Genesis chapter 50 and reading
from verse 1. This is to do with the death
of Jacob which has just taken place and the reactions and the
burial of that man. And Joseph fell upon his father's
face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded
his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, and the
physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled
for him, for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed. And the Egyptians mourned for
him threescore and ten days. And when the days of his mourning
were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying,
If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you,
in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying,
Lo, I die. In my grave, which I have digged
for me, in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now
therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and
I will come again.' And Pharaoh said, Go up and bury thy father,
according as he made thee swear. And Joseph went up to bury his
father. And with him went up all the
servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders
of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph and his brethren,
and his father's house, only their little ones and their flocks
and their herds they left in the land of Goshen. And there
went up with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very
great company. and they came to the threshing
floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan. And there they mourned
with a great and very sore lamentation, and he made a mourning for his
father seven days. And when the inhabitants of the
land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad,
they said, this is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians. wherefore
the name of it was called Abel Mizraim which is beyond Jordan
and his sons did unto him according as he commanded them for his
sons carried him into the land of Canaan and buried him in the
cave of the field of Machpelah which Abraham bought with the
field for a possession of a burying place of Ephron the Hittite before
Mamre. And Joseph returned unto Egypt,
he and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury
his father after he had buried his father. Amen. May the Lord
bless to us this reading from his word. These verses and these narratives
that we encounter in the lives of the Lord's people of days
gone by teach us that it is not improper for us to feel sad at
the passing of those who die. We weep for those whom we love. And when we lose a friend or
when we lose a relative or lose someone who is near to us and
dear to us, it is not wrong and it is not inappropriate for us
to mourn and feel sad. Joseph did. Joseph certainly
did. And we find that recounted here
in these verses. And David did. He was another
who mourned for those that he lost. And of course the Lord
Jesus Christ also mourned for those whom he loved. We remember
it was said that Jesus wept also. And we grieve with sadness at
the death of a friend or a loved one for the loss and for the
loneliness that it causes and for the pain that their absence
brings. The Bible tells us that there
are two kinds of sadness in mourning. There is a hopeful sadness, and
there is a hopeless sadness. There is sadness for those who
die outside of Christ, who have no hope of eternal life because
they have rejected the way of life and the way of truth. And there is a sadness that we
feel that is coupled with a gladness for the entry of our friend or
our family into everlasting peace and joy in heaven with the Lord. Jacob was dead. They would not
see him anymore. They would not have his company.
They would not have his wisdom. His spirit left his body. and because he trusted in the
Lord Jesus Christ, it went at once to be with God in heaven. His body must now be dealt with
appropriately. It must now be removed before
it decayed and decomposed. Nowadays, some people are cremated
and that means that their bodies are burned. But in the Bible,
all the Lord's people are buried. And in addition, because Jacob
was to be transported all the way back to Canaan for his burial,
we find that his body was embalmed, which is a way of drying and
preserving the body for a long period of time. We won't go into
any of the details about how it is done, but the Egyptians
were very good at this, and you'll notice that Joseph called for
physicians to embalm his father. It was a process that took 40
days for the body to be dried out, prepared, and then dried
out. Joseph then asked Pharaoh for
permission to go and bury his father in accordance with Jacob's
wishes and the vow that Joseph had made to him. Pharaoh agreed
and he sent a large number of important people together with
soldiers along with Joseph and his brothers as a mark of respect
and honour both for Jacob and for Joseph. And it must indeed
have been a truly amazing group and a caravan of people that
made their way out of Egypt into the land of Canaan that they
might bury this man. I'm sure that there would be
great men who would be buried in Egypt and such processions
would be seen within the borders of the country but here was one
that left the country and headed into Canaan and the people of
Canaan as we read here must truly have been impressed and interested
about what was happening. But let me point out just a couple
of interesting aspects about Jacob's burial which I think
provide us with little lessons that we might find useful. And
the first one is this, that the Lord provided for Jacob in ways
that the old man could never have imagined. Because God's
providential goodness, that's what provide means, it's his
providential goodness, is always upon the children of his care. Those that the Lord loves, those
that the Lord cares for. He is constantly providing for
their well-being. And it is true that hard things
happen to the Lord's people in this life. God's provision is
not always that good things happen and only good things happen,
because hard things and bitter things and trying things do indeed
fall upon the Lord's people and those that the Lord loves. But
even in the midst of our troubles and our trials, the Lord's hand
is always with us. We'll remember, I'm sure, that
many hard and sad things had afflicted Jacob in his life. He had lost close friends, he
had lost close family, and he had had many times when he felt
doubt and uncertainty and indeed fear and anxiety. You'll recall
that he told Pharaoh, few and evil have the days of the years
of my life been. He looked back on his life's
years and said that they were in many ways evil, that they
were harsh and hard and bitter to him. But here at the end we
see that God honoured his servant in ways that no one could have
imagined. In life, Jacob was provided for
because Joseph was returned to him. And in death, he was buried
as he desired, even though he had been living so far away,
and his burial was attended with all the dignity of an Egyptian
pharaoh's funeral. Jacob had honoured the Lord in
life, and the Lord honoured Jacob in his death. And when we live
in this world, we may not be rich or famous or blessed with
much of this world's goods, but we shall be blessed in ways that
will surprise us and prove to us the divine care and providential
goodness of God. No one who trusts in the Lord
will be disappointed. The Apostle Paul reminds us in
Romans chapter 10, verse 11, whosoever believeth on him shall
not be ashamed. It is good for us to trust in
the Lord Jesus Christ. And the second point is this,
just quickly. The return of Jacob to Canaan
and to the burial ground of Isaac and Abraham reminds us that God's
covenant promise is still in effect. And this land and God's
word would continue to be important to his people forever. It would
be hundreds of years before the children of Israel returned to
Canaan. Many generations would pass in the land of Egypt. But this was still the promised
land and that return would take place. It reminds us that God's
timescales are not the same as our timescales. We get impatient,
we want things to happen at once and everything to get sorted
out quickly. But God has an appointed time
for all his plans and all his purposes. And sometimes we just
have to be patient and to wait upon God's good timing. The book
of Proverbs tells us, trust in the Lord with all thine heart
and lean not unto thine own understanding. We all like to lean on our own
understanding because we all think that our understanding
is better than everyone else's, or that our own wisdom is good
because we're pretty smart. But God's wisdom is greater than
ours, and God's knowledge is better than ours, and God's ways
are more useful and profitable than ours. It is best that we
trust in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in his
ways. Solomon says, in all thy ways
acknowledge him. he shall direct thy paths. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.