Introduction
Good morning. We are looking in the book of Genesis. We’ve called this series “The Good Life,” thinking particularly about traveling through the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We haven’t gotten to much of Isaac and haven’t gotten to Jacob yet, but thinking about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the life that God has promised them and really unpacking that idea of what does the good life look like.
We get to this story that we just read in Genesis chapter 23, which is quite a strange story. One of the things I did this week is I tried out Google’s new deep research tool as part of Gemini, their AI project. You can plug something into it, and it’ll research a whole bunch of websites and give you a five-page summary of its research. I did that, gathering stuff together as I prepared my sermon. At the top, there was a little button that said, “Produce an infographic.” I was like, “An infographic for the sermon, that’s got to be helpful for everyone.”
What it did was it turned this Bible passage into an investment diagram about how much money Abraham spent on this land. It went through the steps he took to buy the land, the negotiation deals, and the value of the land compared to other land that is bought in the Bible around the same time. It gives you a bit of a picture of what the image we get from this story is. It’s a strange story because it is a story about investment. It is a story that goes through all this detail about their negotiation and how much they spent and how much they wanted to spend. It’s quite unusual.
It is an important passage for a number of reasons, and we always look at a Bible passage and try to unpack why God has given us this particular story. One of the reasons is it’s important as we think about the promises that are given to Abraham. One of them was that he would have a promise of land, but up until now in the story, there hasn’t been any land. Abraham’s a traveler, and he doesn’t own any land, and God said, “I’ll give you this land,” but he hasn’t seen any of that promise fulfilled, and this is the first glimpse of that promise.
There’s another important thing to Israel here, and this is an official buying into the land of Canaan. It established the relationships between the other Canaanites at the time. We look at, and I’m not trying to make any political statements about the state of Israel at the moment, but for Israel, this is quite important to them, that this is something that happened early on, a deal that was struck that gives some investment and ownership into that land. That’s a picture that we get.
Here I am a stranger and foreigner among you.
I think the most critical thing in this story for us as we think about this story comes from, we get a glimpse of it in verse four in the way Abraham identifies himself. This is what he said in verse four, he says that he is, “Here I am a stranger and foreigner among you.” This is the picture of Abraham. This is his identity the whole way through. He is a traveler. He’s not someone who has settled down and stuck in a certain place, and it’s a picture we get of God’s people the whole way through the Bible, that even when God’s people are in the land of Israel, there’s a sense where that home is not their permanent home truly, and the Bible keeps talking about this eternal home. In the New Testament, it’s very clear we are like Abraham, foreigners is the language that Peter uses. We are strangers, the same words that Abraham uses. We are travelers like Abraham. This life has got a temporary element to it, and that really comes ahead in this story at the very opening because the very opening of this story is the death of Sarah.
It’s quite significant because here’s the journey we’ve been following through. God has given Abraham immortal promises, right? Immortal promises. Your name will be great. Your descendants will be like stars in the sky. There’s an infinite picture with his descendants. All nations on earth will be blessed through you. There’s an infinite element of that picture, and so Abraham has been given immortal promises. Almost every chapter that talks about Abraham in Genesis reminds us of those promises, and yet this chapter starts with mortality. This chapter starts with the death of Sarah. Here is Abraham who has the immortal promises faces Sarah’s mortality or really his own mortality in that sense.
The Traveler’s Loss
The first thing we want to look about as we think of the traveler is the traveler’s loss that we face. This is part of what it means to be a traveler in this life with those opening verses that talk about Sarah show us a little bit of how important she is as a character in the Bible. One significant thing about her is it tells us how many years she lived. She is the only woman in the Bible that that happens, that we’re told how many years she lived. A number of men were told how long they lived, but she’s the only woman that we’re told that, which shows us something about the significant role she plays in her lifespan in being part of the promise of God in bearing the promised child in Isaac. She’s significant.
We also see that she’s significant to Abraham. We’re told that he weeps for her. This is the first time in the Bible that we’re told anyone has shed a tear. The words weeping has not happened thus far. All the things that have happened in the Bible, no one we’ve been told has cried for those things, and so she’s significant in the Bible. She’s significant to Abraham. As we think about what it means to be a traveler, there’s a reminder there that this life we suffer loss, and we grieve that loss. In fact, we are created to grieve. We have a gift of grief.
The Gift of Grief
That’s a bit of a strange thing to think about, isn’t it? The first thought on the gift of grief is that we have the gift of tears. Humanity is the only creature on the planet that cries for emotional reasons. Many animals have teared ducks, but we’re the only creature that cries that lets out emotion in that way, and it is a gift in the sense that it is a way for us to express the grief to lay out the grief.
It’s not just an expression of grief, it’s actually an honoring of the joy that we have lost, that that grief created. I’ll give you an illustration. A few years ago, we went to Raging Waters with our kids, and it was a busy day. We waited in lines for way too long, and when we came to the end of the day, we stayed as late as we thought we could because of the kids’ bedtime, and then we said, “It’s time to go home.” Jet was greatly griefed, and the memory of Jet being so upset brings me great joy, and not because I’m a cruel father and I love to see that kind of pain on his face. What that grief told me that day is he loved that experience so much that he hadn’t had enough of it, that it was actually the joy of the experience pouring out as it came to an end that’s what was generating the grief that he had, and it was just great to see he had loved it that much that he just didn’t want to see it end.
The grief exists because of the joy, the grief exists because of the hope of the of the life that was lived and and what is going to be lost because of that the grief exists because of the gift.
There’s a strange reality to grief that exists for us as well. When someone dies in our life, that is part of the grief we feel. The grief exists because of the joy. The grief exists because of the hope of the of the life that was lived and what is going to be lost because of that. The grief exists because of the gift, and in that sense, we live as travelers, enjoying elements of this life, but also in the recognition that there is a limit to what we experience in this life, that the joy is limited in a sense, and so we are given the gift of grief.
Living with the Reality of Death
We want to live with the reality of death in our minds and not forget that it’s something that’s real. The Bible doesn’t shy away from acknowledging death. It doesn’t shy away from acknowledging the reality of death. There’s a danger that sometimes we do want to ignore it, pretend it’s not there. It’s a horrible thing. People sometimes use the language of it’s our last real enemy. Death is a horrible thing. The Bible meets that head on and acknowledges death. There’s some verses we read at funerals that sound like really beautiful verses until you realize what they’re talking about, and then it can be quite confronting. Verses sound like even a love letter type thing. Here’s an example. This is Peter. He says, “Your beauty is like a flower in the field.” Then he says, “The grass withers and the flowers fade.” That’s what your beauty is like. It withers and fades. Lovely. That’s probably not your opening to your proposal of marriage. Your beauty withers and flowers fade.
There’s another one we read all the time in Psalm 103, which says this, once again, it sounds beautiful. Our days on earth are like grass, like wildflowers. We bloom and die. It continues on. It says, “The wind blows and we are gone as though we had never been here.” They sound quite confronting, and in certain contexts, you would say they’re really out of place. They’re not the kind of thing you, it’s not the letter you write in your Valentine’s Day card or that sort of thing, but we often read them at funerals, and they never feel out of place. They always feel right because the reality is there before us. We can’t ignore it anymore. We can’t pretend it’s not there, and the most healthy thing for us to do is recognize it.
There’s a reality as travelers in this world that we live in the face of loss. We face life with the reality of death. That is what we see, but we also as Christian travelers face death with the reality of life because we have a hope beyond that. In fact, Peter’s words in that passage before are spoken exactly in that context. If we put part of that back up, Peter said that line, our days on earth are like, not that one, that one, the grass withers and the flowers fade, but this is what he said just before that. He says, “You’ve been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord, the source of that life, it will last forever.”
There’s a picture of not just recognizing we live life with the reality of death, we also face death with the hope of life. Both these things are true as travelers in this world, and so we live with that in mind. We live for eternity. In fact, Peter uses those words of travelers. He uses the words as temporary residents. This is what he says about living our lives for eternity. He says, “As temporary residents and foreigners, be careful to live properly amongst your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.” There’s a picture there of live facing death with that life, eternal life, that we live our lives knowing that we’re travelers and so not living for this life, but living for honoring God and the life to come.
The Traveler’s Cost
Abraham’s life illustrates that picture in two ways. We see the picture of the traveler’s loss, but in Abraham’s story, we also see the picture of the traveler’s cost, and that is the cost of being honorable in our lives and the cost of being a traveler. The first thing is the cost of being honorable, and we get this picture of Abraham that there’s some picture we get that he has sought to honor God. We’ve seen in his life that he has made some serious mistakes, but in verse four he says, “Please sell me a piece of land.” He doesn’t take it by force. We’ve seen that he has a whole lot of soldiers with him, but he doesn’t take it by force. He is an honorable man in seeking to buy it.
The Cost of Being Honorable
The next thing we see is people treat him with honor. They say, “You are an honored prince amongst us. Choose the finest of our tombs.” We get this picture that Abraham has lived to some extent an honorable life amongst people, but we see that particularly in this story, in this transaction deal. We see Abraham showing honor in a place where he could actually get the cheap option. He chooses to pay the cost. It’s quite a strange story, this story of Abraham and Ephron and this negotiation about this tomb. For starters, there seems to be a lot of bowing going on in this story. Verse 7, then Abraham bowed low before the Hittites, right? Then he has this strange interaction. He asks if they will speak to Ephron, but we’re told Ephron is there in their midst. I don’t know if him and Ephron had a fight before now, and they’re like, “You tell Ephron that I said this.” He says, “Since you’re willing to help me in this way, be so kind as to ask that guy, ask Ephron, son of Zoah, to let me buy his cave at Mcappella.”
The first thing is it’s weird that he’s talking to Ephron. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s there. He’s talking about Efron communicating through them. The second thing is his very specific request. He’s like, “You can have any cave. Oh, I know, I’ve got one in mind down at the end of the field.” He says he’s been on burials us.com. He’s been on domain, and he’s found the proper site, the location he wants. That’s the second kind of strange thing that’s happening here. The third strange thing is he’s obsessed with witnesses. You see that through this passage. I will pay the full price, he says in the presence of witnesses. That’s the strange thing that’s going on for Abraham. It seems similarly strange for Ephron because he is also obsessed with witnesses, although he does seem like he’s trying to show off his generosity. He says Ephron was sitting there, verse 10, amongst the others, right? There’s witnesses there, and he answered Abraham as the others listened. We’re told speaking publicly so they can hear, of course, before all the Hite elders of the town. Then he says, “My Lord, please listen to me. I will give you the field and the cave here in the presence of my people. I give it to you.” He seems more interested not at the witnesses in the sense of transaction, but the witnesses in sense of seeing his generosity.
We get this bow off between the two of them. Verse 12, again bowed before the citizens of the land. He says, “Ephron says, “Please listen to me. I will give you the field.” Abraham says, “No, listen to me. I will buy it from you. Let me pay the full price.” Ephron answers, “My Lord, please listen to me.” Then he does this thing that sounds like they could be friends, right? He says, “My Lord, please listen to me. The land is worth 400 pieces of silver, but what is that between friends? Go ahead and bury your dead.” It sounds like they could be friends, although I’m pretty convinced by the whole interaction they’re not friends, and one of the most telling things about it is what happens next. Listen to the details of this transaction. This doesn’t sound like two guys making a deal. It says Abraham agreed to Efron’s price and paid the amount he had suggested, 400 pieces of silver. Then it adds weighed according to the market standard, and the Hitti elders witnessed the transaction. These are not details you add if two guys that are good get along well together kind of exchanging a deal. This is some level of tension that’s going on here. That’s the first hint we get that it’s not a friendly deal.
Abraham is acting honorably. He’s going over and above to make sure he’s doing the right thing and his integrity here costs him and it costs him quite heavily.
The second one is the price, 400 shekels of silver. Now, it’s difficult for us to estimate what that’s worth, but what we can do is compare it to other sales that happen. Other sales that have happened in the Bible. For example, David buys a business. He buys a threshing floor and ox for 50 shekels. That’s 350 shekels less than a cave and a field. Jeremiah buys a field for 17 shekels. That’s significantly, I mean, this cave must be some nice cave if it’s worth that much above just the cost of the field. It seems pretty clear that 400 shekels actually is overpriced. What’s going on here with all this detail is that Abraham is acting honorably. He’s going over and above to make sure he’s doing the right thing and his integrity here costs him and it costs him quite heavily.
The Cost of Living Generously
The reality is this is what it means for him to be a traveler is the cost of seeking to live for God and living honorably no matter what he faces. We think about that ourselves as travelers when it comes to things like ethics in business, in the workplace, in our jobs, that if we are to live as travelers in this world living for eternity, then we will seek to do the right thing even in times that it might cost us more. It means living generously, being generous with everything we have in order to show love for others. I think there’s a danger in particularly western society. Lots of things have set up in our society to help care for those who are in need. Most of those things are the legacy of Christian heritage, things like our Centerlink social provisions for people who are out of jobs, those sorts of things. They come from a Christian heritage, but there’s a danger actually that Christians say, “Well, we’ve set those things up. We no longer need to live generously. We can let the system care for the people, and we will just go on living for ourselves.” If we are to do that, we are actually to dishonor that heritage that we have from all that work that has been done. It is because Christians seek to care and love for the poor and outcast that we now have a world that cares it some to some extent for the poor and the outcasts.
To live as travelers, we face the travelers’s cost. That is the cost of living and giving generously, the cost of living counterculturally when the world values things differently to us. The cost for Abraham is a cost of integrity, but the second cost is the cost that it means to be a traveler, that is he has to pay this money because he owns no land. The reality is that we think about people who are not investing in this life investing in the life to come, there is a cost to that.
The Traveler’s Legacy
We don’t just have the traveler’s cost, we have the traveler’s legacy, an investment in God’s kingdom. This land purchase in this little chapter, this little story about a little negotiation is the first installment of the promised land for God’s people. It’s the first bit of land. Sarah actually doesn’t live to see the day when they own some of the promised land, but she is buried in that land. It’s the family burial, so Abraham is buried in that land. Other family members are buried in that land. It’s the first installment, so Abraham’s investment is an investment in God’s plans and God’s kingdom.
Investing in God’s Kingdom
It’s helpful for us to also think about what it looks like to be travelers and how we invest in God’s plans and God’s kingdom. We do that in a lot of ways. We do that in the way we make decisions about priorities. We had an opportunity this week in my house to have that conversation with our kids about thinking about our priorities this week. The game Fortnite had a global event. You could join Luke Skywalker in defeating Palpatine and destroying the Death Star, right? The problem with the global event is it happened at 4:00 a.m. this morning, 2:00 in America, good for them, 4:00 a.m. here, and so there was a conversation. Susie and I talked about this is good. Jet and Olive have been playing a little bit of Fortnite, but Jet’s particularly interested, little bit of a conversation saying sometimes we don’t do things because our investment in the kingdom is that we prioritize church. It helps that I’m preaching and kind of have to be here, but we prioritize church. We’re not going to get up at 4:00 a.m. and then be too tired for church. Of course, at 4:00 a.m. this morning, I had another lesson to teach Jet, and that was sometimes we get up at 4:00 a.m. and do things and then we still go to church. That’s the investment lesson we want to learn. After all, the galaxy needed saving. When we woke him up this morning, I said, “This is the second part of the deal, no grumpiness or I am fried.”
There are moments that we try to teach our kids what priorities look like and how we balance those priorities, what decisions we make for things that we want to enjoy in this life versus an investment in God’s kingdom. One of the greatest ways we did that, do that, we’ve already talked about this in our service today, but the idea of giving regularly to the work of the church is one way that we quite tangibly invest in kingdom work because the church is funded by people in our church that give to it, and we use those funds to employ staff to help manage the church to help enable ministry to happen, so that’s one way. Another way is giving to mission organizations and our link missionaries. It’s a good opportunity for me to say Dave Syninden, one of our link missionaries is actually short on some of the funding that he needs to raise, and so I encourage you that if you have capacity maybe to give towards that that you sign up to help him out with reaching his funding goals. It’s part of what we’re thinking about with our Thanksgiving this week, our Thanksgiving offetry.
Kingdom Investment
I want to take a moment to talk about another kingdom investment that we have before us at a church, and I’ll try to do this quickly, but I want to just take a moment to lay this out before you. We’ve been talking a lot about this, but the reality is we are asking the question about what the future of our church looks like with the limitations on this facility that we’re on right now. We’re building a church up on Hamilton Street. We’re hoping three years maybe that will be done, but we’re working on how we build investment, use this facility here now. This becomes tricky for us. We are for a government grant, we’re raising the roof here, and there’s going to be a little bit of extra things that need to be done to finish that job off. We’re just raising these kind of 10 m here exposing the rafters and trying to make the room feel a bit bigger. We’re going to do that, and there’s a little bit of investment for us even though we’re not going to be here long term because we want to just not let anything hold back moving forward as a church.
One of the great challenges for us is to figure out the limitations of this building. For example, how many people can we fit in here and grow? The reality of church is that churches generally experience a growth barrier that happens, growth stops when a church room is 80% full. That’s a tricky kind of thing to think through, but I said this a couple of weeks ago, church is fantastic and it’s a taste of God’s kingdom together and it should be a sellout concert, but the reality is in this life it isn’t a sellout concert, and so people aren’t going to come and squeeze side by side and take tickets at the door to fit in and we’ll use every nook and cranny to fill this church. The reality is if we want to reach people who are on the fringes of our church or not even sure about church at all, we need to create a space where they feel welcome and comfortable and not packed in like sardines, and so a church will tend to grow. They say after co it’s actually 70% full. I don’t know if that’s true. I think we can fit 200 in here. Last week we had 140 on just a regular Sunday that includes kids and they were only in for the parts of the service last week, but you can see if it’s 70% full we’re starting to feel this 200 people with the coffee machine out and pushing chairs all the way back, so we’re starting to feel those challenges. Our car park is actually a greater challenge. I think we have about 50 car park spaces depending on how tight we park on the gravel, about 20 on the street before you’re walking too far that you feel like it’s a distance that’s around 100 adults consuming some share cars and some don’t. That means that we actually last week had 90 adults at church and I know many are parking out on the street to free that up.
It’s very hard for us to figure out where the line is that we need to make serious decisions. If you’d asked me six months ago I’d said what we need to do is have two family services on a Sunday morning and then we would be able to enable much more growth because we are moving off site. I think because we’re moving to another site I think a better plan for us moving forward is to consider moving to a school where we stay as one service. We will bring the 8:00 service in because I don’t think we can run two services offsite and run one service on a Sunday in a school. I don’t have to explain to you the complications with something like that and it’s not the juggle between those two is hard. I’ve been asking our leadership team our church board some of their values on this like for example if we’re not here on a Sunday we could hire it out to another church but we will pay higher at another facility so that’s could work out costneutral. The bands the music team if they were here they come in for two services cuz I don’t think we could swap bands between services that’s a long warning but if we go off site we’ve got to set up everything that’s a long warning. Probably one of the biggest things for us is our kids ministry to run two kids ministries offsite really means even though they’re set up sorry to run two kids ministries here would mean doubling our kids ministry team. Some people might be able to double up their amount of serving but we are really struggling to run one kids program. I don’t think we have the resources to run two, so I’m thinking we need to think about where we might meet in the future. The question becomes when and because we’re selling we want to look to sell this building for the sake of a sale we may need to consider moving sooner rather than later in order to lock in a sale. This is a very unique sale site we’ve got a heritage building we’ve got a heritage tree that’s fun and so it makes it very limited on what we can do here. The best plan for everything including the legacy of the ministry here is another church buys it that would be the ideal to see church ministry continue on this site. I’m having chats with churches about that there’s a couple that are potential one that’s really keen and they’re real keen real soon and we might need to ask those questions.
Here’s where I think that lands for us and then I’ll wrap up the sermon. I think October this year or September October next year is what we’re thinking. I think that’s around the ideal time to move coming out of the colder months, but we will need to October this year is very soon and so these are pretty serious conversations going on so I want to let you know that that’s what we’re doing here and I want to pull it back to what we’re talking about about kingdom investment. These challenges come with great costs. A number of years ago someone challenged me when talking about vision stuff to not use the word difficult. It’s going to be difficult. The word is it’s going to be a challenge. It’s going to be a difficult challenge is the reality and there’s going to be cost and one of the things we want to build as a culture in our church when it comes to serving is we want to have a culture where we own the costs together. We want our teams to work together and own the outcomes of what we do and share them together and that’s going to be true of something like this. This is going to be a shift depending where we move the time frames that that happens the setup that will be involved each Sunday if we do that for how long we need to do that we’re thinking about serious questions about what midweek ministries would look like our playgroup our youth ministry our oneoff events our gingerbread event our alpha course our hope would be to sell to another church and have an arrangement that we can lease back from them some of those things but that’s where we’re at.
We live as travelers in this life and this story from Abraham reminds us exactly how that is that there’s awareness of the finitude of this life the brevity of the life that there is a limit to how long we will be here and that brings with it some some sorrow because of the joy that we experience and that joy lost.
I’d invite you as we think about what it looks like to live as travelers in this life to think about how we keep investing in the kingdom. The reality is we could not do anything. We could say if we’re not thinking about travelers if we’re thinking about ourselves then we’d say I’m comfortable here and we can you know if other people aren’t comfortable filling up the room I’m comfortable filling up the room just let it be and I think the outcome will be we will limit the opportunities we have to share Jesus with more and more people and so I think these are challenges we need to face. We live as travelers in this life and this story from Abraham reminds us exactly how that is that there’s awareness of the finitude of this life the brevity of the life that there is a limit to how long we will be here and that brings with it some some sorrow because of the joy that we experience and that joy lost. It also helps remind us that there is a limited time here for us to serve God and we should be working hard with all we have it’s about embracing the cost that comes to be a traveler and it’s about investing in the legacy of God’s kingdom here on this earth as we look towards living for the future.