Lessons from Sarah's Burial

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Death Teaches Wisdom and Keeps Eternity in View

We are in Genesis chapter 23, but I want to begin just by quoting from Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse 2. There we read the words of King Solomon. He is the son, of course, of David, and he gives us these wise words in Ecclesiastes 7 and verse 2.

He says, Let me repeat it one more time. Listen to it carefully. For this is the end of all mankind, and the living, those who are still alive, will lay it to heart. There is a great deal of wisdom here, probably more than most people recognize when they're engaged in just a cursory reading of Ecclesiastes.

And maybe it's helpful to reframe the words so that we can understand what it is that Solomon is getting at. In the words of Derek Kidner, who I think does a good job of reframing it in his commentary on this book, he says, There is just something about death.

There's something about the death of someone who is close to us that forces us to take stock of our lives, to consider the brevity of our days, and to take to heart the fact of our mortality. And we know this well, that when all things are going swimmingly, when everything goes just as we wish or as we think it should go, we don't often stop and take stock, stop and take time to think about the realities that govern our brief existence on this planet.

We live as if this life in its current form will go on forever. And when we live like that, what we end up doing is this, we entertain a delusion and we fill our minds with the frivolities and vanities of this world.

But as Ecclesiastes 7 -2 reminds us, there is great wisdom in visiting the house of mourning. There's great wisdom, great benefit in attending a funeral. In fact, there is more benefit in attending a funeral than attending a birth, because it brings us face to face with the reality of death.

It brings us face to face with reality. And this is because when we become acquainted with the house of mourning, when we consider, to use the words of Solomon, the end of all mankind and lay it to heart, it serves as a check, I said a reality check already, a reality check that restores us to a teachable frame that can begin to receive wisdom.

And this afternoon, as we find ourselves in Genesis 23, we're moving from one of the most rousing scenes in all of scripture. I tell you, it is hard to preach Genesis 23 after Genesis 22. What did we find last week?

We found Abraham and Isaac on the summit of Mount Moriah. Isaac laid out across the altar at the top of that mountain. I, Abraham, with the sword, with the knife clutched in his hands, lingering over the chest of his son.

And then what? In a moment, God provides a substitutionary sacrifice, something that would die in his place. That was last week. This week, we don't come down the mountain, interestingly. We go up from the mountain.

To a place called Kiriath Arba. And it's not a mountaintop scene as we would expect it to be. But rather, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, has died. And chapter 23, in its entirety, deals with Abraham's negotiations to buy a burial plot.

As I said, in some ways, it pales in comparison to chapter 22. And yet, as we come to Kiriath Arba, as we come to this place that will one day be called Hebron, we find ourselves in the house of mourning.

And in this passage, as we begin to come to the end of Abraham's generation, beginning with the death of his wife, Sarah, this is what we find. Here in the house of Abraham's mourning, there is great wisdom to be had.

And we learn a number of valuable life lessons. This passage, if we see it for what it really is, it's more than just negotiations for a burial plot. It is a passage that speaks to the brevity of life.

The brevity of life, the kind of lives that we should live in light of this life's brevity. And the eternal hope that awaits every man and woman who believes in the promises of God in Christ Jesus. And so we're in Genesis 23.

I've divided it into four different parts and we'll begin in verses one and two. And what we'll learn in verses one and two is this, that we will all die sooner than we expect, sooner than we plan, perhaps sooner than we would hope.

And this is what we read in verses one and two. Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

Here in verse one, we start off our study with something of a timestamp in the Genesis narrative. If you know anything about me, certainly some of you are getting to know something about me over these years.

But you know that I love maps, I love topography, and I love timelines. And so I take note when I see that it tells us in verse one that Sarah lived 127 years. It's interesting that Sarah is the only woman in the whole Bible where we are given an explicit mention of her age.

And we see that Sarah lived to a good old age, even by our standards today. And yet in the passing of her days, what we see is that her life begins, her life starts, or at least we find her partway through her life.

Her life continues and ends in rather short form. We were introduced to Sarah in Genesis chapter 11 and Genesis chapter 12. And if we use the biblical chronology that the scriptures give us, we can determine that she was about 65 years old when she left with Abraham out of Haran to begin their sojournings in the land of Canaan.

And the last time, if you turn there with me, the last time we heard about her age was in Genesis chapter 17. In verse 17. And when we found them there, you'll remember that Abraham is greeted by the Lord and two angels.

And besides being told that they'll have a child within the coming year, Isaac, they're told of the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That Sarah was 90 years. And now just a few chapters later, we find her at 127 years.

So to put this in perspective, 37 years have passed in just a few short chapters. And Isaac, who just a chapter ago, you'll remember, was a young boy carrying the wood up to the altar at the top of Mount Moriah, would now be about 36 or 37 years of age.

And something interesting is happening here. In this account, as Sarah gets older, as she gets older, there's an acceleration of time that begins. Longer and longer periods are covered in fewer and fewer chapters until here in chapter 23, Sarah comes to the day of her death that was written in God's book before the ages began.

And she breathes her last. And in verse 2, we see where Abraham and Sarah's journey had taken them. But in those 37 years, 36 years from that update in Genesis 17. That Abraham and Sarah had again settled in Hebron, which was the same place that we found them in Genesis 13, 8.

If I remember correctly, I believe we were at Metalodge Bible Camp that day. And we heard about how Abraham went up to the highest possible place in the land at Hebron, over 3 ,000 feet above sea level.

And there he built an altar to God and worshiped Yahweh there at the Oaks of Mamre. And so here at the highest point in the land, Abraham comes and he is brought to the lowest point in his life. And verse 2 tells us about his grief in vivid detail.

We're told that Abraham mourned and that he weeped for Sarah. And it's helpful for us to pause and to look at this for a moment because I think it conveys something. That word mourn in Hebrew is the word that describes the beating of one's breast because of grief.

And to weep was to wail, to wail loudly. Sometimes it would mean to tear one's clothing, to sit in the dirt in a wardrobe of sackcloth, sometimes even to shave one's head. And so what we find in verses 1 and 2 is Sarah dies and then Abraham expresses the deepest grief that one can express.

Not the kind of grief that hired mourners would come in later where you'd give them a paycheck and they would go outside at the funeral and cry and tear their clothes and throw ashes on their head. But here we find Abraham in a sincere expression of grief because he had lost his wife sooner than he would have wanted to part from her.

When we do the math, Abraham and Sarah had been together now in their sojournings for at least 62 years. But Sarah was no more. And it's easy for us as readers of scripture to see this, to see it for the fact that it is and go, check, he grieved.

They had been married, they had been together for at least 62 years through thick and thin, dwelling in tents, on mountains and in valleys, making the best of things. What I want us to see is this, that what this passage spells out, that what we really must take to heart is that death is real.

And death, as I said at the beginning, always comes sooner than we would expect. Not even Sarah, the mother of all believers, as we read about in Galatians, and first Peter was exempt from death. And not even after 127 years on this earth, did that feel long enough for her to quietly slip into eternity without the deepest expression of grief.

And brothers and sisters, one of the lessons that we need to learn here is to learn humility and to gain wisdom and perspective from this fact of our deaths. That death is coming and death is coming faster than we might want.

Matthew Henry says on this passage, he says, the longest life must shortly come to a close. Those whom we love most, yea, even our own bodies, which we so care for must soon become loathsome lumps of clay and be buried out of sight.

Those who have least of this earth find a grave in it. Whatever our possessions are, there is a burial place at the end of them. And we learn this lesson, and when we think about it often, it has a way of tempering our lives for good.

I find it remarkable how frequently the Bible speaks about the fleeting nature of our life. Because there is wisdom, there is value in knowing that we do not live forever, at least in this current form.

When we think about death, when we consider our own deaths, it has a way of keeping our eyes on eternity, keeping our treasure in heaven, keeping our affections off the fleeting pleasures of this life, and keeping our hearts for God.

But the reality is, a sermon about death, a sermon about your death is not a very popular sermon. I would venture to say that as I stand before you, to remind each of you, to remind myself of the coming day when our lives will end, if Christ should tarry, that everything in the world is working against sermon points like this.

That the devil throws much of his lies, many of his lies, much of his energy at seeking to keep the reality of deaths out of our minds. And the question is perhaps, am I exaggerating? Am I making this statement?

Or am I making an assumption for some kind of rhetorical effect? That the devil would have you not to think of your death. I want to take you back for a moment. We're in Genesis 23. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 3.

And I want to ask you, what was one of the first lies that was ever told in the garden? You will not surely die. That that ancient serpent replied to Eve's hesitation at his temptation. But the Lord said that if we eat from the tree, from the fruit of this tree, we will surely die.

And what did Satan say? You will not surely die. And I believe this is a lie that Satan has been telling all people since that day in Genesis chapter 3. But because as is the case in the temptation of Eve, if Satan, if our enemy can keep the reality of death out of our minds, sin looks much less menacing.

And accountability before God seems like a distant improbability rather than what it actually is, an imminent certainty. Who here, maybe just by a show of hands, has read the book Screwtape Letters by C .S. Lewis?

The whole book, yeah. Now the book Screwtape Letters by C .S. Lewis is in many respects a dark book. If you know the basic premise of the book, it goes like this, that Uncle Screwtape, who is one of the high-ranking demons in hell, writes a series of letters to his nephew, Wormwood, Wormwood is something of a naive apprentice who's trying to figure out how to ruin the life of his patient.

That patient, in the cosmic sense, is you. It's every believer. It's every individual who the demons would seek to undermine our faith, to persuade us to depart from the narrow path, to distract us with whatever we possibly could be distracted with, to hinder our walk, to ruin our souls.

And it's interesting that in this letter, and I think it's incredibly perceptive on C .S. Lewis's part, Screwtape writes to Wormwood and he says this, he says, it is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds.

Putting things in. In reality, our best work is by keeping things out. And how often is the thought of death, believer, the thought of death, unbeliever, kept out of your minds by so many things, by so many mechanisms.

It might be fair to ask the question, how many things in the world today exist simply to keep us busy and entertained so that we don't think about the imminent certainty of our death? How many social media platforms exist?

How many streaming services, podcasts, playlists, gig apps, and countless other things have been invented to distract our minds and to pacify our bruised consciences so that we never think about the most important questions in our existence?

It's one of the things that I will sometimes say as I'm standing on the street corner on White Avenue, why is it that we do not think, we do not seek to answer the most important questions that there are in this life?

Like, who made me? Or where will I go after I die? Or why do I have this constant reminder of my own accountability before an omniscient God? Or am I ready to do business with that God? Unless Christ comes first.

There are two things that all of us will have in common in this world. Perhaps these are the only two things. One, that we are born. One, and two, that we will die. And yet, why is it we celebrate our birthdays every year and almost never do we think about this, that one day we will die and stand before God?

You know, we all know that death is a reality, but we all tend to apply this reality to everyone else but not ourselves. But Sarah's death brings us to the house of mourning to remind us that we all must soon die.

The billionaires and beggars together will be eaten by worms. The king and his subjects will both return to the dust. Prime ministers and presidents will pass from this life and be made to stand before the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

And one day, these hearts that beat in our chests will come to a sudden and screeching halt, and we will all stand before the living God who will soon judge the living and the dead. This is why the Bible takes great pains to remind us of this fact, because it's speaking the truth.

The truth that we often put out of our minds. James chapter four and verse 13. James says here, come now you who say today or tomorrow, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Or the psalmist in Psalm 39, four. Listen to this prayer. And I want to ask you, have you ever prayed a prayer like this?

I think this was given to us that we would pray prayers like this. Psalm 34 and verse four, 39 and verse four. Oh Lord, make me know my end. And what is the measure of my days? Let me know how fleeting I am.

Behold, you have made my days a few hand breaths and my lifetime as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Or if you'll tolerate one last verse, Psalm 90. There is great wisdom to grapple with our own mortality.

Psalm 90 and verse 12. Another prayer that we would all do well to pray. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom, wisdom. Sarah's death teaches us this, that we will all die sooner than we think.

And there is great wisdom in embracing this fact. But there's more. These are only verses one and two. What else do we learn? In verses three and four, we see this, that we will not only die sooner than we expect, but we ought to live as sojourners in this world.

Living as Sojourners and Exiles in This World

This is what we read in verses three and four. And Abraham rose up before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight.

In verse three, we read that Abraham goes to the Hittites now to buy a parcel of land. Now the Hittites, or if you have a King James, it says the sons of Heth. That's what it actually says in the Hebrew.

It likely moved from a place in Anatolia in what would be modern day Turkey and had come down now and settled in Canaan. And we see that they were there at least long enough to adopt Semitic names like Ephron and Sohar.

And in verse four, Abraham approaches the Hittites and he refers to himself as a sojourner and a foreigner in the land. Now this is something that really is quite interesting. It should make us scratch our heads when we look at it carefully.

Again, it's something we might be inclined to gloss over, but this comment from Abraham is incredibly self-deprecating. It's language that's used to speak of those who were on the lowest rung of the social ladder.

For instance, just to pick on one word, that term foreigner in the Hebrew is such an unfavorable term that one Bible scholar writes this about it as I was looking in various Hebrew Bible dictionaries, that a foreigner was a person who was irreducibly other.

They were a non-belonger, a stranger, a foreigner, an alien was not part of the in crowd. They weren't even, that wasn't even in the question. They were the low and despised people of the land. And yet Abraham, the man who had wandered from place to place in Canaan for the last 60 years, the man who had gained perspective by the death of his wife, Abraham, the man of faith was happy to embrace this despicable label, these despicable labels as his own.

And this is because Abraham is one who trusted in God, understood that this world was not his own. It was not his home. And in light of the fact that Abraham is our, our father in the faith and view of the brevity of this life in our coming death, does it not make sense that we should view our own lives, view ourselves in the same light?

This is after all, how all the early Christians saw themselves as strangers, as aliens, as exiles, as foreigners in this world. But when Peter wrote to the saints in his first letter, to the Christians who had been dispersed across Asia Minor, what does he call them?

He calls them elect exiles, elect exiles of the dispersion. In 1 Peter 2 .11, he says, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

Or elsewhere in the writings of Paul, in the book of Philippians chapter three. It's interesting, Paul tells us that there is a way that we can tell the difference between those who are enemies of the cross of Christ and those who are in Christ.

And we can tell it simply by their allegiance. In Philippians 3 .18, for many of whom I have told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their God is their bellies and they glory in their shame.

And how do we know this? What characterizes these people, these enemies of the cross of Christ? He says with their minds set on earthly things. But in contrast, he says, but our citizenship is in heaven.

Not in Canada, not in the Republic of Alberta, but our citizenship is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is, this has always been, it must always be the mindset of the people of God who live in this world.

That this world, at least in its present configuration, is not our home. Therefore, we must keep our affections off this world. And if I can say it like this, like Abraham to some degree, we must travel light.

And perhaps there are a few places in the Bible that describe this as clearly and as compellingly as that which we find in Hebrews chapter 11, if you turn there with me for a moment. In Hebrews chapter 11, what we find, it's sometimes called the hall of faith or the faith hall of fame, a long list of those men and women who came in the old covenant and leading up to the New Testament, who were men and women who walked by faith.

And Hebrews 11, 13 describes all of these individuals in this way. It says, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were what?

Strangers and exiles on the earth. If you're here in this room and you take the name of Christ, you say, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But you are not a stranger or an exile in this world. You are completely at odds with all of the men and women of faith who have come before you and will come after you.

But brothers and sisters, how earth bound we are. I say this, you've heard me say it before. I'll have to say it several more times before the Lord takes me home, before my ministry ends in this church.

I come as a fellow sufferer. And yet we are to live as strangers and aliens in this world, totally separated from it. We live here, but this world is not our home. This is not my lot in life. My house in Sherwood Park is not going to be my house forever.

Your house, wherever it is, is not going to be your home forever. This reality needs to impact, needs to change everything about the way that we interact with the world. That we, brothers and sisters, we have oftentimes far more in common, we have a lot than we do with Abraham.

We feel far too comfortable living adjacent to the world and then living in the world and then moving into the heart of the world and then becoming a respected citizen of this world. And then eventually, slowly, this world suddenly becomes a resident in our hearts, becomes a part of who we are.

But we are to be all together different, to belong to Christ, to belong to the Lord our God should make us, must make us, necessarily makes us different. The Lord Jesus in Matthew 6 and verse 19, he says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break and steal for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We know it. You know the answers to these questions. Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. Brother, sister, let me ask you, where is your treasure today? Show me your treasure. I will show you where your heart is.

And the reality is that question for many of us is more complicated than we wish it was. None of us would say, well, all of my treasure is here. But I think probably many of us might be inclined to say, if we answer honestly, not all of my treasure is in heaven.

Not all of my allegiances are there. And brothers and sisters, I want to tell you this is madness. This is totally divorced from reality. It might make sense to the world, but it does not make sense to the biblically informed Christian.

Spurgeon says about this life, he says, this is our inn, not our home. We tarry here a night and we are away in the morning. We're here, it's a mist and it's gone. And yet the folly of it all, imagine for a moment what it would be like if we were to go to some kind of conference as a church.

And it's a conference that we all like. And so we all go. We pack ourselves in a bus or two buses and we go to the conference and we check in at the hotel and everyone finds their respective room in the hotel and dinner comes.

And a few of you say, we're gonna go to the Poirier's room and pick them up and we're gonna go to dinner together. And so you come, you knock on my hotel door and I opened the door and the sounds of construction go past me into the hallway.

And you look over my shoulder, which is not hard to do. And as you look into the depths of the hotel room, what do you see? Well, Noah, I have Noah, he's tearing up the carpet because we're putting tile in.

I mean, carpet smells. We don't know how many people have lived here. We're putting tile in. And you see that I have Elise and my wife, Nicole and they're painting the walls a new color. I don't like this dark color.

I want a bright room. And you look into the bathroom and I have contractors. They're tearing the bathroom out to the studs so they can put in a new bathroom. What would you do? You'd grab me by the shoulders and shake me.

What are you doing? This is a hotel room. We check out in three days. And this is madness. You've lost your marbles. And if you really cared about me, you would escort me out of that room for my own good.

You'd care for me, no doubt, but you'd care for me as one who had lost his ever loving mind. It would be complete and utter madness to behave in this way. And yet many of us are behaving in this way, in this world that our life here and now as it is, is but a fraction of a second in light of eternity.

And most of us, I think, struggle with this that we invest most of our lives, most of our time, most of our money in this fraction rather than an eternity of eternities of eternities before God. We are far too prepared, far more ready to entertain such madness than we care to admit.

And brothers and sisters, I want to encourage you in this. We're far too ready to entertain this madness in one another that we not only are tempted to live worldly lives, but we're tempted to let other people live worldly lives so they get a pass and I get a pass.

This cannot be so. And we will know, I think, but when we are living earthbound lives or when we are living lives as sojourners, as exiles and foreigners, not only by the way that we operate day to day, but by how the world interacts with us.

It's a question that's been asked of you before. It's a question that we would do well to ask again. Does your life make sense in the eyes of an unbeliever? Because it shouldn't. It mustn't. John 15 and verse nine.

We read, if you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. What do we read of those sojourners, those exiles in Hebrews chapter 11?

What became of them in that chapter? In Hebrews 11, 37, they were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed with a sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated.

Would that this would describe us of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth. I quoted Spurgeon a moment ago. I'll quote him one last time.

He says, don't expect the men of this world to treat you as one of themselves. If they do, be afraid. What a memorable picture. He says, dogs don't bark when a man goes by that they know, they bark at strangers.

When people slander and persecute you no longer, be afraid. Visiting the house of mourning helps us to remember not just where we are, but where we will be and to live accordingly. And then in verses five through 18, we see this, that not only will we die and we will die sooner than we expect, not only ought we to live as sojourners and exiles in this world, but we ought to live godly and upright lives in light of this.

Upright and Godly Living in Light of Eternity

Verse five, this is what we read. The Hittites answered Abraham, hear us, my Lord. You are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choices of our tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead.

Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land. And he said to them, if you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and entreat for me Ephron, the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns.

It is at the end of the field. For the full price, let him give it to me in your presence as property for a burying place. Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites and Ephron, the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of the city.

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

And he said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, but if you will hear me, I give the price of the field, accept it from me that I may bury my dead there. Ephron answered, Abraham, my Lord, listen to me.

A piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver, what is that between you and me? Bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephron and Abraham weighed out from Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, 400 shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants.

So the field of Ephron 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 the city, his city.

In verses five through 18, we find an extensive record of Abraham's acquisition of the land, his just and fair acquisition of the land. I like what R .C. Sproul writes as he summarizes the whole picture.