Our study today is titled “Joseph's Bones.” "What on earth," you ask, "can we learn about becoming and being a Christian from a study of Joseph's bones?” Well, let us see what the Bible says about it.
Welcome, my friend, to our Bible study program-- In Search of the Lord's Way. As always we welcome you with the prayer that you and we will be blessed by our study together. Your mail is important to us, too, not because we want you to send us money, but we are encouraged by knowing how you have been blessed by this ministry in some way.
In the very preface of his book titled, Basic Christianity, John Stott makes an interesting observation. I believe he is right about it. Oh, he said a lot of things I would like to read or to quote for you, but consider this one short thought here. He says, "An appreciable number of people throughout the world are still brought up in Christian homes in which the truth of Christ and Christianity is assumed. But when their critical faculties develop and they begin to think for themselves, they find it easier to discard the religion of their childhood than make the effort to investigate its credentials." Remember that now as we study "Joseph's Bones."
If you think you might want a free CD or audio cassette tape or printed copy of it, please send your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. Or you may use our toll-free telephone number to make your request. The number is 1-800-321-8633. Or, you may e-mail us at searchtv@searchtv.org. If you didn't get the number, run and get a pencil and paper now, because we will give it again at the end of the program. Right now Ken Helterbrand will lead us as we sing, then I'll be back for Bible reading and prayer.
We are reading today from Hebrews chapter 11, verse 17 beginning, and we will read through verse 22. “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac your seed shall be called, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.” And we read through verse 22. Now let us go to God in prayer. Holy Father, we are so thankful to You for the revelation You have given us in this whole chapter of Hebrews about people who demonstrated and exercised great faith in You and were able to accomplish Your will in magnificent ways in their lives. We are thankful for the inspiration and the instruction we receive from it, and we ask You to bless us now as we meditate on these thoughts. In Jesus’ lovely name we pray. Amen!
We are studying today in the New Testament book of Hebrews. We have no way of knowing for sure the penman of the book, but it is believed by some to be the apostle Paul. Whether he wrote it or not doesn't add anything to it or diminish anything from it at all. But whoever penned it, it's a powerful message for Christians everywhere and in all times-- and it is inspired of God according to 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17.
By use of Old Testament types and shadows, the writer of Hebrews shows clearly that Jesus Christ as the Christian's High Priest and as such, He has immediate and free and personal access to God for all of those who believe in Him. Having said that now and done that well, look how he begins his second division in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19-22: "Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." With those words he introduces what appears in our Bibles to be three and a-half chapters of very practical application of all he has said to this point.
As a matter of encouragement and exhortation he says, "We are not of those who draw back to perdition; but of them who believe to the saving of the soul. Now faith (he continues in chapter 11, verse 1) is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony." Then he goes on and proceeds to provide example after example how the elders (and elders here means those older ones or those who have gone on before us); by faith they obtained a good report. “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain…By faith Enoch was taken away so that he didn't see death...By faith Noah, being divinely warned of God of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear and prepared an ark… And by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place that he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going…By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning the things to come...By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped leaning on the top his staff...By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel; and gave instructions concerning his bones." Well, there are more, but today we are focusing on Joseph, whose faith was so great that he deserved a place in the list of selected patriarchs, because when he was dying, he gave instructions concerning his bones.
"Faith" is not a word of "weakness," friend. Oh, I know that's the way we use it so often, so frequently. We sometimes say, "I believe it might have been Thomas Jefferson who said thus and so." When we are not real sure, we may say "I believe it might have been this way." But, "faith" is a word of "power" and "strength” and "conviction." It is a word for certainty, friend. "By faith we understand (or we know) that the worlds were framed by the word of God..." There is no room for doubt there! The believer understands or he knows what is so great a mystery with others about origins. Charles Sanders Pierce, French philosopher of the early 20th century, spoke of faith as a way of knowing. The believer knows the origin of the universe. He knows whence he came and he's absolutely sure there's no monkey in his family tree. Peter said, "We have come to believe and know that You are the Christ the Son of the living God" (John 6:16). And look! Right here in this study, "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Well, what other than faith in God could motivate a person to do some of the things attributed to Abel and Enoch and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and the others mentioned in this chapter?
But, what is so great about Joseph, that when he came to die he gave instructions concerning his bones? Lots of people make request concerning the disposition of their earthly remains.
Well, we will have to go back to the Genesis story and see all of that, won't we? You may remember that in Genesis chapter 12 God called Abraham out of the land of his kindred, to go into a land that He would show him, with the promise that He would make of him a great nation, make his name great, and give him and his descendants the land of Canaan for their very own. The relevant part here is that Abraham is Joseph's great grandfather, and God promised him and his descendants the land of Canaan, that included Joseph; and it was to be theirs for an inheritance. Now that's of interest to Joseph, of course it is. As God renewed that promise in chapter 15, He mentioned something else to Abraham that is really relevant here. He said to him, "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried at a good old age: but in the fourth generation they shall return here..." And that is Genesis 15, verses 13, 14, and 15.
So God promised Abraham the land of Canaan for his posterity, but before they occupied it, they would have to serve as slaves in some unnamed country, which we now know to be Egypt. Four hundred years they would serve there. And in the fourth generation, they would come out of that country. The promise was made again to Joseph's grandfather, Isaac, and again to his father, Jacob.
And a big part of the book of Genesis is devoted to how Jacob and his family of seventy people happened to go to Egypt where they were later enslaved. It is a long, long story, and one of the most powerful lessons found anywhere about the providence of God, but it would consume one entire program in itself. We will do that someday. So, very briefly Joseph's brothers sold him as a slave there. He was falsely accused, served a prison term, and from there rose to be the second most powerful man in Egypt-- second only to Pharaoh, the king himself. There was a drought in that part of the world and in Canaan, too, and Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy food for the family. They were sent there by their father, Jacob (Israel). Joseph just had them all moved to Egypt where he could take care of them. They multiplied, but by his God-given wisdom Joseph saved not only his own family, but Egypt as well, and he was esteemed very highly-- a great and powerful man was he in that period of history.
"So Joseph dwelt in Egypt, and he and his father's household. Joseph lived one hundred and ten years...And Joseph said to his brethren, I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land which He swore to (great grandfather) Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here. So Joseph died being one hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt." So say the last four verses of Genesis.
There, my friend is the reason Joseph is mentioned among the "greats" of Hebrews 11. Not because he overcame all the obstacles and handicaps to become the success that he was-- to become one of the most powerful men in the world of his day; not because he was such a forgiving person as to forgive those terrible brothers who had sold him into slavery; not because he saved Egypt and his own father's house from extinction by the great drought, but because he believed God concerning the promise land. And he "took an oath of the children of Israel saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from hence." Take my earthly remains with you, he is saying, when you go into the promised land. That is where I want to be buried. That's what he was saying. You see, due to his position in the Egyptian government, he was entitled to the burial of a dignitary-- with great pomp and pageantry, but he chose the promised land instead.
Then in Exodus chapter 12, verses 40 and 41 the Bible says, "Now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years-- on that very same day-- it came to pass that all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." And what do we know? Chapter 13, verse 19 says that "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you."
In all those years of slavery, the children of Israel held on to Joseph's bones. And when they left Egypt-- all six hundred thousand men besides the women and children (some have said more than two million of them in all) together with all their possessions and flocks and herds and they all had all their possessions, they were careful to take Joseph's bones. Even in forty years of wandering around from place to place thereafter in the wilderness and perhaps another five years or so while they were taking the land city by city, they still carried Joseph's bones. But finally, in Joshua chapter 24, verse 32 it's said that "the bones of Joseph which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt they buried at Shechem..." Well, Joseph's bones were finally laid to rest in the land the Lord had promised the descendants of Abraham, the great grandfather of Joseph. I will be back for the application of these things to our own lives in just a moment. Let us pray. Holy Father, we are so thankful to You for this message about Joseph’s bones as You have recorded it for us in Your word. We thank You, thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
So, what do we learn for us from all this long story about Joseph's bones? Well, it's a story of the dynamics of faith! Faith is strength! Joseph really believed God's promises; that they could not fail. After four long arduous centuries, in the fourth generation, God would indeed bring His people out of Egypt to the promised land. In Joseph's heart, once God had said it would be, it was impossible for it not to happen! And he wanted to be in the number to go there. Today, God speaks to us in His word, the Bible. And He speaks just as powerfully now as He did to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. When He says as for example in Mark chapter 16, verse 16 that "He who believes and is baptized, will be saved," there is no possible way it can be any other way, friend. When He says in John 11:25 "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," it is impossible not to happen.
But there is another message in this story for us, equally as powerful, too, and just as needed as the one about believing to the saving of our souls. And the one I asked you at the beginning of this message to watch for. Here it is: Joseph respected and he clung to very firmly the faith of his fathers all the way from his father Jacob, back to his great grandfather, Abraham. But, we have grown up a generation, many of whom arrogantly repudiate the faith and the institutions and the values of their fathers, and insolently pursue a new faith, everyone his own personal faith. To this generation faith is personal, founded not on the word of God as in the case of Joseph, but everyone his own experience, his own feelings, everyone his own interpretation of the Scripture. Insinuating a greater enlightenment than what they consider their biased mothers and fathers possessed. They go on in the search for their own faith. Some tell us that they are leading us out of the darkness of "traditional faith" focused on Jesus Christ and sustained by a "thus saith the Lord," to a new and free and personal and exciting relationship focused on "me" and my personal wants, my personal needs. And, where has all this taken us? Religious confusion! Moral chaos! Emotional instability!
Oh, I understand about religion that is founded on the traditions of men, alright. Of course I do. When Jesus was asked why His disciples transgressed the tradition of the elders by eating with unwashed hands, He turned the question around on the Pharisees, and He asked them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?" What were they doing to transgress the commandment of God? In verse 4 Jesus said, "God commanded, saying, Honor your father and your mother; and, He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say whoever says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God-- then he need not honor his father and his mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition." Say! When we boast "We're not interested, when we say when we boast that we are not interested in the faith of our fathers founded on God's word, focused on His Son, we have our own faith;” we are skating on very thin ice, my friend. We are getting pretty near-- in fact we may be doing precisely what Jesus was denouncing. The tables are turned.
Paul wrote Timothy in his second letter chapter 1, verse 3: "I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did...when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also...Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus."
Well, I'm so glad you were able to join our study today and I pray sincerely, it has been a blessing. For a free printed copy, CD or audio cassette tape of today's program, please address your request to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. By e-mail our address is searchtv@searchtv.org. If you prefer you may use our toll-free telephone number 1-800-321-8633. Well, we plan to be back next week. I hope you will too, friend. And if you would like some home Bible studies, we would like very much to share ours with you. Simply write and ask us to enroll you in our home Bible study course. Oh, hope you will be back next week. God bless you, now. We love you.
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