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Genesis 23
Leaving a God Honoring Legacy
INTRO
Over the years in our walk with the Lord as we regularly spend time with Him,
seeking Him in His Word and in Prayer.…He
challenges and even changes our
thinking on things.
Thoughts and positions we once held may,…not all of them,
but many,…may alter or even change dramatically from what they once were.
And this is to be expected in His sanctifying work in our lives to at least some
degree, right?. Isn’t this what (Romans 12:2) is speaking to in large part?
“Do
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and
acceptable and perfect.”
And this chiefly comes through His Word and
through Prayer…as you wrestle through it.
Well, upon reading this passage, Genesis chapter 23,…the recalling of a
thinking of mine,…that has been put into question by God’s Word,….came to
mind a fresh,…on a particular subject matter.
Now, allow me to clarify
something before I proceed.
Don’t hear me share this as if attempting to sway
you one way or another.
That is not my intent….At all….THE Verdict is not yet
in even in my own mind on the topic….OKAY.…It
may provoke some
contemplation in your mind along with me, which is fine and well,…but I only
share it as a place where the Lord has worked through His Word over time to
challenge my thinking, to have me reconsider my thinking on a subject matter
and how it comes through in the text before us.
Some years ago, if ever in conversation about my death….I was adamant that I
wanted to be cremated,…with only the question of where…where were my
ashes to be dispersed on the earth.
It had to be some amazing place where I
loved to be.
My reasoning?
Was two fold…#1,..It’s the most affordable.
I
didn’t want the burden of the expense of a full burial to be left to my family.
Just incinerate me and pour my ashes out at some mountain place, or maybe
the ocean,… a place yet to be determined, pour my ashes out there and be
done with it and then go have a festive time…in my name.
That was number 1
reason,….and
# 2….when Jesus returns, those ashes will come up, from where
ever they are and meet me, (my soul) in the sky where glorification of my whole
body will be completed.
God is fully able to do so.
Many men and women have
passed in such a way where their remains are at the bottom of the ocean,
or,..burned to ashes in a fire, scattered in every direction by an explosion, buried
in a permanent snow tomb, or…heck,… even turned to dung from animals who
ate their corpses.
Whether those or any other imaginative returning of your body to the
earth when deceased…it doesn’t matter.
Nothing poses a difficulty in God
bringing every man and woman who ever lived before His throne at the end of all
time.
On that day…Judgement Day.
Everyone from Adam to the last of us will
stand before our maker and give an account.
(2 Corinthians 5:10) “For we must
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive
what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”
So, if I
have a saying in how this is to go about,..what are to be of my remains when I
die…that was how I would like it to be.
Cremate me.
Which is all fine and good,
… but , but…I began being challenged on this thought as I started noticing how
everyone in the Bible was….buried.
Laid in a tomb as if sleeping peacefully.
Both in the Old and in New Testament.
We’ll see this take place with Sarah in today’s passage and it’s clear that
Saints in the New Testament were also buried.
After John the Baptist was
beheaded…(Matthew 14:12).
“….. his disciples came and took the body and
buried it, and they went and told Jesus.”
Following the stoning of
Stephen….the
first martyr…(Acts 8:2) “Devout men…..buried Stephen and
made great lamentation over him.”
Our Lord Jesus himself was… “laid in a
tomb”.
(Luke 23:53).
“Then he (Joseph of Arimathia) he took it (the body of
Jesus) took it down (from the cross) and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid
him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid.”
Just like that example of Our Lord Jesus….Consistently, we see in
scripture,…great care done in the process of burying,…the deceased.
SO,..how does this tie into Genesis chapter 23 other than Abraham
purchasing a piece of land…to bury his wife Sarah in….which the acquiring of
property, becoming a possessor of land in the land God swore to give him being
very noteworthy…mark that,…we’ll spend more time on that shortly.
Other than
that,…How does this challenge in my thinking (Cremation verses burial) tie in to
the passage before us?
You ask.
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