradise to call your own. Just like that which was given to Abraham. Only difference being there, in the new home, there will be no need for tombs because those will all be empty. Praise the Lord. There will be no more mourning, no more tears, only endless joy in a new global city that our God will graciously give us. This is the promise. This is the new homeland that we are seeking. And that is the metaphorical cathedral that God is building for us. And Jesus has promised that he's going to go ahead of us, both in time and space, and prepare this place for us. At some point we will meet him there. The grand cathedral of our God will finally be complete. If that is the promise, and what a big promise it is, can we wait patiently on him to deliver that? Can we wait for him for that? And if our only task is to lay down one brick in that cathedral, and in this life we never really see the fullness of what we are doing completed, well we still labor at that one brick. Sarah never saw it. But look what has become of her labor. The apostles never saw it. But nevertheless, they laid the foundation upon which we are building. Christians, we must keep those blessed promises in view. Otherwise, it feels as though we are laboring in vain, but we know that we are not. There is a point and a purpose to every act and every action and every day. We may never see it, though. But because God has promised, we know that we do not labor in vain. And as Peter reassures us in 2 Peter 3, God is going to provide us a new homeland. And in light of that promise, Peter says, what sort of people ought we to be in lives of holiness and godliness? How do we live when that is our end? I'll tell you that the world is much better and much sweeter when you know what you are working towards. And not only do we know the end, right? A holy city, a new homeland, it is an end that is gloriously inexpressible. So I'll close then finally with the words of Peter from 2 Peter. He says this, but according to his promises, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace, and count the patience of our Lord as salvation. Just as our beloved Paul also wrote to you, according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do with other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your blessed promises. We thank you that you have revealed us to us these promises in and through your word, Lord, and we thank you, Lord, that you show us even in the old, that you were working these promises to be fulfilled in Christ. We thank you for Christ. We thank you for the homeland that He has now gone and is preparing for us, Lord. We thank you for His resurrection. Lord, and in that you have promised us that we too will be resurrected just as He is resurrected. We'll be long in hope for that day when we will be with you forever in paradise for all eternity. We ask you to come quickly and take us there. Forgive us where we have failed you, Lord. And we proclaim Jesus' death, Lord. His sacrifice for us now as we partake of these elements. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.