“Value of a Funeral” – FBC Morning Light (10/19/2023)

Well, a good Thursday morning to you. Today we're reading in Jeremiah 39 and 40, Hebrews chapter 5 and Ecclesiastes 7. And I want to look at Ecclesiastes 7, first opening verses in that chapter today as kind of a follow-up to something we mentioned on Monday when we talked about the fact that Jesus, God became man, Jesus, to deal with our lifelong fear of death.

We've been in bondage to this fear of death all our lives, even though we don't acknowledge it many times, we try to do everything we can to squelch that fear. I mentioned that one of the ways we do that is by what's happening in the transformation of the whole funeral industry, if you will, where today there's this great trend away from having traditional funerals.

I think about when I started in the ministry 40-some years ago now, okay, I'm telling my age there, but if someone passed away, even in the church, even outside of the church, it was almost unheard of not to have a funeral.

In fact, there were several times I got called on by a funeral director to have a funeral for somebody that wasn't even a part of my church. And I shouldn't say it didn't happen a lot, but it has happened a few times earlier in my ministry.

Well, today you find more and more occasions where there is no funeral service at all. Many times there's not even a visitation where you go to a funeral home or a church and meet the family, greet the family with the person who's deceased in a coffin and surrounded by flowers, and you pay your last respects and final goodbyes and that kind of thing.

It just doesn't happen as a norm anymore. Instead, some people actually have kind of a party. They'll rent out a room at a restaurant somewhere and invite friends and family to come and celebrate the life of so-and-so and have like a little party.

The House of Mourning Is Better Than the House of Feasting

Well, with that in mind, Ecclesiastes 7, in verse 2 and 3 and 4, challenge that mentality, challenge that trend. Listen to what it says. It's better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men.

What is the end of all men? The house of mourning, the funeral home. It's a metaphor for death. That is the end of all of us. So it's better to go to the house of mourning and to be confronted with the reality of death than it is to go to a house of feasting and ignore that reality.

He goes on to say, the living will take it to heart. The wise who go to the funeral home or to the church where there's a funeral, and they visit with a family as they grieve over the loss of their loved one, and that departed loved one, the body of that loved one is just lying a few feet away, and you are confronted with, that's going to be me someday, and I don't know when that'll be.

It could be tomorrow, but that's my destiny too. The wise will go to the house of mourning and lay it to their heart that that's my end. He goes on to say, sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better.

Now, it's true that a merry heart does good like a medicine, we understand that, and there is some medicinal value, if you will, in laughter, but here he's drawing a contrast between ignoring the reality of death by partying and being confronted with the reality of death, and it's sorrow, and he is making the point that it's better in this case to actually sorrow and grieve over death, because by it your heart is made better, your heart is directed and healed, and it's made whole because you're thinking about reality, and you're going to deal with that reality in some way.

Verse 4 says, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. The fool does not want to deal with death, doesn't want to think about death, so does everything he can to ignore it, have a party instead of a funeral, whatever the case.

I don't want to think about it. The wise person faces the reality of death and then asks the question, what do I need to do to be ready, to be prepared when my end comes? That's the purpose of going to the house of mourning.

It's also the purpose of going to the house of mourning to contemplate about the way I'm living now, as my manner of life such that I'm living well so that I might die well. These are the kinds of questions that you get confronted with when you go to the house.

Of mourning.

Let's be sure we choose the wise thing in that regard, shall we? Our Father and our God, I pray that we would not shirk the value and the necessity of being confronted with the reality of death. Father, I pray that we would be wise in this regard.

We pray it in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well listen, I hope you have a good rest of your Thursday, even though I've just brought up a morbid subject. I hope that in doing so, it encourages us to think well and to think wisely, even through the remainder of how we live out this day.

God bless you on a good day.