Connect with Skip - Skip Heitzig

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Connect with Skip Heizig. We're glad you've joined
us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heiitzig exist to
connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's
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(00:22):
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dot com. Now let's get into today's teaching with pastor

(00:42):
Skip Heitzig.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Now, all of the world was to be blessed to
Abraham's seed, and that means physical descendants of Abraham, spiritual
descendants of Abraham, as well as the ultimate seed Christ.
All of the abomber true. Think, but we would be
missing if the Jewish people were not around, if there

(01:05):
were no Jewish people, well, number one, we'd be missing
our Bible. I couldn't say, turning your bibles tonight, because
we would have no bibles to turn, too, we would
have no Ten Commandments. That was part of the covenant
God gave to them. The Ten Commandments very important to us.
It's the basis of our jurisprudence system in most western

(01:26):
civilized nations. Number Three, we would have no Savior. He
came through the lineage of the Jewish nation, and without
a Jewish Jesus, we would have no Christianity, no salvation.
He's the ultimate seed. And so that promise really is
of the Gospel. In your seed, all the nations of

(01:47):
the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.
So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose
and went together to Beersheba, and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. Question,
why does verse nineteen say Abraham return to his young men?
How come Isaac didn't return? Remember what Abraham said to

(02:08):
them back in chapter While we're in chapter twenty two
last week, he said, the lad and I will go
up yonder and worship, and we will return to you.
So why doesn't the text say they both returned, just
Abraham returned. I don't quite know. But it is interesting

(02:28):
that though obviously Isaac returned as well, because he wasn't sacrificed,
there is no mention of Isaac from the time of
this almost sacrifice until we see him in a couple
chapters when he reappears with his bride, his gentile bride.

(02:53):
There's an absence, and then he appears again as he
meets his bride. As he comes again with his and
with his bride, we see them. It's just something to note.
Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's one
of those little fingerprints of the Holy Spirit, because obviously
the sacrifice on Mount Moriah is indicative of the sacrifice

(03:17):
of Christ on the same place. And it's just interesting
that he is not seen here but will be seen
again when he appears with his gentile bride again. That
could just be a wonderful little touch by the Holy Spirit.
It came to pass after these things. It was told
Abraham saying, indeed, Milka has also born children to your

(03:37):
brother Nahor. Now there's a list of names, twelve sons
that Nahor had. Now get these names. Huzz his firstborn,
Buzz his brother. So the first two boys, Hus and
Buzz boy If they were around today, wouldn't they get ridiculed?

(04:01):
Kim you well, the father of Aram, he said, Hazo,
pill Dash, gid laugh and Bethel, well, how many of you?
Do you know anybody who's having kids soon? Any of
you here gonna have children soon? Are you congratulations? Does
any of those names appeal to you? You raise your hand.

(04:23):
You're looking for biblical names. You're thinking forget it right,
good move? I dare you try this one? Pill Dash?
I'm just kidding now, it says Bethel. Well, now look
at verse twenty three. Bethelwell, begot Rebecca. These eight milkaw
bought Tonjor, Abraham's brother, his concubine whose name was Reyuma,

(04:45):
also bore Tiba Gayham, they hash and Maka, there's another one.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Maka.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Now why is this little information given to us? Because
the narrative is going to show, because the promised is Isaac,
and Isaac in a couple chapters, is going to get married.
And now we have a hint of betha Well, who's
going to have a child named Rebecca, and Rebecca will
have a brother named Laban. And all of these characters

(05:15):
are very important in the next few patriarchs Isaac and Jacob.
Now we get to chapter twenty three and it's an obituary.
Chapter twenty three, it's the death of a Princess. Sarah
dies in this chapter. Sarah Originally her name was Sarah I,

(05:38):
which meant contentious. God renamed her thankfully to Princess Sarah
means that she's one hundred and twenty seven years old
when she dies. Okay, you're thinking it's about time that
she dies. When you get to one hundred and twenty seven, okay,
that's like old. I got an email today from a

(06:00):
friend overseas. I don't know how true it is, but
they're trying to corroborate a family from the country of Georgia,
these ex Soviet states that there's a woman I saw
her picture even that she's going to be one hundred
and thirty years old, they say on July eighth, and

(06:21):
so they're trying to make they're trying to contend with
Guinness Book of World Records because the record holder is
one hundred and fourteen year old woman from Japan, and
they're saying, look, we have the documentation she's going to
be one hundred and thirty years old July eighth, and
you know what, honest, I don't know when the picture
was taken, but she didn't look that bad. I mean,

(06:41):
for one hundred and thirty Yeah, you're just if you're
just breathing air, you're looking pretty good. But this lady
didn't look too bad. So it says Sarah lived one
hundred and twenty seven years. These were the years of
the life of Sarah. So the death of a princess,
Abraham's princess. Now some of you, most of you will

(07:02):
remember back to September sixth, nineteen ninety seven, when the
People's princess, she was called, died. Princess Diana, the most
photographed woman in the world, died in a car crash.
When she died, it was such a huge deal. A
million people showed up in person lining the streets of
that death march. Is that flowery casket drove in that

(07:24):
glass hearse to her burial place. Two point five billion
other people billion watched it by television. It was a
huge deal, the People's princess. But here we have Sarah.
Now she's a big deal. And here's why. As the
wife of Abraham, she's the mother of the Jewish nation.

(07:49):
There's no other woman in the Bible, where her age
is mentioned, her death, and her burial and burial place
is mentioned besides Sarah. And it's because of who she
is she occupies such a huge place in the Bible.
In fact, women are told to emulate her. She's an
example to women. Now I find that interesting. Here's something

(08:13):
you might find interesting. Nowhere in the Bible is Mary,
the mother of Jesus, ever given as an example for
people to follow. Did you know that She's never held
up as a supreme example, But Sarah twice in the Bible.
Is once is Isaiah chapter fifty one, where the children

(08:34):
of Israel told to look back over their own history,
remember where they've come from, and Abraham and Sarah are
listed in that. The other is First Peter chapter three,
where the outward woman isn't to be emphasized, but the
inward woman is to be emphasized, and Sarah is given
as a beautiful example once again, an example to be followed. Now,

(08:58):
here's what I love about the language of the death
of Sarah in chapter twenty three. Follow me number one.
The language is straightforward language. It talks about death very
openly and plainly. You know why, because death is a
fact of life. That's why. And the lesson for us,
in the straightforward language of chapter twenty three is we

(09:23):
should learn in preparation for our own death or the
death of people in our family, is to learn to
talk about it openly. In many families it's not discussed.
Don't talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. Well,
if you don't talk about it, then you're not going
to deal with it until that person dies. Then you
have to deal with it. Better to talk about it

(09:44):
and get the right attitude about it first. So it's
straightforward language. Second thing I want you to notice is
we work our way through chapter twenty three. It's personal.
Sarah is mentioned by name. She's not called the dearly
departed or Abraham's loved one, but she's personalized. Again, I

(10:10):
think that's huge. Number three, Sarah is not given into
the hands of specialists who handle the body and handle
the funeral, but she's in the loving hands of her husband, Abraham,
who seeks to bury his wife. I'll tell you one
of the things I'm grateful for I lost my father
and my mother and my brother is the ability at

(10:33):
my mother's death to be next to her and not
have her at the hospital, but be next to her
in that last week of her death, and to take
care of her, and to watch her leave earth and
go into Heaven. That was wonderful, painful, but wonderful holy
ground I feel. And so Sarah lived one hundred and

(10:56):
twenty seven years. These were the years of the life
of Sarah. So Sarah died in curioth Arba, that is Hebron,
in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to mourn
for Sarah and to weep for her.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig before we return
to Skip's teaching. If you've ever wondered what the Bible
has to say about some of our culture's big issues,
we have a great resource for you. When you give
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support the ministry of Connect with Skiff Heitzig, we'll send
you God Speaks Biblical answers for today's issues. This special

(11:34):
resource bundle contains six of Pastor Skiff's booklets that address
topics like suicide, why the Truth matters, Heaven and Hell,
and the Church's response to racism. You'll gain valuable insight
into what God's Word says about the big questions in
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(11:55):
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give fifty dollars or more. Now let's get back to
Skip for more of today's teaching.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
No matter what commentary I read about this chapter, inevitably
one or more commentary will bring up the longevity issue.
How could someone be one hundred and twenty seven years
of age? You know, they make a big deal out
of how old people were, and then they go back
to earlier times and to Deluvian times before the flood

(12:30):
when they lived to be really old. You know, Adam
was like nine hundred and thirty years old when he died,
Seth nine hundred and twelve years old when he died.
Methusela nine hundred and sixty nine years old when he died.
Now that's old after a while. It's just hard to
blow out candles on your birthday cake. But the kind

(12:55):
of longevity, even in the nine hundreds is not even
unique to the There are records that show records from India,
records from Egypt, records from Persia and other countries of
that era that talk about longevity besides the Bible and scientists,
and we've covered this in earlier parts of Genesis, talk

(13:16):
about the canopy that could have been around the earth
that protected the cells from the bombardment of radiation that
cause a breakdown in the genetic system. That they see
a drop off immediately after the flood, and they like
to trace it back to that vapor canopy being disposed of.

(13:37):
But to me, living to be one hundred and twenty
seven isn't the issue for me. The big question is
how did she look so good at ninety so that Abraham,
remember a couple chapters ago, had to lie about her.
It's my sister. You know, she's good looking. Stay away
from she's ninety, really, and you're worried. Go figure. It

(14:03):
says in verse two that Abraham came to mourn for
Sarah and to weep for her. Now here's the first
mention in the Bible of tears. First time you read
about somebody weeping for somebody, tears shed, it's right here,
Abraham weeping for Sarah. Now those tears are going to
continue throughout the Bible, throughout history, throughout our history, on

(14:28):
into the future until we get to Revelation chapter twenty one,
where God will wipe away every tear. They're now a
part of the stain of human life, of humanity until Revelation,
when it's the end and he restores all things. Abraham

(14:50):
mourned for his wife. I don't know why, but sometimes
I meet Christians who try to be really pious and say, oh,
you shouldn't cry, you shouldn't weep, you shouldn't get a
emotional your loved ones in heaven. I want to slap
that person, because that defies even the design of the
human body that God gave you. He produced little things

(15:12):
in the corner of your eyes called lachrymal glands, and
they secrete what we know as tears. They do a
lot of things. They provide a moisture for the eyes,
they take out dirt and foreign bodies. But they also
are triggered to the emotional centers of your brain, and
those lacrimal glands get very active when there's a deep,

(15:35):
stressful loss in a person's life. And the Bible even
says there is a time to weep, and there's a
time to laugh, there's a time to mourn, there's a
time to dance. So if some pious believer tells you
you shouldn't weep over somebody that has died and gone
to heaven, great, they've gone to heaven. I'm still here

(15:56):
on earth without the one that I love. Natural, it's
very normal. In fact, it's very unnatural. It's very unnormal.
And I'm going to even say unspiritual. To not sorrow,
it would defy the way we have been built by
our creator. He wept for her, he mourned for her.

(16:17):
And then it says in verse three, Abraham stood up
from before his dead and spoke to the sons of Heath, saying,
I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give
me property for a burial place among you, that I
may bury my dead out of my sight. And the
sons of Heath answered Abraham and said to him, hear us,

(16:40):
my lord, you're a mighty prince among us. Okay. Something
to note here. Back in those days, if you were
in a country, you move from your hometown like Abraham did.
Or of the Keldes, and he's in Canaan. It would
be typical if your loved one died to want to
take them back home to where you came from and

(17:03):
bury them in the land of their origin, the land
of their family, the land where they were born. The
fact that Abraham does not want to do that indicates
that he is believing the promise of God that that
land they're in is the land of promise, not only
for Abraham and Sarah, but for his descendants. Has God

(17:24):
promised that land to be It's an indication that this
is his new home. He's willing to take some property
here and bury somebody in it, so he has a
stake in it, indicating that he's believing the promises of God,
not taking his wife back home. Now. When it says
that he verse three, it's a beautiful phrase stood up

(17:46):
from before his dead. I read a commentator that said,
this indicates a change, a new corner that he's turning
in his grief process. It indicates, as this commentator, a
squaring of the shoulders, a lifting of the eyes, affirming
of the step, and a desire to move on now.

(18:10):
There's a time to mourn, in other words, and there's
a time to move on now. The Hebrews mourned for
thirty days thirty days. You know, we mourn, we have
a funeral day, and we might mourn for a few days.
But they had I mean services of mourning that lasted
for thirty days. The Egyptians seventy days. I mean, they

(18:36):
really got into it, and they demonstrated their sorrow. They
would rip their clothes, throw dirt in the air, and
even in later Hebrew times like the New Testament, they
would hire professional mourners. So when you just sort of
got tired of whaling, they would be paid to stand
outside your house and go oh and just so people

(18:57):
passing by would know what had happened. I know it
sounds goofy, but they wanted the emotions to be let
out and freely expressed. So he now stood up from
before his dead. He's going to do something. He's going
to be proactive, and I think this is again very healthy.

(19:19):
There's a thing called well, I'll just say what we
usually say and slang good grief. My mom used to
say that good grief. Do you know what I found?
Grief is good, it's good to grieve, but prolonged grief
is not good. When my brother died, I watched my

(19:42):
mom for years never get over it, never get over it,
until finally we had an aunt in the family who
took my mom and just took her in the room,
closed the door and said, you're going to have to
move on, and just got her to talk. It's true
and not well. She just didn't deal with it very well.

(20:06):
And my brother said the same thing to us. After
he died. It was a period of mourning and a
week of reminiscing, and then my brother got us all
together and said, Okay, it's great that we share these things.
It's important that we grieve, but there comes a time
now where we're going to have we have to move
on with our lives. And he was right. So Abraham

(20:28):
does something. He selects a burial plot for his wife,
puts her in the ground. In chapter twenty four he
gets a bride for his wife Isaac, and in chapter
twenty five he gets remarried. Now you go, well, now,
wait a minute, how old is he? Yeah, it's interesting

(20:49):
because here he's like one hundred and thirty seven years old,
and he's thinking of number two. But he dies at
one hundred and seventy five years of so he's got
some time. He's not thinking about that yet. But as
the time wears on, he will think about it, he
will move on. It indicates a healthy way of dealing
with it. Now, I want you to notice something else

(21:14):
in verse four, and I do notice the time as well.
He says, I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Now,
of course he means that I've been living intense I
don't know in any real estate. I know this is
the land God has promised me, but I don't even
have a single acre yet. But we know something else

(21:35):
that in Abraham's own mind and heart, he is thinking spiritually,
I'm a foreigner. I'm just a pilgrim here. Because Hebrews
eleven makes a big deal out of this, saying Abraham
chapter eleven, verse ten or twelve, I can't remember which
verse says that Abraham waited for a city that has foundations.

(21:59):
Who's built and maker was God. So he's moving toward eternity,
and that's the city he's really going to put his
roots down in. God has promised the land for his descendants,
but he himself is moving toward Heaven. So it's good language.
I'm a foreigner and a visitor among you. By the way,

(22:23):
this is why Paul writes in First Thessalonians four, as
he talks about Jesus coming back, and he says, I
write this to you lest you sorrow like those who
have no hope. Do you remember that little text? The
reason we sorrow and he sorrows here, but we sorrow differently.
It's a hopeful sorrow is because if our loved ones

(22:47):
know Jesus Christ, then the moment they die, we know
exactly where they are, and we rejoice for them. And
so his wife has died. She's one hundred and twenty seven.
Now she's with the Lord. It's coronation day. He's a foreigner,

(23:08):
he's a pilgrim among them. The sons of Heath answered
Abraham and said to him, hear us, my lord, you're
a mighty prince among this. Now watch this is a
very long account of a real estate transaction. And he says,
bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places.
We'll give you a grave. None of us will withhold

(23:28):
from you his burial place, that you may bury your dead.
And Abraham stood up and bowed himself to the people
of the land, the sons of Heath, and he spoke
with them, saying, if it is your wish that I
bury my dead out of my sight hear me, and
meet with Ephron, the son of Zohar for me that
he may give me the cave of Mcpella, which he has,

(23:51):
which is at the end of his field. Let him
give it to me at full price as property for
the burial among you. So they're saying, look, just bury her,
you can have the place for the grave, and he goes, no,
I want to buy some land. Now. Why does he
want to buy land. It's indicating that he believes God's

(24:14):
promise that this land that he's just been a tent
dweller in, now he's going to buy some acreage because
he believes this is the land that God wants us
to live in, die in, get buried in, and our
family will possess eventually as according to the promise of God.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember
that when you give fifty dollars or more to help
reach more people with the gospel through connect with Skip Heitzig,
we'll send you God speaks Biblical Answers for Today's issues,
which contain six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you
understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism,
the importance of truth, suicide, and Heaven and Hell. To

(24:59):
request copy of God Speaks Biblical Answers for today's issues,
call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. That's
eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight, or visit
connect with Skip dot com slash donate for more from Skip.
Be sure to check out the many resources available at
connect withiskip dot com slash store. Come back next time

(25:23):
for more verse by verse teaching of God's Word. Here on,
connect with skip Heidzig, Make.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Connect, make a Connect, The cross Chats song makes Next.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Connect with skip Heidzig is a presentation of connection communications
connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times