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That's ConnectWithSkip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching with Pastor Skip Heitzig. What we would be missing if the Jewish people were not around. If there were no Jewish people. Well, number one, we'd be missing our Bible.
I couldn't say turn in your Bibles tonight because we would have no Bibles to turn to. We would have no Ten Commandments. That was part of the covenant God gave to them. The Ten Commandments, very important to us.
It's the basis of our jurisprudence system in most western civilized nations. Number three, we would have no Savior. He came through the lineage of the Jewish nation. And without a Jewish Jesus, we would have no Christianity, no salvation. He's the ultimate seed. And so that promise really is of the gospel. In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men and they rose and went together to Beersheba and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. Question, why does verse 19 say Abraham returned to his young men? How come Isaac didn't return? Remember what Abraham said to them back in chapter, well we're in chapter 22, last week. He said, the lad and I will go up yonder and worship and we will return to you.
So why doesn't the text say they both returned? Just Abraham returned. I don't quite know but it is interesting that though obviously Isaac returned as well because he wasn't sacrificed, there is no mention of Isaac from the time of this almost sacrifice until we see him in a couple chapters when he reappears with his bride, his Gentile bride. There's an absence and then he appears again as he meets his bride, as he comes again with his bride and with his bride we see them. It's just something to note, maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't, maybe it's one of those little fingerprints of the Holy Spirit because obviously the sacrifice on Mount Moriah is indicative of the sacrifice of Christ on the same place. And it's just interesting that he is not seen here but will be seen again when he appears with his Gentile bride.
Again that could just be a wonderful little touch by the Holy Spirit. It came to pass after these things it was told Abraham saying indeed Milcah has also borne children to your brother Nahor. Now there's a list of names, 12 sons that Nahor had. Now get these names, Hus, his firstborn, Buzz, his brother. So the first two boys, Hus and Buzz, boy if they were around today wouldn't they get ridiculed.
Kemuel the father of Aram, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Gidlath and Bethuel. How many of you, do you know anybody who's having kids soon? Are any of you here going to have children soon? Are you?
Congratulations. Does any of those names appeal to you? You raise your hand.
You're looking for biblical names? You're thinking forget it, right? Good move. I dare you try this one. Pildash.
I'm just kidding. Now it says Bethuel. Now look at verse 23. Bethuel begot Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor Abraham's brother his concubine whose name was Reumah also bore Teba, Gaham, Thahash and Ma'akah. There's another one, Ma'akah.
Now why is this little information given to us? Because the narrative is going to show, because the promised seed is Isaac and Isaac in a couple chapters is going to get married and now we have a hint of Bethuel, who's going to have a child named Rebekah and Rebekah will have a brother named Laban and all of these characters are very important in the next few patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob. Now we get to chapter 23 and it's an obituary, chapter 23. It's the death of a princess. Sarah dies in this chapter. Sarah, originally her name was Sarai, which meant contentious. God renamed her, thankfully, to Princess. Sarah means that. She's 127 years old when she dies.
Okay, you're thinking it's about time that she dies. When you get to 127, okay, that's like old. I got an email today from a friend overseas. I don't know how true it is, but they're trying to corroborate a family from the country of Georgia, these ex-Soviet states, that there's a woman, I saw her picture even, that she's going to be 130 years old, they say, on July 8th. And so they're trying to contend with Guinness Book of World Records because the record holder is a 114-year-old woman from Japan and they're saying, look, we have the documentation. She's going to be 130 years old July 8th. And you know what, honest, I don't know when the picture was taken, but she didn't look that bad.
I mean, for 130. If you're just breathing air, you're looking pretty good, but this lady didn't look too bad. So it says Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. It's the death of a princess, Abraham's princess. Now some of you, most of you, will remember back to September 6th, 1997, when the people's princess she was called died, Princess Diana, the most photographed woman in the world, died in a car crash. When she died, it was such a huge deal, a million people showed up in person lining the streets of that death march as that flowery casket drove in that glass hearse to her burial place. 2.5 billion other people, billion, watched it by television.
It was a huge deal. The people's princess. But here we have Sarah. Now she's a big deal and here's why. As the wife of Abraham, she's the mother of the Jewish nation. There's no other woman in the Bible where her age is mentioned, her death and her burial, and burial place is mentioned besides Sarah. And it's because of who she is. She occupies such a huge place in the Bible. In fact, women are told to emulate her. She's an example to women. Now I find that interesting. Here's something you might find interesting. Nowhere in the Bible is Mary, the mother of Jesus, ever given as an example for people to follow.
Did you know that? She's never held up as a supreme example. But Sarah, twice in the Bible, is. Once is Isaiah chapter 51 where the children of Israel are told to look back over their own history, remember where they've come from, and Abraham and Sarah are listed in that. The other is 1 Peter chapter 3 where the outward woman isn't to be emphasized, but the inward woman is to be emphasized, and Sarah is given as a beautiful example once again. An example to be followed. Now here's what I love about the language of the death of Sarah in chapter 23.
Follow me. Number one, the language is straightforward language. It talks about death very openly and plainly. You know why? Because death is a fact of life, that's why. And the lesson for us in the straightforward language of chapter 23 is we should learn in preparation for our own death, or the death of people in our family, is to learn to talk about it openly. In many families it's not discussed. Don't talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. Well, if you don't talk about it then you're not going to deal with it until that person dies, then you have to deal with it.
Better to talk about it and get the right attitude about it first. So it's straightforward language. Second thing I want you to notice as we work our way through chapter 23, it's personal. Sarah is mentioned by name. She's not called the dearly departed or Abraham's loved one, but she's personalized.
Again, I think that's huge. Number three, Sarah is not given into the hands of specialists who handle the body and handle the funeral, but she's in the loving hands of her husband Abraham who seeks to bury his wife. I'll tell you, one of the things I'm grateful for, I lost my father and my mother and my brother, is the ability at my mother's death to be next to her and not have her at the hospital, but be next to her in that last week of her death and to take care of her and to watch her leave earth and go into heaven. That was wonderful.
Painful, but wonderful. Holy ground, I feel. And so Sarah lived 127 years. These were the years of the life of Sarah.
So Sarah died in Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you've ever wondered what the Bible has to say about some of our culture's big issues, we have a great resource for you. When you give a gift of $50 or more this month to support the ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks, biblical answers for today's issues. This special resource bundle contains six of Pastor Skip's booklets that address topics like suicide, why the truth matters, heaven and hell, and the church's response to racism. You'll gain valuable insight into what God's Word says about the big questions in our culture and get equipped to stand for the timeless truth of Scripture.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give $50 or more. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. No matter what commentary I read about this chapter, inevitably, one or more commentary will bring up the longevity issue. How could someone be 127 years of age? You know, they make a big deal out of how old people were and then they go back to earlier times and to Deluvian times before the flood when they lived to be really old. You know, Adam was like 930 years old when he died. Seth, 912 years old when he died. Methuselah, 969 years old when he died. Now, that's old.
After a while, it's just hard to blow out candles on your birthday cake. But the kind of longevity, even in the 900s, is not even unique to the Bible. There are records that show records from India, records from Egypt, records from Persia and other countries of that era that talk about longevity besides the Bible.
Scientists, and we've covered this in earlier parts of Genesis, talk about the canopy that could have been around the earth that protected the cells from the bombardment of radiation that caused a breakdown in the genetic system, that they see a drop-off immediately after the flood and they like to trace it back to that vapor canopy being disposed of. But to me, living to be 127 isn't the issue. For me, the big question is, how did she look so good at 90? So that Abraham, remember a couple chapters ago, had to lie about her. It's my sister. You know, she's good looking. Stay away from her. She's 90. Really. And you're worried.
Go figure. It says in verse 2 that Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Here's the first mention in the Bible of tears. First time you read about somebody weeping for somebody, tears shed.
It's right here. Abraham weeping for Sarah. Now those tears are going to continue throughout the Bible, throughout history, throughout our history, on into the future until we get to Revelation chapter 21 where God will wipe away every tear. They're now a part of the stain of human life, of humanity, until Revelation when it's the end and He restores all things.
Abraham mourned for his wife. I don't know why, but sometimes I meet Christians who try to be really pious and say, oh, you shouldn't cry. You shouldn't weep. You shouldn't get emotional. Your loved one's in heaven.
I want to slap that person. Because that defies even the design of the human body that God gave you. He produced little things in the corner of your eyes called lacrimal glands. And they secrete what we know as tears. They do a lot of things. They provide moisture for the eyes.
They take out dirt in foreign bodies. But they also are triggered to the emotional centers of your brain. And those lacrimal glands get very active when there's a deep, stressful loss in a person's life. And the Bible even says there is a time to weep and there's a time to laugh. There's a time to mourn. There's a time to dance. So if some pious believer tells you you shouldn't weep over somebody that has died and gone to heaven, great, they've gone to heaven.
I'm still here on earth without the one that I love. It's very natural. It's very normal. In fact, it's very unnatural. It's very unnormal. And I'm going to even say unspiritual to not sorrow.
It would defy the way we have been built by our Creator. He wept for her. He mourned for her. And then it says in verse 3, Abraham stood up from before his dead and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give me property for a burial place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight. And the sons of Heth answered Abraham and said to him, Hear us, my lord.
You're a mighty prince among us. Okay, something to note here. Back in those days, if you were in a country, you moved from your hometown like Abraham did Ur of the Chaldees and he's in Cana, it would be typical if your loved one died to want to take them back home to where you came from and bury them in the land of their origin, the land of their family, the land where they were born. The fact that Abraham does not want to do that indicates that he is believing the promise of God that that land therein is the land of promise not only for Abraham and Sarah, but for his descendants as God promised that land to be. It's an indication that this is his new home.
He's willing to take some property here and bury somebody in it. So he has a stake in it, indicating that he is believing the promises of God, not taking his wife back home. Now when it says that he, verse 3, it's a beautiful phrase, stood up from before his dead, I read a commentator that said this indicates a change, a new corner that he's turning in his grieving process.
It indicates, says this commentator, a squaring of the shoulders, a lifting of the eyes, a firming of the step, and a desire to move on now. There's a time to mourn, in other words, and there's a time to move on. Now the Hebrews mourned for 30 days, 30 days. You know, we mourn, we have a funeral day and we might mourn for a few days, but they had, I mean, services of mourning that lasted for 30 days.
The Egyptians, 70 days. I mean, they really got into it. And they demonstrated their sorrow. They would rip their clothes, throw dirt in the air, and even in later Hebrew times, like the New Testament, they would hire professional mourners. So when you just sort of got tired of wailing, they would be paid to stand outside your house and go, oh! And just so people passing by would know what had happened.
I know it sounds goofy, but they wanted the emotions to be let out and freely expressed. So he now stood up from before his dead. He's going to do something.
He's going to be proactive. And I think this is, again, very healthy. There's a thing called, well, I'll just say what we usually say in slang, good grief. My mom used to say that. Good grief!
Do you know what I found? Grief is good. It's good to grieve. But prolonged grief is not good. When my brother died, I watched my mom for years never get over it. Never get over it. Until finally we had an aunt in the family who took my mom and just took her in the room, closed the door and said, you're going to have to move on.
And just got her to talk it through and not, well, she just didn't deal with it very well. And my brother said the same thing to us after he died. It was a period of mourning and a week of reminiscing and then my brother got us all together and said, okay, it's great that we share these things.
It's important that we grieve, but there comes a time now where we have to move on with our lives. And he was right. So Abraham does something. He selects a burial plot for his wife, puts her in the ground. In chapter 24, he gets a bride for his wife, Isaac, and in chapter 25, he gets remarried.
Now you go, well, now wait a minute. How old is he? Yeah, it's interesting because here he's like 137 years old and he's thinking of number two, but he dies at 175 years of age, so he's got some time. He's not thinking about that yet, but as the time wears on, he will think about it.
He will move on. It indicates a healthy way of dealing with it. Now I want you to notice something else in verse four.
I do notice the time as well. He says, I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Now of course he means that I've been living in tents.
I don't own any real estate. I know this is the land God has promised me, but I don't even have a single acre yet. But we know something else, that in Abraham's own mind and heart, he is thinking spiritually.
I'm a foreigner. I'm just a pilgrim here. Because Hebrews 11 makes a big deal out of this, saying Abraham, chapter 11, verse 10 or 12, I can't remember which verse, says that Abraham waited for a city that has foundations whose builder and maker was God. So he's moving toward eternity, and that's the city he's really going to put his roots down in. God has promised the land for his descendants, but he himself is moving toward heaven. So it's good language. I'm a foreigner and a visitor among you. By the way, this is why Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4, as he talks about Jesus coming back, and he says, I write this to you lest you sorrow like those who have no hope.
Do you remember that little text? The reason we sorrow, and he sorrows here, but we sorrow differently, it's a hopeful sorrow, is because if our loved ones know Jesus Christ, then the moment they die, we know exactly where they are, and we rejoice for them. And so his wife has died. She's 127.
Now she's with the Lord. It's coronation day. He's a foreigner. He's a pilgrim among them. The sons of Heth answered Abraham and said to him, Hear us, my Lord, you're a mighty prince among us.
Now watch, this is a very long account of a real estate transaction. And he says, Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places. We'll give you a grave. None of us will withhold from you his burial place, that you may bury your dead.
And Abraham stood up and bowed himself to the people of the land, the sons of Heth. And he spoke with them, saying, If it is your wish that I bury my dead out of my sight, hear me and meet with Ephron, the son of Zohar, for me, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he has, which is at the end of his field. Let him give it to me at full price as property for the burial among you. So they're saying, look, just bury her.
You can have the place for the grave. And he goes, no, I want to buy some land. Now why does he want to buy land? It's indicating that he believes God's promise that this land that he's just been a tent dweller in, now he's going to buy some acreage because he believes this is the land that God wants us to live in, die in, get buried in, and our family will possess eventually as according to the promise of God.
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks, biblical answers for today's issues, which contain six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism, the importance of truth, suicide, and heaven and hell. To request your copy of God Speaks, biblical answers for today's issues, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store.
Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth for changing times.
