The scripture reading this morning is from Genesis
chapter 23, and so will you turn to
that chapter and listen as I read through
the 20 verses.
Genesis chapter 23, verse 1 through verse 20.
Now Sarah lived 127 years.
These were the years of the life of
Sarah.
And 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.
Then 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.
And 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 choicest 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 Ephron, the son of Zohar, 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.
You'll notice that Abraham did not ask for
a clergyman's discount when he asked for this
piece of property.
And it's one characteristic of the Old Testament
saints, the prophets and others, they did not
ask for any favors from the world.
Verse 10, Now Ephron was sitting among the
sons of Heth, and Ephron the Hittite answered
Abraham at the hearing of the sons of
Heth, even of all who went in at
the gate of his city, 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, and he spoke to Ephron at 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.
Incidentally, this is probably a kind of conventional
haggling that went on.
This is fun for them who are in
the east.
And so when it was offered to him
free, it was not really meant that way.
If he had taken it, they would have
been shocked.
He knows that they want ultimately him to
buy it, and probably at a good price.
Then Ephron answered Abraham, saying to him, My
lord, listen to me, a piece of land
worth four hundred shekels of silver, that's the
key, that's the price, four hundred shekels of
silver, what is that between me and you?
So bury your dead.
And Abraham then wrote a prayer letter to
his constituents, enclosing a self-addressed envelope.
Well now, I just want to call your
attention to the different customs that do exist
between the present time and the times of
the men of God of the age of
the patriarchs.
And Abraham listened to Ephron, and Abraham weighed
out for Ephron the silver which he had
named in the hearing of the sons of
Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, commercial standard.
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 all
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 in at the gate of his city.
And 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.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
The subject for this morning is Sarah's death
and the power of the resurrection.
If it depended on the will of the
preacher of the word, Genesis 23, like the
book of the third stanza of so many
of our hymns, would be skipped.
That it is...
That's really one of the values of the
expository preaching of the whole of the books
of the Bible.
We are forced by expository preaching to study
all of the passages of the word of
God.
We do not just go through the Bible
picking those passages that are most appealing to
us.
Of course, we could make a point over
the inevitability of death, but the subject is
really Sarah's death and burial.
We might want to say that it is
appointed unto men once to die and after
this the judgment and expatiate over the inevitability
of the fact that sooner or later all
of us must die.
The validity of Benjamin Franklin's famous observation, in
this world nothing can be said to be
certain except death and taxes, goes without question.
Some may be able to avoid taxes, but
no one can hope to escape death except
that group that shall be alive when the
Lord Jesus comes.
Sir Walter Scott and Marmion put it this
way, and come he slow or come he
fast, it is but death who comes at
last.
But this chapter is, I say, more important
than simply a comment upon the fact that
all men and women must ultimately die.
There are some important lessons in Genesis chapter
23, and by avoiding it we may have
escaped some of them.
And so I'm thankful again for the fact
that at least in Believer's Chapel we have
committed ourselves to the consistent, generally speaking, consistent
systematic exposition of the books of the Bible.
And so we must take a look at
Genesis chapter 23.
There are some important lessons here, I say,
and I think one of the first one
is that we have here an illustration of
the mode of life of the man of
faith in dealing with the material world.
You will notice that Abraham again affirms that
he is a stranger and a sojourner among
the Hittites in verse 4.
And that illustrates again the fact that the
Christian man is a visitor in this world.
He is one who is traveling through.
His main purpose in life is not to
accumulate a lot of property and a lovely
home, but his main purpose in life is
to do the will of God while he
is passing through this earthly scene.
And so Abraham's repeated statement that he's a
stranger and a sojourner, and the New Testament
authors pick that up, is an expression of
how the man of faith should deal with
the material world.
It also is revealing in that it gives
us a picture of Abraham, this great man
of faith, dealing with the immaterial side of
life, too.
And he deals with those that are not
part of the covenant people in courtesy, in
kindness.
He deals with them in gentleness, and he
also himself gives support for the customs of
the times.
He doesn't hesitate to bow before the sons
of Heth more than once here as he
carries on this little work of bargaining over
the piece of property.
In other words, it illustrates for us that
if we are to be good illustrations of
Christians, we ought not to be battle axes
of women and boars of men.
And the very thing that we claim that
we are should produce the kind of gentleness
and kindness and courtesy manifested in the life
of this great man of faith.
In the New Testament we have many texts
on this point.
I don't have time to cite them for
you.
They will be in the lesson which we
hope to have for you next week.
But the apostle warns us more than once
that we should walk honestly, properly, it is
rendered in the New American Standard Bible, properly
towards those that are without.
It is also an illustration of the mode
of life in meeting death.
Christians encounter death just like others.
We must meet death.
We know that in the present day by
virtue of what Christ has done for us,
we have the redemption of our souls.
And we also have secured through the work
of the Lord Jesus the hope that our
bodies shall be redeemed as well.
But our bodies are not redeemed now, and
they will not be redeemed until the coming
again of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And here we have in Abraham an illustration
of how believers meet death.
And it's not surprising that Abraham should weep
and mourn over this companion of his who
had been with him for about four score
years.
And then we have, I think probably as
a highlight of the chapter, an illustration of
the faith of the man of faith in
resurrection.
You can see how anxious he is that
he might have just a little bit of
land in Canaan, because God had promised him
Canaan.
It was Canaan that was the object of
the promises made to him.
And he sees in the procuring of just
a little burial place a kind of anticipation
of the promises that are ultimately to be
his.
Later on in the book of Genesis, we'll
read how Joseph asked that his bones be
taken up from Egypt and put in the
land buried there, because he too believed that
those promises that God had given to Abraham
would find their ultimate fruition, and he would
be in the land.
And he wanted to be there when he
was resurrected from the grave.
So, in the burial of Sarah, there is
a witness to the resurrection and to the
promises that had been given to Abraham early
in life.
Even John Calvin said, while they themselves were
solid, the sepulchre cried aloud that death formed
no obstacle to their entering on the possession
of it.
So far as Abram was concerned, the fact
that Sarah had died did not mean that
she was not going to inherit the promises.
No, he was certain of that, and he
wanted her to have a place in that
land so that from that spot there may
be the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises.
It is twenty-five years now since the
experience of Mount Moriah when Abraham took Isaac
up on top to sacrifice him at the
command of God.
Life, evidently, has been serene and untroubled in
the twenty-five or thirty years since that
time.
We read of nothing between Genesis 22 and
Genesis chapter 23.
Evidently, it was a rather monotonous life of
a man who had great flocks and who
spent a great deal of time out in
the pasture.
Someone has described it this way, that the
rivers of Abraham's life had passed the rapids
and the narrows of the earlier course, and
now Abraham and his family were dwelling in
the still waters of the pool after those
rapids.
Well, something is going to happen now that
is going to change things for Abraham.
The pastoral life left ample time for leisure
and close personal intercourse.
And so in the case of Abraham and
Sarah, there was a very close relationship, no
doubt.
Their lives had grown together very closely.
And death will leave a great blank in
the life of the patriarch.
Listen again to the two verses of the
twenty-third chapter that open it.
Now Sarah lived one hundred and twenty-seven
years.
These were the years of the life of
Sarah.
I've commented about three times already that Sarah
is the only woman whose age at death
is recorded in the Bible.
I've wondered about that, I must confess, in
the meantime, and I've made these little jokes
about it.
Of course, women might say, it's providential.
That means that we shouldn't tell our age
all the time.
On the other hand, I was this past
week thinking about the passage in 1 Peter
chapter 3, and I wonder if there is
any connection between that and this passage.
For in that particular section, Sarah is singled
out as an illustration for the women of
the faith.
Remember, she called Abraham, Lord.
Now we're not making any application of that,
just cite the text.
But then in the sixth verse, after saying
that with reference to her, I can see
that it's not doing any good.
The women in the audience are laughing over
it.
Men, it's...
we're in sad shape, I guess.
But the text, verse 6, says this, Thus
Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you
have become her children, if you do what
is right, without being frightened by any fear.
So evidently, just as Abraham is the illustration
of the man of faith, so Sarah is
looked upon as the illustration of the woman
of faith.
And perhaps as a recognition of Sarah's place
in the Word, she is marked out with
special attention and her age is recorded at
her death.
What was the death of Sarah?
Well, first of all, it was the death
of a believer.
It's clear from that passage in 1 Peter
that she's regarded as a believer.
So this was the death of a believer.
Now, a believer's death is not as sad
as it might seem.
In the case of Sarah, it was the
death of a believer, and consequently, her future
is entirely different from an unbeliever.
Now, men die with different degrees of equanimity.
John Quincy Adams is reported to have said,
when he died, this is the last of
earth.
I am content.
Well, that's a fine way to die.
But it's even greater to die as a
Christian and to die in Christ.
And Sarah died in Christ.
It was the death of a believer.
It was the death also of a lifelong
companion.
And no doubt Abraham felt the loss more
than anyone else.
A tremendous part of his life was gone.
Someone has said every man needs a wife
because sooner or later something goes wrong that
you just can't blame on the government.
But in Abraham's case, it was a lifelong
companion.
It's very difficult to put into words what
this must have meant to Abraham.
I think any of you in the audience
who've been married for years or scores of
years, you'll understand better than I could possibly
explain to you what it means to lose
a lifelong companion.
But in the case of Sarah's death, it
was the death of a lifelong companion.
We'll say more about that in just a
moment.
It was the death of a mother as
well.
Isaac was now between the ages probably of
thirty-five and forty.
And Isaac and Sarah evidently had a very
close relationship.
I know you might wonder about that, where
do you get that in the Bible?
Well, of course, you might expect it because,
after all, he was the promised child.
She had been barren all of these years
and had borne the reproach of never having
children.
And that was quite a reproach of the
East.
And now finally there had come the promised
son, Isaac.
And no doubt, she really doted on that
little child, that little boy.
If ever a child was spoiled or had
occasion to be spoiled, perhaps Isaac was the
one except remember that the Bible said that
God said that Abraham was his father because
God knew that he would train him up
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Well there was a close relationship between Isaac
and Sarah, and I'm not just speaking out
of my imagination.
For at the conclusion of the next chapter,
it is stated, Then Isaac brought Rebekah, her,
into his mother Sarah's tent.
And he took Rebekah, and she became his
wife, and he loved her.
Thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.
And so evidently, Isaac was very disturbed over
the death of Sarah and felt the loss
of his mother.
And he was a young man of, well,
I hate to say it, middle age, 35
or so, middle age, you know.
So here is a young man who was
very close to his mother, and when Sarah
died, it was the death of a mother
who was loved by a son and who
needed his mother.
And of course it was the death of
a homemaker.
We all know what a homemaker is, and
Sarah was not only the homemaker for her
family, but for all of the retinue of
servants and others that Abraham had.
It was a place that hardly anyone could
be expected to fill.
Well, the consequences of Sarah's death are described
in the phrases and clauses that follow.
We read in the last part of Genesis
chapter 23, verse 2, And Abraham went in
to mourn for Sarah and to weep for
her.
One might ask, why did he have to
go in or come in?
Some have said he must have been away.
Perhaps he was out in the fields with
the flocks.
And Sarah's death may have been a sudden
kind of death, and so he was called
in and thus he came in.
The Targum of Jonathan, one of the Hebrew,
the Jewish paraphrases, the Aramaic paraphrases of the
Old Testament says at this point, And Abraham
came from the mount of worship, Moriah, and
found that she was dead.
And he sat down to mourn for Sarah
and to weep for her.
That account is, it's only a traditional account,
but it is that while he was gone,
Sarah had died.
While he was gone to offer up Isaac
on Mount Moriah.
And still others have said, traditionally, that what
happened was that she learned that Abraham was
going to offer up Isaac on Mount Moriah,
and she swooned and died from the shock
of hearing that Abraham was going to offer
up Isaac.
Now as far as the text is concerned,
we do not have anything in it that
suggests that these explanations are correct.
Back in chapter 24 and verse 67 again,
we read, Then Isaac brought her into his
mother Sarah's tent.
And probably the safest explanation of this is
that Sarah had her tent and Abraham had
his tent.
And when Sarah died, and we read Abraham
went in to mourn for Sarah and to
weep for her, he left his tent and
went into her tent.
And that probably is the meaning of that
expression.
But now notice what he did when he
went in that tent.
Here is the great patriarch, the great man
of faith, and he went in to mourn
for Sarah and to weep for her.
One of these words is a word that
speaks of very strong expressions of mourning, the
kind of outward weeping and wailing that the
Easterners do and did.
And the other, well, the quieter kind of
weeping and crying that is familiar to us
in the West.
I want you to notice this.
It's not unmanly for a man to cry.
It's not an idle activity for a man
to weep.
It's not a morbid activity for a man
to weep.
Now, of course, the occasion is different.
This is the first time that we read
of Abraham weeping.
He didn't weep when they left Ur of
the Chaldees.
And he may have been thinking that this
is the last time I'll ever see my
home.
He did not weep then.
He did not weep when tidings came to
him that his nephew Lot had been carried
into captivity.
He didn't weep when he took Isaac to
Mount Moriah.
Now, we do not read that as they
rode for those three days that he was
weeping over what must be done.
But now that Sarah is lying dead before
him, the fountains of his grief are broken
up, and Abraham went in to mourn for
Sarah and to weep for her.
Now, I want to draw two or three
lessons from this because I do think it's
important.
Spirituality is not against the natural instincts.
The Bible does not in any way suggest
that we should deny our feelings or that
we should restrain our feelings.
It's not bad to weep and cry as
a Christian.
When the occasion calls for it, it's perfectly
normal and natural.
There are people who incline to think that
if we believe that there is a resurrection
that there is no place for weeping.
That's not biblical.
That kind of pastoralism that bids us to
meet the most agitating experiences of life with
rigid and tearless countenance is not biblical teaching.
The spirit of the gospel, the spirit of
the Word of God has little sympathy with
that.
We do not have morbid sentimentality taught in
the scriptures, but I think it's fair to
say that we may well question whether the
man who cannot weep can really love.
Because in the final analysis, what is sorrow?
Well, sorrow is love that has been widowed
and bereaved.
And consequently, it is perfectly natural for individuals
who love to weep when the occasion calls
for it.
It was the most natural expression of the
love of Abraham's heart for him to weep.
So we say that Christianity does not come
to us to make us unnatural and inhuman.
It comes to purify us and ennoble us
and to raise all of the true emotions
of life to their proper perspective.
Jesus wept.
Peter wept.
The Ephesian disciples fell on the neck of
the Apostle Paul when they thought that was
his last visit to them, and they wept
over him.
And so the Lord Jesus stands by all
of the mourners of life and encourages them
as they weep with the illustration of his
own weeping.
Now Sarah had been the partner of Abraham
for seventy or eighty years, and so it's
not surprising that this great man of God
wept and mourned over the loss of his
wife.
As a matter of fact, I imagine that
in Abraham's mind he went over all of
the experiences that they had enjoyed together.
She alone was left from those early days,
whenever he spoke of Nahor or Terah or
Ur of the Chaldeans, or even of the
experience with Pharaoh in Egypt, it was Sarah
who would most understand.
The hopes, the fears, the plans, the purposes
that they had formed in their own minds,
these were things that Sarah was able to
share.
Others were not.
He remembered her as a beautiful young woman.
He remembered her when she was a hundred
and twenty-seven years of age.
I'm sure he enjoyed the fact that she
was a beautiful young woman.
I think I read this to you once
before, but you'll pardon me if I read
it again.
I like it every time I read it.
Someone has said, justice is when he chooses
an incredible homely woman with a profoundly beautiful
soul over an incredibly beautiful woman with a
profoundly shallow soul.
There is no justice.
Now, in Abraham's case, he was a man
who evidently appreciated beauty, and he remembered Sarah
as a beautiful woman.
But there was more to Sarah than a
shallow soul and a beautiful face, and he
remembered all of that.
And when her body was finally lifeless and
the spirit had gone to be with the
Lord, it was, we shall see, a very
precious thing to him.
So spirituality, Christianity, is not against the natural
instincts.
We don't deny our feelings as Christians.
But the Christian does not mourn as the
world mourns.
The apostle reminds the Thessalonians of that in
the fourth chapter and the thirteenth verse of
his book, when he speaks to them concerning
the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
He says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and
verse 13, But we do not want you
to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are
asleep, that you may not grieve as do
the rest who have no hope.
So Christians grieve, but they do not grieve
as those who have no hope.
We grieve over the loss of our loved
ones, but we do not grieve as the
world does, because we know there is reunion,
and reunion on the plane of life that
we shall enjoy throughout all eternity, when there
shall be an ennobling of everything.
The resurrection body, the relationship that we bear
to each other, will be a relationship that
we enjoy with the whole of the body
of Christ, and so we look forward to
the restoration of fellowship with friends and loved
ones.
What a wonderful thing it is to be
a member of the family of God and
have such a great hope as this.
Samuel Johnson used to say, Christianity teaches us
to die well, but not eagerly.
That too is human.
We're not all going to rush out and
try to die in the next few moments,
because it's so great, because the Lord has
certain things that He wants us to do.
Another thing, you will notice here that Christian
mourning does not interfere with the grand duties
of life.
The experience of suffering, the experience of the
loss of Sarah, is designed to purify and
ennoble Abraham, to make him into the kind
of person God wants to make him.
And he felt that the loss of Sarah
was important for that.
John Keats has said that this life is
a veil of soul-making, and that's what
God is doing with Abram.
He's fitting him for the future.
And consequently, he experiences this, but he's not
to just give up at this point.
He has duties to perform.
And so he must get about the business
of burying Sarah and get on with the
things that God intends for him to do
in the remaining years of his life.
Now, the next thing to do is to
buy a burial spot.
There is a time to weep, there is
a time to refrain from weeping.
And so Abram will now deal with Ephron.
This is two heads of covenant people.
Abram, the head of the covenant people of
God.
Ephron, the head of the Hittites, a Gentile
kind of non-covenantal people.
And so these two must deal now with
the burial site.
And so Abraham, in testimony to his innate
feelings, he wants a place in that land
because he believes those promises are going to
be his, and he believes, therefore, that there
will be a resurrection and an enjoyment of
them.
And so he wants to place Sarah in
that land that has been promised to him.
So he says, I'm a stranger and a
sojourner among you.
He's lived there for years.
It reminds me of Charleston.
In Charleston, it's reported that there is a
tombstone there in honor of one man that
reads something like this.
He was 50 years in our midst, and
though a stranger among us, well, anyone who's
lived in a place with a lot of
tradition knows that people like to think that
you're not really one of them unless you've
been there for a number of generations.
Abraham says, I'm a stranger and a sojourner
among you, but give me a burial site
among you that I may bury my dead
out of my sight.
And notice the familiar way in which he
speaks of the body of Sarah, my dead.
You know, I think there is another thing
that we can learn from this.
We have some interesting funeral customs in the
United States.
If you'll compare our funeral customs in the
United States with the funerals that are referred
to in the Bible, you will notice an
amazing difference, particularly in recent years.
What characterizes the funerals and the burials of
the Bible?
I think you can say this, simplicity, dignity,
respect.
What characterizes so often the funerals of today?
Not simplicity.
They are elaborate and they are costly.
It is very difficult to have anyone buried,
even in Dallas, Texas, for anything less than
say $1,500 to $2,500.
Now that may be very simple for some
of you, but it's not simple for many
people.
The places of burial are characterized by euphemistic
types of things that in the final analysis
are denials often of the biblical truth.
There is a mausoleum in Nashville that's 20
stories high, contains 130,000 crypts.
The higher you are, the lower it costs.
You can get a special coffin for only
about $500 there.
That of course is not the cost of
the funeral.
And that coffin is available in early American,
French provincial, or Mediterranean style.
Now that is the truth.
You see, when the concept of resurrection is
lost, death is masked and hidden.
And so the euphemisms are multiplied and the
allusions and superficialities abound.
And when you go and engage in the
haggling that takes place over our dead loved
ones, you will notice the ways in which
we have sought in our society to cover
over the fact of death in its awful
reality, and also the great Christian hope of
the resurrection of the body.
Incidentally, you will notice that Abraham buried Sarah.
Now I'm going to say something that might
offend some of you, and I don't intend
to offend you, and I want to say
right at the beginning, before I say it,
that God is able in His almighty power
to restore the bodies of the saints and
to resurrect them.
But it appears to me, and this is
my opinion, it's not stated in the Bible,
it's just my opinion, it appears to me
therefore that cremation is contrary to the spirit
of the Bible.
Because in cremation we in effect are paying
no attention to the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body.
In the destruction of the body we affirm
that it is not essential.
But the Christian doctrine of the resurrection is
not that we shall have a resurrection body.
The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the
body is that our body, this particular body,
shall be resurrected.
And that there is a continuity between this
body, yes I know it's difficult to believe,
this body that you see in front of
you, and the resurrection body.
In other words, my resurrection body will be
distinct.
Peculiar, but distinct.
Distinct.
So that you and I will know each
other, no doubt, and we will not be
precisely the same.
There will not be a lot of people
walking around with the same countenance.
But we will be distinct individuals, each possessed
of a body like His own glorious body.
So the Christian doctrine of the resurrection is
the resurrection of this particular body.
That's why burial is a significant thing.
We are placing in the ground the body
that is to be resurrected, uniquely kept by
God, and then restored and glorified.
And I think we find that expressed here
in the burial of Sarah as carried out
by Abraham.
Well, it's not necessary to go over the
account of the haggling that took place between
Ephron and Abraham.
It was on the level of the courtesy
of the times.
For Abraham's part, he wanted a piece of
that ground.
He wanted an admission that he was an
owner of land in Canaan because he had
been promised by God Canaan.
And he was not going to take anything
from Ephron.
He did not want anyone to say, you
have made me rich, you Gentiles.
And I have a hunch that that 400
pieces of silver was an exorbitant price.
In this case, Ephron Gentiled this Jew out
of some of his cash.
And Abraham accepted the price without any haggling.
He didn't say that he thought the land
was only worth 350 pieces of silver, but
he accepted the price because to him it
was a priceless piece of land.
And it was so priceless, as you know,
that later on Isaac is buried there.
Jacob is buried there.
Rebecca is buried there.
Leah is buried there.
And there is tradition that Adam had been
buried there, but that's pure tradition.
And of course, so far as we know,
is not true.
But this was priceless for Abraham.
It was the way in which he expressed
his faith that there was coming a time
when he would have that land and that
there would be a city that God had
promised.
Well, the burial is described in the last
few verses, 17 through 20, and the details
are given, the witnesses are there, which indicate
that this was a fully secured contract.
Let me close by making a few comments.
I think from this incident, it's a very
difficult chapter in many ways, we learn behavior
in bereavement.
It's natural to have the sorrow of love.
It's also natural that there should be the
service of duty.
And so Abraham carries on with his life,
which prevents the odd kind of regret that
means uselessness following the death.
But most of all, in our bereavement, there
should be the expression and anticipation of the
sure hope of the resurrection.
We meet death, we Christians, we must meet
death, but we do not meet it as
the pagans do.
The grave does not hold us captive forever.
Death is the boundary of Satan's power, and
when death has taken the body, then God
takes over.
Our spirits go to be with the Lord,
and we await the day when the Lord
Jesus shall come from heaven, shall bring with
him those who have died, shall quicken our
mortal bodies, raise them up, transform them so
that we are united to them, and so
we shall ever be with the Lord and
with our fellow believing Christians.
How important it is, my dear Christian friends
in Believers Chapel, that we live the profession
that we make, that we live really as
those who anticipate the resurrection.
This is our home.
This is that to which we look forward
and anticipate.
And you know, there is one other thing
that I want to mention to you, because
I think it's so appropriate in an audience
like this, because I know that in this
audience we have some individuals who are not
Christians at all.
You may think because you're a member of
a church that you're a Christian.
Perhaps you're a member of a very lovely
church, but that does not make you a
Christian.
No doubt you have heard someone say that
the only way in which you become a
Christian is through faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
As the apostle told the Philippian jailer, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
be saved.
We do not become Christians by joining the
church, by praying, by sitting at the Lord's
table, by being baptized, by doing good works,
by being a good citizen in the community,
by coming from a lovely cultured family with
a great history, by having money and influence,
by being benevolent benefactors of the community.
We do not become Christians by works, for
by grace are you saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves, it is the gift
of God, not of works lest anyone should
boast.
Do you know when Abraham was carrying on
all of this bargaining, this conventional fiction of
talking with Ephron in the presence of the
others, he's thinking about the promises that have
been made to him, he speaks out of
his relationship to the Lord, he speaks out
of knowing the true God.
But here is Ephron over here, one of
the sons of Heth, head of the sons
of Heth, and the sons of Heth know
nothing of any of this while they're dealing
with Abraham, the great man of faith.
Think down through the ages of eternity, what
shall Ephron be thinking?
I'm the man who dealt with Abraham, the
great man of faith, and I didn't know
anything about the salvation provided by God.
Abraham's thoughts were entirely foreign to this man
with whom he was dealing.
The world knoweth us not, the apostle John
says, because it knoweth him not.
They don't recognize us.
When I walk down the streets of Dallas,
they don't say, there's a son of God.
They don't realize that.
They don't say, there's a man who has
been forgiven by God.
There's a great sinner and he's been justified.
They don't know us because they don't know
him.
It is possible to be that close to
the things of Christ and not have the
Lord Jesus himself.
How wonderful it is to have the faith
given by God that enables us to approach
great times like this with the courage that
comes from personal salvation through the Lord Jesus.
When the doctor told Lord Palmerston of the
severity of his situation and that he would
soon probably die, he said, die?
My dear doctor, that's the last thing that
I shall do.
Well, he was correct.
It was the last thing that he did.
He huffily said that.
The facts are, of course, that that's the
last thing that all of us probably will
do.
Oh, that we might die in the faith,
in the assurance that we have the forgiveness
of sins.
We invite you by virtue of the saving
work of the Lord Jesus to come to
him.
The sacrifice has been offered.
The blood has been shed.
God offers the redemption from sins to all
who come to Christ.
It's very simple.
You know, it's simply an acknowledgement within our
inmost being.
Something like this.
Lord, I do thank Thee that Thou hast
revealed to me that I am a sinner
and that the wages of sin is death.
I'm on the road to perishing eternally.
I know I stand condemned, but I see
that Christ has died for sinners and salvation
is offered through Him.
I turn from my trust in myself, my
good works, all of the other crutches, and
I flee to Him and I trust only
in Christ.
I plead only the finished work of the
Lord Jesus with Thee.
May God help you.
By the grace of God the Holy Spirit
to come to that decision.
May we stand for the benediction.
Father, we are grateful to Thee for these
wonderful pictures of the life that is true
to life.
We thank Thee for Abraham.
We thank Thee for the way that grace
worked in his spirit.
We thank Thee for his tears.
And we thank Thee for his hope of
the resurrection.
And we pray, O God, that Thou would
give us the tenderness and the love and
the true emotional appreciation of the things of
life together with that sure hope that our
future is sure and certain because it is
in the hands of our great sovereign God.
Lord, if there are some in this audience
who have never believed in the Lord Jesus,
through the Holy Spirit bring them to trust
in Christ.
May grace, mercy, and peace go with us
for Jesus' sake.
Amen.