We're going to do the entire chapter 23 tonight of Genesis, maybe, and we find here Genesis 23. We have an account of the death of Sarah. We have Abraham purchasing a field and a cave so that he can bury Sarah in the cave. And as we look at the chapter, the theme that I want to focus on is going to be life in this world as a sojourner and a stranger. and focus on the promises of God that we are on our way home. We're on our way to a better place, and we need to bear in mind what we're here to do and why God has left us here. So, Genesis chapter 23, let's go ahead and read the whole chapter. Beginning in verse 1, Now Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham rose from before his dead and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner among you. Give me a burial site among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The sons of Heth answered Abraham, saying to him, Hear us, my lord, you are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choices of our graves. None of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead. So Abraham rose and bowed to the people of the land, the sons of Heth, and he spoke with them, saying, If it is your wish for me to bury my dead out of my sight, hear me. And approach Ephraim, the son of Zoar, for me, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns, which is at the end of his field, for the full price. Let him give it to me in your presence for a burial site.' Now Ephraim was sitting among the sons of Heth, and Ephraim the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the sons of Heth, even of all who went in at the gate of his city, saying, Know my Lord, hear me. I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. In the presence of the sons of my people, I give it to you. Bury your dead. And Abraham bowed before the people of the land. He spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying, If you will only please listen to me, I will give the price of the field. Accept it from me that I may bury my dead there. Then Ephron told Abraham, saying, My Lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver. What is that between me and you? So bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephron and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver, which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth 400 shekels of silver commercial standard. So Ephron's field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre, the field and cave which was in it, and all the trees which were in the field that were within the confines of its border, were deeded over to Abraham for possession in the presence of the sons of Heth before all who went in at the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field at Machpelah, facing Mamre, that is, Hebron, and the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave that is in it were deeded over to Abraham for a burial site by the sons of Heth. Let's pray for God's blessing on his word this evening. Our Father in heaven, your word we recognize is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path, and we pray now that you would show us how we are to live in a place that is not our home. Show us how to live as sojourners and strangers in this land as we make our way to that home that you have promised us into your eternal presence. So please help us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Home is where the heart is, is what they say. And I think it's probably a good saying in a lot of ways, but really that whole idea falls apart when the one that you love dies. When somebody passes away, suddenly the inevitable consequences of sin come in and steal away that person who has been with you for most of your life. We're forced to reconsider where our home really is. Life doesn't have the same kind of joys and happinesses when a loved one passes away and it becomes quite a different place altogether. C.S. Lewis, writing on this idea, gives us a reminder. He says, if I find myself, rather if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, The most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. And when you really begin to consider your experiences and your desires and how life is full of unmet desires, you start to really reckon with the fact we're made for a different place. And very often that comes about with the death of a loved one. It focuses us on the stark reality that something's not being satisfied. Some longing in me has been taken away, and I must not be made for this place. And for Christians, that's right. We were made for a different world. And here and now, we are sojourners and strangers. We're just passing through. We are on our way to the place that God has made for us. And as we realize this, instead of trying to make this world our home, we could even say make it into our home, we are better off learning how to live in it as strangers and aliens, sojourners. The reality is our hearts are with Christ. And Christ is in another place. He is in the heavenly places waiting for us, and we more than anything desire to be with him. And so because we're strangers and aliens in this world, as those who are passing through on our way to our eternal home in heaven, we need to learn how to live in this world as strangers and aliens. So there's three things in our text. There's a whole lot more, but three things that we're gonna look at. Number one, we should allow death to teach us about our place in this world. We should allow death to teach us about our place in this world. Death has a message and we need to hear that message. Secondly, we should freely invest in our promised inheritance. And then finally, we should do what we can to advance the kingdom that is our true and lasting home. So I wanna begin with the death of Sarah that kind of gives us an underlining principle here. And then the other two points will follow from that. Allow death in this. Just think about Abraham's situation. Allow death to speak to you about your place here in this world and in this life. Verses 1 and 2, now Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. Sarah died in Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Nothing jolts us into the reality of our temporal station in this life more than the death of a loved one. Everything can be going along fine and well and dandy, and then somebody dies, and you really are jolted out of kind of the dream world that we all fall into, that this is my home, this is my life, this is my reality. And as we look at Abraham here, Abraham is now forced to reckon with the vapor of life. I guarantee those about a hundred years that he was married to Sarah went by so fast that he couldn't believe it when finally she was being buried in the ground. He's certainly crushed. He's deeply grieved at the loss of the love of his life. And you think about the journey they shared. I think this is important just to note They leave Ur of the Chaldeans together just because Abraham basically hears a voice out of the sky that says, I'm God, you need to go. They pack up and leave. They head to this promised land that God promises to Abraham. They get there, we've seen Sarah was kidnapped twice. I'm sure that she never let Abraham live either one of those down. God rescued Sarah twice, and I'm sure that they never stopped thanking the Lord for that wonderful rescue. But they're for all those adventures, you know, just massive things. They're touring around the Promised Land, the defeat of all the kings, you know, and saving Sodom and Gomorrah. They're for Melchizedek greeting Abraham as he comes back from the war. You have the covenant of circumcision that takes place, and I'm sure she had to have gotten a kick out of that. The promises that are given, the promises that are fulfilled, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham and Sarah's lives were woven together by God in this beautiful tapestry, demonstrating and telling us about God, keeping his promise. and about two people who believed that God would keep his promise, and they lived a life of faith. And now, Sarah's gone, right? The woman of faith is gone, and Abraham mourns, and Abraham weeps for her. And in this, every funeral, every funeral, every death speaks a message to us specifically as Christians. I'm not talking about what the guy says at the funeral, but the death itself is telling us something. Ecclesiastes 7.2 says, The message of the funeral is to remind each and every one of us this is not your home. This is not home. The wrongness of death itself tells you you are not home. The effect of sin in death is declaring to you loudly. It's preaching to you saying you're not home. This is not your place. And Abraham knows this. Abraham's not ignorant of this fact. In fact, in Hebrews 11, speaking of Abraham, the author says, "'All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.'" For those who say such things, make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own." Abraham's life, I think, helps us to understand our own. Here we are. We have a promise from God that one day we will inherit the entire earth. Right? Abraham had a promise. You're going to inherit this land. It's going to belong to you and your descendants forever. We have a promise that the whole earth is going to belong to God's people. New heavens and new earth, all remade, all recreated, but not yet. We're going to die and not get that promise. Now, right now, the whole creation groans. It's waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. It's waiting for that day where we get all these things. And this is never more clear. And the earth's groaning is never more clearly distinguished in our hearing than when we bury our dead in the ground. We're not home. And so right now we bury our dead, but we bury our dead in the promised hope of resurrection, that one day. God's going to raise them back to life and we're going to see them again. You notice he goes on in verses five through seven. What do we learn here? The sons of Heth answered Abraham saying to him, here is my Lord, you're a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choices of our graves. None of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead. And so Abraham rose and bowed to the people of the land, the sons of Heth. Abraham wants to bury Sarah in some place, and he needs a piece of land. The land's been promised to him, but he doesn't actually own it yet, and we're kind of in the same situation. We have to actually go buy our little pieces of property, you got to buy your burial site, all of these things, and so the people of the land say, yeah, go ahead, bury your dead wherever you want. And there's another lesson about how we live in this world here. Abraham is respected, but Abraham's also respectful. Part of life as an alien, as a sojourner, as a stranger here, is that we need to, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men. And we should respect and treat others with kindness and courtesy and never use that alien status that we have as an excuse to be rude, just to be jerkish to people, to think that relationships with others don't matter. You know, there's almost a Christian culture where it says, yeah, we can treat the world however we want. We can speak poorly to them because, you know, they're going to hell and we're going to heaven. And so we don't need to interact with them in the right way. Obviously, this is not the way we're supposed to behave in this life, but there's also the other danger that we would begin to act as though we belong here. We have to keep the distinction clear. We need to be kind, courteous, respectful, all of that, without stepping over the line and forgetting who we are. We were in Boston, just here a few weeks ago, and we were milling around the Boston Public Library and I was getting bored and I looked over and I saw this couple and they were wearing Texas Ranger baseball hats and Texas Ranger shirts and the Rangers were in town playing the Red Sox. We had gone to the game the night before. My wife wore a Texas Rangers hat to the game and she was the only one that I could see. And anyways, I was still thinking that was funny, and I thought, well, I'm bored. I'll go mess with these people a bit. So I walked up to the couple, and I said, you're not from around here, are you? And in this deep Texas drawl, and it just contrasted that Bostonian kind of high-pitched accent so well. Deep Texas drawl. He looks at me and goes, no, sir, we are Texans. And I thought it was great. He knew who he was. He knew who he was. He knew where he was from. He knew he was the stranger and the alien in Boston there, and he didn't try to be something different. He was just passing through, but he's still kind and courteous. And I think for us, we need to hear the message of death that tells us you're not home. This isn't your place. You're not from around here. And our home is the place where death is no more, where Abraham will once again stand with Sarah, where we will all stand with King Jesus, with all of our tears being wiped away. The one who has our hearts, Jesus, will be with us forever. And so the lesson of death. It's speaking things to us, but primarily it's telling us we're not home. And once we hear that message, then we should ask the question, what does this mean about life in this world? How do we learn from this? And Abraham has two lessons here that I think would almost contrast where our minds immediately would go in thinking this is not our home. The first one is this. we should freely invest in our promised inheritance. Notice verses eight and nine. And he spoke with them, sons of Heth, and said, if it is your wish for me to bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and approach Ephron, the son of Zoar, for me, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns, which is at the end of his field for the full price. Let him give it to me in your presence for a burial site. Now, you could just like read the narrative here, and that's fine, but there's gotta be a lesson. God put this here for some reason, and I think one of them. is should we ask the question here? Should we just wait around for Jesus to come back or for one of us to die and just go to heaven? Or should we really be investing in the kingdom now? Okay, remember, this is the promised land. God told Abraham, you own all of this. This is all your descendants. And here's Abraham having to buy a piece of that land that's been promised to him. And why would he have to do that? Why would he even think about that? Well, let's consider something for just a moment. If you go over to Matthew, you have this story that Jesus tells, or a parable in Matthew 25, and it is called the Parable of the Talents. It's kind of long, but I'm going to go ahead and read the whole thing because I think it's pertinent here to what Abraham's doing. Jesus says, Matthew 25 verse 14, For it is just like a man about to go on a journey who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one. each according to his own ability, and he went on his journey. Immediately, the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them and gained five more talents. In the same manner, the one who had received the two talents gained two more. But he who had received the one talent went away and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time, the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I've gained five more talents. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I've gained two more talents. His master said to him, Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. And the one who had also received the one talent came up and said, Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering from where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours. But his master answered and said to him, you wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed, and you ought to have put my money in the bank. And on my arrival, I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore, take away the talent from him and give it to the one who has the 10 talents. For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The parable is helping us just to see something very straightforward. God has given to each and every one of us a stewardship. That stewardship is a stewardship of resources and gifts, even you could say talents if you want. All of those things that God has given to each and every one of you is to be used in the investment of a kingdom that cannot fail, a kingdom that no matter what will go on. And God is telling you, you're to invest in it so as to provide a return on the investment. Here's where you could fall into the trap of being like the third slave. I knew you were a man who reaps where he did not sow, so I was afraid. This is not a fearful thing. You have to really buy into this reality. Life is short. We have the chance to carve out a little piece of God's kingdom here and now. We have the chance to invest our lives in something that's eternal, something that actually matters. It's just a little bit, and it's just a short amount of time. But this is what Abraham's doing. Abraham is getting a piece of the promised land for himself right there, right now, a piece that he's actually going to pass along. We're going to find later Isaac is buried in this same cave, Jacob's buried. Remember, Jacob said when he dies in Egypt, he says, take me back to the cave of my father's and bury me there. And Abraham is willing to pay. He's willing to to really invest in the kingdom in a costly way. Notice verses, let's just do 10 through 16, because we're running short on time. Now, Ephron was sitting among the sons of Heth, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the sons of Heth, even of all who went in at the gate of his city. So it was a big public gathering. Saying, no, my Lord, hear me, I give you the field and I give you the cave that is in it. In the presence of the sons of my people, I give it to you, bury your dead. And Abraham bowed before the people of the land. He spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of land saying, if you will only please listen to me, I will give the price of the field, accept it from me that I may bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham saying to him, my Lord, listen to me, a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver. What is that between me and you? So Barry, you're dead. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver which he had named in the hearing of the sons of Heth 400 shekels of silver commercial standard. Now, this is a strange section right here because in our Western minds, because we don't bargain, right? We don't bargain for things. And we have no problem asking for exorbitant prices for things, okay? That's not how they bargained back then. In our minds, we read this, and Ephron's trying to give Abraham the field, and Abraham's being one of those guys who won't be given anything, too, and he pays for it. That's not what's happening. It is expected that Abraham will say no when Ephron says, I'll just give it to you, right? This whole public display is part of the bargaining process. Abraham's supposed to say, nope, let me pay you. And then this gives Ephron the opportunity to name his price. And now notice, Ephron wants to make more money. And so he actually adds the field. Abraham didn't want the field. He just wanted the cave in the field. In fact, it's clear there, he says, he tells them earlier, I just want the cave that is in his field. And the price was way, way over what the land was actually worth at the time. But Abraham was looking for a city to come because he viewed life in this world as a sojourner and as a stranger. He was not tight-fisted with his money, and he didn't even haggle, which he was supposed to haggle here. He was expected to haggle, but instead he pays this exorbitant price in the presence of all these people so everyone would know, man, Abraham got ripped off. And for generations, people would be talking about how terribly Abraham, yeah, he owns that field. He paid 10 times what that field was worth. But he doesn't mind doing this because he knows it's his by promise. This is his anyways. That money that he put into it, whatever. It's not a big issue. It's all going to come back to him. Thinking of sojourners and strangers and aliens and all this, tents are really a funny thing. Tents, the things you camp in. Little shelters that you put up in the woods so that you can sleep in them for a night or two. Some of them are cheap. Some of them are really expensive and nice. You only have to sleep in a cheap tent once. to never buy a cheap tent again, or to just ruin the whole camping experience and never, never do it ever again, right? Camping, there's a, don't take this too far. There's a promise out there that the wilderness offers you some great relief and all that. But if you show up and you do it on the cheap, it becomes a miserable experience. right? And you don't really get to take part in the promise. The investment is worth it if you want to be a sojourner. And this is the thing, we are not home. You're not home. We're sojourning. Don't cling to the things of this world so tightly. Invest in that little piece of the kingdom. God allows you to function for a time right here in this world in order to invest in eternal things. So don't be tight-fisted when it comes to the promised land. It's the only thing, it's the only investment you make in this life that lasts forever. Every other thing you purchase, everything you spend your money on, every nickel you save that's in your bank account when you die means nothing. But what we invest in here and now in the kingdom is forever. Now, that again, that's money, that's time, that's talents, that's all of those things. But when the eternal kingdom is your home, that frees you It's a freeing feeling where everything else can be held with a loose hand because I know I'm losing it all anyways. I need to be a good steward of it. But the kingdom, that's the thing that's eternal. That's the thing that lasts. And so the lesson that death is teaching us is this. Invest in the kingdom now. freely invest in the kingdom now. With your time and your efforts and your resources and all that, I can make this promise, there is not one saint in heaven who would not show up here today, if he could get resurrected for just an hour and preach a sermon, you know what he would preach on? Invest in the kingdom now. Because I'm telling you, it's real, and it's the only thing that matters. Give it your all, give it everything you have. And then second lesson, do whatever you can to advance the kingdom while you're here. Okay, now that sounds like the same thing, but it's not. You know, you buy the piece of land, but we're not just buying it for us. We're not investing in the kingdom just for us. you know, who's going to shepherd our children? Who's going to shepherd our grandchildren? Where will they worship? How will they be, you know, trained and sent out into the world to go advance the kingdom in their way? And this is why Abraham buys the field. It's for a generational idea. Verses 17 and 18. So Ephron's field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre, the field and the cave, which was in it, And all the trees which were in the field that were within the confines of its border were deeded over to Abraham for a possession in the presence of the sons of Heth before all who went out at the gate of his city. Why buy a field that God says is going to be yours one day anyways? Why invest in the kingdom now if the kingdom is going to be given to you one day anyways? If all the promised land is going to belong to Abraham one day, why buy that little piece for such a huge price? It's a great question. People have asked me this. They've said, no matter what, I'm going to heaven because I believe in Jesus. Why do I need to give myself and give my all to God's kingdom? Just three reasons. There's a whole bunch more. Number one, we're going to call it natural law. If these things are true, what else are you going to do with your life? It just comes down to almost a pragmatic approach. You can do all kinds of other things with your life, but you should do this because this is the best thing to do with the best results. You can accumulate wealth, you can accumulate land, you can get a bunch of money, you can have experiences, you can do all these different things, but for what? You know, in the end, what does that matter? As Solomon said, you know, referring to accumulating great amounts of wealth, you can die and who knows what the fool who inherits it all is going to do with it. You know, that's a very serious way to look at it. In fact, Psalm 8410 says, I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than dwell in the tents of the wicked. And the idea is that I'd rather have nothing and serve God than have all the wealth and be in the company of the wicked. I'd rather just give it all away and be the poorest slob in God's kingdom because that's the only thing that matters. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 3, 10 through 15, Paul talks about the things that we do, how they matter, right? In the end, there'll be this judgment. Wood, hay, and stubble's going to burn up. The gold and silver and precious stones will last. What that text is telling us is that as Christians, you can waste your life. You can waste your whole life, get to the end, stand before Jesus, you're going to heaven, you're going to make it, but God is going to take everything that you did and it just burns up and it's gone. And I think there's a lot of Christians who are going to get to that day and it's all going to be gone. Nothing they did mattered. Yeah, they're saved, the Lord brought them in, but in the end, we ought to really invest in this thing because that's all that's going to last. When we labor for the kingdom and we do what we can to advance it, God is giving us the desire of our heart. He's giving us a small part now of the great kingdom that we're looking forward to. The second thing is that we're actually, we're just straight up commanded to do this. So natural law, let's move into divine revelation, Matthew 6, 33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And really just like underline first. Before you do anything else, you need to be seeking first the kingdom. You know, not your career. Great to find a good career, right? And great to work hard on it, but is the kingdom still first in the midst of that? The kingdom always has to have first priority. It's that kingdom and it's that righteousness that we're to be looking to. Finally, in Luke chapter 10, you have the story of Mary and Martha. And Jesus says this, I'm not going to read the whole story because you know it, right? In verse 41, but the Lord answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary. Only one thing is necessary. And he says, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Only one thing is necessary. And if we choose the good, the good part, it will not be taken away from us. And that's what Abraham's doing. He's deciding here and now, Sarah's died. I'm coming to the end of my own life. I've got to pass this thing on. I've got to put my footprint in this land that God has promised to me and to my descendants. So in verse 19 of Genesis, after this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field at Machpelah facing Mamre, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave that is in it were deeded over to Abraham for a burial site by the sons of Heth. Death is telling us things. Just something on death. Why do we bury people? Isn't that a strange thing? Like, why do we go through the whole ceremony of burying people? And the reality is, is because we all know deep down inside that this is not the way it's supposed to be. I think God, when Ecclesiastes talks about God has put eternity into our hearts, I think that God has even put it into our hearts that we know one day there's a resurrection of the body. Job was able to discern that way before there was any scriptural revelation, written revelation of a resurrection. Death is not a part of life. I don't go around correcting people because they say that all the time. Death is just a part of life. Death is not a part of life. Death is the opposite of life. It's everything that's opposed to life. Death tells us you're not home. Death tells us you're a stranger, you're a sojourner. We memorialize people by burying them in the ground because we have a great hope of eternity that one day they'll be resurrected. And so it's telling us we're strangers and aliens. It's telling us we're not home. We have to learn from death to invest in that thing that is necessary and in the good that will not be taken away. And so we learn from death to live in this world for the world that is to come. In fact, Paul puts this very simply, and I'll just wrap it up here. In Philippians 3.20, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to himself." Our citizenship is in heaven. So let's set our minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. Like Abraham, let's invest in the promise. Like Abraham, let's do what we can to advance the kingdom for the next generation. Let's usher in the kingdom and see it expand. Let's close in prayer also.