20250720 Gen 23-25:11 God Secures his Promises For The Next Generation

Genesis 23-25 concludes the Abraham narrative. Genesis 12-25, the Abrahamic account, is foundational to the Christian faith. Because of this foundational narrative, for Christians, the name of Abraham among other things, evokes: God's promises, the concept of justification by faith, and God’s blessing for all the nations.

Early in the Bible, the Abraham narrative reminds us that God is not for one small people in the Middle East, but rather His concern is for the whole world. This is great news for us who come from all over.

The Abrahamic account instructs us on the important concept of faith. In Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God’s promise of offspring and God counted his faith to him as righteousness. Abraham’s offspring is related to the salvation for the world and so in believing in that offspring, in a way Abraham already believed in Jesus, like we believe in Jesus. In Genesis 22, Abraham showed that faith in God’s promises leads to obedience. He was even willing to sacrifice the son of the promise, because like Christians, Abraham believed in the resurrection of the promised son.

Abraham shows us what it looks like to be in a covenant relationship with God, as a people who are saved by faith who live out our faith in obedience. The life of Abraham also teaches us what we are saved from. In the Sodom and Gomorrah account God punishes sin with judgment and there is still a judgment for all those who refuse to turn from their sins and trust in Christ.

Abraham is so foundational to the Christian faith that the NT calls Christians, children of Abraham (Rom 4:16; Gal 3:7).

The three promises that have connected every account of the Abrahamic narrative have been the promises of Offspring, Land, and Blessing. These promises are connected to the reversal of the consequences of sin and so each of these promises of offspring, land, and blessing point to the person and work of Christ. The offspring is Jesus, the land is the New Creation in Christ, and the blessing for all the families of the world is the forgiveness of sins for the nations purchased by Christ for those who trust in Christ.

In all these ways, the Abraham narrative is a Christian text that explains the Christian faith.

The Abraham narrative began in Genesis 12:1-3, with God’s promises to Abraham of Land, Offspring, and Blessing. Genesis 23-25:11 reveals how God secures these promises for the next generation.

In Genesis 23, God secures the Land Promise For the Next Generation. In Genesis 24, God secures the Offspring Promise For the Next Generation. In Genesis 25, God secures the Blessing Promise For the Next Generation.

In Genesis 23, God secures the Land Promise For the Next Generation.

Genesis 23

Genesis 23 is significant in the life of Abraham. Sarah, Abraham’s wife and the mother of Abraham's heir dies. This death confirms that Isaac will be the heir since there will be no other children to Sarah who could take his place.

Most importantly, Genesis 23 changes Abraham's relationship to the Promised Land. Until this chapter, Abraham did not possess any of the Land. In Genesis 23, Abraham purchases a field with a cave that will serve as a burial site.

Genesis 23:3-20 includes a lot of repetition that can seem redundant, but this is intentional. The author makes it clear that Abraham went through the whole legal process and paid the full price for the land. It makes it clear that Abraham possesses a part of the Land. In Gen 23:4, Abraham refers to himself as a sojourner and foreigner among the Hittites. By the end of the chapter, he is a landowner. For the very first time, he owns part of the Land God Promised Him. The promise of Land is starting to be fulfilled.

This little plot of land remains important in the rest of Genesis. Being buried in the promised land is a sign of faith in God’s promise of Land. In Genesis 50, before his death, Jacob, Abraham's grandson asks while he was in Egypt, that he be buried in this same cave (Gen 49:29-50:13). His own son Joseph who was living in Egypt believed in God’s promise to bring his people back into the land. According to Exod 13:19, he made his sons swear that when God delivers his people, they would carry his bones from Egypt to the land God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod 13:19).

God promised land to Abraham’s offspring. Even when they do not have the whole land, the little plot of land Abraham bought, served as a guarantee that God was keeping his promises. Jacob and Joseph lived different because of the assurance they had in God’s promise.

Application

Christians also receive a downpayment of future blessings. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:13-14, the Holy Spirit is the "seal" and the "guarantee" of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it. The Land to Abraham and Spirit to Christians both anticipate the new creation. The Holy Spirit indwelling in us assures us of our future full inheritance in Christ! This is our eternal blissful state in the New Creation in the presence of God.

The Holy Spirit guarantees that God keeps his promises so we can live differently. If you believe in Jesus, you are filled by the Holy Spirit and are guaranteed all of God's promises. (For more detail read the message on Genesis 22). God promises us his faithfulness to keep his promises, love, presence, forgiveness, wisdom, guidance, peace, power, care, transformation, His gift of eternal life, security, and future.

How does the gift of the Holy Spirit help us today? Our lives a busy, hard, and stressful. How can we, in the midst of the craziness, stop and rejoice in the gift of the Spirit as a guarantee of our full inheritance? God gives us ordinary means to walk in step with the Spirit. They are his Word, the sacraments, and prayer. As extensions of these, we are strengthened through having spiritual conversations with Christians, listening to Christian worship songs, reading the Bible, and listening to biblical sermons. When we get so stuck in our thinking because of stress, anxiety, despair, fear, and shame, God uses the gospel message through different means to remind us of his grace, his promises, his Spirit in us, and our future inheritance so that we can view our hardship in its proper place and can live more intentionally in the present and be free to live for God. When we pray, the Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are the children of God (Rom 8:15). When we read the Bible, we are confronted with our sins and can rejoice in the Spirit work of sanctification. The Bible also stirs up our longing for our full inheritance and glorification. When we make use of the means God gives us to enjoy him, the Spirit cultivates the fruit of the Spirit in us. He allows us already to enjoy glimpses of peace and harmony in our relationships here as we wait to experience bliss in full in Eternity. Abraham received his deposit of Land, we receive the Holy Spirit, our deposit of our full inheritance.

In Genesis 24, God secures the Offspring Promise For the Next Generation.

Genesis 24

Genesis 24 is the longest chapter in Genesis. Its length indicates its importance in the Abrahamic narrative. In Genesis 24, God is securing offspring promise for the next generation by providing a wife for Isaac. It is not enough that Abraham had a son, now Isaac needs children and his children need children.

Genesis 24 gives two criteria for Isaac’s wife. She must come from the right people (Gen 24:3; 37) and must be willing to come to the right land (Gen 24:6-8). God makes promises and God gives commandments.

In a mysterious way, God guarantees his promises and demands obedience. He uses the obedience of his people to enact his will. God promised Abraham offspring who would bless the families of the earth (Gen 22:18), and Isaac must marry a person who would help him in his walk with the Lord and raise up Godly offspring. God’s guaranteed promises are not a ground for living how we please, they should motivate our obedience.

The concern for Isaac’s wife not being a Canaanite is not one of ethno-centrism or even racism. Deut 7:3 offers a more specific explanation, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods.”

Isaac’s wife cannot be a Canaanite and she must be willing to come to the Promised Land because she too needs to live by faith in God’s promises. In many ways, Rebecca is presented as a New Abraham. She lived in Mesopotamia like Abraham. She gave up everything and came to the promised land like Abraham. She receives almost the same blessing as Abraham (Gen 22:17; Gen 24:60), “may you become thousands of ten thousands, and may your offspring possess the gate of those who hate him!”

The chapter ends with Isaac marrying Rebecca. It is through their son Jacob that God’s promises will pass to the next generation.

Application

For us, this application concerns marriage. In Genesis, Abraham married one of his clan. It is also the case for Isaac and Jacob. Each time, their brothers who are not heirs of the promise marry, they marry outside of the clan. Ishmael married an Egyptian and Esau and Ishmaelite. It is like these marriages confirm their hearts were far from God.

The Bible teaches that the reason we marry one who is devoted to the Lord is so that they do not draw us away from Him. We must choose who we marry for the glory of God. The most famous example in the Bible of one who married foreign wives and turned from God after beginning so well was King Solomon. When considering a future spouse, I recommend going a step further than just asking, “Are they Christian?” The word “Christian” is not always helpful. Rather if you are looking to marry, look at the trajectory of the person’s life. Do they love Jesus and are they growing more and more in their love for Jesus. Do you want to help them grow in their faith? Will they help you be strengthened in your faith and encourage you in your walk with the Lord. If the Lord blesses you with children, will they be a partner in helping raise them in the ways of the Lord? Genesis 24 is the longest chapter in Genesis and it is about Isaac marrying the right person, deciding who we marry is still important for us today.

In Genesis 25, God secures the Blessing Promise For the Next Generation

The Abraham narrative concludes with the securing of God's promises for the next generation. Gen 23 describes the securing of land, Gen 24, the securing of offspring for Isaac’s. Genesis 25 is about the blessing and the anticipation of the reversal of Genesis 3.

In Genesis 25, Abraham gets remarried following Sarah’s death and has more children. We see that he is faithful to God’s plan and promises by caring for all his children and giving them gifts (Gen 25:6) but also making sure that they would be separate from Isaac his heir. These verses confirm God’s blessings for the next generations through Isaac.

Gen 25:7-11 is about Abraham’s death. Genesis 25:8 states that he breathed his last breath in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Victor Hamilton writes that the phrase, “full of years” speaks to the inner peace that Abraham enjoyed. It was not just that he had a long life, he lived a good life and died well.

Still in Gen 25:8, for the phrase, “he was gathered to his people,” I made sure to check for different commentaries to make sure not to get this wrong.  Hamilton and others confirm this view. Four things that occur at Abraham’s death: (1) he breathed his last, (2) he died, (3) he was gathered to his kin/people, and (4) he was buried.

Being “gathered to his people” occurs after death and is separated from burial. It implies a belief in Genesis of a continued existence where the spirit of the deceased joined the ancestors in the land of the dead. This phrase occurs for Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron.

Abraham is buried in the cave he purchased. Gen 25:9 connects Abraham’s burial side to paradise with many allusions to Eden.  The first is the cave of Malchpelah. The Hebrew word for cave means nakedness, because a cave is not covered, it is open. The word “Malchpelah” means pair or couple. So Abraham is buried in the place called Naked Pair – which is most obviously Adam and Eve.

In Gen 23:17 we are told the field was full of trees, and to the east of Mamre.  Like Eden, it must have been on a mountain because Abraham had previously built altars in Mamre (Gen 13:18; 18:1). Abraham is buried in a place that recalls Eden the original paradise and we are told that he is gathered to his people. We can conclude that Abraham died in an Edenic land, and was buried in and into an Edenic garden or paradise.

Abraham’s death and that connection with paradise is important in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 16, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, in contrast to the sinful selfish rich man who dies to be in torment, righteous Lazarus goes to be “by Abraham’s side” (Luke 16:22). The righteous who die in Christ are gathered to their people and rest by Abraham’s side. Later in Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus is on the cross, he tells the thief who believed in him that that very day, he would be with him in paradise (Luke 23:42-43). The word paradise is the Greek Word for Garden.

If we take Luke 16 and Luke 23 together, Jesus promises to go to the garden where Abraham was gathered to his people. This teaches us that throughout history the saints who die go to be by Abraham’s side, or paradise that is pictured in Genesis 25. By dying and being buried in an Edenic land, we learn from Genesis 25 that there is Eden or paradise to be enjoyed even beyond the grave for all those of us who have the faith of Abraham and trust in Christ.

This description around Abraham’s death teaches us the security of the blessing for Abraham than even his death cannot hinder. For us as well, who are heirs of God’s promises to Abraham we will know that same Edenic rest. The text ends with God securing his promises to Abraham by repeating them to Isaac – Gen 25:11 reads: God blessed Isaac, his son.

Conclusion

We live in an uncertain world. We have so many things we can worry about – finance, health, our loved ones, romance, or mental health. God invites us all into a story that is true to the ups and downs of life. It is also a story of a generous sovereign God who makes and keep promises.

Genesis 12 began with the promises of land, offspring, and blessing. The life of Abraham ends with those promises kept and secured for the next generation.

As Christians, we don’t read the OT pretending like we do not know how the story ends. Christ is our security. He is the Son of God full of glory and power, truth and love. He fulfilled God’s promises. In Christ, we navigate through the storms of life. We can remain true to God as we trust his promises. We live for God, his way, according to his word, holding onto his promises because:

Christ is the offspring who brings a blessing to all the families of the world through his death for sin. The promised Land is expanding as people come to Christ. One day at Christ’s return, the land will fill the whole earth and Abraham’s descendants in Christ will be as numerous as the stars of the sky and sand of the sea. Christ has reversed the consequences of Genesis 3. We have the forgiveness of sin. In Christ, we enjoy Edenic intimacy with God, restored relationships with one another in the church, and as Abraham saw, death cannot take God’s blessing away from us. At death, we will be gathered to Abraham’s side. This is paradise in the presence of Christ until the final resurrection of the dead and which point we will enjoy New Eden with new bodies forever and ever! This vision changes how we consider what is currently preoccupying us. Life is hard, but God promises to bless us. The Abraham narrative teaches us we can trust God and live for him.