I read, beginning with verse
33, the last verse of chapter 49, verse 33 and chapter 50,
verse 1, when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons,
he gathered up his feet. He was ready. The Lord had prepared
him. He gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the
ghosts and was gathered unto his people. And Joseph, who was
sitting beside him, fell upon his father's face and wept upon
him and kissed him. This was a man who was greatly,
greatly loved, and he's now gone. And he will be sorely missed.
In verse 10, it says they mourned a great and very sore lamentation. He will be sorely missed by his
wives, sons, daughters, grandchildren, even the Egyptians, it said,
turned out, many of them. This is the story of Jacob's
funeral. He must have been a great testimony
to the Egyptians because many people turned out to his funeral. This is a great loss, a great loss, a loss of a husband
of many years. It's a great loss for a wife,
and it's an indescribable loss. And only those who have experienced
it know what it feels like. But the point is, if the Lord
doesn't come back for us, every one of us are going to go through
this. The loss of a father. Many in
here, if not most, have already experienced that. A loving, faithful
father is such a gift and such a blessing. And to lose him is
a very sore and grievous thing. A brother or a mother. To lose
a brother in the Lord, or a brother in the flesh, to lose a long-time
companion, to never see their face again on this earth, to
never hear their voice again, to never see their smile, to never feel their touch, it's
a great loss. And they grieved greatly. It is love to mourn over one
you love. It is love to weep. Joseph wept. There is a difference between
crying and weeping. We often cry over disappointments. We often cry over aggravations,
don't we? Frustrations. We often cry over
sentiments. But weeping is deep sorrow. It says of our Lord who, it says,
cried with strong crying. Deep, deep grief and sorrow. A man of sorrows acquainted with
grief. 2 Samuel. Go over to 2 Samuel
18 with me. 2 Samuel 18. And some in here
have experienced this kind of deep sorrow. But there's a deep
sorrow and weeping over several things, but there's a weeping
and a sorrow and a mourning over sin. And I just know this from
Scripture and from experience, that until a person has really
wept over their own sin, I don't think they know the Lord
yet. We weep over sin. We weep over our own. We weep
over the sins of others. If you really love people, you
weep over their sin. You weep over the sins of the
world. Jeremiah did. Paul said in Philippians one
time, he said, there are many whose God is at belly. I say
even now, weeping. It's even now weeping, he said,
that they're an enemy of the cross. I wish I could weep like that
over sinners, but he did. We weep over our own sin and
what it cost the Lord. we weep over wayward or should
weep over lost and wayward people. 2 Samuel 18, verse 33, when David heard about
the death of his son Absalom, he says, the king was much moved
and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, He said, O my
son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I died for thee, O
Absalom, my son, my son. Now, that's weeping. And there's some in here that
have experienced just that. Indescribable and seemingly unbearable. And the Lord wrote this down.
He wrote these stories of indescribable grief and loss, of pain, of suffering,
of grief, of mourning, deep, deep, deep sorrow. He wrote these
stories not to make us sorry, but to show us many things, to
teach us many things. to show us that there's no temptation,
no trial, no trouble, no sorrow you have been through, but such
as is common to man. And God will with that trial
and that trouble, as deep as it is, He will make a way. He'll
bring you out of it. And all of God's people, Peter
said, eventually all of God's people, the same afflictions
are accomplished in your brethren throughout the world. Countless
people have gone through exactly what you, what we go through. And to show us that our Lord's
Word is true. The Lord's Word is true. His
promises are true. His promise of hope, of peace,
of strength in time of need. He says, as your days, so shall
your strength be. And it's so. His promise that
His grace is sufficient is true. You can testify of that. These
things happen, and the Lord writes this all down for us to see how
badly we need Him. We need everybody else so much
as we need Him. We're going to lose everyone
and everything, but there's one thing we need. and to show us that we need His
Word. We need His Word. We need a place
and a man to preach that Word, to be constantly reminding us
that all flesh is grass. But behold, you're God. And we need each other. We need
a place. We can come. and hear about our
Lord's sufferings for us, for our sins that we mourn over,
enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, and a place we
can come where we can enter into the fellowship of our sufferings. Who better to join ourselves
with? Don't go off and exclude yourself
and get in a cave and isolate yourself from God's people
in times of sorrow, because they've gone through it too, and we need
each other. And the Scripture says, bear
one another's burden. And it's all for God's glory.
It's all for God's glory, whatever happens to us, whatever God brings
about. The Lord says, I killed. It was
Jacob's time. He couldn't live another day
after that. And it was God's purpose and
God's will and it was all for God's glory and everything that
happens to us, life or death, bad or good, evil or whatever.
It's all for our good and the good of others. Though indescribably
painful and grievous, Eli summed it up. Eli had two wayward sons. Samuel had two wayward sons.
David had about ten of them. In fact, all I can read about
is one son that gave him much happiness in Solomon. But Eli, when they came and told
him what happened to his two wayward sons, and the Lord had
him pen these blessed words for all who go through what Eli did,
he said, it's the Lord. Let him do what seemeth good. Abraham said, Shall not the judge
of the earth do right? At the thought of losing his
nephew Lot, whom he loved, and others, his family whom he loved,
all Abraham could do to console himself was consider that God
is right in all that he does. He's right. He's not unjust. He's not unmerciful. He's right. Job had seven sons
and three daughters. And he lost them all in one day. Can you imagine? We can't imagine that. To lose
one? To lose an only son must be worse
than to lose one if you have several. But he lost them all. But here's our greatest comfort,
here's our understanding of the Lord's will and purpose, here's
His love, here's His goodness in everything, that Christ the
Son of God, listen to it, I said he's a man of sorrows. Well,
the Lord said he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
When the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth, for him to come
to this place is indescribable, people. We cannot describe what
it was like for the Son of God to leave his heavenly Father
and come to this place. Thirty-three years must have
seemed like an eternity to him. He who knows no time, who declared
the end from the beginning, became a creature of time and had to
wait. And for him to come here and
live for thirty-three years was like an eternity in Sodom. To leave his father. He dwelled with the Father from
the beginning in perfect harmony and perfect love and perfect
happiness. He dwelled in a land of peace
and joy and worship and love with the Father in a land of
righteousness. And He willingly, though, came
down to this place that was the opposite of all that. He left
a land of peace to come to a place of war. He left a land of joy
to come to a place of sorrow. He left a land of light to come
to a place of darkness. He left the land of love to come
to a place of hatred and wrath. And for Him to live here thirty-three
years, indescribable. He must love us. He must love
us. And when He came, Scripture says
He was touched with a feeling of our firmness. He knows what
it is to sorrow, to weep. We came to the tomb of His dearly
beloved friend. And people, He was more than
a friend to our Lord. He is His Son. Lazarus is His
Son. This is His joy. This apple of
His eye. Lazarus died. He got sick and
He suffered and He died. And our Lord came to that tomb.
And Mary and Martha, whom He loved dearly, were overcome with
grief and weeping. And our Lord Wept. Deeply wept. Doesn't he know? Oh, he knows. That's why he wept. He wept over sin. He wept over
the consequences of it. He wept over the separation it
brings, the sorrow it brings, the grief it brings, the confusion
that it brings. He touched with a feeling of
our infirmity. And all this pain and this sorrow and death that
we experience in this world is because of sin. So why did Christ
come? To put away sin by the sacrifice
of Himself. To put away pain. To put away
sorrow once and for all. And this is the only way it can
be done. To put away death by His own death on the cross. Was it hard for Him to die? He hung on the cross and cried
out with a cry, we can't enter in, we never will, bless God,
we never will enter this. My God, my God, why has thou
forsaken me? He went through hell, separation
from God. He must have loved us. And he wept in the garden. Sweat, tears, or sweat of, as
it were, great drops of blood and wept. And here's the promise
though. It came true with our Lord and
His weeping was so much deeper than ours. You see, He truly
bore the burden of every single sinner He came to die for. He
truly bore the griefs and sorrows. All our griefs and sorrows were
His griefs. Do you mourn and weep more over
your children's sorrow than you do your own? When your children
are in sorrow? This is why I like to lose a
grandchild. Brother David Pledger and Pat
Pledger lost their four-year-old grandson. It was Jonathan and
Mary Pledger's only son, four years old. He got sick at church
one day, got a headache, and he died. And David and Pat watched their
son grieve. They were grieving over their
grandchild and the indescribable grief of their own child. Double
sorrow. So every single child, every
single child of the Lord, he grieved over their grief. That's
why he wept over Mary and Martha's indescribable grief. And he kept
telling them, weeping over ignorance, weeping over their unbelief,
weeping over their lack of faith. Do you ever get frustrated trying
to tell your children something? When they cry, inconsolably cry,
and you're trying to tell them, honey, just hold on. It grieves you, doesn't it? Well,
Jacob's funeral. Let's go to that. Jacob's funeral. Verse 2. Oh, this man is sorely
missed. And Joseph, his son, wept over
him, as many of you in here have done, over your father or mother's
face. My, my. You know what Joseph
was feeling. And we'll all experience it right
soon. Verse 2, Joseph commanded his
servants, the physicians, to embalm his father. And the physicians
embalmed Israel. This is where this started. And it was necessary to do this. You remember? Jacob gave the
command for Joseph to take his body all the way back to Canaan
and bury it. He had to. He had to do this. This wasn't the... tradition of Israelites, but
it was the Egyptians. But this had to be done, right?
It had to be. So, people, this is-it's not
evil, it's not wicked, it's not wrong, okay? Some of you don't
want to be, some don't mind being. We're going to take-he's already
requested we take his body back to Ashland to bury it, so it
must be done. It must be done. This is a lesson
though, just this right here, embalming. Why do we need to
embalm bodies? Because of this corrupt flesh.
What a lesson in depravity this is. The flesh is so corrupt,
you've got to get it in the ground fast. They said of Lazarus' body,
they said these sisters, when the Lord came four days later,
He said, roll back this time. They said, oh Lord, don't do
that. By this time, he's stinking.
All flesh is grass and it corrupts and the body must be buried.
It will be unbearably offensive. It will be unbearably offensive
if we don't get it in the ground fast. Now listen, here's the
lesson. Because when there's no life in the flesh, it's corrupt. When there's no life, there's
no warmth. You touch that dead body, it's cold. And what I'm
speaking of now is spirit. If there's no life of God in
a man or a woman, it would be cold. There's no warmth. There's no emotion. Where there's
life, there's emotion. There's happiness, there's sadness,
there's joy, there's sorrow. When there's no life, no spiritual
life, there's no emotion. And that dead body, there's no
tenderness. It's hard. It begins to get hard, doesn't
it? The body. Real quickly, hard. Scripture
says, harden not your heart. The Gospels preached it's meant
to soften us, but we become hard-hearted. Those with no life then, hard-hearted. There's no breath. No voice,
a dead body. It's not going to call. Not going to respond. You look
in the eyes, they're vacant. Look in the dead eyes of a person
spiritually, it's a vacancy. No light there. Ears don't hear. That's some in this room right
now. Must be given life. Salvation
is to be given life from above. It's to be born again and everything
becomes brand new like a baby. Like a baby. Everything is wonderful. They
cry and they laugh and they joy and they hunger. They thirst. They need companionship and milk. That's life. That's spiritual
life. But oh, when we're dead and trespassed in sin, no response. Got to be buried. Got to be killed. Got to be buried.
You know, burial is a picture of our Lord's baptism into our
Lord. Let's see if I can find this
verse. It says in Romans 6, it says,
as we are buried with Him by baptism into death, like as Christ
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life. Reckon yourselves to
be dead. If we be dead with Christ, we
believe that we shall also live with Him. for crucified with
Christ and buried with Him. If what Christ did on the cross,
if the God, the Spirit will take it and apply it to our dead hearts,
we'll live and we'll see that We'll mourn over our sins and
we'll want to be buried, put out of sight. We'll want the
Lord to put our sins away. The gospel will be the most wonderful
story we've ever heard. We'll want to hear about what
Christ did for us and be buried with Him that we might live. Burial is a picture of baptism. You're put under, but you don't stay there. And we need to be crucified with
him and buried, raised to walk in newness of life, the life
of the Spirit, the breath of life. The Lord buried Moses. Burial is the way that we are
to, what we're to do with these bodies. We're to bury them, not
cremate them. You'll not find that anywhere in the Scripture.
Embalming, yes. Cremation, no. We're to be buried. The Lord buried Moses. All the
Old Testament saints were buried, all of them. The Lord was buried.
The Lord Jesus Christ. We need no other example to bear
it. Well, he was mourned a long time. Verse 3, he was mourned a long
time. Three score and ten days. Forty
days were fulfilled after embalming him. Sixty days. A hundred days. This was a long, drawn out thing,
wasn't it? Verses 4 through 6, read this.
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,
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. And Pharaoh
said, Go up and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.
and I'm going to do exactly what my father asked to do, Lord willing."
And his brother even asked her to do something for her concerning
his body, and she said, I'll do it. But this is another reminder
that Jacob was making plans for his own death. He was preparing
for it, as Scripture said, and this is what we looked at recently.
that we should think on our end and prepare for. Oh, that they
were wise and would consider their latter end. Today might
be our last day. Oh, we'll wait till tomorrow.
Oh, no. There's no promise of that today. And we need to say with Jacob,
Jacob said this to his son. He gathered all his sons together.
He said, Lo, I die. I'm dying. I'm going to die.
And he said, I've digged my grave. That's what he said. He said,
I've digged my own grave. He had bought a piece of land,
a cave of mumry. That was his grave. And he bought
it and dug it, as it were, preparing for his own death. He was so
ready for it. He was so conversant with it.
He so spoke of it that he was anxious for it. He dug his own
grave. I wonder if he tried it out.
I wonder if he got in it. You know, if anything, visiting
the cemetery, if it would be good for anything, it would be
good for that, to go there and see, this is where I'm headed. It's out of sight, out of mind,
you know, but go there and see. My old dog Abner, you know, when
he was getting old, I knew his time was soon, and I dug his
grave. I dug his grave weeks before
I put him down. And I took him to that grave
one day, just he and I, and put him in it. I said, lie down with
me to see if it fit him. You know that our Lord took Aaron
up on Mount Horeb. He was healthy. He was alive. He took Aaron up on Mount Horeb
and said, now you didn't sanctify me before the people. He would
marry him. And he said, you've got to die.
And he took him up on Mount Horeb and he killed him. He took Moses
up on Mount Pisgah and said, Moses, you didn't sanctify me
before the people. You smoked that rock twice. I
told you not to. And he said, now you're going
to look at the land. You're not going in. And God killed him.
You need to prepare for it. And our Lord swore he wouldn't
leave us. Like Jacob made rain, he said, don't leave me. Don't
leave me. Joseph said the same thing. Don't
leave me. Take my bones where they belong. And our Lord swore
he wouldn't leave us. He's the one that's going to
bury us. And he swore he would come again. And here's the gospel
in this picture. An obedient son, our Lord was
the obedient son, and in covenant with his father, he came to bury
his dead. He came to put away his dead
from his side. And he's coming again. Like Joseph
took his father's body away out of Egypt, our Lord is going to
take ours too away. Way up in glory in Canaan. We're
going to take our bodies to Canaan with them. Verses 7 and 8, Joseph
went up to bury his father, and with him went all the servants
of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, all the elders of the
land of Egypt. These were the finest people
in the land, well-known, rich, poor, high, low, young, old,
male, female, all the house of Joseph, per se, and his brethren,
and his father's house. This was a huge funeral, wasn't
it? You know, old Jacob must have
been a good testimony. You reckon? And I thought about
this. I know this is so. There must
have been a lot of people come to know the Lord through Joseph.
Don't you know? Don't you know? Is he a good
testimony, Joseph? That's why he came to Egypt.
Not only to save his people, not only to save Jews, but guarantee
you there's some Gentiles saved by Joseph's testimony. You know,
that's why we're here, people. That's why we're in Egypt. That's
the only reason we're here. bear witness of our Lord, a testimony,
and for our brothers. The old Jacob was a good testimony.
So was Joseph. Many people came to his funeral
with a testimony to a man that was greatly loved and honored
among many. I sent this card. Now, it's not... I sent this card to Joe. And
to Ed Ballard, these two men that I greatly esteem, on their
birthday one time, I found this card and it said, It's not so
important how many people... I wrote it down. What did it
say? It's not so important how many
years a man lives as how many people. right glad he did. I thought that was good. And I
sent that to two men that I esteemed very highly, that many people
were right glad they did. Now Jacob was like that. Jacob
wouldn't have said that, would he? Jacob, you can't believe
all the people that came to your funeral. Oh my. Well, verse 9, look at
this. It said, they went up with him
chariots and horsemen, a great company. For who? Who was all
this about? Jacob. Jacob, cheat, supplanter. Remember where he started? Remember where the Lord found
him? Deceived his brother, deceived his father. He's on the run.
He doesn't have anybody, doesn't have anything. Laying out there,
running, scared of nobody. Nobody knows him. Now look, chariots. Pharaoh's chariots are coming
to bury him. Horses. A great crowd of people. For old Jacob, mind you, people,
you can't believe the procession that's awaiting you in glory.
You can't believe it. I can't tell you because I haven't
seen it, but the Lord said, He said, angels await our coming. Chariots of fire are coming for
us. A great company, a heavenly host is coming for who? Henry
and Soren from Corn Valley. Isn't that amazing? Because God
takes a Jacob and makes him an Israel, a prince with God, and
affords him a burial of a king. A king. We came to this threshing
floor, and I've got to quit. Verse 10. I hope you don't want
me to quit, but my, this is wonderful. This is not just a funeral, people.
This is glorious. Came to this threshing floor
of Etad, and I don't know the significance of that. It doesn't,
you notice there's no reference to it anywhere, and I couldn't
find it anywhere. First mention of it, last mention
of it, Etad. The word means, I looked up the
word, it means a thorn, a piercing. So in other words, This death
of Jacob was, they were pierced through with much sorrow. And
that's good. I mean, that made me think of
our Lord. He said, they'll look on me whom
they've pierced, and they will mourn. They will mourn. And our Lord Himself was pierced
through with our sorrows. And He wore thorns, didn't He?
He wore a crown of thorns as our substitute. Verse 11 says,
a grievous mourning. They named it the mourning of
the Egyptians. A grievous mourning. I thought
about this too. The Egyptians, or verse 11, the inhabitants
of Canaan. Now, by this time, it was full
of heathen people. You know, remember when David
came, he had to conquer this land. It was full of Jebusites.
They lived in Jerusalem. He had to take it away from them,
fill it with his people, his relatives. Well, the inhabitants
of the land of Canaanites saw the mourning in the floor of
Atad, and they said, this is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians.
I thought about this, that when the world comes in here, when
they see us gather together, those who love our Lord Jesus
Christ, those who know something about sin, those who know something about
what it costs our Lord, those who grieve over their own sin
and grieve over what it costs our Lord and grieve over death
and pain that sin causes, When the world comes in here, they
don't need to see a laughing, smiling, you know, jovial, flippant,
careless people that are carrying on like nothing's wrong. Do they? When they come in here, the world,
inhabitants thereof, they need to see a people whose laughter
has been turned to sorrow, who mourn over their sins, mourn
over the consequences of it. Let the world know this is serious.
This is not playtime. This is serious matter of life
or death here. It's grievous. So much so, Christ died. Not happy all the time. Man is
born of woman is full of trouble. Oh, but we can tell them if they
mourn over their sins that they'll laugh with us. There is joy with
us. And also, they called this the
mourning of the Egyptians, Abel Mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. The Egyptians mourned Jacob.
All of them turned, as many as, well, Pharaoh's house. Pharaoh's
house, mind you. Think about this. Think about
this, how things change. They all mourned. Egypt mourned
Jacob. I believe Pharaoh was a believer.
This Pharaoh, God saves kings. He saved Manasseh, I believe. Pharaoh mourned over Jacob. Boy,
it didn't last long. It wasn't a generation later,
the Egyptians hated the Jews. Until they rose up a Pharaoh
that didn't know Joseph, didn't know Jacob, hated these Jews,
and they wanted to kill them all. God gave favor in the sight of
the Egyptians. But, buddy, our Lord said, Marvel
not, though, the world is going to hate you. They're going to
hate you. It says, Our Lord grew in wisdom and stature and favor
with God and men. And for a time, all men admired
Him, but, boy, it didn't last long, did it? See, the sorrow
of this world, the mourning of the Egyptians, is the sorrow
of this world at work at death. People sorrow, and they come
to hear about Jesus, and they come to hear this, and they might
shed a tear, and you'll see that it's serious, but it doesn't
last long. Unless the Lord puts this repentance that needeth
not to be repented of, godly sorrow, they're going to end up hating
it. That's that. And verse 13, so
his sons carried him. Verse 12, I'm sorry. His sons
did unto him according as he commanded them. His sons carried
him into the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the
field of Machpelah. Do you remember that? Where he
was buried? Which Abraham bought with the
field for possession. Where Abraham was buried. Where
Sarah was buried. Where Isaac was buried. Where
Rebekah was buried. Where Leah was buried. Jacob's
now going to be buried. Joseph's going to be buried too.
And Joseph returned unto Egypt, verse 14, he and his brethren,
all that went up with him, to bury his father, they returned
and went back to Egypt. And people were going to go to
the grave too, weren't they? If the Lord doesn't come back,
I don't know who's next. I think it's going to be my father
or mother or it might be Henry. So it might be me. Right? We buried some people we thought
prematurely, didn't we? Some people that we thought we
didn't expect. Simple. I mean, think about it,
don't we? And we're going to go to the
grave and bury a body. Then we're going to go back to
Egypt. We're going to go back to Egypt.
We're going to go back out in the world. Well, let's not forget
it. Let's not forget what we've done. And, you know, they may have
gone and taken Benjamin there and buried him. There's no more
mention of these men. They may have gone and taken
Issachar and Dan. Dan may have been next to be
buried, right? It's going to happen. You've
got your plot, don't you? And we'll go to the grave again
and again, and we'll return to this world. Let's not forget
it. And we'll return to this world until the Lord returns
for us. And my dad one time was walking
to the gravesite to bury another brother, and he turned and said
to us, I'll be glad when we stop dying. Won't you? But if you die with
Christ, if you died with Christ on the cross, it's just a brief
separation. It's a gathering for you in glory. There's a chariot that came for
our brethren. Chariots and a great crowd, a
cloud of witnesses. And it's a happy time for them,
sad for us, but we're right behind them. Right behind them. Okay. May the Lord bless that.