Funerals

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome back to No Compromise Radio ministry, here on our flagship station,

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WVNE 760 AM. The Lord has brought me a long way. I remember in 1979, 1980, must have been, maybe 81,

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I was a disc jockey for a punk rock program,

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KZUM, I don't know, I think it was 88 .9, and it was a studio that was in a house and it was a non -profit community station with a bunch of crunchy liberals, and what was that?

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Oh, Yule Gibbons. Remember Yule Gibbons, for those of you who are old enough, kind of nuts and fruits,

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Yule Gibbons. But anyway, I was a disc jockey for KZUM, I'm sure they're long underground now and dead and gone.

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But now, we get on the radio and we talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, His church,

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His word, and I did not do anything to deserve that, I didn't do anything to accomplish that,

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I was running the wrong way. I moved to Los Angeles from Nebraska so I could sin more, it's easier to sin around the clock in Los Angeles, at least

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I thought so, although you could sin in a monastery around the clock as well. And God has given me a burden, and here's the burden.

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The burden is to teach people about Christ and His word. And in society today, there are a lot of people that just won't teach, and so VNE has given me the privilege here to teach at 3 .30

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every day, and if you're listening, I'm glad you're listening. I heard from another person this week that basically said this,

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I don't like everything you say, I certainly don't like the way you say it, but I want to listen anyway.

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And so I like that. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And if you disagree with me theologically, you probably change it around and say it's always provocative before it's biblical, but it's my show and so we say always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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If you'd like to get a t -shirt, you need to go to info at nocompromisedradio .com, email us there, rjustnocompromisedradio .com,

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and get one of the t -shirts with the red splattered blood etc. designed by Josh McDowell, Josh McDowell, Josh McDonald, Josh McDowell.

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Yes, I have Josh McDowell, evidence that demands a verdict. He's now working for me at No Compromised Radio Ministry.

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He thought he'd take a step up in the world of evangelicalism. Today I'd like to discuss the topic that I think needs to be addressed, and that is

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Christians and funerals, Christians and wakes. What do you do as a

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Christian when there's a death in the family, a loved one who is a

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Christian, a loved one who's not a Christian, a friend, a comrade, a co -worker, somebody else in the church?

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If someone dies that you know, or you know somebody who knew someone who died, what do you do?

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What's your theology? How do you rearrange your life, if you in fact do rearrange your life, so that you can go and minister to them?

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Now what I found out in general, being a pastor for many years, and working in hospitals for many years as well, and being exposed to probably more dead bodies than the typical

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Joe or Jill, is that people, and in one sense this is good, people are afraid of death.

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They're afraid of something more than death. They're afraid of dead. They're afraid of the dead.

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What do they do? I mean, it's not that often you're around something that's dead these days. When your dog dies,

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I think it's probably illegal in Massachusetts, I haven't checked lately, to even bury your own dog, unless you probably live out in the country someplace.

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You can't even bury your own dog, you have to call up the Humane Society or the VED or whatever the acronym is here in Massachusetts that's highly subsidized and taxed.

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So you have to avoid looking at the dead dog. It is, maybe we see dead birds more than anything else, dead squirrels on the road, when

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I ride my bicycle and see the dead animals I think, stay on the road and don't get hit by a semi because I'm next.

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So we don't see dead things that often, at least dead things that we love. It could be a possum on the road or something like that, but when it comes to an animal, when it comes to a person, what should we do?

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Who wants to be around a dead body? And so today I'd like to discuss this idea of your approach to wakes, which is usually the night before the funeral, memorial service, and then the funeral service itself.

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And so if I could say one thing to start, it would be this. Don't leave your kids at home when you go to the wake or when you go to the funeral.

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Don't leave them at home. I don't know how many parents I've seen that need to get babysitters before they go to a funeral, before they go see the dead body.

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I don't know what you're thinking, but you're not thinking through it properly. If you go back into the days of the

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Bible before, even the days after the Bible, what would you see? You'd see someone die.

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Let's say grandma dies in her room and then for several hours, in fact, for several days, you would say your goodbyes and then you would bury grandma.

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And it's just part of life experiencing death and experiencing the death of those around you.

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And so I don't want to be morbid, I don't want to be gross, but I want you to be a realist because there are a thousand lessons you could teach kids about the death of a loved one, about death in general, and we'll get to some of those lessons here fairly quickly.

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And so when you have a funeral and when there is a death in the family or death at work and there's a wake and a funeral, my first advice is this, go and go as a family.

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If you're a dad, I don't want you to say, well, kids, would you like to go to the funeral? I mean, first of all, as an adult,

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I probably wouldn't like to go, but that's the wrong question. The question is never, oh, hey kids, how'd you like Sunday school today?

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I would never say, how did you like Sunday school today? I would say, what passage did they teach today in Sunday school?

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Would you learn about God at Sunday school? And then I'd encourage them to like teaching, to say, this is what we need, this is what's good for us, and it should be in a context that's less than boring, it's less than drudgery, less than, you know, a place that kids can just sit around and complain.

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It should be exciting, it should be enthusiastic, after all, we're talking about the infinite God. But asking a kid, do you want to go to the funeral, is the wrong question.

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You say, there's a loved one, a friend, a family member who's died, and we can't make it to the wake, but we're going to go to the funeral.

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And so we rearrange all of our life to go do that, and we get dressed up and we go. Or you say, well,

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I can't make it to the funeral, but I can make it to the wake, and so let's go, let's get our best clothes on, let's make sure our hair's clean, take showers, etc.,

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and then go visit the family. And if you say, well, do they have an open casket?

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Do they have a closed casket? Will there be an urn there full of the cremains, the remains of a cremation are called cremains.

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What about all that? What about the dead body? Well, the way you should think about that is, this is part of death.

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This is part of life. This is a reminder. Solomon is right when he says in Ecclesiastes, in my own theological translation, it's better to go to a funeral than it is to a wedding.

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Why? Because the lessons stick. The lessons are driven down deeper. And part of the

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Christian life is sorrow. And so you go to the wake and you tell the kids, all right, here's what we do.

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This is what I have to tell my kids all the time, or if I see church kids. First of all, you bring the kids. There's no reason you should go to a funeral without bringing your kids.

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And then you go to the wake or the funeral, and then you bring the kids in and you coach them on the way. You're walking in and you say, we don't have to say anything to the family.

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You don't have to feel awkward or somehow, you know, lack of words. What you do is you go up and you say,

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I'm sorry, I love you. And then you give them a big hug. That's all you have to do. But first we're going to walk up and we're going to take a look at the dead body and everybody has to look.

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So I say to my kids, you all have to look, they've heard the speech along a lot of times, you have to look at the dead body.

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And I want you to think of several things when you see the dead body. First thing I like you to think about is death is very ugly and you can put makeup on a dead body and you can comb the hair of the person's, you know, the dead body.

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You can put a suit on them or a dress or whatever, surround the casket by flowers. And I think it's good to see your loved one the last time.

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I'm for open caskets, but you're still going to say they don't look good. Now they might look better than they did just before they died at the hospital, but they still don't look good.

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And so I want to tell my kids and I want to learn my lesson as well, that death is ugly, that death is gross, that death is an enemy.

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Sin entered the world and because of sin entering, there's death and sin affects everything.

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A dog dies, it's been tainted by the fall. I don't mean the dog with sentient thinking sins against a holy

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God. But what I do mean, as the earth groans and grumbles because of the fall,

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Romans chapter 8, so too are animals affected by the fall. Now the animals don't sin, but they've been affected by the sin.

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And so when you look at that dead body, you should say to yourself, sin is repulsive, sin is ugly. I want to turn my eyes away, but my daddy told me that I have to look for a few seconds.

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So that's lesson number one. And we would see when Jesus, with the account of Lazarus in John chapter 11, that Jesus was weeping.

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Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus. Jesus knew that he had victory over death. Jesus knew that in, you know, not too short of time,

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Lazarus would be talking with Jesus again. But because sin is so ugly, sin is so destroying, sin is such an enemy, sin strikes out against the holiness of God and his good right law, that Jesus wept.

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Jesus wept. People think it's the shortest verse in the Bible. There's actually a shorter verse in the Greek in 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always is one word.

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But here in this short little verse, Jesus wept. It should tell us the attitude that we should have when it comes to death in the family.

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And it's okay to cry. I tell my kids, if you want to cry, it's okay. Skin your knee. I don't want you to cry very much if you're a boy, buckle up, button up, but it's okay to cry at a funeral.

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I will not wipe my eyes again at a funeral or awake or the bedside of somebody who

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I love and they die. I'm not going to wipe my eyes anymore because it's good to cry. It's right to cry. It's a holy thing to do, to feel sadness just like Jesus did.

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And so we need to make sure to teach the kids, what do we do?

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There's an etiquette. There's a proper thing to do. You're always a parent. You're always teaching. You're always saying, you know,

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I should do this and I should teach through that. My wife tells me all the time, you're always a pastor. So that means you're always teaching.

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You're always being watched as you teach people by your example. And so you bring the kids up to the casket and you don't kneel down on the kneeler.

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You don't make the sign of a cross. You don't say anything like that. That's not what we do.

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We go up there and we think about how bad sin is and it makes us cry, even like Jesus with his friend

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Lazarus. And here's a second lesson, a second lesson, children. The second lesson here, if you're listening today, we're talking about how to go to awake and what to do at a funeral.

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It probably needs to be a class that they tell you at church because people just don't know what to do. They don't bring their kids.

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They don't go. They've got other things to do. They got soccer games after all. And we've got to bow down to the

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God of soccer and the God of sports and the God of music and the God of entertainment. If there's a death in the family, you need to cancel what you're doing.

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That's what death does. And you can see it in the life of Jesus. When there's a need, Jesus says,

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I'm on my way to Jerusalem, but here's a need now. And he stops and he ministers to the people. I'd ask yourself a question, if somebody canceled a soccer game to go to your son's, our daughter's, our father's funeral, would you like that?

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The answer is yes. And so you're to love your neighbor as you love yourself. You say, well, I'm busy.

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I'm sure you are busy, but you're supposed to be loving other people. And so why don't you go and just say,

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I love you. But make sure you swing by the casket on the viewing hours, especially, and take a look and tell your kids, look what sin does.

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Here's how it's okay to grieve, just like Jesus. The next lesson is, only Jesus Christ, only

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God can take someone who is dead, and with all due respect, stiff and cold.

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Rigor mortis has set in. They've already had the, you know, the procedures done to them where the blood is taken out.

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And God could say, get up, and that person would get up. God has the power over death.

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And he has shown that in many different cases as people have been raised from the dead in the Bible. But he has specifically shown that when he raised his son from the dead, when

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Jesus raised himself from the dead, when the Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead, the triune work of God, all working at the resurrection,

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God has power over death. And you could go up to that casket and you could cry.

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You could shake. You could scream. You could holler. You could demand emergency medics.

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You could take the body to Bethesda Naval Hospital. You could go to Mayo Clinic. You could go to MD Anderson in Texas, and you can't raise that body from the dead.

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Jesus made sure with Lazarus in John 11, four days dead, to make sure everybody knew that body is dead.

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And yet Jesus has the power of the resurrection. And he can resurrect other people.

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And that's exactly what he does. And so you need to believe in this Jesus who raises people from the dead.

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That's why we believe his claims. Because what he said, how he said it, and what he did, specifically raising himself from the dead.

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The other thing I'd like you to do when you go to a casket, when you go to a funeral, when you go to a wake, calling hours, is when you look at the body,

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I want you to think this way. I want you to say to yourself, here's another lesson.

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I tell this to the kids. Tell it to your five -year -old. Tell it to your nine -year -old. Tell it to your 15 -year -old. Tell the kids, one day, short of the

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Lord's return, if the Lord returns, great. But one day, I'm going to bury you.

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One day you're going to be in that metal coffin, casket, excuse me, coffin, sir, shaped a little bit differently.

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You're going to be in that casket. And if it's not me burying you, it's going to be someone else. And you need to be prepared to die and face the

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God who made you. The holy God who requires perfection for you to get into heaven. You're going to meet him one day.

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And you're not going to be able to say, I didn't know, because Romans 1 says, everyone knows. I didn't know enough about you, because Romans 1 says that everybody believes in God and they know his power, they know his wisdom as they look at creation and the natural order of things.

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And you need to have your sins forgiven. And the only way you have your sins forgiven is by trusting in what

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God said, taking God at his word, believing God by faith. And here's what you believe, that the

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God of the universe said that if you look to my son who lived a perfect life, died on behalf of sinners, was raised from the dead, you look to him and trust what he did for you, that by looking to him, by believing in him, by turning from your sin of self -righteousness, of pride, of lawlessness, of unbelief, of all the sin, and you say,

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I turn from that, and now God, I take you at your word, and I believe that Jesus was the God -man.

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He is the God -man, and that he's coming back one day, and I'm going to believe in the truth claims of scripture, and I will take your word on it, and I believe in him.

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And that's your only hope, son. That's your only hope, daughter. If you're trying to hide behind some kind of made -up, faux age of accountability, you're not going to find an age of accountability.

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I don't think you're going to find that. You may say, well, at the end of Jonah, people don't know their left hand from their right, 120 ,000 of them, and we could argue that passage a little bit, we could talk about bar mitzvahs at age 13, but you need to preach the gospel to your kids.

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You don't preach the age of accountability to your kids, you always preach the gospel to your kids. So, preach the gospel to your four -year -olds.

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On a regular basis, say, do you believe that Jesus, if you died now, do you believe that Jesus would take you to heaven?

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You need to ask those kind of questions. When God holds somebody accountable is not for us to know.

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It's for us to do what he says, and that is to preach the gospel, and preach the gospel to every nation, starting in Jerusalem, including your children.

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Your children are sinners, and they need the gospel. So, start early, and go show them, this is what death is like, and one day you're going to die.

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People can't even say death these days. They have to say, kick the bucket, past, expired, they say all kinds of different things.

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And it is this business that is hush -hush, it is this business that is cut and dry, we don't want to see the body, we don't want to deal with these things, and it is an unnatural, in my mind, an unnatural thing to have happen.

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I think we bury people in an unnatural way. We don't even have cemeteries at churches anymore, because you don't want to walk into a church.

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It's bad church growth policy to go into a church building and have tombstones of five -year -olds, and ninety -year -olds, and twenty -year -olds right there when you walk in.

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But back in the days of the Puritans, back in the days of New England, you would have the graveyards adjacent to, or next to, what?

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The church. And you would realize that there's more to life than the living. There's an afterlife, and there is something that we need to do, and that is consider our latter ends, and that we are temporal people, but we do because our bodies will die one day, but our spirits are going to live forever, and we'll be reunited with our bodies one day according to 1

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Thessalonians. I'd like to teach the kids when we're looking at the body, the real person is no longer in there.

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And that's true for both believers and unbelievers because the spirit is immediately in the presence of God based on the work of Christ, or the spirit is in the presence of the

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Lamb with his holy indignation in a place called hell. One day there'll be the lake of fire, but there's immediate torment for those who have expired.

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There's no holding place, there's no purgatory, there's no intermediate place of holding.

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It's either bliss or it's torment, and the bliss will get better over the years because you'll appreciate who

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God is in heaven more and more and more, and I think heaven will become then more wonderful as your appreciation level of the triune

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God increases, and also in hell it's going to get worse because there's not going to be righteous going on in hell, there's going to be sin and more sin and more sin and more sin, which will increase and increase and increase the body's appreciation for—appreciation in quotes—for torment.

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And so we need to tell people, that person that you know is gone. They're not in there.

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And that's easy for kids to see. That's easy for adults to see. What made that person, that person, is no longer in there.

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They're gone. And you can tell something's not right. And it's almost an optical illusion because if you look at a dead body long enough, you start thinking that their chest goes up and down and breathes.

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But you know it's not. But that's just so normal to look at a person and they breathe. If you ever see someone sleep, that's just what they do.

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And so you are—it's unnatural to look at a body and not see the chest rise and fall and breathing, even in a sleep breathing.

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And so what I'm trying to do here at No Compromise Radio Ministry is we talk about funerals. I do enough funerals that I want to say to people, go and love other people.

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Love your neighbors yourself. And if you'd like to have somebody at your loved one's funeral, then that means you ought to go to them and assist them while they're grieving.

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You don't have to say anything. Just put your arms out, hug them really tightly. And if it's in a public place, hug them tightly.

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If it's private, you can't really, you know, you ought not to touch another person. But if you're in a funeral, why don't you give somebody a big hug and be the last one to let go.

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And just look at them and say, I love you, I'm sorry. And weep with them, because that's very biblical.

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We weep with those who weep. We go there and we say, I love you, and that's all you have to say. And you can say,

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I'll always remember them or whatever, and they'll say, thanks for coming. And when you go to the calling hours, then get there and be prepared to minister.

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I'm always supposed to act like a pastor, and you're always supposed to act like a Christian. Be ready to love, love your neighbor as yourself.

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And so when you go to the funeral, then you love the people by just saying, I love you, give them a hug, take a look at the dead body.

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You don't have to say anything else. By the way, if you have just experienced death in the family, and people say stupid things to you, and they say, well, at least they lived a long life.

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Don't say that, because that doesn't take away from the loss. Yes, we are glad when people live 90 years, at least it's humanly a good thing.

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Oh, they lived a full life. If they've not repented, that will only count more against them.

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But I get the sentiment. But we don't need to say it, because a loss is a loss. Whether you lose a baby one day old, or you lose a grandpa 90 years old, it's still a loss.

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And so just say, I love you, and I'm hurting with you and for you, and if you need anything, let me know.

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You don't even have to say, what can I do? Just bring some food over. You don't have to say, well, you know, let's get together later in a week or two or three weeks.

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Why don't you call them and get together with them? Because then all this, you know, the frenzy and the frenetic activity is all going to be gone, and they could be sitting at alone at home without their loved one.

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And so here you come with some food, and you just show up with a big smile on your face and you say, I love you.

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So I didn't cover everything today that I wanted to cover, but I wanted to talk in general about funerals. And you say, well,

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I probably should start going more. If there's a death in the church family, you ought to drop everything and go.

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Why wouldn't you? Well, it's a playoff game. Well, I guess it is a playoff game.

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And so why don't you teach your kids there's something more important than a playoff game, a playoff game that's going to matter for zero for the rest of their lives.

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Oh, they got a trophy, and it was a fake trophy, and they're going to throw it away. Their wife's going to throw it away when they're 30 years old and still lugging around their dopey soccer trophies that they won trying to live a life of, you know, what

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I was like when I was a kid. No, we don't need to do that. I'm not against soccer. Well, maybe

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I am. I'm just kidding. I'm not against recreation. We can rest because we have a

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Sabbath rest. We have Jesus who has done the work, and in him we can have rest and enjoyment. But when that rest and enjoyment takes the priority of loving other people in a local church, then there is a problem.

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So why don't you go to that funeral of the person who died at church? Why don't you make time to love them?

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Why don't you set aside the time? If it's a long drive, it's a long drive. Pray on the way. Pray for them on the way.

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And take your kids. Here's the message today. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. Stop this idea that says,

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I'm going to leave my kids at home for the week. I don't want them to see the dead body. Are you kidding me? No. Show them the body.

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Be respectful. You don't have to be weird about it. But this is a dead body that teaches a lesson.

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And there's a sermon there. And here's the sermon. Jesus has victory over death. You're going to die one day.

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Your only hope is Jesus Christ. And we, since we've been loved by Christ, we're going to go love this other family.

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And we're going to say we love you. We want to minister to you. We miss the loved one. And you can count on us.

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That's what we do. No Compromise Radio ministry here. NoCompromiseRadio .com. Mike Abendroth. God bless you.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.