Genesis 23:1-20 Promises in the Cemetery

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filseck and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis.

If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

I'm Don Filseck, I'm the Lead Pastor here, and just remember to fill out the connection cards you received when you walked in. If you fill one of those out and turn it in a black box back there, just a good way to get connected here.

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, you know, 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.

The goal is that everybody kind of has one of those. That's good. And then, also remember that any offerings that you choose to give, go in the black box back there as well. We don't pass an offering plate.

And 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.

And so anything pertaining to that would be what that's used for. And just a word on the Expansion Fund to kind of update you on where we're at, you can actually see what has been given to the Expansion Fund by taking advantage of the e-cast that's sent out.

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 how that Expansion Fund is going. But 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.

Did you recognize that? So we don't have a financing option in front of you. And actually, just a point for prayer and for information to you, 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. And so we know that nothing is a mystery to God, but that's the way that that's happened. And I want to just point out, many people have been asking me, so when are you gonna break ground?

When are we gonna break ground? And I don't know if that's just like kind of a casual way that you talk with a pastor, you know, you know, there's hopes that we're gonna build a building or something.

So, but let me just tell you that you will know before we are going to break ground. So it's not like you're gonna show up one Sunday, and there's gonna be a sign at the door that says, no, we're meeting in our new facility, and you're like, what happened?

And when did they build that? And so you're gonna know. And the order of kind of events moving forward, for curious minds, the order is that we're, we continue to receive funds. We've got this, we've got this fund that's open.

We're not, we're not begging you for money. We're not trying to sell seats or sell bricks or anything like that. The fund is there. People have been giving to it. We're grateful for that. And you can, again, see what the, see what the result of that is.

But 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.

There will be a vote on whether or not we will take a financing option or not. And so that's gonna come down to a congregational vote according to our bylaws. Before we would go into any debt, take on any debt, we would, 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 gonna continue to raise funds and look for other options. And so that's kind of the way forward.

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.

I want to point out that the, even, even talking about a building can be very confusing because it's not that we want a building so that we have, you know, 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.

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

And so you look around and you say, well, there's empty seats here. But I, I'm, I think I'm on pretty firm ground in saying that come fall, we're gonna be wall to wall again here. A lot of people are gone every week.

Every week I can point to 20 or 30 people that are missing because of they're on vacation or they're gone or they're doing this or that and they're planning on being back. So just be in prayer about that.

The Irony of Promise and Delay in Genesis 23

Now,.

Switching gears to the text this morning, Genesis chapter 23. 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, right?

What are the two things that are sure in life? Death and taxes. Everybody knows that. That's, that's right. And Sarah, we find in this text, Sarah, the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac dies in Genesis chapter 23.

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

Bury his wife.

Okay, is there irony in the way that God works? In the way that, the way that God fulfills his promises, there's irony in it. God works in mysterious ways and by mysterious, I mean sometimes ironic. He promises a man and his barren wife that they will become a great nation and they have one child.

And.

Then he promises them a great land and then waits until after they are dead to give it to them. He promises to make their offspring a blessing to all nations and he waits centuries to complete that promise through his son, Jesus Christ.

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

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.

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

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 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. 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. 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.

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. We are going to read Genesis 23, the entire chapter, so follow along in your Bibles.

Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land, and he said to them,. 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,.

Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to Ephraim in the hearing of the people of the land, Ephraim answered Abraham, Abraham listened to Ephraim and Abraham weighed out for Ephraim 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 Ephraim in Machpelah, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites before all who went in at the gate of his city.

After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field of Machpelah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, we need your presence here with us. We desire to connect with you this morning and although we connect through what is in 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, Father, but in this text we see you shining through and once again is 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, 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 or 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.

We thank you for the focal point of Jesus Christ and for the gift that we have in him and we see all these promises in the 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 God who is worthy of all of our worship and I ask this in Jesus name, amen.

I encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 23 again I mean we're asking for God to speak to us through his word and I think that the best thing that you can do is just keep that open in front of you, Genesis chapter 23 and get comfortable, as comfortable as possible, at a funeral.

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

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

Like 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, 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. Who is the author of Genesis chapter 23? Does anybody, can anybody say? Moses? Moses? And that's important for us to identify that it's Moses and not Abraham writing this.

As you read through it, you'll, I mean, we'll get there here in just a second. Why is it important? 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?

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. We have three brief verses of mourning over her. We don't even have a eulogy. Does anybody, the word eulogy, by the way, is a compound Greek word that just means good word.

It's a good word about a person's life. Good word. Eulogy. Not a eulogy, but a eulogy. And some of you are already there in your mind. You know you were. It's a eulogy and it means, it means good word.

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, doesn't spell out her life or the good things that she did or any of that kind of stuff. Right off the bat, it's three verses of mourning, 17 verses dedicated to obtaining a tomb for her.

That seems strange?

Three verses dedicated to the mourning of Abraham and then 17 verses dedicated to how he obtains a tomb. What do you think was significant to Moses in this account? Was it Abraham's mourning for Sarah?

Not really.

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

He got a really good deal. It's a super nice cemetery. You know, anybody thinking that would be a, that would be like creepy conversation, like really bizarre. Okay, you'd be like, calling the police now.

So, I mean, that's kind of what the text looks like for us. It's like all of this time and energy poured into the plot and the coffin and not much into the mourning. We start out learning that Sarah lived 127 years.

127 years were her years. Do you think about these as your years? Do you think of your life as these years that are yours? They are. They're given to you by Almighty God. 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? Hers were 127. Ours are variable. We don't know how many years were given, but I love how it's possessive. 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? 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?

Some are thinking too long to some degree. Yeah, maybe too long. I don't know. It depends on how well your mind stays intact and stuff. It might be kind of cool, but a pretty long life. She had gone through a lot, including many years of barrenness.

We know that, right? 90 years of barrenness. 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. It can be very difficult, but I want to highlight that in their cultural context, it was almost a death sentence in a way.

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

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

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

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

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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

He's looking messed up. Now we know, if you study Abraham, maybe you went, how many of you went into this study of the book of Genesis thinking 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. Any of you, 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. Did he always do things right by his wife and family? He's just rock solid family man. We don't get that picture of him in scripture, right? So we see that he messed up often, but I believe that he genuinely loved his wife.

Do you guys know that your spouse, did you already know this? Your spouse is not perfect. Did you know, your spouse, 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, but it's true, Sharon.

No, but you know what I'm saying? I mean, we know, and if you've been married at all, you know exactly what 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 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.

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

I think he's genuinely a broken guy. He is, he is weeping over the loss of his wife. He is deeply grieved at this. He and Sarah, I just put this in perspective. I mean, to live 127 years, he's even older than her.

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 Valley of Sodom.

All this stuff that happened in their lives, this is what we have recorded, is pretty intense. 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 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. Now it's important for us to remember, Abraham doesn't own any land. He's got no place to call his own. 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 then we find out in context that it is the Hittites, what's translated Hittite here. And he's been occupying their land with their permission, apparently.

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 Heth, or Heth, H-E-T-H.

Some, it depends on how you pronounce the Hebrew, but most people will call it Heth. And that's actually a direct translation of this, we call it Hittite in the English text, but it means sons of Heth is the actual words that are used in Hebrew.

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

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 are, you know, worry about who these Hittites are, because there's a massive empire that comes into modern, what is modern day Turkey during the biblical era, a huge massive group called the Hittites, they're mentioned later in scripture, and that's a different group altogether than these Hittites.

People are like, oh, the Hittites weren't in this area during this time. Well, the sons of Heth were, not the formal empire of the Hittites. But Abraham begins in humility before his host, 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, 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.

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 Negev.

He's moved over to Egypt before. He's, you know, 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. 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?

There are missionaries around the world that are in that situation where what they want most of all is a stamp of permanent residency. Abraham does not have that at this time and so he is a sojourner in their land.

Does not have that, 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 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 getting what I'm saying? So it's a little bit more of a, 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.

It 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.

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. 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 I could get something out of it as long as I'm, 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. The conversation between these two, we're going to see it's, it's ultimately starts off between Abram, Abraham and the city officials in the gate and eventually ends up being a conversation between him and an individual 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 like shifty kind of game playing that goes on in negotiations.

Do you know, any of you know what 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 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. 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. There is also in this text though, the interplay of the kindness shown to a man who is grieving. There's the, there is the sense in which the Hittites are, 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. 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. 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 Abraham and so they correct him. He's identified himself as a sojourner and a foreigner. And they say, no, no, no, Abraham, you're wrong.

You identify yourself as a sojourner and a foreigner, but we identify you as a Prince of God. How was Abraham known in his community? What was he known as in his community? As a Prince of God Almighty.

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.

There's richness in that interaction. How many of you noticed that wherever Abraham goes, people recognize God's hand on him?

Have you seen that in the text?

Abimelech saying, God blesses you in all that you do. Now here are the sons of Heth. We recognize you as a Prince of God, blessed by him. Abraham is a shining example of what happens when God grabs a hold of a human life and gets him or her.

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

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, 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. 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. I mean, the town gate, the city gate.

And they say, yes, Abraham, you can use any of our tombs that you want. We won't let anybody deny you the right to use their tomb. But this offer of use is not what Abraham had in mind. Now you need to understand just a little bit about burial practices.

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.

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? 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. Are you getting what I'm saying? There's a difference between using it and having it as his possession. 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. And they're saying, you can use any one that you want. Well, we know that burial, even up into the 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. 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 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. 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 Ephraim, the Hittite, can I have his cave, then, if you're saying this.

Now, the cave is called 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.

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