SOVEREIGN GRACE PREPARES PEOPLE FOR DEATH

Genesis 47:28-48:7

INTRODUCTION

Raise your hand if you’ve been to a funeral. Now raise your hand if you have been with someone as he or she died. How many have been present when another human being took their last breath? Not many of us have been in the presence of death. In our culture, death is kept hidden and, as much as possible, out of our sight and thought. Not many enjoy going to funerals. It is not good that we live in a culture that avoids and covers up death like ours. It is not good that we steer clear of funerals. The book of Ecclesiastes says, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.” The Bible repeatedly encourages human beings to consider their death. We are reminded over and over in the Bible that our presence on earth is only temporary. In fact, compared to the earth itself and God who is eternal, our lives are as permanent as the steam that comes off your coffee cup on a cold morning. Our lives are like the fog that hangs over fields of corn on an early summer morning but disappears as soon as the sun hits it.

There is a day coming when the heart that beats in your chest will stop beating. There is a day coming when your chest will no longer regularly rise and fall with your breathing. There is a day coming when you will no longer see with these eyes or hear with these ears. There is a day coming when you will no longer enjoy the pleasures of this world. You cannot avoid it. Every day that passes brings you one day closer to that day. From the moment of your birth you begin to die. I am not simply being morbid. I do not want you to live like a fool who never thinks about dying. I want you to live your life in light of the fact that you are going to die. People who live without an acute awareness of their impending death live wrong, live like fools. However, I also do not want you to live in light of your dying like those who have no hope. There are many who know they are going to die but who live in terror of it or pursue all the pleasure they can here because this is all they have. They have no hope beyond this life. Also, there are many who know they are going to die and who have hope but their hope is a vain hope. They are looking forward to something that does not exist like Iraqis living in the hope that their army is going to crush the coalition forces. Many are hoping for things that will never happen because they are deceived.

This morning it is my ambition to do all I can to prepare you for a good death by examining a good death, the death of Jacob. I mean by “good death” that a person dies full of joyful anticipation that something better is coming. I mean that a person dies satisfied with the grace of God. I want each of you to be able to say what Paul said, shortly before he died, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day.” Jacob was not always ready to die in hope. In fact, Jacob spent much of his life despairing over the prospect of his death. He said on several occasions that the anticipation of his death gave him no relief because his present life was miserable and he didn’t expect it to get any better upon his death. However, by the grace of God, Jacob has come to a place where he is not only ready to die but the days of his dying are more hopeful and happy than any other period in his life. Over two chapters are devoted to the last days of Jacob. This morning we are going to examine the beginning of his dying in order to discover how it is that God prepares people to die well.

MAIN POINT
God, by sovereign grace, prepares us for a good death by…

I. Causing us to yearn for heaven while living on earth (47: 28-31)

We are told in 47:28 that Jacob and his family have lived in Goshen in Egypt for seventeen years. If you’ll remember, Jacob and his family came to Egypt to escape the famine that God sent on the whole earth. However, the famine ended twelve years ago, so why are Jacob and his family still living in Egypt? Why have they not returned to the land of Promise, to Canaan? We are not told why they have not returned. Life was easy in the fertile plains of the Nile River with their brother Joseph ruling Egypt as the second most powerful person in the land. Jacob was very old and perhaps too frail to make the return trip. Joseph, most likely could not leave Egypt. The Pharaoh required his services and no one in this family would be interested in leaving Joseph behind in the land of Egypt. However, regardless of the human reasons for not leaving we do know that the ultimate reason they do not leave Egypt is because God does not want them to leave. In Genesis 15 God told Abraham right after he promised him he was going to have as many descendants as there are stars in the heavens, “…your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” It was God’s will that Jacob and his family continue to live in the land of Egypt until the final deliverance and salvation that God planned came to pass. It was God’s will they live outside of the land of Promise not just for seventeen years but for 400 years.

However, while Jacob lived in Egypt and knew it was God’s will to be there, yet his mind and heart were set on the land of Canaan, the Land of Promise. While he was grateful for the abundance that he and his family enjoyed, his heart yearned for Canaan. While he was delighted that his family had escaped the horrific famine by fleeing to Egypt and while he was overjoyed to be living with his beloved son Joseph, yet his mind was set on the land God promised to give to him and his descendants. The pleasures and plentitude of Egypt did not distract him from his ultimate goal, his highest ambition, to dwell in the land God promised forever. Jacob lived like a refugee for seventeen years. He did not permit himself to settle down in Egypt as if this were his permanent residence. You might be asking, “How does John know that Jacob’s heart, his yearnings were for Canaan?” I know it because of what Jacob says and does in 47: 29-31.

Jacob knows as many people do, that the time of his death is drawing near. He feels the weakness in his body and knows that his death is imminent. So he sends a message to Joseph who is busy in the capital of Egypt managing the affairs of the Pharaoh to come to him because he is going to die. Joseph cancels his appointments, delegates his duties and rushes to Goshen to be with his ailing father. Sometime during the course of his stay among the tents and flocks of his shepherding family his father calls him to his bedside. Propped upon pillows the frail man looks his regal son in the eye and says to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt but when I lie with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt and bury me where they are buried.” Joseph responds to his beloved father, “I will do as you say.” Jacob responds by commanding him, “Swear to me.” Joseph responded by putting his hand under his father’s thigh and swearing to his father that he would make sure he was buried in the tomb where Abraham and Isaac were buried in the cave of Macphelah, near Hebron.

Jacob does not require Joseph to take an oath because he does not trust him but in order to impress upon him how important it is that his body be buried in the land of Canaan. Why is it so important to Jacob? There are a number of reasons. However, it is not because of some superstitious belief that what happens to his soul depends upon where his body is buried. It is not because Canaan has nicer graves than Egypt, for the opposite is true. The tombs of Egypt are legendary. It is not because life in Canaan is so much better than life in Egypt. Indeed, the very opposite is the case. Canaan for Jacob had been a place of hardship and heartache, while Egypt has been a place of plenty and happiness. Jacob wants his body buried in Canaan for two reasons. First, his hope is fixed upon Canaan because it is the place of God’s promise. Canaan matters to Jacob because it is the place where God has promised to make him into a great nation. It is the place where God has promised to be his God and to dwell with him and his descendants. But you see it’s not really even about the physical land. His hope and yearning are for something more than a homeland on earth for his people. Notice what he says in v. 30. He says, “when I rest with my fathers” then carry me to Canaan and bury my body there with them. Do you see what he is saying? He is not simply talking about dying. He is talking about joining his fathers in rest. There is a day coming very quickly when he will join Adam and Seth and Noah and Terah and Abraham and Isaac in a living fellowship with God. He is referring to what Jesus told a group of Sadduces who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. The God of the OT is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus, seeing this kind of statement all over the OT told those Sadducees that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Jacob wants to be buried in Canaan as an expression of his confidence that what God has promised to him, he will do. Canaan is for Jacob the physical symbol of the eternal reality.

That leads to the second reason why Jacob is so insistent on being buried in Canaan. He is concerned that his sons and grandsons and great grandsons yearn for Canaan, for the fulfillment of God’s promises just like he has. So he views his burial in Canaan as his final attempt to keep their attention focused on God’s promises and not upon the ease and comfort and pagan practices of Egypt. He wants to be buried in Canaan to strengthen the faith of his children and grandchildren. But especially he wants to strengthen the faith of Joseph. You must remember that Joseph is living in the midst of the most powerful nation on earth. Not only does he live in it, he is the second most powerful man in that nation. He has access to all the wealth and power that being second in command in an absolute monarchy can give you. He is married to the daughter of a pagan priest. Of all Jacob’s sons, Joseph experiences the greatest pressure to not think about Canaan or about the promises of God and to get caught up in the power and pleasures of Egypt. So he calls Joseph to his side and makes him swear that he will make sure he is buried in Canaan so that he can show Joseph, even in his death, that the promises of God are true.

After Joseph promises to bury his father in Canaan, Jacob worships God. His heart is full of joy in God and gratitude towards God. Why does he worship at this particular time? He worships God because he knows that soon he will be in his presence. He worships because he knows the promises of God are true. While he lives in Egypt, not Canaan, and his descendants are not as numerous as the stars in the skies and no kings have yet arisen among his sons, yet he is absolutely confident that God is going to make all his promises come true. He knows that soon he will gain his true, heavenly home of which Canaan is but a symbol. He also worships because he knows that Joseph and the rest of his children are going to hold fast to the promises of God. He knows that when they bury his body in Canaan their faith in God’s promises will be strengthened and they will look forward to that city whose builder and architect is God. He knows that a community of nations will one day come from his descendants. He knows that the Messiah will come and save all of God’s people.

What about us? Here we are living in the land of Egypt, the land of ease and pleasure. Do our hearts yearn for the Promised Land to such a degree that we view our stay here as temporary? Do we consider going to heaven as better than everything else? The only people who are going to heaven are those who are absolutely convinced that going there would be better than the best thing you can imagine happening to you on earth. Everyone who has a true faith in Christ lives like Jacob, who is living with his beloved son Joseph and enjoying abundance and wealth and family and security, yet yearns for what God promises to give him. His mind is set on things above, where Christ, the fulfiller of all God’s promises is seated at God’s right hand. He also yearns for his family to live in the same hope, having the same affection for heaven that he does. Calvin says, “It is a proof of great courage, that none of the wealth or the pleasures of Egypt could so allure him, as to prevent him from sighing for the land of Canaan.” Is that true for you and I? Are the allurements of living with Jesus forever in heaven greater to us than the allurements of the pleasures of this life? If that is true then how is it shown in our lives? What do you do that shows that you are yearning for heaven? We know Jacob’s mind is fixed on Canaan because of his preparations to have his body buried there. What preparations are you making that show your mind and heart are fixed on heaven? How you use your time and money, how you treat people, what you think about, what you get excited about, what you get sad about, all these things show what you are yearning for.

God, by sovereign grace, prepares us for a good death by…

II. Persuading us of the supremacy of His promises (48: 1-6)

As so often happens when people are at the end of life, Jacob doesn’t die but regains strength and continues to live. Joseph cannot stay away from his duties forever, waiting for his father to die and so he returns to the capital of Egypt leaving word that he should be sent for the moment his father shows signs that the end is near. Weeks or months go by and then the word comes to him that the end appears to be near. He rushes to Goshen once again, this time bringing his two oldest sons with him, Manasseh and Ephraim. When Jacob hears of Joseph’s arrival he gains new strength, enough to sit up in bed. This time, when Joseph and his sons come to see him he makes no request. Rather he has important news for Joseph and his sons.

On his deathbed, Jacob, acting as God’s prophet announces God’s good news to Joseph and his sons. He recounts the promises of God to Joseph and his son in the hope that they will embrace those promises for themselves. He does this to bear witness to his own faith and in the hope that they will make his faith, their own. I want us to spend a few minutes considering the promises that God made to Jacob, as Jacob recounts them to Joseph and his sons. Then I want us to consider the response of Joseph and his sons to these promises.

First notice that the one who made these promises is God Almighty, El Shaddai. He knows that the God who appeared to him and made promises to him is the God who cannot be thwarted. He knows that “no one can hold back his hand or say to him, what have you done?” “When God acts, who can resist him?” There is infinite power behind these promises and therefore they will be fulfilled. However, please look with me at what has been promised and then look at Jacob’s experience. First, he says that this Almighty God blessed him. The verb does not simply mean that God gave him a one-time blessing at Bethel. Rather, Jacob is claiming that when God appeared to him at Bethel he began to bless him and he has blessed him every moment along the way since then. God actually appeared to Jacob on two occasions at Bethel. He spoke with him prior to his leaving the land of Canaan and going to Paddan Aram to the house of Laban where he married his wives and had eleven sons and one daughter. He also spoke to him at Bethel after he returned to Canaan with his wives and children and after meeting his brother and going through the chaos at Shechem. In other words he says that ever since he left his parents home in Canaan, God has blessed him. However, except for a few brief moments no one, not even Jacob would describe his life on earth as a blessed life. In fact, seventeen years earlier he described his life to Pharaoh as “evil”. Next, notice that he says God promised to make him fruitful, to increase his numbers to such an extent that his descendants could be described as a community of people groups. Finally, he says that God promised to give him and his descendants the land of Canaan as an eternal possession. I want to ask, how many of God’s promises to Jacob have been fulfilled? None of them. His life has been full of evil, not blessing. His family numbers in the hundreds, not in a community of people groups. He is living in Egypt, not Canaan.

I want you to get the picture here. Here is this weak, frail old man, lying in a bed in a tent surrounded by sheep, donkeys, camels and all their associated smells. Standing before him is a regally dressed prince and his two vigorous, imposing sons. This old man is telling these powerful men that Almighty God appeared to him and made promises to him that do not appear to have come true in the least. Now look at what he says next. He tells Joseph, “I want these two princes who are heir to all of the power and wealth that Egypt contains—these two young men who are from the elite, ruling class of Egypt—to become my sons and join my family. I want them to be my heirs rather than yours. I want them to inherit all the promises of God rather than all the wealth of Egypt.” As if that proposition isn’t crazy enough he tells Joseph that they will each get a share of the promised land on the same scale as the other eleven sons. He promises to give these boys and their descendants land that he does not possess. Do you see what he is saying? God made promises to me that I have not yet experienced. I want these boys to give up all their power and prosperity in Egypt and join my family to inherit these promises. I bequeath to them 1/13th of the land of Canaan, a land that I do not possess. Who in their right mind would give up what these boys have in store for them to live like Jacob has lived?

Jacob is preaching the gospel to his sons. The apostle Paul says this about the gospel and people’s response to it, “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Just as an old man telling princes that if they will leave behind certain wealth and power and join his family to inherit a land he does not possess sounds foolish, so the invitation to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow a crucified man in order to obtain eternal life is foolish. If we were to read on in the chapter we would see that Joseph and his sons join Jacob in believing the promises. They leave behind the wealth and power of Egypt in order to gain the promises of God. Why would you cast in your lot with such a ragtag group of folks when you could have such a great life on planet earth? Why would you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow a crucified man?

You will do it because you know that regardless of what it might look like, Almighty God has made this promise and so while the pleasures of Egypt are great, the pleasures of God are infinitely greater. God has made promises that are going to come true. He has given evidence of his faithfulness in his work of creation, of saving the nation Israel and in our Lord Jesus Christ to demonstrate the certainty of the promises coming true. But the promises will not be completely fulfilled until a day in the future when Christ returns and gives us the Promised Land as an everlasting possession. Until that time we will get tastes of his goodness, like Joseph and Jacob did, but we also are going to experience pain and suffering. The promises are true but they are for the future, not now. This is the Christian life. You become a Christian and you live as a Christian by believing the promises of God. “We eagerly are waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. In this hope, we were saved.” We must leave behind pursuing a life of pleasure on earth and believe the promise of Christ, joining ourselves to his church, which is waiting for salvation to come, not experiencing its fullness now.

God, by sovereign grace, prepares us for a good death by…

III. Giving us pain while living on earth (48:7)

Verse 7 is one of the most poignant verses in the Bible. Dying Jacob, as he looks upon the oldest son of his beloved wife, Rachel, remembers her death some 40 years earlier. He remembers and he causes Joseph to remember that day when Joseph was a young teenager. The family was traveling from Bethel in the north to Hebron in the south. Along the way, the caravan had to stop as Rachel went into labor with Benjamin. A tent was pitched as the midwives helped Rachel to give birth. Her cries of pain and finally despair plainly heard by the entire company. She died giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, along the road, on the way to Bethlehem. Then Jacob recounts the burial of his beloved wife along that road. He buried his beloved wife by the road, not in the family grave plot. What a painful memory this is. Like the men and women who settled the American west left graves along the trail, so Jacob buried Rachel and moved on. He never had a chance to visit her grave again. This young woman died, leaving behind an infant son, a teenager and a grieving husband. Why does Jacob remember this awful day? Why does he remind his son of what must have been one of the most difficult moments in his life?

I think there are two reasons that Jacob reminds Joseph of this painful day. First, the pain of Rachel’s death reminds Jacob and he hopes, Joseph, that this life is not real life. The pain that has comprised so much of both of these men’s lives is a reminder, sent by God that earth is not their home. The loss of the beloved wife and mother confronted both of these men with the futility of hoping in finding happiness here and now. Pain and suffering are sent by God for this purpose, to show us that we were not made for this world. If we believe that this is all there is and that life consists of having good health and good marriages and good jobs and a secure economy then we are going to end up in despair because God makes sure that all of these things fail. He rips away the things we love and hope in to teach us that living as if we were made for this world is futile. Even if you were able to live a whole life without suffering the loss of anything or anyone dear to you, you cannot escape the fact that in the end it will all be taken from you in death. It doesn’t matter how much pleasure you obtain on earth because in the end you’re going to die and lose it all. This world is disappointing because you were not made for this world. Jacob is reminding Joseph and his sons of this so that they will abandon their hope of finding life here and trust the promises of God and make it their goal to inherit what he has promised—life with him forever.

The second reason Jacob reminds of Rachel’s death is because of where she is buried. Verse 7 emphasizes the place of burial. She is buried in Canaan, the land of promise. She is resting with their fathers. Again, Canaan stands as the physical symbol of that eternal home that Christ has prepared for all who love him and so points them and us away from earth to heaven. Additionally, she is buried about eight miles north of Bethlehem. The land where she is buried is the land that the tribe of Benjamin comes to possess after Israel takes over Canaan. Rachel, in her death and burial, not only reminds them of the futility of hoping to be happy here but also points them ahead to the fulfillment of God’s promises. We as readers see the Providence of God in her burial. Rachel, the mother of Benjamin is buried upon the land that God gives to the descendants of Benjamin some 450 years later. Her burial place is a reminder of the faithfulness of God to his promises. There really is a heaven to which Christ will bring all who trust his promises. In all of the pain that we experience here there are reminders of these promises. Let the suffering and disappointments of this life have their intended effect. You are not made for this world but for the next. Live now as though your hope lies in that place where Christ has gone to prepare a place for all those who trust in him. Do not set your hope on the passing pleasures of sin and of this world. Live in the world, enjoying God’s gifts, but not needing God’s gifts to be happy. Set your hope for happiness on heaven, where our great Savior has gone to prepare a place for us in our Father’s house.

God, by sovereign grace, prepares us for a good death by…

 

© Copyright 2003 John Swanson
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