Homesick Faith
Life of Joseph • Sermon • Submitted
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Big Idea: We looked at the implications of seed last week. This week we are going to see the ideas of land and covenant in the Joseph story and the implications therein for our lives today. Land = a new kingdom of God’s provision and rest. Covenant = God’s promise to bring His people into that provision and rest. These ideas are seen culminating in the work of Jesus. Jesus is the promised seed who will enact a new covenant that will bring his followers into a new kingdom. Much like the Israelites, this kingdom is never fully realized this side of the new creation. We are meant to live in and steward this kingdom in the here and now as though we are already in the new creation. We take hold of God’s covenant promise of a living in a new kingdom through faith. When the book of Hebrews recounts Joseph’s saving faith it speaks about the last words Joseph ever spoke…Carry my bones up out of Egypt when God delivers you.
Briefly tell the Joseph paradigm…picture behind the picture.
Talk about longing for home
Link this to the desire I feel when I look around at the brokenness of the world around me…I long for a better kingdom (and all its implications, no war, no racism, no environmental problems, no problems with …continue on…)
There is a tension there. And unlike the tension I feel when I am away from home that is sometimes unexplainable…this tension has a purpose and it is meant to produce something in us…this longing for our true home. This tension we feel as we long for a world made right is actually one of the largest themes in the entire Bible and is actually the theme that Joseph’s story culminates in. And so this morning, I want us to look at that tension in the story of Joseph and how his response to that tension is ultimately meant to shape our response to the same tension.
Let me show you what I mean by purpose in the tension:
We open in Genesis chapters one and two on a paradise world without suffering, war, relational strife, sickness, death, or natural disaster. All feels right. This is home but then we break it. The next ten chapters of the book of Genesis are an expose of human brokenness and the corruption of the human condition…it’s everything wrong with the world. Out of this brokenness and corruption flows everything that is wrong with the world.
Whats more, we know it isn’t supposed to be this way…we feel the tension that we are actually meant for so much more than the brokenness of this world. Our hearts long for Eden.
Here is what Romans chapter 8 says about that tension:
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.
For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
The end of Joseph’s story is a commentary on this tension. How Joseph deals with the tension of longing for another country actually informs our story in some incredible ways and that is what I want us to look at this morning.
In order for us to fully understand what this passage is trying to say to us though, we have to go back and remember the original purpose of the book of Genesis which is:
To tell the beginning of Gods plan of redemption that is meant to help the Exodus generation understand where they fit into Gods story and give them a framework for Gods covenant promises that will bring them into the promised land.
And so the story of God’s redemptive plan actually begin in Genesis chapter 3 verses 20-24 where we find mankind expelled from the garden and sent into a wilderness exile.
The story just gets worse and worse and worse, there is a flood and then immediately after the flood we rebel again and are sent into exile once more.
Out of this land of exile, God calls a man…Abraham… a promised seed out of exile and into a land of promise by making this covenant.
We need to talk about covenants for just a second. A covenant is more than an agreement and its more than a contract. A covenant is the binding of lives over a promise. This idea of believing a promise is incredibly crucial…not just to the Joseph story but the Bible as a whole.
Here is one part of the covenant that God made with Abraham. I will point out the ideas of promise and belief in that promise.
Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”
And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
That is part of God’s promise to Abraham. Now lets look at verse six:
Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then something really strange happens. Well…strange to us but not strange to them. God commands Abraham as the sign of the covenant to take a bunch of different animals cut them in half with a walkway in between them. Two people would do this and then walk through the covenant as they gave their trust to the other party to uphold their part of the covenant agreement. The picture being that if I fail to uphold the covenant may I be torn apart like these animals. A covenant is the binding of two parties into one predicated on trust.
What is really strange though, is that after Abraham has placed his faith in God…only God passes between the animals. That is to say that God is responsible for ensuring that the covenant of blessing, land, and seed will be given to Abraham.
Let me just make a quick point of practical application we see from this picture.
God’s promise of blessing and life are not contingent on our actions. The picture we see here is that we can never be worthy of it and we can never earn God’s grace, favor, and forgiveness. God’s love for us isn’t defined by who we are or what we bring to the table but by who He is. Our only part is to simply trust in him for that.
Can I just speak a word of good news to you real quick. God loves you. He’s actually really fond of you. God has your picture in his wallet and the really good news is that it isn’t because of anything you’ve done or anything you have to keep doing. You didn’t earn it and you can’t lose it. I know the weight and struggle that so many of us (to include myself) carry around as we think about measuring up to God’s standard.
When God passed through the animals he was passing through for you and him. He knew we could never be righteous enough to uphold the covenant so he walked through on your behalf signifying the fact that he would also be torn to pieces on your behalf as well.
Man I could camp there all day but we have to keep moving or we’ll never get to where we are going.
Part of God’s covenant promise to Abraham was that he would inherit this promised land…But Abraham never gets to see this possession of the promised land fulfilled.
In fact, he only gets to purchase a field that he turns into a graveyard. This is what the promised land is to Abraham by the end of his story…just a picture of death…if something is going to happen, God is going to have to intervene. But Abraham dies without ever seeing the promise fulfilled. Did God lie to Abraham? No but we’ll have to get to the end of the sermon to see how that is the case.
We do get a whisper though, of how God is going to give Abraham the promised land.
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.
“But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.
And so Abraham doesn’t see the promised fulfilled in his lifetime and the story of land and covenant continues with Isaac:
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.
The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you.
“Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham.
“I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed;
because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”
There is some crazy awesome symmetry happening in this story that relates to Joseph’s that we just don’t have time to look at. I read you that to show that the promise of land and covenant is continuing on with Isaac Abrahams son.
By the end of his story, however, he possesses no more of the land than his father did. In fact, if you continue reading on in chapter 26 of Genesis, you will see contention start to arise over the land as Isaac has conflicts with the inhabitants of the land over some wells he dug.
Even though Isaac didn’t see the promised covenant and land fulfilled, Isaac still believes in Gods covenant promise. Listen to his parting words to his son Jacob as he is preparing to leave his fathers house and see if you can spot the themes of land, seed, and covenant promise of God’s blessing and provision.
“May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.
“May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.”
Isaac goes on to die only holding on to the future hope of this land of promise and covenant blessing.
Then comes Jacob who we have talked a lot about in this series.
We see the themes of land, seed, and covenant promise repeated several times throughout the Jacob narrative. We actually get to see the land expand a little bit under Jacob…emphasis on the little part…
Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram, and camped before the city.
He bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred pieces of money.
Then he erected there an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.
And yet, we just read the story of Jacob’s death which happens while he is living in a far away country still not having seen the land of covenant promise.
And now this brings us to the ending of Joseph’s story. I want to re-read a small portion of that story and see if you can pick out the themes of land and covenant promise. Now, remember, we have already covered the promised seed last week so the only outstanding themes needing to be covered to wrap up the Genesis narrative well is that of land and covenant promise.
Now Joseph stayed in Egypt, he and his father’s household, and Joseph lived one hundred and ten years.
Joseph saw the third generation of Ephraim’s sons; also the sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees.
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.”
Circle, underline, or highlight this next verse. These are Joseph’s last recorded words and just like anyone’s dying words, they are incredibly important. These words show us Joseph’s response to the yet unfulfilled promise.
Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here.”
So Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years; and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.
Now before we look at the story behind the story, I want us to just rest for a second in the immediate implications of this ending to Joseph’s story.
Put them into the shoes of the Israelites -
This was written for the Exodus generation.
Explain what they’ve seen up to this point to include the plundering of the Egyptians on their way out of town [10 plagues and they have plundered the Egyptians (link back to Gen 15:14 and the plundering of the Egyptians as foretold to Abraham)].
And so as you imagine yourself in the shoes of that exodus generation who has just witnessed God’s mighty hand of deliverance what are you feeling as you read this?
God is good! God is doing something amazing that people have been looking forward to for generations. We are finally getting to go into that promised land!
Given what you’ve seen as you have left Egypt and given the story you have just finished reading in the book of Genesis, can you trust God? Is God going to take care of you?
And so, you travel along and it starts to get hot. Like really hot…like the hottest driest place on earth hot. You quickly do the math as you look up and see 2 million people walking through the desert and uh-oh we’ve got a problem right…
Do the faith in God for water and food bit…they have a chance to trust God but...
But they failed. In fact, the Israelites are given chance after chance after chance to put their trust in God for their salvation from their exile and they fail. They failed to capture the message that Joseph’s story has been telling from the very beginning…that:
God’s promises are faithful, good, and trustworthy.
I know that’s a point I made week one of this series and I’m so very sorry that I’m not more creative than that, but much like the Israelites, I believe this is a promise that we need to be reminded of over and over and over again. They failed to take away the lesson of faith from Joseph’s life they were meant to. I don’t want us to make the same mistake lest we make the same type of mistakes the Israelites made.
Noe, we have been looking at Joseph’s story for six weeks and Joseph has done some incredible things and has without fail trusted God in faith. I want to jump way forward in God’s redemptive story though, and see how later biblical writers understood and talked about Joseph’s faith and let they way they saw his faith inform the way we see it.
Explain Hebrews 11 as the hall of faith…
We see that:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son;
it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.”
He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.
And that:
By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come.
And:
By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.
And all of these have some incredibly significant meanings. All of these show the moments in which these men and women displayed the type of faith that connected them to the promises of God’s blessings. But I want you to notice what Joseph’s hall of faith moment was…I mean there were so many to choose from.
Here is what the author of Hebrews notes as Joseph’s hall of faith moment though:
By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones.
This is directly from that next to last verse in the book of Genesis that I had you underline.
Notice it wasn’t Joseph’s faith in the pit...
It wasn’t Joseph’s faith while being sold into slavery...
It wasn’t Joseph’s faith in God’s law when he was being tempted by Potiphar’s wife...
It wasn’t Joseph’s faith in God’s plan when being falsely imprisoned...
It wasn’t Joseph’s faith in God’s interpretation of the baker, or cupbearer, or even Pharaoh's dreams...
It wasn’t Joseph’s faith in God’s redemptive purposes in bringing his brothers back into his life that allowed Joseph to forgive them...
It was none of those things.
Joseph’s hall of faith moment was when he was on his deathbed giving instructions about bringing his body back to the covenant land of promised blessing.
Joseph new that not even the seemingly final circumstances of death could separate him from the goodness, faithfulness, and trustworthiness of God’s promises.
Joseph had enough evidence of God’s faithfulness from his own story that he could trust that God was going to deliver his people and that he would rest in the land of his fathers.
Explain how Joseph had probably already been forgotten…he had lived to see three of the four generations born in Egypt.
I believe this is the foreground image that we are supposed to see when we read this part of Joseph’s story. Let me explain.
Give example of leaning out on faith by leaning against the pillar.
A true step of faithfulness is when we lean so far out that if God doesn’t show up we will fail.
Give story of us moving out here and getting out of the military in the middle of a pandemic (lean on pillar) because of How we had seen God be faithful in our story leading to this point. **Do Danielle’s statement: God didn’t lead us out here to drown us. (And point back to how the Israelites were faced with the same choice to believe God).
I believe in this we see the foreground image in Joseph’s story:
We are invited to look back and see God’s faithfulness over the history of our story and allow it to ease the tension of our circumstances as we trust in the God of the promise.
I have no idea what it is that you walked in here with this morning. Maybe its some huge decision you need to make. Perhaps you are facing circumstances of uncertainty and fear. Or maybe it is just your next step of faithfulness you need to take…let me explain.
Do tithing bit…
Here is the deal though… just like every other week, we have to see the story behind this story if our lives are going to be affected by it. I believe this point about looking backwards over Gods history of faithfulness in your life and in the lives of others (to include Joseph and the other biblical characters) is theologically sound and really does produce hope in us. BUT this is Joseph’s story. In order for this story to connect to us, we have to connect it to Jesus.
Look at me really close and don’t miss as I read these next verses. This connection is found in the opening context of Hebrews chapter 11. Let’s go back and read the verses that come before what we just read.
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;
for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.
Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.
And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.
If you were to catch up with Jesus on any given day during his ministry do you know what three things you would hear him talking about? Land, Seed, and Covenant promise. Because Jesus was the fulfillment of these three things, we see a bit of a shift in the language. For seed you can substitute the word savior. For land you can substitute in God’s Kingdom, and for covenant you can substitute in salvation. On any given day whether he was preaching, performing miracles, or just having conversations with people, these three concepts are at the heart of everything Jesus says and does.
Here is the picture behind the picture of Joseph’s life:
Jesus is the savior seed of promise that has offered salvation from exile through the covenant of his blood that has opened a way into God’s kingdom of blessing and rest.
What is amazing is: Now that we have read the Genesis story, do any of the patriarchs (to include Joseph) get to see God’s land flowing with milk and honey? NO
What about the Exodus generation? Do they get to fully possess the promised land? NO
What about the generation after the Exodus generation…the Joshua generation…do they fully possess the promised land? NO That story actually ends with an account of all the idolatrous nations that still possessed parts of the promised land.
What about the judges or any of the kings or even after Israels exile in Babylon? NO Even at Israels best, they still never returned to the garden of Eden that our hearts long for.
Here is the tough one though. What about after Jesus? Did Jesus’ followers see God’s kingdom come in its fullness? NO. In fact the Romans were an oppressive power enslaving and killing God’s people long after Jesus had gone. And this was a real problem for a lot of Jesus’ followers too. They thought that when Messiah came, he would finally restore the nation of Israel and the Messiahs’ followers to the fullness of the promised land of blessing.
And yet, 2,000 years later we find ourselves in a place not far from where Joseph was. Living in this sort of already but not yet kingdom.
Here is the deal with God’s kingdom though. We often think of kingdoms being defined by their borders. In Jesus’ day that wasn’t necessarily the case. There were borders of sorts but they were more defined by how far the rule and reign of the king extended. And so we see ancient borders defined by mountain ranges, big rivers, and other large bodies of water that defined how far a king could exert his authority and rule.
Here is the real beauty of this story. Through the promised seed of salvation Jesus and through his fulfillment of God’s covenant promise of redemption, we can now experience God’s kingdom. We experience God’s kingdom as we submit to the rule and reign of King Jesus in our lives and in so doing, our lives become this little pocket of God’s kingdom.
We have hope in the midst of exile. Our lives, our relationships, our finances, even the world around us begins to reflect the beauty and blessing and hope of God’s kingdom as we come to submit more and more of our lives to Jesus over time.
We can look around the world at all of the brokenness that exists here and feel the tension of wanting to be home in a place where that tension does not exist. Every fight with a spouse, every sickness, every death, every time we say goodbye to a loved one who goes off to fight in a war, every act of injustice, every betrayal by a close friend, every story of a corrupt leader or politician, every pandemic, every financial crisis, every natural disaster, every broken heart, and really and broken thing we experience should remind us of the tension we live in as aliens and strangers in a foreign land.
That tension should make us focus our eyes on the God of hope and promise and drive us to live faithfully in the already but not yet kingdom.
That tension should fill us with an unstoppable drive to share the true message that hope and redemption from exile is only found in a life submitted to king Jesus.
That tension should make us long for the coming of God’s Kingdom in its fullness and pray daily that it would come today. We should say what the Apostle John said, who, after seeing the fullness of God’s kingdom wrote these words:
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
I really like the King James’ rendering of this verse:
“Even so come, Lord Jesus.”
And so here is the question I want to leave you with as I close out our Joseph story:
Have you had your hall of faith moment?
You see, Joseph looked forward to God’s promise of redemption and acted accordingly. He didn’t say if God rescues you then take my body back to the promised land. NO! Joseph said when God rescues you. Joseph knew God’s promise of redemption was good, trustworthy, and true and he had placed his faith in God for it.
We do not look forward but we look backward. We look backwards and place our faith in the perfect life that Jesus lived on our behalf. We look backwards and place our faith in the substitutionary death as Jesus died for our sins and our brokenness and all the ways we have contributed to our own enslavement in exile. We look backwards and place our faith in the open tomb of the resurrection that we get to walk out of with Jesus and into the promised land of God’s kingdom. Only when we have done that can we assuredly look forward to the rescue from the tension of the brokenness of this world. Otherwise, God is willing to honor our decision to continue in exile for all eternity.
And so, I want to invite you to do that this morning if you have not. I am going to be standing at the back as Ethan comes up to play us out in one final song. If you cannot look back at a moment in your life, I encourage you to make that decision this morning. Our world is incredibly broken and we all have experiences by the truckload that confirm that. The question at hand, however, is can you trust that Jesus is the answer? Not just for all the brokenness in the world but specifically for your own sin.
Give final Gospel example and close in prayer.