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WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOD DOING? HE IS TAKING HIS PEOPLE HOME GENESIS 22:20 – 23:20
INTRODUCTION One of the most popular booklets used in sharing the gospel of Christ in our day is called "The Four Spiritual Laws". Over a billion of these little booklets have been published in over 100 different languages. The first law says this: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." It then quotes John 10:10 where Jesus says, "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full" or as in older translations, "might have it abundantly." Is it true that Jesus promises to give a full and abundant life to everyone who trusts in him? Yes, Jesus promises to give joy beyond measure to all his people. However, when most people hear this promise of an abundant life, of God’s wonderful plan, what do they think? Well, most people think that Jesus is promising that life here will go better if you are a Christian. In fact I would say that most of the presentations of the gospel of Christ that I have heard and many of my own presentations of the gospel in my early years have contributed to this assumption. Most of the time in the American church the gospel of Jesus is presented as the solution to all of your earthly difficulties, as the key to "abundant living" as defined by American culture. We are told, if you’ll become a Christian you’ll have a better marriage, a better sex life, a better relationship with your children, better health, financial security, emotional health, more friends, more success in your job…you get the picture. When the church asks people to talk about the difference that knowing Jesus makes we tend to put good-looking, successful people on the stage who talk about all the positive changes that knowing Jesus has made in their present life. Let me be quick to say that when a person comes to know Jesus Christ everything in life changes. Jesus radically transforms the life of all his followers. However, we have a tendency to overemphasize the earthly benefits of knowing Jesus. The problem this view of Christianity creates for people is enormous. If God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life then why am I on the brink of financial ruin? Why is my marriage in such shambles? Why do I still struggle with these bad habits? Why don’t I have any friends? Why do I feel so sad all the time? Where is this abundant, joyful life that I keep hearing about? While there are numerous benefits to knowing Jesus in the present, the bulk of the benefits will not be experienced in this life but only in heaven. The fact that the majority of God’s promises will not be fully experienced until heaven is not often clearly taught in our instant gratification obsessed culture. Understanding this fact is absolutely essential to living the Christian life. I would say that much of the unhappiness in my life and in yours is due to not keeping this idea at the front and center of our relationship to God. We are going to see in this passage in Genesis what it’s like to live as a person who trusts in Christ but who lives in this world. God promises to bring all of his people safely home. However, he does not promise to make us feel at home in this world. We are going to discover what difference it makes to us now when we know that God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven. MAIN POINT God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven, therefore… I. We will often feel left out while living on planet earth (22: 20-24) I need to begin by reminding you of what has just happened in the life of Abraham. In chapter 22 God tested Abraham’s faith. He commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mt. Moriah and to offer him as a sacrifice there. Abraham obeyed God, trusting that God would raise Isaac from the dead after he killed him. At the last moment God stopped Abraham from harming Isaac and provided a ram in place of Isaac. Then God restated his original promise to make him into a great nation and give him more descendants than stars in the sky and sand on the seashore. Abraham saw in the substitution of the ram and the receiving of Isaac back from the dead a picture of that coming Savior, one of Isaac’s descendants, who would suffer for the sins of his people and then rise from the dead. This is the climax of Abraham’s life. On the mountain of Moriah Abraham experienced the love and faithfulness of God in dramatic ways. He knew in this "mountain top experience" the joy of Christ’s salvation and an overwhelming experience of the presence of God. But just like us, he had to come down from the mountain and enter back into the everyday experience of life. The very next thing we are told, following this mountain-top experience, is that Abraham receives a report about his brother Nahor. (Read vv. 20-24). It has been at least 60 years since Abraham has had any contact with or news about Nahor. He left him and his wife Milcah behind in the city of Haran when he obeyed God’s command to leave his family and his people and go to the land of Canaan. This information probably came to Abraham through one of the merchant caravans that frequently passed by his camp at Beersheba. What did he find out about Nahor? He found out that Nahor his brother had 12 sons and at least one grand-daughter, Rebekkah. I want you to think about this for just one minute. In Gen. 12, God told Abraham to leave Nahor behind and go where he told him to go because he was going to bless him and make him into a great nation and bless all the nations of the world through him. Here it is 60 years later and what does Abraham have to show for 60 years of obedience to God? Can you imagine a conversation between these two brothers, Abraham and Nahor? Abraham: "Nahor, it’s so good to see you after all these years. Tell me what has happened since I left you in Haran." Nahor: "Well, I don’t have much to complain about Abraham. After you left I took over Dad’s pottery business and we’ve done quite well. We have 10 outlets throughout Babylonia. All 12 of my sons are in the business. My oldest, Uz, has become quite famous for the beauty of his pottery. My second oldest, Buz, runs our biggest outlet down in Ninevah. He just built a 30 room mansion on the bank of the Euphrates river. We have dozens of grandchildren. Milcah and I spend most of our time just travelling from one child’s home to the next. We just had a week long family reunion on the yacht my son Pildash owns. All of my grand-children are turning out great, especially Rebekah, my youngest son’s daughter. She is the most beautiful and intelligent young woman around. What about you Abraham? By the way, where’s our nephew Lot?" Abraham: Well, ah, let’s see. Lot went to live in the city of Sodom. I had to rescue him once from an invading army. But, well, I haven’t seen him since God destroyed Sodom. I have two sons. The oldest, Ishmael, is well the son of Sarah’s maid-servant, Hagar and well, I haven’t seen them for over 30 years, ever since I sent them out into the desert with some bread and water. I do have one son, Isaac. He fills our life with joy. He was born to Sarah and I about 30 years ago, when I was 100 and Sarah was 90. He’s not married and so we don’t have any grand-children yet, but we expect to have more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. I’ve sort of made friends with a couple of kings over the years. We still live in tents and mostly I watch over my herds of sheep and goats and donkey’s. We don’t own any property other than our tents and animals. But God’s been good to us." By the world’s standards Abraham is pretty foolish, especially when we see how his brother Nahor has flourished by staying where Abraham left. God’s promises to Abraham will only be fulfilled in the future and so his present condition looks pretty bad compared to the world’s standards. If you are a true Christian you will often have the experience of feeling left out, of looking at the happy lives of those who do not know Christ and wondering how it can be that you who know and love God could be so miserable while those who care nothing for him are so happy. It will often appear that following Christ has gained you nothing in this world. In fact, it will often appear that not following Christ leads to greater happiness here, so you will feel left out of the happiness and often feel like a social misfit. A friend of mine and his wife were leaders in their church and viewed as a model Christian couple. They were asked each year to speak to the young married couples about the keys to having a successful, Christian marriage. One year he discovered his wife was having an affair with the choir director and that she wanted a divorce. He told me that the hardest thing was knowing so many non-Christian couples that apparently had happy marriages and yet his had crumbled around his ears without him even knowing it. He would drive past bars and be envious of the people in them because they were happy and he was miserable. Where was God’s promise to love him and protect him from evil? I don’t think it takes tragedies of this magnitude to cause us to feel left out of the happiness that the world is enjoying. It is the common experience of all God’s people because God’s promises are only fulfilled in heaven. We often feel like the author of Psalm 73 (read vv. 2-5, 12-14). If you are going to be a faithful follower of Christ you need to expect to feel left out of the happiness and like a social misfit at times. God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven, therefore…
II. We will often be sad because of the bad things that happen (23: 1-2) The next thing we are told is that Sarah dies at the age of 127. Isaac was 37 years old and still not married and so she dies without meeting her only daughter-in-law and with no grandchildren. Abraham, we are told, mourns and weeps over her. They have lived together as husband and wife for over 60 years and he is sad and grieves over losing his life partner. This is not wrong. The Bible nowhere says that Christians don’t grieve over the tragedies in our lives. Quite the contrary, it teaches that Christians do grieve over the death of loved ones and over the evil that is in the world. The weeping of Abraham for Sarah is just one of numerous examples from the Scriptures of the sadness that Christians experience when bad things happen. Our grief is not like the grief of those who have no hope, as we will see Abraham demonstrating in just a moment, but we do grieve. We need to hear that grief and crying over the bad things that happen to us is normal to the Christian experience because God’s promises are not completely fulfilled until we are in heaven. You should have heard it in the passage that Steve read just a moment ago. "For while we are in this tent (our physical body on planet earth) we groan and are burdened." We are not in heaven yet where we will experience only the kindness and love of God being poured out on us forever. We still live in a world that is under God’s curse and things are not the way they should be, yet. So we are sad and we cry. All those who teach that Christians don’t cry when bad things happen but instead smile and say, "Praise the Lord" are false teachers. Abraham cried and mourned over the death of Sarah, his wife. We should not expect to escape the experience of bad things happening and the sadness that goes with them because we are Christians. "In this world you will have trouble but take courage, I have overcome the world." This is Jesus’ promise to us. Not that we won’t experience trouble but that he will bring us safely through the trouble into his eternal kingdom just as he overcame the trouble of his life and his suffering and rose from the dead victorious. I hope this helps you. It helps me tremendously. I’m not surprised when bad things happen. I expect to suffer through difficulty because God says that I will. His promises are trustworthy but they are not completely fulfilled until heaven. When bad things happen it does not mean that God is mad at me or that he doesn’t exist. Suffering is part of his plan for us. In fact, according to Heb. 12: 7, suffering is a sign of God’s love and necessary for us if we are going to make it to heaven. Like Abraham, Christians are sad when bad things happen. God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven, therefore…
III. We will often be tempted to find comfort in this world (23: 3-15) The strangest thing about this passage is that the death and burial of Sarah is mentioned in 3 verses and then 17 verses are given to Abraham’s negotiations to obtain a grave for Sarah. It’s easy when we read a passage like this to conclude that it is an interesting piece of historical trivia but what possible application does it have to us? Why does Moses include such a long and elaborate description of Abraham’s purchasing a field and a cave in which to bury Sarah? Why does he give so many details of the transaction? First, I want you to notice the structure of the dialogue between Abraham and the Hittites. Do you see that Abraham speaks three times and the Hittites respond three times? Notice what Abraham is asking for every time he speaks (read vv. 4, 8-9 & 13). What does Abraham want? He wants to buy the cave so that he can bury Sarah. He wants to legally own the property where she is buried. Now notice how the Hittites respond to his request to purchase the property (read vv. 6, 11 & 15). Do you see? They don’t want to sell the property. They want to give it to him. Now at first this might appear to be a generous offer on their part. However, when we remember that the Hittites are one of the tribes that God commands Israel to wipe out because of their wickedness and he commands them to not make a treaty with them, we see that their offer to Abraham contains a barbed hook hidden in it. Abraham describes himself as a stranger and an alien. They describe him as a great prince among them. They want to treat him as one of their own and they want him to treat them as though he belonged to them. If Abraham accepts the gift from them he enters into a much more intimate relationship. Abraham, while courteous, insists that they maintain an impersonal, business kind of relationship. He wants to keep the transaction purely business and thus maintain his independence from them. They want to have Abraham treat them as family, as though he was one of them. Here is the seduction of the world and the devil. Rarely does Satan tempt us to engage in great and obvious sins. He is more subtle than that. The language of the Hittites appears full of love and admiration for Abraham. The offer of the Hittites appears extremely generous. They are not inviting Abraham to come worship their idols or to join them in a drunken party. They are offering him the opportunity to enter into a more intimate relationship and to provide for the burial of his wife. What could be wrong about that? The temptation is for Abraham to seek his comfort in the fellowship and the friendship of the world, not in the promises of God. When we are continually feeling left out of the happiness that the world enjoys and when we are frequently being saddened by the bad things that happen, then we are very tempted to begin to seek our contentment, our happiness in the world and not in God’s promises. The world is continually trying to get us to adopt its value system, to seek to find comfort in the same things that it finds comfort in. The United States is a decidedly unfriendly place to Christians and not because the Supreme Court ruled that students can’t lead prayers at football games. It is unfriendly because it is so easy to seek our comfort in the world while maintaining the appearance of Christian commitment. Nowhere in the world is Satan’s seductive strategy more winsomely marketed. When there are so many things so readily at hand to medicate my pain, to gladden my sad heart, it is hard to know if I’m seeking my comfort in God’s promises or in watching TV, or having a well-manicured lawn or in playing golf or in a bag of Oreos or in going to a movie or in living in a nice house or in a new computer game or in a new car or in a great vacation. Just like the Hittites offering their graves to Abraham for free there is nothing obviously sinful about any of these things. However, Satan knows that when we seek our comfort in them we cannot be seeking it in God at the same time and so he continually tempts us to seek our comfort in the pleasures of this world. Is your hope for happiness in God and his promise of eternal joy in heaven or in the comforts and pleasures of this world? God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven, therefore…
IV. We must set our minds and hearts on heaven (23: 4 & 16-20) Why does a nomad need to own a burial plot? Unlike Lot, Abraham has not settled in one place but has moved from place to place for his whole life. He is a nomad. He’s never purchased land to live on, why is he so insistent that he own land to be buried in? This is the sixth town that Jane and I have lived in since we were married in 1976. We have never considered buying a burial plot in any of them prior to moving here because we knew we were going to eventually move on. This is the first town we’ve talked about buying burial plots in. Why would we consider buying plots here? We hope to live here until we die and we know that our families are in the area and expect that some of our children will end up living in the area as well. All of us want our remains to be in the place we call home. Do you see what Abraham is doing by buying a piece of property in the land of Canaan (notice how this is emphasized at the beginning and the end of the passage)? He is expressing his confidence in the fact that God’s promise is going to be fulfilled in the future. He will never own any property to live on but his descendants will possess this land and so he and Sarah’s bodies will be present among his descendants. Abraham’s mind is full of the certainty of God’s fulfilling his promises in the future. Abraham’s mind and heart are fixed on God’s bringing his descendants into this land. But he is not just thinking about his descendants living in this land but about that eternal kingdom that will be brought into being through one of his descendants. In v. 4 when he says that he is a stranger and alien he is not simply stating his relationship to the Hittites he is also confessing the reality of his entire life on planet earth. This world is not his home. His final resting place is with God in that eternal kingdom of which the kingdom of Israel will be a dim illustration. Hebrews 11: 13-16 refers to this passage when it says, "They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were looking for a better country—a heavenly one." Abraham gets up from grieving over Sarah’s death and pursues the purchase of this land because he is certain that Sarah has not ceased to exist. He knows that there is an eternal life which is embodied in all the promises that God has made. So his mind is filled with thoughts of that coming kingdom. His heart is set on arriving safely in that heavenly home. He does not accept the land as a gift because he is not looking for the help of men or the comfort of this world but hoping only in the glory to be revealed when Jesus comes again. How do you become a person who is able to reject the seductive comforts of this world and to be content even though you regularly feel left out of the happiness and are sad at the bad things that happen? You must fill your minds with thoughts of the greatness of Christ and of his promises that will be fully kept in heaven. You must ask God urgently to give you a heart that loves him and the place where he dwells above everything here on earth. You must regularly deny yourself the comforts of this life in order to more fully fix your hope and affection on the comfort of that eternal home that Christ has promised. The beauty of heaven is that we will see Christ there and be filled with joy as he pours out his love on us as a never ending fountain. Abraham was filled with wonder at the hope of beholding his glory and so he made every effort to purchase this tomb. He parted with a great sum of money (over ½ million dollars) because he believed that to have Christ and the hope of eternal life with him was better than money and more certain to make him happy than money. Listen to what John Owens says about the necessity of filling our minds with thoughts of Jesus: "It is the neglect of meditation that keeps so many Christians
in a feeble state. Many cannot meditate because their minds are so
cluttered with earthly things. There are some who profess to be Christians,
but who never put aside time to meditate on the glory of Christ. Yet
they tell us that they desire nothing more than to behold his glory
in heaven forever. They are being wholly inconsistent. It is impossible
that someone who never meditates with delight on the glory of Christ
here in this world, who does not make every effort to behold it by
faith as it is revealed in Scriptures should ever have any real desire
to behold it in heaven. It is sad, therefore, that many can find time
to think much on earthly, foolish things, but have no heart, no desire
to meditate on this glorious object. What is this faith and love they
claim to have? We experience the power of his life in us only as our
thoughts are filled with him and we continually delight in him. We
must be filled with thoughts of Christ and his glory on all occasions
and at all times. This is the mark of the true Christian." Abraham has come to maturity in his faith. His hope is set on God’s promises for the future, not in his present experience. His mind is full of thoughts of Christ and his kingdom and the glorious future that awaits him and all the people of God. He knows that God has brought Sarah safely home and that God will bring him home as well. He does not expect God to make him feel at home in this world. What about you? Where and when do you expect to be perfectly happy? Are you showing your hope is in heaven by your refusal to pursue your happiness in this world and by your filling your mind with thoughts of Christ and his promises? God’s promises will only be completely fulfilled in heaven, therefore…
© Copyright
2000 John Swanson.
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