Buried In Faith

Thank you.

We're going to read Genesis 23, 1 through 20.

Hope you're wearing good shoes.

You're going to be standing for a minute.

So all right.

Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah.

And Sarah died at Kiryath Arbah, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan.

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

And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you.

Give me the 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 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 Makhpelah, 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 the Hittites, all of who went in uh all of all who went in at the gate of his city.

No, my lord, hear me.

I give you the field, and 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 might bury my dead there.

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 Makpala, which was uh to the east of Mamre, the field in 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 went in at the gate of his city.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field of Makpalah, 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.

Good morning.

Yeah, that was a long one, wasn't it?

Uh got a couple of announcements, and then uh we'll start talking about uh this uh the these men at the city gate trying to outpolite each other uh in the ancient Near East.

And you'll see that this is a relevant text for me today.

Uh it is, strangely.

Okay, so uh first an announcement.

We've got a women's study starting this Wednesday, right, Mona?

And uh uh yeah, cheer for women's studies.

Yeah.

Uh they'll be moving through uh Genesis 1 to 11, so you'll get kind of the this like uh worldview base for why the world is the way that it is.

And uh I I think it's going to be like a wonderful study.

Uh Mona, how many folks are signed up right now?

Do you know?

Right now we've got potentially 25 of them.

25?

That's like half our church.

Uh this is I'm so thrilled about this.

And just like the fruit that this has the potential to bear and the community that this can build.

Uh, if uh you are a woman, requirement number one, and requirement number two, you want you want to study the Bible this year?

What an amazing opportunity to do that.

Um huh?

And have lots of fun.

Yeah, mono guarantees fun.

Where are you gonna get a deal like that?

So sign up uh for guaranteed fun.

Um and uh yeah, I'm I'm thrilled about the way this is developing.

Um uh okay, so uh next up, uh we just want to bring to your attention the Redemption Church Denver app.

Do this occasionally.

Uh this is a a wonderful place to give.

It's makes it pretty easy to give to the church.

Um our church is uh funded by internal donations.

Um those are things that you guys give.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week and he was like, you know, I'm thinking about giving, and I've been thinking about the way that I want to give.

You know, if if I set up a recurring gift uh where it's just like an automatic deduction, then I'm worried like I won't feel the spiritual impact uh of that type of recurring gift.

And so he was thinking of like ways that he could do this.

And um I'll I'll give you just like a pro tip from behind the scenes.

Um we can't tell uh whether it's recurring or not.

Uh I don't think that there's a uh uh my my point to my friend was like, look, dude, you're overthinking this.

Uh this is just like a reason to not start giving right now.

Uh so if you have one of those uh and you're thinking like, oh man, I've been kind of overthinking this.

I just want to encourage you, make giving to your local church a part of your worship.

Uh we have hopes, we're putting together our budget for the next year.

Our hope is that this year becomes our first year to break even uh in our budget so that we're just a healthy church that's supporting itself.

Um and uh yeah, I just want to invite you to join us in that goal.

Also, in the app, outside of giving, you can uh join us in our Bible reading plan, which has been really joyful to be a part of.

We've got a group chat that you can participate in for the that like goes alongside the Bible reading plan.

And it's been really awesome uh to see people in our church just asking each other questions, answering questions.

And you can just download Redemption Church Denver uh in your app store of choice, type in the whole name, Redemption Church Denver, because I don't know if you've noticed, there's like about a million Redemption churches.

Um, but there's only one Redemption Church Denver.

Yeah, there we go.

That's the response I was hoping for.

Um so search the whole thing and uh join your uh uh fellow church members and attenders in reading the Bible.

Okay, ready to pray and get into this big long negotiation.

Holy Father, we praise you for your word, and we ask that you would attend this morning, that you would give us an understanding of the ways that you work in the world practically.

And Lord, that you would especially help our hearts understand what it means to live in a promise that we don't get to see fully realized.

Lord, help us learn what it means to live lives that are guided by faith in you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so uh today's reading was 20 verses.

20 verses about the the intricacies and the negotiation involved in purchasing a burial plot for Sarah after she died, a burial plot in the land of Canaan.

Just for context, uh the uh like the whole story of Abraham centers around this promise of Isaac being born.

When Isaac was finally born and we reached that climactic moment, seven verses.

Uh when Abraham is called by God, the story that I'm sure you all know, not that this one isn't one of your favorite stories in scripture, but the story that you all know of Abraham being called by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son, uh, on on the mountain, and then the Lord staying his hand and all that that entails, that story, that amazing story, uh is 20 verses as well.

So why are we giving so much time, so much space in scripture to the details of this land deal, the details of just buying a burial plot for Sarah.

This could have been handled uh in something like this.

And then Abraham bought land and buried Sarah there.

Done.

That's enough information.

And then we we we could have just imagined maybe he had to negotiate a bit with the Hittites.

And then somebody would have written in a commentary, he probably had to negotiate a bit with it with the Hittites.

We would have been like, okay, that's fine.

Like, that's what it's like to buy land now.

You you have to negotiate a bit and you have to craft a deal, and then a deal comes together, and then the land is owned.

Done.

Why are there 20 verses on this?

What is here for us to see?

Um, this is one of those texts where it it reinforces the reason that we structure our sermons and our preaching the way that we do here at R C D is we just preach through books.

And when I was laying this out, um uh the the how we preach through Genesis, I read this chapter and I was like, I have no idea what I'm going to say about this.

But then you just assign it to future James.

Um he'll be able to figure it out.

And uh and and I'm so after spending uh a week in this text, I'm so thankful because there is this is actually so wonderfully practical because it pushes us right into these um uh very, very personal, very real questions of our faith, which are what does the promised land mean when when you never get to experience it?

What does the promised land mean to Sarah?

Sarah lived her life with Abraham as a sojourner, a foreigner, wandering around.

They had a home they could return to, but they didn't.

Instead, they kept pursuing this life of difficulty and challenge, guided by this promise of God.

And Sarah only experiences the promised land after she dies.

She died thinking, well, what did this promise mean?

Was this life of pursuit in pursuit of faith, was this life in pursuit of what God had laid out for her and her family, was that just foolishness?

Was it a waste?

Was it useless?

Would it have been better to approach life differently?

These are real questions.

And I hope that we'll be given the wisdom together as a church this morning to face these sort of soberly, to consider what would our faith mean if these promises are ultimately fruitless?

You know, let's take that seriously.

And my hope is that we can begin to shift what Christianity often does in our minds.

It becomes like a psychological tactic that we use, and we're comfortable with fooling ourselves for our whole life with this psychological tactic, thinking, you know, perhaps it will cause me to live a better life or a more psychologically fulfilled life or something like that.

And so even if Christianity isn't true, then it's fine if it isn't true because it's still a useful, you know, operating system for approaching the world.

If you think of Christianity like that, I I want to invite you this morning into a much more stark vision of what it is.

I want you to consider something like what the Apostle Paul said, that if this isn't true, if these promises are not real, then we are of all men most to be pitied.

That in fact we're living foolishly into absolute in plunging ourselves into meaninglessness when we ought to just be embracing some other narrative of life as a journey where where you gather up as much experiences as you can for yourself, and then it ends in in meaninglessness.

So my hope is to face soberly this question of what do the promises of God mean for us if we don't get to experience them in this life?

What did they mean for Sarah?

We're gonna get real, we're gonna try in our hearts to get as real about futility as possible.

Okay, so with those questions in the back of our mind, let's move into this story about purchasing this land and try and understand the nuances of it.

And then we're going to go to the book of Hebrews, which offers this wonderful interpretation of this very passage.

Um thank God, because otherwise I would have been lost.

This passage that I was reading this passage and I was like, what is happening?

And then thankfully, there is a cross-reference to Hebrews, and I was like, oh, okay, that's what's happening.

So I hope that we all get to share in that together this morning.

All right, so first of all, uh Abraham tries to buy a little slice of Canaan, a little slice of Canaan.

Aren't we all trying to buy a little slice of Canaan?

Genesis 23, verses 3 and 4 says, And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I'm a sojourner and foreigner among you.

Genesis 23:3

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

Okay, so Sarah dies after 127 years, and she lived to see the fulfillment of the promise of her son Isaac.

And so she does get this taste of the promise.

But part of the covenant with the Lord wasn't just the birth of Isaac, but it was also the promise of the land, that they would be given the land of Canaan.

Now she doesn't get to see that fulfilled.

But Abraham commits himself to purchase land in Canaan for a burial place for Sarah.

So a burial place is somewhere that that's permanent, right?

This is something that will, this will, you know, you a burial is indefinite.

So he needs to own this land in order for it to become a meaningful purchase, a meaningful place for Sarah to be buried.

This is something that's truly theirs, that belongs to the family.

And the difficulty of this purchase is that Abraham, as he describes himself in this verse, is a sojourner and a foreigner among the Hittites.

He's living in the land of Canaan, but as a resident alien.

He doesn't have rights to the land.

He has no inheritance to the land as the rest of the Hittites would.

He's a foreigner, and so he is just wandering in this place.

No, he can't make a true burial here because there is no indefinite place that he is able to bury Sarah.

And so this is joined up with this story, this need of permanence that's that's uh that's provided by the conditions of Sarah's death, requires this act of faith for Abraham, where he is he is saying, I need to, I need to make the step to own land here.

And so this whole act on Abraham's part is a way of saying, this is a way of him demonstrating trust that God will provide the land of Canaan in a way that could possibly be realized by them.

Even, by the way, after Sarah's death.

We've seen faith like this from Abraham before.

Just a couple of chapters earlier, we saw that God required Abraham to uh sacrifice his son Isaac, the child of promise.

And Abraham gets to holding the knife above his child before the Lord stays his hand and provides another sacrifice.

And the reason that Abraham was able to move in such faith was because he trusted that God would be able to even raise Isaac from the dead, so that somehow death itself would not be an obstacle to the fulfillment of God's promise.

So this same sort of faith is shaping Abraham's desire to bury Sarah in the promised land.

It is a demonstration of this hope, this hope in God regarding the promise that was given to Sarah, which says, somehow, in a way that I can't even understand, even in death, Sarah might share in this promise.

That's an important framework that's going to guide all of this.

And it so that's why this purchase of the land is actually a critical demonstration of faith.

And the obstacle to it is that Abraham is a sojourner and a foreigner among the Hittites.

So he asks, Can I have this land?

I know I'm a sojourner and a foreigner, but can I have this land?

And he even phrases it as cautiously as possible, that I may bury my dead out of my sight, saying, Look, this is just a burial, it's going to be out of my sight.

I'm not going to secretly move in.

Okay, I'm not, I'm not considering myself a resident, a resident at this point.

I'm this is just a burial.

And the Hittites respond in verses five through six.

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.

Doesn't that sound so nice?

It isn't.

So what's what's happening here, they do bear witness to the blessing that Abraham has experienced.

At this point, he's extremely wealthy.

Uh and his family uh is growing, it's a he's ex he's experiencing this blessing of herds and flocks, and the Lord's hand is obviously on the life of Abraham.

And Abraham wants to buy land.

That means it would be his, in his name, he would own it.

So the Hittites are doing everything they can to keep Abraham from getting a real foothold of true ownership in the land.

So, what do they try to do throughout this whole negotiation?

Pivot to make it just a gift.

No actual contract signed, no legitimacy of ownership, just you can use whatever burial ground you want in our land, you use it, but there will be no true ownership here.

So they frame it, it's it's the subtext of this politeness of you're like a god among us.

Just take whatever land you need.

But Abraham knows I need to own this.

This needs to truly be in my name.

So what he's coming up against is uh, you know, the the bane of any local politician.

What's the uh problem with Abraham looking to buy land among the Hittites?

It's a it's a NIMBY problem.

Uh you can buy land just and we're fine with you, you know, doing whatever you want, just not in my backyard.

You know, it's the same, it's the Abraham, what does Abraham and nuclear power have in common?

Not in my backyard.

So the Hittites are gathered together in a group with Abraham at the gate of the city, and Abraham has the shrewdness, and this is just like really practical, you see how earthy and gritty the promises of God where they lay themselves out take place in these just ordinary negotiations.

Um Abraham has the shrewdness to stop addressing the Hittites as a crowd.

Because the Hittites as a crowd are able to just stand and say, We don't want you to own any land.

So there's no pathway forward there.

The crowd is gridlocked.

And Abraham says, I'm not going to deal with the gridlock of the crowd.

I'm not even going to enter that conversation.

Can you hear some wisdom in this?

Some practical wisdom in this?

Instead, he says, I'm going to localize my request to a particular individual.

Because to the crowd, I'm just not in my backyard.

But to this particular individual, I'm a customer.

And I can pay for the land that I'm looking to get.

Do you see the ordinary ways in which the promises of God become fulfilled to get Into the land just through the incentives of working wisely with people in a business deal.

These are not uh this is not like a secular part of life.

Being able to make good deals is incredibly important for the kingdom of God.

Did you know that?

Did you consider that as just maybe something outside of the Lord's domain?

As we get into Genesis, you'll see that the places and the things that we preach through are deeply practical, uh, so practical that you might forget they're spiritual.

And hopefully, if it works, you might forget the difference.

So here's what um so Abraham pivots and he says, I want Ephron's land.

There's a cave there, I think it'd be a great burial place.

Uh so he pivots away from the crowd and towards Ephron.

And uh here's that they they have this sort of um interaction, and Ephron in front of the rest of the Hittites, he says the same thing.

He toes the party line for at least one exchange, and he says, All you know, Abraham, you're such a great guy.

I love your new haircut or those new shoes.

And uh you can have whatever land you want, uh, wherever you want to bury Sarah, have whatever space you need uh to bury Sarah.

And Abraham says, Great, Ephron, I'm glad you're interested.

Uh I and they both use the word give, which is funny, because they don't mean give, they mean buy.

And Abraham says, I will give you the price of the land.

Please, Abraham bows down and says, Uh, please allow me to give you the price of the land.

And then Ephron makes this amazing move where he says, Um, well, it look I'll read it to you in Genesis 23, 15 to 16.

This is Ephron speaking.

My Lord, listen to me.

A piece of land worth 400 shekels?

What is that between you and me?

Bury your dead.

Now, Abraham listened to Ephron.

And Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, 400 shekels of silver according to the weights current among the merchants.

Do you see what happened?

Ephron says in this just like wonderful way.

I I think I love this because this feels like the car business, which is my roots, grew up in the car business.

Um, and this is uh there, every single deal just comes together by the skin of its teeth, and that was true then.

Uh, Ephron says this in such a way where he's able to save faith among the rest of the Hittites, because he says it in a way as like I'm giving it to you.

But what he does is he names the price.

And that's all he had to do for Abraham to know, all right, we've got a number, so we've got a deal.

I I want I want uh part of my hope is I know that many of you, for your work, you spend your days making deals, and you might consider that this is um separate from your faith, or that there's nothing that scripture speaks into with these practical realities that need to come together.

And yet we see that Abraham operating in the wisdom of the Lord is able to make a deal.

Why did God uh structure it this way?

He could have, he could have easily uh uh enabled a way for Abraham to just get the land, uh get deeded the land in some legitimate way, but instead he calls Abraham to move in the Lord's wisdom to participate in the realization of God's own promise to them.

He makes Abraham's making of this deal become an act of faith.

When you in your place of work are making deals, have you considered that it might be done in such a way as to be an act of faith?

What parameters would that put on the deals that you made?

What might that expose in the tactics that you're using?

Would you be comfortable seeing the Lord witness you make the deals that you need to make?

Or would you say, Lord, you can watch, you can watch the outcome.

I'll give you the outcome of this, but you don't want to see how I'm actually gonna make this thing.

It gets a little shady.

That's the car business.

The pirate crew.

It could not be if you're a Christian in it.

So I I just want I don't want the I don't want the grittiness and the practicality of this to be lost on us.

It's so evident in the text.

So it comes together in this way where uh Efron names the number.

Um it it commentators it's are kind of split, it's difficult to understand what this means, but the majority of some commentators said that I read, we just don't really know what this number means.

Others were quick to say this is an exorbitant amount of money.

So it's one of those.

I don't know which.

Um either way, Abraham quickly accepts the offer and pays for it.

So they purchased the land, though the rest of what we read is so so detailed and clear because it's the description of what a contract sounded like in the ancient Near East.

It even makes this pattern where it says the trees of the land were included in the purchase, because that's something that was um called out um in the ways that the purchases work.

It's kind of like, you know, they must have had like an ancient Near Eastern Ray Kroc who was like, I own the land that the McDonald's is on.

That's the way McDonald's works, by the way.

As a franchise model.

Learn something new every day in church.

So this deal comes together by the skin of its teeth, and now they own the land in a true, a true way.

But we've got to, and then it ends with Sarah buried there.

So we've got to return to this question.

Well, what does that land mean for Sarah?

What does it mean for Sarah who only experiences this land in death?

Was the Lord faithful to his promise to Sarah?

Did the Lord answer his promise?

Was her life meaningful in some way as it was connected to the promise of God?

We can understand this in our own terms as Christians, because we can relate to this experience that Sarah has of I saw I was promised the promised land, and then she never saw it, but is buried there in death.

As Christians, even this morning, we prayed this phrase, your kingdom come, your will be done.

Where?

On earth, as it is in heaven.

Have you seen it yet?

Have you seen his kingdom here on earth?

The Lord's rule in our own hearts, in our culture, in the nations of the world as it is in heaven?

Will the Lord ever fulfill this promise?

Are we praying in vain?

Is this just uh is this just is our whole religion just a psychological tactic, a coping mechanism that we've developed where you you you know you can't live a life without some sort of hope, without it connected to some sort of hope.

So we'll we'll imagine that there is some hope out there, but you never actually experience it.

Are we just fools unwilling to face the futility that the world requires us to face?

Are we just playing a psychological trick on ourselves?

Is that what this whole game is?

We should ask that question.

We're pressed into it here with regards to Sarah.

Is our faith just a pattern of self-deceit?

Otherwise, how do we relate to the promises of God that we so often don't get to experience here?

The besetting sin that you haven't been able to throw off, the relationship that you've prayed for reconciliation and haven't seen.

You know, that took such effort and toil to, you know, deals like this that came together by the skin of their teeth.

And then it was just gone.

What did that mean then?

The writer of Hebrews opens this up for us.

So listen to this.

Hebrews 11 13.

Speaking of this very passage, he writes, These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Okay, do you hear the shape?

This is this is the direct pattern of what we've seen here.

Abraham and Sarah, they acknowledge what are we on the earth?

We are strangers and exiles on the earth.

The writer of Hebrews is saying, take this very same pattern for what we see in the Old Testament, you know, these characters of old who shared in our faith.

This same pattern is what applies to us now.

We are strangers, foreigners, exiles on the earth.

Our hope is a heavenly kingdom.

And because of that, the earth, in the way that it's structured now, is not our true home.

But we have a hope in it.

They die in faith.

How did Sarah experience the promise?

Listen to this, it's a wonderful phrase.

Having seen them and greeted them from afar.

How is it that we experience the kingdom of God?

The answer to our prayers, what is that?

It's like it's like we greet it from afar.

We can see it off on the horizon.

It provides an orientation for our lives, a true hope that we can live towards, but we can't run up and hug it.

You know, it's just a zoom call.

You can't experience it.

So, what this means, and what we should the way that this this offers this strange framing for the life of a Christian, because it means that much of what we will live our lives moving towards are things that we will never experience.

That we live our lives in a pattern that says that that we won't get to we won't get to sit in the shade of the seed that we've planted.

This means that most of or that many of the most successful Christians will die in what looks like apparent failure.

Isn't that strange?

I heard it said by another pastor recently, I won't tell you who he is, you might start listening to him.

I'm just kidding, it's Mark Dever, and you can listen away.

He said that if you are if you are able to experience in this life the fruit of what your life is aiming at, then your life likely isn't aiming at the kingdom.

Isn't that good?

We see that in this pattern of a life that's guided by faith.

The writer of Hebrews continues, verses 14 to 15, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had an opportunity to return.

So, people who speak in thus terms, people who describe themselves as strangers and aliens, you know, people who aren't fully residents here, they're speaking, you describe yourself as an exile when you're seeking a homeland.

There's an intention of home here.

Now, this is one of the ways to understand the whole biblical narrative is through the pattern of exile and return, exile away from home, and then the experience of home.

Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden.

And so the human heart is plagued by this desire for a return to a true home that we don't get to experience.

And so we live in this world as exiles, as strangers and aliens.

What does that look like?

I live in the midst of a culture that doesn't seem to understand me.

When I adhere to the values that Jesus has espoused, when I try and map my life onto his pattern, it comes across to my peers as foolishness, as bigotry, as backwardness, as being on the wrong side of history, as all of these phrases that we use to demonstrate the counterculture of Christianity, the Bible says that's because we are strangers and aliens here.

You are living in a counterculture.

You are living as an exile.

Now, Abraham and Sarah, in this pattern here, it says, if they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, what does that mean?

That there is, there was a home that Abraham and Sarah set out from.

God called Abraham in the beginning, I've got a promise for you, go, leave your homeland.

And in fact, the verses just before this one are a, it's news that Abraham receives, that his brother back in the homeland that he left has had a ton of children and is thriving in land that he owns.

Can you imagine what that would mean for Abraham to hear, to receive that news?

You just think, uh I've just spent all this time wondering.

The Lord gave me this promise, and what do I have to show for it?

I'm haggling over a grave.

I'm gonna bury her out of my sight.

And what if I had just been like my brother?

You know, how do you know you're rich?

You have more money than your brother-in-law?

It's a pro tip.

Abraham's thinking, uh, how do I know if I'd how do I know if I was blessed by the Lord?

You're laughing because you're like, that's so true.

It is so true.

Man, we are a fallen people.

So, Abraham, it's so easy for him to consider.

Uh the I followed the Lord's promise.

And what do I have to show for it?

I look just foolish.

It looks like my life has just been wasted, and now I bury my wife, who never got to experience the land, and I haggle for a gravesite.

What did it mean to follow the promise of the Lord?

Now we could spiritualize it and say, yes, but they're, you know, look at the work that was done in Abraham's heart.

And he's like, Yeah, but you know what?

They don't take uh heart work uh on a land deed.

Like at a certain point, Lord, your kingdom is supposed to come to earth.

So when are when are is this all just sort of like fairy tale language to get us to disembody from the world that we're in?

Is this all just language we're supposed to use to kind of check out and trick ourselves into feeling better for a little while before we enter back into a place that's truly, if we're honest with ourselves, hopeless?

No, this is a different pattern.

It could have returned to the land if they had been speaking about that land from which they had come from.

Consider what Abraham gets that news of his brother, right?

And he thinks, I've I've wasted it.

Let me try and come up with a way that I should have lived my life.

Abraham could have said, I should have crafted my life, which has been a journey.

I could say something like, all that matters in my life is the journey.

It doesn't matter if it is connected to any true or ultimate end.

You know, it's it's fine if at the end of Lord of the Rings we just skip the scene where Aragorn gets crowned.

You know, that that was the main point.

If you haven't seen those movies, which they recently made books out of.

Is it okay if my story just foolishly doesn't is it okay if, and I just say it's just about the journey.

My grandpa on my dad's side lived this larger-than-life type of life.

And at he wasn't a Christian.

And at his funeral, they played this song that I hate.

Uh uh My Way by Frank Sinatra.

It's like ruined Frank Sinatra for me.

I know that there's lots that I should probably like about Frank Sinatra.

Regrets, I've had a few.

But then again, too few to mention.

Has there ever been a less relatable lyric ever written?

Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention?

Give me a break.

Do you have any idea what it's like to live out here?

It's full of regrets.

But why would you tell yourself a lie like that?

Because you recognize my life doesn't connect to any ultimate meaning.

So I'm going to try and reduce the meaning of my life to just the way I lived it.

So what way will I come up with?

I did it my way.

You try and nurse some meaning out of that.

Abraham could have tried to pull one over on himself like that and thought, you know what?

My brother, he did things his way.

It seems to be more meaningful.

I, you know, I got taken in by a while.

I got taken in by this foolishness for a while.

And Abraham goes through this pattern where he, you know, starts deconstructing his faith on TikTok.

And then he realizes I've just been fooled and duped and taken advantage of by narcissistic leaders.

And I'm going to go and realize that life is a journey of my fulfillment.

I'm not going to get tricked into missing out on that anymore.

I'm going to go, I'm going to do things my way.

But he didn't.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.

Hebrews 11, 16, but as it is, they desire a better country.

That is a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

You know Bach?

Johann Sebastian?

That's the way his name appears in the phone book.

Here's a great description of his music that I read recently.

Bach's music is extremely faithful to the mathematical and physical reality of vibration.

Made by an instrument, but at the same time seems infinite.

So it's faithful to the physical reality, but at the same time seems infinite.

In this sense, Bach's music might be the best representation of God made alive in Christ.

Isn't that wonderful?

Bach was a Christian, you know.

Influenced by the reformers.

Writes this incredible music.

Yo-yo Ma owes like his main single to Bach.

When Bach dies, he's completely unknown.

And his music is unplayed for a hundred years after Bach's death.

And at the end of his compositions, it was typical for Bach to write Soli Deia Gloria for the glory of God alone.

Now, if this were 15, 20, 90 years after Bach's death, and you were to assess his life, you would say something like that, well, ultimately, it didn't amount to anything.

But Bach composed in a way that was toward the Lord in hope.

And then what was manifest is something like a resurrection.

The Christian, Abraham, Sarah, they have their eyes set on a heavenly city, which means that they are able to live their lives now, even in ways that appear futile.

Live their lives now in an absolute hope that even in the face of death, the promise of God will be realized.

There is a hope in the city that the Lord has prepared for us.

Here's this dynamic that I want us to see.

Abraham buys the land for just a burial site, but he buys the land.

Okay, now what's the meaning there?

The Christian life is a strange one because the heavenly city that we trust God to build is here.

It is on earth.

You know, the the Lord redeems the creation.

He creates a new heaven and a new earth.

He doesn't throw the world away, he redeems it and inhabits it here.

But that new creation is stored for us in heaven.

It is not something that we can make happen.

We can proclaim it, but I can't go out and make the kingdom.

That can only be done by the Spirit and by the Spirit's work.

But yet, we are called to live in faith that it will be happening.

So that means that our lives will be in ways that almost look like making the kingdom.

They'll be taking shape that way.

So Abraham goes and he buys the land.

This is an act of faith.

To buy the land is an act of faith.

But it's not a disembodied faith.

It's one that says, I know that this is only being occupied in death, but I'm saying to the Lord, I still trust your promise to come, even after death.

Without that framework, having this framework as Christians, it helps us to avoid these two pitfalls.

One is just an absolute spiritualization of the kingdom to come, which says we don't need to concern ourselves with the issues that we face in the world now.

And the way that we'll make ourselves feel better is to say this isn't the real kingdom.

And the other pitfall is to say, you know, the kingdom is ours, it's in our hands now to make.

But that isn't true either.

This is something that we receive from the Lord.

So instead, what we are called to is live lives of faith now, as strangers and exiles.

They might look absurd, and our lives might look like things that only end in futility and death.

But you know what?

We have another story that looked like it was only going to end in futility and death.

And what it ended up being was the new creation of the world.

Later on in this same book in Genesis, Joseph will become the second most powerful man in the world.

He'll be second only to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

And when he dies, he makes sure that his bones are not buried in Egypt, but are buried where?

In this tomb.

The one that Abraham owns.

This is generations later.

Why?

Because all the kingdom and the power of Egypt was nothing compared to the promise of the land given to Joseph.

Later, from the same family, of course, will come Jesus, who is buried in faith that from that death the kingdom will come.

We need to understand the shape of the way that the Lord brings his transformation.

Why is it that Jesus calls you to a life of death, to a life of laying aside, of not going your own way?

It's because in that death we see the seed is planted that is resurrected to the new heavens and the new earth.

That this little buying of a burial plot might one day connect to the glory of the Lord just by faith now.

The faithfully raising your children might connect to the glory of the Lord.

The faithfully working out that deal that you're working now and not veering into sin or greed might somehow connect to the glory of the Lord.

How?

I can't describe to you how.

This is not a thing you just make.

But by faith, we trust in the promise that it is true.

We know that the Lord has a better city prepared for us.

Okay, let's see if there are any questions.

Does this passage relate to the already but not yet nature of many kingdom promises?

For example, how we see God's kingdom fulfilled in church, but not in culture, and the down payment of the Holy Spirit.

Yes.

Would you do you want to do this?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's wonderful.

And the one thing that I'd uh add is the way that it's fulfilled in church is very incomplete.

Like, look at the hope of a city of light, you know, that's a city of absolute truth and the glory of the Lord shines forth from it.

You know, that's what the church is meant to look like.

Um I don't know if you guys have access to news, but we we don't look like that.

But how do we experience it so often even together?

We greet it from afar.

And the Lord gives us this greeting of it as we forgive one another and as you are offended and then stay.

You know, as as you you sin and then repent.

This confession and forgiveness of sin that we've been doing each week, I'm thinking like, how did I make it through weeks before we did this?

Before this was like a part of my daily rhythm.

What are we doing?

We're greeting the glory of God's graciousness to us from afar.

So, yes, wonderful insight.

Now, part of what we see in our practice of communion each week is a proclamation of this promise that the Lord's death means our salvation, and that the resurrection is this these first fruits of a glory that is to come, that we will get to participate in.

We are not, when we come up and we eat this, we take real bread and we dip it in real wine, we are saying we are not fooling ourselves by living according to this promise.

This is not a psychological trick.

This is the reality of resurrection, which has taken place in the world.

And now that it is real in the world, it would be foolish to pretend that it isn't.

We aren't tricking ourselves.

We're participating in the reality of Christ come to save sinners.

So let's participate in that.

Holy Father, I pray that you would attend this meal, that you would work in our hearts in ways that we may feel like we're facing futility.

Let us not turn back, but instead turn towards you and your promises, knowing that we we may make deposits.

They may just be deposits of death now.

But Lord, that in you we have an absolute hope that they are connected to real life.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.