JACOB'S DEATH | JOSEPH'S RESPONSE TO JACOB'S DEATH

Pastor Christopher Choo

Lesson 3679

JACOB'S DEATH

JOSEPH'S RESPONSE TO JACOB'S DEATH

There are lessons to be drawn from Joseph's attitude towards honouring his father's last wish to be buried in the Promised Land.

Gen 50:1-13 records for us Joseph's response to his father's death. 

1. He expressed his sorrow and mourned his father's death (Gen 50:1), seemingly the only son of Jacob who did so.

2. Joseph also embalmed his father (Gen 50:2) and the process took 40 days. He also allowed his father to be mourned in the Egyptian fashion -- mourned for 70 days (Gen 50:3). This was different from the Hebrew tradition of 7 days. It was only after the days of weeping were completed that Joseph asked for permission to take his father back after the long death and mourning process in Egypt (Gen 50:4-5).

3. Pharaoh allows it (Gen 50:6) so that Joseph can keep his promise to his father. 

Joseph's obedience to his father's wishes was not merely an act of filial piety.

Heb 11:13-16 reminds us that God's people, people who live by faith lived in the world but saw and desired something beyond this world.

Jacob and his beloved Joseph continue to show us what it means to have our identity wrapped up in God's promises.

God's promises permeate and seep through and flow into every aspect of life and death.

 It is worth it for us to pause and soul search at this moment. Are we of the world and happily in it? Can those around us see that we are Christians from the way we live? 

Believing and professing Romans 14:17-19 is not something intellectual, nor is it something passive. It should affect and change the way we live. 

We sing these songs of surrender quite often in church and at our study, but do we live it day after day, even in the mundane simple moments where we have to serve people and die to ourselves? 

These are things worth considering, repenting of, and committing to, not tomorrow, not next week but today and even now.

We learn from Joseph how he honoured his father during his lifetime and even after Jacob had passed on.

The prophetic gesture in making the arduous journey back to Hebron with all of his brothers to bury Jacob in the Promised Land is very significant as it shows how committed Joseph was in honouring God's covenant in life as in death. 

For it was a step of faith as the future destiny of their children was not in Egypt but in the Promised Land.