Carry Up My Bones
part three
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.
Jesus was asked once by a sect that did not believe in the resurrection about a hypothetical situation that they thought made the resurrection an impossibility. Jesus’ answer was that their Scriptures say that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He told them to pay attention to the tense of the verb. It doesn’t say God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It says God is (present tense) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He finishes by telling them that God is the God of the living and not the dead.
What was Joseph basing his belief in a future resurrection on? He was basing it on the word of God, the promise that God made. The Christian does the same. It is not that the Christian faith is a faith without reason. The Christian faith is a reasonable faith. But in the end when you ask me how can you know your sins are forgiven, the only thing I can point you to is the word of God and the promises of Christ.
Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again for our justification. And he promised that whoever placed their faith in him would not perish but have everlasting life.
So, the Christian can die like Joseph by looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth. Looking forward to Paradise restored. Looking forward to a new, resurrected and perfected life.
There is no need for the Christian to build a monument to their past because they have a certainty about the future.
Death for the Christian is not the end. It is the anticipation of a new beginning.
Let me mention one other thing that Joseph does and doesn’t do. He doesn’t do what his father did. Jacob asked that he be immediately buried in Canaan. That’s what they did with Jacob. When he died, they had a long, long funeral procession and took his body and buried it in Canaan before returning to Egypt. Joseph could have done that. He didn’t
It was as if he wanted his corpse to be a constant reminder to the Hebrew people of the promise of God that was going to be fulfilled for them. I don’t know where they kept it, but they kept Joseph’s corpse. For about 300 years they kept the coffin and when Moses led them out of Egypt, they carried it with them. They carried it around in the wilderness for all those years and they eventually buried him in Shechem.
For all those years they had that coffin and corpse to remind them. God will surely visit you.
Now, we don’t have a corpse to look at to remind us of the promise of God.
No. We have something far better.
We have an empty tomb.
How can we know we are forgiven?
Jesus is risen.
How can we be certain of life after death?
Jesus is risen.
How can we have hope in a new heaven and new earth?
Jesus is risen.
How can we be confident the death will be defeated, and we will live again?
Jesus is risen.
In 2 Timothy 2:8 Paul exhorted Timothy to “Remember Jesus Christ; risen from the dead. Look to Jesus, crucified, buried, risen from the dead and have faith.