Strange baggage but confident hope

My wife and I often joke about how different we are when it comes to packing for a trip. Days before we leave she meticulously makes a list of everything that will be needed on the trip, while I start to pack an hour or so before we are supposed to depart. Neither of us understands how the other one operates, but it works for us.

Yet, for as strange as we both think the other one is when it comes to packing, there’s something nestled at the very end of Genesis that would strike both of us (and probably you!) as very odd about what the people of Israel would need to pack and take with them when they leave Egypt in the exodus.

As Genesis concluded (Gen. 50:22-26), things were not as they should have been. The people of God were far from their homeland, and Joseph, their hero and rescuer, was about to die. Genesis began with the perfect, wise, good creation of life by God, but Genesis ended with Joseph dead and in a coffin.

God’s promised faithfulness

Things were not as they once were intended to be, but what did Joseph tell his brothers? “God will surely visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” This was the first time in the Bible that the promise of God’s faithfulness was attached to the covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give them land. Joseph invoked the names of the patriarchs of Israel as a reminder to all who were listening that God would be faithful to His covenant people and He would surely lead His people out of Egypt and back to their homeland.

How certain was Joseph of this promised faithfulness of God? He made the sons of Israel — his brothers — swear that they would take his bones with them when God visited them and took them home. His own pending death would not thwart Joseph’s confidence in God’s faithfulness.

It is interesting but not surprising that this was not the last time that Joseph’s bones were referenced in the story of God leading His people out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. In Exodus 13 as the people of Israel were packing up to leave Egypt — because God had visited them and was leading them out — Moses made sure to carry Joseph’s bones with him. You can picture the people of Israel hurriedly packing up as they were making plans to flee from their Egyptian slave masters and captors, and in the midst of the chaos — plagues and Passover had just happened, they would soon cross the Red Sea. And in this commotion Moses says something like, “We must not forget the bones of Joseph, because God is at work!” 

These bones were also mentioned at the very end of the book of Joshua after God had led Israel all the way through the wilderness and into the Promised Land in a journey that stretched across multiple generations and many long, agonizing miles. Once Israel was home, Joseph’s bones were buried at home in the family burial plot as a testimony to the faithfulness of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Hope in waiting

Today, we often find that our waiting is mingled with pain. We find that we wait in grief. We wait with sorrow over our sin. Many of us wait for our Lord with a sense that things have been left undone, incomplete or with an overwhelming cry from our hearts that “this cannot be the way it’s supposed to be.” And that is why we wait. The sorrows of this life reveal to us that we, too, are in a metaphorical Egypt. This is not home for the people of God.

But we do not wait without hope. The hope we have in our crucified, risen and reigning Lord comforts us in our weariness and distress and tells us that though we are in Egypt, our God has visited us, He is with us and He will visit us again. And He has told us that in this waiting, we must love one another as He has loved us. We have a responsibility to help one another to wait well.

As His people, we do not have bones that we carry with us from one place to another in hope of the coming work of God. In fact, there are no bones to carry. The One greater than Joseph did not need His bones to be carried around because His bones did not remain lifeless. And He will bring life to the bones of Joseph and to all who have died with hope that God will visit them. We look to the One who is greater than Joseph and we hear Him say to us that yes, “I have surely visited you and I will bring you to the land that I have promised to my people.” And we hear Him say to His church, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Stephen McDonald is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Scituate, MA.