Sarah's Death and Burial

Buying a Plot, Advancing the Plot
(Genesis 23, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, February 1, 2015)

Abraham’s wife whom he has loved for many years, who has been his companion through many travels and trials, has now died.  We live in a fallen world where death is all too common.  Those whom we love are taken from us or we are taken from them.  This was never God’s original design for his world.  Scientists might argue that death is part of the necessary order of things.  God’s word says otherwise.  Death entered the world through sin.  Thus it is good to grieve the loss of those whom we love.  Grieving the loss is good, because the loss itself is not good.  Abraham lost his wife and life companion, and he wept for her.

Did Abraham despair in his grief?  No.  Did he give up on life?  No.  He had work to do.  The majority of this chapter is focused on his efforts to secure a plot of land from the local people where he could bury Sarah.  In the next chapter we will see Abraham working to secure a wife for his son Isaac.  In this world full of sin and death there are times to mourn.  But there is never a time to give up on life.  We may need to take a break from certain things at times, to grieve or to rest or to heal, but we must never take a break from hoping in God.

Sarah, Abraham, and their descendents all died without seeing God’s promises come to complete fulfillment.  Yet their hope was beyond this life (Hebrews 11:13-16).  They awaited the coming heavenly kingdom.  There is something important we need to understand here about the hope Abraham had, and that we have.  True hope is not escapism.  Escapism says, “This life is meaningless to me.  My hope is in heaven.”  If Abraham had had this attitude, he wouldn’t have bothered to work so hard to buy a plot of land from the Hittites.  When they offered to give him a tomb, he would have just taken it. Instead, he negotiated to buy a plot.  God had promised to give all this land to Abraham’s descendents.  Abraham uses the occasion of his wife’s death to secure the first plot of promised land for himself and his descendents.  Abraham would also be buried here, as would Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah.  Abraham’s hope was in God’s coming heavenly kingdom, and it was a hope that he would only fully realize after death.  Yet this hope motivated him to stay engaged in kingdom work.  The securing of the land God had promised was essential to the fulfillment of God’s promises and therefore essential to bringing in God’s heavenly kingdom.  Abraham could not just give up on life and wait for heaven.  He had kingdom work to do now.  By purchasing this plot from the Hittites, Abraham was honoring Sarah, he was expressing their shared faith that God would give this land to their descendents, and he was actually advancing God’s plan of redemption.  Abraham was advancing the plot of God’s story of redemption.

We also have kingdom work to do.  Everything we do, sharing the gospel, training up the next generation, spreading the love of Christ to a dying world, even mundane tasks at our jobs or at home done for the glory of God, matter.  Our hope in God’s coming heavenly kingdom should motivate us not to despair of this life but to recognize that everything we do in this life matters in eternity.  God is advancing the plot of his redemptive story through us and through our actions and words.

Put the Word to Work: We face painful loss with grief and hope.  Our hope motivates us to action now, for we have kingdom work to do.  Life here and what we do with it matters.

Memory Verse from the Psalms of Ascents: Psalm 127:2 – It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Gospel Reading: Matthew 18:7-9 – Temptations to sin