Through Faith and By Faith - Hebrews 11

Looking at the achievements of faith from the perspective of persuasion and credence. Part Ten - Joseph

Author: Randy Pritts

Today's Text:

kjv@Hebrews:11:22 @ By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.

"By faith Joseph..." v22

It is not uncommon to have it specified in your will where you want your body's final resting place to be. What is uncommon is that the place Joseph has specified is a land the tribes of his father Israel do not posses; there is very little solid evidence available other than God's promise that they ever will. Talk about "things hoped for" "things unseen". What then is the substance behind Joseph's faith?

I think it best stated in kjv@Genesis:50:24

kjv@Genesis:50:24 "And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob".

The framing word of God has been reacted to and believed on by all these men: Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, now Joseph. Abraham repeated it to Isaac who told Jacob who told Joseph, promising not only about sons and daughters totaling stars in the sky and the promised land, but God providing their ultimate atonement at great personal cost to HIMSELF. On top of that they have each had their own exchange of words with God, new experiences and directions to be layered for our sakes upon the already existing framing word. They have given themselves and their families over to this multi-generational word much like living sacrifices. Although they have not yet seen the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises, they have each witnessed the fulfillment of several smaller promises and or a movement toward their progression. This then is their substance. Their substance, you see, is truly substantial.

Joseph is not just telling them where to bury his bones, he is telling them when: "...God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham..."; which from Abraham to Moses is waiting period of about 400 years.

Ask yourself why it would even matter to Joseph where and when, after all he will be dead and gone. The answer is that it doesn't really matter to Joseph individually as much as it does for the Children of Israel through the many long difficult years ahead. In essence what Joseph is doing here is becoming an additional layer of substance to the coming generations' faith. Joseph is fully confident of this future visitation and promised land being completely fulfilled. Now he working to build everyone else's confidence in it by offering the bones of his own dead body as a symbol of trust to help get them there.

Think of the times soon coming, when the people will be slaves in the brick yard stomping bricks at the crack of a whip. What hope is there? Why should they continue on? Well, somewhere, the location of which is unbeknownst to the guards, there is a box of bones belonging to father Joseph. When they are released by Pharaoh, and they leave out the palace gates with much of the wealth of Egypt by God's hand, what is the proudest possession they are carrying out? Well, there is that carriage harnessed tall and proud, transporting the very same box of bones.

This is what it means to the on going framing word of God that Joseph surrenders himself to the will of God to lend a hand (or shall we call it his bones) to being a huge part of this. Had Joseph not done this, who knows how the tribes of Jacob would have managed their way through this. No doubt God would have made another way, but this is the way God chose and this is the way HE saw them through. God should be mightily praised for that!

God speaks, man reacts.

I would like to go back to an important point that we have made a few times before: the reaction of man to God's framing word. God speaks, God's word constantly frames the age in which it was uttered and thereby the ages next to come. Man hears of that word, he rarely hears it or only hears what he wants of it, to what little he does hear man reacts, man reacts mostly negatively to that word, only rarely and with God's help does any man or a woman act positively. No one truly seeks God among us, no not one.

That is why I believe that God's framing word is not only verbal, put into a verbal language only our ears and deceptive hearts can translate. God's framing word, the words HE uses to frame all the ages towards repair, also includes larger scale communications captured for us in a language that also our eyes and our minds and our imaginations and our sense of personal experience can receive as a whole. Having received as a whole then each of us can consume it in more finite and translatable pieces.

In this case God drives Joseph through a long life long process of establishing him as one trusted and used by God to everyone's benefit. Being establish as a central key player, then God uses him to give us hope and motivate towards a much bigger than life purpose and promise. Man might react to the verbal word in a predictable bad way. But, there can be no denying that is not it, not all that can or will be said in a multitude of other more convincing ways.

Look how God grooms and establishes Joseph :

When God speaks to Joseph in a dream, God speaks to Joseph alone. Joseph tells his family, the ten brothers surrounding him old enough to absorb it respond with disbelief and outrage. To them it appears that Joseph is parading his godly virtue and father's favoritism above them once again. God's word is true yes, but often times it makes no immediate sense, add to that it makes its' lone receiving ear to awkwardly stand out. Often times it doesn't even make sense at first to the receiving ear it is given to.

It is almost as if God, knowing the rebellious heart of mankind, depends upon the negative reaction of the majority to both test the receiving ear to prove it and then in further rebellion help spread it. Odd to think of it this way, but given the state of man's heart it may be the only pathway forward God has left. How we wish it were not so, that God would utter HIS word and we all know what it is whole to believe it, that we would take God at HIS word and not have to be tested by others in order to prove it. If we are to follow the Biblical accounts however, we quickly see that such a rosie appraisal of man's heart is not the case, when even the receiving ear is going to be mystified and challenged by it.

This word of advice and perspective is going to help this author's "being tested converts". They have received the further utterance of God built up upon the well established prophets and Torah and center of which is the promised Messianic seed. Like Joseph they are now having to endure a time of being tested, that test being conducted by the brethren they not long ago respected and were familial with most. Those brethren don't yet grasp what has been uttered by God through Christ, but neither fully do these converts.

To the old family brethren these converts appear as "look at me in my bright flashy coat, having dreams of my greatness" fools. Those brethren are seeing the odds of that being ten to one or greater in their favor that they are right and the converts presumably spoken to wrong. How they wish that these converts would just settle down, take their flashy coat and supposed God uttered visions back, else they go away/fall in a hole somewhere and never come back. Perhaps though that is the reaction of man that God has to rely upon to get HIS word down and across and spreading like wild fire on out.

This time it is not our visions and flashy coats the converts and us are bragging about, it is our Lord Jesus'. It is more like we are of the 10 to 1 along with you who that self righteously placed the one Seed that mattered most to God into His grave. We are the ones who've gone famished into Egypt to beg at His feet for bags of grain to take back home, only now we are the first to finally realize that He is that one God has chosen to save us, this one who in times past did anger us so utterly. How hard it is to forgive ourselves and ask a saving grace from, of Him that we so long ago did nothing but mortal harm.

You know what? As hard as it is for us to repent and ask this of Him (Christ), it's just as hard to hear from Him "brother, that's okay, what you meant for evil against me, God meant for a much greater good". Really that is where we are at with this, not a single one of us being any better than the rest, it is a matter of once having seen God alive in the flesh accepting it and getting ourselves and our faith back on the right side of the isle. This just as the brethren of Joseph had to do.

"...And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel..." kjv@Genesis:50:25

If Joseph has lived to a dying age then so too would have his elder brothers. None of the others brothers command the respect nationally that Joseph does to receive all the tribes of Israel's attention. He is a great man not only among his brethren, but in Egypt also and all the region. Joseph did not make his success however; God did. By his own doings he was cast out by his brothers, worked his way up to foreman only to be falsely accused, all but forgotten there in prison. No, it was on the bases of several key dream interpretations given to him by God that he was expedited to a position of authority and stature.

The oath is almost as if to say: dear children, Egypt will not much longer be your land. "God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land". And to their present hosts it says "this is not the land that has been promised". And to those currently in the land of Canaan "don't get too comfortable in that land because God Jehovah has other plans and purposes". That is what is being stated by them when they all take up repeating this declaration back to Joseph seven times.

The children of Israel now have the substance of what had been told Abraham Isaac and Jacob, they now have the substance of what is being added to them by Joseph's instructions and oath. God's word more and more is framing the ages.

Comment Board: ThroughFaithAndByFaith10

Tags: Joseph, Israel, Egypt, Dreams, Burial, Oath, ,

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