“Who will get my bones?”   

When people draft wills, the lawyer asks about mutual funds, life insurance, and jewelry.

But not bones.

The message of Joseph’s bones

We know that Joseph cared a lot about his bones. He wanted his bones to be buried in the land of Canaan. But not right away. He asked his family to swear that they would move his bones to Canaan when the Lord kept his word and restored the Israelites to that promised land.

That wouldn’t happen for more than 350 years. In the meantime, the Jews experienced brutal oppression and bitter hard labor in Egypt. Yet in the testimony of his last breath, Joseph gave witness to his confidence in the unseen fulfillments of his covenant Lord. Joseph directed survivors to look beyond his death into a future held by divine, gracious hands.

God’s promised rescue finally did come. Moses did just as Joseph’s last recorded words had asked—he carried Joseph’s bones toward Canaan, bones that served as a living witness of divine faithfulness.

Our confident confession as we face death

Death seems like an enemy. God never desired that death be a part of our world. Death comes because of sin, our sin. The thought of death brings to life the accusations of conscience, the expectation of facing a Judge who knows our hidden—as well as our obvious—faults.

We may avoid thinking about death because our flesh calls to mind only deserved punishment. Yet death became something so different in Christ. He knew our sin. He made it his. He knew of hell. He made ours his. Jesus died for us. He loves us.

Jesus faced death with Joseph-like confidence in the future, or, perhaps better said, Joseph faced his death with Christlike confidence. It was anticipation of God’s conquest of sin and death that permitted Joseph to look to the future after death. It was peace that came from the promise of a Satan-crusher that focused dying Joseph on a God who never breaks his promises. It is the assurance that Jesus died for the sins of the world that gives us the desire to make a confident confession as we face our own deaths. Death is not evidence of God’s defeat. Death was the enemy over which God scored the greatest of victories. Jesus lives! He has risen. We, too, will rise.