It Is Better To Go To A Funeral Than A Wedding - Genesis 23 Series

If you were to travel to Israel today there would be a list of things you would want to visit and see. If you’re Jewish the number one visiting place would be the Wailing Wall, which is that wall of the leftover of the old Temple that’s still there. People will take their prayer requests and they’ll write them on pieces of paper and then they’ll stuff them in and around the bricks. So all of these blocks have cracks in them and they’re putting their prayers in there.

If you were Jewish the second most visited place would be the grave of Abraham. Because he is the father of the Jewish nation. So that is in what is called the Cave of Machpelah down south of Jerusalem. South is Bethlehem and then below that is Hebron and it’s in that Hebron area. Today that cave has a temple or a church built over it. It was built during the time of Herod way back in the first century and it’s a remarkable building that’s still left. If you go inside the building there’s these two stairways that you can go down and you can see the caves. They’ve done some archeological digs around there to verify that these were the genuine places of that period. So they’re pretty certain these were the actual graves of where Abraham and Sarah, his wife, were buried, where Isaac, their son, and his wife were buried, and where Jacob, their son, and his wife Leah were buried. Now today we’re going to learn about the history of this story, where it all started – Machpelah and how it came to be into the possession of Abraham.

We’re going to look at Genesis 23 today. As we do we’re going to see that Sarah is the first one of those six people who dies and Abraham is going to obtain this place to bury her. So our passage today is somewhat funeral like. In other words we’re going to look at the death of Sarah and how that impacted Abraham. As we do look at that we’re going to ponder our own lives. In fact look at this verse from God’s word that says this: It is better to go to a house of mourning (that is a funeral)… This is in Ecclesiastes 7:2. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting (whether that’s a party or a wedding or something like that), for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.

So visiting a funeral or going to a funeral is a significant event. It’s a time for pondering, it’s a time for thinking. It affects us and we should take it to heart. Actually the statistics are rather conclusive. We look at the statistics today we see that 10 out of 10 people die. So we know that we are all facing that challenge unless the Lord comes back again before then. If you’re married it’s likely one of you is going to go before the other, so you may even lose your spouse before that. So it’s something of us to consider in the midst of all of this experience.

I have three goals for us in our sermon today. As we look at the death of Sarah and Abraham’s handling that and the burying of her and so on, I’d like us to recognize that we are sojourners in this world. We’re just passing through. Secondly, I would like for you to go away feeling the impact of today. That today is a valuable day and you can rejoice today because this is the day the Lord made and you get to enjoy it. Today is valuable. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but today you can enjoy. And thirdly, to value those you love. Because you don’t know how long they’re going to be around and how much you’re going to be able to spend time with them. So valuing your loved ones is my third goal that you would have today as we look at this passage.

So I’m eager to go into Genesis 23. You can open your Bibles if you would to Genesis 23 and let’s take it verse by verse through the passage and understand what God might be saying to us today.

It starts this way: Sarah lived 127 years. Do you know this is the only woman in the Bible that God tells how old she is? Maybe that’s because the Holy Spirit is a gentleman and we know that women don’t like to talk about their age very much.

I laugh when the little boy gets on the bus and the bus driver says, “And young man, how old are you?” And he says, “I’m five and my mom is 47,” and she’s going, “Ah!” Don’t want to tell my age.