Joseph, and Jacob before, passed on the faith. That is our task. All life's journey, right to the end, to pass on the promises of God: of a Saviour, and a land. To pass on the message of salvation, to pass on a legacy of proof of God's power, and God's living activity in the lives of his people. They would study the life of Jacob, and its provisions, and how to prove God. They would study the life of Joseph, his extraordinary biography, and see God's hand upon him. So they left not only the promises of God, the covenant, but they left a legacy of proof of God's hand upon them. That is your task and mine: that our children, our families should know all about God's dealings with us, our testimony, our proving of him, every step of the way in our journey, so that they know the reality of God's activity in the lives of his people. What an example of humility is Joseph! An example of long-suffering and patience. Do people see those things in us? An example of faith and godliness and trust in him. This was the life of Joseph and the life of Jacob before him. He lived throughout for the future: the fulfilment of the promise, that God would take them to a land, that Messiah would come, that one day all the families of the earth would be blessed.
I often wonder if that drove Joseph in his work, even his political and secular work towards Egypt. How is it that somebody who was first and foremost a man of God, concerned for the promise of God to the people of God; how is it he could be so effective and so efficient in the administration of Egypt? Because he believed all the promise: that through the coming seed – the seed of Abraham, the Messiah – all the families of the earth would be blessed. So he had a heart for the stranger, the foreigner, as well. I think that enabled him even to serve the Egyptians and to build up his great testimony there.
The captivity is not all bad. The lot of Israel at this time was good. Worst was yet to come. A Pharaoh would come who knew not Joseph, but at the time of the death of Joseph things were not that bad. Why did Joseph not instruct his body to be taken and buried in Canaan, but instead to be kept in Egypt, to be put in a temporary burial place and then taken to Canaan? Why give this instruction that his body should not be returned to Canaan until all the people leave? Because soon after his death Egypt would become a hard task master. God had told Abraham that his descendants would be in a foreign land for four hundred years (Genesis 15:13-14). But Joseph wants to keep their faith alive. So he says, keep my bones with you. Let my bones be a token we are going back. God will keep his promise. If you understand the word of God and obey him, in some way maybe, you will speak long after your death.
Live for the future; live to see the Lord; live to be wholly transformed one day and free from sin. Your maturity as a Christian may be measured by the degree to which you look forward to heaven. If you look forward to heaven little and it only speaks to you in shallow nominal way, it is an indication of your level of spirituality and closeness to the Lord. Oh to know all things, to see the Saviour, to see the Lord's people, to see his handiwork, to be in a place where he rules, where there is no sinful rule, no evil thing. That should be a highest desire as we grow in grace. Think of it often: the blessings of eternity and heaven. Think of it as a place of praise, a place of love, a place of beauty a place of truth, where all the sufferers that we read of in different lands will be eternally set free and rewarded. To think of heaven often will be a source of assurance to you. ‘Pastor, I lack assurance.’ One among several remedies is to think of heaven and the heavenly hereafter. It will banish pain; it will banish frustration when things don't go right as you would like them to; it will give you zeal; it will strengthen your patience, multiply your faith, and deepen all your trust and love. When somebody speaks to you as a Christian and asks you, ‘What is your highest desire?’, oh to be able to answer honestly and feelingfully: ‘Heaven; to see him, and all the people of God in perfection; to know him and his purposes and all things.’ If we can say that was then we are where we should be. So ends the time of the patriarchs: the Book of Genesis from the creation of the world to Joseph, the supreme type of Christ. This is the book of the greatest imaginable promise: the Book of Genesis.