Giving Death its Due

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Open your Bibles with me and turn to Genesis chapter 49, and we are going to move from chapter 49, verse 29, right into chapter 50.
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As many of you know who have been here, this is our series on Genesis.
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It's finally coming to an end.
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We have about three more messages and then we'll be done with our three years of study.
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So I'm looking forward to landing this plane.
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And we're getting there, we are getting there.
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Today we are going to discuss a topic in this text that is not only uncomfortable, but it hits close to home in the fact that we as a church are grieving the recent events of loss.
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We're going to be talking about death and giving death its due.
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And I hope by the end of today, you'll understand what that means.
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Before we read, I just want to make a quick comment.
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As many of you know, I have been in and around the subject of death for a long time, because as a young man, one of my first real jobs was I worked at a funeral home.
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And I thought I was going to be a funeral director.
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That was what I was going to go to school to do, but God led me into the ministry.
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So it took me in a different direction.
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But in my later teenage years, that was the direction that I was headed.
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And one of the things I remember as a young man working in a funeral home was oftentimes I would go on removals.
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And what a removal is, is when a person dies of natural causes in the home, they don't have to go to the morgue, they don't have to go to anywhere but the funeral home.
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So they would call the funeral home and they would send for a couple of guys to come and bring a gurney and retrieve the body.
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And I remember many, many of those moments where myself and one of the other attendants would be carrying the stretcher up into the home.
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And I remember almost always the person who had passed would either be laying in their bed or they'd be laying on a chair or couch or something.
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But the other people in the home would be in another room, typically gathered together, mourning together, hugging one another.
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But I remember walking past them on many occasions, one in particular that stuck out in my mind over the years.
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And I remember looking into the faces of this family and seeing on their face the look of grief.
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And there's nothing quite like the look of grief.
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That face, the contortion, the sadness, the brokenness, the feeling that this just doesn't feel right.
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And as I was thinking about that, as I was preparing this week's message, I titled the sermon, Giving Death It's Due, because the idea that we're going to look at today is giving death the proper grief that is due in that time.
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We have, as a people, divorced ourselves from the concept of death, and we have so hidden it from ourselves that when it finally comes calling, we are not prepared to give it its due.
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And as a people, we are woefully, woefully unprepared.
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I say that having years working with grieving families.
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And I do want to make mention today, I am going to be citing a book a few times throughout this.
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I don't always do this, but I did read a book in preparation along with the text.
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It is by Tim Keller, Don't Throw Stones at Me.
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I know Keller's made a few left turns the last couple years, but he has said some good things.
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And on this subject, I think he wrote a few good things that are worthy for us to hear.
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So if you got problems, just remember Paul quoted from Pagans 2.
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No, I'm just kidding.
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I'm not saying Keller's a pagan.
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Keller's a good guy.
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He's just, he's made a few left turns, but his book on death is good.
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In fact, when Brother Mike, this past week, as I was talking to him, I gave him two books.
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I gave him Grieving by James White and On Death by Tim Keller to help him have something to occupy his mind and read through and help him through this time of grief.
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So it is a good book.
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Let's stand and read.
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We're gonna read now Genesis 49, 29.
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Speaking of Israel, it says, "'Then he commanded them and said, "'I am to be gathered to my people.
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"'Bury me with my fathers in the cave "'that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, "'in the cave that is in the field of Machphala, "'to the east of Mamre in the land of Canaan, "'which Abraham brought with the field from Ephron "'the Hittite to possess as a burying place.
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"'There they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife.
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"'There they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife.
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"'And there I buried Leah.
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"'The field and the cave that is in it "'were brought from the Hittites.
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"'When Jacob finished commanding his sons, "'he drew up his feet into the bed "'and he breathed his last "'and he was gathered to his people.
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"'Then Joseph fell on his father's face "'and wept over him and kissed him.
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"'And Joseph commanded his servants, "'the physicians, to embalm his father.
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"'So the physicians embalmed Israel.
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"'Forty days were required for it, "'for that is how many are required for embalming.
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"'And the Egyptians wept for him 70 days.
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"'When the days of weeping for him were past, "'Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh saying, "'If now I have found favor in your eyes, "'please speak in the ears of Pharaoh saying, "'My father made me swear saying, "'I am about to die in my tomb "'that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan.
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"'There shall you bury me.
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"'Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father.
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"'Then I will return.' "'And Pharaoh answered, "'Go up and bury your father as he has made you swear.
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"'So Joseph went up to bury his father.
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"'With him went all the servants of Pharaoh "'and the elders of his household "'and all the elders of the land of Egypt, "'as well as all the household of Joseph, "'his brothers and his father's household.
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"'Only their children, their flocks and their herds "'were left in the land of Goshen.
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"'And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen.
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"'It was a very great company.
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"'And when they came to the threshing floor of Atad, "'which is beyond the Jordan, "'they lamented there with a great and grievous lamentation.
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"'And he made a mourning for his father seven days.
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"'And when the inhabitants of the land, "'the Canaanites saw the mourning "'on the threshing floor of Atad, "'they said, this is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.
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"'Therefore, the place was named Ebo Mizraim.
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"'It is beyond the Jordan.
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"'Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them.
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"'For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan "'and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah "'to the east of Mamre, "'which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron, "'the Hittite to possess as a burying place.
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"'After he had buried his father, "'Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers "'and all who had gone up with him to bury his father.'" So ends the reading of God's word.
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May God bless the reading of his word and write its eternal truths upon our heart.
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You may be seated.
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For the first time in history, the majority of people in our land are divorced from the subject of death.
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Even though all men know that death is coming, we do our best to separate ourselves from it as far as possible.
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I've noted before, because you all know I work with a local funeral home and I do memorial services two or three times a month.
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That memorial services are becoming less and less attended.
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People don't want to go.
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Many people forbid their children from going to memorial services because they don't want to expose their children to the reality of death.
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In fact, they've gotten to the point now where they say things like, well, I just don't want them to have to deal with that at such a young age.
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Thank you, brother.
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A few months ago, my daughter, Hope, who is in a private school, the private school is attached to a church and the church was having a funeral during the school day.
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And so the school and the church are separated, but it's only by a hallway.
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And Hope asked the teacher, she's nine years old, can I go to the restroom? Teacher allowed her to go to the restroom.
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Well, when she went out to the restroom, she decided she wanted to see what was happening in the sanctuary.
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So she walked into the sanctuary and the pastor is preaching and the people are there and the casket is here open and she walks up to the front and she puts her hands on the edge and goes just like that.
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She just looked right over into the casket and nobody said anything.
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Until finally, the teacher realized that she had absconded and the teacher ran in and grabbed her and pulled her out.
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Now, when I get there, they're mortified.
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Not because my daughter went in.
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They recognize that, you know, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.
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She wasn't doing anything.
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She wasn't trying to be inappropriate.
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What they were mortified about was that she had seen a dead body.
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And they were saying to me, we're so sorry that your child had to see a dead person.
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To which I responded, I'm sorry that she interrupted the service but I'm not sad that she was exposed to the reality of death.
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Because one, in my house, that's a regular.
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I spend, like I said, hours every month preparing funerals.
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My children often participate seeing these things.
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They see me going and coming.
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They hear me talking about families that have lost.
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And they have been a part of family memorials.
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Many of your family memorials.
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My children have been there and seen them.
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I don't want my children to be disconnected from the reality of death.
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And we shouldn't want that.
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Because in generations past, it wasn't possible to be disconnected from death.
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In fact, this is, when I mentioned Tim Keller's book, this is one of the things that he recognizes.
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John Owen had 11 children.
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He outlived them all.
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As well as his wife.
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In colonial America, one out of every three children died before adulthood.
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So almost every parent knew the grief of having lost a child.
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And the average person didn't live well into their 50s or 60s.
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So many children experienced the loss of their parent while still children.
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In fact, this is what Keller says.
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He says, nearly everyone grew up seeing corpses and watching people die.
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In fact, Brother Mike and I talked about this this week.
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We have changed the architecture of our lives to eliminate death.
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Because used to, there was a place in the home that was referred to as the parlor.
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And when someone would die, they would place the body in the parlor of the home.
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So that people could come and people could experience that loss and that grief with the body there.
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Homes don't have parlors anymore.
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What do they call them now? The living room.
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It's not a parlor.
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What do we have now? We have funeral parlors.
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We take that away from us.
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We divorce it from us.
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We put it somewhere else.
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So that it can be out of sight and out of mind.
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We've done our best to hide death from ourselves.
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Many people won't even talk about it.
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Anthropologist Jeffrey Gore wrote an essay.
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He called it the pornography of death.
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This is what he said.
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He says contemporary culture has replaced sex with death as the unmentionable thing.
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Used to you didn't talk about sex and polite company.
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Now that's fine, but we don't talk about death.
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We don't want to talk about death.
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Keller says this.
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He says medical progress supports the illusion that death can be put off indefinitely.
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It's more rare than ever to find people who are as the ancients were reconciled to their own mortality.
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And there are even thinkers now who seriously believe death can be solved like any technological performance issue.
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Many in Silicon Valley are obsessed with overcoming mortality and living forever.
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All this means that modern people are more unrealistic and unprepared for death than any people in history.
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Hear that last part again.
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Modern people are more unrealistic and unprepared for death than any people in history.
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With that in our minds, I want us to turn our attention to the text.
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And my hope to draw out of this text is some important applications about the subject of death.
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This is about the death of Israel, which is also known as Jacob.
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His life has occupied half of the book of Genesis.
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He was introduced in chapter 25.
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We're now in chapter 50 and it's still about him.
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His life has taken half of this very long book.
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147 years of life and he's about to die.
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He has gathered his sons around him.
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He has given them the blessings and the prophecies that we talked about over the last few weeks.
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And he has now given his...
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He is now about to give his last will and testament before he draws his legs up into the bed and dies.
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Here's the outline for today.
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We're going to look first at Israel's last will and testament.
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That's verses 29 to 32.
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Then we're going to look at Israel's death.
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Do we not have a screen? There we go.
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Alright, so we have Israel's final will verses 29 to 32.
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We have Israel's death, verse 33.
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And then we're going to look at the work of grief in verses 1 to 14.
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Let's look first at his final will.
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It says, He commanded them and said, I am to be gathered to my people.
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Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite.
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Now we've already read this.
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I'm not going to read the whole thing but understand what this is talking about here.
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Those of us who've been in the study of Genesis understand that there's a background here.
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Abraham had been called to the land of Canaan from the land of Mesopotamia, Ur of the Chaldees.
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He had been called to the land of Canaan, but he never owned any of the land of Canaan.
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Even though it was given to him by divine right, even though it was given to him by God's promise, he never actually had owned any part of the land with the exception of one plot of land.
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When his wife Sarah died, he went to the Hittites and he asked that he be able to purchase a field.
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Remember they tried to give it to him.
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We don't want to buy.
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You shouldn't have to buy anything.
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You're a great man.
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You're a man who has blessed us.
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And he said, nope, I'm going to purchase this.
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And he gave the purchase price and he purchased a field and in that field was a cave.
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And in that field Sarah was buried and in that field he was buried.
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Later in that field Isaac was buried and Rebecca was buried.
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And then remember Jacob had multiple wives, two wives and two concubines and his one wife that he loved the most, Rachel, she had died on the road to Bethlehem.
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So he wasn't able to bury her there because it wasn't possible.
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So he had to bury her on the way to Ephrath, which is also called Bethlehem, but he did bury Leah there.
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And so now he is coming to the end of his life and he's looking at his sons and he gives his last will and testament.
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Boys, don't bury me here.
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See, because he's in Egypt.
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He had moved to Egypt at the behest of his son Joseph.
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He had come there and he had been given the best of the land.
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He could have had the nicest tomb in all of Egypt, but he didn't want that.
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He wanted to be buried with his ancestors.
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And this reminds us.
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I'm going to be making application throughout, so let me quickly just make a quick application here.
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This reminds us of the importance of preparing our loved ones for our inevitable passing.
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Men, I want to ask you this.
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I want you to seriously consider this.
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Have you a plan in place for your wife when you die? Do you? I mean, I know men who just don't, I don't want to think about it.
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I don't want to deal with it.
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Well, guess what? When you do die, somebody's going to have to think about it.
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Somebody's going to have to deal with it and you're going to be leaving your grieving wife without a plan.
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Parents, you should be thinking about your children.
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No one is promised tomorrow.
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What if you and your spouse were to be killed tonight? What is going to happen with your children? I'm going to tell you a few years ago, or it wasn't even a few years ago.
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It was a year and a half ago.
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Jennifer and I had to fly to Arizona because our son, Cody, who's in the Air Force, he was sick and we wanted to be with our son.
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And so we decided we were going to fly together to Arizona to take care of him.
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But before we left, we met with a lawyer.
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And we met with a lawyer to write a will for our children.
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We asked the lawyer, write down who would get custody of our children in the event of our death.
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Because guess what? It was just me and her going together.
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What happens if the plane goes down? So these are practical lessons.
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This is what's happening here.
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Jacob is looking at his family.
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Israel is looking at his boys.
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He's saying, boys, here's what I want you to do when I die.
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He's already given them the blessing.
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He's already said who's going to be in charge.
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He put Judah in charge.
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He's already doled out the prophetic blessings.
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But now he's saying, here's what I want you to do with my body.
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And let me tell you something, guys and ladies.
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If our answer is, well, I just don't want to talk about it.
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Understand you've given into the culture of the age.
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As Christians, we should be able to talk about death.
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We should be able to have legitimate, godly conversations about, if there's anybody in the world who should know it's coming, it's us.
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And if there's anybody in the world should be ready for it, it's us.
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Also, this tells us something about a legacy of faith.
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Because notice what he says to his sons.
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Don't bury me here, bury me there.
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Why not? Because this isn't the promised land.
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This isn't the land that was promised by God to my ancestors.
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This isn't the land that God promised to me.
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Don't bury me here, bury me there.
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What he's saying is bury me in faith.
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Jacob is showing faith in the promise of God, even in the face of death.
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There's nothing more beautiful than seeing a saint of God, trusting in the promises of God at their death.
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And that's what we're seeing right here.
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Somebody who trusts in the Lord saying, this is how I'm going to die.
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I'm going to die in faith.
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If we are believers, we should hope that any and all final words that we give to our children are a testimony of our faith in the Lord.
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So we see his last will and testament.
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Now, let's look at his death.
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Verse 33.
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This part is really, really, in a sense, it's almost very sweet because it paints a picture.
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It says, when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and he breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
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Now, the idea of drawing his feet up into the bed is the idea that he had been sitting on the edge of the bed.
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He had been pronouncing blessings on these young men, but now he's moving to the posture of death.
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He's drawing his body together.
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He's preparing for this moment when life is going to escape and he is going to pass from this life into the next.
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And it says, he breathed his last and he was gathered to his people.
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The term gathered to his people, for the sake of time today, I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because I actually talked about this in several messages prior because every time a godly person dies in Genesis, it doesn't just say they died.
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It says they were gathered to their people.
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And there's two ways of looking at that.
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There is the natural expression that when a person dies, they're buried with their families and we know that's what's going to happen with Jacob.
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He's going to be buried with his family and therefore some take this as a very crassly literal thing.
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He's gathered to his people or his bones are going to be gathered with their bones.
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But I don't think that that's the intention of this.
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Neither do many commentators believe that's the intention of this.
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But rather, we see the intention of this text to reference the fact that there was a trust in the afterlife even in the lives of the early patriarchs.
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That they understood that there was something more than just this life and being gathered to his people was not just having his bones buried with their bones but rather that there was going to be a sweet and precious reunion with his loved ones at death, those who had died in faith.
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He was going to be gathered to them.
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Bruce Waltke in his commentary says this.
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He says the exceptional translations of Enoch and Elijah point to the possibility of transfer into the heavenly realm of experiencing God's presence.
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The salvific interventions of Elijah and Elisha that raised the dead show that God, not the grave, has the last word.
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If death had the last word, death would be God.
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But death does not have the last word.
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And God is supreme.
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So he breathes his last.
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He is gathered to his people.
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There's a powerful sense of finality in a last breath.
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And if you've never seen it, it is a...
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there's just nothing quite like that moment when everything changes and the body goes from life to death.
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Most people are familiar with it in the movies and they have the beeping machine and then there's that eerie tone of a long drawn-out loud tone.
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That's not what happens.
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More often what happens is the breath becomes shallow and shallow.
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And it goes from one minute to two minutes to five minutes to seven minutes to ten minutes between breaths.
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And when you think the last breath is taken, they'll go...
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and you...
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because you realize they weren't ready yet.
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And it just sometimes can take a while.
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But when the final breath does come, it's rarely pleasant because the body wants to live.
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So the body is grasping for life.
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And it can be a difficult moment for the family to watch.
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But again, I tell you it can be one of the most precious things that you can be there for so that they are not alone.
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And it does not happen behind a curtain or behind a door.
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You know, people used to die at home with their family around them.
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And now so many times people die in rooms behind doors with no one there who cares for them.
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No one there who's holding their hand.
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We should not avoid the last breath.
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If God allows us to be there, we ought to be there.
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In fact, I want to say this and I don't want to get too weird on this.
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This is the thing that makes COVID and all of the mess that went with it so damnable because people were robbed of that moment of being with their families at death.
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This is an important moment.
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This is a precious moment.
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And this is the moment that leads us to our third point.
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Because after the last breath is taken, after the body is now, the shell has been left behind, but the spirit has moved.
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And that's what the Bible says.
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The Bible says the body without the spirit is dead.
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And people say, what constitutes death? The spirit is gone.
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And the body without the spirit is dead.
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And so there lays the dead body.
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And what do we do with that? I want to credit this term.
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I always like to give credit.
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I never ever try to plagiarize, but I do like to use good material from people.
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And the term, the work of grief, actually comes from Brother Matt Decker, who is, y'all notice I had to lead worship today.
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His family, we should have prayed for them.
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And I'm sorry we didn't, but his wife is not feeling well.
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Their whole family's been sick all week.
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And I should have had their name went in the bulletin so it slipped my mind, but please pray for them.
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He had introduced me to a teaching from his former pastor on the subject of death.
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And he talked about the work of grief.
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And I never heard it that way.
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And I've taught on it many times, but I never heard that phrase.
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I want to introduce that to you, because what it is, the work of grief is the idea of actually going through the process of grieving rather than hiding ourselves from grief and trying to avoid it.
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That's what we've done today.
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Even with funerals, we don't call them funerals anymore.
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What do we call them? Celebration of life, because we don't want to face the grim reality of death.
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We don't want to have to deal with the fact that life has ceased.
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So we focus on the part of good and we don't face the part that hurts.
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And what happens is we put it off and we put it off and we put it off and it becomes a weight that crushes us.
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We have to do the work of grief.
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And it is a work.
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Notice verse 1 of chapter 50, Joseph fell on his father's face and he wept over him and he kissed him.
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Joseph is the most, one of the most godly and manly men in the Bible.
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He survived slavery, imprisonment, false accusations.
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He eluded the insidious temptation of an adulterous harlot.
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He stood fearlessly before Pharaoh, gaining second in command status.
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This dude is a man.
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And he cried more than anybody in the Bible.
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More chapters are wet with his tears than any other person in Scripture.
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He's weeping over his father's lifeless body.
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And they wept for 70 days.
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It says 40 days for embalming and 70 days of grief.
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You know one of the things that frustrates me most is when somebody goes through a time of severe grief and somebody will come to me and say, how are they doing? Have they gotten over it yet? No, they haven't gotten over it yet.
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I mean, what do you think? No, no, they haven't.
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Not at all.
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Now there is something here that we need to look at because I do think this text tells us a little something about what we do when people die that does come along with grief.
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We have to actually deal with their body.
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And the Bible does not give us a prescription for this.
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I want to be clear.
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The Bible does not give us a prescription for what we do with the body at death.
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In fact, this says they embalmed him.
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And by the way, Egyptian embalming, it took 40 days because it was this long elaborate process.
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But this is not a prescription.
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This is a description.
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You have to understand when you read the Bible, the difference between prescriptive texts and descriptive texts.
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This is not telling us that we need to embalm.
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It is telling us that embalming is okay.
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If you want to have your loved one embalmed, that's fine.
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But understand, that's not Jewish custom.
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The Jewish custom is still, even to this day, to bury the body within 24 hours, having only washed it and clothed it, putting it in a wooden casket, and putting it in a tomb that has a bottom that is open so that the body is able to go back into the ground.
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Most of what we do is not traditionally biblical in the sense embalming and viewing and all that stuff.
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It's not wrong because that's what they're doing here.
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But why is Joseph embalming his father? Because he knows it's going to be a little while before he gets him to his grave.
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So he's prepping the body in a state of stasis so it won't begin to decay and they're able to travel to Canaan and get him to where he goes.
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But there's not a prescription here.
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Here's the prescription.
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You want to know the prescription? We don't have one.
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In general, believers are buried, but that's not a have to.
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That's just the general.
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And we see that like when Moses died, God buried him.
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So there is a sense in which that's the general mode.
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But it's not the only way to do it.
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And what we have to remember is whatever we do with the body, it's not going to imperil the soul.
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Years ago, there was a man in this church.
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His name was Don.
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And this was years and years ago.
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He passed away and his family was somewhat divided over what to do with his remains, with his body.
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And the family had wanted to fulfill his wishes and his wishes was that he would be cremated.
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So they decided to fulfill his wishes and have him cremated.
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Well, one of the members of the family had married a man from the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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And I'll never forget this because I wasn't the pastor then.
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I was the associate pastor, worked with the youth group.
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And Pastor Darrell was my boss.
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He was the senior pastor.
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And so I was with him and he was the mouthpiece at the time.
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And we were standing here and in walks this dude who is wearing a vestment that looked very, very Lord of the Rings-ish, the best I can say.
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It's just long and dark and black.
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He had a giant ivory cross that emblazoned his chest.
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He had no hair from here up, but hair for days from here down.
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It was long hair down the back, but it was a chrome dome on top.
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It is what it was.
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And a long beard.
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And he walked in, had his cuffs in, you know, very serious, very somber dude.
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I remember when he saw Darrell, the pastor, he says, you may call me father.
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And he said, I ain't gonna do that.
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So it's one of the most proudest moments I had of my predecessor.
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I was like, get him, Darrell.
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We don't call each other father.
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But he began to chastise the family for choosing cremation.
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And he began to argue that they were imperiling the soul of their loved one.
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Let me tell you something.
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I don't care whether a body is burned or eaten by a shark or blown up in a bomb in Iraq.
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God is able to resurrect his own.
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The typical mode is burial.
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But if you have chosen another mode by your conscience, then may God be blessed in that.
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And here's the deal.
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Nothing we do to the body can imperil the soul.
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Or thwart God's ability to bring resurrection.
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Now, I gotta start to draw to a close.
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But I want you to notice not only do they deal with the body, they also deal with grief.
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And this brings me to really the main thrust of what I want to get out today is that the reason why death hurts and the reason why grief is as intense as it is, is because death, and beloved hear me, death is an enemy.
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It is an intruder into God's good world.
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And the reason why it doesn't feel right is because in the grand scheme of universal truths, it ain't right.
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God made men to live.
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And death is the enemy.
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The Bible says in Ecclesiastes, He has placed eternity in our hearts.
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And this is why when we see our loved one grasping for breath, and we see them take their last breath, it is a moment of sincere brokenness, because we realize this is what sin does.
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Not necessarily the sin of that individual, but this is what sin has brought into the world.
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Death came into the world because of sin.
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By one man sin came into the world, and death who sinned, and therefore death spread to all men because all sinned.
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Romans chapter 5 verse 12.
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It is an intruder.
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It is an interrupter.
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It is, I know the green people want us to say it's natural.
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You know what I'm saying.
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It's an enemy.
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Again, I want to quote Keller, he says this, Death is the great interruption tearing loved ones away from us and us from them.
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Death is the great schism ripping apart the material and immaterial parts of our being and sundering a whole person was never meant to be disembodied even for a moment.
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Death is the insult because it reminds us as Shakespeare said that we are mere worm food.
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Death is hideous and frightening and cruel and unusual.
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It is not the way life is supposed to be and our grief in the face of death acknowledges that.
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Death is our enemy more than anything.
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It makes a claim on each and every one of us pursuing us relentlessly throughout all our days.
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Why do we grieve? That's why.
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Because we're facing an unrelenting unquenchable enemy who will not be satisfied though he take us all.
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And if we don't give death its due.
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If we refuse to do the work of mourning and we sit in denial of our natural impulse to grieve.
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It will consume us like a fire.
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We must do the work of grieving people grieve differently.
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Yes, but we must not avoid it.
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I'm going to tell you something guys when somebody dies.
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The first thing we like to have is an action list, you know, I got to do this.
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I got to do this.
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I got to do this.
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I got to do this because we want to stay busy to keep our minds off the grief and I got to say I know why we have that propensity.
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But let me tell you something.
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You don't need a list at death.
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You need to grieve at death.
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Are there things that have to happen? Yes, but don't occupy your mind so much that you don't get around to doing the grieving.
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Because if you do that you're just putting off the inevitable weight that will crush you in the end.
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Now verses 4 to 14.
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I'm not going to walk through every verse and give an exposition of it.
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But I do want to mention verses 4 to 14 teach us something else about grief.
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Because notice it says that it took 70 days of grief in Egypt.
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40 days of embalming another 30 days of continued grief.
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So they've already grieved for, I'm bad at math, two months, three, two, whatever.
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They've grieved for 70 days.
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And now they're headed to Canaan.
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And this entourage goes with them from Egypt.
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Goes with them to Canaan.
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In fact it's such an impressive entourage that when they get there the Canaanites watch them grieve.
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They say man this must be something big.
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This must be a truly important Egyptian death because these people are grieving.
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But you notice they're still grieving.
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They are still grieving.
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The initial shock of the death has passed.
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But the grieving continues.
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That's something that we often miss.
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Grief is not something you get over.
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Grief is something you learn to adjust your life to.
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But you don't get over it.
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That's the thing that people, have they gotten over it yet? No they haven't.
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And they're not going to.
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They're going to have a new normal.
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They're going to have a new life.
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They're going to adjust to this pain.
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And that's what they're going to have.
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Not are they going to go from grief to not grief.
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No they're going to learn how to live their life in light of this new grief.
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And it will not just simply go away.
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They're never going to stop missing that person.
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They're never going to forget that person.
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Memories are going to come into their minds.
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One of the things I prepare people when I talk to people who are going through grief.
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I tell them one of the things that's going to happen and this is inevitable.
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One day you're going to have ugly crying in a Walmart.
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Because you're going to be in Walmart.
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And you're going to see something that your loved one really would have liked to have.
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Maybe it's a box of cookies or it's a toy.
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Or maybe it's something that they really enjoyed.
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And you're going to say, hey I bet he would have loved this.
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And in that moment that flood of loss is going to happen again.
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And you're going to find yourself all alone crying in a store.
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Why? Because that hole is still there.
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And the sadness is still there.
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And the brokenness is still there.
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And that happens.
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And you could feel ashamed for that but you shouldn't.
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You should not feel ashamed of your grief.
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And that's the point.
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We're still doing the work of grief.
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These people in this text even months later are still doing the work of grief.
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It is truly unfortunate that our society has gotten so far removed from the subject of death.
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That we no longer believe that it could be spoken about in polite company.
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Beloved we must do that.
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We must be prepared for death.
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Not only our own but for those who we love.
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Because it is something which we will not escape.
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If you have your Bible still open turn to one last verse.
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And this will be where we close.
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Turn to the book of Ecclesiastes.
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And go to chapter 7.
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Go to verse 2.
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Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 2.
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It is better to go to the house of mourning.
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Than to go to the house of feasting.
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For this is the end of all mankind.
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And the living will lay it to heart.
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The writer of Ecclesiastes says it's better to go to the funeral home.
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Than the steak house.
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But why? Notice he doesn't say it's more fun.
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Because it ain't more fun.
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He says it's better.
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Because it reminds us of our eternity.
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We will all die.
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And when we go to the house of mourning.
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It reminds us of that reality.
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As I wrote many years ago.
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And I still quote it to this day.
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Death comes to the old and to the young.
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Death comes to the weak and to the strong.
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Royal doors cannot block death's entrance.
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Money cannot bribe death away.
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10 out of every 10 people die.
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So the book of Psalms chapter 90 tells us.
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Number our days.
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That we may get a heart of wisdom.
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Back in chapter 23.
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I talked about the death of Abraham's wife.
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And I said this.
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No person looks forward to grief.
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But we all have it coming.
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No one is exempt from participation.
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It is a required course in the school of life.
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And none of us knows when the next semester is going to begin.
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Are you prepared? I got to tell you this.
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If you don't have Jesus Christ.
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You're not prepared.
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Either for facing death.
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Or for your own.
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If you have the Lord Jesus Christ.
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If you have trusted in him.
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Then you can face death.
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With the certainty that God is sovereign.
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And he's working all things together for the good of those who love him.
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You can face death with that type of comfort.
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Even in the midst of your grief.
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You will have the sovereignty of God.
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And the love of God.
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Which gives you the peace.
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Which passes understanding.
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If you have Christ.
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But if you don't.
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When death comes to call.
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And he will.
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Death will come to call.
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You will have nothing.
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In which to hope.
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Or to find comfort.
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And the same is true for your own.
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If you face death outside of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You will face death in sin.
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And you will face death with no possibility of salvation.
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Because there is no salvation in any other.
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For there is no other name under heaven given among men.
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By which we must be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So I call you today.
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If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You are not ready for death.
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And it is a certainty.
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So I encourage you.
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Don't keep putting Christ off.
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You don't know how much time you have left.
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Let's pray.
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Father I thank you for your word.
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And I thank you for reminding us today.
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About giving death its due.
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Lord I pray that you would give us.
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A heart of trust in you.
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During this time of sincere difficulty in our church.
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And grief in one of our beloved families.
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I pray Lord that we would all.
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Mourn with those who mourn.
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And place our faith in you.
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Lord if there are those here who don't know Christ.
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Especially Lord.
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Lord those who might think that they do.
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But they have been.
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They have been living a lie.
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Lord that today might be a day where they are confronted.
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With the reality.
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That no man will escape death.
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But we can escape the consequences.
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Only through the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And we can have life forever through him.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.