Just for full disclosure, I’m feeling a little bit under the weather tonight and I’d invite you to take your Bible. Let’s take our Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 47 as we continue in our series on the life of Joseph. And tonight I want to speak on the subject, The Moment We All Live For. The Moment We All Live For. Last week we saw Jacob and Joseph reunited in a very emotional moment and Jacob give testimony to the fact that God had been good beyond measure and imagination and he never thought to see Joseph again, let alone see not only his son but his son’s sons. And we reminded ourselves never to give up on the goodness of God. But we’re moving forward. 17 years will have passed and we’ve come to a point in the story where Jacob is facing death, the moment we all live for.
We read about it in Genesis 47:27. “So Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen and they had possessions there and grew and multiplied exceedingly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt 17 years. So the length of Jacob’s life was 147 years. When the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph and said to him, ‘now, if I have found favor in your sight, please put your hand under my thigh and deal kindly and truly with me. Please do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers. You shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place.’ And he said, ‘I will do as you have said.’ Then he said, ‘Swear to me.’ And he swore to him. So Israel bowed himself on the head of the bed.”
And what proceeds is a parade of Jacob’s sons and Jacob blesses and prophesies and we read at the end of chapter 49:28, “All these are the 12 tribes of Israel and this is what their father spoke to them and he blessed them. He blessed each of them according to his own blessing. Then he charged them and said to them, I am to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron, the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of the Hittite as a possession for a burial place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife, and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is there were purchased from the sons of Heth and when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.”
There is a moment we all live for and it’s the moment we stop living in the earthly sense, life is winding down to death. Now I know that some people don’t want to hear that or face that reality. In fact, William Randolph Hearst forbid anybody to use the word death in his presence. You can ignore death if you wish, but it won’t go away and its reality is better faced than ignored. In fact, you’re not ready to live until you’re ready to die. In fact, Philip II, king of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, it is said that he commissioned a servant to follow him throughout his daily experience on weekly chores and solemnly announce on a regular frequent basis, “Remember Philip, you must die.” The moment we all live for is the moment we will stop living. We want to live but we have to die. There’s no escaping it.
Psalm 89:48 says this, “What man can live and not see death or save himself from the power of the grave?” Ecclesiastes 9:5 says this, “For the living know that they will die.” Every one of us is biodegradable and we’ve got to come to terms with our mortality. We’re not ready to live until we’re ready to die. And so I want to come into the context of Genesis 47, 48 and 49 and there we find a man who’s come to that moment we all live for. Jacob was about to die. He sensed it. In fact, we read in verse 29 of chapter 47, “When the time drew near that Israel must die, he called his son Joseph.”
Some of that has happened in your own families with your own fathers. There’s been that phone call or that message, “We need to talk. The time has come.” The shadow of death had cast itself over the threshold of this home. And you and I could do well to learn some lessons from how Jacob approached death. Richard Baxter, the English Puritan, it is reported that some of his last words were to a fellow minister and those words were this, “The Lord teach you to die.” We need to be open to the Lord not only teaching us how to live but how to die because life intersects with death for all of us and you and I need to indeed think that through. Everyone must die, yes, but how we die, that is the matter of real importance.
And so let’s look at this man’s death. In fact, the Book of Genesis finishes with two notable deaths, the death of Jacob and the death of Joseph. In fact, one commentator has said this, “The Book of Genesis is one vast graveyard, one great handbook of funeral sermons, one long obituary.” We have stood by the mutilated corpse of Abel. We have read the register of births and deaths in chapter five and attended the burial of a race in the flood. We have been to the funeral services of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Ishmael, and we have wept with Jacob at Rachel’s grave.
The Book of Genesis deals with death because the Book of Genesis introduces the subject of death. Remember what Paul said in Romans 5:12 that sin entered the world and death there by see man falling in sin and out of grace with God and death results. And so you have this long funeral procession winding its way through the Book of Genesis and here we come to one of the notable deaths in the Book of Genesis and we could learn much about how to die through what the Lord may teach us.
And so I want to say three things, hopefully as time allows me. I want us to look at the faith he confessed, the family he blessed and the future he possessed, and the Lord teach us to die through what we learn here.
Let’s look at the faith he confessed. As Jacob stares death in the face, he confesses his love for the Lord and the Lord’s love for him. Picture this scene, the old man knew that his time had come. He sends a message to Joseph to come in. He wants to say some things. He will begin to bless his family, beginning with Joseph. This touching and tender scene as the old man realizes that the clock is winding down. And it says he kind of pulls himself up on the bed, kind of fluffs his pillow up or whatever, and he prepares himself to share some last and lasting sentiments with his family.
He recounts God’s goodness and mercy and he confesses his love for God and God’s love for him. He gives testimony to God’s succeeding faithfulness and he gives testimony to God’s exceeding grace. In fact, this is a scene marked by worship. Here’s a man who dies with a testimony for God upon his lips. In fact, we read about this, don’t we, over in Hebrews chapter 11:21, that hall of fame, that hall of faith as the Hebrew writer recounts the great man and women who cast their anchor with God and we read in verse 21 concerning Jacob, “By faith Jacob when he was dying,” okay, that’s where we’re at in the Book of Genesis, “by faith Jacob when he was dying, blessed each one of his sons or the sons of Joseph and worshiped leaning on the top of his staff.” And I think we want to have that in mind. There’s an act of worship taking place here. Joseph or Jacob seeks to give testimony to God’s goodness and mercy, God’s succeeding faithfulness and exceeding grace.
Two things he confesses concerning his faith in God and God’s faithfulness to him. He confesses his faithful Lord and he confesses his fruitful life. Look at the verse three of chapter 48. In fact, we’ll back up in verse one. “Now it came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, ‘Indeed, your father is sick,’ and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim and Jacob was told, ‘Look, your son Joseph is coming to you,’ and Israel strengthened himself.” Can you imagine the old man mustering up his strength? In fact, as soon as he gives these blessings, he dies. And I have witnessed this as a pastor and some of you have experienced this in your own families, how people hang in there until they’re able to share their last words and their last wishes and then they kind of just take their last breath and relief and release they pass on.
And so the old man realizes time’s short, he strengthens himself, he sits up on the bed, he worships upon his staff and then Jacob said to Joseph, verse three, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you and I will make of you a multitude of people and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession’.”
There was a time in Jacob’s life, it seems here, where he encountered God in a very personal and powerful way and he became aware of God in his life and what God intended to do through his life like he had never done before. Whether this is the exact moment of Jacob’s conversion, we can’t be sure, but it’s a moment of conversion and gives testimony to the fact that God indeed had encountered this man and changed him and redeemed him and straightened out this twister. Jacob means twister, supplanter. And we find that Jacob remembers this time when God Almighty appeared to me at Luz. If you go back to Genesis 28:10, you read about that encounter when he gets to that place he’ll later call Bethel and how he kind of fluffs up a stone as a pillow, falls asleep and he dreams about this ladder and angels descending and ascending on this ladder how God appears to him and God promises certain things to him and God promises him goodness and mercy and the continuance of his seed in promise to Abraham and Isaac.
God met Jacob, the sinner, in grace and mercy at Luz and that became a moment of mercy, a memorable moment of mercy in the life of Jacob. And as he is about to face God in death, he looks back at that time when God appeared to him, God manifest himself to him, where he encountered God and came to know him in a very real and personal and powerful way. The way we would put this is in verse three, Jacob’s giving a word of testimony, a word of testimony. He’s expressing his faith in God and God’s faithfulness to him. And it seems to me, if you and I are to learn how to die, you and I need to learn this, that we want to come to our own deaths with an assurance that God has been made known to us, that we know God and God knows us.
One writer puts it like this, “The troubled waters of Jacob’s life had now settled and cleared and were flowing placidly in a quiet stream of fellowship with God.” He’s talking about God because he’s soon to talk to God, and that’s the way we want to die. We want to die in faith in God. We want to die with an assurance that we know God and God knows us. In fact, in John 1:15, I believe it is, 51, sorry, this very scene in Luz and Jacob’s encounter with God and God’s encounter with him is a kind of precursor, a promise of the coming Messiah, the one who indeed would be the ladder between God and man.
Remember what we read in 1 John 51 where Nathaniel is told of Christ and the fact that he is the promised Messiah and to pinpoint that reality, Philip or Jesus says to him, “Most assuredly I say to you, hereafter, you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” And it’s a throwback to that scene in Jacob’s life and how the angels were descending and ascending in this ladder in Jesus Christ is presenting himself as the fulfillment of that and the fuller picture of that. He is the ladder between heaven and earth and no man comes to the Father but by him. And often in John’s Gospel, John will detail this fact and Jesus will declare this fact that indeed he has come down from heaven.
And so for us, just as Jacob can give testimony to the fact that he encountered God at Luz, that God came down to him, met him, redeemed him, rescued him, brought him into relationship with Himself, so you and I want to get to that place in life where we can give testimony to the fact that we have indeed come to know the one who came down from heaven, that we might go to heaven, that indeed Jesus Christ has become to us a ladder to heaven through His death and His ascension and His intercession on our behalf. It’s a great thing to know the Lord and the promise of His presence when you find yourself in the presence of death. The Lord teach you to die.
You’re not ready to die until you have met the one who is the resurrection and the life, who has promised that if we will put our faith and our trust and our hope for eternity in Him, though we die, yet shall we live. Hopefully that’s true of you tonight. There has been that time, that you can give testimony to those that might gather around your deathbed, that God appeared to me. For me it would be a Sunday night in a drizzly Belfast evening at Antrim Road Baptist Church around about 8:30 when I myself closed in with God’s offer of mercy to my soul through the work of the Holy Spirit and the clarity and promise of God’s word, I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And hopefully for me when that day comes, if my girls are gathered there or June, our friends or family or even some of you, I can say, you know what? God appeared to me on the Antrim road in Belfast and I put my faith in Jesus Christ, the ladder between heaven and earth, the one mediator between God and man.
You want to be able to give that testimony. Simeon was able to give that testimony at his death, wasn’t he? In Luke chapter one or two we read, “I have seen thy salvation. Now let thy servant depart in peace.” Paul was able to say in his death or as he anticipated his death, he would be able to say, “I’m persuaded that He’s able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.”
John Knox, the renowned Scottish reformer who was used singularly by God to establish the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, when he was dying, he gave testimony to the fact that God had appeared to him, that he was known to God and he knew God. On the day of his death, he asked his wife to go and get a Bible and read to him 1 Corinthians 15. And as he listened to the great promise of future resurrection, he said that that was a comfortable chapter.
A little later on he said to his wife, “Go read where I first cast my anchor,” whereupon she turned to John chapter 17:3, which was a text that the Lord had used to bring Knox to faith, “That this is life eternal, that you might know Him, the living God.” She read that text in that chapter to him, and his last words, given in a deep sigh were, “Now it has come.” And you know what? When it comes, when that moment comes, the moment we all live for, when we stop living in an earthly sense, I hope you and I could remember where we first cast our anchor, that time, that place when definitively and without doubt you and I came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You don’t only see him give testimony to his faithful Lord. He gives testimony to his fruitful life. Look at verse three and four again, “Then Jacob said to Joseph, ‘God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me and said to me,’ ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you and I will make a view a multitude of people and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession’.” Jacob not only thanked the Lord for what he had done for him in salvation, he gave testimony to the fact of what God had done through him in service. Jacob died satisfied with this thought that God had used him, that he had become to some degree, and you know what, Jacob had a pretty checkered life, but to some degree he had a real sense, a demonstrable understanding that God had used him in a significant way. He had become a catalyst for the kingdom program, that he had become an instrument in God’s hand for building that kingdom. He had become a conduit for God’s power strengthening the people of God.
You and I know from the story, I think there was a time when he probably doubted what he shares here with great confidence and clarity. “Behold,” God said to him, “I’ll make you fruitful and multiply you and I’ll make a view a multitude of people.” Before they encountered Joseph, things weren’t looking too good, right? They were in dire straits. It looked like that the seed of Abraham through the line of Isaac and Jacob was on the edge of extinction. But God in His goodness and grace and mercy turned the tables and what looked like an end was really a beginning. And they come down to Egypt and they learn of how God and the words of Joseph had sent him ahead to preserve a posterity, to save a nation, to fulfill the promise of God through Abraham and to Abraham.
And so you know what? 17 years had passed years of great fruitfulness and now he revels in God’s goodness. He gets great joy and a certain amount of pride in seeing that you know what, God had indeed been working through him and there was a legacy, there was something left behind that would last. His life hadn’t been wasted, but God had indeed used it in a very fruitful manner.
In fact, James Montgomery Boice in his commentary in Genesis draws this contrast because these chapters we have entered upon here, the end of 47 through 48 and through 49 is taking us past the famine into those years of great prosperity for Jacob and Joseph’s brothers, Jacob’s sons, and really you set that in contrast with what was going on in Goshen among the Israelites and what was going on in the rest of the land among the Egyptians, listen to these words, “For one thing, since they follow the account of Joseph’s treatment of the Egyptians during the famine crisis, they suggest the contrast,” says Boice, “between the two peoples. On the one hand, the Egyptians ended the famine years in bondage. The Israelites ended the same period as free persons. Again, the Egyptians had lost their lands to Pharaoh.” Remember how they had sold all their lands to get the grain? Our text says the Hebrews acquired property.
Finally, the text emphasizes that the Israelites increased greatly in number. This means that the Egyptian years were ones of unprecedented growth for God’s people. These were years where Jacob saw in both an accelerated fashion and in an exaggerated way how God was working through him and it gives testimony not only to his faithful Lord, but to his fruitful life. Look at verse 27 of chapter 47 again. “So Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen and they had possessions there and grew and multiplied exceedingly.”
I think in the mix of all these physical blessings there were a ton of spiritual blessings. This man enjoyed increasing physical wealth and increasing spiritual wealth. And I think again, and you and I as the Lord teaches us how to die and we think through the moment we’re all living for, the moment we’ll stop living, we want to come to that moment in the calm and confident assurance that we’re in a right relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, that we’ve been made right or justified through faith in Him. But we also want to come to that moment and look back and have a sense that indeed God has worked through us. We want to not only rejoice in His work for us in Christ, but His work through us in the spirit. We want to have fruit. We want to have a legacy of God’s work in us and through us. The Christian ought to be fruitful.
And the while maybe the accent here is put on physical fruitfulness in Genesis 47 through 48 and 49, you and I indeed want to give testimony to a great harvest of spiritual fruit in our life. That will give us confidence in death because anyone who lives a fruitless life entertains a false hope of heaven. Let me say that again. Anyone who lives a fruitless life entertains a false hope of heaven. Because while we are not saved by works, we are saved unto good works and the work of God in our life is proved by fruitfulness. If you and I are a branch in the vine, if you and I are united to Christ, as the analogy goes in John 15, we will bear much fruit, John 15:16, just like a vine that doesn’t bear fruit, it’s cut away and thrown in the fire, so a life that doesn’t bear fruit is a useless life, one that has no spiritual or eternal value. Works follow salvation, right?
“For by grace you were saved, through faith, that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast, but we are his workmanship in Christ Jesus, created unto good works.” Not saved by works, but having been saved, works will follow. Works, follow salvation and works follow the saints. Revelation 14:13, “Our works will follow us to heaven.”
Anyone who lives a fruitless life entertains a false hope of heaven. And you and I want to get to a place in life and then in death where we can look back and see a harvest of spiritual fruitfulness, that our walk with God was real, that our prayers were heartfelt and our love of people was genuine, that we give ourselves to the study of God’s word, that we touched people’s lives, that the fruit of the spirit, kindness and patience and goodness and all those things was bearing results in your life and mine, because death will only begin if life for us is Christ. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain. There’s a correlation there. Death is no gain. Death holds no profit unless we have invested our lives passionately for the things of Christ.
And so you and I need to learn how to die well, but we want to die well like Jacob, we want to die well like Paul, “I realize the time of my departure’s at hand, but I want to give testimony to the fact that I have indeed run the race and kept the faith.”
Catherine Booth, after her marriage to the founder of the Salvation Army, spent a great deal of her time seeking to improve the position of women and children in society. She was a gifted speaker among women, yet she struggled with ill health most of her life and ultimately succumbed to cancer. Her last words were these, I love these words. “The waters are rising, but so am I,” speaking about death, that image of crossing the river, “the waters are rising, but so am I. And I’m not going under but over. Do not be concerned about dying. Go on living well and the dying will be right.” It’s great statement, go on living well and the dying will be right.
Do you see the faith he confessed? He confessed about a faithful Lord and he confessed about a fruitful life and that brought great comfort and confidence to this man. But let’s move on to the family he blessed. I mean this is a very tender and a very touching scene. We find Jacob lying on his bed, his deathbed. He’s surrounded by family and some favorite things. He’s leaning on his staff. Joseph and his sons are first to come in to the tent and then the other brothers will follow. It’s a beautiful scene. Not all together unlike the death of Francis Schaeffer who was brought home from the hospital to die amidst familiar surroundings and some of his favorite music playing in the background and family and friends, and that scene’s being repeated again and again.
And here we have this very touching and tender scene of a man and his family gathering around him. And what he does in chapter 48 and 49 is he blesses them. He shares some of his wishes for them. We read about that at the end of chapter 49, don’t we? Verse 28, “All these are the 12 tribes of Israel and this is what their father spoke to him and he blessed them and he blessed each one according to his own works.” Now, we are not going to take time to work our way through chapter 48 and 49, but you’ll find that Jacob rebukes the sin he had found in his family. He promotes godliness and encourages a pursuit of God and covenantal blessing, and he pronounces blessings on the boys according to their works.
It wasn’t altogether easy. In fact, some of the sons learn that although they are still within God’s covenant blessings to the seed of Abraham, because of some of their behavior and disobedience and lack of faith and an ungodly behavior, they’re going to lose out and those that belong to them are going to lose out in the next generation. Reuben is said to be like unstable water, chapter 49 and verse four, the terrible twins, the two men of violence, Simeon and Levi is said of them in chapter 49 and verse five, following that their descendants are going to be scattered throughout Israel. We read of Issachar, that he was full of potential but quite lazy and he set up the next generation to follow him for failure. You read about that in chapter 49 and verse 14.
There was a mix of things in this family. It was never easy with some of the boys, and yet there were joys too. Judah and Joseph come to prominence. Judah is praised in verse nine of chapter 49 following, and Joseph is said to be like a fruitful vine that climbs over a wall. He’s more than a conqueror, to use Paul’s language from Romans chapter eight. But each of these sons hears from their father some general blessing and in some specific blessings or some prophecies concerning the consequences of choices that have already been made.
And while some of those warnings and negative prophecies must have been discouraging, on the whole, they hear how God is going to bless the descendants of Jacob and his sons and their sons and no doubt that must have held them during the of slavery. They must have often recounted this story to their sons who then recounted it to their sons and through the succeeding generations that God indeed had said to Jacob who passed it on to his sons, that indeed God would be faithful. He would reward faithfulness, that He would punish unfaithfulness, and sometimes in His mercy He would look past unfaithfulness and in covenant blessing and in commitment to himself continue to further His work despite their unworthiness.
And I think the thing we take from this is that the plan and the purposes of God would be worked out across the generations. There would be a chain reaction, a domino effect to the descendants of Jacob’s sons. And it seems to me that as you and I reflect on this, we want to hone in and center in on this thought that we want to get to that place where we can share with some confidence and some clarity and have a sense ourselves that the work of God will continue beyond your generation to the next. I mean we could spend a lot of time unpacking that, but the general gist is he gathers the boys and he tells them, leaving the negative aside, that here’s what’s God’s going to do through the 12 tribes of Egypt in answer to the promise that God had made to Abraham and Isaac and now was fulfilling in Jacob. And he’s encouraging these boys to carry on where he’s going to leave off.
And I think one of the nice things about this, the challenging things about this, Jacob wished his boys to have as a last memory of him this scene where he gives God all the glory and all the credit and he prophesies and projects what God is yet to do through these families if they will remain faithful to Him. And I find that very challenging. As you and I would learn how to die, we need to remind ourselves that each of us is setting the course heading for a generation or two to come. By our actions or our inactions, we can affect the trajectory, listen, of 100 years of our family history. Now, that’s not in the text, but we can see here that Jacob’s talking to his sons and their sons. You’ve got Joseph and his sons and the prophecy goes beyond one, two to three and four and five and six generations. It moves them beyond the 430 years of slavery.
And so what Joseph has in mind is the work of God rippling across the generations and if you and I kind of limit that a little, in Deuteronomy 6:1-2, every Israelite family was reminded to pass on their faith to the next generation. And we read in Deuteronomy 6:1, “Now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord our God has commanded to teach that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess.” So there’s certainly an echo here of what Jacob was trying to get across to his sons and every father after Jacob was to try and get this across, how they needed to obey God and live within the covenant of God. “That you may fear, verse two, “the Lord your God, to keep all his commandments and statues, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.” Here God is challenging every father, just like Jacob, every father to affect the Son who will affect the grandson.
Steve Farrar has a great book called The Anchorman and reflecting on Deuteronomy 6:1-2, he says that God expects each father or mother to anchor his family for at least a hundred years. You say, where does he get that? Let me read something of Steve Farrar in that book. “God expects every father to anchor his family for at least 100 years.” No kidding. The phrase, “You and your son and your grandson,” when you think about it covers right when a hundred years. God wants His men to take their fathering seriously. You may be thinking, I won’t have a family in a hundred years. Think again my friend. You’ll have a family in 100 years. You just won’t be around to know them, but they’ll know of you. One day your children will have grandchildren and these grandchildren of your children will be four generations removed from you. They will show up about 100 years from now, give or take 10 or 20 years. When was the last time you ever thought about those kids?
That’s challenging, isn’t it, that what we do today or what don’t do today, the prayers we pray today or the prayers we don’t pray today, the obedience that we give to God or the disobedience we show to God will be rippling across our families for 100 years. Each of us is setting the course heading for a generation or two to come. Our greatest legacy is our children. We live on through them unlike anything else. We may leave a ton of things behind us but nothing quite like our children. They bear our physical image and hopefully they’ll be stamped with our spiritual character. And here you have Jacob gathering his sons around his bed and blessing them and challenging them to be a blessing.
October 31st, 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 departed from Anchorage, Alaska, for a direct flight to Seoul, Korea. Unknown to the crew, however, the computer engaging the flight navigation system had a one and a half degree riding error. At the point of departure. The mistake was unnoticeable. 100 miles out, the deviation was still so small it was undetectable, but as the giant 747 continued through the Aleutians and out over the Pacific, the plane strayed increasingly from its proper course, eventually flying in to Soviet airspace. Soviet radar picked it up, fighter jets were scrambled into the air to intercept and then it would seem a situation of great miscommunication or preemption in the part of the Russians, those jets shot that flight down with all loss of life aboard.
You and I need to choose our directions well because although our poor choices may not hurt us immediately and may not show up for a while, the longer you go, the more harm they will do. And to me that seems to be a great illustration that some of our deviations and some of our disobediences may not truly show up for a generation and the further out our family history goes, the greater the impact our faithlessness and unfaithfulness. And so you and I need to be challenged. The Lord teach you to die. Let’s die with faith in God and the life of service and fruitfulness. Let’s die with the hope that oh not perfect, you and I have sought to set an example before our children. They’ve heard our prayers, they have watched our commitment to a local church. They have seen us flesh out our love for God’s word. They have watched us in the midst of suffering and storms prove the reality of God’s grace and mercy, so that they indeed might become torchbearers and standard-bearers for God and his gospel.
The last thought, you don’t only see the future he confessed, the family he blessed, but let’s think about the future he possessed. As Jacob pulls his feet up under the covers and smiles into the face of God and is gone, you and I want to get a sense that he died with a great hope concerning the future. Jacob could smile in the face of death because he was looking forward to certain things that were certain to him beyond death.
This man’s feet might have been in Egypt, but his heart was in Canaan, and the future that God had promised the people of God and the seed of Abraham. While he enjoyed 17 good years in Egypt, we read about that in chapter 47, verse 28, Egypt was never his home. He was always anticipating something beyond that, something more than that. If he must live in Egypt, he will keep his heart in Canaan, the land of promise. The place where God had put his name. Jacob’s earthly affairs were in Egypt, but his heart was in Canaan. Reminding us by the way that pilgrims are people that die well because death is not complete loss to them because they’re looking for something beyond where they’ve been and where they are. And you and I need to live and die as pilgrims. Oh, our feet is here, but a heart should be somewhere else.
We are citizens of heaven. And Paul tells us, doesn’t he, in Philippians 3:20, “Your citizenship is in heaven from which you look for the son of God to come back,” to change this vile, decaying, mortal body into something much more glorious. See, death for someone who hasn’t got faith in God and a pilgrim mindset, death is an unmitigated disaster because it robs them of everything that’s precious to them because it’s all about the here and the now. You only go around once, so grab as much gusto as you can and when that moment comes, you know what, you realize it’s all gone. It’s all at an end.
But the pilgrim, no. The pilgrim enjoys his journey. The pilgrim enjoys all that he’s going through and experiencing, but the pilgrim realizes that even when that comes to an end, they want to get somewhere else from where they are. And that’s the Christian, and that’s the way you want to die. “Lord, I thank you for the life I’ve lived,” and you gather your children around you give testimony to God’s goodness and mercy and the manifold experiences of his blessings, but at the same time you go, I’m glad to go because there’s something beyond this. There’s a better and a brighter future.
And you see this quickly. Jacob anticipated a future coming and Jacob anticipated a family gathering. Look at verse 10 of chapter 49. He’s speaking to Judah. Judah, the tribe of Judah was to be the kingly line. The kings of Israel would come through Judah. Look at verse 10. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes and to him shall be the obedience of the people.” Shiloh is interpreted as the one who will bring peace and the majority of commentators and I along with them believe that this is the promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest king of Israel would be the king of kings and he would come through the line of Judah. In fact, Jesus is described, isn’t He, in Revelation 5:5 as what? The Lion of Judah. This is Shiloh, the one to whom all the people will give Obedience and it could be the nations there.
And what we have in view here is the second coming of Christ when every eye will see him and every knee will bow. And I don’t know what degree did Jacob grasp this, but he certainly shares it with his own sons. There’s coming one, Shiloh, through the line of Judah and to him all the people will bow in obeyance and in obedience. And it’s a great thing to die in the hope of the second coming, to die without hope, burning brightly in your heart when you’re surrounded by death and by indeed darkness, to die in the anticipation of a new order, of a better day, of a grander, greater life. That’s how Jacob died and that’s how you and I want to die in the anticipation of a new order, a better life. We call it the life to come.
It might incorporate the millennial kingdom, it’ll incorporate the temporal heaven. It’ll incorporate the unending experience in the new earth and the new heaven, but it’s a better life than this one because all that is bad will be absent and all that is good will be present and the curse will be removed and the blessing of God will be known in a manifest and multiplied way. Night will not cloud its day, death will not walk its streets, tears will not seep through its walls, sickness will not enter its gates, sin will not curse its history and the devil will not bother its citizens. Heaven and the kingdom to come, and Jacob dies in the hope of that. And you and I need to keep that hope alive in us while we are alive and then that hope will sustain us in the face of death.
Our greatest happiness is to be found not in this life, but in the life to come. And we need to be careful because ours is the first generation of man that actually expect to find happiness on earth. Our forefathers believed in two worlds, this world which is solitary and poor and nasty and brutish and short, and you certainly would be a fool to put all your eggs in this basket. But then there’s the other world. Not the short world, but the long world, not the poor world, but the enriching world. A world unmolested by sin, not threatened by Satan. A world where there’s no crying and no sighing and no dying. That’s the world you want to die anticipating.
That’s how a young girl by the name of Frances Wynant died. If you were to visit a little church in the village of Stanton England, the church is St. Michael’s, you’ll find that throughout the floor of that church are burial markers and there’s one to this young girl. Let me read it because you and I’ll probably never go to see it. “Sacred to the memory of Frances, third daughter of Reginald and Frances Wynant who died March 12th, 1808, aged 19. Cut off in the morning of life, her many amiable virtues had endeared her to all who knew her. Sensible and prudent in all her actions, she lived unspotted from the world and untainted from any of its vanities. Upheld by the animating prospect of a future, a better state of existence, she supported the lingering illness which brought her to a premature grave with exemplary patience and cheerful resignation.” Those are beautiful words.
We want to live but we must die. Death’s an intruder. We’re uncomfortable in the presence of death. But you know what? The gospel makes the difference. The risen Christ makes the difference, and you and I can be upheld by the animating prospect of a future better existence. And when we give in to death, it will be with a cheerful resignation.
Same with Jacob. “Hey boys, time’s up, but Shiloh is going to come and we’re going to enter into an everlasting kingdom.” He had anticipated a future coming and quickly a family gathering. Do you notice how his death is described in chapter 49:28-29? Then he charged them and said to them, that’s Jacob to his sons. “I am to be gathered to my people, bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron on the Hittite.” In his dying, Jacob anticipated a family gathering with Abraham and Isaac.
Death may hide but it cannot divide. And death is described here as a gathering to his people, and I don’t think that’s just he was buried in the family plot because it’s a separate phrase from the fact that Jacob was also buried. This is something apart from the act of burial and part of this hope that animates a dying person with the hope of a better future is also that in the midst of that, those who have gone on before await those who are yet to come. I don’t want to get too sentimental about that. I mean the first person we will want to see is the Lord Jesus, but those we have loved we want to see again and those whom He has loved and who loved us, we want to see again and that’s a hope that indeed you and I need to lay hold of.
In fact, in Luke 7:15, there’s this beautiful phrase, when Jesus raises the dead son of the widow of Nain, it says, “And he brought him to her.” And I think the Lord will do that after our own resurrection. After our own resurrection, there will come these reunions with those who have gone on before. Death may hide us from them now, but it cannot divide us from them then.
In fact, what do we read in Matthew 8:11? The Lord Jesus says, well, the testimony of scripture says concerning the life to come, the very thing we’re talking about here, Matthew 8:11, Jesus is speaking about the future kingdom, “And I say to you that many will come from east and west and sit down with,” what? “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” What’s Jacob say to his sons here? “I want you to get me out of Egypt. Don’t bury me here. And I want you to go and bury me where Abraham and his wife was buried and where Isaac and his wife was buried and where I buried Leah, I want to be buried there.” And Jesus tells us, in the kingdom of heaven, there’s going to be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, one people of God forever united in Him and reunited at death.
And I think that’s a beautiful thing to lay hold off because in death we say goodbye to those who are still living but in death and because of death, we go and say hello to those who once died, but who now live forever in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that blunts the edge of our sorrow and that should also blunt the edge of those who are left behind in their sorrow.
I like the story, as we close, of the elderly Christian woman who lost her daughter, was grief-stricken, and so she decided to go and visit her other daughter who at that time was living in England and so she took a voyage from New York City to England and part of the way across the ocean, this vessel was caught in a massive storm that threatened the lives of all on board. But this woman seemed to be at peace. When the passengers frantically raced for the lifeboats and in the midst of all that panic, she showed no signs of panic. One person challenged her, “Lady, we may sink and die?” To which this woman replied, “Young man, I have a daughter in heaven and I have a daughter in New York and it doesn’t make a difference to me which one I go to see.”
The moment we all live for is the moment we’ll stop living and you and I need to anticipate that. We can ignore it if we like, but we’re better facing it because ignoring it doesn’t remove its reality. And if the Lord is going to teach us to die, He’s taught us tonight through Jacob that we need to die in faith and confidence in Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection for us. We need to die with our track-rack road of faithfulness and obedience to Jesus Christ, a life of fruitfulness, rejoicing not only in God’s work for us and Christ, but in God’s work through us by the Spirit. We’ll want to die with our family, God willing, around us and die in the hope that indeed we leave behind us a legacy that will set the course heading for the next hundred years of our family’s life and legacy.
And we want to die in the hope that death is not the end, that it is but the beginning of a better, brighter life. And we are not just leaving people behind. We’re actually going to meet people who stand ready to wait and welcome us. The moment we all live for is the moment we stop living. Let’s pray.
Lord, we have been encouraged in your word to number our days and apply our hearts onto wisdom and as we come to this part of the story of Joseph’s life, that tender and touching moment when he will bid goodbye to his father, God, help us to pause here, when the quietness and stillness of this Wednesday night, when so much of life would seek to distract us, perhaps cause us to think about things that are really not that important, Lord, help us just to pause and take some inventory of our life and remind ourselves that we are living for a moment when we will stop to live.
And Lord help us indeed to prepare ourselves, to number our days and apply our hearts onto wisdom. Perhaps Lord, we need to repent and we need to reassess and we need to refocus so that indeed when that time comes like Catherine Booth, we will not go under, but we will go over and having lived well death will take care of itself. Lord, we thank you for the hope that we find in you. Thank you for the promise of a greater life and a grander life. And help us not to put all our eggs in this one basket. Help us to live this life for that life. Lord, we just commend ourselves to you and pray that your word might find a place in our hearts tonight where we may not sin against you. That indeed, when our time of departure comes, we can say with Paul, Lord, we have kept the faith and we have fought the fight, and we have run the race. For these things we ask and pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.