Genesis 23 – Being Human

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Genesis chapter twenty-three, and we'll be reading from the ESV, so English Standard Version.

Sarah lived a hundred and twenty-seven years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah.

And Sarah died at Kiriatharba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan, and Abram went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

And Abram rose from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and foreigner 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 me, uh entreat for me Ephron, the son of Zohar, so that he may give me the cave of Machpellah, 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 the burying place.

Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city.

No, my lord, hear me.

I give you the field, I give you the cave that is in it.

In 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 of the land, But if you will, hear me, I give the price of the field.

Accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.

Ephron answered Abraham, My lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver.

What is this?

What is that between you and me?

Bury your dead.

Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out uh weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the ch hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants.

So the field of Ephron in Macpellah, which was the east of Mamre, the field with 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 Hittites, before all who went in the gate of the city.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Macpellah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan.

The field and the cave that was that is in it were made over to Abraham as a property for a burying place by the Hittites.

And so reads God's word.

We come to the end of our time with Abraham and Sarah.

We've spent 15 weeks journeying through the life of Abraham and Sarah over since uh the start of September, since Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And at this point we we leave them behind.

And we say goodbye to Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and we stand with Abraham, in a sense, at the graveside and watch how it is that he mourns for his wife.

This chapter reminds us that faith does not shield God's people from grief.

The sorrows common to all mankind visit our own house as well.

Whether it's sickness or tragedy or death, they are still part of our earthly experience.

But while faith does not shield us from grief, it does shape our grief.

We grieve differently, still with sadness, still with a sense of loss, still missing.

The person who has died still longing for that resurrection reunion.

That means that our grief is mingled with hope.

It's mingled with thankfulness.

It can be to run away from pain, to run away from grief, and the pain that grief carries with it.

We think, well, what good does it do to sit and dwell on these things?

What good does it do to feel this pain, to experience this grief?

What good can it possibly do for our souls?

Let me read to you what the book of Ecclesiastes says about us.

Yeah, the book of Ecclesiastes is a book of wisdom, a book designed to help us to become wiser in our old age.

Ecclesiastes seven, verse three says, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind.

And then he says, The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.

There is something wise making for you about standing here with Abraham as he grieves the death of his wife.

It's easy, isn't it, to uh to read this chapter and to skip over it as you might do uh a death notice or obituary, although Irish people don't send to skip over death notices.

We obsess over them.

Uh RIP.ie must be one of the most visited websites, uh, especially by an aunt of a certain age.

Uh she needs to find out what funerals she's going to that week.

Um but if you don't know what rip.ie is, you're obviously not from around here.

You should check it out.

It's crazy.

Uh people love rip.ie.

But we can think, okay, well, this is the Old Testament version of RIP.ie.

It's just a death notice.

Sarah, wife of Abraham, died, age 127 years old.

And so we move on.

But if Ecclesiastes is right, then God says that there's wisdom here in visiting this house of mourning.

There's wisdom here to be gleaned for each one of us here today.

There's some benefit to reflecting on the death of Sarah and observing Abraham's grief.

And I think that's right.

Even amidst all of the weird business of buying caves and fields and rising and bowing and rising and bowing, it's like an old traditional Anglican service.

Uh, but there is wisdom here for us.

And uh I think that there are three things to reflect on.

The first is this that even in grief we get to remember grace.

Even in grief we get to remember grace.

Verses one and two, Sarah lived 127 years old.

These were the years of Sarah's life.

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

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

Sarah, beloved wife of Abraham, mother of Isaac, has died.

And you might not realize it, but these opening verses are actually really significant.

Because these are the this is the only time in the Old Testament when a woman has had her age recorded at death.

Now you might think, well, I don't want my age recorded if you're a woman, but that this is a thing of honor.

As Moses the writer places Sarah in the place of honor that she deserves by the grace of God.

Sarah is given this special honor, her years remembered, and they are recounted for us here.

Do you know she was married to Abraham for one hundred years?

I don't know what that gift is for the anniversary.

A hundred years married to her husband.

Sixty-two years they journeyed together under the promise to leave their home in Ur of the Chaldeans, trusting that God would be faithful to them, trusting that God would give them a son, trusting that God would give them a land to live in.

And we know if you've been here over the last 15 weeks, we know the high points for Sarah, and we know the low points for Sarah.

And in the end, Sarah dies.

The mother of laughter, the mother of all who would have faith.

And Abraham honors his wife.

He shows and wants to remember the grace that has been shown to her, even in where he decides to bury her.

He decides to bury her in this cave that is near Mamre.

Now you might have uh noted that as we've kind of gone through all of the readings, there's been talk about Mamre and the Oaks of Mamre.

And well, what's the deal with the Oaks of Mamre?

Well, the significance there is that that's where the happiest times for this couple were.

That's where God showed up the most for them.

That's where the Lord arrived in Genesis chapter 18 by Mamre and said to Sarah, This time next year I'm going to fulfill my promises to you.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

My promises made in grace, and you're going to have a son.

That even as he lays his wife to rest, he does so in a place that testifies to the grace of God in Sarah's life.

That even in grief, he's remembering grace.

Now, when somebody dies, it's usually considered bad taste uh to recount all of the bad things that they did in life.

Uh we and so what we end up doing is we end up pretending uh that they were better than they were.

You maybe you've uh experienced that grief where uh where actually the person who has died um they're looked back on as somebody who did no wrong.

And you kind of say, Well, hold on a second, that's that's not quite right.

I remember a few things, but you don't really say that.

And in the last dozen chapters that we've been looked at, the things, the low points have not been brushed away either for Abraham or for Sarah.

But, but in the end Sarah's mistakes don't define her.

She's buried in memory, a testimony to the grace of God.

She's remembered as the mother of all who would have faith.

How is it that God can transform a legacy?

Can transform what we remember people for.

That's by grace, isn't it?

In grief, we look back at Sarah's life and we don't ignore her flaws, but we see that God was at work despite them.

And in our grief, as we grieve the loss of uh of people, we can look back and again not ignore their flaws, but see that God's grace was at work.

Despite them, in spite of them.

In grief, we can look back at the life of a saint and rejoice that in the end grace will win out.

And if you're a saint, a saint is just anybody who is trusting in Jesus.

It's not somebody with a gold dinner plate behind their head, you know, and kind of stands posed like that.

It's every believer in Jesus is a saint.

And if you're a saint, if you're a believer in Jesus, do you know what?

Grace will win out in the end.

There will be high points and low points.

There will be moments when your faith falters and fails.

But if you're trusting in Jesus, grace will win out in the end.

Grace transformed Sarah.

It covered every sin and sustained her to the end.

I know that perhaps not many of us in this room are at the life stage where we begin to think about legacy and what our legacy will be, what we will leave behind, what we'll be remembered for.

But the reality is that if you are somebody who is trusting in Jesus, with sins forgiven, heart transformed, living a life journeying under the grace of God, then whatever else your life speaks in the end, it will not speak of your achievements or your prestige, but of the greatness and beauty of the grace of God.

That is the legacy that Sarah leaves with us, and it is the legacy that by faith each of us should pursue.

That even in grief we remember grace.

The second thing is that grief reminds us that we're pilgrims.

Verses uh three to five.

Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, these are just the group of people that are uh living around him, they're the landowners.

He says, I'm a sojourner, that is, an alien.

I'm a sojourner, an immigrant, a foreigner among you.

Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

And the Hittites answered Abraham, Hear us, my lord, you are a prince of God among us.

Bury your dead in the choicest of tombs.

None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead.

Any suffering, but perhaps especially bereavement, grief, brings into focus the things that really matter.

COVID kind of did that for us all.

COVID kind of sharpened the things that we really value.

And grief does that all the more.

It brings into uh into real focus the things that uh that we value most, the things that we really are living for, the things that truly matter.

Abraham, by this point, had become a very successful person, a person of great wealth and influence.

And with so with such success, it would be easy to feel comfortable, secure, at home.

And yet that's not what happens with Abraham.

Abraham is reminded that in grief he's a pilgrim.

I'm just passing through.

I'm a foreigner here.

This isn't my home.

A sojourner amongst the natives of the land.

This is striking, isn't it?

Because God has promised Abraham the land.

I'm going to give this to you and to your descendants.

And yet Abraham must end his days as a pilgrim.

He has lived his whole life by tent and by altar, wandering and worshiping.

And he will end them as a pilgrim.

There's wisdom here to be gleaned in Abraham's perspective.

First, because well, he's looking at all that he has, all that he has amassed throughout his life, and he's not putting in putting any trust in it, any stock in it.

It's all gonna go.

This side of death's veil.

And so why cling to position and power and prestige and property?

It's all just J.D.

Rockefeller, who was one of the most wealthiest uh men in America, when he died, uh a journalist asked uh his lawyer, how much did he leave behind?

And his lawyer simply replied, All of it.

All of it.

Abraham realizes that he is a pilgrim.

The second thing that there's wisdom here for us in is that Abraham embraces the promises of God as not something that he himself will receive, but as a legacy for those who will come after them, after him.

And he still trusts them.

He knows that he will not see the fulfillment of God's promise in his lifetime, and yet he still trusts.

Isn't that a rebuke to us when we think of um the immediate blessing that we want from God, when we want things so instantly?

God had made promises to Abraham that Abraham would not see fulfilled in his lifetime.

And yet he doesn't turn around to God and go, well, some God, you are.

You know, I've now buried my wife.

Where's the land?

No, he continues to trust.

He continues in faith.

He knows that he is a pilgrim.

There's a uh there's a New Testament uh theologian, uh, a guy called Don Carson.

He's a Canadian fellow, and uh he's one of the finest New Testament scholars uh in the world.

His dad was just a Baptist pastor uh in Canada.

He wrote a book about his dad's ministry called Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor.

His dad didn't have a big church, didn't have a big following, didn't have an influential ministry.

The ground was hard in Canada.

Uh when you read memoirs, uh people weren't coming to faith.

It was uh the uh the 50s, 60s, early 70s, and not many people wanted to know about Jesus.

And yet Don Carson's dad labored on, continued to trust, continued to preach the word, continued to evangelize, and saw very little fruit from it.

Didn't see very many people come to know Jesus, and yet he was faithful to trust the promises of God all the way through his life.

And Don Carson recounts how after his father died and he became a pastor in the mid-80s, the revival broke out all across Canada thousands of people coming to know and to love the Lord Jesus, thousands of people having their hearts transformed by the grace of God and Carson's father never saw it and yet he labored on as a pilgrim.

And what about us and all the things that we aspire to as city church?

It'd be wonderful to see revival now, wouldn't it?

It'd be wonderful if all of your friends and colleagues were suddenly transformed by the grace of God and more churches were planted and people brought from death to life.

Doesn't our city need that?

Haven't we seen in the last few weeks that our city it more than it needs good governance, and goodness me, it does, but the more the thing that it needs more.

More than that.

Because it needs the hope of eternal life.

Wouldn't we want that?

Wouldn't we love that?

Don't we long for that?

Isn't that what we're laboring for?

But here's the thing.

What if God has promised that He will call thousands of people to Himself in Ireland and see hundreds of new churches planted across the length and breadth of this island?

But what if it's not for us to see?

What if actually it'll be something that our children benefit from?

What if our children get to reap what we have sown?

Would we not sow?

Would we go, well, if we're not going to get it, why would we invest in it?

If we're not going to get it, why would we trust it?

God has promised that he will build his church.

But he has not promised that we will see it flourish.

Would we say, well, I'll not labor for it?

No, surely we would sow all the more.

Surely we would continue with renewed zeal that even though we may never own a footspread in the promises of God for Ireland, we will take our place in the legacy of gospel faithfulness, whatever may come.

As J.C.

Ryle, the former bishop of Liverpool, said, we preach Christ, we die and are forgotten.

That's our legacy.

Preach Christ, die, and be forgotten.

Abraham remembers that this world is not his home, that he is a pilgrim.

The Hittites honor him and say that he is a prince, a prince of God.

They know about Abraham.

He owns no lands, wears no earthly crown, bears no lordly title, and yet the thing that they know of him is his faith.

They know that Abraham trusts another.

He's a prince of Yahweh.

The God of heaven and earth.

And again, the question of legacy challenges us, doesn't it?

What will come first to people's minds when they write our RIP.ae entry?

What will they say on our tombstone?

Will it be things of position?

Of wealth?

Of title and prestige?

Or will it that we were princes?

Princesses of the living God.

In grief, remember that we are pilgrims.

Finally.

In grief, glimpse the faithfulness of God.

I know that we've only got to first to verse five, and I've said finally.

But as we get so I can I think I can summarize pretty uh quickly what's going on here.

The rest of the chapter, in a sense, it's a back and forth of conversations uh about a cave to bury Sarah in.

So Abraham goes and he asks for a cave.

The Hittites return and say, We think you're great.

Uh pick whatever cave you like, have the have the best one.

And he says, Well, there's a cave near Mumre, um uh the cave of Macpella.

Um Ephron owns it.

And Ephron kind of steps out of the shadows.

He's there in the meeting, and and Ephron says, Well, there's the cave, and there's the field uh that's uh that the cave is in.

Take it, it's yours.

And Abraham says, No, no, I'll pay for it.

And Ephron says, and he's perhaps being a little bit cheeky here, uh, giving a little bit of an extortionant price.

Uh, but in essence, he says, Huh, this field in this cave, it's worth 400 shekels, Abraham.

What's that between friends?

Just take the field.

Abraham will hear nothing of it.

This is paying over the odds, make no mistake.

But Abraham is not about to haggle over the grave of his wife.

Don't know if you've ever gone and picked out a casket or a coffin, but you don't tend to haggle with the undertaker.

And Abraham isn't going to do it over the grave of his wife.

His name, or her name, rather, meant princess.

And even in death she will be honored.

And so he pays for it.

He pays over sticker, he pays over the odds, and everyone sees that he has paid it.

That's his emphasis of they're all sitting at the city gates, and everybody knows that the deed has passed from one set of hands to the other, because if it had just been a gift, then this piece of land would have been contested.

But he has paid for it, and he has paid dearly for it, and everybody has seen that he has paid dearly for it, and so there is no doubt that Abraham owns this piece of land.

And here's why that's significant, because it isn't any old piece of land.

Where is it?

Verse two.

Sarah died in the land of Canaan.

Verse nineteen.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field of Machfelah, east of Mamre, in the land of Canaan.

Abraham has now taken possession of a small piece, just a small piece of the land that God has promised to give him.

And in just a small way, we see the promises of God beginning to prove true.

And God to prove himself faithful once again.

But one of the questions that's rattled around my head, and maybe it kind of is popping in yours, is why buy it anyway?

If God is saying, you're gonna get it all for free, I'm gonna give it to you and to your descendants, why buy it?

Why spend any money on it?

Certainly, why pay over the odds?

I think the answer is this.

When we trust the promises of God, putting our wealth behind those promises makes perfect sense.

When we trust the promises of God, putting our wealth behind those promises makes perfect sense.

If we believe that God has promised, which he has, to forgive and to redeem a people for himself from every tribe and tongue and nation which he has, that not one person that Jesus has died for will be lost, but all will be saved in the end.

All that Jesus has laid down his life for.

We give in line with the promises of God because money always, always shows us where our heart is.

Where your money is, that's where your heart is.

If you give nothing to the advancement of the gospel, is your heart really captured by the advancement of the gospel?

Abraham looks at the prospect of owning a part in the promised land that God has pledged to him.

And Ephron says, pay me over the odds, pay me 400 shekels.

And Abraham responds with it's worth every penny.

He weighs it out, doesn't even think about it.

Six and a half pounds, about three kilos of silver.

Worth it, worth it, in order to show that he trusts the promises of God.

Abraham, in buying this land, in a sense, is placing a stick in the grind, a sign of his confidence that God will in the end give to his descendants the whole land.

And so he pays for this small piece, and it shows a new resolve.

We already know from previous chapters that Abraham, in a sense, we saw this with Isaac last week, that Abraham, Abraham's faith allows him to look beyond his life, to look beyond the veil of death, to see the day when the promises of God will be fulfilled.

And he knows that Sarah won't be excluded from the promises of God, even though she has died.

And so he buys the field in the land because he has faith that Sarah will in the end see those promises fulfilled, and he won't have her miss it.

So this cave in Hebron continues after Sarah's death to be a flagpost, a signal to the faithfulness of God.

And Abraham in the end is buried there, and his son Isaac is buried there.

His grandson, a guy called Jacob, is buried there, and then the people of God go into exile, into slavery in Egypt.

And they're there for 400 years.

The man who had brought the people of God into Egypt was Abraham's great grandson, a guy called Joseph, of technicolored dreamcoat fame, right?

And for 400 years they're in slavery, and after 400 years, God redeems his people, he rescues them, he breaks their bonds of slavery and sets them free and brings them finally, after centuries, to the land of promise.

And what do they do?

They bring Joseph's bones out of Egypt and they lay them in the cave of Machpella that his great grandfather had bought more than four hundred years ago, in trust that one day all will rise and enjoy the fulfillment of God's promises.

Abraham had faith enough to look beyond this life and down the corridors of time and see the day when God would say yes and amen to all of the promises that he has made.

And Abraham waits for that day still, when he will enter into that promised new creation land.

And in that day, he will take the hand of his wife and say, Wasn't God faithful to us?

And from noble Sarah, who we remember today, has come from her line, the one who we celebrate this evening.

That from noble Sarah has come the Savior of the world.

Jesus, the promised one, the promised blessing to the nations who came to finally roll back death's dark veil and wipe away each grief shed tear from our faces.

That by his death and resurrection he has promised us a day when there will be no more need of graves.

And until that day he promises to forgive all who would turn in repentance and faith to him.

He promises that his kingdom will expand and grow until the waters uh sorry, expand and grow and cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.

He promises to build his church, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And with those promises he calls each one of us.

Trust him in a similar vein to Abraham and Sarah.

Trusting Him, following Him, living the life of a pilgrim.

This is not our home.

Living lives of tent and altar, of wander and of worship.

To trust him in all seasons of our life, in goodness and in grief.

And so we bid farewell to Abraham and to Sarah.

At some point in the future we'll finish Genesis.

I cannot promise when we will do that.

But we turn aside from this couple that has walked with us, guiding us, helping us to understand what it means to be human, to trust the promises of God.

And now for the rest of Advent, we turn our eyes to see the fulfillment of those promises, the baby in the manger, the Savior of the world.

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