Truth For Life

Guest (Male): In the book of Genesis, as Joseph's life story is coming to an end, he faced death with confidence, but not because of his accomplishments. Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg explains how, like Joseph, we can face our final parting without fear and use it to bless those we will leave behind. We're in Genesis, chapter 50.

Alistair Begg: It's interesting when the writer of Hebrews records out of all the things that might have been recorded concerning Joseph's life and the great testimony of his experience. This is what it says in Hebrews 11:22: "By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones."

Does this strike you as interesting at all? When you think of all that we've discovered in the saga of Joseph—in the pit, out of the pit, Pharaoh, Potiphar's wife, the cupbearer, the baker, all of that. And here the scripture says, and Joseph, by faith, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions concerning his bones.

Why? Because it was so phenomenally significant. Joseph bore an Egyptian title, Joseph married an Egyptian wife, Joseph enjoyed an Egyptian lifestyle, and yet he never bought the whole package. Hebrews 11:13 is a classic illustration: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them from a distance, and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on the earth."

People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

This marks out Joseph at the end of his days. He has stayed the test of time. He's living in an ancient civilization, the most advanced civilization. He's living under the shadow of the pyramids. He is dwarfed by the sphinxes. He is part and parcel of the whole political, social, and economic structure of the place.

And yet, when he gets with his children and with his grandchildren, and when they get into their huddle, they don't do despite to the culture, they don't condemn it. They simply remind one another: "This is not it, you know." Our security does not lie in my job, he tells his kids. Security does not lie in the resources that I've been able to put away.

Our hope for the future is not tied to what will happen to the economic prosperity of Egypt. We don't have to worry about that. God has helped us in the past. All of our hope and all of our focus is on somewhere else. We're going to Canaan; we're going to the land of promise. They would have said it again and again. And then, just to reinforce it, he says, "And by the way, when I die, you make sure that you carry my bones up from here."

Is this not one of the great challenges of trying to stay the course in Christian living today? It certainly is for me. Paul writes to the Romans after he has given the doctrinal indicatives and he comes to the ethical or moral imperatives. He says in Romans chapter 12, in light of the gospel that he has laid down, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

In other words, as Phillips paraphrases it, "don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold." Just because everybody else says that's what you're supposed to do, that's how you live, that's how you retire, this is the next thing on the journey—just because everybody says that doesn't mean that the believer has to buy it.

The great challenge is, as it was for Joseph, to live in the culture and yet at the same time to be saying to our children and our grandchildren, "this is not it." Some of us can't say "this is not it" because everything that we're doing with our time, our talents, and our money says to our kids, "this is it. This is all there is."

Colossians 3: "Since then you have been raised with Christ, seek these things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God." Don't get embroiled in this. Don't get stuck with the earthbound stuff. First Peter chapter 2, he says, "You guys are aliens and you're strangers." You're living in the culture, but he urges us to abstain from sinful desires which war against the soul. Live instead as aliens and strangers.

I've said this to you a hundred times, but it is the truth that it is easy to become an extremist on these things. Buy yourself a toga, a pair of sandals, put flowers in your hair, and go to San Francisco or wherever else you want to go. Set up your own kind of compound and condemn everybody else who still wears suits, still goes to business, still lives in the culture. "We are the ones that have got it right; come over and be an alien and a stranger with us."

The far harder thing is to drive the same cars, wear the same kind of suits, shop in the same supermarkets, go to the same schools, engage in the same pursuits, and somehow or another live as an alien. The future of the church in America is directly related to finding out how to do this.

Because the contemporary world asks the question: Is God alive? I spent a whole week asking that question. And it was fascinating, and they had people from here, there, and everywhere answering the question. But never was there a thought in the midst of it all that the church of Jesus Christ would be able to answer that question and would be able to establish the factuality of it by their lifestyles.

What are we? Are we a subgroup? Are we an economic environment? Are we a political caucus? We've allowed ourselves to become all of these things because we stepped up to the plate and did it. But Peter never did it. He didn't get involved in that in relationship to the Neronic persecutions. Paul did not get involved in that in relationship to the problems that confronted them morally and sexually in Corinth.

He determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified. The people said, "If you did dramatic things, or if you spoke with eloquent words, you'd be far better off." And Paul said, "I understand you feel that way, but I have determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." I've got one string to my bow; it is the cross of Jesus Christ. I'm going to proclaim it everywhere I go and every opportunity I get. And people said, "You know what? You are weird. You're an alien. You are strange."

Joseph was strange because he was a stranger. And strangers are always a wee bit strange. How strange are you? How strange am I prepared to become so that I might stay the course? We see him standing the test of time. Now let's go to him facing the final curtain. It's one thing to stand the test of time; it's another to be able to face the final curtain as does Joseph.

"Then Joseph said to his brothers," verse 24, "I am about to die." There's a kind of realism about this, something striking about the matter-of-factness of it. It's one thing for our faith to stand the test of time; it's quite another for it to be able to face the final curtain. Dying men and women will often be unwilling to believe that which is apparent to everybody else.

But interestingly, in contrast, Joseph is in no terror. There's no grasping at shadows, there's no clutching at vain things. Instead, his words are brief, they're to the point, and they're not in the least self-focused. "I am about to die, but God will come to your aid. Your aid. I'm dying, you're living, your aid."

This tells me something about Joseph. It tells me something about the way people die, and the way you and I will die. Because of what I do, I've been with many people in the last 20-plus years as they have died. I was thinking about it this week in terms of the approach to death and all the different things that I've seen. Many of them harrowing and difficult.

One stood out to me more than any other. My mind took me way back to 1976 to a hospice on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I went there to visit a lady who, along with her husband, had been a missionary in China for the vast chunk of their life. They were now very elderly. She had piercing blue eyes and gray hair, which she always kept long but was always tied up.

She had terminal cancer. She was in the hospice. There was no hope for any earthly recovery. I had gone in the routine of my responsibilities as the assistant minister in the church to visit this lady, Mrs. Leckler. I went and I spoke with her on this particular afternoon. She was very lucid. She lay in the bed, I took her hand, she squeezed mine.

She asked me about my wife. She asked me about the prayer meeting which had taken place on that Monday evening prior. She asked me about a whole variety of things in relationship to the church. We read the scriptures and we prayed together, and I left and came back into the center of Edinburgh to tell the people that I felt that Mrs. Leckler was rallying a little bit. She was so interested. She didn't have a consideration about anything for herself; she only inquired about the ministry, the gospel, and every other thing.

When I was voicing this to the individual, they let me finish my sentence, and then they said, "Mrs. Leckler passed away between the time you left her an hour ago and arrived back here at the office." Now, all of her dying concerns had to do with everybody except herself. There was no paralysis, no paranoia, no undue fearfulness.

And that's what we find in Joseph. Joseph is encouraging those that he leaves behind with a strong reminder of the covenant promise of God to his people. And he says it twice in verses 24 and 25: "God will surely come to your aid." Verse 25: "God will surely come to your aid." He's going to take you up.

All he is doing is reiterating the promise that God had made to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. In case you've forgotten, Genesis chapter 13:14: "The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, 'Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south and east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.'"

Now, we read this with great familiarity because we know the story of Abraham. But for Abraham, it was a complete freak-out. He couldn't even have a child! And the promise is that you'll have so many offspring that you won't be able to count them. He didn't have a place to call their own, and God said walk through the land for I am giving it to you. And on the strength of nothing other than the promise of God's Word, Abraham proceeded.

You find the same thing reiterated in the life of Isaac. Genesis chapter 26 and verse 3: "Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham, and I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky."

You find the same thing in the next generation. Chapter 35 and verse 12, the word that comes to Jacob. First to Abraham, then to his son Isaac, then to his son Jacob. "This land, the land I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you." Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.

Now you find Joseph on his deathbed. And he says, "Listen, God said it to Abraham, he reaffirmed it to Isaac, he promised it to my dad, and I want you to know that it is not in question." And so he makes them promise: "When you go, carry my bones up from this place."

We see him standing the test of time, facing the final curtain, and crossing the great divide. Verse 26: "So Joseph died at the age of 110, and after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt." Like his father, he was gathered to his people. Unlike his father, he did not have an elaborate funeral. Instead, all he asked was that his body would be embalmed and that it would be placed in a coffin and that it would remain there in Egypt.

Why? Because he recognized that the coffin itself would be a memorial to the fact that the prospect of them going to the Promised Land was as certain as any promise that God had ever made. He didn't want his bones to be buried; he wanted to be at the ready. As soon as the wagons were ready to roll, he was going to roll.

When the difficult days came, as he knew they were going to come, as he probably sensed in his spirit as they grew in strength and in influence as a refugee family within this larger family, in those days of difficulty, he wanted them to be able to look somewhere and affirm again the promise.

In Exodus chapter 1 and verse 8, a new king who didn't know Joseph came to power. He decides that the people of Israel have grown too large and they must be subjugated. In verse 11, they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. Everything was about to change. Joseph was about to go, and some of the glory days were about to depart, and oppression was going to come.

He said, "I want you to keep my coffin with you there in Egypt so that it will be a reminder to every subsequent generation that Egypt is not our permanent home." So when the grandchildren said, "Why do we keep this mummy with us?" They said, "It's not your mummy, that's your great-grandfather."

The embalming processes of Egypt made it possible for them to take out the organs that would putrefy and do a taxidermist thing on it and then put it in one of these things that we've seen in the treasures of Tutankhamun. All the time, they would make sure that they had them.

You can imagine the mother saying, "Look, don't annoy me just now. Why don't you go over and play with your great-grandfather for a while?" And they would go over there and they would marvel that great-grandpa's bones kept getting wheeled around. Why was it done? It was done so that every generation would look at that and would say, "Joseph was sure that we're leaving."

If he hadn't been sure, he wouldn't have had us cart his bones around like this. If it had just been rhetoric, he'd just have said, "God will surely take you up, sayonara." But he said, "I want you to embalm my body, keep my bones, and move them. And when you go, I want to go." For us this morning, it's not a coffin full of bones that speaks of God's provision in the past and his promise for the future. It's not a coffin, but it's a cave. It's an empty cave.

What is the strength of our conviction that we could stand the test of time? That we could face the final curtain? That we could cross the great divide? On the basis of what? Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone. Because I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living, and death may be faced because he lives.

Twice he says to these folks gathered around him, "God will surely come to your aid." Isn't that the message of the whole Bible? He could never know the totality of what it meant. He couldn't even see as far as Moses in Exodus chapter 3, and God speaking to Moses in the great drama that's involved in that. Fabulous stuff.

God says to Moses, "Now I want you to go and say to Pharaoh, 'Let my people go.'" God will surely come to your aid. And then they walk out and they cross the Red Sea. With the armies behind them and all of the tyranny in front of them, God surely comes to their aid and he parts the Red Sea and they walk through on dry ground.

Then he folds it in on top of Pharaoh and his armies afterwards. And they look over the thing and they said, "That's what our great-grandfather was on about! God will surely come to your aid." He did it there, did he not? That is fantastic. In the wilderness wanderings, when they were thirsty and hungry, spring water and manna every morning. God came to our aid.

But how are we going to get out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land? Through Joshua, God came to our aid. And then through the line into the kings and the provision of rulers, and in the prophets and the word that it was to come. The prophets standing on tiptoe saying God is surely going to come to our aid.

They looked back to the Passover events in Egypt and looking forward to the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. And the prophet stands and he says, "But you, Bethlehem, though you be least among the rulers of the princes of Israel, out of you will come forth one who will rule my people Israel." God will surely come to your aid.

And the angel comes to Joseph and says, "And you will give him the name Jesus because he will come to your aid." The great message of the Bible is that God comes to the aid of the helpless and the hopeless and the needy. But he never comes to the aid of the arrogant, the self-assertive, and those who face the final curtain declaring, "I did it my way."

That is the great divide. "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to your cross I cling." Then he comes to aid. But to the stiff-necked, the rebellious, and the intellectually arrogant, it is a hopeless life followed by a hopeless death with no one else to blame but one's own proud heart. You wouldn't walk away from such a great story, would you, stiff-necked in your rebellion? Surely you would come and say, "Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for you."

Guest (Male): You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. As we learned today, the message of the whole Bible is that God will surely come to your aid. And that's a message we want everyone to hear. Late last year we told you about Alistair's new book, *The Man on the Middle Cross*, and we encouraged you to get multiple copies to pass along to those who don't yet know Jesus as their Savior and King.

The response to that invitation to join us in spreading the gospel was overwhelming. We shipped out more than 100,000 copies of the book. And we've been praying since then that God is using this little book in a powerful way to bring many who received it to saving faith.

As we look ahead to Easter, we want to invite you to once again make Jesus known. When you donate to Truth For Life today, you can request a three-pack of the booklet, *The Man on the Middle Cross*. It's our way of saying thanks. This short book compels readers to consider this question: Are you going to heaven?

You can use it as an invitation to your church's Easter service or give a copy to a friend or a young adult you know as a way to open the door to a gospel conversation. Ask for *The Man on the Middle Cross* three-pack today when you donate to Truth For Life. You can do that online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884.

By the way, Alistair is speaking today to college students at Liberty University in Virginia. Please join us in praying that all who attend will be encouraged as they learn and fellowship together. Thanks for listening. Hope you'll join us tomorrow when we learn why a solid understanding of God's Word is crucial to a sustained journey of faith, especially when you're going through difficult times. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.