Well, hello everybody and welcome back. This is our daily devotional for Friday, January the 10th, 2025. We've already made it through our whole first week of devotionals, and I'm so glad to be back with y'all. Thank you so much for those of you that have reached out. I've gotten emails from people in different parts of the country and all sorts of things, and it is really good to be back with y'all. Really appreciate your encouragement, and I hope that this is an encouragement to you all. It's really fascinating, the things that we come across in God's Word, especially, and I talked to you about this yesterday, slow down, y'all, slow down. I can't tell you the amount of times that people talk to me about New Year's resolutions, and one of them is, I'm gonna make it through the Bible in a year. And y'all, if you can do that, that's fantastic, wonderful. But don't read the Bible just to say that you read the Bible, okay? Is it a good thing to do, to read through the Bible? Yeah, it's a fantastic thing to do, but if the motivation behind it is, I just got to do it, I got to do it, I got to read it, I got to read it, and then you're just blazing through stuff and you never slow down to look at the deeper implications, that's a problem, y'all. Because think, for instance, what we're going through right now. We started it yesterday, Genesis chapter 23, where you have this passage that is simply the timeline of Abraham and Sarah's life. If you were here yesterday, you'll know that what this is, it details Sarah's death. Okay? She was 90 years old when she had Isaac. She lived to be 127 years old. So, y'all, it happens. Okay? But Genesis chapter 23 is this very fascinating story where you see this back and forth with the Hittites and all this different stuff. And at first glance, it's like, okay, yeah, we got this in here. I suppose we needed to find out about how Sarah died. But outside of it, just filling in the blanks in terms of the timeline of Abraham's life, Why do we need to know all this stuff? What's so important about it? Well, yesterday, what we saw in the beginning of Genesis chapter 23 is a very important thing to draw from this is that even marriages that aren't perfect, okay? Even marriages that have significant problems can still bring glory to God. And y'all, God can overcome the problems in your relationships. He can overcome the problems in your marriage. What did we start out with? The fact that Sarah died and that Abraham wept bitterly over her, okay? He loved her deeply. He mourned for her. He wept for her. And y'all, Think back on some of the stuff we went through with Abraham and Sarah. You know, that whole thing, oh, what was it? Yeah, that's right. Abraham lied and tried to pass her off as his sister because he was worried about his own life. He let her be taken by the Egyptian pharaoh, for instance, right? And this happened again later. That's a problem. You have that other, you know, little teensy thing where Abraham gets Sarah's maidservant pregnant. And I know that Sarah was the one that suggested it, but the buck stopped with Abraham. Terrible decision, terrible marriage communication there. I mean, just event after event of not very good things happening, and yet you see this deep love where God can bring forgiveness, God can do all sorts of things, including Okay, including the fact that God can take a marriage that is broken and still use it to glorify himself We saw that yesterday Okay, um genesis 23 verse 7 then abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land the hittites He said to them if you are willing to let me bury my dead and then he goes forward and he he asked for them To sell him some land right and and then he said no my lord. Listen to me And then he said, listen, everybody has seen this. He doesn't exactly say everybody sees how much you love your wife. He said, no, you're a prince among us. Ask any of us, any of us, and he will give you his own tomb. Y'all, what that points to is the impact that Abraham's love for Sarah had on the Hittites. These people that later on would be a serious problem for God's people. We see them respecting this relationship. And y'all, again, this is not a perfect marriage. By the way, there is no such thing as a perfect marriage. Every marriage has issues that have to be worked through, and God can do something incredible and beautiful. But that's not the only thing that you'll miss if you just blaze through this. Something much more deep is present here. Something really, really important is present here. And I gave you the answer yesterday, but I'm not going to start out with that today. Instead, we're going to read it because what we find is fascinating. Oh, my goodness. It's the ancient Eastern world on display, right, where you see this little game of cat and mouse, where you see Crudeness and subtlety. Oh, it's fantastic. I love it I'm gonna I've shared this with you before I think but maybe you maybe you were here Maybe it was just in a sermon, but I'll share with you the riddle of Saladin Right in just a moment first, let's pray and then we're gonna dig in Father, we thank you for this time. Please be with us. Guide us. Let us understand, in as much as it's possible with us, with our Western mindset. Let us understand what's going on in your Word, and let us see the far deeper implications of this, because they point to your faithfulness. So please, guide us in this time, and we pray it all in Christ's name. Amen. Now, what am I talking about? What riddle of Salad? Not Salad, Saladin, okay? The ancient Ottoman leader, right? The Sultan, right? The one that during the time of the Crusades, the fabled confrontation between he and Richard of England, Richard the Lionheart. I'll get to that in a second. We need to read some first because what we come across today really is fascinating. Okay, it's really fascinating. So, we're going to pick up verse 5, right? Actually, no, verse 3. It says, Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for my burial site so I can bury my dead." Now, I hinted at this yesterday. Abraham reveals something important here, y'all. And it harkens all the way to Hebrews chapter 11, where it talks about how Abraham lived in a tent. And the reason he did so is because he was always looking for that city whose foundations, whose builder and architect was God himself. Abraham was looking for the inheritance that God would give him, and he knew it was about so much more than land, okay? So much more than the physical side of this world that we find ourselves living in. Abraham says this to indicate that he is a stranger in a strange land. He says this to indicate that this world is not his home. Then what we find is fascinating, okay? This is verse five. It says, the Hittites replied to Abraham. I alluded to this earlier. Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead. And this is where it gets interesting. Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. He said to them, If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron, son of Zohar, on my behalf, so he will sell me the cave of Machphala, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you. Verse 10, now Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people, and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. Time out, pause, wait a second. Why does Abraham do it this way? You know, this is something that if you just blaze through and if you don't slow down, you're gonna miss it. Abraham previously said, hey, listen, anybody, you just name it. It's yours. Nobody's going to refuse you. And his response is he bows down and then he says, if you'll intercede for me with Ephron and ask him to sell me this piece of property, just this cave. And he says this and the dude is sitting there. Why does he do it that way? Why doesn't he just say, hey, all right, Efron, hey, listen, can you and I chat here? Can we work something? No, no, no, no. He says it in the presence of all the people. This is not going to be a private transaction, y'all. It's not gonna be private at all. Verse 10, Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people, and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gates of a city. No, my lord, verse 11, he said, listen to me. I give you the field, and I give you the cave that's in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead. You can almost hear it, right? The dripping sound of his voice. Bury your dead. And Abraham bowed down before, this is verse 12, and Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. And he said to Ephron, in their hearing, that's key here, in their hearing, listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there. Ephron answered Abraham, listen to me, my lord, the land is worth 400 shekels of silver. It's that between me and you. Bury your dead, y'all. What's going on here? 450 shekels of silver, that's a lot of money. That's 10 pounds of silver. I meant to look that up before I started this daily devotion. I don't know what silver is trading at right now, but this is not a paltry sum of money. But you'll notice, he didn't say to Abraham, hey, listen, you want it? Okay, it's gonna cost you this much. He says, this land, this field is 450, but what's that between you and me? You know, this is hard for us to understand, OK? We're from a Western mindset. As my man Rudyard Kipling said, east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. This brings up the riddle of Saladin, right? And I can't find it anywhere. I've tried to look it up. I think, I mean, I've Googled it. I've never found it on there. I found some things that are close. The place that I heard this first, well, the only place that I ever heard this was from my beloved Hebrew teacher, Dr. Douglas Culver. Now, Dr. Culver and his wife immigrated to Israel after it was made a state by the UN. And the reason they did that is because anybody that went there had to learn Hebrew, and they learned it from the rabbis. And he was a Hebrew scholar, and he just had to go, so he and his wife went. Incredible story, but it was there that he heard the riddle of Saladin. As they were trying to describe, Israel was just becoming a state. And this was largely due to the United Nations, which is a thoroughly Western thing. And yet, they're operating in the East. And he talked about the old rabbi telling this riddle. It's the time of the Crusades, and Richard the Lionheart is at a stalemate with the Ottomans, with those, the Muslims that had come up out of Israel. And they're doing battle, and neither side is winning, and there's such great casualties. And so Richard the Lionheart, King of England, and Saladin, the Sultan, decide that they're going to come together and have a battle of champions. Instead of their armies waging war, it'll just be Richard, and it'll just be Saladin, and they will do battle in between them. Whichever one wins. That means his side will have prevailed and the other side will go away, right? It's a battle of champions, kind of like David and Goliath, right? Goliath represented the Philistines and David represented Israel, okay? Similar set of circumstances, but Saladin on one hand representing the Muslims, Richard the Lionheart celebrating the West. And as they prepare for this battle, you find Richard the Lionheart saying to his aides, I'm sending you. Go to Cambridge and bring me back Cambridge steel. I want a hand and a half sword, six feet long, that's so heavy and so mighty and so strong that I can cleave an English oak in two with one swipe of my broadsword. And therein, my friends, you find the Western ideal. But Saladin said to his aides, and he said, bring me steel from Damascus, no more than twice the size of a man's hand. I want it to be light, though. I want it to be supple. And I want it to be so sharp that it would cut Allah himself. And thus, you find the Eastern mindset. The Western mindset is, well, if one tank won't do it, we'll send in 50 tanks to do it. I want the biggest sword you could ever imagine, one swipe and it cuts a tree in half. That's the West. The East, oh, they want small. They want slight. They want subtle. You ever been cut with something really, really sharp before? I'm not going to show you. I carry a Spyderco knife, right? The Japanese, man, they know how to make a sharp knife. And it's not a knife for cutting boxes open. It's a knife for cutting other things. I'm just going to put it that way. I cut myself with it. Isabella doesn't even like to look at that knife because it's so scary. It's so sharp. It's not big, but it's so sharp. It's so deadly. And that's the Eastern mindset. It's tricky even. Now the question is in the riddle of Saladin, who wins? The West and all of its power on all of its hubris manifest or the East with its shrewdness and its subtlety? There is no answer. The point of the riddle is not to find out who wins. The point of the riddle is to understand how the West thinks In this circumstance, we'd think, why doesn't the guy just tell Abraham what he wants for the land and why doesn't Abraham just pay him? Why does Abraham not talk to him directly instead of doing this in front of all the people? Y'all, because this is the East. The same reason that Saladin wanted that small, small blade that was ever so sharp. What you see here is Eastern shrewdness. this part of the world where to this day, y'all, shrewdness is seen as a grand virtue. I remember going to Morocco and bargaining and bargaining and bargaining. And this is one of my, I actually was wearing it today and it just so happened to be in my desk, but I bought this scarf. Tangier right it's fantastic i love it i love it is super cashmere right and i remember you know you've heard about turkish bazaars let me just tell you i'm a rockin bazaar is really something else and i bargained and bargained with this guy want to sell me a rug but before you ever showed me the rugs. Oh, he served tea and just this fantastic, fantastic pistachio thing. Pistachios are my weakness, y'all. Absolute favorite. OK. And just this wonderful, wonderful dance. And, you know, he said to me, are you sure you're not Moroccan? Right. Because we just went back and forth. I loved it. I loved it. That's why I love buying cars. I can't help myself. And I don't know why that is. It's just maybe it's because I was raised in part by my grandfather, who was a horse trainer. I don't know. But the point is this, the reason that we find what we find in Genesis chapter 23, not so much that it's trying to convey this to us, but what we see is the Eastern mindset on display. You see subtlety. You see pageantry in this. You see when Abraham says, let me buy the field, and the guy says, no, no, no, no, no, no. The field? You mean that field that's worth 450 shekels? What's that between you and me? That's the East. And so, what do we find? Verse 16, Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms. Second, pause, time out. What terms? There were no terms. All he said is between you and me. He didn't even say how much it costs. He said exactly how much it cost. This is the Eastern mindset on display, all the subtlety, okay? Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites. You'll notice that not only did Abraham ask them to intercede with Ephron in the hearing of everyone, Ephron said the price in front of everyone too. Oh, it's this beautiful dance, right? I love this stuff. I hope that you do too. And if not, then forgive me for my excitement over this. But he weighs out the shekels, 400 shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants. Now that's important too, because he went by their scales. That's important. Verse 70, it's important to show that Abraham capitulated here. Verse 17, so Ephron's field of Machpelah near Mamre, both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field were deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. Afterward, Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre, and then in parenthesis, which is at Hebron. and the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site." Y'all, why all of this? Well, this is what we left with yesterday, and we'll end with this today, because we're at the end of the chapter. But this is about so much more than a burial plot. This is about Abraham first recognizing he's a stranger on a strange land. He's an alien there. He's traveling through. but it's also about Abraham remembering. It wasn't enough to Abraham that somebody give him just a spot and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can bury your dead there. It's my tomb, but you can bury your dead there. No, no. Abraham insisted that Sarah be buried here at this place. And all throughout the passage, it's referred to as Kiriath Arba. And then in parenthesis, which is at Hebron. Y'all, the reason it's got two names is because one is the Hittite name. Hebron is the Israelite name. Hebron is the name that this place would become when God's promise was realized by his people. Now, it would be long after Abraham had died, after Isaac, after Jacob, in fact. It wouldn't be until the conquest that God's people would finally take possession of this land that he promised to Abraham all the way back in Genesis 12 when he said, hey, take everything, go to the land that I will show you, it will be your inheritance. And hundreds of years, generations after generations of God's people would pass, but God is faithful. And Abraham insisted that Sarah not be buried in some foreign land, but instead, she be buried in the land of her people. Wasn't her people yet, but it would be, you see. Hebrews 11, which we're not gonna read, but we've alluded to all throughout this study, points to all the things that different people did. And the resounding refrain is that they did this by faith. even though they had not yet received that which God had promised them. They trusted God. They acted by faith. You want to know what Genesis 23 is all about? It's not about the pageantry of the Eastern mindset. It's not about how important it is to mourn over people. I have seen arguments made against cremation for this. I'm not going to buy that and I'm not going to preach that. But nevertheless, there is something about how a society treats its dead that I'll save for another time. That is very, very important. But the real point of all of it is not those things. The real point of all of this is to show that God is faithful and that you never misplace your trust when you put your trust in him, because even in situations that seem dire, even in situations that seem as though they're never gonna work, God is working. What must have gone through Abraham's mind? His wife, whom he loved, is dead. He's only got the one son, and yet God promised him these descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and he's got one. God promised this land to be his inheritance, and here he is, dickering with this guy named Ephron, Like he's trying to purchase a new camel. We don't know what's going through Abraham's mind fully. We know instead, Hebrews 11, no matter what passing fancies might've gone through, Abraham trusted in the Lord, that God is good to his word. And you need to trust in him as well. I don't know what's going on in your life. But I do know this, if you're living any kind of life, that means that you are living through difficulty. Maybe not right now, but you have. And if you haven't, and you're not now, you will. That is the nature of this life, the nature of this existence. But God gives you promises. The promise of the Holy Spirit to guard, guide, protect, lead you. The promise of the fact in Romans that Jesus is at God's right hand interceding for you. The promise he gave his disciples, it is for you and me as well, that he'll never forsake you. The promise that you don't have to worry about the future, let the future worry about itself, he's in control. Different promise, but in a lot of ways, exactly the same. Abraham trusted the Lord. Who are you trusting in? Let Genesis 23 be a reminder of God's great faithfulness to you. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank you for this time that you've given to us, for the opportunity to talk about all sorts of things, East versus West, all that kind of stuff, but ultimately to see your faithfulness on display. Oh, Father, that we would be faithful, work in our hearts to that end, and we pray it in Christ's name, amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time and for suffering that little episode where I get into things that are really interesting to me. You know, at one point in time, I had it as my design, and even had conversations with my Hebrew professor to leave, to go to New York City, go to Columbia University, the Ivy League, and to study ancient languages. That was really what I wanted to do there. And then we had a child, and the Lord got ahold of me and said, hey, dummy, don't you know you're supposed to be a pastor? Give it up for this whole professor stuff. And so now I just know things that are good for Jeopardy maybe once upon a time. But nevertheless, Forgive me for my excitement over this stuff. Thank you for bearing through it with me. But what a wonderful thing it is to slow down and to really digest God's word. Thanks for being a part of this time. Lord Willow will be here Sunday morning at 10 o'clock to live stream. Get yourself in a Bible believing church. Then after that, we'll be back Monday at six. Until then, take care.