Genesis 23:1-2 Bible Study | Episode #292

November 22, 2022

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Genesis 23:1-2 Bible Study | Episode #292

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's Word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to.

And allow you to see him and to know him, and to know his will, that you might glorify him, and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus' name. Good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Churches. Morning Bible study. We are in Genesis chapter 23. We've made it all the way to Genesis chapter 23.

It is a very interesting chapter. We're dealing with the death of Sarah and Abraham's efforts to abraham's efforts to secure for himself because he's a wanderer. He's a sojourner in the land of Canan. It's not his original home. And he is looking for a place to have as a permanent place for him to bury his dead, meaning the people in his family who have passed away.

And that's what he's doing. And that's an important, it's, it is an important passage. We'll dig into it over the next few days and probably on into next week maybe. But the main thing is for you to get from this is that is that eventually we all pass away. It says that verse 23, Chapter one, Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah. That's important to understand. God knew and God had planned for Sarah to live 127 years. Oftentimes we think that we control life and death. And let me tell you something, there's industries built on. On deciding helping you decide or helping you prolong life and death, and you say we live a lot longer today than we used to live.

And the truth is that's not really all that true. A lot of times people say the average age of a person is far more than it used to be when we were little. That's true, but you gotta remember that. Averaged in into that is a lot. And when I say a lot, I'm talking about a tremendous amount of children who live into later adulthood.

And what I mean by that, When you do an average from, let's say a century ago from from 1921 or two centuries ago, from 1821, when you do the average age of an individual when they die back then the infant mortality rate or the a number of children babies especially, but the number of children who died early was super sky high.

The two times in your life when you're vo most vulnerable is when you're above the age of 70 and when you're below the age of about 12. And those times in your life are the most vulnerable as far as susceptibility to disease and maladies like pot smallpox and things like that.

And especially back before we had penicillin. And be before the the whole understanding of the microbial and even smaller than that. Illnesses were really understood. People died. They died. Children died. Many children died. If you had a family and it was not uncommon to have a family of 10, 15 children, it was not uncommon to have.

A family where there were 8, 9, 10, 12, 15 children. And it wasn't uncommon for out of that 10, out of those 10 children, two or three of them, to not make it to teenage their teenage years. And if you're adding, if you're taking, let's say you're taking 15 children and three of them.

Pass away at anywhere from zero to 12 years old. Then the other 12 children outta the 15. The other 80%, they have to live a long time to bring that average up, they have to br they have to live. Remember, for every year that they live they're going to have to, they're gonna have to pull up.

They're gonna have to pull up that bottom 20%, and that means that they've gotta live an extra 5, 6, 7, 8 years for for the average to be high enough. So that it would be equal to today? Our infant mortality rate in the world we live in today is far smaller than that. It is it is far smaller now.

Do we have babies that die? Sure we do. We still have this thing called sids. We're not sure exactly what causes babies to pass away in their sleep, but that happens. But. But remember any kind of illness back then, any kind of illness as far as the common flu the common cold many of the illnesses that plagued a lot of people during the last 200 years they they.

They took their toll on the younger children. And and interestingly, that caused the mortality rate to be a lot higher at a younger age. And it caused the average age of a person. In the world to be tremendously lower. If you read in your history and you read throughout your history, it's not uncommon to find people who were living in their seventies and eighties, 102 hundred years ago.

They made it through their childhood and they they, they didn't happen to ha have. Any accident out working in the field or in the factories and they made it to that age regularly people have made it. My my, my great grandparents many of them lived into their seventies and a few of them even into their eighties.

And that was not uncommon for that to happen. The reason the average age uh, was so much lower is not because of the people who lived to the older ages. It was the people who didn't make. To the Middle Ages and understanding that's I. And understanding that God is the one who is the author and decider of those things.

God's the one who decides who lives long and who lives short lives and remember, life to God is life and what we call long and short oftentimes. Is not long and short to him. He calls our lives hand breaths before him. What does that mean? He says that our life is like when we're out in the cold weather right at the start of the winter and we breathe out, and that that breath that's out there, you see it for a moment and then it's gone.

As far as God's concerned, our lives are many ways like that And I'm gonna tell you, I think my life is like that. The older I get being closing in on 50 years old it, I'm far closer to the end than I am at the beginning. And my life is shorter. And I will say this, the older yet, the more you enjoy life.

But the younger you, the the older you get, the more you realize how fleeting life actually is. How. Slow it is at the start and how quickly it moves toward the end. The older you get you can remember those times when you were in your class at school and you sit there and watch the raise of the sun shine in because you wanted to be outside and see the, remember seeing the dust dance in the waves out there in the rays of sunshine and thinking that day was never going to end and.

I get home in the evening and I think I just got out of bed. And that happens in life. That, that is the way life is. And so when it says Sarah died in Ki Ja Aba and that is better known as he today in the land of Canan. It says that she died. She died. Where did she die and when did she die?

And, we even open up our funeral services with what we call the obituary. And and we talk about where you were born and where you died. Who predeceased you and who who is still alive today and there to mourn. That's what we do in a funeral. And why don't we do that?

Because it's just a measure of life. It's a, it's an, a taken account of the life that was lived that's before us. And it's an understanding that God is in charge of life. God's the one in charge of life. And we do mourn we do miss them, but The Bible, it teaches us a lot of things.

And it says that Sarah died in he in the land of Canan, and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weak for her. He, he did. What is natural, It's natural to feel the loss of a person knowing that you cannot have contact with them in this physical world anymore. That they're gone and they're passed.

Nothing wrong with morning. There's a whole process that we go through in the morning process. That process is greater and more for those of us who. For those who we lose and we maybe had broken relationship with, or those that we lose and we had very close relationship with and they filled filled a Vic space in our lives.

Those things are important, the the Apostle Paul peaches us about that and, I don't wanna have a funeral service here for Sarah but I think it's important that we get a perspective on life. It helps you live the life that you live. Now, if you realize that that life is fleeting, you tend to invest your life on the important things and care less about the unimportant things.

You tend to focus your life on the things that matter and not focus your life on the things that don't matter. And that's, and Jesus even told us that. He said he. He said, Don't invest yourself in things that pass away silver and gold and things that can be robbed from you and destroyed.

He said, Invest yourselves in treasure in heaven. And what is the treasure in heaven? The treasure in heaven is people. How do I know that? God paid the ultimate price for people. So quite obviously what was most important to him was us. And so obviously people are the most important thing in the world, and they're the most important thing to invest in other people.

And we make small investments in some people and huge investments in other people. But the question is, are you really investing your life in people? Are you investing your life in the things of this world? Are you investing your life in entertaining and feeding your own flesh? And if your investment of.

Is in feeding your own flesh and enter entertaining yourself. Let me say this you are burning that which is most valuable for you and you're burning your most valuable resource, and you say what is my most valuable resource? The only resource that you have. Limited version of less today than you had yesterday is time God has ordained the days of your life.

He's determined from where you when you start and when you are going to end, and the time that you live each and every day. The time that you live each and every day, you are spending each and every day you are, you're burning that time. It is not a fungible resource, which means it's not a resource that I can sell.

It's not something that I can trade. I cannot trade time with God and I can't bargain for more time with God. I have to. I have to focus myself and understand that life is short and that life is fleeting and that my life needs to be invested in things that are going to reap reward of eternal life.

And remember, we have eternal life. Those whom the father give me. Jesus said I give them eternal life. Eternal life is the. That we live that we live today in eternity. And let me tell you something, you're alive today, both physically and you're alive eternally, which means if you have eternal life, you have a new human spirit.

You, you are, you're literally in the presence of God. The kingdom of God is inside of you. And so you need to marry up the eternal with the physical and live your lives each day. Investing in that which is important, and that which is important is people because they are the only eternal things around you.

I would say this a lot of times we spend our lives investing in bananas and we ought to be spending our lives investing in salt. And you go why? Salt? Salt is cheap. It is, it really is cheap. But salt lasts a long time. You can put up salt, and salt has purposes that you can use forever and ever.

Bananas, they taste really good and they're really a cool color and they, you can even buy 'em when they're green and then they turn yellow and then when they get brown, I don't like 'em, but a lot of people even like 'em when they're brown and they seem so great. But you know what?

Once they. All brown, you gotta throw 'em away. And that usually happens within a week. And so why would I invest in something, a lot of my resources in something that's going to be gone in just the moment? Why would I not reinvest myself in the resources of the hour? And Paul says that verse in chapter th four verse 13.

He says, I don't want you to be ignorant brethren. He says brother, sisters, listen. I don't want you to be ignorant and remember ignorant is. The inability to learn in ignorance is the is the absence of knowledge or the absence of information. He says, I don't want you to be ignorant. My brethren concerning those who have fallen asleep or those who've passed away, he says, I don't want you to, I don't want you to, I don't want you to be ignorant or what's happening unless you sorrow as others who have no hope.

Remember now did Abraham sorrow and have no hope. He perhaps he perhaps did he he perhaps did but it doesn't indicate that in scripture. What it indicates in scripture is that what it indicates in scripture is that he does have hope and And that he was a man of faith and that he did trust God.

And so we shouldn't sorrow for those who have no faith in God because faith in God gives us a clarity as to what eternality is happening, what an eternality is happening, what's going on eternally around us. He said I don't want you to. So as those who have no hope, you have a hope.

And remember, hope is. A role of the dice. Hope is an anxious expectation, which means I know what God says. I expect it to be true, and I'm anxiously awaiting it happening. We do have a hope as far as life is concerned and death and that hope is an eternal hope. He says in verse 14, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, which means what he's saying is, Do you believe in the resurrection power of God?

Do you. That God has the power to raise life, and the one we see most prominently and understand is that Jesus rose again. He had the power over death, and he had the power of life in him. Even so God will bring with him those who fall, all fall asleep in Jesus. He's saying, Listen, we're all going to eventually be with.

In in, in glory. We're all going to be together with him in glory and we're going to be in his present. Forever and ever, and we don't have a hope that is that is empty. We have a anxious expectation, hope that that we are anxiously expecting for that to actually be true.

He says, For this, we say to you by the word of the Lord, and he's saying, I'm telling you this, by God, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will, by no means proceed those who are asleep. Meaning we're. We're not gonna get there before them. They're gonna, they're, we're not gonna, we're not gonna beat him to God.

We're going to get there. He says, For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of an art angel and the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. And the, that's talking about the first resurrection. And we even talking about that on Wednesday night, I think even last Wednesday night, we talk about the resurrection of the of the church and the those who are people of faith.

Of the righteous and remember a righteousness that comes by faith. There's a resurrection of them. And then there's going to be a resurrection of the righteous during the tribulation time. And then at the end of the thousand years, there's gonna be a resurrection of those who who are unrighteous, who do not have faith in God.

He says in the, at the trumpet call the first trumpet call, all those who've. Prior to the tribulation, all those who've died are going to be caught up in the air. Now you go where do we go in between that time? And that question was an important question. It wasn't very well answered question by the early church, and then the Roman Catholic Church came up with the idea of purgatory.

But see, the idea of purgatory goes against the scriptures where it says to be dead in the bodies to be present with the Lord, which means when I'm physically. I'm eternally in the presence of God and to not get too deep into it because it's very difficult for me to explain in just a few minutes eternality.

But remember, God is the author of time and time is a dimension of the universe. Time is one of God's creation, and it's a creation for us for his purposes. Remember, God's not limited time. He lives today. And yesterday and forevermore all at the same time. For him, because he lives outside of time, he is not limited by time he can see Adam in the garden, he can see me talking to you, and he can see Jesus sitting on the throne for a thousand years during the millennial kingdom all at the same time because he exists outside of time.

And so when he, when we. He plucks us from time into his presence and we are in his presence immediately when we die. Now in time, that is at a certain point in time, but in eternity. We all arrived there together at the same time. Just think of you all going up throughout the timeline and we all go.

But we all arrive at the same time. And the reason we arrive at the same time is because God is eternal and we're eternal because Jesus said, Those whom the Father give me, I give them eternal life. Now, I know that was just a real quick run through of how that works, but I will say to you today that that is a great hope because you, you're gonna, you're gonna meet you're gonna meet everyone that you've ever known that is, has eternal life.

You're gonna meet them in the air immediately at the. Either at the resurrection when you're alive, or you're going to meet them in the air immediately when you die, and they're gonna be going up at the same, relatively speaking in eternity time. But remember, time is not in eternity. Time is time.

Is made is a part of the creation. He says. He says, And thus, we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one anothers with these words. I hope I've comforted you with these words. We see that we see that Abraham was mourning for his wife Sarah, and you go she died a long time ago, and in times she did.

But if you have a brother or sister or a mother or father or a spouse who died this week or this month, or this year or this decade they were caught up in the air or they were caught up into maternity with Sarah at the, The only way for me to describe it to you is that the same. Time, but not really time.

Okay. Not ta really time. So we will, we shall always be with the Lord. Notice it doesn't put a timeframe on it. You go always is all time. No, From your human perspective, it's time he says. And thus, we shall always be in his presence. Why? Because we will be timeless then. We will be. We will be an eternity.

An eternity is not limited by. Time, and I know I use time a whole lot today. I would just say to you that we should comfort each other with these words because we are in the seat of eternity right now. If you're born again, you ha and you have eternal life and you are what you need to do is you need to turn toward that life and live it.

You need to chase after that life and understand and walk. The life you have today, you need to invest in who you are. And I would say that to you over and over again. You need to invest in who you are and who God has placed around you. You need to invest in the life. The eternal life that walks around you.

I hope you'll do that today. I hope you want mourn as those who have no hope, because you do have hope. That does not mean that we don't mourn, we just don't mourn like them because we've not lost everything when we lose somebody. In fact, we've really lost nothing. We just have lost the moments in time that we want to spend with them in time.

But remember, time is very fleeting.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus' name.