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BURIAL, NOT CREMATION!
FRIDAY, MARCH 28
Genesis 50:1-6

Psalm 49:1-10

 

Keep on believing.

Jesus is very near.

 

BURIAL, NOT CREMATION!
 
In land-scarce Singapore, it is commonly argued that cremation is preferable to burial. What does God’s Word have to say in this matter? Should Christians follow the fashion, reduce their dead to ashes and deposit them in a columbarium, in a recess in a wall for a sepulchral urn? Many Christian leaders advocate cremation, being persuaded that it is the better method, although without Scriptural support.
 
Today’s reading gives us an account of the preparation for Jacob’s burial. No other burial in the Bible is described in such detail, a fact which emphasises the importance of Jacob in God’s redemptive plan. In a practical way, it shows how believers should treat their dead with due honour and commit their bodies to the ground by burial. The Lord God in the Garden of Eden had said to Adam, “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” (Gen 3:19). In obedience to this injunction, the Scriptural method for disposal of the dead has through the ages been by burial and never by cremation.
 
It is interesting to note that Jacob was accorded the highest honour given by the Egyptians to their dead. Joseph had his personal physicians to embalm Jacob’s body, an elaborate process lasting forty days. Then followed national mourning for the great patriarch for seventy days. This was only two days shorter than that for a pharaoh. After the mourning period was over, Joseph proceeded with arrangements for burial back in Canaan as requested by Jacob. Joseph first sought and obtained Pharaoh’s permission for the clan to return to their homeland for the burial, with the promise that they would come back. Evidently, after seventeen years the Israelites had become an important, if not indispensable, component of the Egyptian economy. This was the principal cause of their detention in the land in later years.
 
THOUGHT: Scriptural injunction must override social expediency.
PRAYER: Father, may I not be just a hearer of Thy Word, but a doer as well.

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