“1 Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah. 2 She bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. 3 Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan; the descendants of Dedan were the Asshurites, the Letushites and the Leummites. 4 The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida and Eldaah. All these were descendants of Keturah.
5 Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. 6 But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.
7 Altogether, Abraham lived a hundred and seventy- five years. 8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. 9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, 10 the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah. 11 After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi.”
How do you say goodbye? Last Sunday evening we were praying together as churches do and Josh VanGrouw asked for prayer for his aunt Sheryl. Sheryl has been battling cancer for a long time and has decided not to undergo further treatments. Josh’s dad flew out to Washington state to see her. What was Josh’s dad thinking about on that flight? If I had to guess I would say that he was asking himself the question, “How do you say goodbye for the final time?”
How do you do justice to the fact that there really is an end? We all handle the reality of death in a variety of ways. Some of us deny. Some of us obsess. Some of us distract ourselves. Some of us get angry. All of that is probably all of us some of the time.
This morning we will see what the promises have to do with the end. This is our twenty-second and final week studying the promises. We’ve seen their power to overcome every obstacle—infertility, armies, sin, doubt. We’ve seen that the promises of God are an intrusion of the power of God into this cursed world and that they can change anything and everything. Today we see that they can even change death; they can change the end. The promises continue after the end. So do those who trust them. That’s the claim of this sermon: the promises continue after the end. So do those who trust them.
We will study this in three points. First: Abraham and Keturah. Second: Abraham’s inheritance. Third: Abraham’s death. We will study Abraham and Keturah in verses 1-4, Abraham’s inheritance in verses 5-6, and Abraham’s death in verses 7-11.
First: Abraham and Keturah. Last week we studied one way in which Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother. Now we see one way in which Abraham was comforted after the death of his wife; verse 1, “Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.” Some of you know the comfort of a second marriage. You know that your second husband isn’t replacement for your first, and he isn’t meant to be, but he is a comfort. He is a companion.
Keturah was a comfort and a companion. She was Abraham’s wife. Now, 1 Chronicles 1:32 says that she was his concubine. It’s likely that the ambiguity between the two accounts has to do with the status of their sons, who did not inherit their Abraham’s estate as we will see in our second point.
Keturah bore Abraham six sons. Men are able to father children quite late into life. Apparently Ramjit Raghav, who died in February, fathered his second child at the age of 96. A woman’s biological clock ticks quite differently from a man’s in that regard. The miracle of Isaac’s birth had to do with Sarah’s womb not Abraham’s potency.
These six sons underline the power of the promise. They are yet another sign that Abraham was blessed because children were the ultimate blessing in that culture, which is yet another lesson that our culture could learn from that culture.
These six sons also show you that it was God who had previously placed Abraham in a situation in which faith would be necessary. Abraham could have children according to the flesh all he wanted; he could only have children according to the promise by way of faith. As we’ve seen this is one of the reasons God continued the line of promise through Isaac.
Now not everything in Genesis is recorded in chronological order. Abraham lived for thirty-nine years after Sarah died. He lived for fifteen years after his grandsons Jacob and Esau were born. That is just to tell you that there is more going on here than meets the eye. This rather sparse account in verses 1-11 isn’t designed to tell you everything.
It tells you about these six sons and their descendants. These descendants show the reader that God kept His promise to make Abraham the father of many nations. These descendants appear elsewhere in Scripture and archeological evidence. Let’s walk through them. First, we have Zimram. His people were listed among those who would attack Jerusalem before the exile to Babylon and suffer God’s wrath as a result. Jokshan is most likely mentioned in the table of the nations in Genesis 10. Midian is the best known of these sons and people groups. Moses married a Midianite after fleeing from Pharaoh. Shuah may be the father of the Shuhites, as in Job’s friend Bildad the Shuhite. The Asshurites were most likely a group living near Egypt. Dedan shows up in oracles of judgment in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
These names don’t mean much to us, but they meant something to the Israelites. This genealogy was included to help the Israelites understand their relation to the surrounding people groups around them. It helped them understand their relation to the specific groups who were offspring of Abraham but not children of the promise.
Now these people groups could become children of the promise. Isaiah told Israel to look forward to a day when, “herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.” Those are sons of the flesh becoming sons of the promise.
That’s what the great commission is about; “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Or in Abrahamic language, “go and make children of the promise from the whole world because the promised son of Abraham has come. Give them the mark of the covenant, and teach them the stipulations of the covenant, and as the God of promise was always with Abraham, so I am always with you.” That’s church. Church is not an event to which people go. Church is not a product that we try our best to promote. Church is not a relic that we beg modern people to like. Church is not something we water down to appeal to those who have no interest in understanding or obeying. The church is a people who have covenanted with God just as Abraham did. It is the people who have faith like Abraham.
Now, it is the children according to the promise who inherit the blessing; not the children who are merely born according to the flesh. We see that in our second point: Abraham’s inheritance. We have our own difficulties with inheritance. I’ve you’ve ever tried to determine who will get what after you die or who gets what now that your parents have died, you know that it can be sticky. Now Abraham was exceedingly wealthy. That can make an inheritance exceedingly sticky. Abraham had sons with three different women—Hagar, Sarah, and Keturah. That can make it even stickier.
Now in the Ancient Near East, the sons of a concubine weren’t entitled to any share of the estate. That is part of what is going on in verse 5, “Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.”
Abraham was generous to Keturah’s sons, but they, like Ishmael, didn’t inherit anything. Also, Abraham did not permit them to remain in the Promised Land. He sent them away before he died just as he sent Ishmael away. As we saw with Ishmael, unless they would submit to the way of the promise, they were threats to the promise, and so he sent them outside the Promised Land.
This is about the promises. Isaac was the son of the promise. He was the one through whom the whole world would be blessed. He was the ancestor of the Christ, which is why the New Testament begins with Jesus’ genealogy starting with Abraham and then moving to Isaac.
So Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac and sent the other sons out of the Promised Land. If you are a parent, you might be thinking, “I’m glad I don’t have to make that kind of choice.” You do. You have to decide whether or not you cherish the promises above your children. Jesus was very clear, “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
Jesus wasn’t telling us to hate our loved ones. He was telling us that faith like Abraham prioritizes him, the promised son, above our loved ones. A number of dilemmas within the church would be clarified if we prioritized Jesus and his commands above the desires and decisions of our loved ones. If you find yourself siding with your loved one’s choices above Jesus’ commands or seeking to change what Jesus has said in order to fit your loved one’s situation, please know that this is not an expression of faith like Abraham.
All of this might sound somewhat offensive, but the exclusivity of the promised son has always been offensive. It was offensive when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Abraham’s inheritance demonstrates his trust in the promises. His death demonstrates the same. That’s our final point of this sermon and of this series: the death of Abraham. We are told that altogether Abraham lived 175 years; since he was 75 when he left Ur that means he spent 100 years as a pilgrim.
We’ve seen that Abraham left Ur because he was promised blessing and verse 8 tells you that he was blessed, “Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years.” That is the obituary of a blessed man. To die at a good old age was a sign of blessing. To die full of years was to die a blessed man.
Abraham died blessed because of the promises. God had promised to bless him, and his flocks and herds were abundant evidence that He had. God had promised to bless those who blessed Abraham and curse those who cursed him and that was how life had gone. God had promised to make him the father of many nations, and so he was. God had promised to give him a miracle baby and so He had; God had even given him Isaac back from the dead so to speak. God had kept His word.
Abraham died blessed because he had lived by faith in the promises. If you want to die blessed, live by faith. If you want to die like Abraham, live like Abraham. As Calvin put it, “looking unto God sustained [Abraham] through his whole life amidst the most boisterous waves, amidst many bitter griefs, amidst tormenting cares, and in short an accumulated mass of evils; let us also rely on this support that the Lord has promised us a happy issue of life, and one truly far more glorious than that of our father Abraham.” If you want to die with the comfort of the promises, live by faith in the promises.
That is the death of Abraham; “Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years.” But now was that the end of Abraham? Remember Josh’s dad flying out to Washington. How do you say goodbye for the final time? How do you do justice to the fact that there really is an end? Well, is that really the end?
Death was not the end for Abraham. You see that at the end of verse 8, “he was gathered to his people.” Abraham didn’t simply die; he joined the dead. This is life after death language.
Abraham was with God. That’s how the author of Hebrews reads this. He says that Abraham and the other patriarchs died, “longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” The promises don’t end at death. Those who trust the promises don’t end at death. Abraham was buried in that cave of Machpelah in hope of the resurrection just as he had buried Sarah in that cave in that hope of the resurrection. You need to ask yourself if you will be buried in that hope. You need to ask yourself if your loved ones know that you will be buried in that hope. Tell them.
At Abraham’s burial, we see the return of Ishmael. He and Isaac bury their father together. There is no word about the state of the relationship between these two brothers. The focus is on the promises and you see that in this inclusion of verse 11, “After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi.” Beer Lahai Roi was where Ishmael was born. The focus on this location, and this acknowledgment of God blessing Isaac there, was included to tell the reader that Isaac had, in fact, displaced his older brother. The younger son was, in fact, the son of promise.
This is all a preparation for the next major section of Genesis which is the family history of Isaac. You can read it on your own. Christians want to know their own story. God had blessed Abraham. God will now bless Isaac. God had made promises to Abraham and Abraham had placed his faith in these promises. If we were to study Isaac, we would see God make promises to Isaac. They would sound familiar, “I will make your descendants [Isaac] as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees, and my instructions.”
The promises to Abraham continue and faith like Abraham continues. The promises to Abraham continued through that line all the way to Jesus, as the New Testament takes pain to make clear. These promises and this faith continue today. We, who live in part of the world of which Abraham knew nothing, are currently worshipping Abraham’s God because we have faith like Abraham.
The promises to Abraham continue. Faith like Abraham continues. Abraham continues. That’s what Jesus said. Jesus was debating with the Sadducees who denied the resurrection. Jesus asked them, ‘have you not read what God said to you, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”’ Now, Moses lived 400 years after Abraham. Abraham had died, but God didn’t say to Moses, “I was the God of Abraham.” He said, “I am the God of Abraham.” Abraham lives. He lives because he had and has faith I the promises. “The just shall live by faith.”
Henry Lyte lived by faith. He died a blessed man. Lyte knew that he was dying. He took a walk down to the harbor. “It was a lovely sunny day and the sun was setting over distant Dartmoor in a blaze of glory. On the left lay Brixham harbor like a pool of molten gold, with its picturesque trawling vessels lying peacefully at anchor,” as one author put it. Lyte watched the boats, walked back home, and went to his study. His family thought he had fallen asleep in there, but he was writing these words, “Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away. Change and decay in all around I see. O Thou who changest not, abide with me.” Lyte died a few months later.
As it was for Henry Lyte and for Abraham, so it will be for you and your loved ones—change and decay in all around you will see. You, like Henry Lyte and like Abraham, will die. Your only hope is that the One who changest not abides with you. If you have that hope, you have faith like Abraham’s. Amen.