Hebrews 11:22 NIVUK
[22] By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones. https://bible.com/bible/113/heb.11.22.NIVUK
Everyone is familiar with the life of Joseph. There is even a musical written about it, which, during one particular run in the West End of London, featured a popular Australian former actor and pop star.
Yet the one event that is chosen by the writer to the Hebrews as being a demonstration of faith might be very surprising.
For the third time in succession, this writer has jumped over a long life and concentrated on the dying words of a famous figure from Jewish history. Maybe for Isaac we can understand it as we don’t have a lot of information on his life. And for Jacob, we can also understand it, because what we known of his life isn’t always palatable.
But Joseph?
Here is a man who sunk so very low and rose so very high and is regularly used as an example of how living God’s way brings amazing rewards, even when it doesn’t seem like it will happen.
So why is he reduced to one line, and even that, just about his dying words, after all he achieved?
Because out of it all, this was his ultimate accomplishment. This was his greatest expression of faith in God.
How?
Let’s remind ourselves of his life.
And what a life!
He begins as the firstborn of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel (Genesis 30:22-24). He was not born in the Promised Land, but in Paddan Aram, most likely Harran, to the north, likely in modern-day Turkey.
He is his father’s favourite (Genesis 37:3), which triggers jealousy from his brothers (Genesis 37:4), who had been born either of a wife Jacob had been tricked into marrying or a servant.
He dreams of his future as the one who will rule over Jacob’s quite fractious household (Genesis 37:5-7). Given the nature of the relationships in the family, this is not well received, and results in his brothers faking his death and selling him into slavery (Genesis 37:12-35).
The Midianites to whom his brothers sold Joseph then take him to a slave market in Egypt and sell him on to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s senior officials (Genesis 37:36), whose wife’s loose morals see Joseph imprisoned, falsely accused of attempted rape (Genesis 39:1-20).
Joseph prospers in jail (Genesis 39:20-23), where he interprets the dreams of two servants that Pharaoh himself has capriciously sent there (Genesis 40:1-22).
But Joseph is forgotten (Genesis 40:23).
Until he interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and saves the nation with a brilliant piece of advanced disaster planning for a seven year famine (Genesis 41).
His brothers and family in the Promised Land are also starving and come to Egypt for food, where Joseph fools them for a little while (Genesis 42), before they are eventually reunited (Genesis 43-46).
It is a brilliant story. A truly ripping yarn. Completely inspirational. A delight to read. Five stars.
But if we just see the wonderful story then we don’t also see the thing that makes it so wonderful. And it’s not the coat of many colours or the song and dance routines (neither of which are in the Bible).
No, it’s the quiet, unobtrusive, but firm as iron faith lived in exile in a land that did not appreciate or understand it.
Behind this story is a resolute man living in a place that did not share his beliefs or his moral fibre.
And that takes faith. Not to mention fortitude and determination.
That is why his story is so inspirational.
But we move now from his faith to his belief.
And it is here, as the end of his life beckons, that we see the substance of the man. Read these words carefully:
Genesis 50:24 NIVUK
[24] Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’
Joseph is a man who is living hundreds of miles from the country God has promised His people, where Joseph was not even born. He has prospered greatly in Egypt. He has had power and position and wealth beyond what most people will achieve in their lifetime.
But it isn’t home.
And that is what matters.
Look again at the phrase he uses. Joseph says that God will ‘come to [their] aid’. The Hebrew words means ‘to visit’, ‘to help’.
But why would they need help?
Because of Joseph, his family has risen up the ranks very quickly. Pharaoh has given them the very best pasture land in all of Egypt – Goshen – and some of them are taking care of Pharaoh’s own flocks (Genesis 47:1-6, 11-12). They have a truly privileged position.
Joseph himself was Pharaoh’s second in command (Genesis 41:37-43).
What is more, they had more than enough to see our the famine.
Yet despite all this wealth, Joseph sees them as needy. He sees them as in want. He sees them as lacking something.
Because they are not home.
This is not where they should be.
After all these years living off the fat of the land and saving millions from famine, Joseph still longs for the Promised Land in God? What will it take for you to do the same?
He also sees that the only One who can truly get them there is God – despite his immense power and wealth.
That is how the eyes of faith see the world around us.
But not only that. He also believes that God will give them it.
That too is really extraordinary.
This is how Joseph’s family had lived there:
Hebrews 11:9 NIVUK
[9] By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. https://bible.com/bible/113/heb.11.9.NIVUK
Now they lived in Rameses – a city (Exodus 1:11).
The land God had promised them was full of numerous tribes and nations who were much stronger and more numerous than them.
Yet, again, Joseph saw with the eyes of faith the day when God’s promise would be fulfilled.
But this was not an idle faith. It was not a faith that was maudlin in its longing but ineffectual in his life.
No, Joseph’s faith made him do something. So we move from his life and belief to his request:
Genesis 50:25 NIVUK
[25] And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, ‘God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.’ https://bible.com/bible/113/gen.50.25.NIVUK
This is absolutely remarkable.
Anyone who has been to Egypt, or even to North Sudan, will know that their rich and powerful deceased were built in enormous tombs with all their wealth, and occasionally their wives and household servants. That is essentially what the pyramids are: massive mausoleums, built by slave labour.
Perhaps it is the grandeur of these man-made tombs that inspired these words in the psalms:
Psalms 49:10-12 NIVUK
[10] For all can see that the wise die, that the foolish and the senseless also perish, leaving their wealth to others. [11] Their tombs will remain their houses for ever, their dwellings for endless generations, though they had named lands after themselves. [12] People, despite their wealth, do not endure; they are like the beasts that perish. https://bible.com/bible/113/psa.49.10-12.NIVUK
Now, there is little doubt that Joseph is a great and highly significant man. He saved millions of lives. He reduced most of Egypt to slavery under Pharaoh. The Bible even teaches that he helped set up their taxation system (Genesis 47:23-26). There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Joseph would have been deeply respected.
Yet he had no thought to having his own pyramid. It just did not enter his head.
Instead, he wanted his body to decompose, his bones to be kept in a simple box and then buried in the Promised Land. So sure was he that God’s promises will be fulfilled that Joseph forgoes all the trappings of the culture around him and chooses humility over ostentatiousness.
What is all the more remarkable is that in clinging to this truth, Joseph is holding on to a promise that was given four generations earlier to Abraham:
Genesis 12:6-7 NIVUK
[6] Abram travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. [7] The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
In all that time – four generations – there had not even been the slightest indication that it was about to happen. And here he was, an old man, dying in a foreign land, in the full knowledge that it would never be fulfilled in his lifetime. Yet Joseph clung tightly to the promise – so tightly, in fact, that he wanted to be buried there, not in Egypt.
That takes faith.
And that is why this blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment is mentioned in Hebrews, because here is where we see Joseph’s deep faith laid bare – the same faith that enabled him to do all the that we see in the chapters before.
When I was a child, my parents managed to scrape together the money to buy our first computer. This was before Apple, and Microsoft at the time were making computer games, not even consoles. Our computer was made by Amstrad.
If you haven’t heard of them, don’t worry.
It had a black and white monitor.
To load anything at all into it required a cassette to be placed into a cassette deck and then a five minute wait while the computer made noises akin to a fax machine.
Yes, I am that old.
But one day a piece of equipment came on the market that promised to connect our computer to our colour TV. Cue much excitement.
So we bought one. It was called a modulator.
It arrived to no little fanfare.
My dad and I – the technical geniuses in the family – set it up and connected it to the TV.
It didn’t work.
So we sent it back. Another one arrived. We connected it up.
Same thing.
The third time, we decided to read the instructions.
It was then it dawned on us.
The modulator needed to be plugged in to the electricity supply.
That wonderful piece of technical skill from my youth is a bit like the story of Joseph. You can marvel at how this man survived slavery, unjust jail time, being forgotten, rising to the very top and then forgiving his nasty brothers, but to really understand it, you need to grasp one thing:
All his actions were driven and underpinned by his faith.
In fact, remove his faith and Joseph would not have either the strength or the resilience to do what he did.
But it’s not enough just to have faith.
What or who you have faith in is just as critical.
Waterfalls are powerful. Winds are powerful. We could have plugged our modulator into either of them, but it would have made no difference – other than ruining the equipment.
It needed to be plugged into the electricity supply.
It is like that with our faith.
It has to be in God.
He made the difference for Joseph. He was the power, the strength, the resolve, the hope and the resilience that drove Joseph on.
And He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
So if you want the same power, the same strength, the same hope, the same resilience, there is only one thing you need to do:
Have faith in God.
So will you believe?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, Joseph’s life is so inspirational – not because of who he was but because of who You are and what You did through him. I believe in You. I trust in You. I want to follow You like Joseph. Amen.
Questions
1. What are the things that Joseph had in his favour?
2. What are the things that were against him and caused him to struggle?
3. What made the difference in Joseph’s life? Will it make the difference in yours too?
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