Genesis 23:1-24:14 - Strangers and Sojourners

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, currently in the book of Genesis.

We're calling our study in the beginning because Genesis goes all the way back to the beginning, the first beginning.

When God created the heavens and the earth.

And I love the book of Genesis because it really starts to answer some of the really big questions human beings have been asking for a long time.

Where did everything come from?

Is this all just a big accident, or was it designed and created specifically with all of its intricacies, with all of its beauty and order and power and majesty and all of that?

And what does it mean to be a human person?

And how can we, as human persons that were created in the image of God, live in accordance with that image of God that's been planted within us?

These are great questions.

And today we're picking up in Genesis chapter 23.

Genesis 23 · chapter mention

We're going to call this study Strangers and Sojourners.

And I think the reason we're calling it that will become evident to you pretty quickly as we dive into this.

But this is heading toward now the end of the Abraham and Sarah narrative, which runs really from Genesis chapter 12 all the way through chapter 25.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And the life of Sarah is going to be coming to an end here in chapter 23.

So I want to prepare you for that.

And let's just read, let's dive in right now.

We've just come back from chapter 22, where God tested the faith or proved the faith, if you will, of Abraham.

And Abraham and Isaac and their two young men, they went back and they're in Beersheba.

But as we pick up in chapter 23, verse 1, here's what we read.

Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah.

By the way, she's the only woman in the entire Bible that we hear numbers about her age on.

And she's a significant woman of faith and just a powerhouse in a lot of ways.

Not perfect, just like Abraham, but quite a story since Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And here we we come to where the narrator tells us that at 127 years of life, she's gonna pass from the scene.

Sarah died in Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan.

And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

And what a what a precious and intimate moment that must have been.

And he may or may not have been right there when she passed.

He may have been in Beersheba, she's in Hebron, but uh they had so many flocks and so many cattle and all of that, that it you one could easily understand why he might be some 26 or 27 miles away trying to help tend to or care for uh their business.

But he comes back and he finds that she's passed, and he goes in and he just weeps, and his heart is broken.

And this woman that he shared so much with, and she with him, um, now passing away, uh, and he is he is he's cut to the quick and he's mourning and he's weeping.

And by the way, the first time that's mentioned in our Bibles is right here as well.

Well, let me read on.

Abraham rose from before his dead, and he spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.

Give me a burial site among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

And the sons of Heth answered Abraham, saying to him, Hear us, my lord, you are a mighty prince among us.

Bury your dead in the choicest of our graves.

None of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead.

So Abraham rose and bowed to the people of the land, the sons of Heth.

And he spoke with them, saying, If it is your wish for me to bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and approach Ephron, the son of Zohar, for me, that he may give me the cave, and the word give there could be translated sell just as easily.

In other words, I like that to be my option, the cave of Makpilah, which he owns, which is at the end of his field, for the full price.

He's not just asking for it to be given to him, he wants to pay for it.

Let him give it to me for the full price in your presence for a burial site.

Now Ephraim was sitting among the sons of Heth.

And Ephraim the Hittite, and this is why we think that uh these folks are uh a group of Hittites that have perhaps uh migrated along the marketing roads and the business roads uh in ancient Canaan land there.

And so he is sitting among the Hittites, and he answered Abraham, in the hearing of the sons of Heth, even of all who went in at the gate of his city, saying, No, my lord, hear me.

I give you the field, I give you the cave that is in it, in the presence of the sons of my people, I give it to you, bury your dead.

Abraham bowed before the people of the land.

That's the second time that's been said.

Notice his respect and all that he's showing to them.

And he spoke to Ephraim in the hearing of the people of the land, saying, If you will only please listen to me, I will give the price of the field, accept it from me, that I might bury my dead there.

Then Ephraim answered Abraham, saying to him, My lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver.

What is that between me and you?

So bury your dead.

And Abraham listened to Ephraim.

And Abraham weighed out for Ephraim the silver which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, commercial standard.

And this is, you know, before you start thinking to yourself how great and generous Ephraim the tite is, he is the one that named the prize first, okay?

And we'll see.

Uh I'll I'll share some other examples uh from scripture that we know uh, you know, typical purchases of real estate.

Uh this seems a bit exorbitant, actually.

He's kind of taking advantage of the situation.

Ephraim's field, which was in Makpilah, which faced Mamre, the field and cave which was in it, and all the trees which were in the field that were within all the confines of its border were deeded over to Abraham for a possession in the presence of the sons of Heth before all who went in at the gate of his city.

And believe it or not, this is the very first and only bit of land that Abraham will own in the promised land that has been that that God has actually walked him through and said, See, all this land, this is all gonna be yours and your descendants, and you're gonna have, you know, a progeny, you're gonna have a the number of descendants will be as the number of the stars, the number of sands in the seaside.

And so this is the very first little bit of land, the promised land that he's actually realized, and it's just gonna be a cave.

It's just gonna be a tomb, basically, with a field in front of it.

And they were deeded over, so it becomes a formal real estate transaction, right?

And uh it becomes his in front of all of those who in and out of the gate of the city, and that's where a lot of the uh the gate of the city would be a place where a lot of the business transactions were done, a lot of judicial uh uh judgments or cases are settled there.

And uh after this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field at Macpilah facing Mamre.

Again, very specific, the narrator is, to tell us where, which direction it faces.

That's one of the reasons why this particular site appears to still, everybody that does the work of archaeology seems to feel like they know exactly where this is.

It happens to be underneath of a mosque in Hebron, and it's uh so it's it's under uh control in such a way that we can't visit it.

But but the idea is that this is one of those sites that has a lot of credibility because of all the specificity in terms of it's almost here's the GPS coordinates for it right here, you know.

So the field and the cave that is in it were deeded over to Abraham for a burial site by the sons of Heth.

And as I said, when we last left off, we'll uh see if we can pick up a couple verses in chapter 24 in a minute, but just want to make a couple points from this, if you will permit me.

When we last left off, uh Abraham was in Beersheba, as I say, 25, 30 miles away from where Sarah was.

Sarah, who is mentioned 39 times in the Bible, uh, again, the only woman whose age is mentioned in the Bible, married to the same man apparently for close to a hundred years, it looks like here.

Um, probably one of the reasons she's listed in the Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

The negotiations uh for the cave here at Makpilah, uh, a little more complex than is obvious, really.

Uh, the average worker or artisan at the peak of their career back then would only be making 10 shekels per year.

And might not even make 400 shekels in their lifetime.

Later in the Bible, we read that Amri bought the entire site of the ancient city of Samaria for just 6,000 shekels.

David bought the entire site of the where the Jerusalem Temple Mount goes, uh would go for just 600 shekels of gold.

And so a shekel was a weight, a measure of weight, whether it's gold or silver or whatever it might be.

Much later in Old Testament history, after David, Jeremiah bought himself a field for just 17 shekels of silver.

And I know location, location, vocation.

I get it.

Um, but the idea is that for Abraham to pay 400 shekels of silver for what amounts to be a field and a cave of some insignificance doesn't really appear to be one of those kind of financial moves that sets him up to be, you know, this gigantic real estate magnet or something.

Um he really just wanted to bury his his sweet wife uh there, and he will be buried there as well.

Um, as a matter of fact, Isaac and Rebecca will be buried there as well.

As a matter of fact, Jacob and his wife Leah will be buried.

And as a matter of fact, Joseph at the end of Genesis will be buried in that very same cave.

This first bit of the promised land that's realized and owned by one of God's people.

But this chapter is about more than the purchase of the cave, isn't it?

And it certainly begins with this idea of Sarah passing away.

It's not the first death that's mentioned in the Bible.

Um however, it's a very um uh significant one.

And we have walked a long way together with Abraham and Sarah.

Uh, we've we've walked together with them uh as God called them out of Ur of the Chaldees and said for them to call them to get moving before He said He said, You're going to be going to a place I will show you.

In other words, he hadn't given them the destination, but he just told them to get moving.

And that's the way obedience to the Lord often is, isn't it?

When we're moving in faith, we're we we get moving, and the Lord often reveals along the way as we're obeying him, as we're responding to him, he continues to unfold and unveil before us what his plans really are for us.

I love the way G.K.

Chesterton said it once.

Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough.

And I don't know about you, but I kind of love the tenacity of truth in our world, the resoluteness of reality in our world.

And I'm while myself, I've I've bucked, I, you know, I've fought against it myself, and of course, our entire culture appears to have gone nuts off the rails, um, intellectually confused, morally bankrupt in every way.

But I gotta say, as I look back through history and this account, some 4,000 years of history, I really start to see the tenacity of God's truth and the resoluteness of his reality.

Though creation has is now under the curse and it is broken, it's groaning, and you can you can almost hear it groaning for the renewal of all things, as the Apostle Paul would talk about uh later in the New Testament.

So, what do we learn here though?

What could some of the highlights of uh chapter 23 be?

And if we've got enough time, I'll jump into chapter 24 a little bit.

First, the universal frailty of human life.

Here we find the unavoidable ravages of aging and death, loss and grief right here, just in the first two sentences two verses, with Sarah uh dying and her age being given 127.

Um, and while I think to myself, man, I'm I'm I'm like half of that right now.

I mean, this is just midlife crisis for her at my age, right?

Um I don't haven't got a clue what it might be like to live that long.

Abraham's gonna live to be 175.

And as we know in our previous studies in the book of Genesis, uh, before the time of Abraham and Sarah, people lived much even long, much longer, much longer.

Methuselah, you know, some 969 years or whatever.

So the lifespan of human beings is going down as the world is being populated, and perhaps as the world is being polluted more and more, and as the gene pool continues to become confused and spread and and all that sort of thing.

So it's it's just one of those kinds of things that you're kind of watching nature um uh devolve a little bit, and it makes us long for the day when God promises to come along and renew all things.

We don't really like to talk about death much, do we?

We typically avoid it, although we watch it happen in movies, we watch it happen in television shows, we read about it in novels all the time.

Um, but how do we navigate the physical, psychological, and emotional turbulence of human vulnerability, especially after the last year and a half that we've had with so many around the world succumbing to this uh this virus smaller than we we can't even see it with the human eye, naked human eye, but we we can see the ravages of it across the world.

And how do we navigate all of that?

Even uh if if we haven't been touched by the pandemic, maybe we've been just touched by our own aging, our own bodies falling apart, or um or or the loss of a loved one to some other um uh either accident or disease or just aging.

How do we handle all of that?

And and how do how does God relate to us in the middle of all of that?

And I think chapter 23 is really helpful.

You know, God isn't even mentioned in chapter 23, but what we do know is that Abraham is called the friend of God in the scriptures.

And that's that that tells us about a real intimacy, even though right here we're seeing about, you know, the focus is on his relationship with Sarah as he comes in and he mourns and he grieves over her, and then his relationship with the watching world around him, uh, with his neighbors, which they seem to show some level of mutual respect and all that sort of thing.

But at the same time, when it gets down to brass tacks and business, that's what it ends up being with uh Ephron the Hittite, right?

How do we navigate all of that?

Well, I love the way J.A.

Metters talks about this.

We will regularly experience more than we can deal with, which is why we need God to be our refuge, our shelter, our dwelling place.

Lament teaches us to uncork our hearts and pour them out to God in faith.

Lamenting is relearning our humanity, lamenting is admitting that we can't handle it, knowing we need God's power, mercy, and grace.

And see, this is one of the gifts that we read about in the Bible is that this biblical kind of faith doesn't ask us to deny the reality of our vulnerability.

Um, we're not told to deny it, to sweep it under a rug, uh, but we're told that there is a universal frailty in human life.

And how foolish we would become if we just tried to deny it all the time.

And I know that some people are deniers all the time of any kind of trouble.

They're just always trying to uh to live in some kind of a fantasy world.

But as we go through life, denial of our vulnerability makes us the ostrich with his head in the sand.

Some try to steal themselves against any kind of suffering or pain.

Uh, and what really ends up happening there though is if you're trying to deny it and just just you know disregard it and and and ignore it, is that you become not more human, but less human.

The one who designed and created you to bear his image in this world, he knows your name.

He knows your pain, your struggles, and your shame.

He knows you even better than you know yourself, and the only one who can do anything to help you, the only one who has the power to save you is also eager to comfort you and to be your friend.

And that's why I point out that Abraham was called the friend of God.

Maybe you have suffered a loss recently yourself, like Abraham here with Sarah.

Or maybe it's around the corner for some of us and we we just don't even know it.

Um good to not sweep it under the rug and ignore it, but to actually find ourselves asking the big questions of life.

What does the Bible have to say about all of this?

What does it have to say about grieving and mourning?

And uh I have to say, my wife has written probably what I think is one of the best books on the subject called Finding Your Way Through Grief.

And it she says, God has been attentive to my mourning.

And she wrote this book not too long after uh her own mother, uh sweet Anne, passed away.

God has been attentive to my mourning, He has been ever close, close enough to catch my tears in a bottle as they fall from my eyes.

She says, I wonder if perhaps the bottle of my tears might sit on the shelf next to the tears.

Jesus wept.

And a great reminder there of what happened in John chapter 11, recorded in our New Testament, when the friend of Jesus named Lazarus, when he had died, Jesus delayed.

John 11 · chapter mention

Uh, as he was told that Lazarus was sick and he might die, he delayed, and then he shows up, knowing full well himself, clearly, that uh Lazarus would be dead when he gets there.

And he weeps.

We're told it's the shortest verse in the entire Bible.

Jesus wept.

What did he weep for?

He knew what he was going to do.

He knew he was gonna raise him from the dead again or resuscitate him, if you will.

And um, and and Lazarus was dead, dead.

There is no doubt about it.

Those folks knew what it looked like for a body, a human person, to be dead, way more than we do in our own day and time.

Because for them it was right there in their living room, very real.

And so um there goes Jesus and he weeps.

Why?

Because it's not the way it's supposed to be.

And he intends to do something about it at the end of time, and so we look forward to reading about that.

Well, the second thing I see here, not only uh is there a universality to human frailty, but the resident alien status of believers in this world.

And Abraham admits that he's a stranger and a sojourner among these Hittites.

They didn't worship his God, he didn't worship their gods.

They were not his family or his people, yet he showed respect.

He bowed before them.

We're told in verse 7 and verse 12.

Um, Abraham exercised civility and decorum in his dealings with the Hittites, even in these negotiations for the cave and for the uh opportunity to bury his dead.

The only thing Abe demanded was to pay full price.

And he didn't renegotiate once Ephraim set the price.

Now that doesn't mean that you when you buy the next car or whatever it is, that you're not allowed to negotiate.

That's not the point.

The point here is that Abraham knew he was a sojourner, that he was a stranger in the land.

And he wanted to behave in them in such a way that brought glory to God, and at the same time, he would never find himself beholding to someone who might try to get him to turn away from Yahweh, to turn away from Yahweh.

His God.

Oz Guinness talks a little bit about some of this in his book, The Last Christian on Earth.

He says the core challenge to the Western Church can be expressed in three words: integrity, credibility, and civility.

Though the greatest of these is integrity.

In relation to Jesus Christ our Lord, we must regain the integrity of our faith.

Amen.

In relation to educated outsiders, we must regain the credibility of our faith.

And in relation to people of other faiths, we must regain the civility of our faiths.

How true, Oz.

Thank you for saying this.

This is the sum of our challenge to be utterly faithful to our Lord, while at the same time utterly and properly engaged in life in this astonishing modern world.

And I think he said it so beautifully right there.

We're resident aliens and the world in which we live.

But we've got a witness and a testimony that needs to be preserved in this world, especially in a day and time when Christians and evangelicals especially, and that simply means people who believe in the good news, when evangelicals are the ones that are being, you know, marginalized.

And of course, yes, some of them, some of us, if you will, uh are acting weird and strange and mean-spirited and all of that.

But that doesn't mean we're all that way at all.

And I would quickly say, those folks don't speak for me.

Those folks don't speak for Jesus, even.

They don't speak for the Christian faith.

Um, but we should, like Abraham, realize that we're strangers and sojourners in land, and we should represent our God with integrity, with credibility, and with civility.

Thirdly, notice too, the significant symbol of a tomb.

Instead of burying Sarah back in Beersheba, this symbol of death, uh, this tomb was also a symbol of the first bit of land that Abraham came to own in the promised land.

Faith in the God of the Bible ends up being a very forward-looking faith, doesn't it?

Yeah.

The tomb also pointed to the promised seed of Abraham, God's Messiah, who would be placed in another tomb, only to burst forth from it three days later.

Sarah was the first one in this tomb.

Abraham will be the second one in about 38 years' time, from what we read right here in chapter 23.

Then later still would come Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, and finally Joseph's bones will be brought back from Egypt to be buried here with his family.

Notice the rich beauty, though, of the biblical symbolism here.

The promise was from God to Abraham was for a place and a progeny, a promised land and a people living in that land.

And while Abraham did not fully realize that, he got a down payment, a deposit, if you will, when he got this cave.

And his family began to join him being buried in this cave.

Um, and then as we see the the whole thing foreshadowing what happens to this other tomb a couple of thousand years later in and near Jerusalem, where Jesus will burst forth from the tomb that he was buried in by the power of God and to just fill us with the hope of heaven and the hope of resurrection.

John Stott in the Cross of Christ says, Jesus is the resurrection of believers who die and the life of believers who live.

His promise to the former is you will live, meaning not just that you will survive, but that you will be resurrected.

His promise to the latter is you will never die, meaning not that you will escape death, but that death will prove to be a trivial episode, a transition to fullness of life.

And I love that idea.

I've heard it said so many times by different people that we will become more fully alive when we're actually in the presence of the Lord.

Um, and I can't imagine what that will be like.

The New Testament hints at it over and over again, and uh it is just something that we're uh supposed to look forward to in ways that our imagination unfortunately can't quite grasp.

But here's what I do know Genesis ends with a full tomb, lots of bodies in it, but the gospels end with an empty tomb.

And oh hallelujah, the Bible ends with every tomb emptied out.

You see that in the book of Revelation, don't you?

Well, let's get back to our text.

I think we've got to at least whet our appetites for what's going to come in chapters 24 and following.

Abraham was old, advanced in age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in every way.

And most of the commentators think a few years have passed here, so Abraham might be around 140, Isaac perhaps 40 years of age.

And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had owned.

This is probably Eliezer that we learned about in chapter 15.

Please place your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live.

But you shall go to my country and to my relatives and take a wife for my son Isaac.

And so this is, of course, sounds strange to us, putting your hand under the thigh of someone and making a promise.

But this is an ancient practice.

It's like a solemn vow that you understand what's going on as you place your hand near the reproductive organs of a human person, and you're you're saying, I'm very serious, I'm paying attention, I really, this is serious, and I get what you're saying, right?

And the servant said to him, Suppose the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land.

Should I take your son back to the land from where you came?

In other words, Eliezer isn't sure that he can talk the woman into whoever the woman is that he might find in uh in the Abraham's land to come back.

Maybe I should take Isaac with me.

And Abraham said to him, Beware lest you take my son back there.

The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me, and who swore to me, saying, To your descendants I will give this land, he will send his angel before you, and you will take a wife from my son from there.

But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this, my oath.

Only do not take my son back there.

That's a deal breaker, Abraham says.

And he even gives the servant instructions in case it doesn't work out.

And this is again just a sign of a well-lived life, walking with the Lord, um, communing with the Lord, uh, prayer, uh in faith believing, but at the same time understanding that, you know, we sometimes get it wrong, don't we?

And so he tells Eliezer, this is what you do.

If if it doesn't work out the way I'm telling you, here's what you're supposed to do.

If she's not willing to come back with you, then uh don't take my son back there.

So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter.

Then the servant took ten camels from the camels of his master and set out with a variety of good things of his master's in his hand, and he arose and went to Mesopotamia and to the city of Nahor.

You remember that name Nahor from the last chapter.

Nahor is uh is the brother of Abraham, right?

And he made the camels kneel down outside the city to the well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water.

And this is amazing because this is ten camels.

This is not ten, you know, little sheep, it's not ten little goats, it's not uh it's not ten little dogs like chihuahuas or whatever.

This is ten camels.

They can put some water away.

This is like, this is like ten SUVs pulling in and circling around the well in the center of town, and and they're just gonna stop there and and and it's gonna be at the time when women go up to draw water, which draw water, which would be a custom from their time.

And he says that Eliezer looks at at the Lord, looks up to heaven, prays, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today.

Show loving kindness to my master Abraham.

Behold, I'm standing by the spring, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.

Now may it be that the girl to whom I say, please let down your jar, so that I may drink, and who answers, drink, and I will water your camels also.

May she be the one whom thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac.

And by this I shall know that thou hast shown loving kindness to my master.

And it came about before he had finished speaking, dot, dot, dot.

Okay, so you read ahead.

This is just an amazing chapter.

And uh, if you've ever had the question, how do I know what God's will is?

How can I discern God's will?

We've got some pointers here in chapter 24.

This is going to be very helpful for us next week.

And I hope you'll plan to come and join us as we find the way that uh Abraham and his servant, who's been with him for a long, long time, Eliezer, um, we find the ways that they seek the Lord and the Lord's will as it relates to finding a wife for Isaac.

And it's just a beautiful, ends like a slow-motion movie at the end.

It's just really powerful.

And I hope you'll join us for all of that.

What are we talking about when we talk about this God of the Bible?

The one who uh is so faithful to us, even as we are uh aliens and strangers or strangers and sojourners living in a in a world that to some degree uh has turned its back on God and is in pursuit of everything that is not God, and is uh not quite friendly to our faith at all.

Um as I say, the the uh the the ancient uh timeless truths of scripture are so helpful for us in this regard, and one of the reasons I love studying the Old Testament and being able to also look through the New Testament back at the Old Testament for just a few minutes I want to read, or just a couple, a couple minutes here.

I want to read from First Peter to you, see how this connects with Genesis.

All right, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those res uh those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia.

This is all around the Mediterranean, the area that we now call Turkey in our own day and time, to all of the aliens, the those who are who belong to Jesus Christ and who are scattered throughout that region, right?

Who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood.

May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure.

I love this.

And I I want to walk in that, and I want you to walk in that too.

I want us to walk in it even as we go through the same kinds of things that Abraham has gone through, the fear of losing control, the the gut-wrenching loss of his loved one.

Even as we go through all of those same things, those universal signs that humanity, we are frail, we are weak, we need God.

And here Peter is uh is praying for all of those who will read his letter, us by extension, as well, that we might know the grace and peace of God in fullest measure.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away.

Reserved in heaven for you, who are protected or kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Friends, we're closer than ever.

And he is Jesus Himself, the one who was resurrected, the one whose tomb was busted wide open and who intends to empty every tomb at the end of time.

He's the one we can place our hope, our confidence and trust in today.