No Turning Back
Notes
Transcript
Before the holidays, we were walking through the life of Abraham in the book of Genesis. It was with Abraham that God made the second covenant with a man. God promised Abraham he would become a great nation, that the other nations of the earth would be blessed by him. This promise included land, descendants, and innumerable blessings. In October and November of last year, the focus was on God’s fulfillment of the descendants part of the covenant.
We left off with the birth and then near sacrifice of Isaac. Isaac was born according to the promise God had made a year prior. Some time later, God tested Abraham by calling him to sacrifice the child of promise on an altar. God provided for Abraham in a time of testing, and the event is a foreshadowing of the time when God would send his own son as a sacrifice for us.
Fast-forward some years later, and we get to Genesis 23, which introduces a tragedy: the death of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. She lived to be 127 years old. She dies in Kiriath-arba, also known as Hebron, which is a city still in existence today. Abraham and Sarah spent much of their lives in this area, and back then, the city was run by a group known the Hittites. The New American Standard Bible calls them the sons of Heth, who was a descendent of Canaan, who was a son of Ham, who was one of the sons of Noah. So for context, Abraham is talking to the descendants of a great grandson of Noah.
Sarah’s death has created a need. Abraham needed a place to bury her. So he goes to the Hittites for help. He makes his request known and they respond favorably, giving him the option to pick the best of their tombs to bury his wife in. Look at what they have to say about him in verse six.
“Hear us, my lord, you are a mighty prince among us; bury your dead in the choicest of our graves; none of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead.”
The Hittites thought of Abraham very favorably for them to make this sort of offer. Now, there is something you need to understand about Ancient Near Eastern cultures. It was customary to bury your dead on native land. This was very important to the people of Abraham’s day. So while the offer is very generous, it goes against everything Abraham was brought up to believe.
But the need presents a problem. Abraham is from Haran. He left there 62 years ago. This presents a dilemma. Does Abraham go back? How long would that take? Who would he run into if he did? What would happen to all the promises God made? At this point, Abraham is a firm believer in God’s ability to fulfill his promises. So what does he do?
And he spoke with them, saying, “If it is your wish for me to bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and approach Ephron the son of Zohar for me,
that he may give me the cave of Machpelah which he owns, which is at the end of his field; for the full price let him give it to me in your presence for a burial site.”
Abraham proposes to buy this cave at full price from a guy named Ephron, the current owner of the cave. But Ephron doesn’t want to sell a cave. He wants to sell the field the cave sits on. Notice in verse ten all of this is going down at the city gate. If you recall from the time the angels visited Lot at the destruction of Sodom, all business was handled at the city gate. What you are looking at in chapter 23 is a real estate deal. The price for the field and the cave: 400 shekels. What would that be in today’s dollars? Hundreds of thousands if we are talking purchasing power. This is a huge business transaction.
Abraham and Ephron go back and forth for a bit. This is an example of how they used to bargain back and forth. If you ever travel to Israel, you will experience this. The price is settled on and Abraham pays it. Then the two most important verses in the chapter are 17 and 18.
So Ephron’s field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre, the field and cave which was in it, and all the trees which were in the field, that were within all the confines of its border, were deeded over
to Abraham for a possession in the presence of the sons of Heth, before all who went in at the gate of his city.
So it is here in Genesis 23 that Abraham becomes a landowner. You see, God promised him 62 years ago that the land would be his. For 62 years, Abraham was an occupier of the land. In Genesis 23 he became a possessor of the land. This is a big moment, and the way it happened was extremely important!
Abraham goes to the city, speaks with Ephron in the city gate surrounded by tons of witnesses. The money exchanges hands, and the land is deeded over. Abraham becomes the legal owner of the field and cave Ephron now used to own.
Why is this important? Because Abraham followed God for 62 years on the hope of a promise. He saw the descendants promise fulfilled, and he was shown the land that he was going to inherit, he lived in the land he was going to inherit, but he didn’t actually own any of the land. Could you imagine being promised that one day all this land was going to be yours but then waiting six decades for it to be a reality? That’s Abraham’s life!
This is also important because it solves the problem. Abraham was not a native to the land of Canaan. He was an outsider. But now he owns land in the Promised Land. He now has native land to bury his wife and pass down as an inheritance to his children’s children’s children. What the birth of Isaac was to the promise of descendants is this land purchase to the promise of land. God is fulfilling his promises incrementally.
It also marks a turning point in the life of Abraham: There’s no going back. Abraham is tied to the land of Canaan now. Think about what it typically takes to move from one place to another. If you move from here to George West, it may not require a lot. But if you move from here to New York, it becomes much more difficult. If you have property to sell, the move is even harder. It’s easier to move when you don’t have any property. It’s harder to move if you have property. If this happened 50 years ago, it might have been easier for Abraham to just go back home. But now he has tied himself to the land.
This transaction is an expression of his commitment to trust the Lord for his promises. Abraham has had a lot to learn over the years about trusting God to fulfill his promises. It seems he finally learned the lesson enough to trust God with a down payment. He’s not getting the whole land, but he is getting some. This transaction is also God’s first step in a while of fulfilling the land promise to Abraham. But what does this story have to do with you and I?
Well, we have to remember that we live under a new covenant, not this one. But the stories of the Old Testament often foreshadow the relationship that would exist under the new covenant. This story reminds us of two things.
This is not our home.
This is not our home.
Abraham began this conversation by acknowledging that he was a stranger and a sojourner among the Hittites. He was not from around there. He was in Hittite territory. He didn’t own the land. What’s different for you and I is that you are actually landowners. Some of your land may be generational land. Your parents inherited it from their parents, who inherited it from their parents. But regardless of whether you own land here or anywhere else, this is not our true home.
The Bible teaches us that when we come to Christ, we transfer our citizenship. When Jesus was arrested and handed over to the Romans, Pilate, the governor of the region at the time, questioned Jesus on his identity. He asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Look at what Jesus says in John 18:36.
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
Jesus is king, but Jesus is not king of a physical kingdom. His kingdom is not of this world. It is a spiritual reality before it is a physical reality. He will reign on the earth one day, but not yet.
Paul says to the Philippian church,
For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ,
whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;
who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
This is not our home. We don’t live for this world. Everything here is destined for destruction, to be replaced by the kingdom Christ will create. As I said last week, our role right now is to go out into the world to let them know it is under new management. It’s already done. He’s just giving everyone an opportunity to place themselves under new management before he comes and takes ownership of it. This is not your home. The kingdom of Christ is.
There is no turning back.
There is no turning back.
Sixty-two years and God gave Abraham true ownership of the land promised to him. There was no going back. Abraham now belonged in the land of Canaan. Sarah was buried on native land as was the old custom. This was a turning point.
If you could go back to your life before Christ, would you? There is no going back, but if you could, would you really want to? The song we typically sing at the end of a service says, “I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.” You have transferred citizenship from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ.
When we go out into the community this year, and seek to share the gospel of Christ with others, we should be careful to articulate that they are making a profound choice. They are choosing to say this is no longer their home. They are choosing never to go back. We don’t want easy believism. We want people to understand the decision they re making. Their adoption into the family of God is permanent.
Have you made that decision? Is Jesus at the center of everything you do? What if your job, your social calendar, and your lifestyle centered around how you can intentionally be in front of people who need to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ this year? How can you make moves toward that as the year goes on?
