40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 33

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

Daniel and Chad talked about the death of Sarah and the purchasing of the land to bury her. This sparks conversations about death, resurrection, what's so holy about the Holy Land and a lot of asking the question "So what?".

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Welcome back to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I am Daniel Emery Price, and I am joined by Chad Bird. Chad, what's going on? Hey. Hey, everybody. Where did we leave off on this Genesis thing? We spent at least two weeks, maybe three weeks, on Genesis 22, talking about everything leading up to the near sacrifice of Isaac and, of course, a lot of rich material there as we connected that story

with the sacrifice of Christ, everything from him being the only begotten son to the place where the sacrifice was to happen there at Mount Moriah. And I believe that we wrapped that up last time, finished up there at verses 18 and 19 of Genesis 22. So we're picking up here at the end of chapter 22, just got a couple things to say there, and then most of the time we'll be in Genesis 23, which is completely concerned with the death and the burial of Sarah.

So that's where we're going to spend most of our time. All right. Well, let's jump in and get after it. All right. So finishing up here at the end of 22, it's really sort of a preview of how the story is going to unfold as we get past chapter 23, Because at the end of 22, verses 20 through 24, we have a mini-genealogy, if you will. It kind of jumps back to chapter 12. We know that Abraham had a couple of brothers, and one of these brothers stayed behind. One died, one stayed behind with the father when Abraham and Sarah left for the Holy Land.

And we have just kind of a brief summary of what happened to that family after Abraham and Sarah left. That you had Nahor, who was the brother of Abraham. He had a wife named Milcah, and it goes through their children. And one of their children then has a daughter named Rebekah. So that's setting the stage for what is to come in chapter 24, when Rebecca enters the scene as the bride-to-be of Isaac. So that just wraps up chapter 22. As the Bible often does, it will give us a very brief synopsis of something that it's going to pick up on later on. So this mini genealogy is a heads up for what we're going to be finding fleshed out in actually great detail in chapter 24, which we'll probably get to next week. So that wraps up chapter 22.

And then we get to we get to chapter 23 and we jump ahead quite a ways. You may recall when we when we're in 22 talking about Isaac that we don't we didn't know how old he was. Luther thinks he was around 20. He certainly was at least a young man, if not a young adult, able to converse with his father about what was happening, able to carry the wood upon which he was to be sacrificed. But whatever age he was, we're jumping forward now to the time that he is 37 years old and the year that his mother dies. That's the way that chapter 23 begins. It says, now Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah. You remember that she was 90 years old when she gave birth to Isaac. And so here we find her at 127. So 37 years, 37 years have passed. and uh so about uh about the death of sarah and uh kind of the details surrounding her burial that's what this chapter is all about uh it uh it starts out here with with a geographical designation he's telling us where they were at says that sarah died in Kiriath Arba, that is in Hebron, in the land of Canaan.

And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. So we have her death, we have Abraham's period of mourning for her. But then we have a situation that arises in which Abraham needs a burial site for. He owns not a single plot of land in Canaan. Even though he's been promised everything, even though he's walked north and south, east and west, all through the land of Canaan to claim it as his own. We talked about that several chapters ago.

Even though God has promised that he and his descendants will receive this land as an inheritance from the Lord, technically speaking, legally speaking, he doesn't own one single piece of ground. So he has no place to bury Sarah. so he has to acquire some land, and it's amazing to me, and I think also very telling that the very first land that Abraham purchases is for a burial site. We'll get to that later on, but it's not for building a home. It's not for setting up his tent. It's not for having an

orchard or a vineyard or anything like that. The very first plot of ground that Abraham purchases in the Holy Land is for the burial of the dead. So how's he going to get it? Well, that's kind of what the story's about, what the chapter's about. It's actually quite interesting, I guess, from a legal standpoint, if you're into that sort of thing, because it gives you an insight into how land was acquired if you were in Abraham's state, because he was a resident alien.

So he lived there, but he was not a citizen. He was not part of the people. He owned no property. He really had no rights other than that which was granted to him, I guess we would say by grace, by the citizens of that land. So most of the chapter is concerned with how Abraham goes about purchasing this land. He has to go before what we might call the city council, the Hittites who were living where he was at, and he makes a request. He wants to buy, all he wants to buy is a cave where he could bury Sarah, and then that could be sort of the family plot, the family burial site.

and as the the conversation goes on between abraham and and between the uh the hittites what they're really concerned with is this cave belonging to one of them named ephron and so abraham begins to converse with ephron and they come to an agreement finally that abraham will purchase not only the cave but also the field of land around it from ephron for 400 shekels of silver so that's the agreed upon price and abraham buys it he gives over the the 400 shekels of silver and then it's all ratified becomes his legal legally owned land first legally owned land for abraham in the holy land he didn't he didn't want to simply receive it as a gift even though Ephron offered it to him because if something is a gift

then it could be taken away legally later on so he wants to purchase the land so that it's his and that it's going to be his and his descendants and it ends up being the place not only where Sarah is buried but it's the place where Abraham will also be buried and not only Sarah and Abraham but Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Leah. So you have all of these patriarchs and matriarchs whose final resting place will be in this cave of Machpelah, which is close to Hebron, which interestingly is still, for the Jews, the second holiest site in the Holy Land, the first being the Western Wall. But for them, this is the second most holy site because it's believed to be where the matriarchs and patriarchs were buried.

So that's what the chapter is really all about. I think that the question before us is really is kind of a so what question. So we have these details and the question is, why is this story included? What's significant about it? and I think there's actually two or three major themes here that are worthy of our consideration. That reminds me of a seminary professor I had. It was just one class, but he would talk about something,

whatever it was, it wouldn't matter what it was, and he would say all this stuff about it, and then he would say, so what? That's the question, right? So what? And then you'd have to tell him what the so was. Yeah, and it was actually one of the more difficult things. Well, you know, I think one of the reasons it's important to ask is because sometimes we can get so wrapped up in a story,

and maybe it's not this story, maybe it's another story. We can become so focused in on some narrative, some, you know, action, whatever it is in the biblical story. That we really forget to ask these more important questions, the so what question, and to expand that question out, so what does this have to do with the entire biblical message? You know, so what does chapter 23 of Genesis have to do with the rest of the biblical narrative? And then especially what is Genesis 23 and the death of Sarah and her burial? you know how does that fit into the the grand scheme of god's saving work for us in jesus christ yeah i think so what is a good way to read the bible when you read something and ask that

question what did i just like so what what did i just read why does that matter i mean it's in there for it's in there for some for some reason makes you have to ponder which is not which is not a bad thing yeah yeah and in it you know if it uh if you just ask so what of course you can go different ways some people go so what does this teach me about what i'm to do right so so so what does this do to give me an example that i can emulate in my own life uh you can you can go that direction a lot of people do or you can say so what does this so what does this have to say about how god views me and how god's plan of salvation is worked out in christ jesus because ultimately that's where all of this is all of this is leading genesis genesis 23 or genesis 22 or any

chapter in the bible is part of this longer story of longer story of salvation and if we get too bogged down in the details if we get too even caught up and just kind of you know the excitement of a particular narrative and don't see it from the perspective of the rest of the scriptures, well, chances are we're going to get it wrong. And if we do what we usually do, we're going to end up just focusing back on ourselves and not on what God would have us focus on,

and that is His Son. So I might add one more thing, too, and I guess I'll do this as we talk about chapter 23. One of the ways that we can do this, whether we're just studying the scriptures on our own or whether we're a teacher or a preacher, is we look at these stories and we ask ourselves, what themes emerge from this narrative that we can trace to the rest of the scriptures? For example, back in chapter 22, we talked about Isaac as the only son or the beloved son. Well, you could trace that particular theme through the rest of Scriptures. You can trace Mount Moriah as a theme through the rest of the Scriptures. And in chapter 23, what we can do is we can trace this idea of the land and the importance of the land and the gift of the land through the rest of the Scriptures

and ask ourselves, what's the theological import of God's gift of land to Israel? And we can also ask ourselves, well, what about death and burial as a theme that emerges from chapter 23? It's a big deal, and it's certainly a huge theme to the rest of the scriptures. So what does that theme have to teach us, especially as it culminates in the death and the burial of Christ? So, yeah, let's do it then. Let's talk about a couple of these things. and see what we can learn. I think I'll talk a little bit about the land. This has come up before, but it's a good point to touch on.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this is the only plot of land that Abraham owns, not only now, but for the rest of his life. He will purchase no more land than he purchases now as this burial plot. So this is the beginning of what, of course, is going to grow over time. Abraham and Israel's relationship to the land

is kind of a back-and-forth, back-and-forth story. Abraham is promised the whole Holy Land is his, and yet it's generations later before it's actually acquired by the israelites abraham is is given the promise but then all of his descendants end up exiled to egypt away from the holy land and uh they have to spend 40 years wandering in the wilderness before they actually enter into the holy land and when they do they have to fight to uh to acquire it at the drive out the inhabitants and uh and even then it's not a perfect acquisition because there's still land that remains held by the various, you know, Hittites and Perizzites and

other original inhabitants of the land. And then they had the land for generations, but then they lose it again in exile in the 6th century BC, when they're exiled to Babylon. And they never do regain full ownership of the land when they return. And of course, at the time of Christ, They are controlled by the Romans, so the land is still not their own. But I think what's most important to consider when you're thinking about God's promise of the land and Israel's ownership of the land is that the land was always a temporary gift to Israel. And this is significant because it's often a misunderstood gift in a lot of Christian preaching. The land of Israel is understood by many today as a theological reality, as if when the modern-day land of Israel was created in 1948, as if this was some sort of momentous theological occasion that marked the advent of the end times or something like that.

But the modern-day creation of Israel is nothing more than a political reality. It's not a theological reality because the land that was given to Abraham and his descendants, that promise, that land that was given to them was a was was temporary in this sense. It was given the land of Israel was given to Abraham, Abraham and his descendants. so they would have a place to live so that they could dwell with God who was in the temple or in the tabernacle living in their midst until the time that the the promised seed came so this this promise of the land was temporal in the sense that it was connected with the promise of the seed the promise of the messiah so when christ comes when christ fulfills all the promises of god then the land of israel really has no more significance certainly has no more theological

significance because all the promises including the land were connected with the coming of the seed with the coming of the messiah so when he comes and he fulfills all of these promises what's the what's the thing that he does he sends his his disciples out into into all the world he doesn't say stay in the promised land and build another temple but he says instead teach and baptize and so doing make disciples of of all nations so the land the promised land to which the promised seed comes and is crucified and resurrected that land becomes the launching point for taking the message of the seed out to the rest of the world. And the land as promised, as given to Abraham and his descendants,

no longer has any true theological significance after the coming of Christ. Yeah, that's a huge, huge point. We Christians spill a lot of ink writing about the theological significance of the land of Israel. and it's not any different than and this rubs people the wrong way when you say things like this and so if it rubs you the wrong way, I'm sorry. But Israel as a nation now

is no different than any other nation. Not in reality or in the eyes of God. Israel is not different than Russia or the United States or any other country. It's just a country, and that's it. It doesn't have a bunch of theological significance, the boundaries of this land.

And what we don't realize that we do when we make it that way is that actually denying a part of what the Messiah, what Christ came and did, which is all he is all the is the embodiment of all the promises of god um and we and we say like well but not that one he's not all the promises of god that that one is still that that's that one's still there he's not that one no he he is he is that one god did in fact keep his promise to bring forth a seed from abraham in which the entire world would be blessed like this this happened and so um you know otherwise we'd be going out from israel trying to bring everyone

back to israel but that's not what we're doing it doesn't matter where you live and and we sort of know this i mean it doesn't matter if you're a christian in jerusalem or if you're a christian in bangkok doesn't matter and we know that sort of fundamentally but then also sort of deny that as if this other that location somehow matters and it just doesn't yeah israel israel is nothing more the modern nation of israel is nothing more than a a political entity that happens to be situated at the place where all of these great biblical events happen right but but there's not there's not some sort of living connection between the political entity of modern-day israel and all of these things that happened in the land where they now live.

Yeah, and we still, you know, we call it the Holy Land. And I think that we sort of buy into this idea that maybe it is a little holier than wherever I'm at. Right, right. Maybe Jerusalem is a little holier than Texas. That might be stretching it. Yeah, but it's not. You're not going to go to Israel and then have some super spiritual experience because God really, really shows up there.

Yeah, I mean, if people are really wanting to visit the Holy Land, they just go where Christ is. That's it. That's where the Holy Land is. He makes things holy. You go where the gospel and the gifts of the gospel are, then that's your Holy Land. That's it, because that place is holy where the holy, holy, holy God has placed himself and his gifts. That's the sanctified space, if you will, where Christ is present to speak and to act on your behalf. That's the holy land.

You don't have to visit Jerusalem in order to encounter holy land. You just go where Christ is. That's sacred space. You know, and it's weird. This started way, way back. I mean, they used to make these pilgrimages, right? I mean, way back. You'd be living in, like, Germany or something,

and you'd make these pilgrimages to Jerusalem and go see all the holy sites, and you're gathering all these relics and all this stuff. I mean, this is not something that we developed, you know. This existed before the reestablishing Israel as a state in the 40s. Now, I've never been to Israel. I don't know if you have, Chad. I've never been there.

No, I haven't been. And that's not to say that I wouldn't like it. And I think it was cool to go see the stuff. It'd be cool to walk those streets and things. But only cool because it's such an important part of my life and that I spend a lot of time in the scriptures. And it'd be cool to see the places that this stuff happened. But I don't need to go because I feel like I'm going to have

some kind of super spiritual experience and that God is somehow more present there or that that land is holier than me walking in to the doors of the church or anything else. Yeah, that's what I was going to say, too, that God has never promised that he is in that place for you. He's never said, if you really want to have an intimate encounter with me, than come to the Holy land because this is really where I have placed myself. And if you, if you, if you want to get super close to me, this is where you got to go. No, he's never promised that. And so even though we might have some sort of, you know, uh, experience there because we are close to where these things actually happened. It's just an experience. Uh, God has not promised

that he has placed himself there for us. He's placed himself in his worry. He's placed himself in the waters of baptism, in the Lord's Supper, in all of these places where he's promised to be for you. That's where we have the encounter with a loving and a gracious and a forgiving God. It'd be cool to visit the Holy Land, but it's not a sacrament to do so. No, no. Well, that's a good so what.

What else have we got? Well, I think it would be good also just to talk about, because this chapter really is all about the death of Sarah and her burial, to talk about the significance of the death of the saints, the death of believers, and also their burial. because this is a significant event for Abraham. You know, I suppose he could have taken care of her body in some other way, but he chose to purchase a plot of land so that he would have a location to place her corpse, and then also where he himself, as well as his descendants, some of his descendants anyway, would be uh would be buried so i think that's a that's another uh that's another theme that's worth uh worth talking about yeah well there is there is a one thing you will come in contact

with as you read the scriptures is that all these people die death is a is an is a human thing and it's something that occupies um occupies our our thought process it weighs on our mind you can tell this by you ever had um you ever had somebody say to you you know talk about ways that they really don't want to die oh yeah and then contrast with that with ways that they'd prefer to die yeah yeah so everybody wants to die in their sleep yes yes so it's it's uh torture to death uh drowning like burning like no no i don't want any that's horrible i don't want that i'm praying for in my sleep i don't feel it pass on yeah that's what everyone's aiming for and the fact that we have those conversations you know is is it bears witness that that that's on our mind that

we that we know that that's coming and uh and that there's no there's no escaping that that eventually eventually we're gonna die and uh we know that to the point that we talk about ways that we'd prefer it happen and uh and the scriptures are no different you see you see people die a bunch of different ways and and so death is uh death is a very human thing because it's not a i don't want to say it's a natural thing as far as it's not the way it was originally set up it's the wages of sin is death and and because we live in a fallen world and because we're fallen uh then we will die and but but because of that that's the that's the reality While it's not natural, it is the reality that we live in.

And so when you see death and when you talk about death, then it's interesting that death has claim, or the rulers of this world, sin, death, and the devil, have claim to all of us. And you see that claim being made over and over and over again. and we see it in Scripture, we see it in, we all know people have died or loved ones die, so we see that being made, but the one person that doesn't have claim to is Christ. And yet he goes and he comes and he defeats death by dying. He defeats sin by becoming sin. He defeats the grave by entering it, even though it has no claim on him whatsoever.

That enables us to think about death differently, because we know it's defeated then even though we still die you know like paul says where's where's your victory where's your sting right that death death becomes simply a passage into a good forever well it's it's painful for us that when people die it's no longer actually even a bad thing it has no power i can't it couldn't the grave couldn't hold christ and because it couldn't hold christ it can't hold sarah either it can't hold you and it literally is just this sort of intermediate thing before things get really sweet that's it that's it yeah and that's good and that's good news and uh and i think that with abraham and you know i'm not i'm not going to

to say that like hey i'm anti-cremation and all these other things and you've sinned horribly if you do that but i think that christian burial is is a testament to uh to what we believe as far as i'm going to place this body in a specific place because i don't believe this is the end uh it's not it's not just about i gotta do something i gotta discard this this body so with some place i mean you just throw it in the sea or something otherwise or you just burn it or whatever, but they didn't do that. Abraham doesn't do that either. You place it with care somewhere, believing that that's not the end,

because we do believe in a physical resurrection. You see even with Abraham, who doesn't have all the promises that Christ gives us, speaking of death and resurrection and stuff, but somehow he still has this, he's still holding on to and somehow believing that this isn't the end of this. He still believes that the promised seed is coming, and he's going to fix all this. Yeah, this may be one of the most misunderstood

and neglected teachings in the Christian church today is the resurrection of the body. I was at a funeral not very long ago, and there were three or four different preachers who spoke. and uh not a single one of them uh made reference to the fact that my friend had not yet reached his goal that the resurrection of the body was the gift for which he was still he was still waiting uh they they talked about how he was he was uh you know with the lord he was in heaven all of that But no reference to the fact that the body that would be buried is the body that would be resurrected.

That is the gift that we are all waiting for. The goal of our lives is not to reach heaven. The goal of our lives is finally brought to its completion and perfection in the resurrection of the body on the last day. Yeah. Yeah. So like you were when you were talking about how we care for the body, the way I like to put it is that everything that we do in a funeral should bear witness to the fact that God is not yet done with this body, that he will raise this body on the last day, that he will reunite this body to the soul of the person, and that then, and only then, when this resurrection

of all takes place, will we reach then the goal for which God has created us, to be united body and soul, recreated and glorified to be in the image and the likeness of Christ, just as he was on the day of his own resurrection. Yeah, and we see this even with the way that they cared for for jesus body yeah you know it's a man it's a mangled mess and they take care of it and they and they put it in a they put it in a tomb and uh there's a reason for that and and and that in there we have the picture of that's the same kind of thing that we're going to experience is is that resurrection where where jesus come walks out of of that tomb that they put him in that's that's what we have that his resurrection is is promised to us and so uh so we we do likewise we we take

care of it uh you know you you hear people i hear people talk about like well you know when i die just a carton just do whatever you know and and i get i get that they're saying like you know i mean there's this i'm gonna be in a better place and i'm not there so you know whatever just throw it in the ground and um but i don't think that's the best way to the way to look at it it's not yes you're more than your your body but your body is not not unimportant it's not a mirror it's not a mere shell in which the real you is located no no it's not and it's still something that that god has said is good and even though it's broken now and it's uh you know because of the fall um that isn't that doesn't change the fact that uh that he's that he's going to actually

take that and and make it completely good again and uh and so we want we want to we want to be in step with what god has said that no this is good uh even though we've uh we've messed it up even though it's it's it's fractured and flawed and broken now uh we believe that god and god alone is able to restore this to the perfect goodness the very goodness that he once said it was uh which is awesome yeah yeah that's uh that's when we will finally reach our own easter sunday and i would if if i die today and i'm buried i will be in kind of the the holy saturday state you know the christ was in you know i will be with him uh i will be with him that day in paradise as christ promised a thief on the cross but i will still be waiting i'll be

waiting for my resurrection when i will be brought to that perfection that god has uh has promised to all of us yeah just like he just like he will give to sarah uh and to and to abraham and to and to everyone who is a believer in him yeah physical death takes takes our physical life but uh that will be reversed on the day of uh on the day of our resurrection yeah yeah you're in that intermediate state you are you're waiting uh you're anticipating that day when all things are made new yeah and so the uh the barrel of sarah at least viewed from this broader biblical perspective is really a testimony to the resurrection of the body that is given to us and the resurrection of Christ,

and which will be fully given to us when our own bodies are resurrected on the last day. All right. All right, we did it. We did it. We covered a whole chapter. How's that? Hey, without Brandon, we get a lot done.

Maybe he'll join us next time for the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca. There you go. Maybe he's more into marriage than death. Maybe so. Alright guys, thank you so much for joining us and we will be back next time Thank you.