Genesis #28 - The Gospel According to Abraham #18 - "The Legacy of Faith" (Genesis 25:1-11)

The Physical Legacy of Abraham’s Death and Burial

For one last time. We come to the sermon series that we have been in for several months now in the life of Abraham that we have called the gospel according to Abraham. And if you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, take them and turn with me to Genesis chapter 25.

Genesis chapter 25. Genesis chapter 25 and verses 1 through 11. If you grabbed one of the red Bibles we give away, that's on page 19. Revelation chapter 20, not Revelation, Genesis chapter 25 and verses 1 through 11.

Genesis 25 1 through 11. If you are able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's word as we read this portion of scripture together. Revelation chapter 25 beginning in verse 1.

Brothers and sisters, these are God's words. Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah, and she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Midan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Jokshan fathered Sheba and Dedan.

Dedan's sons were the Asherim, Letashim, and Leomim. And Midian's sons were Ephah, Ephah, Hanuk, Abedah, and Elder. All these were sons of Keturah. Abraham gave everything he owned to Isaac. But Abraham gave gifts to the sons of his concubines, and while he was still alive, he sent them eastward away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.

This is the length of Abraham's life, 175 years. He took his last breath and died at a good old age, old and contented, and he was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre in the field of Ephron, son of Zoar, the Hethides.

This was the field that Abraham bought from the Hethides. Abraham was buried there with his wife Sarah. After Abraham's death, God blessed his son Isaac, who lived near Be 'er, Lahai, Roi 'i. The gospel is a flower phase, but this Word of our God will abide forever.

Join with me as I pray, ask for the Lord's help, and we come to this portion of His Word. Well, Heavenly Father, we thank you once again that we have this privilege to come and to open up your Word and to hear you speak to us as your people.

And so, Father, we would ask that as we round the corner on this part of our study in Genesis, looking at the life of Abraham, we pray that we would be receptive to the lessons that your Word would seek to teach us.

We pray that your Spirit would grant illumination. He would shine light upon the Word so that we can understand what you have for us in this message. Father, it's our custom to pray for other churches in our valley, and we take a moment to pray for Gold Valley Fellowship.

Thank you for Pastor Dave and the work that he is doing up there in Gold Hill. Pray for the continued blessing on that work there. Pray for their intern who is serving there as well as getting training for ministry.

Pray for that body, that they would continue their faithful outreach to the people of Gold Hill. Pray for the preaching of God's Word, that your Word would bear fruit and increase among them. And we pray that for us even now as we open up your Word here.

We ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. Please be seated. Well, we come to the end of something of an era, it feels like. 18 messages, almost five months, given breaks and what have you, since we began.

We come to the end of our study in the life of Abraham. And I don't know how you've felt about this series. I can only speak for myself as I've been able to spend each week preparing these messages. I hope that as we've walked through Abraham's life, as we've seen his flaws and his victories, as we've seen his faith and his failures, my hope is that you've learned something about what faith looks like in real life.

What does it look like when, as one preacher I used to listen to used to say, when we put shoe leather to the experience that is being God's people? I hope that as you've read this, you've picked up on the reality that this is no Hallmark Christmas movie.

I have a family member who will remain nameless to protect the guilty who loves Hallmark Christmas movies. If you've ever watched one of them, I've watched one in my life and I plan to keep it at one.

If you know them, they're just bad movies. I love movies, they're just bad. Like contrived drama, unrealistic expectations, nice almost like saccharine solutions that don't really require any work, and it's just ridiculous at the end.

Well this, that's fine for a Hallmark movie if you choose to watch those things, but that's not how the life of faith goes. I hope you've gathered as we've been looking at the life of Abraham that the life of faith can sometimes be messy, it can be complicated, and frankly at times it's like walking in the dark trusting that God does have a map and a flashlight while he's telling you to follow him.

As we close out the life of Abraham, I want to keep this final message something simple. I'm not going to do all of the usual things I do in a sermon, mostly. I want us just to just dive straight in and to look at two things.

We're going to look at the physical legacy that Abraham leaves us as he dies, but then I want us to look at the spiritual legacy he leaves for us. That's why I have titled the message this afternoon, The Legacy of Faith.

What legacy does Abraham's faith leave for us? Well for the rest of our time, I want to consider the twofold legacy. Like I said, his physical legacy and the spiritual legacy. This twofold legacy that Abraham leaves for us in the Word of God.

So first of all, consider with me Abraham's physical legacy. Abraham's physical legacy. And that's what we're going to see here in chapter 25. The death narrative of Abraham, for as important a character as he is, is actually quite brief.

It kind of just comes to an end very naturally. It plays out really in four scenes, and each of them have something to say about the legacy that Abraham leaves behind. So four scenes real quickly. First of all, Abraham leaves the physical legacy of fathering nations.

Fathering nations in the first four verses. So again, look at them with me. Abraham had taken another wife whose name was Keturah, and she bore him all of these sons. All of these, end of verse four, were sons of Keturah.

Now, we're not told exactly how long it's been since the events of Sarah's death in the end of chapter 23. We're not told how long it's been since the events of Sarah's death, chapter 24, and the whole quest for a wife for Isaac, and where we are now.

We do know that enough time passed for Abraham to remarry and father kids again. My best guess is he remarries not long after Sarah's death, and so given the age that we're given he dies in verse 7, we can kind of guess about 37 years passes.

Again, it's a guess because we're not told for certain, but it seems to make the most sense. Well, this second marriage, shorter than his first, considerably, is nonetheless blessed with six children, and we don't know all the details about all of the children who are mentioned, but the ones who are mentioned in more detail, we will meet again as we read the Bible.

So, Midian is mentioned. He's the father of the Midianite people. We're going to see them again.

In Genesis, and they'll pop up from time to time throughout the Bible. Taking notes, 1 Chronicles.

32 does refer to Keturah not as Abraham's wife, but as his concubine. Regardless, and like I said, that's a discussion for another time. Don't, again, lose the big point. The big point here is very simple.

Isaac is the son of the promise, and with him recognizing this, with Abraham recognizing that this is the son that God has made the promise with, he seeks to protect and secure the inheritance that God has promised for Isaac.

So, his legacy is preserved through fathering nations, through securing the inheritance of Isaac. It's also preserved through being buried in his piece of the promise, through being buried in his piece of the promise.

So again, verses 7 through 10, this is the length of Abraham's life, 175 years. He took his last breath and died at a good old age, old and contented, and he was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron, son of Zohar the Hethite.

This was the field that Abraham bought from the Hethites. Abraham was buried there with his son, Sarah. Now, I won't go into all the details about the importance of this plot of land. We did that back in Genesis 23.

You can listen to that message on our website, YouTube channel, or the app, How Faith Deals With Death. We've talked about that already. Real quick, if you weren't here, you missed that message. This plot of land that's mentioned in detail here is not just a plot of land.

It's the first owned property that Abraham had in the land. It was the first fruits, the advance on God's promise to give Abraham not just this plot, but this entire land. And so even as he is dead and he has been buried, even the place he is buried leaves a legacy of the fact that God had promised him that he would be the inheritor of this land.

Finally, there's a final part to Abraham's legacy. And actually, this has nothing to do with Abraham himself. This has everything to do with Abraham's God. So he leaves a legacy through the fathering of nations, through securing the inheritance of Isaac by being buried in the land of promise.

But he also leaves a legacy through God's advancing of the covenant promise. God's advancing of the covenant promise, verse 11. So after Abraham's death, the text says, verse 11, God blessed his son Isaac who lived near Be 'er L 'Chai Roi.

If you remember that, that ties back to the Ishmael story, this well of the one who sees me. This term blessed has come up over and over and over again in our study of Genesis, especially in relation to Abraham.

And now that Abraham has died, we now see this term not being used for Abraham, but now being used for his son. The blessing has officially, as it were, transferred over from I—from Abraham, excuse me, who has gone the way of all the earth to his son Isaac.

I won't labor the point of Isaac's existence too long, simply because we will spend time in the life of Isaac, able to fall, Lord willing. Now, if it feels like I moved very quickly through verses 1 through 11, I did.

I was actually quite intentional wanting to keep that section of our message relatively short. And I did so because I want to move from the physical legacy of Abraham, important as that is, to, in my opinion, what is probably more important, which is point number two, the spiritual legacy that Abraham leaves for us.

Justification by Faith Alone

The spiritual legacy that Abraham leaves for us. What legacy does Abraham leave for us as God's people? I like what Warren Wearsby, not necessarily the most reformed commentator, but still incredibly helpful.

Warren Wearsby, in his study of Abraham's life, he says this, that Abraham left his material wealth to his family, and his spiritual wealth to all who would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that's an excellent way to put that.

And so what I want to do for the rest of our time, and here I'm going to take much more time, what I want to do is to look at three texts where Abraham is mentioned in the New Testament. And as we look at these texts in the New Testament, I want us to dig into some lessons that we learn from this patriarch's life.

This will feel like reviewer points because we're going to touch individual sections of Abraham's life, but I want us to focus a little more intently on the spiritual lessons that we can learn from each of these texts.

So what exactly is Abraham's spiritual legacy? What does he, as it were, leave in the will for us as God's people? Well, first of all, he leaves us the legacy of justification by faith alone. Justification by faith alone.

For this, tell me to Romans chapter four. Romans chapter four, this is still the very early section of Paul's treatment of justification by faith. He spends the first three chapters of Romans giving us the bad news, the problem of human sinfulness, and the need for redemption.

And then chapter three, verse 21, he starts to get into this subject of the righteousness of God that is received by faith. And we're going to count for just a few moments in Romans chapter four in verses one through twelve.

Romans chapter four in verses one through twelve. Paul is without question the missionary theologian of the New Testament. He is the one who both plants a number of churches and writes the most theologically dense material that we read in the New Testament.

And Romans chapter four, in my opinion, is Paul at his theological best. We are encountering Paul really firing on all cylinders, and we would need several weeks of sermons to trace out and then develop all of the riches that are here.

So consider this me kind of just skimming the surface for some nuggets for a few moments, because there is so much more that could be said about even this short section of Romans chapter four. But what I'm going to do is I want you to kind of follow the logic of the section with me.

And as you follow the logic of the section, we're going to see what Abraham has to teach us about justification by faith. So the section begins with what you could call a foundational principle. It starts with a principle that is right at the bottom of everything Paul is going to say.

So look with me at chapter four verses one through five. It says, what then will we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

So Paul's point is very simple. If Abraham found righteousness with God, but his righteousness with God was found on the basis of his works, he would have something to boast about, because after all he did it, but he wouldn't have anything to boast with God, boast with before God so to speak.

And so verse three says, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. Now to the one who works, verse four, pay is not credited as a gift, but a something owed.

Again, all of us who have worked at some point in our lives, you recognize this. Your boss is not doing you a favor when he gives you a paycheck. You worked for that money. You deserve it. And that's Paul's point here.

If you work, the wages you receive are not a gift. They're owed to you. But look at verse five. He says salvation doesn't quite work like your job. He says, but to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited for righteousness.

Here's the foundational principle Paul's laying for us. That Abraham proves that justification is based on faith in Christ, not works of the law. Pretty simple. We don't really need to expand too much on that.

It's pretty straightforward. And he explains, secondly, what this justification is. Now you remember in this series, we actually had a whole message on justification where I went into way more detail.

Well, this is one of the texts we looked at, if you remember, Romans four, six through eight. Because this justification is not a moral act. It's not something to do with your state as a human being. It's a judicial act.

It has to do with your standing. So we understand this in the world of the law. So when you go to court, from what I understand anyway, the court really isn't trying to determine if you're a bad person or not.

They may bring that in as part of their consideration, but that's not what they're trying to find out. They're trying to find out as the law goes, did you break this law or not? Are you guilty or not guilty?

Well, that's what justification deals with. It deals with the are we guilty before God or are we righteous before God? So look at verse six. Paul says, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the person to whom God credits righteousness or imputes righteousness apart from works.

And he quotes Psalm 32. Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person the Lord will never charge with sin. Again, these are judicial and legal terms.

They're not moral terms. The righteousness we receive in sanctification is not the same thing as we receive in justification. And then he comes back to Abraham having cleared up the nature of justification.

Verse nine, he essentially says Abraham's justification proves this fact. You see, Abraham was justified before he was circumcised. So verse nine, is this blessing, the blessing that he quotes from Psalm 32 of your sins being forgiven, your lawless acts being forgiven, your sins being covered, the Lord never charging you with sin, is this blessing only for the circumcised then?

Or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say faith was credited to Abraham for righteousness. Verse 10, in what way then was it credited? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? When did Abraham receive the righteousness of God that comes by faith?

Well, if you remember from our study of Genesis, that was in chapter 15. Remember Genesis 15 .6, Abraham believed Yahweh and it was counted to him for righteousness. That was pre-God giving the covenant of circumcision, chapter 17.

So he asked, was it while he was circumcised or uncircumcised? It was not, verse 10, while he was circumcised, but uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith while uncircumcised.

Which again, I won't go over because we studied Genesis 17, but circumcision didn't make him righteous. It was a sign and a seal of the righteousness he had already received. And that's Paul's point. Abraham's justification wasn't because he did this physical act as some were teaching in the days of the early church.

Your salvation is based on, yes, Jesus, but also your obedience to the law. He says, no, no, no, no. If that's the case, Abraham couldn't have been justified. But we say he was. And when you come to the end of verse 11 into verse 12, Paul ends this pretty simply.

All he says is what was true of Abraham is true of you. So look at the end of verse 11. He says, this was to make Abraham the father of all who believe, but are not circumcised so that righteousness may be credited to them also.

And he became the father of the circumcised who are not only circumcised, but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had while he was uncircumcised. Paul's point here is pretty simple.

For those who've not been circumcised, Abraham is a father in the faith because he was justified before he was circumcised. Oh, and even for the Jew who believes in Jesus, the same thing is true. Why?

Because Abraham was justified before he was circumcised. His circumcision was simply a sign of the righteousness he already had. Whether you are a Jew or you are a Gentile, the way in which righteousness is received is exactly the same.

And that's part of the spiritual legacy that Abraham leaves for the children of God. Every believer, Jew or Gentile, follows the footsteps of Abraham when they readily accept that they have no righteousness of their own, that they have no good works that are worthy enough to receive God's righteousness.

When they rest in and receive the righteousness that God alone gives freely by his grace. If we can be so bold, Abraham doesn't just leave a spiritual legacy for us, he leaves ultimately a gospel legacy for us.

In fact, you don't need to turn, I'll read it, but listen to what Paul says about Abraham in a very similar context. Galatians chapter 3 and verses 7 to 9. Galatians 3, 7 to 9. He says, you know then that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.

To quote the Sunday school song, once again, Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. Well, there's a lot of truth to that statement. If you believe in Jesus, you are indeed one of those sons.

Congratulations! Verse 8, now the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. And this is the part that when I read, when I taught Galatians a few years ago, this hit me in some big ways.

It said that the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham. There's a reason why I called this series, The Gospel According to Abraham, because the Bible tells me that in seed form, to be fair, he didn't know all the details of the gospel that we know, but in seed form, Abraham heard the gospel message.

How? Well, Paul tells us, he proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham saying, all the nations will be blessed through you. The fact that there can be a salvation that extends beyond Abraham's physical seed to all the people of God, that blessing that we saw in Genesis chapter 12, that reality comes to the full when we understand the gospel.

That's how Paul can say, verse 9, consequently those who have had faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith. The universal blessing that Abraham heard of and believed was ultimately about Christ, the one, the ultimate seed through whom all the nations would be blessed.

And that's every part, every bit, think about this, it's every bit a part of our legacy as God's people, as the cross, and everything that happens in the Abraham's legacy is our legacy as well. And so, Abraham leaves for us the legacy of justification by faith, but that's not all he leaves for us.

For this, I want us to turn to a second text. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews in chapter 11, and in Hebrews chapter 11, we're going to see a second part of the legacy he leaves for us, and if the first part was justification by faith alone, we also receive from Abraham great biblical help on what it looks like to be obediently walking by faith, obediently walking by faith.

We've referenced this passage a few times towards the end of our study, but I want us to come and again look at the logic of this in a bit more detail. Abraham leaves for us the legacy of not just justification by faith, but what it is to obediently walk by faith.

So, Hebrews chapter 11, I want to draw your attention to verse 8. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 8. Word of God says, by faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive for an inheritance.

He went out even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

By faith even Sarah herself, when she was unable to have children, received power to conceive offspring, even though she was past the age since she considered that the one who promised was faithful. Therefore from one man, in fact from one as good as dead, came offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and as innumerable as the grains of sand along the seashore.

These all died in faith, even though they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.

Now those who say such things make it clear that they were seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they had come from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But now they desire a better place, a heavenly one.

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and yet he was offering his one and only son, the one to whom it had been said, your offspring will be traced through Isaac.

He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead. Therefore he received him back, figuratively speaking. Long section. What do we learn about walking by faith from Abraham? Firstly this passage shows us that Abraham's walk of faith and by extension your walk of faith will be, number one, difficult.

It'll be difficult. Think about this, Abraham leaves his family, he leaves his homeland, he leaves the security of a home for a tent in the wilderness. And he doesn't just do this, you know, we, some of us, let me not tell lies, some of us love camping.

We do it for a temporary period of time. Imagine if you decide, I'm gonna pack up my house, I'm just gonna live in a tent forever. Oh and this is not just a like nice place that's set up for camping, it's the middle of the wilderness.

And when he's doing this on the promise of a God he had never seen, about a place that he had never owned. I'll put it to you that if that's not pressure, if that's not difficult, if that's not plain hard, please you need to tell me what your definition of something hard is, because you must be a different kind of cold.

I think for anybody who just thinks about this, even from a purely human perspective, this was not easy. And I think we learned from Abraham quite plainly that the walk of faith is indeed not easy. As some of you know from hearing me preach for any length of time, I have my gripes with a lot of western evangelical belief and practice, a lot of them if I'm really honest.

Near top of this, it's not top of the list, I have some other things that are further ahead, but near top of the list is the ease and entitlement our approach to Christianity has created. Unlike any other part of the world, I've met believers from all over the world, even believers who've come from persecuted countries, we in the west seem to have this belief that we are owed a life of ease and simplicity that the Bible nowhere promises.

We've been unconsciously discipled into believing that Christianity is simply just a set of discrete tasks. You know, you go to church, you hear some sermons, you kick some greenbacks in the box at the back, you're nice and friendly, or pass a plate depending which church you go to, you're nice and friendly, the world loves you, you know, Christianity doesn't cost you that much.

Now let me be clear, should you go to church? Yes. In fact, there's a conversation to be had that maybe we could do with more church, not less. Different sermon, another time. Should you listen to the preach word?

Yes. Should you give to the church? Yes, the Bible says you should. Should you be kind to people, living up the love of Christ to a world that so desperately needs it? Of course you should. I'm not saying those things are bad, brothers and sisters, far from it.

Those are good and wonderful things. But if we boil down Christianity to basically those few easy or relatively easy things, there's a problem. It's a big problem. The problem is that you're missing the reality that sometimes, in the words of Jesus, the Christian life is denying yourself, taking up the cross, which, by the way, was an instrument of death.

Deny yourself, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. Oh, and Jesus doesn't promise to give you step-by-step directions like your phone does. It's the paradox of the Christian life. Have you ever thought about this?

That we come to Jesus, and we find rest, and we find peace, and we find everything that we need in Him, and yet the same Jesus who calls us to find rest and refreshing and peace in Him also tells us to take up the cross and follow Him.

If Abraham teaches us anything in his life, it's that sometimes faith in God, faith in Christ, doesn't make your life easier. It might just make your life a whole lot harder. It might make demands of you that stretch you, that disrupt your life as you know it, and generally are kind of hard.

Well, Kofi, that sounds kind of soul-crushing and destroying. I didn't come to church for this, but before you say that, can I also point you out to the reality that Abraham also teaches us that the walk of faith is not just difficult, but it's promise-driven.

Throughout this series, I've used the term promise a lot. I didn't have time this week. I was going to run a search just in all my notes how many times I used the word promise. I didn't, but it was a lot.

I know I did, and then it hit me. I've actually not stopped once to define what promise is. I just kind of just used it and assumed we all know what we mean. So, better late than ever, let's take a moment and define what this term promise means when you read your Bible.

The New Testament word for promise, it carries this idea. It's easier to define that one than the one in Hebrew. The New Testament term for promise carries this idea. Here's what one dictionary says. It's a declaration to do something with implication of obligation to carry out what is stated.

Let me say that again. It's a declaration to do something with implication of obligation to carry out what is stated. In Kofi level terms, a promise, by the Bible standards, cannot by definition be empty.

You know, we talk about people making empty promises. In the Bible, promises can't be empty because there is the obligation built into it to carry out what you have said. And think about this. When God promises to do something, He is obligated to do what He has promised.

And think about this. Since God can't be obligated by you because that would make you sovereign over Him, and no one is sovereign over Him, since God can't be obligated by you to do anything, who is God obligated to?

Himself. He is obligated to nobody but Himself. Who is on the line if He doesn't do it? Himself. And this is something that the authors of the Hebrews picks up on as he's seeking to encourage these Hebrew Christians who are tempted to go back into Judaism.

Time and time again in our study of Abraham, you probably noticed this. It's the knowledge of God's promises that pushes and propels Abraham to make tough decisions. And the authors of Hebrews picks this up.

So look at verse 9. He says, by faith Abraham stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise. Verse 11, Sarah was able to have this child, verse 11, since she considered that the one who had promised was faithful.

Verse 13, these all died in faith although they had not received the things that were promised. Why could Abraham offer up his son? Verse 17, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, he received the promises.

It's his knowing the promises of God that fuels the kind of obedience that humanly looks extreme and quite frankly makes little to no sense. Why would somebody, and I know people who have made this sacrifice, said, you know, I'm going to leave my comfortable life in the West to go to a people who don't know Jesus, who might actually kill me.

We talked about that a few times in this series. Why would somebody choose to do that? Why would somebody say, I have a career, it takes care of my family, I'm going to leave that behind to serve God's people.

The pay is not great, if there is some in some cases. I'm leaving the security of a job for the security of the unknown, but I'm going to do that to serve God's people. Why do people say, I went to school, I got all this education, I'm going to lay all of that down so that I can serve in a ministry that probably wouldn't pay half as well as the job I left behind.

Think of a friend of mine who, this is the kind of nerd he is, PhD in linguistics, studies language because he's fascinated by language, becomes a believer in his PhD program, on course to go be a professor at some school somewhere, and decides I want to become a Bible translator.

And I remember, there's a guy who was a few years ahead of me, we were in the same church, and I remember people begging, don't leave your job, you can do that and still work. He said, I know, but the need is great, and they need people who can do this full-time.

You don't need to do that, you can do that and still keep it. I'm not saying it would have been wrong for him to keep his job, I'm not saying that, please don't hit me. But what propels somebody to say the need is so great that I'll basically give up what I basically was broke for, he wasn't making a ton of money as a PhD, to go and translate the Bible for people who, chances are, might kill you for doing it.

Not granted, he was living in London and serving in that way, kind of coordinating for the field, so he wasn't in immediate danger, but let's be clear, the people who are going to take those Bibles will probably die.

What makes somebody do that? It is reminding yourself of the promises of God. Can I just give you one of them that ties exactly with Abraham, according to the author to the Hebrews? Look at 2 Peter 3 13.

Listen to what Peter says here. Peter is talking about the reality of the soon coming day of the Lord, and he says, verse 13, in light of the fact that the elements and everything that's in them is going to be burned up with heat, verse 13 says, but based on his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.

You see, the ultimate promise for God's people, think about this, I've been thinking about this a little, I'm reading a book about this whole idea of the new creation at the moment. How many of us have been taught this idea, essentially, that the life after this one is basically this disembodied experience off in the great blue yonder?

Even in culture, well, how is heaven often depicted? You're sitting on a cloud plucking a heart for eternity. And we may say, well, non-Christians don't really understand that, but where do you think they got that from?

Generations of Christians who kind of spoke in that sort of way. No, the ultimate experience for God's people is not a disembodied experience off in a great blue yonder somewhere, that's what the Bible, and I'm not saying there is not a heaven, there is when people die prior to the resurrection, yes, they go into the presence of God.