The Sanctity of Life
Lesson 1: Life is Sacred in its Beginning
We have lost what it means to be sacred in our society. Sacred is defined by Noah Webster as blessed, divine, Holy, Hallowed, and sanctified. The word sacred is not in our King James Bible, but the principle is found from Genesis 1:1 thru Revelation 22:21. The word blessed is found 302 times in your Bible. Something sacred is also divine, “Godly”. Something sacred is Holy. The word Holy is found a little over 600 times in your Bible. God declared many things sacred. Something sacred is Hallowed. This is a good Bible word. Something Hallowed is “set apart” for God. Something sacred is sanctified by God. So, I am concerned that we have lost sacredness in our society and probably in our world. There seems to be nothing sacred. I thought about that as I was working on this message. Churches used to be sacred. Some of you older folks can remember when we never locked churches, we did not have to, because churches were sacred. Hoodlums left them alone because they were sacred. There is nothing sacred anymore. Some things were sacred and they were respected and honored. We have lost that in society. We have lost the sacredness! I have come to expect that in a lost world. We have also lost the sacredness of things in our churches. Inside, what we would call Christianity or Christendom, I think a large part of that is because we have failed to discern that there are only two possibilities of life. Life should be sacred to each one of us. Life can only be sacred to you if you recognize it comes from divine creation. There are only two possibilities of the origin of life in any form. Whether it be our lives as human beings, whether it be animal life, plant life, any kind of life that is in existence is here only because of divine creation or spontaneous generation. There are no other origins. Life was divinely created by an all-powerful being or life just spontaneously generated out of nothing. Spontaneous generation is defined as inorganic matter (i.e. rock) becoming
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organic (i.e. life). Part of the problem we have today is that for the last 120 years since Charles Darwin wrote the book “Origin of the Species”, we have slowly but surely been deceived that there is such a thing as evolution. What evolution does is take away the sacredness of life because nothing is sacred. You are not here because God created you, you are here just by random chance. You’re not special, you’re just chance. Now we have allowed evolution to be taught, unfortunately, to a couple or three generations that evolution is absolutely true and it is not true. The greatest damage evolution has done is that it has taken away anything that is sacred, anything that is Holy. So nothing is sacred because we are just here by chance. It is important that we as a church and as Christians understand we are here by divine creation and life is sacred. Life is holy, it is hallowed, it is sanctified. It is important that we teach our children and grandchildren and this generation the sacredness of life. Life is sacred. Number one, because of its beginning. You see this in Genesis, chapter one, verses 26 and 27 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Now, I want you to notice God created everything that is living, actually, in those two verses you have the last thing God created as far as life is concerned. If you read the verses earlier in the book of Genesis you’ll find that God created the plant life first. God just spoke it into existence and the Earth brought forth the plant life. Then God created the fowl of the air and the fish. God just spoke them into existence to come out of the oceans and out of the seas. Then God created the animal life and just spoke all of that into existence, but then God created man unique. The life that we have as human beings is sacred because it is divinely created. We are not here by accident. We are not here by
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some spontaneous generation which is a scientific impossibility for anything to spontaneously generate. We are here because God created us specifically. Now look at Genesis chapter 2 verse 7. I want you to notice what it says. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, andbreathedintohisnostrilsthebreathoflife;andmanbecamealivingsoul.” Now,Iwant you to notice there is a sacredness of life because God did something unique and very special with man that He did not do with anything else He created. If you study the rest of creation, God simply spoke it into existence and it came forth because God spoke it into existence. But when it came to man, God already said let us make man in our image and after our likeness. That is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the great triune God, said I am going to make man like myself. God formed man literally out of the dust of the Earth with His own hands. Then God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul. God formed Adam’s flesh out of the dust of the ground. Adam had a soul, and by the way, nothing else has a soul. I know that really chaffs a lot of people this day and age but animals do not have a soul. Then God breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, an inner man. Now, I want you to notice something else in chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” God now gives man a choice, a heart, a mind. You find now that we are a three part being just like God and life is precious, it is sacred, it is holy. Every person that has ever been created by God has life and is precious, sacred. I am afraid that we have allowed that sacredness to be taken from us by this heresy of evolution. It almost permeates every part of society, it permeates a lot of Christianity. I think it is important in the hour in which we live to combat this heresy with truth. God has actually raised up a couple of things. The Ark built in
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Kentucky is combatting evolution. The Creation Museum is combatting evolution and God has raised these folks up to make awareness of all the evolutionary dribble and that is what it is, dribble! But we have been deceived by evolution. It is amazing how almost everything in life is somehow or another no longer precious. It’s no longer special. I will show you how we have been deceived into evolution. How many times have you heard someone say, “Well, it’s the quality of life that is important”. Where do you find that in the Bible? Life has quality just because you are breathing, because your heart is beating, not because you have some evolutionary idea like “survival of the fittest”. This philosophy says only the best are fit to survive and will survive. You want to know why we have a society that thinks it’s ok to commit abortion, because it believes in evolution, it believes life is no longer important, but “the quality” of life is. It’s amazing how many folk now look at quality of life, not sacred life. A young couple first gets married and that’s the way it ought to be, first, then get with child and are told by a doctor there is a problem with the child and it will probably be better for this child if you abort the child. It’s because they believe in evolution where the life of this child is not “precious”. Anyone who thinks like that does not get their thinking from God. They do not believe that God created life and that life is precious. It comes from the idea that life is somehow just a “chance”. And you hear that the best thing you can do is abort that child. I have a grandson. My daughter Leigh Ann and her husband Lucas had our little Waylon and he was born with Spina Bifida. The first children’s hospital they were referred to and the first doctor that they saw said the best thing you ought to do is abort this baby. I want you to think about that. How can they say that? It’s because they don’t believe that life is precious, that it is important, that it is sacred. Lucas and Leigh Ann said they couldn’t get out of there fast enough! I am very proud of them. You understand that? You see we have been deceived into this premise of
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“quality”. I am going to help you with something if you’ll let me. The Bible is going to help you. Life is sacred, life is Holy, life is Hallowed, life is sanctified. Who has the right to decide which life has quality? Who has that right? You see, God created life. There was a time God created each life and a time for each life to fulfill a purpose God created it for and when it has fulfilled that purpose God will take that life. But we have somehow or another in Christianity been deceived into this evolutionary philosophy that if life does not have “quality” that it should be ended. Euthanasia is gaining a foothold in America. In some countries it has gained a foothold. Euthanasia is now allowed in many countries. Both Belgium and the Netherlands allow children to be euthanized. I want you to think about how ungodly that is. I want you to think about how life means nothing to them. How does this happen? We have allowed evolution to be taught that life is not sacred and we are just here by chance. You think the teaching of evolution somehow doesn’t affect things. Sure, it does. It affects everything in life. It affects your outlook, especially on life itself. And it starts with a premise that life is not sacred. It is sacred! Every life is sacred! And if you are deceived into this thinking, this evolutionary theory, that some life has more quality than others then you have been deceived into a lie promoted by Satan. And if you are deceived into this lie that your life has less quality now than it once did or there might be a time that your life has no quality so it might be best if somebody killed you or allowed you to die. You have been deceived into something that is unholy, ungodly, and you have no basis for this lie in the pages of the Word of God. And you have headed down a path that opens up for what they passed in other countries, the euthanizing of people. I want you to understand that in the beginning life was sacred because God created it, special, unique, hallowed it, set it apart, gave us a soul, gave us the ability to think and reason and choose right or wrong. And life ought to be sacred, it ought to be sacred in every respect to you and me. It ought
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to be understood that every life is sacred, no matter who it is or what stage of their life they’re in. And it ought to be treated with sacredness. There’s a great truth in that. It doesn’t matter if it’s my life or your life, you ought to treat your own life as sacred in the eyes of God. It should mean something to you that God has given you the gift of life. It should be precious and holy to you. It ought to be precious to you that God has given somebody else the same gift He has given you, which is life and it ought to be sacred. Their life is as sacred as yours. This is really what is going on in the account of the good Samaritan. The Samaritan thought the life of the guy which fell among thieves was as sacred as his own life. Those other folks didn’t think he was sacred. He was useless. You see the truth of the matter is Satan wants to create this thought that life is not sacred. You’re just here by chance and if it’s not got the right quality you ought to just end it. If you allow that thinking to even begin to edge into your mind it’ll begin to invade the decisions you make and the things you do, with your family and with your own life. Life is sacred in its beginning. Life is sacred in conception. In Psalm 139, I want you to notice something about conception. You see we have been deceived into this evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. By the way, he wasn’t the one who came up with the theory, he was just the one that popularized it. He was the one who put it in print and gained notoriety. But because of this theory of evolution, we have come to the point as a society where we have accepted that abortion is a choice, but it’s a sacred life that you are taking. Psalm 139, verse 13 says, “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” Now, I want you to notice there is a principle that starts here that says, “From the time that I was in the womb I am sacred. God already possessed my reins. God already had a purpose for my life and my direction when I was in the womb, God already had purpose in conception.” There are all kinds of things being fought over in our nation. Our state and several other states have tried to pass laws called
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Personhood laws. You may misunderstand what is going on with these laws. What they are trying to say is that a person is a person at conception and so therefore abortion is wrong. You understand what they are trying to pass? You understand why the evolutionary crowd has fought so hard for abortion is because if they allow the law to be passed it says that a person in the womb is a person, and therefore they have rights. They have the right to life, you can’t kill them, you understand that. I’m afraid sometimes as Christians we sit back and act like this doesn’t matter, but boy it sure matters to God. And you find that in the womb God possessed the reins and God says you have life in the womb and its sacred life, its holy life, its hallowed life, its sanctified life, its divine life that God gave. Now watch verse 14, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” Now verse 14 is one of these verses you need to grasp. Every human being that is conceived in the womb is fearfully and wonderfully made. And whenever you are deceived into evolutionary theory, that it’s just chance, then you also are deceived into this philosophy that says if a child is going to have some handicap, going to have some difficulty in life and the quality of life will not be good so it would be better for this child to not even exist. Now they’re not going to call it a child because that still bothers your conscience no matter how callous you are. But the truth of the matter is God says every child is fearfully and wonderfully made. Now think about that. God created it and so therefore that life is sacred. And some arrogant evolutionist says that your life is not as important as my life. Your life isn’t as important as somebody else’s life. The quality of your life would be less than his life so your life shouldn’t live. If you’ve never understood abortion in that manner, that is how you need to understand it. Or, you need to understand as if someone says, well it’s not really a life and it would create problems in my life so I’m just going to kill it. But God says, when I create the life in the womb it is fearfully and wonderfully made.
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And the Psalmist says that my soul knoweth right well. Part of the problem is we don’t know it right well and we allowed evolution to take such hold we even have to combat it in our churches as to whether or not life is sacred and holy and it shouldn’t even be a question among Christians. Any type of Christianity, no matter where you’re from should stand for the sacredness of life. Now read verse 15, “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” Verse 15 is talking about the development of the child in the womb and how that God created it and curiously wrought it and what He did with it, by the way if you look at that verse you’ll understand it says that my substance was not hid from thee. God knew what that child would be. He knew what I would be, He knew what you’d be, He knew what every child would be and He made it perfect and He made it fearfully and wonderfully and sacredly. And there it is, and yet we have this evolutionary theory that has so invaded and pervaded our society that we just accept it and it’s ok and it should never be ok to you and me. That life is not sacred, not just that of a child in the womb, but no matter how old someone is, if their life has lost what the world would say is value or quality, it is still sacred to God. That ought to be important in your eyes and mine. Now keep reading this text. Verse 16 says, “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” The Psalmist says you know what, God wrote everything down about me in His book. Isn’t that a great truth! God already had it written down. God did!!! Just like God created Adam and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, God creates the life in the womb and God says this is something I created and I’m writing it down and it’s sacred. But we’ve lost it. It was sacred in the beginning when He created it and its sacred now. Verse 17 says, “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” You know that’s sacredness. He’s
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saying, you know what, when God created me, He had great and precious thoughts and He does to every soul that is conceived in the womb. And if you and I look at life the way God does, it is sacred from conception until God takes it home. It’s sacred. Let us look at another passage. I want you to open your Bible to Luke chapter 1. As I was thinking about all of this and putting all of this together, Luke chapter 1 is one of these passages which declare life is sacred in the womb. There are a couple of things that happen in Luke chapter 1 that’s unique and special with birth. The first thing that happens is the conception of John the Baptist. Zacharias and Elisabeth are well up in years and actually they are both past child-bearing age. Zacharias, as a priest, is going into the temple to light the incense, which doesn’t take a long time. While he is in there doing his office, the angel Gabriel appears to him and tells him his wife is going to have a child and he argues with him. Then John the Baptist is conceived miraculously. By the way, I have thought about the fact that Elisabeth was well past child-bearing age. In the hour in which we live, they would recommend her getting an abortion because it would be hard on her to have child. Do you understand that? Because the quality of her life is going to be affected by this other life, they would make that decision. They would also tell her that because of her age, the probability of that child being deformed or having some problem is great, so therefore, they might as well end it. The second child that is conceived in chapter 1 is six months later. After John the Baptist has already been conceived the angel Gabriel is sent to a virgin named Mary and tells her she is the chosen vessel, that she is going to carry the Christ child. By the way, there are a lot in our society today that would tell an unmarried woman the best thing for you to do is have an abortion. Both of these women would have been told in our society that the life that you have in your womb is not special, it’s not sacred, it’s just a problem to be gotten rid of. You know why? We do not look at it and say “that is wrong”. We don’t see the wickedness of it. We have been
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so inundated with evolutionary theory and we have seen so much of it we sort of act like its ok, and It’s not. It is something we ought to teach against, it is something we ought to say loudly and it’s something we ought to say to our children and we ought to make sure, at least in Christianity, we’re teaching the truth. I want you to notice that six months after the conception of John the Baptist in verse number 44, Mary comes to see Elisabeth. Elisabeth had hidden herself since she conceived and now her cousin Mary has been told by God that Elisabeth has conceived a child, that she is in the sixth month and she comes to see Elisabeth. In verse 44 Elisabeth is speaking after Mary comes in. “For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.” What a great passage of scripture. You see this was a baby in the womb. I remember when I was in high school and we had a debate in English class on abortion. They kept on trying to say, “Well, it’s just a mass of cells.” Scientifically speaking that’s all you and I are, just a mass of cells. When you are deceived by this evolutionary theory that in order for life to be worth something it must have quality, you have been deceived into something that is unscriptural, unholy and ungodly, because life is sacred and God gave it. So in the beginning it was sacred when God created Adam with His own hands and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living soul. God gave him a choice and made him unique, Adam was sacred. When God took one of Adam’s ribs and made Eve and brought her to Adam, Eve was sacred and holy. He gave them something special and unique. And every time a child is conceived it is sacred and holy. So, number one, life is sacred from the beginning and this is something we’ve lost in our society. The only way we are ever going to get it back is if we endeavor to once again very strongly teach our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, the generation we live in now, that the evolutionary theory is a lie and that life is sacred. Number one, in its beginning, life is sacred.
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Lesson two: Life is Sacred in the Living.
Life is sacred in Living!!! The life each of us has now is sacred, the moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Living life day by day should be considered sacred to every person.
In our own life and the lives of others, God has given sacred life. The first text is Revelation 4:8- 11. 8 And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. 9 And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, 10 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Now I want you to notice verse number eleven, our text verse, for what I’m trying to teach. I want you to notice it says, 11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Now it may seem like a strange passage to use as a text for the sacredness of life and living but the Lord Jesus Christ created each one of us, not for our purpose but for His pleasure. There’s a great truth. His pleasure is His purpose. We must understand Jesus created us for Himself. He created us, He created all life for His own pleasure. You see we get this idea that God created us for ourselves. We think God created us for our own pleasure and for what we want to do. That’s not what God created us for. He created everything for His own pleasure. Now life is sacred in the beginning and it should be sacred in the living of that life. From the time we are born until we either die or are raptured out of here, life should be sacred. And it is. We ought to view life as something that is sacred, holy, divine, hallowed and sanctified. It is s omething God created that is priceless and you
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cannot put a price on it. You cannot value life. Just the fact we’re alive ought to mean
something, not just to ourselves but others. So, in this text I just want to bring out the fact that life is sacred, and God has a purpose for life. His purpose for life is not for us to just try to fulfill our own desires or our own pleasures. You’ll find the greatest peace that you can have in life, the greatest contentment is to yield to God, and be what God wants you to be and do what God wants you to do. You’ll find He has a purpose and so your life is sacred to God. I’ve got several things I am going to look at. Number one, God has a desire to give life to everyone. Now I know that might sound paradoxical but I want you to go to John chapter three with me. In John chapter three we are going to read verses 1-8. God has a desire to give to each one of us life, twofold life, one physical and the other spiritual. So in John chapter three we begin reading in verse number one. 1 There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:
2 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.
3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? 5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. 8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. This particular passage has both types of life. You see God wants you and I to understand, that He desires to give to every person sacred life. Now, it may seem sort of elementary in this passage but if we are alive physically,
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God gave us that life. We already saw God gave life in conception and God gave life in its beginning. Here we find Jesus said, that you must be born again. Well, there is the first birth which is the flesh, the physical, born of water. This sacred life God gave you. Our lives are sacred to God and ought to be sacred to us. I ought to look at birth as sacred. Someone living tonight is sacred, no matter who they are. I should look at my own life as sacred. You ought to look at your own life as sacred. We ought to look at the lives of others as being sacred, because God created them. But not only that, God says not only does He want to give you physical life, He wants you to be born again, and wants you to have spiritual life. And really this is what makes the sacredness complete. We must come to the point where we recognize we are sinners and we have corrupted this sacred life which God has given to us, by sin. But Jesus died for us on Calvary and paid our sin debt and Jesus wants to give us eternal life or spiritual life, being born again. Now that life is sacred. It is something God gave, it is holy, hallowed. I’m afraid sometimes we live our life and we don’t look at it that way. We live our lives without understanding what Jesus said to Nicodemus, what He is saying to you. Nicodemus must understand that life is sacred. I’ve got a purpose for your life. I’ve got something I want to do with your life. I want to bless your life, I want to encourage you, I want to lift you up I want to give you sacred life. And so, we need to see life as God views life, sacred. God has a desire to give us life. I know people are constantly looking for something in this world to give them satisfaction. Something to give them peace. Well, that is what Jesus Christ is saying here, I’ve got something for you. I’ve created you; I’ve given you physical life, and Nicodemus no matter what else you’re doing, “ye must be born again.” There is a sacred life, there is a fulfilled life, a holy life, a hallowed life and God has this life for every person. It’s an offer. He will not force it but he offers it. So, Nicodemus has sacred life offered to him just like you and I do. So, number
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one God desires your life to be sacred in the living. Number two, God wants everyone to come to Himself and have life. In II Peter 3:8-9 God gives an invitation for all to come and have life. Not just life but sacred life. This passage declares that our lives are sacred and we must be hallowed, holy, divine, sanctified. 8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Notice God says that He wants to give you life. God doesn’t want any to perish. He doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, although there are millions that have gone to hell and millions that are going to go to hell. This is a very sad truth. But they are not there because God wanted them to go, it wasn’t predetermined that they would go. There is no such thing as this Calvinistic theory of predestination that God determined some to be saved and some to be lost. That is an unscriptural, ungodly, unholy doctrine, there is no Bible for it. God wants everyone to be saved because God looks at every life as being sacred, it’s valuable. It is something that God created! God is not willing that any should perish. Often times we wonder why God gives so much mercy and grace to people that are so wicked. It’s because God loves them, and Jesus died for them and He does not want them to go to a Christless eternity, to be thrown into the lake of fire for all eternity. He gives them chance after chance after chance to be saved because He is not willing that any should perish. Isn’t that a great truth? You see how sacred life is to God in this passage. Sometimes people say that they don’t know why God is being slack about punishment. He’s not slack. He is not slack as you and I count slackness. It’s mercy that God has extended, because He doesn’t want anyone to perish. Because life is sacred to God. While they’re living, this life is sacred. It’s not that God is ok with the sin. It’s not that God’s not going to deal with
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it. It’s that God sees life as sacred; He is not willing that any should perish. He wants us all to
come to repentance. So, we find here God wants to give life to all. I want to deal with the physical life a little bit with another text. I want you to go to John chapter 10. Oftentimes in this life, I as a Pastor deal with folks whose lives are just weighted down with the burdens and cares of this life. No doubt if you just listen to the news it is going to make you feel like life isn’t worth living with all that’s happening. Listen, mankind has always had all kinds of problems since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. I mean since they committed the original sin in the garden of Eden, all kinds of problems now exist . It’s always been that way. But God has always and God still considers life sacred. God wants to offer to those that will come to Him in this life, an abundant life. Now notice John 10:7-11. 7 Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.11Iamthegoodshepherd:thegoodshepherdgivethhislifeforthesheep. Iwant you to notice that Christ says here, that He wants you to have abundant life. He wants you to find out that he is the door and He wants you to come in. Did you notice the phrase, in verse 9, “shall go in and out and find pasture.” He says that He wants you to have abundant life. You know what God is saying? He’s saying, He created you and gave you physical life. He wants you to have eternal life, and come to Him because life is sacred. But He wants to give you something in this life that is an abundant life. Now that doesn’t mean that God wants everyone to be billionaires or millionaires. That’s not what He is saying. He wants you to recognize there is a sacredness in life and that you can find a place of contentment in life. And by the way, it is
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an abundant life. It is something that cannot be bought, cannot be earned, and cannot be forced.
He says, that He is the door and if you’re going to have this abundant life, you have to get it through Jesus Christ. You won’t get it through anything else. You’re only going to get it through Christ. And once you have this abundant life, which is a sacred life that God wants to give, you’ll find something that makes life worth living. You’ll be able to find pasture, go in and out. You say, preacher, does that mean life won’t have any problems? I didn’t say that and that is not what this passage is saying. He’s just saying that you’ll have an abundant life that you’ll see a purpose for life and you’ll have contentment in your heart that makes life worth living. By the way, you’re going to have problems. We’re going to have problems, all kinds of problems. As you get older you’re going to have problems physically. Sometimes you’re going to have problems with people. Sometimes you’re going to have problems with your own flesh. You’re going to have all kinds of problems. But you know what, life is sacred and if you come to Christ in the midst of all of that, it is an abundant life, and no matter what is going on you can have contentment. Because life is sacred. You say, you just don’t understand what kind of problems I have. Listen, I’m old enough now, I’ve lived long enough that I’ve had some problems. I’ve got some problems now, and the truth I learned a long time ago. There is an abundant life in Christ. And those problems are not something that should pervade my life. I have a sacred life. You ought to recognize you have a sacred life. God has given you something that is worth living. So instead of focusing on the problems and where you think that things aren’t good and something is bad, focus on the fact God created you and He’s got a purpose for you and He’s got great peace which far outweighs whatever Satan is doing in your life. He wants to give you abundant life. One of the things I have done through the years is to find people who have abundant life and learn from those people. I mean, they always have problems; nobody doesn’t have them.
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But if I’m going to try as a Christian I need to see that life is sacred. So, the life that God has
given me is sacred. Revelation 4:11 says that God created me for a purpose. In John chapter 3 and II Peter chapter 3, I find that God wants me to have abundant life. That doesn’t mean I won’t have problems. But it does mean that in the midst of life I recognize God has a purpose for me and I’m where I’m at. And so, whatever problems are there, just sit back and see the power of God to work through them. Do not be discouraged, do not be downcast, and do not be discontent. Just in being content with where you are and with what’s going on, you’ll find an abundant life. I find people all the time that are just discontented with life. I deal with it every day. Sometimes they’re discontented with their family, sometimes they’re discontented with their job, they’re discontented with the church, and they want everyone to know how discontented they are and how wronged they’ve been. You know what, that life is not abundant. But then I see folks that have got an abundant life. You wouldn’t know they had a care in the world. If you sit down and start talking to them, you’d say I didn’t know you had that kind of sickness in your family. I didn’t know you had that kind of heartache. Well, I’ve got a great God. Look at what God’s done for me. You see the difference is looking at life and seeing that God has created a sacred life for you. Everybody has problems. Everybody has disappointments. And if that is all you focus on, it is going to take away the joy of living. It is going to take away the sacredness of life and it shouldn’t. As a child of God, you should rejoice and, again I say, rejoice. You say, I have all kinds of problems, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t. The truth of the matter is, I find that God wants to give abundant life. Now I want to show you something else along those same lines. Matthew chapter 11 is a very familiar passage of scripture, but I want you to see something that you probably know well, but I want you to look at something about God wanting to give abundant life. Matthew chapter 11:28-30. 28 Come unto
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me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Listen, there is an abundant life that is a sacred life that God wants to give you but you know what you have to do, you have to come to Christ. And you not only have to come to him. Look at this text and see what He says. 28 Come unto me, all ye thatlabourandareheavyladen,andIwillgiveyourest. IhavetobelievethatJesusisableto give me rest with all the burdens that I have, not just part of them. But how does he do that? Look at verse 29. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; Now listen, He didn’t say just come to me and tell me what your problems are and I’ll give you the desires of your heart. That’s not what He said. He didn’t say come to me and tell me what’s wrong and I’ll do it your way. That’s not what He said. He said, listen, if you’re heavy laden and you’re burdened down, you come to me and you take My yolk upon you, you yolk yourself up with me and then you let Me teach you what to do. Not that you do what you feel like. What I feel like is irrelevant when I put on the yolk of Christ. Because now I am yolked up with Christ, and by the way, He is going to lead me in the way He wants me to go and if I’m yolked with Him it’s no longer Mike’s will, it’s Jesus’s will. And if you will yolk up with Jesus, it’s no longer you, it’s Him. Then He will teach you what to do and what not to do. And, by the way, pride is now gone out the window. Self-desire and self-glory is now gone out the window and you’re now yolked up with Christ and you’re following Him and notice the end of verse 29, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Now here is a great truth. If I am claiming that I am yolked up with Jesus and I don’t have rest in my soul, there is a problem with this passage. It’s either He can’t do it or He’s lying. Did you catch what I just said? You say, I’m doing everything God told me to do and I have no peace. No, you aren’t going to get me to believe Jesus lied. Because He says that if you’ll yolk
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up with Him and follow Him, for He is meek and lowly, and you will humble yourself and be like Christ, you’ll find rest. The only time I don’t have rest is when I’m prideful and I’m not doing it His way. He wants to give abundant life. But Jesus will not let me lead; He’s going to lead. He will not let you lead; He’s going to lead. It’s an absolute fact that if I find myself all bent out of shape spiritually and I don’t have the rest I need, it’s not His fault, it’s mine. By the way, it’s not other people’s fault. Sometimes I want to say that it’s Elizabeth’s fault, but it’s not, it’s mine. He says, come unto me, He didn’t say if she will let you. Come unto me. You cannot say, well, it’s my friends’ fault, it’s the people I run with, and it’s the people I work with. I hear people say all the time that they could serve God but for the people they work around. It’s amazing to me. I’ve been pastoring for a lot of years now and it’s amazing that people think that every job in the county is the worst place to work because the people that work there are wicked. A long time ago I learned to tell people, listen, you’re working with sinners like everyone else is. Those folks are just like you and I are. They’re not perfect and wherever we are, we just have to be salt and light. God has us there and the people I work around shouldn’t be what’s controlling me and I ought to be coming to Christ. And I ought to be letting Him give me peace. And I ought to be yolking up with Jesus. It’s not my family, it’s not the people I work around, and by the way, it’s not the church. As a pastor I deal with people all the time that say they don’t go to church, that they got hurt at church. I understand that. I’ve been going long enough now that it’s happened to me more times than I can count. What do you do about that? Well, I just take it to Jesus and yolk up with Jesus and He gives me rest. Always. And if I don’t have rest it’s not His fault and it’s not the world’s fault, it’s my fault. If I don’t have an abundant life, it’s Mike’s fault because I’m not following the passage. Human nature wants to blame it on everyone else. You say, I thought you were preaching on sacred life. I am. You see, He wants you to have a sacred
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life while you’re living, but the choice is to come to Him, give it all to Him and let Him take care of it. And I find if I don’t have that peace, its Mike’s fault. I might want to blame society, I might want to blame the government, I might want to blame some wicked crowd, or as I’ve said, my family, my friends, my church. But the bottom line is, it’s my fault. You see Jesus wants to give abundant life in the life we have now. And He’s able, He’s able. I just have to follow what He says. There’s a great truth in that. The thing I want you to see, not only does God desire for us to see there is sacred life in the life He gives. In the physical and salvation, He wants us to come and have abundant life. I have to yield to Him. Now I’ve talked about that little bit there in Matthew chapter 11, but I want you to turn to Romans 12. Many of you know this passage very well. Romans chapter 12:1-2. There is a yielding to Him and the Apostle Paul starts this passage by saying, 1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, He says I am begging you by the mercy of God that you do something, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. He says listen, you want to see how sacred your life is, and I am begging you to give your life to God. It’s your reasonable service. Now watch verse two. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Listen, my mind is never what God’s thoughts are and, by the way, neither are yours. God still says in Isaiah 55:8, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. That’s still true and if I am going to understand this sacred life I have now, I must yield myself to God and have my thinking changed. My thinking! I found a long time ago that if I tell the Lord that I’ve come to Him and given Him my problems, but I’m still all torn up inside, that I haven’t yielded to God and let Him
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change my thinking. I’ve got to yolk up with Him, humble myself. You say, I know what needs to be done. If I have that kind of an attitude I probably have not humbled myself and do not have an abundant life where you recognize the sacredness of it, the holiness of it. Be honest with God and ask what have I not yielded? What have I not come to you and let you do? Where is my thinking wrong? Let’s look at something else. Life is not only sacred in the living. The lives of others ought to be sacred to us. Now go back to Genesis chapter 4. Every time you look for truth, at some point in time you have to go to the book of Genesis because it’s the book of beginnings. You’ll find everything is in Genesis. If you’re familiar with Genesis chapter 4, you know what is going on. 1And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. 2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: 5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sinliethatthedoor.Anduntotheeshallbehisdesire,andthoushaltruleoverhim. 8AndCain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. 9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground 11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a
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fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. 13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Now I want you notice something. Do you know why Cain killed Abel? Because Abel’s life was not sacred to him. Not only do I see that God wants to give us sacred life, but I need to look and see that other lives are as sacred as mine. I may disagree with them. Cain and Abel had a great disagreement. Abel was right and Cain was wrong, by the way. God said so. But Cain did not see Abel’s life as sacred. It was worthless to him, so he killed him. Now I want you to notice something else. I want you to go to 1 Kings, chapter 19. Not only do we need to recognize the lives of others are just as sacred as ours are. Sometimes we don’t recognize our own life as being sacred, there’s a great truth in that. 1 Kings chapter 19 verse one, 1And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. 2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to morrow about this time. 3 And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there. 4 But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. Now I want you to notice that Elijah gets so discouraged he wants to die. Lord just go ahead and kill me, my life’s not worth anything, my life’s not sacred, just go ahead and kill me Lord, just let me die. We live in a day and age which suicide has become more and more popular. We live in a day and age where people don’t think their own life is sacred and holy. Elijah is being pretty stubborn here. If we read the rest of this text, God fed him and God made him go forty days and forty nights in the strength of that meat to Mt. Horeb. You would think after 40 days of trudging through the wilderness and getting to Mt. Horeb and finding a cave to
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live in, he would have had time enough to reconsider his stubbornness. But Elijah didn’t. Elijah gets in the cave and when he is in the cave he dwells there. It’s an interesting thing that he dwelled there. That doesn’t mean he went and stayed all night. He decided to take up residence and live there. He’s by himself, he’s mad at the world and he’s mad at himself and life’s not sacred and life is not worth living. Finally, God comes to him. By the way, the first three ways God came is the way we look for God. He sent a great wind, something powerful and broke the rocks, but God wasn’t in that. He sent an earthquake and God wasn’t in that. He sent a fire and God wasn’t in that. Finally, a still small voice and God was in that. You see the truth of the matter is Elijah, even when God came to him, says well I’m the only one doing the right thing God. Nobody else is doing the right thing, it’s just me. What kind of arrogance and pride is that? We get that Elijah syndrome; we don’t think that life is worth living. We don’t think that anyone else does right besides us. It’s amazing that God just sort of ignored all of that and said, I have a job for you to do. Would you quit whining and get back to work? God gave him three things to do and at the very end God said, by the way, I have seven thousand men that haven’t bowed the knee to Saul and you are not alone. You see sometimes we don’t see that life is sacred. In our own life, we get so discouraged we let the devil discourage us and get us depressed. Life’s not worth living. I deal with people all the time, well preacher I just wish that God would kill me and I’d go on home. Hold on a minute. God’s got you here for a purpose. Hey Elijah, when He’s done with you, He’s going to send a chariot of fire and take you home, but He’s not done with you. You have to go back to anoint Elisha and teach Elisha some things. God’s not done with you yet. And oftentimes we look at our lives as not being sacred and we look at our lives as being failures. By the way, Elijah was full of pride. I am not better than my fathers; until the point Jezebel sent that messenger, he thought he was better. It’s what got him
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in trouble. He thought he was better. He thought he was more spiritual. He thought he was smarter, until a wicked woman sends him one message and then he realizes I’m not better than they were. He should’ve realized that in the first place. But he still had a sanctified life. I have to look at life and see that number one, God wants to give me sanctified, abundant life. He wants to give it to you. He wants to give it to everyone. Everyone else’s life is as sacred as mine, just like Abel’s was and Cain didn’t realize it. I have to recognize that no matter what is going on in my life, God still has a plan for it and it’s still sacred. Go to Jonah chapter 4. You know the account of Jonah. Jonah is one of these fellas that he didn’t like what God told him to do and didn’t want to do what God told him to do and had a little trouble out of it. He finally went and did what God told him to do in chapter three and he preached and God gave great victory. In chapter four, verse one it says, 1But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
2 And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
3 Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. I want you to notice that the life of the wicked was not precious to Jonah. It wasn’t sacred. Jonah wanted God to wipe Nineveh off the face of the earth. They were a wicked enemy of Israel, they were a brutal enemy. Whenever the Ninevites invaded another land they would kill everybody in the city, everybody they found, they would cut their heads off and stack them up like we stack up wood. They were brutal in what they did. There is no doubt there were times they attacked Israel and had done exactly that and Jonah hated them for their wickedness. And when God said to go preach to them Jonah said, that he didn’t want to preach to them and wanted them to die and go to hell, that he hates them. But God said, hey Jonah, their lives are
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sacred, just like yours. When Jonah finally went, it was the greatest revival ever recorded in the history of the Bible and Jonah gets angry. You see the truth of the matter is sometimes you and I don’t think of the wicked as being sacred. We just see them being heathens and wicked and God ought to rain fire out of heaven and burn them right into hell, is what we think. It’s what Jonah thought. I need to see that life is sacred in the living. I need to see that God created me for a purpose. And you need to see that God created you for a purpose. He created you for a reason. He wants you to have abundant life, and if you don’t have abundant life, it’s your fault. It’s not God’s fault. And it’s not anybody else’s fault. I just haven’t done what God’s asked me to do. I need to then recognize that other people’s lives are as sacred as mine. Cain failed to realize that with Abel. He was selfish. We need to recognize that God wants other people to have just as much abundance as He does us. I need to recognize that no matter how I feel like I failed, God still holds my life as sacred. You need to recognize no matter how much you fail God still holds your life as sacred. He doesn’t want you to die. He doesn’t want you to end it. He didn’t do it for Elijah, He didn’t do it for Jonah. Truth of the matter is I have to see that life is sacred and that the life of the heathen is sacred. It’s sacred, they need Jesus. They need abundant life. God loves them like He loves us. I’m afraid because of the theory of evolution, we don’t view life as sacred. It’s almost as if its chance. I don’t know how many Christians I deal with that say, well, you’re just lucky. Luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. Jesus has everything to do with it. From Romans chapter 12, we see that there is no such thing as luck. You see your life is sacred and most of the time the reason I am having trouble is because I am not viewing it as sacred. I’m viewing it with wrong thinking, I’m discouraged, and I’m depressed, downcast like Elijah or Jonah. I’ve worked myself into thinking, there’s just no help here, I should just die, and all of that thinking is of the Devil, because Jesus created you for His pleasure and his purpose and life
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is sacred. No matter what is going on, you can have an abundant life, that’s your choice. Come unto him, have your thinking changed and be what He wants. Hey, is life sacred? It ought to be.
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Lesson 3: Life is sacred in death.
Life ought to be sacred in death. I want to show you a few things that I think are important for us to recognize. I’m convinced that we live in a very Biblically illiterate generation and as a result of that, we have no idea of the sacredness of life from conception until death. The lack of knowledge has created in our nation and all around the world the notion that life means nothing and we’re in trouble. If we as Christians don’t teach our children and our grandchildren, if we don’t teach the generation we live in now, I think we’ll give a great account to God for our failure to teach Bible truth. Psalm 116:15, 15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. What a passage of scripture. Now oftentimes, whenever I’m preaching a funeral for someone that is saved, I’ll use this passage of Scripture. In one respect, it seems odd to you and me that God would say someone’s death is precious. There may come a time in our lives and the lives of our loved ones that we recognize the physical problems that they’re having and we want them to go home and be with the Lord. But it is never precious to us. We look at a birth as being precious, we don’t look at death as being precious, but God does. So, when it comes time for someone who is saved, that has trusted Christ as their Savior and has been born again, to die, it’s hard for us, but God looks at death as something precious. What a great truth. Now having made this principle clear, God looks at death totally different than we do. Death is something sacred and therefore it ought to be with you and me. There are some things I want us to look at. Number one, physical death is a part of God’s plan. You see, I’m afraid that sometimes we forget that God has planned our birth and our death. And each part of that life from conception to death is part of the plan of God and life is sacred all the way through. Life is not something to be thrown away, life is not something to be shoved aside, but each individual’s life is sacred in the eyes of God. Job 14:1-2, 1Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.
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2 He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. Now I want you to notice there is a great truth here. Job is saying, no matter how long you live, it’s a short time. By the way, you realize this truth the older you get and you realize how fast time goes by. James says, “What is your life, it is a vapor that appeareth for a little time then vanisheth away.” The older we get the more that is true. You see how quickly that it goes by. And it does go by quick. Job says, you know what, we are born as human beings, we have a short lifetime. It’s like a flower that comes up, is cut down and it’s over. Verse 3-4, 3 And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? 4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. Job says, listen God is going to bring me into judgment. And I’m unclean and how can I be clean? I’m a sinner, and by the way, all of us are sinners. We’re sinners by nature. Every one of us are equal. All seven billion people on the face of this earth are all sinners, equal in that respect. We are all the same in the eyes of God. We are human beings born with a sin nature. We are estranged from God and Job says, “how can I be clean?” The truth we need to see about the sacredness of death begins in verse five.
5 Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Now, I want you to see, Job says, God has determined the length of life. God has our days determined, by the way, notice it says the months. In other words, it means God knows how old we are going to be when we die. He’s got it determined. God set a boundary there and you’re not going to pass that. So, God has appointed a time that of our lives on this earth is going to be over. There’s a time when we were conceived, and there’s a time when we were born. There is a time that we are living this life now and there is a time that we’re going to die. In every bit of these times, God says life is sacred. Verse 6-9, 6 Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. 7 For there is hope of a tree, if it be
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cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. 8 Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; 9 Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. What an analogy, I’ll come back to this truth of the analogy. God says, if you cut a tree down, its roots are still in the ground and when it gets water it’ll sprout and grow again. Now keep that thought in mind, that is all he’s saying and then he’s going to mention something about death in verse 10-13. 10 But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? 11 As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: 12 So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. 13 O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! Now in all of those verses Job is lamenting his life and the trouble he’s in. He’s already made the statement there is an appointed time to die. By the way, he’s already asked God to let him die prematurely and God didn’t do it because God wasn’t done with him. Now he is lamenting his time. Verse 14 wraps it all up in a neat little package,
14 If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. You see the answer to that question is yes. Just like the tree that is cut down, the roots are in the ground, and with water it buds again. The water of life, which is the Word of God, gives you and me eternal life and there will be a resurrection one of these days. Job is saying, that death is part of life. It is something that God has ordained. Yes, I believe God set the bounds for life here on earth. There is going to come a time to die, but death doesn’t end life. You see the sacred life you and I have doesn’t end at death. There will be a resurrection. There will be a judgment and I will stand before God. There will be a time when God raises the dead. There will be that time of death and it does not end life. So, when I look at death I should not look at it
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from some sort of evolutionary idea that we are just here by accident, that somehow or other
some scientific impossibility of spontaneous generation took place. You all remember the term, spontaneous generation, inorganic matter somehow becoming organic matter. That is a physical and scientific impossibility and if you believe in evolution that is what you believe. Somehow or another that theory of evolution has caused us to not look at death as anything but the end and it’s not the end. It’s precious in the sight of God. It’s still sacred and holy. Because life does not end with physical death. There will be a time that we all will stand in front of the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. As Christians we will stand at the judgment seat of Christ and then there will be a time later that the lost will stand at the great white throne judgement. There is a judgement coming and death does not end life and death should still be sacred to every one of us. I’m concerned life is not sacred. I’m afraid we’ve looked at life and acted like somehow death ends it all. People do all kinds of things to try and speed up death and hurry it up and act like it is not sacred and should be thrown away. God says it is sacred in conception, sacred in living and sacred in death because it is precious in His sight and there is an appointed time for all these (times). Now let’s look at Hebrews 9:27. This passage is quoted often and we quote it for various reasons. The ninth chapter of the book of Hebrews is literally making reference to the Lord Jesus Christ and what Jesus did with His blood after Calvary. He went to heaven and made atonementonthemercyseatinheavenwithhisownblood,thatwemightbesaved. 27Andasit is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So, there is an appointment with death and after death the judgment. So, death is part of God’s plan for life. And since God’s plan for life is a sacred life, in conception and in living, it is also sacred in death. God has an appointment; God has a plan. Now let’s get another passage. In Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, we are going to see that God has a purpose and a plan here. We’ll begin in verses 1 and 2 then we will
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go to verse 20.
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: Now I want you to notice that the wisest man to ever live, Solomon, was given by God more wisdom than anyone who has ever lived or ever will live. He says, now you need to understand that in life there is a time and a season to everything and every purpose. 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; I want you to notice that, he says there is a time to be born and there is a time to die. And in both of those times, they’re very much both a part of life. God says, that He has a time for you to be born, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We looked at the sacredness of conception, we saw what God said about conception. God said that He has a purpose for your life and He made you the way He wanted you to be made, and here you are. I’ve got a purpose, a time to be born, and it is a sacred and holy time. Then God says that He has a time for you to die and that time is also sacred and holy. There is truth in this doctrine. I’ve got a book in my office, in my library that I picked up several years ago that is an interesting book. It is the last words of saints and sinners. You begin reading that book and it tells you the last things people have said before they died. Some of the people are people that I have heard of, some people I’ve never heard of and it is interesting what people said. It’s interesting some famous people’s last words. It’s interesting some of things some saints and, by the way, some sinners have said. One of the most intriguing people, Thomas Paine, is in Hell tonight. He was a wicked man. He went all over the world (he lived in England) and tried to prove that there was no God. He stood on stages all across the world and defied God. He pulled out a little old stop watch he had at the end of each time he spoke and he would challenge God and say, “God, if you are real, if I am destroying the faith of God and if I am destroying souls and God, if you really loved people and God you will to strike me down in 60 seconds.” Thomas Paine would count down the time. Then whenever he didn’t
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get struck down he would say, “You see there is no God. If there was a God and He cared about you all, He would’ve done something to me.” On his death bed, the final words he said was, “I spent my whole life trying to prove there is no God.” He had amassed a great fortune and he said, “I would give everything that I have, everything I’ve ever owned, ever hoped to own, for somebody to prove to me there is no God and there is no hell because I feel the flames of Hell right now.” And he died and went to Hell. There is an appointed time to die. You see a merciful God gave him time after time after time to repent before death, sacred death. You say, even in that? Well, he had a last breath to draw and he had a time God was merciful to him. We’ve already looked at how God is not slack in His promises as men count slackness but is long suffering that all should come to repentance. God wants all to be saved, He doesn’t wany anyone to go to Hell. But he’ll let them choose, He let them choose Hell. Death is sacred. There’s an appointed time God has for men to die. It ought to be something which is sacred and holy. It ought to be something that you and I, as we approach death, that we approach with faith. As we approach death, we encourage our family and friends to trust Christ and be saved. It’s important we approach death in the right manner and we don’t act like death is something unsacred and unholy, because it’s sacred. As a pastor for the last 32 years, and have stood by the side of many saints as they died, I’m going to tell you something, there is something sacred about it. Somehow or another we have lost the sacredness of life and I want you to notice God says, that there is a time to be born, there is a time to die and just like there is a sacredness in birth, we have a sacredness in death. As Christians we need to approach life this way. So, I need to approach death in my own life and, by the way, I need to approach it in the lives of others. Death is sacred, it’s part of my life, and is just as important as birth. It’s just as important as everything in-between and it’s just as sacred. Sometimes it’s as if we’ve shoved it all aside as if
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it’s not. Now physical death does not end our life, it simply brings eternal life. Now when we die we are immediately in heaven or hell. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. You see life is sacred in death because it brings eternal life. The truth of the matter is that the very instant we die as Christians, we leave this world and we immediately are in the presence of God. We’re comforted by some things. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15:51, there is a hope and I want you to see the hope set before us. 51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Now by the way, the word sleep there is making reference to death, it’s not making reference to what y’all are going to do here in a few minutes. It’s making reference to death. He says that not all of us are going to sleep, the rapture is going to happen and some of us aren’t going to die, but are going to be raptured out of here. Wouldn’t that be great if it happened tonight? It would be a great thing. But he says, not everyone is going to sleep. There is going to be sleep. God just looks at death as sleep, but now we don’t look at it that way. Do you remember what Jesus said when he raised Lazarus from the dead in John chapter 11? He told his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleepth and I go that I may wake him out of sleep.” The disciples looked at him and wondered if he was doing good and resting, why the Lord would want to go and wake him? Then He said to them, “Lazarus is dead and for your sakes I’m glad I wasn’t there.” The Lord looked at it as if He was asleep because to Him that’s all it was. So, there is a sacredness in life you and I need to grasp that when we come to that appointed time that God has for us and we die that God says, they’re asleep. There are many passages in the New Testament where it talks about them falling asleep and they had actually died. God looks at it as sleep, He does not look at it as something bad, as something that is ended. He looks at it, as sleep. There is going to be a resurrection, there is going to be an awakening. Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 14:51-57, 51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not
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all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want you to notice that death is sacred because it is just one more step in this life that God has given us. By the way, there is a great hope here. This mortal body must put on immortality. This corruptible sinful body must put on incorruption and the only way that can take place is if we come to the promise that God has given that we die. So, there is a sacredness here. There is a sacredness in birth, conception, in the life we live now and there is a sacredness in death. I like verse 58 because it is kind of like a conclusion of it.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. Do you notice what has been said there? That we ought to always be abounding. I believe we ought to be abounding right up to the point of death. Ecclesiastes 12 is very clear that as we grow older we don’t have the physical ability to do the things we used to do. We lose the strength, the stamina, and the vigor physically. I recognize that sometimes whenever it comes time to die we may not be able to do anything more than just lay in a bed. But we ought to be abounding in our faith and we ought to be abounding spiritually and we ought to be looking at it no matter what the physical condition is that God’s put us here and it is one more day in the life that God planned and it is a sacred life until God says it’s time. That’s important. You see we have bit into this thing in our
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nation, it’s an evolutionary idea of euthanasia. We have built into this evolutionary idea that it’s
ok if someone’s life doesn’t have value then we ought to just let them die. What they’re really saying is we should really just kill them. They don’t actually say that, but that is what they mean. That’s not what God says. God says that life is sacred and I want it to be sacred right up to the point that I am done with it and it’s finished the course I put it here for and at that point it is sacred and it’s over. It ought to be sacred in death. I guess I had this showed to me years and years ago. Dr. Curtis Hutson was my friend and he has been in heaven now since 1995. In November of 1994 he asked me to come to his house. I went down there and he was lying in a hospital bed in the living room. It was the first time I met his wife and children. I went in there and talked to Dr. Hutson for a while and they let me have some time with him by myself. We talked about some things, about the work of the Lord. I got ready to leave and he said, “I want you to call everyone in and I want you to pray for me.” So, he called all of his family in there and introduced me to all of them again. He never called me anything other than Kerley. It wasn’t brother Kerley, it wasn’t Mike, it was just Kerley. He said, “Now Kerley is going to pray for me before he leaves.” He looked at me and he said, “Now I am going to tell you what to pray.” I’m thinking, oh, no I was just a kid anyhow at that time. He said, “I want you to pray that God will take me home and that I’ll die.” Everybody in there started crying. I loved him and honored him, but I wanted to say, what did you put me into? I looked at him and I prayed and I prayed for God’s will. Now I’m going somewhere with this. He told me before they came in there that he has bone cancer and he’s in excruciating pain. If you know anything about cancer you know that type of cancer is the most excruciating kind of cancer you can have. He had lost so much weight he could barely stand; his skin had turned orange like a pumpkin. He’s lying there in that bed and he says you pray that God will take me home. He said you know and
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I know that God isn’t going to heal me or He would have. He said, “I’m not bitter, I’m not
angry, I’m not depressed, I’m not discouraged, I just want to go home.” He didn’t die until March of 1995, but there is a reason behind that. God had one more sermon for him to preach. He laid in that bed and didn’t get up for days and weeks. On a Friday morning they had him scheduled to preach in Chattanooga, Tennessee what we call Southwide Baptist Fellowship that used to be the old Southwide. In the morning when he woke up the Holy Spirit said, “You can preach tonight and I’ve got a message for you.” Things that are different are not the same is the last message he ever preached. He died shortly after that. You know why it wasn’t God’s plan for him to die? Because God had other plans for his life. He sure went through a lot of suffering to get to that plan. It was God’s plan. You see the truth of the matter is, sometimes we would look at that situation and say that he is in all this pain and there is no hope. Now hold on a minute. His life is sacred all the way up to death, God had a plan. There is truth in that. You need to understand tonight that God has given you life and it’s sacred. It’s worth something for every individual. All the way to death and it’s sacred during death. I’m going to give you
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tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. I like verse one where he says that this earthly house, this tabernacle, is our body. He said you’ve got this earthly tabernacle, this body made out of earth and if it’s dissolved, if you die, it goes back to the dirt from which it came. We have something we still live. It’s a great truth. Verses 2-4, 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3 If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now pay attention to verse 4 where
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he says, that we’re burdened in this life and we groan not that we would be unclothed. In other words, we’d just die and it would be over. There is no sacredness in that kind of thinking. There is no sacredness in the face that it’s just bad, it looks like there is no hope and you should just end it. There is no sacredness in that. Listen, I have been around a lot of people that have had a hard time dying, if you want to put it that way. But I have learned something from this scripture and from those experiences, that death is still sacred in all that is happening there and what God’s doing with it. He says, I don’t want to be unclothed. I don’t want to just die and it be over. That is not what you and I ought to be. It’s sacred, it ought to be clothed upon with something greater than what we have now. Go back to the verse and keep reading the text, verses 5-10, 5 Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. You see life is sacred even in death. God has a plan for it. God has a time for it. All of us would like to plan our death out, well we’d like to plan out the rapture, isn’t that right? We’d like to plan that there would be no pain, no heartache, and we think if there is anything like that somehow it is wrong or we have the right to change it. I have no more right to change God’s plan for how my life ends than I have a right to change how I am created the way God made me. It’s sacred all the way around. God has purpose in the creation of a person, in their living that life and even in their death and from start and, what we call finished, is sacred. But it’s not finished. There is a glad reunion. In
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Luke 23 you have the crucifixion of our Lord. Verses 39-43, He is already on the cross for about 3 hours or so by the time this takes place, a little less than that. 39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. 42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. 43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. There will be a glad reunion at that sacredness of death. There is a great truth about that. As I’ve been working on this message and thinking of this message and the one I have after it, I began thinking of all the folks in my lifetime that I know that are in heaven. And I am getting to the age where I know more people in heaven than I know here. I used to hear that when I was younger and I really didn’t understand it, but I understand it now. I have more family and friends in heaven than I have on earth now. The older I get, it gets that way. The truth of the matter is, there is a glad reunion day at that sacred moment of death. It doesn’t end anything. Eternal life begins and there is this glad reunion with the saints of God. Boy, isn’t that a great hope to look forward to. So, life is sacred even in death. John chapter 14:1-7, is Jesus speaking about His death. The disciples were discouraged because Jesus told them He was going to be crucified. They didn’t understand it nor did they like it. So Jesus is now giving them some encouragement and truth about death. 1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can
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we know the way? 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Here is a great truth, Jesus says, that life is sacred and He doesn’t want your heart to be troubled over death. There is no reason to be troubled over it. He said that, in His Father’s house are many mansions, He’s gone to prepare a place for us and that He is going to come and receive us. Don’t you be troubled over death because it’s sacred. Now listen, it’s not right for someone to take their own life. It’s not right at all because that life is sacred and God has a purpose and a plan for it. Neither is it right for us to look at the end of life and say, well my life isn’t worth anything anymore. Of course it is. There is a reason God left you here, there is a purpose in it. If anything else I’ve seen, I’ve seen it with Dr. Hutson. Everybody in the world wondered why God left him here all those months. It’s because God had one final thing for him to do that nobody could do but him. Great truth. So, life is sacred in its conception, in its birth, in its living and all the way up to the point you draw the final breath. We ought to give the honor to sacred life from conception until after death. There is a truth that we’ve allowed the evolutionary theory that we’re here by accident, and if it’s not quality then it’s not worth it to cloud our spiritual minds of the sacredness of life. We ought to have them unclouded and see that life is sacred.
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Lesson 4: Life is sacred in Burial
The Lord began to give me a thought on the sacredness of life and I am very convinced that we live in a generation in our nation that does not understand the sacredness of life. The word sacred is one of these words that we have forgotten. It means divine, holy, something that is sanctified, something that is set apart. I find there are very few things that are sacred in our nation anymore. I think part of that is because we are a Biblically illiterate generation. The Word of God is no longer the basis for the decisions we make morally, unfortunately spiritually, or any other way. We have been so invaded with this damnable heresy of evolution that is has taken away the truth of the Word of God, the sacredness of life. It has invaded almost every area of our lives. I think it must be vigorously opposed and that parents must certainly vigorously teach their children that there is a God and He is the Creator and all this junk of evolution is simply a lie. There is a God and there is a judgment and you will give an account to Him as He is your Creator. As a result of the lie of evolution, we have lost the sacredness of life. Number one, life is sacred in beginning and in conception. Life is sacred and holy. Then we’ve lost the sacredness of life in just living life. Do you realize that the life you and I live today should be sacred to you and me? We’ve lost the sacredness in death; we’ve come to the point in our nation where we’ve accepted abortion as something good and fail to see the wickedness. We’ve come to a point in our nation where we’ve accepted that for someone to choose to die, euthanasia or commit suicide is good. It is never good and never right and is always wrong. No matter how the lie is covered up or glossed over it is always wrong. There is a sacredness in conception, in the beginning. There is a sacredness in life as it is being lived. There is a sacredness in death, but there is also, and should be a sacredness in burial. Genesis 49:28, 28 All these are the twelve
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tribes of Israel: and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one
according to his blessing he blessed them. Jacob in the preceding verses has called all twelve of his sons together and he has given each one of them their blessing right before his death. That is the meaning of verse 28. Verses 29-33, 29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace. 31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. 32 The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. 33 And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. This is a tremendous passage here in Genesis 49 that speaks directly to the sacredness of burial. I recognize as I am starting this particular message, we’ve reached a point in our society to where cremation should be a viable option for Christians. I am not trying to attack anyone that has been part of cremation but if you’re considering cremation, I am going to try and dissuade you from it. I’m going to give you a Biblical concept as to why cremation is a heathen practice and it is not Biblical. Let me make very clear that it doesn’t change whether someone is in Heaven or Hell. There have been millions of Christians burned at the stake because their enemies hated them. That didn’t change whether they went to Heaven or not. There have been literally millions of people that have died during the 6,000 years of this earth that were never found. All kinds of things happened. The eternal state of the soul is not changed because of what happens to the body after someone dies. The eternal state of the soul is depending upon faith in Jesus before death!!! What I am trying to say, is when our loved ones die, and we have
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their tabernacle that they’ve lived in, however many years they’ve lived, we ought to bury that tabernacle with honor and sacredness. So, you find in this text God gives us an insight into a God fearing family and their burial possession, their family graveyard, if you please. He gives a little insight into the sacredness behind burial and the work behind burial. Now, in these days it has become more commonplace to cremate someone, not only to cremate them but to have no service of any kind. I deal with people all the time that say, “Well preacher when I die I want my family not to be burdened with a funeral service and expense.” This kind of thinking is Biblically incorrect, we must understand why God declares a burial and funeral as necessary. Genesis 50:1, 1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. So, Jacob had died, and when he died there was some grief. By the way, he was gathered unto his people. Twice in this text we read he said, “I am going to be gathered unto my people”. This is a great truth. He was expecting to be in the presence of Abraham and Isaac and his people and he was gathered unto his people. He is now dead and there is a time of mourning by his family for his death. Verse 2, 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel. The very first thing Joseph did was to command his servants, the physicians, to embalm Israel, to embalm Jacob. I want you to pay attention what happens now in verse 3, 3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of thosewhichareembalmed:andtheEgyptiansmournedforhimthreescoreandtendays. It’s amazing to me how many people when their loved one dies wants to quickly get it over. I have an idea this was not Joseph’s mindset and the family was not done yet, he’s not buried yet. They embalmed him and essentially you find there was a 70 day wake. I want you to think about that for a minute. It wasn’t an hour, but it was 70 days. There was a scriptural purpose behind the wake. So, they embalmed him and had this 70 day mourning period and they do something else.
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Verses 4-13,
4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 5 My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again. 6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear. 7 And Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8 And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen. 9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company. 10 And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days. 11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 13 For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre. I want you to notice all that they did here. They embalmed him, they had a very long wake, they then took him to the site of the burial and had seven days more of mourning and then they buried him. Quite possible you’re talking 90 days when all of this was done, by the time they traveled from Egypt to the burial place. Why did they do that? Is there a Biblical concept behind the wake? Is there a Biblical concept behind the mourning? Is there a Biblical concept behind the burial? Absolutely, in every aspect of it. Number one, I want you to understand
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something. A burial and a funeral is not for the one that’s gone, it’s for the living. One of the things you and I must understand, there is a sacredness in the burial. It is sacred and holy to bury them but it has no bearing on them whatsoever because they’re gone and they are either in Heaven or Hell and anything we can do will not change that. But it is a time of honor and it is a time of remembrance. I’m going to tell you what a funeral and a wake does for the family. It is a time to allow people to come around and mourn with you, it gives you closure at the death of your loved one. As a pastor I’ve dealt with people that for various reasons their loved ones could not be located. They were in some sort of accident, never found, or they were lost in war, or they were lost in some sort of circumstance where they never found the body. Sometimes those family members have a hard time with closure. They know they’re gone but they did not have a time of closure. By the way, not everybody is the same, I’ve learned that. I’ve learned it isn’t as necessary for some as it is for others. But it is necessary for everyone. And the reason you have a funeral is so that family can be comforted by one another and by their neighbors, their friends and by the people that love them. There is a certain amount of comfort and closure, and if you just ignore the wake or avoid, it you will not get. This is a great truth! So, this practice we have now, where we just quickly do something and we leave no time for a wake, robs people of comfort and closure. I don’t know how many folks these last several years as a Pastor have come in and said, “Preacher I wish I hadn’t rushed through the funeral. I rushed through something and now I feel like I’m battling something. I wish I’d taken time and done something a little differently.” You see this Biblical concept of what we’re doing here is a sacredness in a burial and it brings closure and it helps people. I’m going to tell you something else that it does. It allows for a heritage to be taught. Did you not catch that in all of this passage? “There they buried Abraham and Sarah,” is interesting how it’s worded. Instead of Isaac saying this is where
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we buried Abraham and Sarah. Jacob wasn’t around when they buried Sarah. “There they buried Isaac and Rebekah, there I buried Leah.” There’s a heritage that is taught. There is also a place they can go back to and see that heritage. I do a lot of funerals, many funerals a year. One of the things I always do when I go somewhere, if I have any length of time at all when the funeral is over, I go around the graveyard. It is always interesting to me to see what is written on the tombstones. It’s amazing especially 50-60 years ago there was always some sort of message, there was a heritage being taught. There are salvation messages, there are tombstones that have Scriptures, there are stones that said we believed in God and this is not the end and we’re only asleep until Jesus comes. Those kinds of things are on them and it means something. It also gives you a place to go back and remember your heritage. From time to time, it is important for you to go and just be there. You say, well they’re not there. I know they’re not there, but it gives you a place to go and remember your heritage and it ought to be sacred. I find all kinds of things in the Scripture about the burial. As I looked at burials, I found out there are over a hundred burials recorded in the Bible. Isn’t that interesting? These burials are recorded in Scripture and they’re given for us. I want to give you one other before I get into some other reasons why I actually think cremation is one of these things that we ought not to be a part of at all. In Deuteronomy 34 you have the end of Moses’ life. Moses is arguably one of the greatest prophets that ever lived. One of the greatest men or person of faith is about to die and God has called him. He has gone up into the mount and he is with God. Deuteronomy 34:5-8, 5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. 6 And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. 7 And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. 8 And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the
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plainsofMoabthirtydays:sothedaysofweepingandmourningforMoseswereended. Now this is a unique burial. Matter of fact, it’s one of a kind, so to speak, and it stands by itself in the Bible. Moses died and God buried him. Now that is interesting that God buried Moses. If you read you’ll see that Satan and one of the Archangels had a dispute about the body of Moses one time. He buried him in this valley and no one knows where He buried him. There are a lot of reasons for that. God buried Moses so they wouldn’t be worshipping Moses’ tomb. But God buried him. God could’ve done anything with him, do you recognize that? God could have taken him like he took Elijah but he didn’t do that. God could have chosen for him to go back to nothing and God could have cremated him if He chose. But what God chose to do was bury Moses, and then I want you to notice there were 30 days of mourning by the children of Israel for Moses. Now all of that is important. If I am trying to find out God’s will about something I need to find out what the Bible says. As I was studying this message I thought, what would God do? Right here is what God did. Not what God would do, what God did. So, when Moses died, God buried Moses and He had at His disposal to do anything but you know what God did, He buried him. So, as a Christian if I want to do what God would do, I want to be buried and I want to bury my loved ones. You say, why do you say that? It’s very simple, it’s Biblical. I also want to have a time of mourning which by the way was not for Moses but for the people of Israel. Now here is a truth, I find that oftentimes people make all kinds of decisions about what is going to happen. It’s interesting, I’ll give you a couple of things pastoring a church I’ve had to deal with. Occasionally there will be somebody that comes to me that says, “Preacher I am going to leave you in charge of what happens when I die.” I’ll say, “Hold on a minute. Now you need to understand something. If I don’t think that lines up scripturally I won’t do it. You need to understand that. You’re trying to put me in a spot and trying to make me do something that I
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don’t believe is right.” I’ll use an example and you’re going to understand what I’m talking about. Mrs. Esther is in Heaven now. I led Esther and her husband Ridley to the Lord about 30 days before Ridley died. He was terminally ill with cancer, and never left his house from the time I went there and led them to Christ. Ridley died and Esther already had made arrangements and they cremated him. Which, by the way, didn’t change anything. He’s in Heaven, and we had a service for him. They bought a grave plot in a cemetery and that is where Ridley is.
Esther always told everybody that when she died that she wanted to be cremated and to be put there beside Ridley. One day she said, “Preacher I’m going to make you the medical power of attorney. I have no family and I am going to make you the medical power of attorney.” She put Tom Netherton over taking care of the estate. I said, “Esther, you understand something? I will not do what I preach against, if you want that done, find someone else. Understand me?” She said, “That is what I want done.” “I understand, and I won’t do it. I will not do it because I don’t think it’s right.” Little conversation back and forth. A few days later she brings me this paper and made me medical power of attorney. This goes on several years; she was pretty healthy. Esther came to the end of her life and was in a nursing home. We were there the night she went home to glory and there had been conversations between people about what was going to happen. We are standing there and the funeral home comes in to get the body and the first thing they said was, “Who is the medical power of attorney?” Everyone there said that I was. The funeral home asked if they were going to cremate or bury, and I said bury. I had folks there that said, I should not have done that. I said, that she ought to have made you over it then. It is not right for you to ask somebody to do something that is not right. Regardless of the circumstance. Do you understand what I just said? It would be wrong for someone to ask you to break in and steal something because you thought you needed it. You say, “I wouldn’t do that.”
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Then what is the difference of them asking you to do something that is wrong Biblically? There is a truth in that. Not long ago we had a situation that I was involved in with another preacher. He was more deeply involved than me. He’s a little younger than me. I said, “Brother I’ve been in this situation and I’ll probably be in it again and if I was you I would do what is right. What do you think is going to happen when you get to Heaven? You think they’re going to be mad at you? Do what is right.” I want to help you in two ways with that statement. Number one, don’t try to make things hard on your family about your burial, since you won’t be there anyway. Don’t ask unreasonable things to be done in your service. It’s not for you, anyway. It’s amazing to me as a pastor how many times I am with a family where someone has died and they have some unreasonable request to be done during the service, as if it matters to them, anyway. It’s not for you, it is for the survivors. The mourning is for them. The closure is for them. You read your Bible, there was always the closure, there was always that time and they were always having a wake and it was Biblical. I just tell people up front, that if you try to make me do something that is unreasonable or unscriptural I won’t do it. If you want it done, don’t put me in charge of it. I think that’s fair. I think there ought to be a sacredness in burial. I don’t think it should be decided by popular opinion of the day we live in; it should be about what the Bible says. Let me tell you the importance of the funeral is not for the person who is gone, it is for the family and it needs to be done, it brings closure, it brings help to the family. That’s what it’s for. It is sacred, it is holy, it ought to be honored. Joseph had them bury his bones in the land of Canaan 400 years after his death. That’s an interesting thing. In Deuteronomy chapter 28 I want to show you something I think is important as you begin to answer, should somebody be buried? Is a burial important with God? I want to show you some principals here in the next several passages that I give and I want to show you the importance of the burial and show you what it
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means if there is no burial. Deuteronomy 28:25,
before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. God is saying to the children of Israel, if you don’t serve me you’re going to go to battle and I’m going to be against you and this is what’s going to happen to you. But pay attention to verse 26 because it is an interesting verse.
26 And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. God says, you know what I’m going to do then? I’m not going to let you be buried. When someone is not buried it is always a dishonor in scripture. Anytime that God mentions no burial, it was not an honorable thing, it was to their dishonor. Let me give you some more scripture, Jeremiah 16. The children of Israel are in trouble morally and the weeping prophet Jeremiah is giving them all kinds of prophecy trying to get them to get right with God. In Jeremiah 16, verse 4 he’s going to say what God is going to do to him but he’s going to mention this thing and I think it’ll be even more clear than what we’ve seen in Deuteronomy chapter 28. Jeremiah 16:4-6, 4 They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. 5 For thus saith the LORD, Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the LORD, even lovingkindness and mercies. 6 Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them: I want you to notice, that God says when He destroys them there will be no honor in their death because of their wickedness. It’s interesting, this is what’s going to happen to them, they’re to be as dung, their carcasses are going to be here. What honor
25 The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten
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is it when you take someone and consume them in fire? Where is the honor there? Where is the burial there? Here is the same basic principle in Jeremiah 25:33, 33 And the slain of
the LORD shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shallnotbelamented,neithergathered,norburied;theyshallbedungupontheground. You see it is always a dishonor to not be buried and not to be lamented or mourned or not to have a service. I’ll give you another one in the book of Jeremiah chapter 22, where a judgment is pronounced against one of the kings. Jeremiah 22:18-19, 18 Therefore thus saith
the LORD concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah; They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory! 19 He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. He asks, do you know what is going to happen to Jehoiakim because of his wickedness? They’re going to bury him like they would a donkey and drag him outside the gates and let him rot. It’s all they’re going to do. No honor, for you see it is important to understand as you read the scripture there is honor in the burial. There is honor in what they did and here we find there is no honor. What does God say? Does the scripture have any reference to cremation at all? It’s not going to call it that but I want to draw your attention to Amos chapter 2. In Amos chapter 2 there is an interesting situation taking place. If you’re familiar with the book of Amos, you recognize that one of these prophets, especially in the first couple of chapters, starts out and begins to prophesy all of this judgment against countries. He would call a country and say for these three sins, then he would list a fourth one and he would say for the fourth, I will not take away the punishment thereof. Amos 2:1, 1 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime: That is cremation. God says, you know the final straw that took
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away any kind of mercy that I would have with Moab, is when he burned the king of Edom’s
bones into lime. Now, by the way, both of those are heathen nations. Neither one of those are God’s chosen people. They’re not Israel. That is Moab and that is Edom and God says, you know what? There was no honor and there was great dishonor for him to take the king of Edom in battle and kill him and burn his bones to lime. He cremated him. God says, because he did that, punishment is coming. There was three things before he doesn’t mention, but this fourth one is the final straw. I remember reading that years ago and I thought if there was any reason in the world that you will never find me agreeing that I’ve got a part in cremating somebody it’s Amos 2:1. It made God pretty upset. I have a hard time believing He’s happy about it today since He changes not. There is a great truth. There is only one time that I found as I studied this that they ever burned the flesh of anyone and then they buried the bones. By the way that is not cremation. 1 Samuel 31 is a great chapter. It is the end of the life of the first king of Israel and his rebellion and God allows him to be killed in battle, King Saul. But something happens here. 1 Samuel 31:8, 8 And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa. Now Saul and his three sons died in battle in one day. They were actually shot by the archers and Saul actually killed himself by falling upon the sword. The Philistines did not know they had killed them until the next day. The Philistines had come to strip the slain and they’re going to take everything off of them and spoil them of anything that is any good or valuable and they find Saul and his three sons. 1 Samuel 31:9-10, 9 And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. 10 And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan. Now I want you to notice how they defiled Saul and his sons. They fastened their
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bodies to the wall of Bethshan. I think that verses 11-13 are tremendous passages in honor to the men of Jabeshgileaed. 11 And when the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; 12 All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. 13 And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days. By the way, later David would take the bones and rebury them. They burned those bodies that were obviously decaying as they were trying to move them, but they did not burn them to lime. They did not cremate them and they buried the bones. It’s always an interesting fact why the men of Jabesh did that. If you know the history, Saul protected them from having all their right eyes thrust out, the first act he did as a king and then they honored him in his death. It is interesting to me that you can read your Bible from end to end and you say, “Preacher the word cremation isn’t mentioned in there.” No, but God sure was against burning the bones of the king of Edom to lime. That’s the end result. I find that there are over 100 burials in the Bible and I find that God buried Moses Himself. I find that Jesus was buried and rose again. I find that the burial is a representation that the body is asleep in the grave until the resurrection. I find all kinds of references in the Word of God for burial and it ought to be sacred to you and me who are Christians. I challenge you to do a little bit of studying, you’ll find that cremation is a heathen practice. It was never practiced by God fearing people. It has become very popular in this age and we have become Biblically illiterate. I have people say to me all the time, “Well, the Bible says ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” It does not say that. You can look until your eyeballs fall out, it does not say ashes to ashes. It does say the body will return to the dust from which it came. You see, cremation is a heathen practice we have incorporated into Christianity. You say, “Preacher it doesn’t cost as much.” There are a lot of things that don’t cost as much in
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life but you do it because it’s right. I want you to understand there is a sacredness in conception and abortion is wrong. There is a sacredness in living and suicide is wrong. There is a sacredness in death and it ought to be about God’s time and euthanasia is wrong. There is a sacredness in burial and it ought to be done that honors the plan of God and the way God has done it. I recognize that this goes cross grain in our culture, even in churches but it is still Biblical. We are in trouble in our nation as far as revival is concerned because we try to pick and choose what we are going to do and not do in following God. If we ever have revival, one of the things we’ll have to have is a sacredness of life from conception to burial.