which has been going through
the book of Genesis. And one thing I'm finding about that
is that God regulates the teaching. You know, it's like going to
school. You don't know exactly what the teacher is going to
put in the next lesson. But God has a way of putting
in there exactly what we need. Today, we're going to be looking
at just verses 1 and 2 of Genesis, chapter 23. And I've entitled
this message, The Death of Sarah. She was a believing, a believer,
and she was a beloved wife and mother. The death of Sarah, a
believing and beloved wife and mother. And so let's read these
two verses together here. Actually, let's ask the Lord
to be with us before we do. Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly
Father, how our hearts echo the words of this song we just sang.
Our children are in your hands, and they are in our hearts. You've
put them there. And we pray, Lord, that you would,
in your great sovereign grace, have mercy upon them. We cannot
save them, but we desire, Lord, with this desire you've given
us, that they would be found in the Lord Jesus, that you would
remove the offense their sins caused in you and replace it
with the everlasting righteousness of your dear son, who worked
that righteousness out to cover his people and present them before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Thank you for
this grace that you would adopt and provide and purchase and
bring your children to yourself. We pray, our children, Lord,
that you've given to us in this world would be named in the Book
of Life, but we can't make it happen. We can't change their
hearts. We certainly can't do what only
the Spirit of God can. But you've taught us to come
to you with our every anxious thought and our prayer, knowing
that you can do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.
Thank you for that promise of yours. Thank you for your power
to save. Thank you for the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Genesis 23 verse 1 reads, And
Sarah was a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and seven and twenty
years old. A hundred and twenty-seven. These
were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjeth
Arba, the same as Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham
came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. That's what I want
to consider today, just those few words there. Job asked a
lot of good questions in the book of Job. One of the questions
he asked was found in Job chapter 14 and verse 14. He asked this
question, if a man die, shall he live again? That's a good
question, isn't it? Especially considering that Job
faced in his body afflictions that made him want to die and
made him wonder all those questions that he asked. And he asked this
one, if a man dies, shall he live again? Although he didn't
ask it without understanding the answer, because he gives
the answer in the next couple of words. He says, all the days
of my appointed time will I wait. God has appointed a day for every
man to die. And Job is waiting for that appointed
day, but not just for his death, but for what lies beyond death. And so he says, all the days
of my appointed time, I will wait. When we wait, we wait in
hope. And that hope is given to us
by the Spirit of God. A believer believes because God's
Spirit enables him to believe, and he hopes in life, looking
for what God has promised. And so Job goes on. He says,
"...if a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed
time will I wait till my change come." That change will come
not just at death, but at the resurrection. So he says this
in verse 15, Job 14, 15, "...thou shalt call." and I will answer thee. Thou
wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands." God is going
to call his people from the grave. He's going to raise them up.
He's going to have a desire for the work of his hands. God always
has a desire for the work of his hands. God always looks at
what he does and he finds great pleasure and satisfaction in
it. And so He is going to bring all of His people. We're called
His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus on two good works, Ephesians
2.10. I've heard some people say, incorrectly,
falsely, I've heard people say that the only reason some people
get sick or don't recover from their sickness is because they
don't have enough faith to be healed. But I've never seen any
of those people who say that live to be older than Sarah.
Have you? So we know that they're all liars.
The Bible says that both Abraham and Sarah, who were believers,
died. That means that all of us who
are believers will die unless the Lord comes again. before
we die, but we know here from this scripture that believers
die. We would wonder about that, wouldn't
we? Because Jesus said, whoever believes on me shall never die. In John chapter 11, verse 26,
we might wonder, well, is it our lack of faith? Or is there
something wrong? No, it's God's appointed time
for every believer to die. And so we read here about Sarah
dying. And I'm sure it didn't come as
a shock to Abraham. It doesn't come as a shock to
us as we see our bodies weaken and grow older. And we should
look forward to that time when we will be with the Lord. Remember
what Paul the Apostle said, for me to live is Christ. But to
die is gain. To live for Christ means to live
not for myself but for His glory and for His people. So we live
our lives not for ourselves but for Christ who saved us from
our sins. And we have eternal life by Him and we live for His
glory. We live for those that He would have us to be with in
whatever way we can to serve in order that they might see
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. for me to live is Christ. But
to die is gain. Personally, I gain by dying.
Those I leave, well, I hope that they consider that a loss to
them. I won't be there to help them anymore, to provide whatever
I can. So in that sense, they won't
benefit from me anymore. But I pray that God would give
me faith or grace now to live for Christ, that they might benefit
throughout our lives. Isn't that our prayer? For me
to live is Christ, but to die is gain. But to die is something
that every believer will come to. But the death of a believer
is not a punishment. We know the Bible says the wages
of sin is death, but the death of our body is not a punishment.
We know that's true, because remember in 1 Corinthians 15,
the sting of death is sin. And if the sting stung Christ,
because He took our sin and bore our death, the punishment of
God for our sins, then the sting of death has been removed in
His death. It fully expended its poison
in Him for His people so that the sting is removed. There's
no more sting in death for the believer. Death is not the punishment. Our physical death is not a punishment
for sin. In fact, it's what the Bible
calls a sleep. We go to sleep waiting for the
resurrection. And our physical death is a freedom,
it's a liberation from the body of our sin. Romans 8.10 says
the body now is dead because of sin. One day, God is going
to make known His sons. He's going to make them known,
and then we will rejoice, because the Lord has given us this hope,
and it's the realization of that, in the fulfillment of it, that
we long for. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4,
you want to turn there in your Bible. In 1 Thessalonians chapter
4, we're explicitly told to comfort one another with these words.
about death, because death is a reality for believers. But
it's not the death that we look forward to, but the resurrection.
God will call, He will have a desire to the work of His hands, said
Job, and He will call, and then I'll answer Him. Just like Lazarus
answered Jesus. Lazarus, come forth! And He came
forth. He answered that call of His
Savior to come forth from the grave, and so will we. But in
1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13, it says, Paul said to the Thessalonians
and to us, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning
them which are asleep. You see how God describes the
death of a believer? We're just asleep. I don't want
you to be ignorant that you sorrow not, even as others which have
no hope. Those who have no hope are those
who don't believe Christ. In verse 14 he says, "...for
if we believe that Jesus died and rose again..." That's the
entire basis for what follows. "...so, even so, them also which
sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." With Him means when
Christ comes again. He came the first time in order
to bear our sins. He comes a second time without
sin in order to bring the fulfillment of our salvation to pass. So
he says that God will bring those who are asleep with him. That
means he brings them in their resurrected souls with him. And then he says, For this we
say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive
and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent, that
means to go before, we won't go before them which are asleep.
Well, how does that work? Well, the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven with a shout. with the voice of the archangel
and with the trump of God." He's the archangel, the archmessenger,
the chief messenger from God. He's the Word of God. And he'll
come with that shout, with the trump of God. And the dead in
Christ shall rise first. Those who have died We don't
have with us on the earth anymore who are in Christ. They will
come with Christ and their bodies will be raised. They will rise
first. Then we, which are alive when
the Lord comes, those believers who are alive when the Lord comes
and remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds. Those who are alive in Christ,
who haven't yet died, will be caught up from this earth at
that time when Christ comes and be lifted up in the clouds and
our bodies will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of
an eye. And they will have been raised
already and together with them, those who have died before, we
will go to be forever with the Lord. That's what he says, "...caught
up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort
one another with these words." It's a comfort when you believe
the words, but if you don't believe, there's no hope. There's no comfort.
So there's no hope for the believer. There's every hope for the unbeliever. There's every hope for the believer. But here, Sarah died. It says,
the years of the life of Sarah were 127 and she died. Now Sarah corresponds in Galatians
chapter 4 to the New Jerusalem. Remember what it said there?
She's called the mother of us, or the New Jerusalem, or the
Jerusalem which is above, which is the church, is the mother
of us all. And in that chapter of Galatians,
Sarah represented or corresponded to that New Jerusalem. So Sarah
corresponds to the mother of us all. She represents every
believer and all believers because the church is the one that gives
birth to its children and we are part of that church. So she
represents each of us and all of us who believe Christ. She
lived in faith and she died in faith. She lived in hope of God's
promise of eternal life in Christ. She died in hope of God's promise
in Christ. Having lived and died, and living
on Christ by faith, she received the expected promise. Though
she didn't receive it in this life, she received it after she
died. In Hebrews 11, if you want to
look there, It talks about Sarah. It's interesting
that the Bible doesn't talk a lot. It talks mostly about the men
of faith. But here, and in the case of
other women, like Rahab the harlot, or Abigail, the wife, who became
the wife of David, and some other women, Deborah and so on. They're
featured in Scripture, but Sarah is featured. Not only is she
used to represent all of those who are saved, but she's also,
her life is spoken of in great detail, even the end of her life
and the age of her death was given in Scripture. That's unusual.
But in Hebrews chapter 11, In verse 11, listen to what it says. It says that through faith also
Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered
of a child when she was past age because she judged Him faithful
who had promised. And that is faith. That's a definition
of faith. It's judging God faithful who
promised. Faith is not saying, I believed,
I walked the aisle, or I raised my hand, or I decided for Jesus,
or any of those things that men describe as faith. It's not saying
the sinner's prayer. That's not faith. Faith is believing
that God is faithful and able to do what He promised. He's
faithful. And then in verse 12, therefore,
because she had that God-given faith, therefore sprang there
even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars
of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore
innumerable. These all died in faith, not
having received the promises. When she died, she had not yet
received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were
persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Sarah lived like her
husband did, as a stranger in this earth. It wasn't that Abraham
believed and she just happened to tag along. She also believed
Christ. Remember Lot's wife was turned
to a pillar of salt. There's no evidence that she
was a Christian. But here Sarah also believed and she believed
that God was faithful and he would do what she couldn't do. So her confidence was not in
her confidence. Her faith was not in her faith.
Her hope was not in what she was in herself. But her faith
and hope were in God who promised. And that's what those words mean.
She judged Him faithful. She considered God's strength,
God's faithfulness to be the whole reason, the whole way in
which God's promise would be fulfilled. God promised her salvation
and eternal life in Christ. All who believe Christ are her
children. But where did Abraham's children
come from? But through Sarah, and Sarah
represents the church. Therefore, all who are of faith
are the children of Abraham and are born of this woman who is the church,
which Sarah represented. She represented the mother of
all of God's people. Throughout her long life, Sarah's
body was unable to bear children. She was dead to bearing children.
And remember that she was tempted by that long period of time and
so she, in a sense, slipped. She faltered in her faith and
she tried to help God fulfill that promise or do what she thought
was necessary for that promise to be fulfilled because it didn't
seem like it was going to happen unless she did something. So
she did the wrong thing and she gave her slave girl, Hagar, to
her husband, Abraham. And when she did that, she reaped
the sorrow and the anxiety of all that she did in that faltering
faith. But God used that to teach us
what Sarah would then learn, is that God doesn't fulfill His
promises by our works. God doesn't do what He promised
by our contribution. God does it. by himself, and
he gets all the glory in spite of all that we are. She was dead
to bearing children. In spite of that, God gave her
Isaac, who was the one through whom the Lord Jesus Christ came.
But it's interesting also that Sarah, in scripture, in relationship
to Abraham, was called his sister. Remember? Abraham and Sarah had
the same father. But they had a different mother.
And also, she became his wife. That's what Abraham told everybody
when he went somewhere. That she's my sister, but he
failed to mention that she's also his wife. So, in that sense,
she was both his sister and his spouse. And that also is true
of every believer. All believers are called the
sons of God. We're sons of God by eternal
adoption. Remember Ephesians 1 verse 4? It says, We were chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and blameless before Him in love, having predestinated us unto
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself. So God the
Father adopted us before the world began, predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself. And
it was by Jesus Christ, because it was by His shed blood we were
redeemed from under the law and sin, and made holy before Him
in love, and the Spirit of God was then given to us by the justifying
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 20 verse 17,
I go to my Father and your Father. We have the same Father as our
Lord Jesus Christ. We're sons of God, therefore
we're like sisters and sons to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean,
sisters and brothers to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Son of
God, the only begotten Son, the one who is the Son of God by
nature, and we're God's sons by adoption. born of the Spirit
of God. So all believers are therefore
the sons of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we're
related to one another and to the Lord Jesus by the same Father. And in that sense, we're all
brothers and sisters in Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
our brother, and we, as his people, are his brothers and sisters. And yet, by our natural birth,
we have a different mother. We were born after the flesh.
Remember Eve was called the mother of all living? Sarah was called
Jerusalem, which is above, which is the mother of us all. In other
words, Sarah was the mother of all those who were born of God's
Spirit. She was the mother of all believers.
So by the will of God the Father and by the power of His Spirit
through the Word of God we're born of God to believe and live
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Church of the Lord
Jesus Christ and every member in particular were chosen in
Christ as their covenant head and the Lord Jesus fulfilled
His covenant obligations to His God and Father and to His Bride. How did the Lord Jesus do that?
How did He fulfill those obligations to His Father and to His bride? Because those people who were
called the sons of God became His bride, His wife. Well, he
did this. He loved them, he loved the church,
and he gave himself for it. The Lord Jesus Christ loved the
church and gave himself for it. And that is used in Ephesians
5 in relationship to the husband and the wife. Husbands, love
your wives. Husbands, love your wives. Even
as Christ, the husband, loved his wife, the church, and gave
himself for it. So therefore, as Sarah was related
to Abraham as his sister and his spouse, we also are related
to Christ both as his sister and his spouse. And this is what
Jesus says to every believer and to all the church. He says
this in Song of Solomon, chapter 4, verse 9. Listen. The Lord
Jesus is speaking in this song. He says, Thou hast ravished my
heart, my sister, my spouse. Thou hast ravished my heart with
one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy
love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than
wine! Every word in here are reflecting
of the gospel. The wine is the blood of Christ.
He gave himself for his church. How much better is thy love than
wine, and the smell of thine ointments than all spices? Thy
lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb. Honey and milk are
under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell
of Lebanon. A garden enclosed is my sister,
my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Now, what
is a fountain sealed? Well, it's that secret unknown
fountain that can't be accessed by any but the one who knows
of the spring that's in the fountain, who's able to draw from it. And
the Lord Jesus Christ knew his people in eternity and he drew
from them what quenched his thirst and that was what he did in order
to save them. Remember he said to the woman
at the well, he said, give me to drink. And in Proverbs 5.5
the Lord says that we are to drink water out of our own well,
our own cistern. And so the Lord Jesus asked her,
give me to drink. And then later he told her, if
you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaks to you,
you would have asked him and he would have given you living
water. To quench his thirst, he had
to give her drink from himself, laying his life down for her.
This is that fountain that he opened up in his people. He drew
grace. He, out of himself, provided
a fountain. By which they would then receive
that fountain of living waters and doing so he quenched his
own thirst to have them and to save them at the price of his
own blood. What a marvelous picture this
is of the love between the Lord Jesus and his people. The love
between a man and his bride. A man and his wife. So was the
love between Sarah, Abraham and Sarah. She's his sister and his
spouse and so are we to the Lord Jesus. Now love is commitment. Love is commitment. When you
have the ring in marriage, it signifies a life commitment of
love. You put the ring, it's just a
token. It's a seal of everything that
it represents and reflects that love of the husband for his wife. This is the seal on her hand
that I have a commitment of love to her for life, as long as we
both shall live. So that's what that ring signifies. And the intimacy between a man
and a woman is therefore reserved for marriage. Intimacy is the
mutual enjoyment of that intimate commitment in marriage. And where there's no marriage,
there is no love of commitment. There's no willingness to commit
one's life to the other one unless you get married. In God's eyes,
not to have that intimacy of marriage outside of that commitment
of marriage is to commit adultery and fornication. And so it's
reserved only for those who make that life-laying-down commitment. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
has his people. He laid down his life. He purchased
them at the cost of his own blood. And therefore, he dwells in them
and they dwell in him by the faith he gives to them. Jesus
said in John 6, 56, if you eat my flesh and drink my blood,
You dwell in me and I dwell in you. That's the commitment. That's
the intimacy of the marriage between Christ and his people.
So when we believe Christ, he dwells in us and we dwell in
him. That's the enjoyment, that communion of that deep intimacy
between our heavenly husband and his bride, each believer. It's a deep and intimate communion
between the soul and the body of the believer and the spirit
of Christ. Our bodies are the members of Christ. Christ dwells
in us. We're one with him by the indwelling
spirit of God. We can't see it. We can't feel
him. But we know it's true because we believe him. And that faith
is the produce, the result of his saving grace. Faith doesn't
get God to do what we want him to do. Faith is given to us by
God because the Lord Jesus laid his life down for us in order
that we might be joined to him in our experience and experience
that intimacy of communion. And so we look to the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. If we look anywhere else but
to Christ for our salvation, it's called adultery in scripture. Just like if a woman were to
look to some other man outside of marriage for that intimacy,
that satisfaction, that's called adultery. And so it is. It pictures to a much What we
experience in the husband-wife relationship on earth is just
a shadow of what is true in heaven, what is true before God. It's
a holy union. And God the Father has loved
his people as his children. And the Lord Jesus Christ has
loved his people as his sister and his wife. And his commitment
to her was a commitment of himself, of his life. And it is an eternal
commitment. He never stops committing himself. He says in John 13, having loved
his own, he loved them unto the end. And in heaven now, he sits
at the right hand of God, making intercession for us. And when
he calls, he comes. He will come for his bride. And
then she will be revealed and made known to be the sons of
God and the bride of Christ. Like a city. resplendent in jewels
and gold and walls of salvation. It's amazing. We can't even fathom
how greatly Christ thinks of his people and how much he loves
them, an eternal love, a love that never had a beginning and
never has an end and never changes. And so he says in Jeremiah 31.3,
I have loved thee with an everlasting love. And in Isaiah 54, 5, thy
maker is thy husband. And then in Luke 22, verse 20,
Jesus holds up the cup. At the last supper, he says,
this cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for
you. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself
for his church. You were sealed, not with the
ring on the finger, but with the Holy Spirit of promise. And
then the Lord Jesus said this in Hebrews chapter 13. He said,
not at all will I leave you. Not at all will I forsake you.
Never. I will never leave thee nor forsake
thee. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? That's what
the love of Christ is towards His people. Therefore, our relation
to Christ is depicted, it's described, it's pictured by Sarah's relationship
to Abraham. And Christ's relation to His
people is an eternal relation, a relation of commitment of love,
of the highest measure and of the greatest intimacy. But in
Sarah's life, She experienced a great many trials. Remember,
her life was long and hard. 127 years she lived. In all of
her life, until she was 90, she was barren. She couldn't have
children. And that was a constant trial in her own self. She was
tempted to regard the deadness of her womb rather than God's
word. She was tempted so much that
at one point, as you recall, she gave her slave girl to her
husband in order to have children by her. But Abraham believed
against hope and Sarah believed against hope. And that's the
reason that God gave Sarah the son that was going to be the
progenitor of the Lord Jesus Christ after the flesh. Every
believer lives like Sarah did. We live in a body that's dead
because of sin. Yet we're alive to God by Christ
justifying death. She was beautiful. Remember how
many people admired her? The Egyptians, the Abimelech,
and all these people looked at Sarah and said, she's a beautiful
woman to look upon. And yet she was barren. And so
every believer in themselves are barren, but in Christ we're
beautiful to God, dressed in the jewels of His righteousness
and His obedience and His love unto death. In her lifelong trial
of faith, she was tempted to rely on her flesh to obtain God's
promise. And that lesson she learned by
giving her slave girl to her husband. is a lesson to all of
her children, that we're justified by grace. We live to God by grace. We do not rely on our own contribution
to make God's promises happen, but we rely on the promises themselves,
on God who is faithful. Not our personal obedience, but
the grace and the work of Christ alone. Salvation and God's promise
depend on God who promised, and not on us, on Christ who fulfilled
all that was required for God to fulfill that promise. In Psalm
94.17, look at this with me. In Psalm chapter 94, a favorite
verse of mine, he says this, in verse 17, "...unless the Lord
had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence." Psalm
94 verse 18, When I said, My foot slippeth, thy mercy, O LORD,
held me up. What a thought. This is what
happened to Sarah. Her foot slipped. She thought
for a moment that she would live on the flesh, that she would
walk not by faith, but by sight. And God used that lesson to teach
us we're not justified and we're not sanctified by what we do,
but by what Christ has done, by God's spirit in us because
of his justifying work. And so her experience, her long
life of trial and warfare, really, with her flesh, are the experience
of every believer. We're constantly frustrated by
the apparent barrenness of our own sanctification, aren't you?
Don't you feel frustrated by that? And God teaches us the
same thing he taught her, that we walk in the same way we receive
Christ Jesus the Lord. Colossians 2.6 says, As you have
received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. And Galatians
3 verses 1-2 say that did you receive the Spirit of God by
the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Because God
said to you in your heart, this is true. Look at Christ, and
you looked, and you received the Spirit of God in believing
Him. Isn't that the way? Or did you do something to earn
the Spirit of God? Of course it was by grace. Of
course it was God's work of faith that gave you faith to see with
eyes of faith that Christ is all your hope. And then in believing
that, you knew this is the truth of God. It's all of grace. And we walk that way. But her
mistake with Hagar led to Hagar's son mocking her own son, Isaac. Remember? But remember how Sarah
rose up in faith and in confidence and declared that salvation and
God's promise must be by grace alone when she said, Cast out
the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall
not be heir with my son. That's what she did. And then
God reaffirmed his promise after her fall. God reaffirmed his
promise. And remember what she did, her
reaction? She laughed. She couldn't believe it. It was
just too incredible at this point. It wasn't just improbable, it
was impossible. But that's the way God's grace
works. When it's impossible for man, then God saves. It has to
be by God. It's foolishness, it's arrogance,
it's ignorance to say that our salvation depends on something
we do. It's a denial of God's sovereign
grace, a denial of salvation being all to His glory. But her
doubting led to receiving from God a reiteration of His promise. Remember He said, In Isaac shall
thy seed be called at this time. the Lord would visit you and
you would have a son. And so every believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ receives repeated Reaffirmation from the gospel that our salvation
is in Christ alone. That's what God had told her
She's going to have a son and she knew that that son would
be the one through whom Christ came By whom she and Abraham
and all the world would be blessed all Nations in the world will
be blessed in Christ. So her salvation like Abraham's
we studied last week in the resurrection of Isaac Or the resurrection
of Christ her salvation was in the fulfillment of God's promise
to her in Isaac Now in verse 2 of Genesis 23
it says that Abraham wept for his departed wife. He wept for
Sarah. He wept because he missed her.
He wept because she had endured much in her life. And he wept
because her body that he knew in life now lay still in death. But his weeping was not as those
who have no hope, as we read in 1 Thessalonians. He looked
forward, like Job, to the resurrection. And Sarah understood and was
fully persuaded and embraced and confessed in life that Christ
was all her life, all of God's promise to her, to all the children
of promise as Isaac. And so Christ was her trust in
life and hope for eternity. And when she died, she received
the inheritance that he purchased for her with his own blood. Once
the son of the bondwoman, the son of the flesh, mocked her
son Isaac. But now, in death, grace triumphed. Christ is exalted. All that sin brings or brought
is mocked. Just like the son of the bondwoman
mocked her son, now the bondwoman and her son are mocked in the
resurrection of Christ. Man's self-righteousness are
all filthy rags in God's sight. All that we do and all that we
think we are is mocked. Because Christ alone is glorified
and exalted and God is glorified in Him. And so she received this inheritance.
In life, Abraham loved her. In life, by faith, she heard
the words of her heavenly husband. But now... After her death, she
heard those words in her resurrected soul when he says, Thou hast
ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse. Her heavenly husband
now says, Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes,
with one chain of thine neck. How fair is thy love, my sister,
my spouse. How much better is thy love than
wine and the smell of thine ointments than all spices. Remember, Sarah
is every believer. Everyone who believes Christ
shall hear these words of our Lord Jesus Christ, now by faith,
then at the resurrection in our body and soul. These were the
years of the life of Sarah. She's like an exemplar. She's
a prototype, a pattern. Indeed, she is the mother who
represents the mother of all believers, the bride of Christ,
the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then also, Sarah was precious
to Abraham in life, but she was equally precious to him in death. So every believer is precious
to Christ in life. And the death of every believer
is precious in the eyes of the Lord. Psalm 116 verse 15 says,
Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints. Our
weakness does not lessen Christ's love for us. It only magnifies
His love beyond measure. When we were yet without strength,
Christ died for us. Our complete impotence was the
occasion for the manifestation of Christ's love. Our death doesn't
bring shame upon Him. It says in 1 Corinthians 15.57,
Thanks be to God, which always gives us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Our death does not weaken or
change His love. His love is stronger than death.
Song of Solomon says, Many waters cannot quench love, neither can
the floods drown it. If a man would give all the substance
of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. The promise now is fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ. The confidence of this promise
is our possession by faith in life. But the realization of
this promise is the fulfillment of it in our death. And so Sarah
received that promise fulfilled in her life and in her death. In her life by faith, in her
death by fact. And these are the years of the
life of every Sarah of God. Long affliction in her life was
the proving, not the failure, of God's promise. Have you ever
thought about that? All the years of her life was
longer than ours. Our lives are much shorter. 60,
70, 80, maybe 90 years. But she lived 127 years, and
the first 90 years was as if God's promise had failed. That
long trial was not The failure of God's promise, but the proving
of it. Our life and our weakness are
not the failure of God's promise, it's the proving of it in our
experience. And so it says in Romans 5, verses
1 through 5, about how faith, patience, works, experience. And experience hope, and hope
doesn't make us ashamed. Because the love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts. So time, her time in her life,
was all the time God used to try her faith in order to make
known the greatness of His promise and how He upholds His children
in that faith. Time itself is that measure. that God uses to fulfill His
promise in enfolding His love to us. Who shall separate us
from the love of God? No one can. Now, look at John
chapter 14. Just a couple more verses here.
I'm commenting on Sarah's life. I'll take you to the New Testament
and show you a couple verses there. John chapter 14. Listen
to what Jesus says here in verse 19 to His disciples, which is
true of all of His people. He says in John 14, 19, "'Yet
a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but you see
me.'" And these next words, listen carefully. "'Because I live,
you shall live also.'" "'Because I live, you shall live also.'"
Just because Christ lives, His people live in Him. We're joined
to Him. We cannot not live because He
lives. Therefore, the fact that Christ
is raised from the dead and sits in glory is our life. Colossians
3 verse 4 says, When Christ, who is our life, shall appear,
then shall we appear with Him in glory. And in Colossians 1.27,
he says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Just because Christ
lives and lives in us, therefore that's our hope of glory. And
we know this by faith. We know these things to be true
by faith. And we know that God's Spirit
lives in us by faith because that's what the Spirit of God
does. He causes us to live by faith
on Christ. And so, just because the Lord
Jesus lives, we live also. And so it was with Sarah. If
a man dies, shall he live again? Though we die, we will live again,
because the Lord will have a desire to the work of his hands. Look
at John chapter 11, another verse. John chapter 11, verse 25. Jesus is talking to Martha about
her brother Lazarus, and he extends the conversation to apply to
all of his people. He says in verse 25, Jesus said
to her, I am the resurrection. She was thinking about an event,
and he said, no, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth
in me, though he were dead, though a believer dies, yet shall he
live. In verse 26, and whosoever liveth
and believeth in me shall never die." We never will come under
the judgment of the condemnation of death. Because in Christ we
live and the condemnation, the judgment has passed from death.
The sting has been removed. He that liveth and believeth
in me shall never die. Never die under that condemnation. Christ is our life, we must live
through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we see here that all the
years of the life of Sarah ended, and she died, and she received
the promise of the inheritance. She was not, she did not come
into condemnation. She rose again, or she will rise
again, but she sits in glory with the Lord Jesus now, like
Paul said, for me to live is Christ, but to die is gain. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank
you. We thank you, Lord, for the work
of our Lord Jesus Christ. He began his work in eternity. He came in time. He stepped from
heaven to Bethlehem's manger, to Calvary's cross, and from
Calvary's cross to heaven's throne. And there he sits, our life.
And when he shall appear again, we shall appear with him in glory.
This is our hope, the expectation that you've given to us from
your word, that because he lived and conquered death in his death
and rose again, that we also in our life, though our body
is dead because of sin, shall live again by him and in him. And so we find the precious endearing
promise that you will have a desire for the work of your hands. You
will call and we will answer. You will raise us from the dead.
We will be joined to our Savior and we will hear His words speaking
to us as His sister and His spouse. How in His heart His love for
us was ravished by what He thought. how he would lay his life down
for us and have us for himself for all eternity, making such
a commitment to save us by his own blood, help us, dear Lord,
to see his love for us and to live for him who died for us
and look for him. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.