Funerals are important…

 

Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days. And 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, there shall you bury me.” Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father. Then I will return.’ ” And Pharaoh answered, “Go up, and bury your father, as he made you swear.” So Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, 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. Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company. When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days. 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.” Therefore the place was named Abel-mizraim; it is beyond the Jordan. Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them, for his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place. 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. (Genesis 50:1–14)

This passage is about grief and the extent of a family to mourn the loss of their father. In my life right now, it touches me two ways. One is that two of our friends died this month. One funeral happened and it was an incredible blessing to review the life of a man who loved and served God. The second one will be later, but it will happen. This man’s life also honored the Lord, and the event will also.

However, many deaths have the notation “No funeral” in the obituary. This is sad. It is usually the desire of the person who died, perhaps thinking it saves the family costs, or pain, or whatever, yet even the least loved family member will be missed and a funeral gives the living an opportunity to say goodbye, and to think about their own lives and deaths. Just a quick “he’s gone, move on” avoids the importance of pondering life.

The second way I’m touched is because I’ve been thinking about my own demise. Being ill does that. Yesterday was sleep, eat, sleep, as has been most of today. The odd thing is that my vitals are normal: pulse, blood pressure, blood oxygen, etc. but this cough will not go away and I am exhausted, with little appetite and no ambition. 

Not certain of the days ahead, the consequences could involve a funeral. Is it vain to suppose my family would mourn? I hope not. What I do want is Jesus to be glorified. The faith of the OT saints and those who currently loved and served Jesus means they are now with their Maker and enjoying eternal life. A funeral, done well, should let the living know that Jesus died for their sins, was buried, and rose again — to give us eternal life. The burying place does not matter, nor does the way I’ve lived or served God. What matters is that Jesus lives and that because He is alive, I will also live with Him forever.

Jesus, while illness makes me think of the end of life, You put that on my heart more than fifty years ago and granted faith to trust You — for all of this life and for what comes next. I want others to know of Your love and faithfulness, not just drop out of sight without being a witness to Your gift of eternal life.

Death Destroyed

 

We watch many television shows that depict justice for a crime or other evil activities. One series hasn’t reached the end where the culprit is found and justice is served. I find that unsettling and want to ‘read the last page’ and put the story to rest.

These stories involve death and the power of death is evident in the fear and anguish it causes. This week a family we know experienced a miscarriage. Even thought that child had not been born, its death caused a deep sorrow. Death is the final enemy, at least without Jesus it would be.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

Christ broke the one who held that power. Satan was not crushed, at least not then, but when Jesus conquered death, that rude enemy lost his great weapon. He still uses lies to mess with human minds, but Jesus exposes lies too. He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) This means that He covers all that Satan throws at us. Jesus provides Himself as the way to God. He is truth that overcomes all Satan’s lies. And He is the life that beat death and removes our fear of it.

The Bible says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19) This is a sharp word to those who think that believing in God is all that is needed to enter heaven. It also shows that Satan knows about sin, punishment, and that all people without Christ will die and be out of God’s presence forever. He wants to deceive people about these things so they die without taking Christ’s offer of eternal life through faith. His lies include: “You are a good person and okay” and “God loves people too much to punish them” and “Death is the end, nothing after it.”

To remove the power of lies and death from Satan, God sent Christ into the world, declaring He is the way, the truth, the life. With faith in Him and His Word, the enemy’s weapons are useless.

Jesus proves it by His life, His words, how He takes care of His people, but mostly by conquering death. He boldly declared to His disciples:

Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. (John 14:19)

Death then is not an enemy. Instead, it is our final release from sin and battling the devil’s and ushering us into the presence of our Lord where we can say: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

PRAY: There are days, Lord, when the idea of death puts me into stress. I feel ‘not ready’ but not because my spiritual business is missing, but because I have so much that I’d like to do or get done before I go. That says something about my value system. Shed light or whatever is needed so the stress is gone.

PONDER: MacArthur suggested reading part of 1 Corinthians 15 to think about today. The last verse is light for me: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58) Whatever gets done will have value. The rest does not matter.

 

 

The Greatest Story ever told . . .

 

READ Mark 13–16

Mark writes concisely. He leaves the other gospel writers and our imagination to add details. I’m told that at least one movie portrayed the events of these chapters in vivid scenes. I’m glad I didn’t see them. It is better to let the Holy Spirit feed me what He wants me to visualize. Today, it is the suffering, not only the physical which I can scarcely imagine, but the anguish that Jesus experienced during all of it.

Jesus warned His disciples, but they didn’t get it. His enemies wanted to kill Him yet He was innocent of any wrong-doing. A woman “did what she could” and anointed Him for His death; she ‘got it’ but they criticized her for it.

He was betrayed by one of His followers. He told them they would deny Him and they denied that they would do it, but they did. Even in His darkest hour of prayer, they fell asleep, and one of them led His enemies to that sacred place of His yielded prayer and had Him arrested.

The trial was a travesty of justice. Pilate knew better, but his position was more important than doing the right thing. The soldiers mocked Jesus, made fun of the One who created them and gave them each breath to live. He was nailed to a cross. He did control His dying — “He breathed his last” — this One who gives life and breath to everyone. A centurion saw it and declared, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” Life itself died.

They put Him in a tomb, a cave-like dark place with a large stone rolled in front of its opening — to keep people out or to keep Jesus in? The stone was not enough, nor the tomb, nor the spear in His side. This God-man had the power to give up life and also had the power to breathe again.

My heart doctor agrees that there are mysteries that cannot be explained, like the fact that a transplanted, inert heart placed in a human body and rightly hooked up will start beating all by itself. Such is the power of life, of the Lord God who is live, of Jesus who is God and who came to life from being dead and alone in a dark tomb.

I sat and cried reading this again, and marveled. This is the One that I worship, that I owe my life to, not just the life that came at conception, and showed itself at that first cry when I was born, but the life that I now have as a reborn child of God, a life that will never die. Like Jesus, the body will go into a tomb, but it will not stay dead. Eternal life cannot be destroyed. Jesus proved it.

The women came, oblivious. They intended to anoint His body, but He was not there. The angel said, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mark 16:6–7)

What joy, what wonder. He had to appear to them or they would have left with unbelief and only their mourning. He met two on a road, “and beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27) After that, He appeared several times, to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers at one time. (see 1 Corinthians 15:5–6) Their surprise reveals that this was not a deluded wishful thinking. Their lives were changed. History was changed.

Mark ends with a section that some Bibles note did not appear in some of the earliest manuscripts. Even so, it describes what other Scriptures verify. Jesus told the eleven what He tells all who have faith in Him: we must go into the world and proclaim the gospel to all creation. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Believers will be accompanied with evidence, and the last two verses affirm this is true:

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs. (Mark 16:19–20)

This is the bottom line: tell others what Jesus did and does. He will confirm it to those who hear. It may not be received by some yet history declares that this God-man changed the world, and my life, by dying when we should have been the recipients of God’s wrath and making His eternal life available to all who believe.