Monday, May 15, 2017
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of
Israel swear to do this. He said, “God
will certainly come to help you. When he
does, you must take my bones with you from this place.” Exodus 13:19(NLT)
Leaving
Egypt the people of God carried off all their belongings, much of Egyptian
wealth, and the bones of Joseph. Aside
from keeping a 400 year-old promise to Jacob’s son who had managed to feed and
protect Abraham’s tribe during the worst famine ever, why would you move a dead
man’s bones? Was the dead man watching? The short answer is “yes”. At church yesterday our text was Revelation
6:9-11, and therein we have strong evidence that the departed are, indeed
watching. They are part of the great cloud of witnesses we
read about in the New Testament. (Hebrews 12:1)
So why did
Joseph, who lived most of his life in Egypt, want his bones carried away when
the children left? The first answer is
that Joseph understood the concept of being an alien. He was brought to Egypt by the caravan of
merchants who had bought him from his own jealous brothers. He didn’t belong there! But Joseph also understood God’s promise to
his great-grandfather, Abraham.
Then the Lord took
Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you
can. That’s how many descendants you
will have!”
Then the Lord said
to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign
land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that enslaves
them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. (As for you, you will die in peace and be
buried at a ripe old age.) After four
generations your descendants will return here to this land… Genesis 15:5,
13-16a(NLT)
As a
highly-favored child in Jacob’s household, Joseph would have heard these words
often; he knew the promises of God to Abraham extended to his son, Isaac, and his
son, Jacob, and, to his son, Joseph. The
promise of God gets deep in your bones!
For Joseph
it was a life-long dream to return to the place of God’s promise; it was
natural to want to go home. But, in the
final analysis, the promise made to Joseph about taking his bones back to the
Promised Land was a matter of faith and fidelity. He knew that God’s promise was where his true
home could be found.
And nothing
less!
For You Today
Where
is your home? Is it some place for which
you worked, scrambled to pay a mortgage, and now have your name on the
deed? Or is it a place deep in your
bones, based on a promise, and sealed with blood that trickled down a cross?
And
nothing less…or more?
NOTES
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