TEXT: GEN. 23:3-6
And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying,/I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight./And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him,/Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.'
The combined and careful observations of the entire life of Abraham, in the light of Genesis 23.and acts 7.5, would leave one with the conclusion that: God never gave him any immovable or landed possession except a burial ground, the cave of mach-pe'lah. Moreover, he lived in tents. The obvious supposition, issuing from this, to my mind, is that his only landed possession is the sort that reminded him of the inevitable blow of death. He is reminded that he would leave this world one day. What a wonderful preacher and reminder this possession was. This constantly showed him that life here is transitory and not permanent. No wonder, he looked for a city not made with hand. He was consumed with the thought of the next world. I imagine that anytime he looked at this possession, he would adjust his life. Anything in and around us that does not remind us about the next world, only tends to make us careless about heaven and to be at home in this world. Nothing is worth our attention, if it endears this world to us and make us careless about eternity. A man would live well if he keeps the day of his death constantly before him! Keep thou the cave of mach-pe'lah before thee!