One hundred and twenty-seven years old was Isaac’s mother, Sarah, when she died. Isaac must have been thirty-seven at the time, and Abraham was one hundred and thirty-seven, for he was ten years older than his wife as we have noticed before.
Death comes sometimes to our homes; never a day passes but He calls at many a house here and across the sea. Hardly anywhere is death invited to come in, but it makes a great difference to the ones left behind when the dead mother or father, sister or brother is saved. Then we are glad to think of the One he or she has gone to be with, and the place where they have gone,—that bright and happy home in the sky that the Lord Jesus went to prepare. A dear old man who loves the Lord was telling me about his sister’s death which happened not long ago, and he said “She is happy, now, happy to be with the Lord,” and then after a pause he added “And the Lord is happy to have her there.” That is true of all those that are saved, when they die. But I think there must be a good many like Balaam who said (Numbers 23:1010Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his! (Numbers 23:10)) “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,” but as for being saved when they have health and long life ahead of them perhaps, neither Balaam cared nor do they. Nobody I suppose wants to go to hell; I am quite sure I don’t. But Satan says Forget about God and Jesus and heaven and hell until you die, and then will be time enough to get saved, so I want to tell you that Satan knows you may not have a chance to get saved when you die, because God’s time is now and He might not give you a chance when you are dying, and because if the Lord Jesus comes before you believe in Him, and He may come at any time, it will be too late for you to be saved then. Don’t let Satan persuade you to forget God’s solemn word in Matthew 25:1010And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. (Matthew 25:10) “They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage, and the door was shut.”
Verse 2 of our chapter tells us that Abraham mourned and wept about the death of his wife. He didn’t know all that God’s children now may know about Him and what He has done and will do for those who love Him, still I think if you or I had been at Sarah’s deathbed, or at the funeral, we would have noticed a difference between how Abraham acted and how other people did whose dear ones died. For they had “no hope,” as 1 Thessalonians 4:1313But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. (1 Thessalonians 4:13) says, while Abraham had a hope in God, for his wife and he were both believers, so his sadness was nothing but grief because his dear wife was gone, while he could be cheered by thinking of her being in God’s home in the sky, to which he too was soon going.
But Sarah’s body, the house she had lived in so long, must be buried, and where? Abraham had lived all those sixty or more years in the promised land as a stranger and a sojourner—that is, as one who never bought a place and settled down to make it his own. God had promised the whole country to him and his children after him, but as yet it was his only in promise, so he would only buy a parcel of land in which to bury Sarah, and to be himself buried in afterward, while waiting for the day of resurrection. And he would pay the full price for the ground he wanted, too, so as not to be indebted at all to the people who had the land then.
The sons of Heth must have thought it very strange that Abraham should be so set on owning a piece of land for a graveyard, when he had never bought any other ground, but they couldn’t have understood Abraham’s life as God saw it, at any time.
Ephron the Hittite owned a field in the end of which was a cave called the cave of Machpelah, and this cave Abraham wished to have for a burial place. So ne asked the children of Heth to speak to ‘Ephron about selling him the land for whatever it was worth. Then at a meeting of the townspeople a bargain was made and the ownership of the land was passed from Ephron to Abraham.
First, verse 11, Ephron offered to give the land to Abraham without any money. Perhaps that was just the polite way of starting a sale in those days, and perhaps Ephron really meant to give his field away. But Abraham as I said would not be a debtor to the world; he would pay what the land was worth, and so he said “I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there.” Ephron then said his price was four hundred shekels of silver, and that amount Abraham paid. The last verses of the chapter tell of the burial of Sarah after the sale of the field and what was in it, both the cave and the trees, had.. been “recorded” and made binding, not quite the same way as is done in the United States and many other countries, but just as surely, I suppose.
These chapters we are looking at, taken together, give us something to think of, besides what we have been noticing. It is this way: In the twenty-first chapter Sarah got Isaac in her old age. Sarah is called a “type” (a person or thing, or happening that God has set out in the Old Testament as showing a likeness to some person or thing or event that the New Testament tells of) of the people of Israel, and it was when God was soon to set Israel aside that the Lord Jesus came into the world. Next, in chapter 22 Abraham is called on to sacrifice his son, and chapter 23 brings us to the death of Sarah, while chapter 24 tells of the seeking of a bride for Isaac. These things are paralleled by the dying of Jesus, the Jews being given up by God for the present, while the gospel is going out to the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit is in the world finding a bride for the Lord Jesus, —but of this last I shall try to say more next time, if the Lord will.