A Piece of the Promise

Open your Bible to Genesis 23 this morning.

Ever since we began our study in Genesis, we have been looking at the way God showed himself faithful to keep his promises.

We have seen Abraham and Sarah and others make poor choices and get off track, but God has still been faithful.

Now, we are coming to the end of Sarah and Abraham’s lives.

We still have a long way to go in Genesis, and we will actually come back a bit next week and look at one more account that happened while Abraham was still alive, but today, we are going to see the end of each of their lives.

As we do, we are going to make this observation: With all the ways they had seen God’s faithfulness in their lives, Abraham and Sarah still died having only received a piece of the promise.

We have the privilege of knowing some of what took place after they died, so we will see that God has been faithful to keep his promises to Abraham.

My hope is that will encourage you to trust that God will be faithful to keep the promises he has made us, even if we only see a piece of them in this life.

Let’s dive in this morning.

While there are a few different promises God made Abraham, two main ones stick out: The promise of descendants who would bless the world, and the promise of land from Egypt to the Euphrates River.

They didn’t get to see the fulfillment of those promises. In fact, we start off by seeing that they died with only...

1) A piece of the land.

Chapter 23 starts off on a somber note.

We don’t know how long they had been married, but had been more than 65 years since we are first introduced to them.

Abraham went to her and weeps for her.

It is beautiful moments like this that remind us of the humanity of these great men and women of God.

Abraham was a mourning widower who truly cared for his wife.

This account is interesting for a few different notes. According to Warren Wiersbe, this is the first record of tears in the Bible. [1]

Also, according to another commentator, Sarah is the only woman in Scripture whose age is recorded. [2]

As significant and powerful as this moment is, it is marred by a painful reality: Abraham doesn’t own any land on which to bury his wife.

All this time, he has been traveling from location to location, moving his tents and his flocks and herds and never actually having land of his own.

He left his ancestral homeland, and God promised him land, but he hasn’t actually possessed any of it.

That’s about to change, though.

Pick up in verses 3-9...

Abraham goes to the people in charge of the town where they are staying, and he asks for a place to bury Sarah.

The townspeople respond that they will gladly give him whatever land he wants, so he requests a cave on a piece of land belonging to a man named Ephron.

Scholars debate about what happened next.

When you read it, it is possible that Ephron is being generous when he tells Abraham that he will give him not only the cave but the field attached to it.

However, it is more likely that what we see here is good old fashioned haggling.

Ephron isn’t interested in just selling the cave; he wants to sell the whole thing.

Politely, he and Abraham go back and forth with Abraham agreeing to pay the full price, whatever it may be.

Pick up in verse 14-15 - Ephron asked 400 shekels of silver for it, and Abraham paid it.

He is able to bury Sarah in the cave there, and he now possesses a piece of the promised land.

We see that clearly in verse 20...

There is no other record of Abraham buying any more land in Canaan before he died.

While God promised his descendants would have this entire land, Abraham only owns a field and a cave after living in the land for decades.

Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Leah would all be buried there.

Now, 400 years later, God would bring Abraham’s descendants back into the land he had promised.

This time, the nation would expand and possess far more of the land than Abraham had.

But for Abraham, Sarah, and the rest of the patriarchs, they all died having only received a piece of the promise.

Here, it is only one field; a place to bury his wife.

It wasn’t just a piece of the promise about land. He also only received...

2) A piece of the descendants.

If you remember some of our earlier messages, you will recall that God said Abraham would father many nations and that his descendants would be as innumerable as the sand and the stars.

Also, through his descendants, God would bless the entire world.

When Abraham died, though, he only saw a piece of that promise.

Abraham lived another 38 years after Sarah died. Chapter 24 happens in that stretch of time, but we are going to jump over that and come back to it next week.

Pick up in 25:1-2...

We don’t have many details, but Abraham took another wife after Sarah died.

During that time, he had six other sons, bringing the total to eight, even though Isaac was the only one who was the direct recipient of the promises God made.

God took each of these sons and allowed them to become nations of their own, so God began to let Abraham see that he really would be the father of many nations.

However, as much as God blessed them, they weren’t Isaac, so he sent them all away before his death.

Read verses 5-6...

The promise was clearly going to be carried on through Isaac, so he received everything Abraham had.

Then we reach the end of Abraham’s story. Pick up in verses 7-9...

I don’t think I particularly care to live to be 175, but I would love to have verse 8 be true of me.

Even this statement is a fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham:

Genesis 15:15 CSB

But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.

Here’s one thing we sometimes overlook: God gave Abraham a good life!

The pieces of the promise Abraham received were wonderful blessings from God.

He had a long life and marriage to Sarah and was even able to marry again after her death.

He fathered 8 sons, so God had fulfilled the promise that he would be the father of many nations.

He had possessions and influence—it was a good life.

Interestingly, even Ishmael came back to bury Abraham, so there seems to have been some continued affection there.

When Abraham breathed his last, he was old and contented.

However, in spite of all the good things God did during Abraham’s life, he still only saw a piece of the promise.

He lived to see eight sons, and perhaps some of their sons and grandsons.

However, that is a far cry from offspring so numerous that they are as impossible to count as the sand or the stars.

Beyond all that, some of the nations that come from these sons are going to fight against Isaac and his heirs, so he still hasn’t really seen how all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed through him.

In fact, the fulfillment of that promise wouldn’t come for almost 2,000 more years when Abraham’s greatest descendant would be born.

While Abraham only saw a piece of the promise, God knew he would not only bless the world through Abraham’s line but also save it.

When Jesus, God’s Son, came to earth as a baby, he came through Abraham’s family.

God didn’t just bless the world through Abraham’s descendants, he saved it.

John 3:16 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Abraham didn’t see that before he died. He lived a good life and saw lots of things, but he only enjoyed a piece of the promise.

In many ways, the same is true for us.

You see, God has made some incredible promises to us, hasn’t he?

He promises to save us from our sins as we trust in Jesus and declare him the Lord of our lives.

Through a relationship with him that is founded on what Jesus did on the cross, God has promised us his presence and his peace and joy and all these things.

While we have hints of all those things now, we just get pieces of them in this life.

Paul described it this way:

2 Corinthians 1:22 CSB

He has also put his seal on us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

Every person who has been saved by Jesus has the Holy Spirit living in us right now.

However, the sin in our hearts and our world cause us to disregard his voice, reject his guidance, and lose out on his comfort.

His activity in our lives is a down payment, but it is just a piece of the promise.

We don’t experience the fullness of the salvation God has given us in this life.

That’s why the writer of Hebrews would use Abraham as an example:

Hebrews 11:9–10 CSB

By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:16 CSB

But they now desire a better place—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Just like Abraham didn’t fully receive everything God promised in this life, so too we won’t fully receive all the blessings he has promised us.

We get beautiful hints and tastes of these gifts God has for us, but we are still waiting for him to bring us into that city.

By the way, remember what he has said about that city:

Revelation 21:3–4 CSB

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.

One day, we know that these things will come to pass.

For those of us who are his today, though, we only enjoy a piece of the promise.

Here is our hope, our anchor, our joy: if God kept his promises to Abraham, then we can trust that he will keep the ones he made to us.

Philippians 1:6 CSB

I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

For today, we hold onto and celebrate the pieces of the promise we enjoy. We strive to live contented lives like Abraham, whether we grow old or not.

Those pieces we enjoy are glorious hints of what is to come, so don’t lose hope.

If you haven’t trusted Christ, you can do that today.

[1] Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Obedient. “Be” Commentary Series. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1991.

[2] Edersheim, Alfred. Bible History: Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975.