Dealing with the Body at Death

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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I do think this text tells us a little something about what we do when people die that does come along with grief.

00:08

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 wanna 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.

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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 gonna 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 wanna know the prescription? We don't have one.

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In general, believers are buried, but that's not a have to, 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, 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, his name was Don, 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, and Pastor Daryl 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 was 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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Just is what it was.

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And a long beard.

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And he walked in, had his cuffs in, very serious, very somber dude.

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I remember when he saw Daryl, 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 was one of the most proudest moments I had of my predecessor.

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I was like, get him, Daryl.

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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.