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Oct. 23, 2016 The Death of Jacob and the Birth of Israel Genesis 49:29 – 50:14 Conley Owens (Deacon)
So some of you may know that when I was 11 years old, my mother died, and an interesting thing about that is I did not cry when she died. It was very sad, of course, and she was very close to me. I was homeschooled, so I was with her all the time.
There was no one in the world I was closer to, but yet I didn't cry at her death. And I didn't cry in the days that followed either. It might have even been a week and a half. I'm not quite sure, but when the funeral service came, the pastor, as part of the funeral service, he explained the story behind the song we just read about how Horatio Spafford lost his wife and children in a shipwreck, and then he wrote that song.
And then after he read that, or he told us that story, afterward his wife sang the song. It's at that moment that I—the floodgates opened, and I began to cry. And the, you know, many days that would pass after that, I'd still be crying.
There's something—there's something about a funeral that causes you to reflect on the reality of what it is that has just transpired. It causes you to reflect on the value of life, on the life of the deceased, on your own life, and what its worth is in the middle, in the midst of a world filled with death and suffering.
And what we're about to look at here is the grandest funeral in all of Scripture. If you remember Princess Diana's funeral back in 97, this one puts that one to shame. This one involves an entire nation, and it lasts for months.
And so we're going to look at this funeral in a moment. But what's led up to this, remember, is that Abraham has been promised a land, and he and his son Isaac and his son Jacob have all been waiting for that land, and they've been dwelling in tents together, waiting in that land for this promise to be fulfilled.
But Abraham has died, and Isaac has died, and now Jacob is also about to die, and this promise still has not been fulfilled. And not only are there those circumstances, but famine has come upon the land, and they're being forced out of the land of Canaan and instead into the land of Egypt.
There's also famine in the land of Egypt, but at least there's grain there. And not only that, but Jacob has had a rough life. When he spoke to Pharaoh and he met Pharaoh for the first time, he said that his days were short and evil.
Now he had lived a hundred and thirty years at that point, and he's a hundred and forty-seven when he finally dies. But he still says his days are short because compared to Abraham and compared to Isaac, he's lived a very, very short time.
And not only that, but his days are evil. Now that doesn't mean that his days are somewhere in a corner cackling like a witch, planning malintentions. It means that they're full of calamity, right? He's had a rough life.
Scripture marks Jacob as being one that it strives with God and with man. Remember, he wrestled his brother Esau in the womb, and then after he was born, he wrestled with him more over his birthright.
And he wrestled with his father over this birthright, and he wrestled with his father-in-law over his wages. He wrestled with his father-in-law over Rachel and Leah. And then he wrestles with God himself, wrestling literally with the angel, with the angel of the Lord.
And then eventually, he finds out that his favorite two sons are most likely dead, and he has had a difficult life. It is short and evil are his days. And it's amidst all that, that he finally, finally breathes his last and dies.
So I'd like to read through some of this funeral with you and explain some of the mourning. Let's look at chapter 50. Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. Now if you're wondering why Joseph is weeping on his father, not the other sons, it's not that the other sons aren't there.
It's not that they don't care about him. It's that God has promised Jacob that Joseph would be the one to close his eyes and to be with him when he dies. And so this is fulfilling God's promise. So they're all there mourning.
And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are there are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him 70 days.
So you have this 40 days of embalming. Now 40 is very often an important number in Scripture. You have Noah being in the ark for 40 days. You have the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.
You have Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and often represents a time of trial. So at the end of this life full of trial, you have 40 days of embalming. And then after that, you have 30 more days of mourning.
This, the 70 days, this is in total. In total there's 70 days. So it's 40 days of embalming and then 30 more days of mourning. And that's also a significant time period. In fact, many modern-day Jews still practice a 30-day period of mourning.
But in Scripture, it's only reserved for the greatest characters. Moses, when he dies, people mourn for him 30 days. And Aaron, when he dies, once again, 30 days of mourning. And the author of Genesis wraps that up together in 70 days, which itself is significant because this is the length of time that an Egyptian king would have been mourned.
So he is receiving the highest form of mourning, the highest by Jewish standards, the highest by Egyptian standards. He is being mourned as an Egyptian king and as a great, great man among the Hebrews.
And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, I am about to die, and my tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.
Now therefore let me go up and bury my father, then I will return. And Pharaoh answered, Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear. So Joseph asked for permission to exit out into the promised land, exit out into Canaan, and then come back, and Pharaoh grants that.
And you may be wondering, now why does he bother, why doesn't he bother, or why doesn't he just ask Pharaoh directly? Why does he go through the household of Pharaoh? This seems a little odd, given that he had a close relationship with Pharaoh.
But once again, this is supposed to point us to his mourning. Because he would have been clothed in sackcloth, he would not have been able to approach the king. Remember that before, when he was in the prison, he was not allowed to see the king until his clothes were, he was not allowed to see Pharaoh until his clothes were changed.
And this happens elsewhere in scripture too. Later on in Esther, Mordecai won't be allowed to enter the king's court because he's wearing sackcloth. So this is not supposed to make you curious about some political intrigue or anything like that.
Once again, this is talking about the mourning of Joseph. Verse 7. So Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household.
Only the children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company. So there's, everybody's going, right?
All these, all these heavers that come from Abraham, much of the land of Egypt, all the elders of Egypt, all the elders of Pharaoh's household, in addition to that, chariots and horses. This is an incredibly massive funeral procession.
It's so great that it's going to confuse the Canaanites in the next few verses who think that this is apparently a mourning, not just of Egyptians, but probably for Egyptians also. Verse 10. So because this mourning is so great, the local people feel the need to name this place, Abel Mizraim, meaning the mourning of Egypt.
And it's so large and so great that, you know, they recognize all of Egypt as mourning here. And they mourn seven days, which is, unlike the 70 that's passed, this is a more typical time period of mourning.
This is how long Saul and his sons are mourned for when they die. It's how long Job's friends mourn for him when they find out that he is ill and come to visit him. It's a very typical period of mourning.
Now all this mourning and all this funeral procession should cause us to stop and think, you know, as I said before, about the value of life and about the value of life in the midst of death and suffering.
Now a lot of people would say that death isn't really a problem that has to be answered. You see, it's all a part of a circle of life. Death, you know, the trees fall down in the forest. They create soil, and more trees come up from that.
So death is just needed for life. But the problem with that is that if life is good, then the loss of life must necessarily be bad. This doesn't make death good. This only makes death neutral, and it makes life neutral.
It makes everything meaningless. What you're offering there is a philosophy that sees the world as meaningless. Now another option is to say that it's the journey that's important. It's not the destination.
I feel like when I was in high school, most of the literature they were feeding me was trying to sell me on this philosophy. So it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Right? Does it matter where you're headed as long as the journey is meaningful and memorable?
You know, that's what matters. But what consolation is that when the journey is cruddy, when the journey's poor, when your days are short and evil, that's no consolation for Jacob to say that it's about the journey and not the destination.
The problem with death, it needs an answer. It needs to be stared in the face and given an answer. There's a poem I really like called The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. If you've ever heard the phrase, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, that's the poem that this comes from.
It's about a man who, a sailor, who does something foolish at sea and causes his whole crew to die. And he's sitting on the deck, and there all the corpses of his crewmates are around him, and he says, "...the many men so beautiful, and they their dead did lie, and a thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I.".
The slimy things are the sea creatures. And so you see what he's saying? He's saying the many men that are dead, they're beautiful. All other things that are alive, they're like me. They're slimy. They're worthless.
If you don't have an answer to death, you get put in a situation where death looks better than life. It looks better to be dead than to live in a land full of death. The problem of death needs an answer.
And this passage has one for us. I'd in this land. Verse 29 of chapter 49. "...and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites.". Okay, so Jacob's father is buried there, Isaac and his wife, and then his grandfather Abraham and his wife are also buried there.
And Abraham bought this land because it is within Canaan, within the promised land. He is holding on to that promise, and he wants his children to also affirm that promise by carrying him there and burying him in this land.
And there's a little more to the promise than that also. In fact, the promise is more specific than you might think. I'd like us to look at Genesis 15. If you will turn to Genesis 15, and then we'll start at verse 12.
"...as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 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 afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, 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.".
So you see, part of the promise that God had given Abraham was that they would go to the land of Egypt. He didn't mention that by name, but they are to go into the land of Egypt for 400 years for four generations.
And God has a purpose to this. Part of that purpose is to incubate this nation. You remember that God often tells them not to intermarry with the Canaanites, and this is always a problem for the sons of Jacob and for the people of Israel.
This is always a problem for them. But here in Egypt, as much as the Egyptians loved Joseph, they would not even eat with him. This is how distinct the Hebrews are from the Egyptians. And so in that environment where the Israelites, where the sons of Jacob are completely distinct from the Egyptians, they are able to grow into a great and large nation because God has a purpose for them.
And part of that purpose, as we learn here, is to come out and conquer the Amorites—the Anamorites being another name for Canaanites—to conquer all the land of Canaan and to bring glory to God's name through bringing his justice to the people.
God has a purpose, and Jacob is hanging on to that purpose. Jacob is hanging on to the hope of God's promises, and this is what is getting Jacob through, and what is getting his children through this time of death and suffering is holding on to the promises of God.
You know, the Bible doesn't talk much about hell. It only mentions it, well, it mentions it quite a few times, but it doesn't give us a lot of detail. It mentions fire, it mentions darkness, and other than these pictures, we really don't have a lot.
But one of the defining characteristics of hell is that there's no hope. Okay, you can be in hell. Well, if you've got a trial here in this life, you know, you can think, well, maybe in a few days this will be over.
Maybe in a few years this will be over. But in hell, you could be there a year, ten years, a thousand years, a million years, and there's never the slightest glimmer of hope that maybe one day this will be over.
It's hopeless. And so without the promises of God, without hope, what do you have in this life? You have hell on earth. You have hell on earth if you don't have hope. So, what promises should you hold on to?
Well, you can think of a few at the moment. James 4 .6 says God gives grace to the humble. Hebrews 11 .6 says that he rewards those who seek him. Romans 8 .28 says that all things work together for good to those who love God.
These are promises that give us hope. So, hold on to those promises of God. However, there is a slight problem with that. That isn't the whole picture. Let me read the last verse of back in Genesis 49, verse 33.
When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people. He breathed his last. There is a finality to death. Okay, he's not going to live on.
In fact, while he's holding on to this promise, his children aren't even going to see this promise fulfilled, and their children won't either. Four generations will pass. And then what about the generation after them?
Oh, well, they'll be in a wilderness for a long time. It's only after that they finally get to the promised land. How is this any real consolation for the people? See, you need a promise that doesn't just kind of distract you from death for the moment.
You need a promise that actually answers death. It's like if you had a boy who has, you know, his favorite dog, and his dog dies, and you tell him, well, maybe next month you can buy a new puppy. That's no consolation.
He wants the old dog back. Right? You need something that's really going to answer death. There's another problem with it too. It's that we have difficulty holding on to the promises of God. Think about it.
Every time you are angry, and you speak angrily with your family or with your spouse, every time you complain, even just in your heart, every time you think in pure thoughts, it's because you're not—even if you believe the promises of God, and I think a lot of, I mean, I would hope that most of us here do—the reality of them doesn't penetrate the core of your being to the fullest degree.
Every time you complain, you are thinking, oh, maybe God doesn't give grace to the humble. Maybe it's more rewarding instead to be proud and to complain. Maybe it's more rewarding not to seek him in this particular circumstance.
If you really believe that every moment fully that it is better to do these things that God is saying, then you would just never sin. But you do. All of us do. So that's another problem. We need a promise that doesn't just give us something if we put in.
We need a promise that doesn't rely on us holding on to it. We need a promise that holds on to us. All right. And we begin to see a little hint, just a little glimmer of a hint of what that promise is back in Genesis 50.
Let's read again these two verses. Verses 10 and 11. When they came to the threshing floor of Atod, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation. And he made a mourning for his father seven days.
When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning on the threshing floor of Atod, they said, this is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians. Therefore, the place was named Abel Mizraim.
It is beyond the Jordan. Now if you know a little about geography, the fact that it's beyond the Jordan should be somewhat confusing because to get to the land of Canaan, to get to the field of Mechpelah from Egypt, you just have to go northeast and then you're there.
Right? The Jordan is further away, further east than that. So this means that they are going around the southern end of Palestine and then crossing west over the Jordan River. Now why would they do that?
I can't give you a human reason why they would do that, what would possess them to do this. However, I do know that God is leading them in all that they do, and I have an idea of what God is trying to tell them and us through this.
Later on, 400 years later when Moses leads the people out of Egypt permanently, he will take them around the southern end of Palestine and west across the Jordan River. And he will do this because the Philistines will pose too much of a threat and it'll be too hard to send the people directly northeast, and he sends them around.
But at this point in time, the Philistines aren't a problem. The Philistines aren't a problem, yet he sends them around because he's giving them a foretaste of that freedom they will have, that promise that they will have when they finally enter into the land of Canaan.
Now what's more than that is that the New Testament explains to us this trip from Egypt into the land of Canaan, this trip that Moses will eventually take, the great exodus. That's not just a promised land for the Israelites.
That's a picture of what we have in Jesus Christ. See, while the Hebrews are enslaved and they're in the bondage of slavery in Egypt, we, before we know Christ, are slaves to sin, to death, to suffering, to the fear of all these things.
However, because Jesus died and because he paid the penalty of death, we can be free of these things. Even though the outer man is decaying and dying, we can be free from that eternally, and we can one day experience a reality where there is no death and suffering if we trust in Christ.
That's why we always sing about rest beyond the river, and that's why we have this phrase, you know, on the other side of the river. It's not because we imagine some river being in heaven, you know, separating heaven and earth.
It's because it's the Jordan. When we get to the other side of the river, we will be free from death. This is a promise, this promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ is one that solves those two problems I mentioned earlier.
It removes the problem of death. It actually fixes death. It removes death. And then on top of that, it is not based on our own work. It is based on the work of Christ. It is a promise that holds on to us rather than us needing to perfectly hold on to it.
It is a good promise. It is one that can give us great hope. And not only that, this isn't just what we should hold on to. This is what Jacob and his children were holding on to. You may not see that, but Hebrews 11 .16 says, but as it is, they desire a better country, they being Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
That is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God. They are holding on to this great promise of a greater land beyond the Jordan. They are holding on to the promise of eternal life, and that is what really preserves them and their children through all this suffering and death.
You see, Jacob, because of his death, Joseph has managed to secure entry into the promised land for a temporary period. However, we, by Jesus's death, secure entry into the promised land forever. And not only that, Jacob is dead.
He's still dead. Jesus is alive, and Jesus is pulling us toward him. He is the anchor of our souls, as Hebrews says. Once again, it is a promise that holds on to us. And so if you love Jesus, if you embrace this promise, this is what will get you through the hard times.
Not the other promises that I mentioned. They're good, but they mean nothing without this promise. This is real hope. I'd like to read the remainder of this passage, verses 12 through 14. So they go, and they bury their father, and they come back.
And notice that all their crying happens before they cross the Jordan, right? They have the seven days of mourning. But beyond that, they're free from the mourning. They have hope at this point. They have hope that God will fulfill his promises.
You see, God had a great land for us, much better than this promised land. He had this paradise for us in the garden of Eden. But instead, man chose death, and man chose suffering through his sin. But ever since that time, God has been telling us about a greater promised land, one that doesn't have any suffering or death.
And one of the ways he's been telling us that is through this picture of the promised land. And we can hold on to that promise, and that can give us hope. Joseph—think about Joseph's relationship to Egypt.
Why is it that all of Egypt is coming up with him? Pharaoh's not playing favorites for, you know, just arbitrary reasons. These people have been saved by Joseph, right? They were in a famine. He comes and saves up grain, giving them the bread of life, right?
He is their Savior, and they are coming alongside him and mourning with him. We have something that's so much better. Our Savior is coming alongside us, mourning with us, comforting us, carrying us through.
That's so much better. And that hope that we have of eternal life is something that can make us so victorious. It can make us so able to deal with any struggle that comes. That is why the church has persevered throughout the ages, despite all kinds of persecution, all kinds of hardship.
You think of beheadings. You think of other kinds of martyrdoms, crucifixions, being burned alive. You know, earlier I was talking about hell on earth being living life without hope, right? If I were to ask you before that what hell on earth looks like, you might have said, you know, being burned alive.
That sounds a lot like the description of hell we get in the Bible. But here's the thing is, the martyrs who were burned alive, flames licking away their bodies, they were able to persevere through that because for them, that was not hell on earth.
For them, they had a hope, and they were able to get through it, and they were able to be victorious. And that is the same hope that lives in every single one of you if you have Jesus Christ. And Providence Bible Church can get through the worst times, the hardest struggles, the worst persecutions.
Doesn't matter how bad things get in this country or in this valley, we will be able to persevere because we have this hope of Jesus Christ, this hope of eternal life. So it's only a short way across that river.
If eternity is like this, you know, our life spans like this, seven days of mourning. It's a short way across that river. We can have hope in Jesus Christ. So you may feel as though your whole life has been a funeral march.
You may feel as though you haven't dealt with much suffering or death at all. But either way, you don't have to wait until a loved one dies and you hear it as well playing to contemplate what hope you have or what you can do in face of suffering.
You can answer that question right now. If you don't have the kind of hope that I'm describing, the kind of hope that can get you through anything, then you need Jesus Christ. You need to turn to him.
You need to bend your knee, and he will be your king that will lead you on to the promised land and victory. But if you do have that hope, then your path is clear. Mourn. The world is full of death and suffering.
There's no reason you shouldn't mourn. Mourn. But mourn with hope. Mourn victoriously because Jesus Christ has made a way for you to be free from death and suffering eternally. Amen.