Abraham’s tears (vv. 1-2). How often in my pastoral ministry I have heard well-meaning but ignorant people say to grieving friends or relatives, “Now, don’t cry!” That is very poor counsel, for God made us with the ability to weep, and He expects us to cry. Even Jesus wept (John 11:35). Grieving is one of God’s gifts to help heal broken hearts when people we love are taken from us in death. Paul did not tell the Thessalonian Christians not to weep; he cautioned them not to sorrow “as others who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13-18 nkjv). The grief of a believer should be different from that of an unbeliever.

Abraham loved his wife, and her death was a painful experience for him. He showed his love and his grief by his weeping. These are the first recorded tears in the Bible, and tears will not end until God wipes them away in glory (Rev. 21:4). Even though he was a man of faith, Abraham did not feel that his tears were an evidence of unbelief.

Sarah died in faith (Heb. 11:11, 13), so Abraham knew that she was in the Lord’s care. In the Old Testament, very little was revealed about the afterlife, but God’s people knew that God would receive them when they died (Ps. 73:24).

The late Vance Havner had a wife named Sarah. Shortly after her untimely death, I was with Dr. Havner at the Moody Bible Institute, and I shared my condolences with him.

“I’m sorry to hear you lost your wife,” I said to him when we met in the dining room.

He smiled and replied, “Son, when you know where something is, you haven’t lost it.”

For the believer, to be “absent from the body” means to be “present with the Lord” (Phil. 1:21-23; 2 Cor. 5:1-8 nkjv); so Christians do not approach death with fear. “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord … that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them” (Rev. 14:13).

The death of the wicked is vividly described in Job 18, and what a fearful picture it is! When the wicked die, it is like putting out a light (vv. 5-6), trapping an animal or a bird (vv. 7-10), catching a criminal (vv. 11-14), or uprooting a tree (vv. 15-21). What a difference it makes when you know Jesus Christ as your Savior and as “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25-26; 2 Tim. 1:10).