We turn now to our sermon text for this morning, which is Genesis chapter 23, and we'll read verses 1 through 30. This is on page 16 of your pew Bibles. While you're turning there, I'll just mention that our plan for the summer. is to finish up the life of Abraham, and you'll see that that takes us through two or three more Lord's days, but then we're going to break and we'll turn to another text in the New Testament for the remainder of the summer, and then back to Genesis in the fall. But I wanted to give you a little map as to where we're going. If you've reached Genesis chapter 23, I invite you to stand, and out of respect for God's word, Let's hear its reading. Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kerioth Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight. 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 Zophar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns. It is at the end of his field. For the full price, let him give it to me in your presence as property for a bearing 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 a city. No, my Lord, hear me. I give you the field and I give you the cave that it is in it. In the sight of my 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 it? What is that between you and me? Bury your dead. Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out for 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 his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field of Machpelah, east of Mamre, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. I remember when my great grandma died and I went to visit my great grandpa. And he sat there with a locket of her hair in his hands. And he didn't have much to say. He said, she was by my side for 60 years. I don't know what to do without her. I remember that vividly. The grief of losing our loved ones is a heaviness that's hard to describe. Heavy because we've lost a companion in life. Heavy as well because then we start to think about our own death. This is where we meet Abraham this morning. Sarah was his princess, his wife for over 100 years. You think of 50, right, anniversaries, the golden wedding anniversaries. Well, think about 100 years married and beyond. It's amazing. And now she's gone. What will Abraham do? Will he descend into despair? Or in his grief, will he rise and step forward in faith? What will you do? You push away the thought of losing those closest to you and you push away the thought of your own death, but you can't avoid it forever. And apparently the scriptures want us to prepare for this because it's been brought before us several times this year, many times at various intervals. Our own death, the death of our loved ones, how to prepare for this. As we're preaching, moving expositionally through the word of God, this theme has come up and we must reckon with it. Even the patriarchs had to face death. Think about that. The heroes, Abraham, Sarah, Even they, with their great demonstration of God's grace in their lives, even they had to face with this death, this cruel intruder into God's creation. So will you. Genesis 23 is here to prepare you for that moment. Genesis 23 is here to prepare you for the grave. What I want you to see as we lean into this text is that God calls you Christians to face death with faith, face death with faith. The time of death, in fact, should be the greatest demonstration of your faith because you have a hope that reaches beyond the grave. And we need to see this unfold through Abraham mourning the dead, Abraham purchasing a grave, and finally Abraham and us clinging to hope. You'll notice cause of Abraham's mourning, his wife, Sarah, has died. At 127 years old, she lived this full life, this life of adventure in God's presence. And if there was a eulogy for Sarah, it might sound something like this, that she was far from perfect, but she was a hero. She was a hero of the faith, a matriarch, as we call her. And she followed her husband to the promised land. When God called them out of their pagan world, she left everything behind. Her family, her things, everything. To follow what? A voice calling, come to something that's truly better. Come to the promised land. and she left everything behind and followed her husband and her God. What incredible faith. Sarah was known for her laughter. Never was her laughter more pure than when God gave her the gift of a son, Isaac, when she was 90 years old. Now she leaves behind in her death her only son, Isaac, along with her devoted husband, Abraham. How do we properly mourn the dead? How does Abraham properly mourn for his dear wife, Sarah? Well, we see here how this is done. Abraham gives us this example as to how we are to approach this moment in our own lives, when we've just heard the eulogy of a loved one, when we ourselves are disturbingly aware of our own frailty and impending death. We properly mourn the dead by caring for their bodies. Notice how many times burial is mentioned in this passage. Seven times, burial, some variation of burying your dead or going bury your wife or I need a place to bury her has come forward. Burial is most appropriate. because it is care for the body of our loved ones. And here I need to make a comment on the mode of how we care for the bodies of our loved ones, how we dignify them. Cremation isn't strictly forbidden in the Bible, but it's not the model we see in the scriptures. Starting with Abraham and going all the way through Jesus in the early church, God's people have shown over and over and over again that the body is not disposable. How do they show that? What was their testimony to this in their darkest hour? Their testimony to this was honorable burial. Placing the body in the grave as in a resting place, as in a sleeping position. Though separated from our physical bodies for a time, those same bodies are still part of us. You've heard this over the past year in my preaching. Hear it again. We like to, oh, I can't wait until I'm done with that, this old body. It's caused me just a world of trouble, but. It's part of you. And it is part of what God will renew and rejuvenate and restore. That same body which is laid in the grave is restored in the resurrection. Now, it is absolutely true that though the body be scattered to the four corners of the world in ashes, that God can raise that body back. There is no hindrance to that. How do we show in putting our dead in the grave? How do we show? What picture do we lay a hold of to picture our hope that the body will be laid and restored again? I think the scriptures put before us an example to consider a burial. They rest in their graves till the resurrection. And so this is part of the way we care for our loved ones. This is how, think of Abraham. He has no other mission, no other focus, but I need to bury my wife. I need to lay her to rest. And it is part of an act of his faith, his devotion to her and to God to find a place for her, where he will soon join her. So we care for the bodies of our loved ones. We also weep. Notice, we see in this passage, for the very first time, a grown man's tears. It's the first crying of a man in the Bible, and it's the crying of Abraham as he weeps over his spouse. I don't know if we still have in our culture this idea that grown men don't cry, but I've seen little hints of it. when I'll go to a place of mourning and I'll see men who are struggling with everything within them not to shed a tear. This is not the way of scripture. Scripture invites weeping in the face of death. And here's Abraham as he weeps. And you can be sure of this, that he followed the custom of the day in tearing his clothes, in covering his head with dirt, and by loudly weeping. This was how the people of old used to express grief over the horrible intruder of death. He wept aloud for his dear Sarah, for his bride, for his princess, whom death had taken from him. Abraham cries. And yes, sometimes Christians give the impression that it's not okay to show sadness. Your mom passed away? Well, don't forget to assure everyone with a smile that she's with the Lord. And it's true, isn't it? That if she died with faith, she died in the Lord. but it's okay to weep, it's okay to cry, it's okay for it not to be okay. Jesus wept over death and loss at the tomb of Lazarus. So may we. In fact, there's something that makes death very sad. Death It cuts things off. It separates things. It separates us from our loved one. It separates us from our bodies. And it feels, now this isn't true, but it feels like it's separating us from the promises of God. feels like it's cutting us off from the future that God has in store for this very good, this creation that he called very good. We know he's going to remake the new heavens and the new earth. We know he has promises for us, promises of longevity for his people. And so death feels like what gives God. You're cutting us off from that. Why do your own people have to die? You've given promises to them. Think about Sarah. Think about how long and patiently she waited in the land. And then she gets the first fruits of that when her son Isaac is born. And she rejoices in this birth of this boy. But then when he's 30 years old and still without a wife and still without children of his own, he doesn't he hasn't even given Sarah a grandchild yet. And she dies. She never sees her grandchildren. You know what else she never sees? A single plot of land in the promised land. Up to this very point, Sarah and Abraham were wandering around in tents. Sarah dies without a title to her name. This is what's hard for us in death, too. So many promises, so much hope of what the Lord will do in the new heavens and new earth, the freedom from sin, the freedom from the deterioration of our bodies, a land of our own inheritance. And then all of a sudden, we don't wake up. Feels like we've barely greeted the promises. Is this all there is? So death gives us this disturbing feeling that those whom we love and we ourselves in death are cut off from the promises of God. And yet that's not true. And Abraham shows it to us because not only does he mourn the dead, he also stands up and in faith he goes to purchase a grave. You notice what the text says. It says he rises from before the body of Sarah and he goes. Abraham doesn't linger long in sorrow and despair. He has a hope that lifts him, a grief that rises and takes action. And he looks for a place to bury his wife. Not any old place will do. He wants to find a special place. Why? A special place for his bride, yes, but a special place that especially expresses his promise, his faith in God's promises. This is important for us. It means that the death of our loved ones and our own death is an opportunity to mourn but also to put faith to action. Funerals of our loved ones, preparation for our own funerals, can be this act of incredible faith where we say, I want you to hear loud and clear, even in the darkest moment, what I believe and what my hope is. The problem is that Abraham doesn't own a grave. Remember? He doesn't have any land. His entire life up to this point, he's been wandering around in tents with Sarah, just waiting patiently for God to give them this place. He says, you're gonna have all of it, Abraham. You're gonna have all of it, Sarah. Abraham says, okay, I'm waiting. Still waiting. Okay, my wife has died and I don't own any property. God, I guess this is a sign if there was ever one that I ought to go purchase something. Does he purchase a home? No, he purchases a plot. Imagine for a moment, you meet someone and you say, do you own a, where's your home? He says, oh no, I move about here and there in tents, but I own two plots in Woodland Cemetery. Abraham goes to the local landowners, the Hittites. And I want you to notice this. He is insistent about going to the people near where Sarah has died. He's insistent of going to people in the promised land. It even says they are the men of the land. And he goes to these people, these local landowners, the Hittites, and he says, I'd like to buy a tomb for my wife. And the Hittites say, what? Don't worry about buying property right now, Abraham. You're a grieving man. We'll take care of you. We're happy to loan you a tomb free of charge. Isn't that the sweetest thing you've ever heard? Only it's not very sweet. When you understand what's really going on here and you tap into the cultural customs of the day, you'll learn that they're actually beginning to extort Abraham and take advantage of his grief. This often happens, I've seen this happen time and time again, when people are grieving, Christians are grieving, and the unbelieving world around them, the swindlers, seek to take advantage of their grief. It's wrong. They do this to Abraham. You better believe that these guys saw an opportunity to take advantage of Abraham, who was a rich man. There's no such thing as a free tomb. There's a tomb. with strings attached, right? You know, maybe for a few years, Abraham would go on just using their tomb, and then they say, hey, Abraham, we have a favor to ask of you, right? This is how it often happens when you're loaned something from a friend. Say, remember I did this nice thing for you? Now you need to do something nice for me. Abraham wants nothing to do with that. He's a man of God. He's not a man of debts. He wants to be free to live honorably before the Lord. And so he does not want this generosity to become leverage over him. So Abraham insists, no, I want to buy this cave for my family with my own money. I want it to be official. And they say, no, Abraham, go ahead. Come on, we've got this tomb right here. It's one of the best tombs. He says, no, name the price. And then what do they say? Really, a cave worth 400 shekels of silver and a field included? What's that between you and me? You see what they're doing? They're already upselling Abraham by adding the cost of the entire field, not just the cave, but they've added the field to the transaction. And the price they just casually mentioned is outrageous. 400 shekels of silver was this huge price, this exorbitant price for a little field in a cave. At this point, they probably think, you know, Abraham's going to fire back with a counter offer. to their crazy high price, but to their surprise, Abraham says what? It's a deal. He starts bringing out the cash. He says, let's go to the title office. Let's make it official. I want to buy the field and cave bundle for your price. Now I want you to think about this for just a moment. Why would Abraham take this offer? Why would he buy a tomb and a field at this crazy inflated price? He could say, hey, I'm out of here. You guys are ridiculous. You're trying to take advantage of me. And he could hightail it back to where God first called him in the land of Ur. His family has possessions there. There's tombs of Sarah's family there. He could lay his wife's bones to rest there. but he is utterly insistent upon the fact, no, she is going to be buried here and I'm gonna take that cave, I'm gonna take that field, I'm gonna pay for it so everyone knows it's mine. You see, Abraham did this because he wasn't just purchasing land. Do you know what he was doing? He's purchasing hope. This place was more than a field with a cave. It was a small portion of promised land. And for the very first time, Abraham now owns a part of that land. And his dear wife, Sarah, is buried in the land, inside the bounds of the place that God said would one day be theirs forever. You see, Yahweh's promises to his people, they've started to come true. You can barely see it, right? It's not the whole land. It's not the new heavens and the new earth. It's just a cave and a field, but it is. Slowly but surely, his promises are coming true. They're unfolding. So that Abraham would say, yes, I do own a portion of the promised land. It's not much. One day it'll all be mine. Abraham purchased this land so that in faith one day the entire promised land would belong to him, to his dear Sarah and to all who are his family. Abraham would be buried in his tomb. So would Isaac. So would Rebecca. So would Jacob. So would Leah. So would Joseph. They would all be buried in that cave of Machpelah. Why? I mean, when you get to the end of Genesis and Joseph is in Egypt and he says, his last dying wish is this, take my bones and take them to that tomb in the cave of Machpelah. Why was this cave so important? Why was it hoped for? Because it's all that the people of God had of the promised land, but it was theirs. Their first fruits, their possession. By buying this land, Abraham was testifying to everyone who would see that death was not the end, but that God's promises extend beyond the grave. I want you to listen to what John Calvin has to say about this passage. He says this, while they themselves were silent, the sepulcher cried aloud that death was no obstacle to their entering on the possession of what God had promised. Even in the face of death, Abraham was looking forward to the life to come. His possession, the place that he owns in the promised land, it's not a home, it's a tomb. It's a place associated with death. And it is exactly where he lays his hope that one day he will see his wife again. Though he die, he will rise again and he will possess the land. Hebrews 11 says this, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, just a little tomb, just a little promised land. But they looked past it and Abraham looked beyond it and said, you know what I see by the eyes of faith? I see myself standing in the new heavens and new earth. I see my body. restored again after the grave, I see my Savior. What about you? What is your attitude towards death? By all means, go, mourn, take time to grieve, bury your dead, take care in these things, but don't grieve as those without hope. Do you know why? There's another tomb in the scripture, another cave in the promised land. It was a borrowed tomb because it would only be used for three short days. Jesus, our Savior, died for our sins. And he was buried in a cave. And he rose again. And now that tomb is empty. By faith, we must invest in that tomb, in that cave, in that burial place. For each of us investing in the Savior's tomb will exact a high earthly cost, more than 400 shekels of silver. We have to take up our cross and follow Christ. We have to give everything away, the sin that we cling to so dearly. We may have to let go of relationships, which God says no to. We may have to lose our very lives, lose ourselves. Why? In order to gain Christ, in order to be buried with him in his tomb, But because that tomb is empty, we can know that death is not a dead end, but a door through which we enter the green pastures of the promised land. See, Christ's tomb, it looked like a dead end. It looked like the end of everything, the end of a movement, an end of the Messiah, an end of his work, right? A closed door. But on the other side, what was it? It was a doorway into paradise. That's what it looks like when we bury our loved ones in the Lord. That's what we look like when we ourselves are laid in the tomb. It looks like things are shut up and closed forever, cut off from the promises of God. But no, don't let looks deceive you because Christ has done the unimaginable. He opened a door on the other side of death so that your death is not a dead end, but an entrance into glory. Courage as you face death. Courage as you face the death of your loved ones. For not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, There's a time to weep and a time to rejoice. And the wise preacher taught us this. Lord, help us to weep rightly, to mourn rightly, not with those without hope, but with those with great courage in Jesus. But Lord, let us surely grieve this bold intruder that our sin brought into the world, death. And Lord, let us also rejoice at the same time that death is not the end, but we have in Christ a bold hope. Lord, help us not to be found apart from him in our sin with a dead end and with an eternity apart from Jesus. Instead, let us to be found safe in his tomb by faith in a tomb that has a door on the other side of it. a beautiful entrance into the promised land and our hope in the new heavens and new earth. We pray, Lord, with confidence that you will raise the dead bodily on the last day. Let us, until then, cling to our hope. In Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.