“Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died,... and he was put in a coffin in Egypt”— Genesis 50:25, 26.
“A coffin in Egypt.” These are the words with which the Book of Genesis closes. It leaves Israel as a people developing into a nation, with Joseph their brother and protector now dead. Before his passing, he “gave commandment concerning his bones” (Heb. 11:22). His embalmed body was to remain in an Egyptian sarcophagus until the nation went up out of Goshen to take possession of Canaan, as promised by God to Abraham. When the day of deliverance arrived, they took the bones of Joseph with them (Ex. 13:19). All through the wilderness journey they guarded these sacred remains of their deliverer, until at last they were laid to rest in the land of Promise (Josh. 24:32). There is more than a hint here, easily understood by the spiritually-minded, of our present responsibility: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus” (2 Cor. 4:10) until we enter the rest that remains eternally for the people of God (Heb. 4:9).
“O Lord, I want my life to speak on
When I am gone:
May something I have done my days outlive,
Some sacred act of faith its memory weave,
And unto men a lasting blessing give,
When life is done.
Oh, may some word I’ve said, some deed of love,
A comfort prove:
Let something stand a lasting monument—
Approved of God, an holy complement,
That I upon His work was full intent.
Sent from above.”
―R. E. Neighbor.