Remsen Bible Fellowship; 02/23/2025
Introduction
If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in the book of Genesis again, marching right on through until we stop for a while, but a couple more weeks here in Genesis. Genesis 23 is the chapter we're going to look at this morning. It's not a long chapter.
It's 20 verses. I want you to imagine living with someone for at least 62 years. We know that Abraham and Sarah were married for at least 62 years from the point when they are called out of the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to the point when Sarah dies is a 62 year time span.
Very likely they were married much longer than that. Probably a hundred to 110 years. These two people are married.
Now imagine being Abraham and losing your wife at that point. Some of you can relate to that grief. Some of us aren't there yet in terms of having lost a spouse or having been married.
None of us are going to make it to a hundred years of marriage, but we can sense sort of what that would be like. We often read chapter 22 with Abraham being called to sacrifice his son Isaac and the Lord miraculously intervening at the last moment. We think of that as the great test of Abraham's faith, and that's true.
It absolutely is a great test of Abraham's faith. When the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote about Abraham's call in Genesis 22, he titled his book Fear and Trembling. It is a great test of Abraham's faith, but I wonder as I observe the lives of people around me and observe the way people walk through the valley of the shadow of death, if the test of Genesis 23 is not at least almost if not just as great when Abraham loses his wife.
It's a great test of faith and it's one losing a spouse that where I have watched it derail the lives of many people, Christians included. It's derailed the faith of more people than I can count. But Abraham, our father in the faith, is a model here, a model here of trust in God through all circumstances.
How does a faithful Christian live in a fallen world? The chief mark of living in a fallen world is the reality of death. Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death. Death is introduced by God in Genesis chapter 3 as a consequence of human sin.
So the fact that we are fallen creatures means that there will be death in this world. So we must ask how does a faithful Christian live in this fallen world? There are four principles we see in this passage. Number one, faithful Christians mourn in a time of loss.
They mourn in a time of loss. We see that in verses one and two. Sarah lived 127 years.
These were the years of the life of Sarah. And 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.
Abraham's life hits a stopping point here. He goes in, he's probably out in the field, still guarding his flock, still working, 137-year-old man, and his wife dies. And he comes in from what he's doing.
He comes in from his work to mourn for his wife. He acknowledges the significance of this occasion. And that might seem obvious.
It's a significant moment when your spouse dies. But many times I have heard Christians talk about death in a way that minimizes the significance of it, minimizes the pain, minimizes the sorrow. We misconstrue a passage that we're going to read later, 1 Thessalonians 4, where it talks about we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
And we misconstrue that as we don't grieve. Christians should be happy all the time. We shouldn't acknowledge the sorrow and the pain of loss and of death.
I think even some of the language that gets used around death speaks to that. We talk about someone passing away, or we have a celebration of life or a memorial service instead of a funeral. A celebration of life is something we should do when people are alive.
When someone is dead, they're gone. That's an important reality for us to face. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 says it's the heart of wise goes into the house of mourning.
The heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Do not trivialize the significance of genuine loss. The separation of the spirit from the body is profoundly unnatural in God's created order.
In his providence, he has allowed human sin to come into this world and he has punished it with death. But God's original design is for human beings to not be a spirit disembodied from a physical body. We are by God's creation, made in his image.
We are body spirit unities. Some theologians use psychosomatic unity. I don't think that's maybe the most helpful term, but I like to say it.
That's what we are. When the Hebrew word soul is used in the Old Testament, it's not talking about an immaterial part of the person. It's speaking about the whole person.
Your spirit and your body together is what constitutes your soul, you. And so when we face physical death and that's separated, you walk up to the casket and you see that's them, but it's not. It both is and isn't.
That's an unnatural experience. And we need to recognize that. And especially when that someone is close to us, the right way to recognize it is tears.
It's sadness. It's sorrow. We should do nothing to trivialize the weight of that moment.
First Corinthians 15 refers to death as an enemy. It's so, so easy to think of death as something, well, it happens for everybody. So it must be natural.
It must be okay. We've just got to kind of come to grips with that and not think about it. But it's not real stoicism, but there's a pop stoicism that's become very popular in the last 10 years.
You can read all kinds of books or listen to podcasts about your daily stoic. And you look at life and you just kind of grit your teeth and work on through, just keep grinding. Don't worry about those things you can't control and you can't control death, so don't worry about it.
That's not what the Bible says. Abraham is far from the only person who stands at the grave of a loved one and weeps, no less than the Lord Jesus himself. In John chapter 11, he hears about his friend Lazarus being sick and the disciples are there with him.
Interestingly here, Jesus says to them, he's asleep. And they thought, well, he went to sleep, he's going to get better. But what Jesus was speaking of was his death.
And when Jesus goes then to visit a few days later, he encounters Lazarus's sister, Martha, and she comes to him and says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And then he goes and he talks to Mary and she says to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And Jesus then goes with Mary to the grave and he stands at the 1136 shortest verse in the English Bible.
It says, Jesus wept. When Jesus stood at the tomb of his dear friend, he wept, knowing that he was going to call him out of the grave. Still, the reality of death brought Jesus to tears.
We need to acknowledge the place and importance of weeping in a fallen world, in the life that the Lord has called us to live here. Do not try to hide those emotions. There is nothing wrong with experiencing and expressing sorrow in the face of loss.
But for the faithful Christian, emotions do not tell the whole story. Faithful Christians feel, but they are not governed by their feelings. That's what we see in the second point here.
Faithful Christians act even in sorrow, even under adversity. We see that in verses three and four. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you.
Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight. Abraham did not allow his grief to overwhelm him. He recognized that there was a task at hand.
His wife needed buried. Now Abraham is confident at various points in his life story to delegate tasks. In the next chapter, he sends his servant to go find a wife for his son.
He's not above saying somebody else can do this job. And here we would understand if when he is weeping at the bedside of his dead wife, he said, Isaac, you go take care of this. Or servant, you go take care of this.
He's a powerful man. He has many people working for him. They could have figured this out.
But Abraham says, no, I'm going to take care of this task myself. I need a burying place for my wife. And so he approaches the Hittites who ruled the area where he was.
It's area of Hebron. And he goes to them and he says, give me a burying place. I'm a sojourner among you.
I've been traveling for many years, walking around with just tents. And he says, I would like to purchase a piece of property to bury my dead. The principle we see here is that though you have lost someone you love, you are still alive.
And if you are still alive, that means God still has things for you to do here. You still have duties. And this is where grief derails so many people.
They allow grief to make them self-absorbed. They turn in and it all becomes about me and my pain and my sorrow and my loss. And those things are true.
Like you have those feelings and those experiences, not questioning that. Just spent the point of the sermon saying you should feel those things and express those things. You're not the only one.
Proverbs 14 in verse 10 says soul knows its own bitterness. There is a real sense in which no one knows what you're going through when you lose someone. You also don't know what they're going through.
You don't know what they've gone through in the past and you still have duties and responsibilities that you need to execute. So there are seasons when sorrow is appropriate and expressing that sorrow is appropriate, but it cannot stop you from living. Do not allow grief to become an excuse for self-centeredness or for ignoring the jobs that God has given you in your family, in your work, in your life.
When we face loss, we ought to grieve. We ought to express and experience sorrow, but we must keep our eyes focused on the land of the living. We remain here and God still has things for us to do.
The Lord often will give you a particular sorrow, a particular grief, with the expectation that you will use the lessons you learned through that grief to minister to others. For the Christian, the pain you experience in this life is not pointless. It is not pointless.
It is meant to teach you. Hebrews 12 speaks of the pains and the sorrows we experience in life as in some measure a discipline from the Lord. Not discipline in the sense that you did something wrong and he's punishing you for it, but that he's using it to train you to become the person he wants you to be.
That text that we read at the beginning of the service, Romans 8, 28, you know, verse 28 all by itself often ends up on a coffee cup. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. But when we see the definition of good in verses 29 and following, those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, to become like Jesus.
Well, what was Jesus' earthly life like? It was marked by suffering and sorrow and grief. He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And so as he learned obedience through his suffering, that's what the book of Hebrews says about Jesus.
So we too are to learn obedience to God and trust in God, faith in him, holding fast to him in the face of very difficult circumstances. And part of how that happens is when we continue to pursue faithful living, even in the midst of sorrow and grief. We who remain continue to have duties and responsibilities in this world.
And how should we carry them out? We also see that shown for us in verses 5 through 16. Faithful Christians are wise and fair in their dealings in this world, in their actions. Verses 5 through 16 of Genesis 23 says this, the Hittites answered Abraham, hear us, my Lord, you are a prince of God among us.
Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land.
And he said to them, if you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat for me Ephron, the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, 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, of all who went in at the gate of the 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 may bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, my Lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver.
What is that between you and me? Bury your dead. And 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. What's interesting here in verses five through 16, when Abraham goes to the Hittites, the people of the land and asks for a place to bury his wife, they say, Hey, you're a prince of God.
They've seen his power. God has prospered him and blessed him over the previous decades. And they say, take whatever you want.
Like, we're not going to stop you from burying your loved one here, ask for the place. And we're going to give it to you. And Abraham says, okay, you let me name the place.
I want this particular cave owned by Ephron at the end of his field. And what Ephron says there in the city gate. So it's in the presence of all the people.
Ephron may be the leader of that particular city. And he says to him, Hey, you can have it. I'm saying this in the presence of everybody it's yours to have.
And yet Abraham refuses to accept this gift. And I think that's an interesting decision on his part. He says, I will pay verse nine, full price for it.
It's a very similar principle to what we saw in chapter 14, when Abraham had gone and saved the Kings of Sodom and Gomorrah before God destroyed those cities. And he brings back the spoils of war. He brings back all the possessions of the city plus whatever they had taken from the other Kings.
And the King of Sodom says to him, Hey, let me have the people back from the cities, but you take all the stuff, you keep it. And Abraham says, I'm not taking a penny from you pay the guys who came with me, but their expenses for coming out and the food that they ate, like reimburse them for their expenses. You keep the rest of it.
I don't want anything from you. And what I argued there, what I think is there in chapter 14 is that Abraham wants the people to see, and he needs to keep remembering for himself that God is the one who provides for him. It is not the Hittite Kings.
It is not the Canaanite Kings of the land who provide for Abraham, who keep him safe. It is God who provides for him. And God has abundantly blessed Abraham.
And he says, I'm not going to take a gift here. I'm going to purchase this piece of land out of the abundance that God has given me. Abraham is avoiding debts and entanglements and obligations to the people of the land in gift giving societies.
And honestly, in any society, we don't have like a, our society is not based on gift giving, but there's still like this subliminal thing that happens. If someone gives you a giant gift, you feel like you owe them. Whether it's a gift and they said, no, this is just for you.
You don't have to worry about it. You still feel like you owe them. And in societies where that's like a common thing, that's used intentionally.
Like if I give him this big piece of land now, now Abraham, this powerful man with all these warriors at his disposal, he owes me. That might come in handy later. So Ephron's not dumb in offering him this piece of land.
The Hittites in general saying, take what you want. They're going to try to put Abraham under their thumb. And Abraham says, no, no, I need a place to bury my wife, but I will pay for it.
I will pay the full price. I don't think debt is absolutely prohibited by scripture. I mean, I sure hope it's not.
I have a mortgage on my house and a loan on one of my cars and credit card for my business. Like, but it is dangerous. Proverbs 22 and verse seven says the borrower is slave to the lender.
The rich rule over the poor debt entangles and emotional debt, even more so than financial debt is a danger and an entanglement for us. Romans 13 and verse eight, the apostle Paul says, no, Oh, nothing to anyone except to love one another, receiving gifts, having debt, obviously are not prohibited by scripture, especially not receiving gifts, but we must be judicious and wise in how we do. So Jesus in Matthew chapter 10 and verse 16, he's sending his disciples out and he says, I'm sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.
So in this situation, Abraham has the opportunity to receive this very valuable gift. He ends up with not just the cave that he asked for, but a field and all the trees around the field as well. He could have received it as a gift, but he said, no, I'm going to pay for it.
He's acting as wise as a serpent, but he's also innocent as a dove. He doesn't try to then say, well, I'm going to pay for it because I don't want to have any entanglement here, but I'm going to use this situation where I've had this great loss to emotionally manipulate and get a deal. As I purchased it, I've got the deed.
It's mine, but I got a real great deal on it. No, he's fair in his dealings. He says, I just want to pay the full price for the land.
There are communities of Christians, who I won't name, who are well known for not doing that, not doing that. There's a particular religious group in the area I grew up that have moved in and they're always trying to get, pay less than something's worth, pay less than something's worth, pay less than something's worth and people resent them for it. I think what we see as an example here in Abraham's life and in the New Testament as well, Christians should be people that non-Christians want to deal with, that we're not getting had, we're not naive as wise as serpents, but we should be innocent as doves and we should want to interact with the world in a way that brings honor and glory to the name of Christ.
First Timothy chapter three in the requirements for elders, the apostle Paul says that if someone desires the office of overseer, he desires a noble task, he gives the list of requirements. The final requirement in verse seven is that he must be well thought of by outsiders, which means like in the guy's dealings in work and in the world, is he honest? Is he the kind of person that people trust and think well of? Abraham's a model of that here. He wants to pay for the field and he pays what it's worth.
400 shekels of silver is close to 10 pounds of silver, which today isn't actually worth that much, that's like 2,800 bucks, but in Abraham's day, almost 10 pounds of silver would be an immense amount of money and he pays it for the field. He's not trying to manipulate things to get his way, he simply wants to bury his and he pays full price for the land. Do your actions in this world make people more or less likely to trust you, to trust Christians in general? Do they reflect well or poorly as people consider Christ? Matthew chapter five verse 16, we read it in our scripture reading a couple of weeks ago, says, so let your light shine before men.
You are a city on a hill. Final point here is that faithful Christians trust in the promises of God, verses 17 to 20. So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to 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 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 Machpelah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites. Why is it significant that Abraham sought to secure a burial place for his wife? Why is there close to a chapter spent on a business transaction essentially? It's because he was purchasing this in the land of Canaan.
It's the only thing that Abraham ever owns in this land is a tomb in the field that surrounds it. Burial here, purchasing a burial place for his wife, instead of taking her back to where his family was from, it's a demonstration of faith that God is going to give this land to the family of Abraham. The family is demonstrating their faith in God by laying Sarah to rest here.
We see this in chapter 49. It would probably be good if I turned the pages of my Bible, not the pages of my notebook. Chapter 49, at the end of Jacob's life, Abraham's grandson, he's gone down to Egypt where his son Joseph is the ruler, and he is telling his sons as he approaches death that he wants them to bury him back in the land of Canaan.
Verse 29 to 31. Then he commanded them and said to them, I am to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah to the east of Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place.
There they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebecca, his wife. And there I buried Leah.
The field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites. Last words of Jacob are, take me back to the family tomb and bury me there because that land is going to be possessed by our people. And Joseph, his son, when he dies, he's embalmed in Egypt, but he makes his sons promise him, when you are brought up out of Egypt, when we leave this place, take my bones and bury them in Canaan.
And they do. They were expressing their confidence in the promises of God to give that land to their people by burying their dead there. Burial itself is a demonstration of faith.
Sorry, I'm trying to read the word that I have right now. Oh, pagans. Pagans burn or leave to rot bodies.
Now there's no specific verse in the Bible that says you can't cremate. I'll say that clearly. But the Jews did not, and Christians until about 15 minutes ago, did not ever burn their dead because we are expressing in placing the body in the ground, our hope in the resurrection of the body.
Again, as I said at the beginning, we are created as human beings to be body and soul, body and spirit united as a whole soul. And in first Corinthians 15, that is expressed as the resurrection of the dead is the great hope of the believer. And so when we lay to rest our dead, we are planting them in the ground and hope that they will be resurrected.
Such hope is the essence of the Christian faith. And again, like there's no verse that says you can't do it any other way. And God is just as capable of raising together a body that was cremated or thrown out at sea as anybody that decomposed naturally.
This isn't a question of God's capacity, but it's a question of how do we act in a way that honors the hope that God has given us and honors the bodies that he has given us. First Thessalonians chapter four says this versus 13 through 18. But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep, but you may not grieve as others do who have no hope for sense.
We believe that Jesus died and rose again. Even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep for this. We declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not proceed.
Those who have fallen asleep for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with a voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are alive, who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
Therefore encourage one another with these words. And the source of hope for a Christian in this fallen world is our union with Christ and our hope in his promises, including the promise of a resurrected body. If we have trusted that we have been buried with Christ in his death, we've trusted this is the picture in baptism, right? We're buried with Christ in his death and we're brought up in his resurrection life, brought up out of the waters of baptism in resurrection.
It's a picture of our being united to him by faith in his death for our sins. And one day being united to him in physical resurrection.
