Friday, March 23, 2007

"By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones" (Hebrews 11:20-22).

IDEA: What God promises offers more than our experience might indicate.

PURPOSE: To help listeners see through Joseph that we can't base our trust in God on our personal experiences.

Hebrews 11:22 tells us that "By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones."

Does it strike you as strange that Joseph anticipated a time when the people would leave Egypt and take his bones with them?

I. Was this prompted by a nostalgia to go home again? No.

Joseph had not been in the Promised Land for 90 years, and when he left it, it was not a pleasant place to be.

He had a bad relationship with most of his brothers.

He had been sold into slavery.

Now, 90 years later, the family was living comfortably in Egypt.

At this point they were not slaves. They had a pleasant life in Egypt.

When the family moved to Egypt, they didn't think of Canaan as a land of milk and honey. It was a land of famine.

II. Joseph anticipated a time when the people would leave Egypt and take his bones with them because he knew that God had promised that land to his people and sometime, in some way, they would return to it.

The promise of God was more real to Joseph than the experiences of Egypt, as pleasant as they may have been.