OPENING TEXT: Genesis 23:1-3

CONTEXT: After the miraculous events of Genesis 22, Abraham is going to live another 50 years. In fact, approximately 25 years passes between Genesis 22 & 23! Nothing is mentioned. It is 25 years (or so) of silence. Although nothing is mentioned in particular… Abraham and Sarah have spent the last 25 years together – moving peacefully from place to place – enjoying life with one another and their growing son, Isaac (who is now 37 years old)! NOW…Abraham (in ch. 23) walks into the darkest valley he had ever entered – the “valley of the shadow of death” – when his dear wife is taken from him. No one knows exactly how long they were married, but we do know that she was about 65 years old in Genesis 12 so they were married at least 62 years.

Here in this dark valley, there’s NOTHING Abraham can do – except lean on the Lord!!! He’s got to trust the Lord – that God is doing right. He’s got to trust the Lord to take care of his Sarah. He’s got to trust the Lord to give him grace to get through each day. 

It may come as a surprise to find out in verses 3-4 that Abraham confesses that he is simply “…a stranger and a sojourner…” After being in Canaan for the last 62 years Abraham doesn’t own even one piece of property! It’s not that he couldn’t have afforded it. We find in Hebrews 11:8-10 that Abraham always considered himself a pilgrim because he NEVER allowed himself to be satisfied with anything less than the promised city of God to which he was headed!! Abraham’s confession of being a stranger and pilgrim means this: “I don’t belong here!  I’m living for a different world and headed for a better place!!!” This is exactly how we as believers ought to live. This is not to say that it is wrong to own property but that we should hold lightly and loosely to the things of this world. We should stay focused on the world to come! We should keep looking up and not live for present “things”, but for heavenly things!

In view of these things, it’s enlightening to discover here in Genesis 23 that the only property Abraham ever purchased was this burial plot for his wife, himself and his family.

Aside from the implications regarding our current study of cremation, another aspect must first be considered. Why did Abraham seek to buy a graveyard here?  Why didn’t Abraham take Sarah back home to Mesopotamia?  The answer is because of his faith in the promises of God!! Abraham bought this one parcel and thus (by faith) claimed the entire land by faith!! This was the Promised Land! His son wasn’t even married. There are no future generations yet! But God had made a promise – and Abraham believed it!! By the way, according to God’s Word the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people!

In this cave of Machpelah lie the treasured remains of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Leah, and the embalmed bodies of Jacob and perhaps Joseph.

Now I want to call attention to the fact to this special thought: Abraham sought to bury his dead. Why? Why “bury” instead of following the concept of cremation that was even then becoming popular back in the East where Abraham was born?

QUESTION: Should Christians cremate or bury? What does the Bible teach about cremation?

HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT BURIAL AND CREMATION:

• Burial was the original practice of all people.
  • In Genesis 23:6, the children of Heth offered Abraham any of their own sepulchers. Obviously, these people also practiced burial.
  • Numbers 33:4 = the Egyptians buried all their dead 1^st born.
  • Archeologists confirm that the ancient Chinese practiced burial

·         Cremation began with the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism

·         Cremations were practiced to a degree by the Greeks and by some Romans.

·         After the rise of Christianity, cremation was outlawed during the Middle Ages in most of the world – except in India and parts of the Far East.

·         Cremation did not start to become common in the Western World until the late 1800s – during the last 130 years!

BIBLICAL FACTS ABOUT BURIAL AND CREMATION:

• God both practiced and instructed burial:
  • God’s instructions to Adam & Eve implied burial of their bodies after death. Genesis 3:19 says, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  Notice that God did NOT say that they should return to ashes.
  • In Genesis 15:15, when God spoke to Abraham, God both prophesied and instructed that Abraham would be buried.
  • In Deuteronomy 34:5-6 God, Himself, buried the body of Moses

• Burial was the practice of the people of God in both Old & New Testaments (Judaism & Christianity):
  • Jesus was buried.
  • The early church practiced burial (Acts 5:6-10; 8:2)

• Burial was a sign of respect for the dead; while the burning of a body was a sign of great disrespect. (II Kings 9:10 & 34-37)
  • Joseph’s body was kept in Egypt for about 400 years and then carried for 40 years through the Wilderness Journeys before he was properly buried.
  • In the Bible, NOT to be given proper burial was a sign of great disrespect: Example of Jezebel  (I Kings 21:23-24)

• In the Bible, a burned body was a sign of God’s curse:

      EXAMPLES:

o   The example of Sodom and Gomorrah (2 Peter 2:6)

o   The example of Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10:1,2)

o   The punishment for harlotry was to be burnt (Gen. 38:24; Lev. 21:9)

o   The example of the men who rebelled with Korah (Numbers 16:35)

o   The example of Achan and his family (Joshua 7:24-25)

o   The example of unsaved cast into the lake of fire for eternal punishment (Revelation 20:15)

• Burial was a sign of hope – for the future resurrection of that same body (only changed / glorified)! (I Corinthians 15:33-44
  • EXAMPLE of Job = "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me."

·         In the New Testament the dead body of the saved loved ones are said to be “asleep” (I Thessalonians 4:13-18)

• God clearly condemns the practice of cremation: "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" (Amos 2:1).

MAIN ISSUE: Christians who believe in the resurrection of the body should follow the Biblical example of NOT desecrating the dead body by cremating it; we should practice burial – as a symbol of our belief in the resurrection.

The heathens that cremate their loved ones (Hindus / Bhuddists, etc.) do NOT believe in the resurrection. They believe in re-incarnation. The reason they burn the bodies of their loved ones is because they do NOT believe that there will ever be any future use of that body. Cremation (consequently) is a religious practice that denies the resurrection.

FURTHER STUDY OF EASTERN RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF CREMATION: The Eastern religions (i.e., Dharmic faiths) such as Hinduism and Buddhism mandate the use of cremation. In these religions the body is seen as an instrument to carry the soul in that birth. As an example the Bhagavad Gita quotes "Just as old clothes are cast off and new ones taken, the soul leaves the body after the death to take a new one". Hence the dead body is not considered sacred since the soul has left the body. Hence, the cremation is regarded as ethical by the Eastern religions. In Sikhism, burial is not prohibited, although cremation is the preferred option for cultural reasons rather than religious.

According to Hindu traditions, the reasons for preference of destroying the corpse by fire over burying it in the ground, is to induce a feeling of detachment into the freshly-disembodied spirit, which will be helpful to encourage it into passing to 'the other world' (the ultimate destination of the dead).

This also explains the ground-burial of holy men (whose spirit is already 'detached' enough due to lifelong ascetic practices) and young children (the spirit has not lived long enough to grow attachments to this world). Hindu holy men are buried in lotus position and not in horizontal position as in other religions.

Cremation is referred to as antim-samskara, literally meaning "the last rites". At the time of the cremation or "last rites" a "Puja" is performed. A "Puja" is a Hindu prayer to assist the spirit to transcend into the after life.

Beginning in …the 18th Century and later, rationalists and classicists began to advocate cremation again as a statement denying the resurrection and/or the afterlife.

(Remember… we shared with you already that cremation was illegal during the Middle Ages and it was not introduced in the Western world until the last 130 years. In fact…cremation started in America in 1876.)

HISTORY OF CREMATION IN THE U.S.A.: ON DECEMBER 6, 1876, in the tiny village of Washington, Pennsylvania, an Austrian-born immigrant named Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm became the recipient of what is described as the first cremation in modern America.  Just before his death, De Palm had joined the newly formed Theosophical Society, a group of freethinkers and genteel social reformers, and, true to the Theosophical vision of that day, he left behind instructions to conduct his funeral "in a fashion that would illustrate the Eastern notions of death and immortality" and then to cremate his body. This was precisely the public relations opportunity the Theosophists needed to attract attention to their cause, and they set about making public ceremonies of both the funeral and the cremation. The widely publicized funeral, held in New York's Masonic Temple, attracted over 2,000 people, many of them gawkers. Guided by the Theosophists' zeal to blend East and West, the officiants presided over a home-brewed liturgy of Hindu scriptures, passages from Charles Darwin's writings, scraps of spiritualism and transcendentalism, references to fire worship, and invocations of the Nile goddess Isis!

STATISTICS ABOUT POPULARITY OF CREMATION: According to the cover story in the December 5, 1995, issue of USA Today, the number of cremations in North America is increasing dramatically. In 1962, fewer than 5% of the people who died were cremated. Only 30 years later, by 1992, this had increased to 20%. In Hawaii, the number is 60.6%. In Washington, 49.9%. In Nevada, 49.8%. In Alaska, 47.2%. In Montana, 45.3%.  By 2001, 25% of the people who died in U.S. were cremated.  Countries such as Japan (97 percent), Great Britain (70 percent) and Scandinavia (65 percent) continue to have a high percentage of cremations. In Canada the rate is 38 percent. (Cremationist 2000, 36(2):10).

INTERESTING THOUGHT: The article noted that the rising acceptance of cremation has coincided with a drop in "religious barriers to cremation." It is interesting that this secular newspaper noticed the connection between religion and cremation.

CLARIFICATION: I want you to understand that I believe that it is Scriptural to bury your dead loved ones and that cremation is a pagan practice!  However, I do NOT believe that if a family has practiced cremation that this causes that person to lose their salvation – just like suicide does NOT cause a person to go to hell.

However…this is an important matter!! We don’t want to live like pagans! We want to obey and honor God!

We don’t want the culture of this world to influence us in an adverse way and draw us away from the Lord!

THIS IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF HOW OUR CULTURE HAS INFLUENCED AND CORRUPTED OUR CHURCHES.

CONCLUSION: The facts are really obvious. The disposal of the body after death is NOT just a financial matter; it is a religious matter. One's beliefs will determine such choices.

• Historically, burial has been a testimony of faith in the bodily resurrection.
• Historically, cremation has been practiced among those, such as Hindus, who deny the bodily resurrection and who believe in reincarnation.
• Historically, wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ has found acceptance, pagan practices such as cremation have been rejected.
• The increase in cremation in North American society has paralleled the wholesale rejection of the Bible in this same society. As paganism increases its steely hold on American hearts cremation becomes increasingly popular.

We believers are IN this world, BUT we are NOT supposed to be OF this world!!  Let’s ask the Lord to help us see areas in our life (such as this issue of cremation) where we need to be different from this world!! May God richly bless you as you seek to honor Him!

Pastor’s Note: Please understand that these notes were derived from hours of research. Many books, articles, and websites were consulted and many of the ideas are borrowed from others. Although I have attempted to give credit for direct quotes, other footnotes may have been unintentionally omitted. I have not knowingly attempted to steal anyone’s material. Please use these notes with the understanding that many of the ideas are not original to me.