Cremation

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

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

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

A Personal Introduction to the Topic of Cremation

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. This is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host today. And today's going to be kind of potpourri, I think, or maybe stream of consciousness, or who knows what we'll talk about today.

I have a general idea, but you know, I showed up today in the studio because I was curious to know what I talked about, what I would talk about. I always like to listen to MacArthur, and sometimes he would say, "'Well, I'm here to talk to you today.

"'I'm curious to know what I'll say.'". And basically what he means by that is he's got so much in his mind about a passage, it's going to be hard for him to get it all out, and the Spirit of God will lead in certain directions, and then he would be surprised to know how the Spirit of God led while he preached the word.

I wanna talk today about cremation and burial, cremation and burial. Do you get cremated, or do you not get cremated? What do we do? How do we think about this properly? I was in a class a couple weeks ago with Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, and he talked about cremation a little bit, and burying, and what about organ transplants, and organ donors, and everything else, and I just found it quite fascinating.

And so I wanna ask the question today, is it sinful for Christians to be involved with cremation? If you have been at a funeral home, and you said, well, I'd like to save some money because of cremation, what should I do?

How should I go about it? Is there a biblical mandate? Is there a prescription in the Bible? Is there a description in the Bible? How do I go about it? I remember when I was at the USC, L .A. County Medical Center, and you might remember that building as the large hospital building that they showed at the beginning of that soap opera, General Hospital, and you say, how would you know about the soap opera, General Hospital?

Well, back in my unsaved days in 1979, 1980, as a college student at the University of Nebraska, everywhere you would go would be General Hospital, Luke and Laura, remember that? And I'm so glad I'm saved out of that nonsense.

All right, that is the building, and it is a very large building, many-bed hospital. I want to say over 1 ,000-bed hospital, but I'd have to remember. I want to say maybe 2 ,200 beds. I don't know, it's just a crazy size.

And so I remember they took me there to the crematorium, and so they showed me how they would cremate bodies, especially bodies at L .A. County that were not claimed. And so they put the crematorium up to this very high temperature.

They'd first have to check to make sure that the person did not have a pacemaker because pacemakers in crematoriums explode like little hand grenades inside. So they had to be careful. And then they would cremate the body at this high temperature, and they would put the cremains, cremated remains, or cremains, put them together.

They'd take the cremains, and they would then put it in some kind of little urn or some kind of container. And the adult cremains would be in a larger container, and there would be some big pieces like with a hip socket bone and some other things.

And then for the young people, the very small infants and babies who are cremated, the remains, their cremains, were just kind of dust that could fit in a little envelope. And it was a quite sobering experience to be in this crematorium.

And so I ask the question to you today, is it sinful for Christians to be involved with cremation? Now, one thing we can't do is we can't go back, and if the answer is yes, we can't go back and uncremate all our friends and all our relatives.

And what's done is done. Certainly God, the God of the universe, who is sovereign over every molecule, over every atom, over every electron, over every proton, He is sovereign over everything that's ever been created.

And at the second coming, at the judgment, and when we get new bodies, He will know how to get your bodies resurrected. And if people are in heaven now, they don't have a body, and when God gives them their new bodies, maybe some of those people have been eaten by sharks, maybe some have been eaten by worms.

More than likely, people that have been buried have been eaten by their own bacteria. You have bacteria in your system now, and the only reason it doesn't eat you alive is because you have white blood cells, you have other blood cells, you have antibodies.

And so the worms don't necessarily need to get in to eat the person. You know, the worms crawl out, the worms crawl in, the worms play Pinochle on your snout, you know, that kind of song. Well, how does the rest of that song go?

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play Pinochle on your snout. And I think it goes further than that, but I don't know what it says. It's usually the bacteria in you. So then where does all that go?

How do we reconstruct a body? Even if body's been cremated? Well, God knows what to do. And so you can sleep well, you don't have to say to yourself, Pastor Mike said this, or Pastor Mike didn't say that, or someone else says it.

And therefore, what am I gonna do in the past? What we wanna think about is the future. And I'll have to tell you at the very beginning, I don't think it's sinful for Christians to cremate. Now, lots of fundamentalists, King James only types, will say that it's certainly sinful.

I think I'm gonna take a little more of a middle road today, but let me just construct a few things in Scripture that might tend you with your liberty in Christ, Romans 14 and 15, to say to yourself, I think a better preference would be to bury than to cremate.

Now, if your family's an unbeliever and you've got five family members and you gotta figure out what to do with your father's body, and they pick cremation, again, I wanna say, don't freak out about it.

Don't have some kind of coronary. There are other issues that are bigger than is someone cremated or are they not? And so if you are a family member and everybody else is saved and you wanna decide what to do, then you can come to more of a consensus.

And I want this show to help you make that consensus. If you're saying to yourself, I'd like not to put a financial burden on my family and let's just do it the cheapest way, and therefore I pick cremation, I might be able to convince you today that you should go for the cheaper burial than an expensive burial, and you might have to spend a little bit more money, but we'll work on that as well.

By the way, on a side note, as I'm thinking about it, if you're a pastor, you ought to go to the rest home, to the funeral home, rather, with your people as they sit down and work through buying a casket, what to do when a loved one dies.

First of all, when a loved one dies, there's lots of pressure and there's lots of emotional despair and they're distraught and they're tired. And then they walk in and as much kindness as funeral homes show, they still are a business.

And there's something in everyone that wants to say, I don't want to dishonor my family by buying the cheapest casket. Yet we have to be careful on what we want to do and how we want to spend God's money even at a funeral home.

And so if you're a pastor, you should go with your people so then you can walk them through it and you can help them say, you know, this is what we want. This is what we don't want. This is how we should work through things.

And if you're a parishioner, you should say, if you have a loved one die, pastor, do you think you could come with me to the funeral home? Because I'm not thinking straight. I'm not thinking correctly.

And I'm sure he would love to go with you. I liken it to having the people come to your church and take pictures for the directory. And then you say as a pastor, oh yeah, free directories, but it's really not free because then they're in the small room trying to sell your people expensive photographs and that's not worth it.

Nothing's free. There isn't anything free. So the question, is it sinful for Christians to be involved with cremation? First thing I'd like to say is that the Jews didn't cremate, but the pagans did. When you look at early church writings, even after the New Testament, you won't see any support of cremation, burning the body.

You will see what? You will see burying the body. We as Christians do not believe somehow in neoplatonic dualism, the body's bad and the spirit's good. We believe in wholeness. We believe in heart, soul, mind, strength, will, ambitions, all put together as one.

And there's something about even heaven where the body's important. Some kind of disembodied spirit floating around isn't really heaven. I don't think our culture really gets that today, but the New Testament culture did, the Old Testament culture did, the intertestamental culture did, and they understood that body and soul need to be united.

And remember when God made Adam and Eve, He made them as image bearers with the body. Now, I'm not saying God has a body. The Father is a spirit, God is a spirit. I am certainly saying Jesus has a body today, a glorified body showing the marks of His crucifixion.

But I want to ask the question, why did the Jews not cremate? Well, because they believed in the image bearing of the body. Not just the body as an image bearer, but part of the image bearing that they had was that there was a body, and they were to respect that body, and they were to treat that body kindly.

And none of the church leaders early on supported any kind of cremation. For the pagans, dust to dust doesn't matter, burn the body, and up in smoke it went. And so, my first thing that I'd like to say today is, Jews never cremated.

Well, that's not, that doesn't mean you, it's sinful if you do cremate, but that's the first consideration. Consideration number two. In the Old Testament, it was a curse. A curse was placed upon you if you weren't buried.

So, listen to this. God curses King Jehoiakim through Jeremiah, Jeremiah 22, 19. He will be buried with a donkey's burial, dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem. And so, there was a curse, there was a stigma attached to not being buried.

It doesn't mean if somebody was eaten by a lion someplace and there's no remains and there's no way to bury somebody, that person's gonna be going to hell. But there was this link. Same thing with Achan, Jezebel, Ahab's offspring, Sisera, Jabin.

Listen to Joshua 7, 15. And it shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel.

And so, you do such a bad thing, you are gonna get burned. That's pretty fascinating. If you'd be doing good things, we'd bury you, but you did something bad, we're going to burn you. Now, listen to Amos 2.

Thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Moab, and for four I will not revoke its punishment, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime. So I will send fire upon Moab, and it will consume the citadels of Kerioth.

And Moab will die amid tumult, with war cries and the sound of a trumpet. I will also cut off the judge from her midst, and slay all her princes with him. Now, the real issue there is vengeance not stopping at death.

But interestingly, some say that Moab's unpardonable sin had to do with burning bodies. I don't think that's primarily what it's talking about, but you can see some of the thinking, some of the thought process behind the scenes when they say, well, that's the real issue, is burning bodies.

Although I think the primary issue was there was a vengeance that just did not stop with death. That's kind of like taking John Whitcliffe, or Tyndale, I think it was Whitcliffe, and they took him back out of the grave and tried to burn his body because they thought he was such a heretic, they meaning the Roman Catholic Church.

The Burial of the Faithful and the Burial of Jesus

Now let's go on to third consideration, consideration number three. There's a lot in the Bible, a lot of detail, a lot of time, a lot of effort spent on the burial of faithful people. God has justified them by faith alone, and there's lots to be said in the Bible about the particular burials.

All of Genesis chapter 23, 20 some verses, maybe 20 verses, talk about the burial of Sarah. When you look at Jesus and the burial of Christ Jesus, much attention is given to that burial. And again, I'm not saying since Jesus was buried, you have to be buried with some kind of weird hermeneutical hijinks.

No, I don't mean that at all. I'm just giving you some information so you can think through this biblically and properly. At our particular church, we won't church excommunicate you if you cremate. But if you ask me what I'd like to have done, for my funeral, I won't be around to tell you, but if I'm able to say it now, and I am able, please bury me in a fairly inexpensive casket.

And you will certainly treat my body with kindness and reverence and respect while you're preparing me to be buried. Why do we do that? If it's just flesh, if it's just garbage, if it just means nothing, then why the reverence?

It's almost built into the conscience. It's built into the fabric of our lives that there's a certain reverence for even a dead body, a reverence for treating it kindly and properly. And so when I look at this discussion of the Bible regarding the burial of faithful people, why does the Bible give so much information to that?

And I think the answer is it's important, whether it's Sarah or certainly our Lord Jesus. John 19, and after these things, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.

And Pilate granted permission. He came therefore and took away his body. And Nicodemus came also, who had first come to him by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight.

And so they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden and in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

Therefore, in account of the Jewish day of preparation, because the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. And so we want to make sure when we look at the text, we just try to think through clearly. I am not saying because Jesus was buried, you must be buried as well.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the Jews, because of their view of the body, which was not some kind of Greek platonic thing, they never cremated. And I think that is insightful. Pagans cremated, but Jews didn't cremate.

The Bible lends curses, something less than a full blessing to people who were burned and not buried. I find that insightful. I find it insightful that when you go read Genesis 23, why all the talk about Sarah and her burial, her death and burial is the chapter, chapter 23.

If it's just a thing, it's just a casing, then let's just get on with it. Well, let's go to the next topic that we can think about, next topic within this topic of cremation. What about God? I find it interesting, and only again interesting, this is not some kind of command.

God, when he buries or he takes care of a dead body, what does he do? Strangely, fascinatingly, God buried Moses. He could have burned him. He could have scorched him with fire. But when it comes to Moses, God's prophet, God's spokesperson, God's chosen one, he buried him.

Deuteronomy 34, five. Again, this is not prescription, but this is fascinating. So Moses, the servant of Yahweh, died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord. Remember, he had broken God's law, transgressed, and God said, I'll let you see the promised land and I'll let you be up there in Mount Nebo and look down and see it, but you can't go.

I've stood there in Mount Nebo and looked around and thought, I wonder where Moses is buried. But certainly if I found his bones, I'd probably make some kind of idol out of it and run around worshiping it.

So God made sure I'm positive that no one will ever find Moses' bones. Deuteronomy 34, six. And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor, but no man knows his burial to this day.

When it was written, now, by the way, Moses, I think, wrote Deuteronomy 34, and certainly he was not at creation when he wrote Genesis 1 -1, and he didn't have to be around when he died in Deuteronomy 34 either.

If Joshua wrote it, fine, but I think Moses wrote it. So what happened? To the day that Deuteronomy had been written, and to this day, no one has found the bones of Moses. Oh, maybe the Roman Catholics say that they have a piece of the bone of Moses like they've got some breast milk from Mary, and they've got part of the spear that pierced Christ in some of the wood.

Maybe there's some kind of relic that someone claims, but it's not the real thing. Verse seven of Deuteronomy 34, although Moses was 120 years old when he died, his eye was not dim nor his vigor abated.

In other words, he could have lived a lot longer. He would have lived a lot longer, but God took him home. God killed him, and then God buried him. The sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days.

Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end. So we have God burying Moses. What are we talking about? My name's Mike Abendroth. This is NoCompromisedRadio .com, a ministry from WVNE and Bethlehem Bible Church.

We're talking about cremation, and we're talking about, is it sin to cremate? And so I would say, here's the bottom line. I don't think it's a sin to cremate. There's not a command to cremate. There's not a command not to cremate.

For me, it's a matter of, one, I want to have a high view of the body, even a dead body, so therefore I'd like to, what, bury. And two, I think it's an issue of cost. No, I don't think it's an issue of cost.

There's a nonprofit organization that I think is still around called Georgia Memorial Society. For small fees, they try to decrease the cost of funerals for family members. So to me, I can't say, well, I'm gonna be a good steward of God's money.

I guess you can say that. And again, if you say, pastor, what do you think we should do? I'll say, my preference is cremation. No, I'll say my preference is burial because of the view of man and his body and what's going to happen and the resurrection.

And if you want to cremate, you're free to do that. I'm not gonna say you can't. If Jesus Christ has given you his perfect righteousness and he's taken away your sin, Romans 3, 4, and 5, and if you're justified by faith alone by the work of a risen Savior and you have his forensic, forensically you have his alien righteousness declared to you, then you certainly are not going to lose heaven because you cremated.

And so there's a reason why Romans 14 and 15 follow Romans 3, 4, and 5. Skewed views of liberty, skewed views of license, skewed views of antinomianism all come from Romans 3, 4, and 5 and a skewed view of justification by faith alone.

Never read 14 and 15 in Romans without considering Romans 3, 4, and 5. And so today we're talking about cremation or burial. And I know there's plots of land and I know there's those kind of issues. Remember, God is able to resurrect your body, your loved one's body, so don't worry about that.

It doesn't matter if that body's been burned or eaten or disintegrated in a bomb, destroyed someplace in the fields and the jungle in Vietnam or Korea. The Lord knows what to do. But I think what I prefer, and again you see that's me saying I prefer, I prefer to do what the Jews did and that is to say let's treat the body, even the dead body, with reverence and respect.

And there was something to them about burning that wasn't right. And so what did they do? They buried instead. Believers back in those days buried, the Jews burned. The Bible says there's lots to be said for burial and the amount of space for death and burial in the text.

And so what do we do? We say to ourselves, let's make sure those who cremate and we think the opposite, that we're kind to them and we're loving to them. It's the same thing when it comes to homeschool and public school and private school and rock music and contemporary music and everything else.

The weak ones are the ones who go around and act like they've got a problem with the others. Problem is they think they're strong, but they're really weak. The strong ones say, I have some other convictions, my conscience has been guided by the scriptures and experience and wisdom.

And I have a different view, but because you're weaker, I will love you anyway. That's Romans 14 and 15, is loving the weaker brother or sister. And so you can't, you know, it'd be horrible if somebody that you know died and then you went to the family member and said, I can't believe you sin by having them cremated.

No, you don't do that. That's just unwise. That's foolish. That's unloving. You wouldn't want someone to do that to you. Would you? But if you're sitting around ahead of time and you're talking about it as a family, what would I like done to my body?

Then you should say, what I would like done is, and then you fill in the blank. I personally, Mike Ebenroth from me and my house, we bury people. We bury people because I think it's just the right thing to do.

Good, better, best. Maybe it's good to cremate, but I think it's best to bury. And you say, well, what about giving organs? I think that is a loving thing to do to say, hey, I'll be an organ donor because then I can use part of the body that God has for me, and it's still retaining its value, as it were, and it's giving it to someone else.

So I think that'd be an excellent thing to do if you say, I'd like to give my body for scientific research, or my eyes, or whatever kind of thing that you have, your liver or something for someone else.

That doesn't go against this principle that we think the body is to be honored and revered, both alive and dead. And certainly with less reverence when they're dead. I mean, you can't say, well, don't embalm my loved one because you can't do something bad to the body.

There are things that you don't want to know that the funeral home people do to the dead bodies so they smell good and they look good. You don't wanna know. If you wanna know, I guess you get the book called Stiff, S-T-I-F-F, and you can read about that.

I forgot the author. It's a woman, I think, in San Francisco. You don't need to know those things. Or maybe you wanna know those things, I don't know. But for me in my house, pick a cheap casket. Pick a casket that's not going to break the family, and then bury me.

And then you say to yourself, it was a shell, but that shell is going to be resurrected and he will be in a glorified body one day like Jesus Christ. Anyway, this is Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio.

We talked today about cremation and burial. If you've got a question about this, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Info at nocompromiseradio .com. We'd love to have your things against it, things for it, and we will see you back tomorrow on No Compromise Radio, WVNE 760.

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

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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