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Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. The Bible says in Judges 20, all of Israel came together as one man. To destroy Benjamin, to destroy the tribe, and they mourn: today a tribe will be no more. in Israel. 400,000 foot soldier army gathers down south to fight against Benjamin.
And they completely wipe out Gibeah, destroy most of the Benjamites. In fact, at the end, they feel so sorry, they go, you know what? Like, there's no more left. How are we going to even have any kind of a tribe of Benjamin?
So they bring in some of the women from Jabish Gilead up north so that those gals can marry the men and they can have more Benjamites. In that tribe.
So, with that in mind, Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning, he will devour the prey. At night, he will divide the spoil. It could speak of that incident that is yet to come.
So here's the summation. All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. And this is what their father spoke to them. And he blessed them. And he blessed each one according to his own blessing.
And then he charged them, and he said to them. I am to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite.
Okay. The sons of Jacob We're judged. And or blast By their father. Whatever they had done years before maybe covered it up for forty, fifty, sixty years. It comes to light.
in this deathbed scene.
Now you know one day we're going to stand before our Father. Every Christian will stand before Judgment. Not judgment for our sins, that's done. Period, passed on the cross, over with. You and I will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, Paul calls it, the Bema seat of Christ.
And we will either be rewarded for what we did, or the reward will be taken away. And our position and place in the future kingdom. Depends on what we have done with what God has given us here. Will stand before. That's why Paul said, Don't you know that everyone, 1 Corinthians 9, verse 24, all those who run in a race, they all run, but only one receives the prize?
So run, so that you may obtain the prize. Live your life in a way as if to get the prize because God's going to reward you. He's going to bless you at that judgment seat or. Refrain from the blessing. A lot of Christians don't even think about that or live that way, that there's a future judgment seat of Christ where God evaluates our work for Him on the earth or lack thereof, and we get a blessing, a reward, or lack thereof.
That's why Jesus said, now listen carefully. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Is it possible to store up treasures in heaven? Because if it is, I want to know how to do that. I want to do a lot of that.
Because I'd like to get there when it's all over and just like have a really cool place. In heaven. How do I do that? By what we're suggesting. Heaven will be the time of enjoyment.
I look forward to it. Earth is the time of employment. Let's get busy about his business. The famous C.T. studd quote.
Only one life 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ. We'll ask. An evaluation is coming, like for these sons. Yeah. And he charged them, and he said to them, Verse 29: I am to be gathered to my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron, the Hittite.
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 is a possession for a burial place. We already know about that. That's up in Hebron. Yeah.
There they buried Abraham, he's saying to them. There they buried Abraham, Gramps. and Sarah his wife, And there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, And there I buried Leah. Interesting. Bury me next to Leah.
Why not Rachel? Rachel was the one he said he loved. He favoured. He loved the two sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin. Rachel was buried by Bethlehem.
We covered that. She's buried at Machpelalea. It's because he's tying himself into the covenant that God made with Abraham and Isaac, who's buried there, and now himself Jacob. Bury me there. It's a statement of faith.
That's the land God gave to us. The field and the cave that is there were purchased from the sons of Heth when Jacob had finished commanding his sons. He drew his feet up into his bed, and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
Now, you might just read that verse and leave it alone, but to me, it's very suggestive. First of all, he's 147 years old and he's drawing his feet up from the ground. up into his bed. It means his feet were on the ground. When he's given this, he's probably sitting up in bed or leaning on a staff, presumably.
And now he gathers and puts his feet back in the bed.
Now he sort of lived that way, you know. He came out of the womb sort of running in all sorts of directions, running away to Padanaram, running away from his uncle, running away from his brother. He's on his feet. He's holding a staff. You say, I'll ask you, why is he holding a staff?
You could say, well, he's 147 years old. Give him a break. That's not why he's leaning on his staff. He had a wrestling match with an angel. And the angel dislocated his hip and he walked with a limp ever since.
And that's what that's all about. that constant reminder of the life change. And then it says, he was gathered to his people. That speaks of life after death. It's the hope and the belief of the afterlife, the future, the resurrection of the dead.
Now, this is exactly the point Jesus makes. I want to tie two thoughts together. In the New Testament, A group of Sadducees, remember the Sadducees? They didn't believe in the resurrection. And they know Jesus believes in the resurrection.
So they said, Lord, you know the law of Moses says that if a man has a wife and he can't have any offspring or he doesn't have any and he dies, that his brother has to marry her and produce offspring for his dead brother. Which is the law of Moses. But There was this group of seven brothers. And the oldest married a woman But the old guy died. Then his brother married the gal.
And He died, and they're all trying to have kids, you know, for the dead brother. And then the third married her, and he died, and the fourth married her, and he died, and number five died, and six died, and they all died. It's a really stupid analogy because who's gonna do what brother is gonna? I'm not gonna marry you, you're gonna kill me. What are you putting in your eggs?
But it's a hypothetical. It's a hypothetical.
So likewise they all died. And then they give the question: So, in the resurrection, Jesus, whose wife will she be? Because they didn't believe in the resurrection. They denied life after death. You know, here's how Jesus answered him.
You're ignorant. That's what he said. You're ignorant, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. He went on to talk a little bit, but he said, But so you know that the dead do rise, have you never read where the Scripture says, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? It's a great argument.
Close case. He didn't say, I was the God of Abraham. I am. Present tense. The only way God in heaven can be the God presentence of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is if They're alive with him.
If there's life after death. And a future resurrection to come. This is a beautiful argument, and that's ties into this. Yeah. Then Joseph.
Fell on his face or his father's face. And he wept over him and kissed him, And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, so the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for him. For such are the days required for those who are embalmed, and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
Now when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, Behold, I am dying. In my grave, which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.
Now, therefore, please let me go up and bury my father. And I will come back. And Pharaoh said, Go up. and bury your father. as he made you swear.
They mourn seventy days. Two and a half months. That's a long funeral. That was an Egyptian custom. Did you know?
That when a Pharaoh dies. A Pharaoh dies. It was a seventy two day mandatory Period of mourning.
So Jacob dies, and because of Joseph's position, he gets the highest state funeral possible. And they mourn him just two days less than they would a Pharaoh. You think when Jacob was running around padanaram, trying to find a wife and running from his brother and all he'd ever have this kind of a funeral? Do you ever think of your funeral, what it's going to be like? Who's gonna miss you?
What they'll say about you. You're listening to Connect with Skiff Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, what would your life look like if God's fingerprints were all over it? In God Print, The Life of Abraham, Pastor Skip takes you through seven powerful messages on the faith journey of one man who learned to trust God through crisis, fear, and uncertainty. Abraham's life was shaped by God, and so can yours be.
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Now let's get back to today's teaching with Pastor Skip.
Okay, they embalmed him because that's what the Egyptians do. They embalmed him. I'll do it quickly. Would you like to know how the Egyptians embalmed people? Yes or no?
Because I don't want to gross you out. I need your permission for this.
Okay, is that a yes?
Okay, okay, so here's what they did real quickly. First of all, They would extract The brain. Through the nasal cavity. with a crooked wire. They go inside, dig out the brain piece by piece, yank it out through the nasal cavity.
Pretty cool, huh? Then they make an incision in the left lower quadrant of the abdominal cavity, take all of the organs out, and either place them in vases separately or clean them and put them back in. Once all the organs are out, they would clean the inside of the peritone and the peritoneal cavity with antiseptic, with palm wine, and with cedar oil. And then they would. They would pack it.
with cloth soaked in myrrh and cinnamon, because that smells good and decaying bodies don't.
So to take away that smell to mitigate against that, it was stuffed with that. And then the body was sewn up, and for thirty days it was steeped In a nitre compound for preservation.
So we're already a month after death. Month has gone by, and they're still preparing the body.
Okay. Then they would take a cloth. That was Soaked in a lime compound. that s formed an encasement and they would put this hard shell clot encasement over the body, And a wooden casket that would conform to the body. If you were a pharaoh, it would be a gold casket.
Placed into a limestone sarcophagus or a pyramid. And, um, If you've ever seen the Face mask of King Tut, the elaborate gold face mask. That's for royalty. That was placed over the face. Very, very elaborate.
And It worked. If you ever go to the British Museum, if you're ever tooling down the street in London and you got a few hours, go into the British Museum. Yeah. There you will see. What they say was the Moses, or excuse me, the Pharaoh from the time of Moses.
The guy who looked into Moses' baby blues And said, I'm not letting these people go. He's there in England. He lives in London now, that pharaoh. As a mummy. His hair is still preserved.
You can see his hair. He has his teeth. His skin is on him. I mean, he looks pretty bad, but he has teeth. I know people that are.
In their later years, they don't have their teeth.
Well, he's a couple thousand, few thousand years old. He's got his teeth. Really well preserved.
So I think if you could ever go to Hebron, where Jacob is buried in Israel. And dig up Jacob, you'd probably find him as preserved. You'd probably be able to see his skin and his hair and everything. that well preserved. I asked for permission.
So Joseph went up, verse 7, to bury his father, and with him all the servants of Pharaoh. The elders of the house and all the elders of the land of Egypt.
Now it's been 39 years since Joseph has seen. the land of Canaan, as well as all the house of Joseph, his brothers, his father's house, only their little ones, their flocks, and their herds that left in the land of Goshen. And there went with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very great gathering. And they came to the threshing floor of Attad, which is beyond the Jordan, and they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father.
When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning of the threshing floor of Attad, they said, This is a deep mourning of the Egyptians. Therefore, Its name was called Abel Mitzraim, or the morning of Egypt. Mitzraim is the ancient name for Egypt. Which is beyond the Jordan.
So his sons did for him just as he had. commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave. cave of the field of Mapella. before Mamory, which Abraham But with a field From Ephron the Hittite as property for a burial place.
And after he buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, and his brothers, and all who went with him to bury his father. Why did they take the body that far away? Why didn't they just bury him in Egypt? It's dead. I mean, he's dead.
Why bury him in Egypt? He's not going to feel anything. Take my body out here, I want to be brave. And they did it. Why not just disbury me here?
You could ask another question. It sort of ties into that. I'll just whet your appetite for it. Why not just burn his body? Why not just cremate the body?
It's interesting, the Egyptians never believed in that. The Hebrews never believed in it. In fact, you'll never read of of that kind of body disposal in all of the scriptures. For this reason, it ties together. The reason Jacob wanted to go back It's because it was a statement of faith.
Not this land. That land is the land of promise, and I believe the future generations will inherit that land. Take me back to my land. It was a statement of faith. Plant me in that land.
When it comes to Christian burial, and I am not dogmatic about this, I'm just throwing out a thought to you. When it comes to Christian burial, The language of the scripture. Is such that it speaks of burying the body. You are sown, the Bible says, in dishonor. You are raised in glory.
The idea of sowing a body in the ground is the statement of faith that, like I'm planting a seed, 1 Corinthians 15, it will be raised in glory. I believe in the future resurrection. That is why Ancient Hebrews. Old Testament, New Testament, you never find a record of Of them. Disposing of the body in cremation.
You find it in pagan cultures. In fact, in early America, there was never cremation in the early part of this country. It wasn't until the rationalists. And the um Atheistic movements was sort of like a fist in the face. Toward belief in God, that they just said it doesn't matter.
Just get rid of the body. Again, I am not dogmatic about this. And somebody could say, well, God's God. I mean, he can find the molecules of somebody who has been cremated, or he can find the molecules of somebody who has been thrown out in the ocean and sharks. Hundred charts went 100 different directions after eating them.
You can find the remains of somebody who's been. killed in a bomb blast. Can't God do that? That's not the issue. Of course, God can do anything.
But why would anyone want to place God in the position of having to do that? The statement of faith is: I believe in the future of the resurrection. Sure, give it 30, 40 years, and that body in the casket will look just like the molecules that remain from cremation. But the statement of faith. It's simply, I'm sown in dishonor.
And I believe in the future resurrection. That's just a little historical perspective. Again, if you cremated your relatives or you want to be cremated, have at it. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, Perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us evil for which we did to him.
So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying, Before your father died, he commanded, saying, Thus you shall say to Joseph, I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin. For they did evil to you.
Now please forgive the trespass of the servants of God your father. And Joseph wept. as they said this to him. And his brothers also went and fell down on his face and said, Behold, we are your servants. Joseph said to them, Don't be afraid.
For am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive.
Now, therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones. And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. In those verses, you have the personal, practical theology of Joseph. God is sovereign.
God is providential. No matter what happens, no matter what happens in my life, I'm not going to turn away from God. If bad stuff happens to me, I still believe in the overruling, providential, and the sovereign will of God in my life. Period. I've lived that way.
I'll always live that way. Don't be bummed out, you guys. I love you. He spoke kindly to them.
So Joseph dwelt in Egypt. He and his father's household and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years. Fifty-four years after Jacob dies, he dies. Joseph saw Ephraim's children to the third generation. The children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were also brought to Joseph's knees, and Joseph said to his brethren.
I am dying. But God will surely visit you. And bring you out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you. And you will carry up my bones from here.
So Joseph died being a hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin. in Egypt. The book closes with the promise. God will visit you. You're going to leave this place.
Someone is going to come to deliver you. That will be Moses. But ultimately, that will be Jesus. God will visit you. He's Emmanuel, God with us.
So we've read the book of Genesis. We finished the whole book. I want to congratulate you. We've seen the beginning of. Creation, the beginning of mankind, the beginning of marriage, the beginning of sin, the beginning of God's plan to rescue people from sin, the beginning of a nation.
Notice how it begins and ends. Genesis begins with a blaze in the heavens. Genesis ends with bones in Egypt. Genesis begins with life. Genesis begins.
with or ends in death. In the book of Hebrews, your homework. is to read Hebrews chapter 11. We're not covering it next week, but read it. These all died.
In faith. Not having received the promise. But they looked for the place God had prepared for them. They knew, they believed, that God had prepared something for them that would even outlast this life. Do you believe that?
Tonight, do you have a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ? Because God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jesus is saying they're all still around. They're alive. There's an afterlife. They still exist.
And here's my point finally. Every one of you will live forever. Every single human being will live forever. where you will live forever. is dependent upon what you do with Jesus Christ.
God sent Jesus. And that is the fulcrum. He made it easy. Trust in him. Come to him and you'll be saved.
so that anybody anywhere can do that. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzik. Before you go, don't forget to request this month's resource, GodPrint, The Life of Abraham. This powerful seven-message study from Skip-Heitzig shows how God's presence shaped one man's life and how He can shape yours. It's our thanks for your generous gift of fifty dollars or more to support this ministry.
Call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. And while you're there, sign up for Skip's weekly devotional email to grow deeper in your walk with Christ. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig.
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