Episode Details

Remsen Bible Fellowship; 02/23/2025

Introduction

If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in the book of Genesis again, marching right on through until we stop for a while, but a couple more weeks here in Genesis. Genesis 23 is the chapter we're going to look at this morning. It's not a long chapter.

It's 20 verses. I want you to imagine living with someone for at least 62 years. We know that Abraham and Sarah were married for at least 62 years from the point when they are called out of the land of Ur of the Chaldeans to the point when Sarah dies is a 62 year time span.

Very likely they were married much longer than that. Probably a hundred to 110 years. These two people are married.

Now imagine being Abraham and losing your wife at that point. Some of you can relate to that grief. Some of us aren't there yet in terms of having lost a spouse or having been married.

None of us are going to make it to a hundred years of marriage, but we can sense sort of what that would be like. We often read chapter 22 with Abraham being called to sacrifice his son Isaac and the Lord miraculously intervening at the last moment. We think of that as the great test of Abraham's faith, and that's true.

It absolutely is a great test of Abraham's faith. When the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote about Abraham's call in Genesis 22, he titled his book Fear and Trembling. It is a great test of Abraham's faith, but I wonder as I observe the lives of people around me and observe the way people walk through the valley of the shadow of death, if the test of Genesis 23 is not at least almost if not just as great when Abraham loses his wife.

It's a great test of faith and it's one losing a spouse that where I have watched it derail the lives of many people, Christians included. It's derailed the faith of more people than I can count. But Abraham, our father in the faith, is a model here, a model here of trust in God through all circumstances.

How does a faithful Christian live in a fallen world? The chief mark of living in a fallen world is the reality of death. Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death. Death is introduced by God in Genesis chapter 3 as a consequence of human sin.

So the fact that we are fallen creatures means that there will be death in this world. So we must ask how does a faithful Christian live in this fallen world? There are four principles we see in this passage. Number one, faithful Christians mourn in a time of loss.

They mourn in a time of loss. We see that in verses one and two. Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

Abraham's life hits a stopping point here. He goes in, he's probably out in the field, still guarding his flock, still working, 137-year-old man, and his wife dies. And he comes in from what he's doing.

He comes in from his work to mourn for his wife. He acknowledges the significance of this occasion. And that might seem obvious.

It's a significant moment when your spouse dies. But many times I have heard Christians talk about death in a way that minimizes the significance of it, minimizes the pain, minimizes the sorrow. We misconstrue a passage that we're going to read later, 1 Thessalonians 4, where it talks about we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

And we misconstrue that as we don't grieve. Christians should be happy all the time. We shouldn't acknowledge the sorrow and the pain of loss and of death.

I think even some of the language that gets used around death speaks to that. We talk about someone passing away, or we have a celebration of life or a memorial service instead of a funeral. A celebration of life is something we should do when people are alive.

When someone is dead, they're gone