We are in Hebrews 11, that great “Hall of Faith,” were we are presented with men and women who walked by faith and glorified God. Some of them received some of the promises but no one received everything promised. While none of them were perfect, they did express faith in God’s covenant promises.
Last week we began discussing the three men captured in Hebrews 11:20-22, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Each of them expressed faith in God’s ability to keep his promises to their children, their grandchildren, or to distant generations of the covenant people.
20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. 21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. 22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
We are discussing Jacob and his life of faith captured in the two acts of blessing Joseph’s sons and worshipping God as he leaned on the top of his staff. These two acts illustrated Jacob’s faith.
The event of blessing the sons of Joseph occurs in Genesis 49. Jacob had brought his sons and their families to Egypt at the request of Joseph in order to ride out the famine. Joseph, hearing that his father was ill and possibly close to death, took his two sons to visit his aged father. Jacob recalled God’s own appearance to him, when the Lord reaffirmed the Abrahamic covenant to him in Genesis 48:3-4.
Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there he blessed me and said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and increase your numbers. I will make you a community of peoples, and I will give this land as an everlasting possession to your descendants after you.’” (Gen. 48:3-4)
Then he claimed Joseph’s two sons as his own in order to bless them as his heirs. In effect, this meant that Jacob was designating Joseph as the firstborn, receiving the double portion of the inheritance through his two sons. Reuben, the natural firstborn, had forfeited his portion by having relations with his father’s concubine, Bilhah (cf. Gen. 35:22; 49:4). So now Joseph’s two sons will each receive their own full portion of the inheritance. So in verse 5 Jacob says, “Now then, your two sons born to you in Egypt before I came to you here will be reckoned as mine; Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine.”
Now, Joseph’s firstborn son was Manasseh; Ephraim was the second born son. So when Joseph presented his sons before Jacob to be blessed by him, Joseph arranged Ephraim on his right, Jacob’s left hand, while Manasseh was on Joseph’s left and Jacob’s right hand, the hand of blessing. However, when Jacob went to lay hands on these two young men to give his blessing, he deliberately crossed his hands, laying his right hand on Ephraim, the younger son, and his left hand on Manasseh, the older son. Joseph was troubled by this and tried to correct his father, but Jacob knew exactly what he was doing. Even though his eyesight was not all that great, his spiritual sight was right on. So verses 14-16 say…
But Israel reached out his right hand and put it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger, and crossing his arms, he put his left hand on Manasseh’s head, even though Manasseh was the firstborn. Then he blessed Joseph and said, “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm —may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly on the earth.”
Both sons would be great in Israel, but Ephraim would be the greater (Gen. 48:19) and in the future Israelites would bless one another saying, “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh,” and our text concludes, “so he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh.” Jacob did this by faith.
One lesson we learn from this is that God’s ways are not man’s ways; God’s ways are according to His sovereign choice and will always triumph over man’s ways. The natural order would have been for Manasseh, the first-born son, to have preeminence over his younger brother. This is what Joseph reasoned. But Jacob chose to bless Ephraim ahead of Manasseh by faith.
In spite of human ignorance and sin which chooses to do things our way, God’s way and His choice will always ultimately triumph.
This applies to the issue of salvation. Man’s way is according to human choice and/or human merit. Good people who make the right choices are in; bad people who make the wrong choices are out. But God’s way of salvation is according to His choice and purpose and His work, not according to man’s choice or efforts (Luke 10:22; John 1:13; 6:65, 70; Rom. 9:11, 15, 16, 17, 18). As James 1:18 puts it, “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (ESV). Our salvation rests on God’s will and God’s power, not our will or efforts.
A second lesson we can learn from this passage is how important it is for us parents and grandparents to bless our children with spiritual blessings rather than worldly possessions. The greatest thing you can do for your children or grandchildren is to pass on your faith in Jesus Christ.
Ephraim and Manasseh were the sons of the second most powerful man in Egypt. Joseph’s wealth and influence were quite impressive. These boys had been raised in, what was at that time, the most luxurious conditions in the world. I imagine they grew up buddies of the sons of Pharoah. Servants attended to their every need. They received the best education available at the time. They were heirs to a large financial estate. They easily could have succeeded in whatever careers they chose for themselves in Egypt.
Thus, it would have been quite natural for a grandfather to bless his grandsons by saying, “May you prosper in Egypt as your father has prospered. May its wealth and riches flow into your life. May you enjoy the best that Egypt has to offer!” Instead, Jacob, the lowly shepherd, who was really a pilgrim in Egypt seeking to avoid starvation in the land of Canaan, adopts these two princes as his own and bestows upon them the blessing of Abraham.
While some may have thought Jacob crazy to bequeath a double-portion of some famine-stricken land, of which he barely owned a square foot, just a cave, when they could have whatever their hearts desired there in Egypt. But what Jacob was really giving his grandsons was faith, faith in God’s promises. Faith in something that was of greater and more lasting value than all of Egypt’s riches (as Moses would also choose). Even though there was not one shred of evidence that God’s promise would actually become reality at this moment, Jacob believed it and he passed it on to his grandsons so that they, too, would believe it.
Steve Cole remarks:
It is a tragedy that many Christian parents today hope more that their children and grandchildren will succeed materially than that they will succeed spiritually! They would be thrilled to hear that one of their kids got accepted into medical school or landed a fat contract with a professional sports team. But if they heard that the kids were headed for the mission field in a poor country, they would try to “talk some sense into them.” They wouldn’t want them to “throw their lives away” with nothing (materially) to show for it. Besides, they’d rather have the grandkids nearby. That is a thoroughly worldly attitude! First and foremost, we should want our children to walk with God, wherever that may lead them in terms of a career or a geographic location.
Another way that Jacob revealed his faith was the fact that he worshipped God “as he leaned on the top of his staff” (Heb. 11:21). This he did in the years since that fateful night when he wrestled with God and came away with a limp. This is revealed to us in Genesis 47:29-31
When the time drew near for Israel to die, he called for his son Joseph and said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt, but when I rest with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt and bury me where they are buried.” “I will do as you say,” he said. “Swear to me,” he said. Then Joseph swore to him, and Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
Jacob’s staff was a reminder of the battle he had with the angel of the Lord, in which he came away with a blessing and a limp. That limp reminded him for the remainder of his life how dependent he was upon the Lord. Here was an old man, whose body was weak and crippled, but whose faith was strong in God’s promises. Although all of his descendants were now living comfortably in Egypt (for the last 17 years, Gen. 47:28), Jacob doesn’t want to signal to his children that this is what he wanted or what God wanted. It is when Joseph agrees that he will make sure that Jacob is buried in Canaan, not Egypt, that Jacob worships God because he sees in Joseph’s promise a glimmer of hope that God will ultimately fulfill His promises.
That staff also indicated that Jacob knew that he was living a pilgrim life, just as Abraham and Isaac. His hope, ultimately, was not in this life, not in the here and now, but in God’s promises for a better country, a heavenly one (Heb. 11:16). So even though he was dying as a poor man in a foreign land, he died believing God’s promise.
Joseph’s Faith
Now, in verse 22 we see that this same faith was passed on to Joseph. The last patriarch mentioned here, Joseph, was convinced that nothing would annul God’s promise that Israel would one day possess the land.
By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
This is remarkable because he had left Canaan when he was seventeen (Genesis 37:2) and lived in Egypt until his death at the age of 110 (Genesis 50:26). But in fulfillment of his faith’s directive, Joseph’s mummy was carried out of Egypt by Moses in the exodus (Exodus 13:19) and then later was buried in Shechem by Joshua when he conquered the land (Joshua 24:32), hundreds of years later!
As Joseph lay dying, he told his brothers that God would bring them back to the land which He had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then he made them swear that they would carry his bones with them when they returned to Canaan. Of course, it was not them, but their descendants several generations later that carried out Joseph’s wishes.
Genesis 50:24 reads, “And Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’”
Now, where did Joseph get the idea that the tribes of Israel would one day leave Egypt and possess the land of Canaan? I can imagine that one of the stories that Abraham told over and over again to his children and grandchildren was God’s promise to him in Genesis 15:13-16.
Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
Now Joseph, even more so than Isaac or Jacob, demonstrated many instances of strong faith in God throughout his lifetime. He had resisted the seductive advances of Potiphar’s wife. He had remained true to God while imprisoned unjustly and forgotten. His faith enabled him to interpret dreams on several occasions. He dealt in a godly manner with his brothers who had wronged him, leading them to repentance and reconciliation. He administered the food program fairly, without greed.
But the author of Hebrews skips over all of these demonstrations of faith and chooses what he said while he lay dying (Gen. 50:24). Why is that?
I believe it is because it shows us a man facing death at a time when God’s promise seemed least likely to ever be fulfilled. God’s promises to Abraham had been 200 years ago! Now his descendants were living in Egypt, not Cannan. And of course, it would get worse before it got better, for one day a Pharoah who knew not Joseph would rise to power and enslave them in Egypt.
It would be several hundred years more before Moses would lead them out of Egypt and 40 years after that before they entered and conquered Canaan. Yet Joseph made mention of that exodus and ordered that they take his bones back with them when they left Egypt.
When Joseph died he was never buried. His coffin laid above ground for the 400 or so years until it was taken back to Canaan. It was a silent witness all those years that Israel was going back to the Promised Land, just as God had said.
Through this pact with his brothers Joseph was disassociating himself from all of his success and fame in Egypt and associating himself with God’s people and God’s promise. That was what was important to him, just as it would be later to Moses (Heb. 11:24-26)
He didn’t want a grand tomb or pyramid erecting in his honor in Egypt. He wanted his final resting place to be with his family in the land of God’s promise. His burial instructions would remain a strong exhortation to his people not to be satisfied with the blessings of Egypt, but to look forward to the blessings of Canaan.
People in poverty regularly long for heaven; those who lives are rich and comfortable seldom crave heaven. The story of Joseph’s bones should remind us not to put our hopes in material accumulation in this world, but to recognize how empty all these riches are compared to riches and glories of heaven. What does it profit us to gain the “whole world” Jesus says, if we lose our soul (Luke 9:25; 12:15-21).
Moses took Joseph’s bones with him, for he made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here” (Exod. 13:19). And in Joshua we read, “As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph” (Joshua 24:32). Joseph’s bones were buried in land allotted to the tribe of Ephraim.
Many years ago now a ship known as the Empress of Ireland went down with 130 salvation army officers aboard, along with many other passengers. Only 21 of the Salvation Army people survived. Of the 109 that drowned, not one had a life preserver. Many of the survivors told how these brave people, seeing that there were not enough life preservers to go around, took of their own and gave them to others, saying, “I know Jesus, so I can die better than you can!” (Our Daily Bread, Fall, 1980)
Faith faces death trusting God to fulfill His future promises, if not in this life, then in the life to come. When we trust in God in the face of death we join with Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, who all “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (Heb. 13:16), looking forward to that better reward.
I love what Spurgeon says here: “The Holy Spirit in this chapter selects out of good men’s lives the most brilliant instances of their faith. I should hardly have expected that he would have mentioned the dying scene of Joseph’s life as the most illustrious proof of his faith in God… Does not this tell us, dear brethren and sisters, that we are very poor judges of what God will most delight in?”
Will you and I hold on to our trust in God’s promises, even when all seems to shout against them, even when it seems impossible to believe that the best is yet to come? When we do, our faith will impact future generations.
Grace Still Amazes 