We're continuing our series in Genesis 23.
!
Genesis 23.
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 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.
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 the cave of Malchpia, 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 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 400 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,
400 shekels of silver,
according to the weights current among the merchants.
So the field of Ephron and Malchpia,
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 Malchpia,
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 burying place by the Hittites.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word.
May it speak to us this morning,
and may you give us your spirit
to show us Jesus.
May we trust in you
because of your word
and the testimony that it gives to your son,
that it gives to you.
We ask this in Christ's name.
Amen.
It's not about the nail.
I'm not sure if you've ever seen this video
where this phrase is repeated over and over again.
It made its round on the internet a couple years ago.
I think it might have even been a TV commercial,
but it's not about the nail.
There's a woman that's sitting on the couch,
and she's clearly agitated.
She's uncomfortable.
She's discussing her pain.
She's discussing the effects
that something is having on her,
and she is in trouble.
And then the camera pans over to her boyfriend,
and he's gesticulating.
He's waving his hands,
and he's beside himself.
He's so angry.
He starts to talk,
and then he stops.
And then as the camera continues to rotate,
you see this woman,
his girlfriend,
has a nail directly implanted in her forehead.
And the man never gets the chance
to address the nail.
The woman is describing her headaches,
her pain,
but it's not about the nail.
The video,
I don't think it's produced for this purpose.
If it is,
it's genius.
Psychologists and marriage therapists,
and even pastors,
use this video to talk about
the differences between men and women.
But I'm not here to talk about that this morning,
how helpful or unhelpful
that video might be in that arena.
But sometimes in life,
we might see something that's so obvious,
a story like this,
so obvious,
but it's not about what we first think.
On the surface,
there's an obvious problem here,
but there's a lot more going on.
This morning,
it's not about the burial plot.
It's not that at all.
It's not about the death of Sarah.
It's so much more than that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get it.
It's not about the nail.
But what about the nail?
After all,
Sarah's death and burial
is what it talks about most
in this chapter.
In fact,
there's very little reference to God.
Apart from his speaking,
there's very little reference to Abraham.
But it's not about the burial plot.
It's not about Sarah's death.
Or her faithfulness.
It seems cut and dry,
but this morning,
we're reminded through this story
of God's faithfulness
to his covenant promises.
Now, sometimes when we say that,
that's a lot of Christian mumbo-jumbo.
And we throw that out at a lot of things.
But what I mean narrowly this morning
is God is going to do
what he said he's going to do.
That's what this story is about.
And that's something that we all struggle with
if we're honest.
We struggle thinking about,
is God really hearing me when I pray?
God, do you really care about me?
Do you really care about my marriage?
When you said you would never leave or forsake me,
did you really mean it?
We've all thought those things,
if not this morning,
but definitely this week,
or definitely in this life.
And yet we're left to navigate this world
where we don't feel his presence.
And that's what brings those questions about.
I'm here,
and I desperately want to be married.
And I'm here alone.
Or I'm so lonely
because my wife has gone,
or my husband has gone.
Or you promised to bless me
and take care of me,
and it doesn't seem like it.
In fact, it seems like a struggle
where I will never get out of this spot.
I read the Bible,
and yet my kids have not come to faith,
and they've walked away from you,
and everything that I tried to do for them.
My husband or wife
is not the person that I want them to be,
not the person that you have called them to be.
And I don't know what to do with that.
Or if I'm honest,
I'm honest about myself.
I say that I'm a Christian,
and I don't pray.
I barely follow you,
if I'm honest.
How are you blessing that, Lord?
Those are all the questions
that swirl about in our minds,
and sometimes they even come out of our mouths.
Those are the same kind of questions
that the followers of God have always had.
And yet God has promised
to do what He said He was going to do.
We have that question.
Abraham has that question.
We know that Sarah had that question.
God, are you going to do
what you said you were going to do?
They laughed because they thought,
surely it can't happen.
We can't have a child.
We can't have a home.
They thought it would never come,
and that is where we find ourselves this morning.
The promise of a child has come to fruition.
But what about the promise of the land?
This morning, it's not about the nail.
It's not about Sarah's death.
It's about God being faithful to His promises.
Even when it seems like all is lost,
God is still faithful.
When time has run out,
when there's not an answer,
God is still faithful to His word.
This morning, the story has three kind of sections.
One, Sarah dies.
The second is the negotiation
for Sarah's burial plot.
And the third is the significance of all of this.
It's like, what does it mean in Sarah's actual burial?
First, let's turn our attention
to Sarah's death this morning.
If you have your Bibles, your bulletin,
let's look back at verse one.
If you remember, before we get there,
we stepped away from Romans momentarily.
And we did so that we could zero in
on the life of Abraham
because there's so much in Romans
that's about Abraham,
which seems kind of odd, right?
It's this ancient figure,
and we're talking about faith and justification
and all these big categories of sin and righteousness.
And yet here we are with Abraham.
Not so righteous
if we really think about Abraham and Sarah's life.
Think about all that Sarah has endured.
And here is the chapter that we get.
All that she's endured,
even at the hands of Abraham.
Or as another has put it,
she is a woman in Genesis of heroic proportions
who endured a hard life
trapped by her husband's stupidity.
I think if we're honest,
that is a really good description of Abraham.
And so when we think about righteous Abraham,
we have to remember,
Abraham, he's kind of a dummy.
And yet,
there's so much in common with Abraham and us.
If you remember,
the last time we talked about Sarah
was at the beginning of chapter 21.
And even there,
she was silent.
And here,
she's the only wife of a patriarch
who we know how old she was
because she's that significant.
And time is spent on Sarah
because she's that important.
Not just in the life of Abraham
to correct all of his stupidity,
but in the life of Israel.
And our clue is in verse 1
where it tells us how old she is.
She's the only patriarch's wife
that's named with age.
Verse 2,
and she dies not where?
Not in the peaceful confines of her home,
but in a foreign land,
in Canaan.
That's our first clue
that something's up.
Hebron,
which is the name of the city
that we know it as today,
and even in Abraham's time,
there's some interplay.
Kirith Arba
is the other name of that city.
Hebron is the Jewish name,
which we'll return to momentarily.
Abraham's response to all this,
of course,
he's sad.
And it's captured in verses 3 and following.
He weeps,
he mourns,
and all those things that accompany it.
We know very little, though,
about what he actually does,
but we can assume
it looks like something like this.
Him messing with his hair,
ripping his clothes,
cutting his beard,
scattering dust,
fasting,
all the normal things.
Abraham is undone
because he has lost his wife.
But there's a bigger problem at play.
He has nowhere to bury his wife.
He has no land.
He has no home.
If you remember,
Abraham was the guy
that was called out of his home
to go into this new land,
to follow God,
and everything would be okay.
Except for,
we have a big problem.
His wife's just died,
and he has nowhere to bury her.
What are you going to do, Lord?
What are you going to do, Abraham?
Look at verse 4 with me.
What does he do?
He says,
I am a sojourner and foreigner among you.
Give me property among you
for a burying place
that I might bury my dead
out of my sight.
He goes to the Hittites
and asks them,
I have nowhere to bury my wife.
In fact,
I have no rights to land.
I can't do anything.
I have no place,
no home.
What am I going to do?
I can't take her
to the local cemetery
because I'm not even
from this land.
Abraham has no rights.
He's a foreigner.
Now often that thought,
the problem is lost on us
in modern society.
I won't ask for a show of hands,
but how many of us
grew up in Colorado Springs?
Not that many.
Colorado, not that many.
How many people live
on the land
on which they were born?
I'm guessing
there's even fewer.
Maybe one or two.
Even if that's the case,
as we move away
from this idea
that we are locked
into our land,
that the land
is where our home is,
as we move about,
as we take different jobs
than our parents
or grandparents did,
we lose our connection
to that land.
We lose sight
of the fact
that we are tied
to land.
We're more mobile.
We're more city-like.
We work in factories,
or maybe not factories,
but we provide services
to people.
We're not tied
to the land.
And that's all
well and good.
But when we come
to a passage like this,
there can be a disconnect.
And we think about,
why is there such importance
on the land?
Abraham,
why do you care
so much about the land?
It seems like
an ancient idea.
It's not as ancient
as you think.
When I was a kid,
I would hear this story
about this Presbyterian
in the Carolinas.
And it's a pretty famous story.
And this man
had gone off to war.
And he had gone
for many, many years.
And he'd been
a prisoner of war.
And when he came home,
and he was released
after many years,
he was coming home.
And as he was crossing
the border,
he ordered the carriage
to stop.
And when he did,
he got down,
and he knelt
on his knees,
and he kissed
the land.
Not just because
he liked dirt
in his mouth
or churred rock
or asphalt
in our day,
but because
he was connected
to the land.
And he thought
he would never
see it again.
The problem of land
is not as ancient
as we think.
But it
compels us
when we have
a right understanding
of how land
forms us
and shapes us
to yell out,
South Carolina,
my mother.
We might never
do that,
but we do things
that are similar
if you think about it.
Maybe you've gone
off to college.
I had a friend
in college
that grew up
on a farm
in South Carolina.
And he took
a mason jar
and he took land
from the farm
and he put it
on his desk
in his dorm room.
So he brought
the farm
with him.
We might not
do that,
but we might
take dirt
or sand
from the beach
and put it
in a glass jar
to remember
things that have
happened.
Or we might
put dirt
in a Ziploc baggie
and put it
in our rucksack
and take it
around the world.
No family
graveyard
back on the farm
to bury
his wife.
Abraham
is a man
without a home.
He has nothing.
He's a sojourner,
a foreigner,
a pilgrim,
and Christian,
oh yeah,
by the way,
you are no different
than he is.
You're marching
on
and yet
this world
is not your home.
This world
is not our home.
In fact,
we're going
to a land,
to a place
that has been
prepared for us
that's greater
than anything
on this earth.
John Bunyan
in Pilgrim's Progress
talks about
the allegory
of the Christian life
and there's a character
in there
named Mr. Valiant
and when he's
introduced to the reader,
Mr. Valiant
says this,
I'm a pilgrim
and I'm going
to the celestial city.
Not to the land
of this world,
but the land
that is to come
and there's a tension
as a Christian.
If we're missing
that tension,
then there's a problem.
The tension is
we live in this world
but we're going
to a land
that is not
right here.
We have to remember
that
and if there's
no tension
in that,
then there's
a big problem
because we might
love the things
of this world,
our family,
our friends,
our bank accounts,
the ease
that we have
in this life,
the joys
that we have
in this life
and yet we're
called to love
where we're going
more than this world.
Christian,
Abraham was a pilgrim
and so are you.
Remember that.
Abraham,
the sojourner,
has made the ask
though to the Hittites,
give me land
to bury my wife
for I'm a pilgrim.
Now let's turn
our attention
to the negotiations
for that land.
The line of argument
here can be
a little difficult
to follow
and it takes up
most of the chapter
but we're going
to spend some time
trying to understand
what's going on.
Why is Abraham
trying so hard
to get this land?
Look at verses
five and six
with me as I read.
The Hittites
answered Abraham's request
and they said this,
Hear us my lord,
you are a prince
of God among us.
Bear your dead
in the choicest
of our tombs.
None of us
will withhold
from you
his tomb
to hinder you
from burying your dead.
Seems really nice.
The Hittites,
they're good guys.
They want to help
a guy out in need.
They recognize
what Abraham
has done to them.
They seem like
gracious businessmen.
Hey, you're in distress.
Let me help you out.
They say take
the nicest tomb
that is,
the nicest tomb
that you can find.
But really,
are they that kind?
Are they trying
to help him out?
They are
and they're not.
They want to help him out
because they see him
as an okay guy,
but they don't want
something to happen.
They don't want Abraham
to own one square inch
of land in Canaan.
Nothing.
If he buries Sarah,
he might come and visit,
but he has no claim,
no rightful inheritance,
and the landless pilgrim
now becomes
a rightful citizen.
You see the problem there.
If they give him the land,
if he buys it,
then he will have a right
to land in Canaan.
Okay, round two starts.
Abraham begins
his second round
with this.
Not just an acknowledgement
of their kindness to him,
but really a match
in their flattery.
He bows before them
and he says
that he might bury Sarah
in their land,
but then Abraham
asks specifically
for this one piece of land
from Ephron.
Look at verse eight.
He asks Ephron
for the cave of Malchpia
in verse nine,
which he owns
and is at the end
of his field.
He wants that cave
at the end of the field,
and the fascinating part
about this is
that we know
where that cave is
to this day.
It's in Hebron,
and you can go visit it,
except there's a building
built over it,
but we know
where that is.
And Ephron,
who is actually sitting
with all the Hittites,
answers him
where all the other people
could hear.
Verse 10 tells us
that they were sitting
at the gate of the city.
If you remember back
to what we've read
so often in Genesis,
Abraham and Lot
interact with all the leaders
of the city
at the gates.
And he's sitting
and he says,
how about this?
What about if I do this instead?
Verse 11.
No, my Lord, hear me.
I give you the field.
I want to give it to you instead.
I'll give you the cave too.
And when I do that,
I give it to you
to bury your dead.
And he did all this
in front of all these people.
The text keeps repeating
this over and over.
Everyone can hear.
Everyone is around.
And then to the final round
in verse 12.
Abraham bowed down once again
and says to them,
before the people of the land,
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.
Abraham doesn't take this charity
that's offered to him.
He says,
I want to pay for it.
And what does Ephron respond with?
Jump down to verse 15,
or 14 and 15.
He answers Abraham like this,
my Lord, listen to me,
a piece of land
worth 400 shekels of silver.
What is that between you and me?
Bury your dead.
But Abraham doesn't take
the offer of kindness.
Instead, he keeps negotiating.
A price has been named now.
And be careful here.
We might think
in the American conception
of bartering
that he's starting
with naming his price
and they're going to keep going.
I don't know if that's
what's going on here.
Ephron saying,
it's worth this price.
And Abraham,
it is that important to Abraham
to have a burial plot.
He doesn't negotiate with her
or with him
for Sarah's burial place.
He says,
basically, I'll have it.
He names the price
and Abraham agrees to pay it.
And then he's measured out.
But that doesn't really answer
the question of
why is Ephron selling this land?
It seems kind of weird.
Like, why so much detail about this?
Ephron offers the land
for every reason
that we do things
in modern American life.
We try to avoid taxes, after all.
If I give him the land,
then I don't have to pay taxes
if I've already given him the cave.
If I sell it to him,
I don't have to pay taxes on the land.
Abraham will pay taxes on the land.
Of course, that's better for me.
Nobody loves paying taxes.
And Abraham says,
you have yourself a deal.
The real question is,
why doesn't Abraham
take the generosity?
If they're offering
to give it to him for free,
why doesn't he take it?
It's because there's no such thing
as free lunch.
They might offer him the land,
but they're going to get it back one day.
If he takes the land
and he hasn't paid for it,
then they can have it back one day.
It would essentially be on loan to him.
So he wants to have it as his own.
And all along the way,
we've had these curious hints
of people that hear
and the presence of these people
or even the trees.
Listen.
The hearing of the people
in verse 13.
The hearing of the Hittites
in verse 10.
Verse 16.
The hearing,
the hearing again and again.
It's this deal has been struck
and it's absolutely certain
because all these people
have heard this deal.
It's like they spit in their hands
and shook on it.
It's a certain thing.
There's no question.
There's no going back.
Abraham is a full-fledged owner
of a piece of Canaan.
And that's significant.
Abraham now has a place
to bury his dead.
The scene in chapter 23
shifts from these negotiations
to the actual burial of Sarah.
Look with me at verse 19.
After this,
Abraham buried his wife
in the cave of the field
of Malchpia,
east of Marmurim.
That is Hebron,
in the land of Canaan.
And the field
and the cave that is in it
were made over to Abraham
as property,
as a burying place
for the Hittites.
Abraham has a resting place
for his wife Sarah.
But not just for her,
but for him,
his child,
his grandchildren,
as we'll be reminded.
And as he buries her,
we see this curious repetition
of this theme
that now,
in verse 20,
the field and cave
that were in it
belonged to Abraham.
He owns a piece of Canaan.
It's been ratified
by the Hittites.
It's not given to him,
but he owns it.
Sarah is not really
the focus of this chapter.
But Abraham having a piece
of land in Canaan
is the point.
Yes, Abraham loved her.
He mourned for her.
He was sad.
He lost her.
But it's not about Sarah.
It's about the land.
It's a fact that Genesis
returns to again and again.
Chapter 25,
chapter 49,
chapter 50.
They read something like this.
They rehash everything
and say,
his sons,
Abraham's family,
his descendants
were buried
in the cave of Malchia
in the field of Ephron,
the son of Zoar,
the Hittite.
The field that Abraham
bought from the Hittites.
Abraham was buried there.
Sarah was buried there
again and again.
The significance
of this passage
is that Abraham
now owns
a piece of land
in fulfillment
of God's covenant promise.
God said
he would give them Canaan
and now
God's people
have a part of it.
Remember Lot?
Remember Abimelech?
Remember Isaac?
Isaac.
All those things
were centered on
the business
that God was doing
in the lives
of his people.
And even before that,
remember what he had said
to them.
I will establish
my covenant
between me
and you
and your offspring
after you.
And I
will
throughout the generations
bring an everlasting
covenant
to be your God,
to be,
bring you offspring
after you.
And I will give it
to you
and you
and your offspring
after the land
of your sojournings,
all that land
of Canaan
for an everlasting
possession
and I will be
their God.
This promise
that has
this simple
fulfillment
in the life
of Abraham
in weird circumstances
where he goes
and buys
a cave
and then a field
to avoid taxes
is the fulfillment
of what God
had promised
to do.
He now
owns
a piece
of Canaan.
Not in the way
that Abraham
thought
or not in the way
that Sarah
thought
but God
has moved
and fulfilled
his promises.
If you think about that,
that's the life
of Sarah.
Sarah never thought
she would have
children.
Sarah never thought
that she would have
a nation
out of her
as numerous
as the sands
on the seashore.
She never thought
any of that would happen.
She never thought
that she would have land.
But the end
of that promise
in Genesis 17
that I will be
their God,
that God will be
with them,
that was the thing
that she was
to hold fast to,
to cling tightly to.
That's what God
promised to do.
That's the North Star
as we navigate
this life.
That God
will be there.
That he will be
your God.
I will be
your God.
When we feel
like he's distant
or he doesn't hear us,
I will be
your God.
When we feel
like that he
doesn't answer
our prayer,
I will be
your God.
When we struggle
through if children
are walking away
from the Lord
or a husband
or a wife
isn't as they should be
or they've left us,
I will be
your God.
God is faithful
to all those promises
despite what we can see,
despite if we have
a home or not.
I will be
your God.
There's one
nagging problem
in this text
that we haven't dealt with.
The promise about land
might have fulfillment
in Abraham's
bartering
and getting a good deal
on a burial plot.
However,
he doesn't own
all of Canaan,
does he?
He owns a small
slice of it.
The promise
about land
was for all of it,
all of Canaan.
But God
is not done yet.
At the end
of the life
of Sarah,
God has work
yet to do.
At the end
of the life
of Abraham,
the promise
is that
is not finished.
God
has work
to do.
The promise
of descendants,
the promise
of an everlasting
covenant,
and even here
with all
of the land
of Canaan
is not
yet finished.
It's fulfilled
partly
in buying
a burial plot.
But one day,
all of that
land of Canaan
will belong
to Abraham's
descendants.
It points forward
to a day
when that land
will all be theirs.
But it's not
really about
that land.
It's about
the heavenly land
to which
all those people
that follow Christ
are marching
towards.
And even now,
we're sojourners
and foreigners
in this land.
But we are longing
for that day
when we will rest
in that land.
Not on a burial
plot,
but in the land
fully and finally.
And our ticket
is punched.
Our
certain hope
that we have
is bought
and secured
by the blood
of Christ.
That promise
that was made
all the way back
in all those
pages before
is Jesus.
Jesus.
And that land
is the hope.
That land
is really heaven.
So it matters
not
whether we walk
and we don't see
the effects
or don't feel
his presence,
but the sure
certain hope
that we have
in Christ
as we march
on to that
celestial city,
to the land
that we were
promised.
And all of it,
not in part,
but all of it.
Christian,
you are not
made for this world.
You are a sojourner
and you are a foreigner
in this land.
May we be
reminded
of that.
May we have
relief
in this life
from our sin.
May we
escape
punishment
from that
as we dwell
in the land
for all eternity.
Will you come
to him
even now?
Let's pray.
Lord,
we thank you
for the reminder
that we have
this morning
that we march
on to a certain
hope,
a sure hope,
that we march
on to a land
not in part
but in whole.
And Father,
may we look
back
to a person
like Sarah
and think
of her sure
and present
hope
in your promises,
in your fulfillment
of those promises.
And may we
lift up
our praise
to you
that you are
covenant-keeping,
a promise-fulfilling God.
We ask this
in Jesus' name.
Amen.