Let the dead bury their dead..........

mrhappy3 said:

Obviously Jesus was talking about the SPIRITUALLY DEAD...was he in effect saying - leave thiose alone who have NO INTEREST in Spiritual things.....in fact, keep well away, until they show signs of changing that stance ????

Click to expand...

Simply put it means to let those who are not born of the Spirit of God, or those not "born again" to take responsibility for burying their own dead. At least I see that after Nicodemus' time with Christ.

Prior to the blood of Jesus washing away our sins, it was the responsibility of the man of the house to sacrifice a sheep, or whatever he could afford at that time. For many, they had no money, nothing in which to purchase a lamb. So then prior to the year of Jubilee, when everybody's sins were washed away, those unlucky few would be my concern.

By what law of God were those elect few forgiven, having nothing in which to purchase towards a sacrifice to God? Did God simply forgive them, seeing they sought with their whole heart to purchase a sacrifice? There is more to knowing Christ than we can ever know, at least until we are absent in the flesh. Eventually all things will be revealed to us.

mrhappy3 said:

Obviously Jesus was talking about the SPIRITUALLY DEAD...was he in effect saying - leave thiose alone who have NO INTEREST in Spiritual things.....in fact, keep well away, until they show signs of changing that stance ????

Click to expand...

No. Love them unconditionally, as Jesus does, so that they may see Christ within you.

mrhappy3 said:

Obviously Jesus was talking about the SPIRITUALLY DEAD...was he in effect saying - leave thiose alone who have NO INTEREST in Spiritual things.....in fact, keep well away, until they show signs of changing that stance ????

Click to expand...

In context:

Luke 9:59-62

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

I have often wondered what it meant...I know Jesus said something about graves to the pharisees...and in Genesis chapter 23 it talks alot about Abraham burying his dead.

I don't have alot of time to meditate on it right now. I look forward to what others have to say..I will spend more time on Gen 23 later to see if I understand more.

First, it is figurative language.

How do we know literal from figurative language?


Consider every passage literally true,


unless it involves an absurdity, as, ‘let the dead bury the dead’ (Luke 9:60)...


unless it involves an inconsistency or contradiction, as ‘he that believes in me shall never die’ (John 11:25-26) [speaking spiritually]...


unless it involves an immoral conclusion, as ‘cut off hand.. foot... eye.." (Matthew 18:8-9) [speaking of self denial]...



unless it is otherwise stated that it is figurative, as ‘destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days... this spake He of the temple of His body..." (John 2:18-21)...

　

The purpose of figurative language is:
to add beauty and adornment,
to better illustrate and explain,
to make a passage more warm and alive,
and to make literal facts more easy to remember.​

　

What are figures of speech?
A word or phrase that is used to communicate something other than its literal, natural meaning.

For example...
‘that argument does not hold water’,
‘stand up for the Word of God’,
‘I was tickled to death’,
Jesus said, ‘this is My body’...

it means to get ourselves into the doing
of what is vital and important to the kingdom...
others can do the mundane, the unimportant....

we have a commission, a work,
a mission for the Lord,
and need to be doing it...

to break it down more, if one chooses,
let the spiritually dead bury the dead bodies...
we are involved in dealing with the eternal souls
of mankind...​

Who would have thought that my first response would lead to so much contriversy. I did like the response by Watchman that to love one another comes first. That's nice.
Jesus ate with the sinners and all.....

That sort of stuff isn't what happened to Lot's wife or Aninias and Sophira, believers or unbelievers. Killing came swift and without warning much of the time in the Old Testament. The fact that they weren't Israelian, nor followed after the God of Abraham, made them unbelievers, thus a swift death. That's why we say "many are cold and a few are frozen." Ha.

One viewpoint is that Jewish burial customs were more involved in those days than the typical modern funeral. They had seven days followed by 30 days and then a period of up to eleven months for what they called a second burial of the bones. There were beliefs that atonement for sin could be accomplished through this second burial. A belief similar to purgatory.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

An amplified (interpretive) rendering of this statement might be: Look, you have already honored your father by giving him a proper burial in the family sepulcher. Now, instead of waiting for the flesh to decompose, this can never atone for sin, go and preach the Kingdom of God and tell of the only true means of atonement, faith alone in Christ. Let the bones of you dead father�s ancestors gather his bones and place them in an ossuary. You follow me! This interpretation allows for Jesus to have upheld the fifth commandment, takes the text at face value, and does justice to the Jewish burial practices of the first century. The interpretation is therefore consistent theologically, Biblically, and historically, and answers the critics accurately.

Click to expand...

Yitzchak said:

One viewpoint is that Jewish burial customs were more involved in those days than the typical modern funeral. They had seven days followed by 30 days and then a period of up to eleven months for what they called a second burial of the bones. There were beliefs that atonement for sin could be accomplished through this second burial. A belief similar to purgatory.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

Click to expand...

" A second burial of the bones." Interesting stuff. My wife is Catholic and very much set in those traditions. I will have to tell her about this one. I've always wondered just how far back some of these traditional beliefs came from. I can't take much of the Catholic stuff, much of it is boring accept for the movies they make of it. That stuff I enjoy. They give it some flair.

tobethebest said:

" A second burial of the bones." Interesting stuff. My wife is Catholic and very much set in those traditions. I will have to tell her about this one. I've always wondered just how far back some of these traditional beliefs came from. I can't take much of the Catholic stuff, much of it is boring accept for the movies they make of it. That stuff I enjoy. They give it some flair.

Click to expand...

I think the hope that people have of somehow getting family members a second chance after death is an old idea. Of course the traditions that some Jews participated in had very little to do with biblical teachings. remember the history of Israel in the Old Testament and how they were always picking up stuff from the nations around them.

Yitzchak said:

I think the hope that people have of somehow getting family members a second chance after death is an old idea. Of course the traditions that some Jews participated in had very little to do with biblical teachings. remember the history of Israel in the Old Testament and how they were always picking up stuff from the nations around them.

Click to expand...

Interesting. Who wouldn't like to think that their mean old grandpa could turn out to be a really nice man in the after-life. I hope my Dad's dad was saved and by some chance a really nice person now. Sarcasm was thick in our family history. Even today it's not easy to obstain from. I guess we are all a bit sarcastic, some more than others.

i buried my dad, maybe i will answer for it at judgement, for wasteing time.
as a matter of fact i am in trouble in all sort ways. according to what i hear in these forums.
thank God , i trust in the cross of christ,or i would be doomed.

Someone once commented and this makes sense to me, that they are talking about waiting to bury people who aren't even dead or on their death bed yet. So what we are talking about is someone saying, I'll follow you after my father dies and I have helped put the family household in order. This person would never really get around to following. There would always be something upcoming.

like eagleswings said:

i buried my dad, maybe i will answer for it at judgement, for wasteing time.
as a matter of fact i am in trouble in all sort ways. according to what i hear in these forums.
thank God , i trust in the cross of christ,or i would be doomed.

Click to expand...

NO, YOU MISS THE POINT... IT IS A FIGURE OF SPEECH TEACHING US A LESSON, BUT NOT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY... WE ARE TO BE FAR MORE CONCERNED WITH THE LIVE SOULS STILL TO BE REACHED WITH THE GOSPEL THAN WITH OTHER MATTERS... a person who has died, is already in heaven or hell, and is not the mission of us now... they had thier time to choose... That does not mean we do not attend a funeral, or put flowers on a grave from time to time, but even at the funeral, the import needs to be on the testimony of the gospel message, perhaps a soul will find Jesus due to the final testimony of the saint being buried... I have seen that happen often...

He tickled me to death, is a figure of speech also, illustrating something, but not to be taken literally.

Thanks , i understand.