Promises in the Cemetery

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

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This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the

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Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.

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Here's Pastor Don. I'm the

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Lead Pastor here, and just remember to fill out the connection cards you received when you walked in.

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If you fill one of those out and turn it in the black box back there, just a good way to get connected here.

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There's a place to put prayer requests or comments on the back. Greatly appreciate those. If it's your first time with us and you fill one of those out and turn it in, and we just also ask that you please take one of those coffee mugs, and I would just want to extend this.

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I know that I say that if it's your first time here, but some of you maybe have been going here a while and you've never taken one of those. You can take one too.

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The goal is that everybody kind of has one of those. That's good. Then also remember that any offerings that you choose to give go in the black box back there as well.

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We don't pass an offering plate. Anything marked for Expansion Fund, either on the check or on the envelope, is going to go into a separate account, which is ultimately the end result of that is a building on the property that we purchased.

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Anything pertaining to that would be what that's used for. Just a word on the Expansion Fund to kind of update you on where we're at.

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You can actually see what has been given to the Expansion Fund by taking advantage of the e -cast that's sent out.

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If you've shared an email address, then we send that out, and there's a financial report that's connected with that on a regular basis, and you can see how that Expansion Fund is going.

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Regarding building progress, we were hoping to have some financing options before you for a vote somewhere in mid -summer, and I don't know if you've noticed that mid -summer has already passed.

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Did you recognize that? We don't have a financing option in front of you. Just a point for prayer and for information to you.

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The financing options that we were working with have completely fallen through, so we're back to square one, looking for options for financing and trying to think that through.

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We know that nothing is a mystery to God, but that's the way that that's happened. I want to just point out, many people have been asking me, so when are you going to break ground?

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When are we going to break ground? I don't know if that's just a casual way that you talk with a pastor, there's hopes that we're going to build a building or something, but let me just tell you that you will know before we are going to break ground.

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It's not like you're going to show up one Sunday, and there's going to be a sign at the door that says, no, we're meeting at our new facility, and you're like, what happened?

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When did they build that? You're going to know. The order of events moving forward, for curious minds, the order is that we continue to receive funds, we've got this fund that's open, we're not begging you for money, we're not trying to sell seats or sell bricks or anything like that.

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The fund is there, people have been giving to it, we're grateful for that, and you can again see what the result of that is.

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Then we're looking into options to finance a portion of the building expenses we will bring, any financing option that we have that we think is tenable, we'll bring that financing option to the church.

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There will be a vote on whether or not we will take a financing option or not, and so that's going to come down to a congregational vote according to our bylaws.

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Before we would go into any debt, take on any debt, we would seek your counsel and your direction on that first, and so the elders would bring that before you, and then pending the result of that vote, we will either begin to build or we're going to continue to raise funds and look for other options, and so that's kind of the way forward.

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If you have any ideas, suggestions, questions, or potential options for financing a new building or funding a new building, please let us know, and then also please continue to be in prayer for this significant step in our ministry to this community.

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I want to point out that even talking about a building can be very confusing because it's not that we want a building so that we have some kind of a massive presence in this community or a super awesome facility or something that just points to God or something like that.

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Ultimately, we're looking for a useful building for ministry to happen and for God to be worshiped in and ultimately that we might be able to expand and continue the expansion of the kingdom of God in this community.

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You look around and you say, well, there's empty seats here, but I think I'm on pretty firm ground in saying that come fall, we're going to be wall to wall again here.

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A lot of people are gone every week. Every week I can point to 20 or 30 people that are missing because they're on vacation or they're gone or they're doing this or that and they're planning on being back.

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Just be in prayer about that. Switching gears to the text this morning, Genesis chapter 23.

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We are at a funeral this morning. How many of you like going to funerals? That's super exciting. Not really. There are two things that are sure in life.

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What are the two things that are sure in life? Death and taxes. Everybody knows that. That's right.

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And Sarah, we find in this text, Sarah, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac dies in Genesis chapter 23.

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But the one who has been promised the entire land of Canaan, there's irony in this, who was promised that his descendants would possess the entire land of Canaan?

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Abraham. He's given that promise and he does not even have enough property to bury his wife.

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Is there irony in the way that God works, in the way that God fulfills his promises?

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There's irony in it. God works in mysterious ways. And by mysterious,

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I mean sometimes ironic. He promises a man and his barren wife that they will become a great nation and they have one child.

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And then he promises them a great land and then waits until after they are dead to give it to them.

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And he promises to make their offspring a blessing to all nations and he waits centuries to complete that promise through his son,

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Jesus Christ. So how many of you know that God's timetable is not the same as our timetable? Have you experienced that?

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How many of you know that God has a bigger picture in mind than we're able to take in in our short little lives?

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That we could spend our entire lives trying to focus in on what is God doing in this generation? What is God doing here? And he's got a much more massive, big picture of blessing for his people that goes so much beyond what we are able to take in.

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Our God holds all of history in his hands. That's the God that we are worshiping this morning. That's the

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God we've gathered together to talk about. The God who holds all of history in his hands. He sees the beginning and the end and every point in between at the same time.

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I can't wrap my mind around that. But he sees the beginning and the end and every step in between. Even if he doesn't complete his promises in the same way that we would, he is a

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God who does indeed keep his promises. He is a God orchestrating history to the ultimate point, which is restoration, his ultimate worship, and ultimately everything brought under his glory and for his glory and for his honor.

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Moses the author of this text, though, so we come to a funeral and he seems to skip the funeral. He is so intrigued by the purchase of the grave for Sarah that he seems to give a fairly heartless account of her passing.

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But the hope represented by the purchase of this grave, Moses caught it and saw something there that maybe doesn't hit us right away, but there's more going on in the text than meets the eye.

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So open your Bibles to Genesis 23 if you're not already there, page 14 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.

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We are going to read Genesis 23, the entire chapter. So follow along in your Bibles. Sarah lived 127 years.

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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.

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

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

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Abraham, hear us, my Lord, you are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs.

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None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. Abraham rose and bowed to the

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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

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Ephraim, the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns.

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It is at the end of his field for the full price. Let him give it to me in your presence as a property for a burying place.

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

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Know 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.

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I give it to you. Bury your dead. Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land.

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And he said to Ephraim 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.

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Ephraim answered Abraham, my Lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver.

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What is that between you and me? Bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephraim and Abraham weighed out for Ephraim the silver that he had named in the hearing of the

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Hittites, 400 shekels of silver. According to the weights current among the merchants. So the field of Ephraim and Machpelah, which was to the east of memory, 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

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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 memory that is

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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

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Hittites. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, we need your presence here with us.

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We desire to connect with you this morning. And although we connect through what is a pretty obscure text about Sarah's passing and it's somewhat of a funeral, somewhat of a purchasing of a plot and trying to figure out what all of this means for eternity and for our lives,

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Father, but in this text we see you shining through once again as the one who keeps promises, the one who is faithful despite the fact that generations come and go, despite the fact that our lives are short and we ought to number our days and consider our role, that we do have a part to play and we glorify you in that and we rejoice that you have given us life and you give us breath and you give us function and purpose in this life to glorify you and bring honor to you.

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But ultimately we know that your purposes extend so much further than my life, than our lives, than even the life of Recast Church or our nation or our state or our country.

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Father, there are so many things that you are doing and you have the big picture in mind of bringing all of this to the end for your honor and glory.

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We thank you for the focal point of Jesus Christ and for the gift that we have in him and we see all of these promises in the

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Old Testament pointing to that birth that we now look backwards to and rejoice in and his ultimate sacrifice for us and I ask that our hearts would be lifted up in joy and rejoicing because you are an awesome

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God who is worthy of all of our worship and I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Encourage you to keep your

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Bibles open to Genesis chapter 23, again, I mean we're asking for God to speak to us through his word and I think the best thing that you can do is just keep that open in front of you,

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Genesis chapter 23, and get comfortable, as comfortable as possible, at a funeral.

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We are talking about a funeral here and how many of you know that funerals can be one of the most uncomfortable things in our culture?

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Would you agree with me on that? They're a fairly uncomfortable thing and they're a thing that people want to move on quickly.

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We don't linger on funerals, do we? We don't like to, as a culture, meditate on them, think about them routinely, regularly.

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As a matter of fact, you might even accuse somebody of being kind of dark in their mind if they were meditating on funerals all the time, right?

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That might be an accusation, like, okay, that's a little twisted, that's a little weird that you're thinking about death all the time or something. But the fact of the matter is, as we get to the end of this text,

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I'm going to point out some things that funerals ought to teach us. I think it's important to start at the beginning by identifying who's writing this.

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Who is the author of Genesis chapter 23? Does anybody, can anybody say? Moses? Moses?

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And that's important for us to identify that it's Moses and not Abraham writing this. As you read through it, we'll get there here in just a second, why is it important?

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If this was the record of the death of Sarah by somebody who was close to her in life, I think it would be reasonable that we would call into question whether or not that person writing this even loved her, right?

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I mean, you read it and it's just kind of like, it's a very heartless account in one way of the death of Sarah.

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We have three brief verses of mourning over her. We don't even have a eulogy. Does anybody, the word eulogy, by the way, it's a compound

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Greek word that just means good word. It's a good word about a person's life. Good word, eulogy. Not a eugugly, but a eulogy.

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And some of you are already there in your mind, you know you were. It's a eulogy and it means good word.

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And we don't even see a eulogy of her in the text, okay? You look for it and it's like it doesn't spell out her life or the good things that she did or any of that kind of stuff.

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Right off the bat, it's three verses of mourning, 17 verses dedicated to obtaining a tomb for her.

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That seems strange? Three verses dedicated to the mourning of Abraham and then 17 verses dedicated to how he obtains a tomb.

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What do you think was significant to Moses in this account? Was it Abraham's mourning for Sarah? Not really.

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There's something that is significant going on behind the scenes that it is the obtaining of the tomb that Moses was most concerned about.

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That's kind of where he goes with this. We'll see why here by the end of our text. But imagine that you run into a friend whose wife has recently passed away and you maybe haven't seen him in a while and you're like, man, how are you doing?

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And he launches into an explanation of how he purchased the plot for her and the coffin.

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He got a really good deal. It's a super nice cemetery. Anybody thinking that would be a creepy conversation, like really bizarre?

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You'd be like, calling the police now. That's kind of what the text looks like for us.

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It's like all of this time and energy poured into the plot and the coffin and not much into the mourning.

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We start out learning that Sarah lived 127 years. 127 years were her years. Do you think about these as your years?

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Do you think of your life as these years that are yours? They are. They're given to you by Almighty God.

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These are the years that you have been numbered on the earth. However many he's given to you, there's a number to them, right?

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Hers were 127. Ours are variable. We don't know how many years were given, but I love how it's possessive.

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127 were her years. Are you owning your years? We're going to get there here by the end of the text, but are you owning your years?

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They're yours. They're yours that God has given to you certainly for a purpose. But how many think 127 years is a substantial number of years to live on this planet?

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Too long to some degree, yeah, maybe too long. I don't know. You know, it depends on how well your mind stays intact and stuff, and it might be kind of cool, but a pretty long life.

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She had gone through a lot, including many years of barrenness. We know that, right? 90 years of barrenness.

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Now in our culture, the inability to have children, the lack of the ability to have children is a certainly hard thing for a person to face.

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It can be very difficult. But I want to highlight that in their cultural context, it was almost a death sentence in a way.

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It was like the community would look at a person who was unable to have children as cursed by God.

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Like God doesn't love you. That would be said to Sarah in public. Like that would be the way that people would actually treat her like an untouchable or like off to the side or the margin of society.

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Whispered in the marketplace, and as she walks by, look, there she is. God hasn't blessed her with a child. And she endured how many years like that?

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90 of her 127 years were lived like that. Like I said, we don't have a eulogy, so we don't have like a biography of Sarah here, but how many of you think that we've got to know her a little bit from the text of scripture?

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The stories, the accounts, if you've been here during the messages, we've got some snapshots of her life.

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We know that at least she had been incorporated into two harems by the boneheaded decision of her husband and making some dumb mistakes and dumb decisions and even sinful self -preservation on his part.

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Something that she endured in life. We know that she was very beautiful. The text tells us that, that her outward appearance was beautiful.

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And we know that she had a feisty and I think I can even go so far as to say vindictive streak. You've seen that in her life, that she could just lash out and get back really quick.

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So we know some of the things about her. We know some of her failures, we know some of her successes, but ultimately she died at Hebron.

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And Abraham, her husband, is very sorrowful. The words used for mourning and weeping in verse two encapsulate all the traditional mourning things that would happen in the ancient culture.

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And so whenever we see the words mourning and weeping in association with the ancient culture, there are certain traditions that went along with that.

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So there was the tearing of the robes in mourning. There was sitting down in dust and ashes and throwing up dust and ashes and wailing.

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And there was actually, you'd have a fire and you would take the blackened coal, the charcoal, and you would put that all over your face and all over your head.

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Not just because, hey, it's dirty time, okay, it's time to get messy. It's because you were trying to symbolize what's going on in your heart internally.

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You're showing that physically. I think there's something cool about that in a way. You are actually identifying to everybody else in your culture what's going on in your heart.

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You're showing that. So I guess maybe they were a little bit more artsy back then or something, or they were more in touch with themselves or with their emotions, but they're actually demonstrating that physically what's going on on the inside.

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And these things were traditionally done in the presence of the deceased, and that's why in verse two we see him go into the tent to mourn.

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He's in her presence and he has torn his robe and he is wailing and weeping and he has put dust and ashes all over him.

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He's looking messed up. Now we know, if you study Abraham, how many of you went into this study in the book of Genesis thinking

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Abraham was, like you were like, Abraham is awesome, he's a super stellar superhero of the faith, and then by the end of this you're kind of going, this was one jacked up dude.

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Any of you there, this study has changed your opinion of him a little bit? He's a little bit broken, a little bit messed up, a lot like you and I, we've talked about that.

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Did he always do things right by his wife and family? Just rock solid family man. We don't get that picture of him in scripture, right?

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So we see that he messed up often, but I believe that he genuinely loved his wife.

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Do you guys know that your spouse, did you already know this, your spouse is not perfect? Did you know, your spouse,

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I'm guessing your spouse loves you and is not, you just found that out. Sorry to break that to you in front of everybody.

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But it's true, Sharon. No, but you know what I'm saying, we know, and if you've been married at all, you know exactly what

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I'm talking about. Your spouse is messed up and broken. I wouldn't encourage you to look over at him and say, see, see, I told you so. But we are, we're messed up, and yet I believe that Abraham really sincerely loved

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Sarah. And I mean, I think we all know that we even don't love our spouses or those people around us that we ought to love the way that we want to.

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We want to love them better than we do. Would you agree with me on that? You actually have a longing in your heart to do a better job and you're just, you're failing because you know what, we're messed up and sin has its way with us at times and we're not giving ourselves over to the

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Holy Spirit and things like that. Abraham's an example of that. Messed up in his family but loved his wife.

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And here he doesn't need to, I don't think the text is explaining that he had to muster up some tears for a public showing.

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I think he's genuinely a broken guy. He is, he is weeping over the loss of his wife.

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He is deeply grieved at this. He and Sarah, just to put this in perspective, I mean, to live 127 years, he's even older than her.

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I mean, how much life had they done together? Just tons of life lived together with following the promises of God, getting, you know, ripped out of their context in Haran and moved on to Canaan and then all this stuff that happened in Egypt and back and forth and watching their nephew in the

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Valley of Sodom and all this stuff that happened in their lives, this is what we have recorded, is pretty intense.

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Not to mention all of the mundane, everyday things that they endured in life together. But now, the text moves on, he's there, he's mourning in front of his dead wife and Abraham needs, in a very practical way, a place to bury

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Sarah, according to custom. And so he goes to the town gate, the city gate, close by, probably right in Hebron, and he approaches the owners of the land he has been occupying.

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Now it's important for us to remember, Abraham doesn't own any land. He's got no place to call his own.

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He does not have the deed to anything, okay? So he is completely and utterly dependent upon the blessing of another group of people, and we find out in context that it is the

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Hittites, what's translated Hittite here. And he's been occupying their land with their permission, apparently.

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But Genesis 10, 15, if you're going to go back to who are these Hittites, it might be good to know that just briefly. Genesis 10, 15 tells us that Canaan's second -born son was named

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Heth, or Heth, H -E -T -H, it depends on how you pronounce the

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Hebrew, but most people will call it Heth. And that's actually a direct translation of this, we call it

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Hittite in the English text, but it means sons of Heth is the actual words that are used in Hebrew.

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So would it make sense to find descendants of Canaan in the land of Canaan, like, right?

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Like Canaan had sons, and they moved to Canaan after the dispersion, and now we find that the sons of Heth are there in Canaan.

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Many have confused these, and the only reason I'm bringing that up, and I doubt many of you are even interested or would study this deep, but when it really comes down to it, people worry about who these

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Hittites are, because there's a massive empire that comes into what is modern -day Turkey during the biblical era, a huge, massive group called the

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Hittites, they're mentioned later in Scripture, and that's a different group altogether than these Hittites. People are like, oh, the

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Hittites weren't in this area during this time, well, the sons of Heth were, not the formal empire of the

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Hittites. But Abraham begins in humility before his hosts, he comes to them in the city gate, he identifies himself immediately by two words, two significant words, he calls himself these things, he says,

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I'm a sojourner in your land, and I'm a foreigner in your land. The first word shows the temporary nature of his occupancy there.

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He's just temporarily, he's a sojourner, he is on his way through. He spent most of his life now in the area of Canaan, but we also know that he's been moving around, he's had an establishment in Hebron, Mamre, Beersheba, the

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Negev, he's moved over to Egypt before, he's routed kings up in the north, he's been all over the place in this land, but he does not have permanent residence in this area.

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Now raise your hand, does anybody here know maybe a missionary, a missionary family who has to leave their country on a regular basis to renew their visa to get back in because they don't have permanent residence?

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There are missionaries around the world that are in that situation where what they want most of all is a stamp of permanent residency,

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Abraham does not have that at this time, and so he is a sojourner in their land, does not have that.

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But the second word is even a more derogatory word, so sojourner is like I'm just kind of temporarily moving my way through here, but to call himself a foreigner shows that he doesn't presume to be an insider, as a matter of fact the way that that could be translated is

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I am an outsider, I'm not in your clan, I'm not one of you, you haven't welcomed me to be one of you, and he's not one of them, he doesn't have all the rights and protections of one who belongs to the clan of the sons of Heth, you get what

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I'm saying? So it's a little bit more of a strong term, I'm a sojourner and I'm a foreigner, and now he says, but my request to you, my request to you is for property to bury my dead, probably appears before them all tussled and ashen from mourning, they identify immediately the markers of a man who is mourning, he never once identifies to them who has died, but they may already know,

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I would assume that they have some indication that it's now his wife who has passed on. And I want to point out that this is likely all occurring in the same day, just because of the nature of the way that bodies were prepared and all of that stuff, this is all going on the same day, he sits down to mourn, she's died that morning, he rips his cloak, puts the ashes on, heads to the city gate to procure a tomb for her.

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The request to give him property is not grubbing for a gift, he's not trying to milk this morning and be like, hey, well maybe

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I could get something out of it, as long as I'm sad here, he actually proves himself ready to pay, and not just ready to pay, but ready to pay full price for this field, what he's asking for here, and give me some property, give me a cave to bury my wife, is the formal way of letting his request be made known in the city gate.

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The conversation between these two, we're going to see, it ultimately starts off between Abraham and the city officials in the gate, and eventually ends up being a conversation between him and an individual,

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Ephraim. It's a subtle conversation, it's nuanced, with the interplay of a business transaction, if any of you have ever been involved in a business transaction where you're not trying to play your cards, and it's kind of like, there's this shifty kind of game playing that goes on in negotiations, do any of you know what

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I'm talking about? It's like, you don't just come right out and say, I'm willing to pay $500 for this, you've got some negotiations going on, and so you can see that in the text, there's like a subtle, like Ephraim's pretty good at this,

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Abraham, not so good, but then again, he's mourning his lost wife, and so he doesn't even hardly negotiate at all, but he does press in a little bit deeper for exactly what he wants, and we'll see how that all plays out.

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There is also, in this text though, the interplay of the kindness shown to a man who is grieving there is the sense in which the

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Hittites, the sons of Heth are looking at him going, this man is grieving, let's give him what he wants, but then also, this is a very significant dynamic going on that we could easily miss, and that is the land transaction occurring between the clan of Heth and a foreigner, one who is indeed a foreigner, one who is a sojourner, one who is not part of them, and so it's no small deal what's going on.

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Land was held onto fiercely during this era as an inheritance for your children, as a way of passing on legacy and things like that, and so if anyone in the clan of Heth gives up land to Abraham, then they are welcoming a foreigner to now be their next door neighbors forever.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? And so this is, in essence, they're saying, yes, you can be one of us, you can be a landholder in our community and in our area, but these sons of Heth know

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Abraham, and so they correct him, he's identified himself as a sojourner and a foreigner, and they say, no, no, no,

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Abraham, you're wrong. You identify yourself as a sojourner and a foreigner, but we identify you as a prince of God.

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How was Abraham known in his community? What was he known as in his community? As a prince of God Almighty.

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That's pretty significant, and not only that, they say, you are a prince of God among us. A way of saying, we benefit from your presence with us, we like you being here, you are among us and that's a good thing.

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There's richness in that interaction. How many of you noticed that wherever Abraham goes, people recognize

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God's hand on him? Have you seen that in the text? Abimelech saying, God blesses you in all that you do.

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Now here are these sons of Heth, we recognize you as a prince of God, blessed by him.

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Abraham is a shining example of what happens when God grabs a hold of a human life and gets him or her.

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If our hearts have been caught up into the plan of God and he has us the way that he wants us, then we will shine for him.

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If he has us, we will shine for him. I want to point out Abraham's wife has died, and they still, these sons of Heth, still count him blessed by God.

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They still see God's hand on him. A life with God doesn't mean that we avoid funerals, but it does mean that we are reflectors for God's glory even when funerals come, even when dark times are there.

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We are still shining and reflecting by the nature of who God has made us to be in Christ. They now offer the use of the choicest of their tombs.

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He's speaking with the elders of the city, the clan leaders, if you will, and they are all gathered together there in the town square,

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I mean the town gate, the city gate, and they say, yes, Abraham, you can use any of our tombs that you want.

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We won't let anybody deny you the right to use their tomb.

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But this offer of use is not what Abraham had in mind. Now you need to understand just a little bit about burial practices.

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I don't want to get into a lot of detail on this, but a tomb was used over and over again. So a person would be laid to rest in a tomb until eventually, there's just bones there, the bones would be moved into a little stone box, and another person would be laid to rest there.

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And eventually another person, and another person, and another person. So they were reused. So the idea of, I mean, how many of you are thinking, use of a tomb sounds kind of permanent to us?

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Does it sound kind of permanent? Like, I'm not going to take that one back after you've used it, right? But for them, this is an offer to use the tomb, but it is not an offer to give the tomb first.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? There's a difference between using it and having it as his possession.

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And that's not what Abraham had in mind. When he asked, when he made the request, he said, give me one. I want one for my own possession.

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And they're saying, you can use any one that you want. Well, we know that burial, even up into the

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New Testament times, happened in a cave the family owned, usually owned their own tomb. And they would visit the family and would all be buried in the same cave, like I just explained.

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And a temporary grave for Sarah that Abraham may or may not be able to visit in the future, where he may not himself be buried, was not what

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Abraham was asking for. And so Abraham shows gratitude for their generosity. He rises and he bows before them, but also continues to go a bit deeper on this.

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We find out that he had a specific cave in mind. A man named Ephraim had a cave on the edge of a field and he asks the leadership to ask

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Ephraim the Hittite, can I have his cave, then, if you're saying this. Now, the cave is called

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Machpelah. Machpelah means folded in Hebrew, just a word that means folded, but it's led people to speculate that it's probably a two -tiered, like a top entrance and a lower entrance to this cave, folded over the top of, you know, so you can get there from the top or the bottom.

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What we're going to have going on here are legal proceedings. I've mentioned that this is going on in the city gate where business goes down.

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And he appeals to them as witnesses in verse 10. So we know that he's identifying them as the witnesses.

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Ephraim was present during this time. So, you know, like if I want to talk to Mike Hogeboom back there, sorry to use his illustration, but I'll just throw that out there.

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So I want to talk to Mike Hogeboom, I usually just talk to Mike Hogeboom. But what's going on here is he's in a room full of these

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Hittites and he addresses the leadership and says, could you seek and speak on my behalf to Mike about this cave?

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Well, Mike's back there listening going, okay, dude, you can have my cave or whatever. But he's going through proper channels.

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That's what's going on here. There's a way to address this correctly and that's what's going on in context is, sure,

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Ephraim is present in the room at the time that these negotiations are going on, but he doesn't presume to speak directly to Ephraim, but rather speaks to the leadership first.

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And now in verse 11, Ephraim graciously offers to not just give the cave, but the field as well.

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He says, you know, you're asking for the cave on the edge of my field. Take it all, bro. You can have it.

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Okay, it's all yours. Now look at verse 11 with me for just a second. He says, this is the words of Ephraim.

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Know 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,

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I give it to you. Command, bury your dead. He's showing his motivation in this.

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Ephraim is moved by Abraham who is in a state of mourning and he says, you know what? You know, bury your dead, dude.

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You can have this cave and the field. Take it. He recognizes the need and Ephraim is apparently wealthy enough to let the field go without significant impact to his well -being.

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He can let the cave go. He's okay with this. Now Abraham seems to be offered material blessing wherever he goes.

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Have you seen that? Like every place that Abraham goes, somebody's going to give him. Say, hey dude, take my gold. Take my silver. Take my camels.

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Take some servants. Here, take some stuff, right? Have you seen that in the life of Abraham? Just everywhere he goes, it's like people are giving him stuff.

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But be sure to not lose sight of the fact that all of this interaction is happening in the context of Abraham suffering the loss of his wife.

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This is not an unemotional day for Abraham. This is not a day of rejoicing and being given gifts. This is a day of suffering and heartache for Abraham.

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The choice of God on a person's life does not make us immune to suffering. That we've been chosen by God is a delight and a joy.

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Would you agree with me on that? It's an amazing thing, but it doesn't make us immune to funerals and suffering.

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But listen to me carefully. The choice of God on your life does ensure his blessing on you.

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Now, does this seem contradictory? I just said, you might suffer, but you will be blessed. Those things seem kind of a little,

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I mean, being honest, does that sound a little contradictory? Kind of like, well, what's the comfort in that then? Because I might go through hard times, but I'm going to be blessed in it.

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Well, I would suggest to you that anyone who has gone through difficult times without God and then later gone through difficult times with God can testify and has now understood how we can be going through hard times and counting our blessings simultaneously.

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Have you been there? Where you recognize the blessing. Like Job. Job is the quintessential example in scripture of a man who lost it all, right?

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Everything. His family failed him. His property failed him. His crops failed him. His house has failed him. Everything failed him.

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And who did not fail him? He clung to God in all of that, in all of that difficulty.

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And for the believer, you can strip everything away. Well, I hope I'm not calling this down on my life, but you know, hey, it is as it goes.

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You can lose it all and the cross is still the same. His blessing still remains for the person who has lost everything, health, and all of their wealth and all of their stuff.

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And we can still praise God because of the blessing that we have in Jesus Christ that cannot be taken away from us.

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Glory to God. Regardless of how difficult life can get, how much suffering there can be on this planet, he is still faithful and we are still blessed if we are in him.

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I believe that Ephraim's offer is genuine. He's not just kind of, this isn't just a little bit of a play.

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He's literally saying, you can take it, Abraham. You can have the field and the land.

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It's a real offer, but Abraham rejects that offer.

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He wants to pay for this land. He wants to pay a fair price so that all will know that it indeed belongs to him.

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I think there's a fear in him that this is not going to be mine come 10 years down the road or when these elders die off and the new elders for the city are elected or however they get into that position.

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And nobody's going to have any record that this is my field and it's not going to go on. Not only that, but culturally, if he accepts this gift,

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I don't even know that in reality there are gifts given with strings attached. Have you ever experienced that?

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And he recognizes that this is, in their culture, this was a strings attached kind of gift. Dude, bro,

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I gave you the field and the cave. Now you need to do me a favor, right? And so he's going to be tied indefinitely to Ephraim the

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Hittite if he doesn't pay fair price for this property and he knows it.

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So once again, he bows in respect and gratitude. Thank you for the offer. I really appreciate it. But he presses in deeper for the purchase of the field and the cave.

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Okay, you want to sell them as a lump sum. It goes together. You don't want to get rid of that. You don't want to sell the mouse without the keyboard.

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Okay, I'll buy them both. Okay, I'll just take them both off your hands. And so that's a chintzy illustration compared to how much the price is on this.

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That was weird. But he says, yeah, I'll pay fair price for both of them.

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Now, Abraham surely has the means to pay. Would you agree with me on that? What you know of the life of Abraham, do you think he has the means to buy this cave and this field if he wants to?

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Yes, we've seen him as extremely wealthy. And I believe that he's actually come into the presence of the elders in the city gate with the means of payment.

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Now, we carry these little plastic things in our pocket that have the potential for a lot of buying power, don't they?

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Scary things. Cut them up. No, maybe think about cutting them up. Some of you probably need to. But you carry this little thing.

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And I want you to know that payment in that era and that time wasn't carried in your back pocket. So, I mean, don't picture

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Abraham standing solo in front of these guys. He has come to do business. He has means of payment with him.

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And I mean, when we're talking 400, he's going to measure out of his wealth. So when you know he's brought some wealth, he's going to measure out of his wealth that he has present with him, 400 shekels of silver, about 400 pounds, if you will, of silver.

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This is a ton of, not literally a ton, 2 ,000 pounds. But this is a lot of silver. And he measures it out of what he already has in his possession.

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So he's brought, he's come to do business, okay? He's going to buy this right here and right now.

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He needs it to him quickly. Now, I just want to point this out. This is distracting myself just briefly.

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But verse 14, really significant. I didn't memorize that, make that a life verse. No, not really.

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But whoever was dividing up these verses dropped the ball on verse 14. That's all I'm going to say about verse 14. Why divide it there?

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I have no clue. And now we get a funny backhanded asking price for the property.

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Efren is good at playing this game. And he's finally like, I'm going to get the price down here. I'm going to get it out there because this guy is driving for a purchase.

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And so I'm going to just say it. But he says it in that kind of sneaky way. He says, come on, Abraham. What's a piece of property that's worth 33 .753182

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million dollars between the two of us? I mean, he almost gets it down to dollars and cents, right? He's like, what's, he's kind of specific here.

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He's like, what's the, what's that between us? Now, I think the statement is authentic. I think he's still genuinely saying, dude, dude, you're mourning.

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You're suffering. Just take the property. This is like, I mean, to put it in terms of what's going on in this transaction.

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This is like Warren Buffett asking Bill Gates for a place to bury his late wife. And, and Bill says, dude, dude, bro, 33 million.

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What's that between us? Just take it and bury your wife. You know, I mean, that's, that's kind of like what, I mean, and they could, they could have that conversation, couldn't they?

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I mean, that's, that's legitimate. Okay. They could, they could talk like that. But now the value of the property has been expressed.

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So, Abraham wires the money from his iPhone and the deal is done right there. He just, dude, dude, dude, and he's done. Well, actually, we know he measures it out according to the official measurement of the merchants during that time.

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Showing us that commerce was already being regulated early on. I mean, this is ancient culture and commerce is already regulated by, by standardized scales and weights and stuff like that.

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The transaction is immediately ratified to, according to the ancient laws of commerce.

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They're in the city gate and it's done. Abraham has received the cave and probably a very substantial field and even a wooded area with many trees.

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Many have made a big deal about Abraham overpaying for this property. Have any of you ever heard a sermon that emphasized how

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Abraham is overpaid for this? I actually just was listening to a sermon on this text a couple weeks ago and I actually heard where the primary message was, men, love your wives extravagantly like Abraham did.

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And some of you wives, I just got your attention. Some of the words used in this sermon were actually diamonds and nice cars and lavishness and things like that.

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Like that was, that was the application. And you women are like, preach it now, Don. Bring it, bring it now, now, now bring the thunder and just land this thing right now.

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We could just pray and call it a conclusion. And, you know, one of the most unloving things you could do maybe is buy diamonds for your wife and the neglect of, you know, going into debt and things like that.

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So just, you know, should you love your wife extravagantly? Yeah, within your means.

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Of course, says one of the wives. Of course, yeah, duh, yeah.

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But what's presupposed in all of this is, okay, so people want to emphasize 400 shekels of silver is a lot of money.

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50 shekels is what David is going to eventually pay for the temple mount. So the place where the temple goes is 500 shekels.

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So people put that in perspective and go, oh my goodness, he was just out of his mind, bonkers in love with Sarah. And just that was, he just, or maybe he was making up for not treating her well in life.

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And so he gets a really nice, you know, Taj Mahal kind of thing. Did you know that the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum for a guy to his wife?

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That huge structure in India and Delhi. That was a dude who built that for his wife as a place to, a resting place for her.

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Pretty crazy. But all that presupposes that this is a small field, right? How big is this field?

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Is it worth 400 shekels? Is Abraham being snowed here? I don't think he is. I think he's getting a really good deal.

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I think he's getting a significant, huge landholding in the area of Canaan.

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There's some indicators for that, that this place is big. Usually transactions like this, we have recorded transactions on parchment of scrolls and engravings and stuff that date back to this era where you can actually identify a very similar gate transaction between property owners in this.

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And it's very similar. The interplay between them, the nuances, all of that stuff. But what is almost always consistent in all of these documents is that they list the number of trees.

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Now, how many of you think in an arid place like this, the trees would be a commodity? You'd kind of like a little bit of shade.

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You'd like a little bit of coolness. You know, all that stuff. They would list the number of trees in the property. What do you notice is absent from this?

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They mentioned trees. They don't even list how many. I think because there's so many trees, they haven't numbered them.

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This is a huge chunk of property here that he is obtaining, and they haven't even counted the trees.

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Look at verse 17. So the field of Aphron 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, again, a

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Hebrew phrase meaning big, okay, through its whole area was made over to Abraham.

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He's not just getting, you know, just a little five -acre plot here. He's getting a substantial land holding in the land of Canaan.

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So there's indicators that this is big, and not to mention that there's already a tomb, a cut tomb on the property that was already identified and useful for a tomb, which would have been money as well.

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So Abraham now buries Sarah and lays her body to rest in the cave of Machpelah on the edge of what is now his substantial land holding.

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And the text tells us where is the land holding? In the land of Canaan, in the land of Canaan.

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Very significant. Abraham was promised what? The land of Canaan. He's been promised that.

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And now he has what would amount to basically being a first fruits, a seed of the promise of God given to him during this era and during this time, saying,

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I've promised you this field, and Abraham by faith has now put his roots down in the land of Canaan.

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He now owns property. Verse 20 lets us know that we haven't been imagining Moses as distant from the funeral of Sarah, but his point in this account is that Abraham now has property.

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Look at verse 20 with me. This is the conclusion of the account of the death of Sarah, okay?

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According to Moses. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a bearing place by the

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Hittites. That's the conclusion to a funeral. Do you see what Moses is focused on in the text?

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What is he concerned with? Abraham has land in the land of Canaan.

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He's been given a portion of the promise. And it's not going to just be a tomb for Sarah, but it's a perpetual burying place in the land of Canaan.

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Abraham by faith has tied his family to the land that God has promised to him. And at the risk of spoiling the stories moving forward in the book of Genesis, some other people are going to die along the way.

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I know, surprise. But not just Sarah, but Abraham, their son

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Isaac, and their daughter -in -law Rebecca, their grandson Jacob, and their granddaughter -in -law, is that a word?

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Leah, are all going to be laid to rest in this same cave. Sign, a symbol of God's faithfulness down through the generations that he has given them this place.

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How many of you think that would be an amazing archaeological find? Any of you into archaeology or history or any of that stuff? This is just me geeking out, okay?

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Apparently nobody else, and nobody wants to admit it if you are, so that's apparent. It would be pretty cool to find that cave.

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Would that be pretty cool to find the remains of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and all of them?

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Well, we think we know the location. This is kind of incumerous, but we're pretty confident that we know the location, but it is located beneath a mosque.

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Okay, so it's beneath a mosque, and it's beneath a mosque that is now occupying a building that was built around the time of Herod the

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Great. So around the time of Jesus, Herod had this huge structure built, and now since then, a group of Muslims have moved in and made it a mosque.

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And so, can you imagine the red tape to try to get under there to see what's under that? Yeah, that's not...

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Good luck archaeologists on that one, trying to find out what's under there. There are two things at play in our text though.

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Two things that are going on kind of simultaneously, one below the surface, one obvious on the surface.

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The first being that Sarah has died, and so I think a few application points about funerals are in order.

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I'm going to be attending a visitation this afternoon, and then a funeral tomorrow. One that I had written a sermon before I even knew that I was going to be going to a funeral this week, and a very, very sad thing that's happened in our community.

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But in our text, there's a funeral. Abraham buries his own wife. He mourned.

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He was full of sorrow. And the fact of life on this fallen planet is that there will be funerals.

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Did you know that? How many of you have attended the funeral of somebody that you love? Have you been there?

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And how many of you have really, if you're honest, you acknowledge there's going to be more? There's going to be more of the same. It's not a fun thing to consider.

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But whenever we encounter a funeral, we should learn to number our days. Our culture is quick to turn its gaze away from funerals, but I think it is a wise person who allows the reality of death to be a tutor, a teacher for our souls.

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The funeral is a teacher that shows us a few important things, and I'm going to give you five things that I think a funeral should teach us, that God wants to teach us from funerals.

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Number one, funerals teach us that we are not God. How many of you are glad that there's a

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God who goes on past you, that sustains things, that is going beyond the extent of your small life?

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That He can make promises like, the gates of hell will not prevail against this church.

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Can you make that promise? We have no control over that. I don't know what happens to Recast Church after I die.

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You know what I'm saying? I don't know what happens to it while I'm alive. I don't have, I don't have, I have very limited control, but God is consistently there moving much further than us.

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No matter how much money you make in life, no matter how much fame or notoriety you gain, we know that we are not in control of our lives.

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And I don't say that to be dark or discouraging, but rather to point us to the reality that there is a God, and death teaches us that we are not as big a deal as we might lean towards in this life.

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The second thing that funerals teach us is that you can't take it with you. Did you already know that? Can't, you know, the whole, you know, there's all kinds of cliches about this.

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There's no, there's no U -Haul trailers behind hearses and, you know, all that stuff. And the whole, he who dies with the most toys still dies.

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And, you know, all of those kinds of things. It's obvious, but a very important lesson to learn from funerals.

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We can spend a lot of our energy and time and resources pursuing things that don't really matter in the end.

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Is that true? Is that something we ought to learn? The third thing funerals teach us, that sin has real world consequences.

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Sin is not some theological or theoretical concept that we find from the pages of Scripture, but it meets us where we live in death.

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Sin is a break in the way that things were meant to be. And through one man, sin came into the world.

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And through sin came, can anybody finish it? Death. Through sin came death.

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Sin leads to death. And a funeral is a reminder of the truth that sin is a real problem.

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It's true and it's real. The fourth thing funerals teach us, to value our time. If we're listening, if we're paying attention, they will teach us to value our time.

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There are so many things warring for my time. I would guess that there's a couple things warring for your time.

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Are there? A couple competing things in your life that are trying to pull you this way or pull you that way?

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How about the new TV show that you want to watch this summer? Or this or that? Or your new devices?

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Or are there some things warring for your time? Would you maybe admit there's some things warring for your time that don't have a lot of value when it's really said and done?

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Do you agree with me on that? People are starting to look a little shifty in your seats. Do you acknowledge that there's some things like that in your life that pull at you that you go, when it's all said and done,

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I'm not sure that that's going to matter at all. If I was laying on my deathbed, I'm not sure that I'd be like, man, I wish I had watched more episodes of fill in the blank.

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Okay. Man, I wish I had spent more time on my iPhone, ignoring my wife.

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Man, I wish I had spent more, more evenings kicked back eating popcorn, watching the tube.

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You know, if I had to do all over again, I'd do a lot more of that. Are you getting what I'm saying?

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Time is a precious commodity and the brevity of life demands a careful assessment of our use of the limited time that we are given.

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And so, think about this question. Is the focus of your time, God has given you blank number of years.

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They are your years. You are living them, hopefully intentionally and not accidentally.

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But is the focus of your time used for the building of God's eternal kingdom? Now, I think what some people can hear churches and pastors say is then, well,

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I ought to quit my employment and just become a pastor or a counselor or a missionary or something like that. The things that you do can have eternal value if you do them unto

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Christ. You can be an engineer for the glory of God. You can be a banker for the glory of God.

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You can be a salesman for the glory of God. You can be a UPS driver for the glory of God. You can be a teacher.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? So don't hear me say that only what you spend in spiritual time, boy, what

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I ought to do is quit my job and just read my Bible and pray every day. Well, there's more, there's more nuance than that, isn't it?

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But ask yourself, what is, what have I been made to do? And then how do the things that I incorporate in my life fit into that calling, the purposes of God on my life?

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He's given me, He has left me here for a reason. I still have breath in my lungs for a purpose.

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What is it? Do you know what you were designed and made to do? If you don't, I'd love to talk with you.

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I know Kyle would love to talk with you. Any of the elders would love to just sit down and just kind of mine down a little bit deeper. We're not talking about quitting your job and becoming a missionary, although I believe that some may eventually do that.

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My prayer is that some do that from this congregation, that you see that that's what God has called you to. But the question is for everyone, every single one of us.

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How has God designed you? And then how are you using your time for His eternal kingdom? What's going to last beyond you?

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Now, I would suggest that a lot of that has to do with people. A lot of it has to do with the investment in neighbors and co -workers and people around us and family.

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How do we invest our time? The last thing funerals teach us is that our hearts are laced with a longing for a place with no goodbyes.

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We hate goodbyes. I hate goodbyes. And some of you are saying it depends on who's leaving.

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We come to funerals with grief and sorrow because it is a goodbye, right? Even when it's a believer, it's a goodbye for at least some duration in our hearts long for something else.

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Do you sense that in your heart? A longing, Ecclesiastes says that God has placed eternity in our hearts, a longing for eternity, a longing for that which doesn't end.

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And it's a reality in every human heart that there's a longing for the eternal. And yet we live temporary lives here.

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We yearn for a place with no more departures and God is preparing just such a place for His children.

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A place with no more goodbyes. Any of you excited about that? Looking forward to that place where there's no more goodbyes.

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Yes, come soon, Jesus. But as much time as I'm spending on applying the funeral,

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Moses might be disappointed with me because he didn't focus so much on the funeral. Something deeper is happening than just a funeral in our text.

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Even at one of Abraham's darkest hours, God is planting a new seed of the promise and Moses didn't miss it.

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He saw it as the significance of this event. He caught it enough that it even eclipsed the death of Sarah in his account.

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God has given Abraham a down payment of the land his descendants were to possess by his promise.

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He says here, here's a down payment of the property. This burial ground is a seed of the promise planted in the ground.

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Abraham has been promised that God would stick with his offspring, that he would multiply them significantly.

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He will bless them with a great land that will preserve them. And it will be a land that will sustain them until the time that one of their offspring comes and will bless all nations.

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I think we miss the point of the promises of God to Abraham because we see it as so central to just Israel.

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And so we get so focused. It's like, I think we have a mindset in the Old Testament that God just kind of wanted to try out a nation.

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He's like, yeah, I'm going to give it a shot and I'm going to try a nation and see if they'll bless me. So he picks

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Abraham and Israel and all this stuff and I'll give them a good land and I'll bless them. So maybe that will entice them to love me more because I'll give them a good land and all that.

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No, no, no, you're missing it. Everything in the Old Testament is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

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And so the promise to Abraham is, I'm going to make you a great nation as a shelter for my offspring, for the one who is coming.

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And then I'm going to bless them with a great land to protect them from the turmoil of the era in which they live.

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They will have sustenance and they will go on by my blessing and by my hand. That the land will be prepared when the one comes.

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There will be a land and there will be a nation from which he can come. And the amazing thing is that the

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Messiah, Jesus Christ is born. Again, there's no irony, there's no coincidence.

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He is born 13 miles away from the place where God gave this down payment to Abraham.

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13 miles, think about the scope of this planet and 13 miles away is where Jesus is born.

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You get that? The promise laid down in land to Abraham saying,

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I'm going to preserve your people with the purpose of bringing forward one who is going to save all the nations, who's going to be the savior, if you will.

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And I'm going to make a nation and then I'm going to give them a great land. And here's part of the land, Abraham, you can have it right now, it's there.

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And it's going to be for your family moving down forward until the one comes. Now, how many of you know that there's some struggle in the

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Middle East over land? Did you know that? There's a little bit of a battle over land. Who does it belong to and all this stuff?

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Well, I would suggest to you that the promise of the land has already been fulfilled. If you get so caught up in this, the land belongs to Israel, blah, blah, blah, blah,

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God promised it to them and all that stuff. He did for the purpose of bringing forward a Messiah. Has he done that?

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Has he fulfilled the promise of the land? He has. He has brought forward his savior.

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And we live in a privileged time of being able to look back at the fulfillment of these amazing promises to Abraham, and it is an awesome, amazing thing.

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That almost got political for just a second. I didn't, I didn't, but it almost got there.

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Ultimately, he has blessed us by his sacrifice. He lived a sinless life, died on the cross as a substitute for you and me.

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Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that one of his offspring would be a blessing to all nations and even down to the nation of the

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United States of America, even down to where we are in history. And so if Jesus is your source of blessing, that is, acknowledge him as king, you have asked him to save you, then please join together in remembering his sacrifice for you as we take communion together.

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If you're not sure that he is the sacrifice for you, you're here, you're kind of checking things out, you're trying to figure that out, then

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I'd encourage you to pass the juice and the cracker by, just let those go. There's no shame in skipping that. But I want to encourage you to look into Jesus if you're in that situation today.

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Come and talk with me afterwards if you have questions about how you can be forgiven and restored through the offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you are a

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God who keeps promises. Many of us in the room have experienced what it means to renege on promises, to give those up and to not follow through on that which you have called us to do.

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Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts to recognize this amazing sacrifice.

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Father, that as we go throughout this week, that we would bring honor and glory to you by the way that we walk and that we would, we know that we can't be worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but it's because he has died for us that we now in turn have the power to live a life for you.

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Father, as we think about blessing and the difficulties of funerals and the difficulties of dark times in life, and I know some here are set against it, they have really hard times in life right now and they're going through the thick of it.

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Father, I pray that you would help us to number our blessings, to count the awesome weight of the cross and salvation in you and recognizing that you are indeed preparing a place for us where there are no more goodbyes and to hold tenaciously to the blessings that you have given to us and to count those every day, even if it is just that we move ourselves to thank you for the cross, even as we are here and taking the cracker and the juice.