Carry Up My Bones

part one

Scripture Reading: Genesis 50:22-26

So, Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father’s house. Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph say Ephraim’s children of the third generation. The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph’s own. And Joseph sad to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” So, Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Genesis begins in Paradise. God created everything and everything was good. It ends 48 chapters later with a coffin in Egypt.

It begins with light and ends in darkness.

It begins with life and end in death.

It begins with everything very good and end with something, a lot of somethings, terribly wrong.

Of course, that should not surprise us, although after millennium of human history people are still shocked at the existence of suffering and evil in the world. But from the beginning God was clear. The wages of sin is death.

Sin entered the world and in its wake were death, disease and disasters cascading down on humanity with unrelenting force.

The metanarrative of Genesis is first an explanation of why things are as they are. It starts good. Better than good. It’s great. It is literally paradise. Then comes the rebellion. Sin enters the world. Things go sideways and get wickedly bad. If you have read the book of Genesis, you know what I’m talking about.

But Genesis is more than God’s, “It told you so.” Because although the curse comes right on the heels of the sin, in the middle of the curse there is a promise. It is the not just a promise. It is The Promise of all promises. God commits to doing something about the mess man has made. He is going to decisively act. There will be someone who will be born of a woman who will crush the head of Satan. He will set things right. He will suffer to accomplish it, but he will most certainly get it done.

This promise in Genesis chapter three is called the “protoevangelium.” That simply means the first preaching or announcement of the Gospel. It is oblique and lacks the full clarity that would develop over time, but the skeleton is there. A man, born of a woman would come into the world and defeat the devil and make a return to paradise possible.

Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that promise. He is the One through whom God sets everything right.