The Life of Joseph By Dr. Frank J. Cuozzo

Lesson XIV: “The Faith of Joseph”

Genesis 50:14-26, “And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father. And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees. 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. And 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, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”

For the past several weeks we have been looking at the life of Joseph. This will be the final message in this series as we look today at Joseph’s death. Last week we spoke about the subject of death as we looked at Joseph’s father Jacob’s death in Egypt. Before he died, Jacob made Joseph vow that he would take his body back to Canaan and bury it with the bodies of Abraham and Isaac in a grave that Abraham had purchased years before.

Jacob’s last words to Joseph are recorded for us back in Genesis 48:21, “And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.” Jacob was a man of great faith as he believed the promises that God made to his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham. Joseph was also a man of faith as he said basically the same words to his people concerning God’s promises to bring them back to the Promised Land. Twice he repeated, “God will surely visit you.” His faith in God never wavered. The question today is, where is your faith today? Is it in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior?

Egypt was full of faith in Joseph’s day, but not a true faith. People believed in idols, strange gods and many false gods, but faith in the one true God was alive in Joseph’s heart. The object of our faith is the Lord Jesus Christ and because he believed the Lord, Joseph could say without any doubt that the Lord would surely visit His people! Faith is not believing God can but that God will do what He says He will do!

God made a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, where the Bible says, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

Joseph, on his death bed, was saying to his brethren, “I have faith to believe that the Lord will keep His Word. So when you leave Egypt, I want you to take my bones with you.” It wasn’t until God proved Himself strong and broke the yoke of Egyptian bondage upon His people hundreds of years later that the children of Israel remembered the words of Joseph concerning his bones.

Exodus 13:17-19 says, “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt. And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.”

The Bible tells us in Exodus chapter one that after Joseph and his generation died, a new king arose over Egypt that knew not Joseph. This new Pharaoh saw the nation of Israel as a people that were growing larger in number every year and saw them as a threat. After over 400 years in Egyptian bondage, God raised up Moses to lead them out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land.

When they finally get to the Promised Land, it was Joshua who took responsibility for carrying the bones of Joseph from Egypt back to Canaan. It just so happens that Joshua was from the tribe of Ephraim, who was one of the sons of Joseph. No doubt Joshua took keen delight in taking care of this responsibility. The Bible says in Joshua 24:32, “And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.”

The story of the life and death of Joseph and the burial of his bones in Shechem is a story of faith. Here was a man in a strange land surrounded by people who did not know the Lord. He worked among people who did not know the Lord and when he was one hundred and ten years old, Joseph still believed with all his heart in the true and living God. In his dying moments he said to his loved ones, “I want you to know that God will do what He said!”

What about your faith? What do you believe about God? If you’re a Christian, your life should be a living declaration that God is real. If you are a husband and father, the statement to your wife and children should be that “God is real!” If you are a wife and mother, your life should be like a sign that says to all that “God is real!” Our lives should be a demonstration of the reality of God.

Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.” Just stop and think about that for a moment. Do you believe that God is eternal? Do you believe that He is God? You see Joseph took the promises that God made and he put his faith in God’s Word. We have so much more today than Joseph had. Not more of God, but more opportunity to learn about God.

We have the completed written revelation of the Word of God. We have the record that the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on the cross of Calvary to pay our sin debt, and rose victorious over sin, death and hell and lives forevermore on high. Joseph’s faith causes us to think about several things concerning faith,

#1) Salvation is by Faith.

-Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” The Bible teaches that anyone who will come to Christ by faith will be saved.

-Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

-Galatians 2:16 says, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

We are all children of the Devil by nature; we must become children of God by faith. Religion, good works, Baptism, Confirmation, vainly repetitive prayers, being born into a Christian home or anything else but faith in Christ alone will not save. When a person comes to trust Christ as Savior the Lord promises that He would save us. He will do what He says He will do. God will save all those who come to Him by faith.

The Old Testament Saints put their faith and trust in the coming Messiah. We in the New Testament must place our faith and trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross. The question for you today is, “Have you come to Christ by faith and been born again?” If not, why not? What else are you trusting in to go to Heaven?

Acts 4:12says, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

#2) We Must Live the Christian Life By Faith.

Faith does not stop when we are saved! This is just the beginning of the faith life. Faith must be exercised each day in the Christian life. When someone asks us about our testimony of our Christian faith, it should not only include our salvation experience but how God has been treating us like one of His children ever since that day. There will be many evidences that we are His children.

Joseph lived to be 110 years old, but we meet him in the Bible when he was just 17. He had faith in the Lord. His father Jacob told him about the Lord, and about the promises of God to his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham and Joseph chose to believe the same promises. He lived to see God work in and through his life to preserve the nation of Israel and Joseph could say to his brethren with absolute assurance that “God will do what He said He would do.”

He told them, “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.” Joseph saw the mighty Hand of God working in his life when he was sold into slavery, sold to Potiphar, thrown into an Egyptian prison, brought before Pharaoh to interpret his dreams and finally made the Prime Minister of Egypt in charge of all the food storage for everyone in the Middle East.

God has done so much in our lives as well as we live the Christian life by faith. We too like Joseph must tell others what God is doing in our lives being a living testimony of God’s goodness and grace.

We said that we are saved by faith, we must live the Christian life by faith and lastly,

#3) Someday We Will Die by Faith.

The day of a Christian’s death will be his greatest day in his or her life. It will be the day that he or she will see the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

In II Corinthians 5:8 Paul wrote that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. When we take our last breath of this earth as believers, God has promised to take us to be with Him. Our loved ones will come and take our lifeless bodies and prepare it for burial, but we will not be in that body any longer because God promised we would be with Him forever in heaven.

We need faith in our dying hour to be able to look our Lord in the face and know that He has never failed us and so we’ll have no reason to believe that He will fail us in that hour. Why? Because God has proved Himself faithful and He always keeps His word.

The problem most of us have is that we think that God is like us and if He is like us than He can’t be trusted. But the fact is that God is not like us, amen?

In Isaiah 55:8-9 God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Like Joseph, we need to realize that we are saved by faith, we must live daily by faith and we will die in faith. Because of all that God has done for us, how He is revealed to us in His Word, from answered prayer throughout our lives and from living a life of faith, when it comes time to go and meet Him, He will be faithful to keep His Word concerning eternity. There is a peace that passes all human understanding in His promises and in His faithfulness to us. May we learn from the life of Joseph and others in the Bible that our God is a God Who can be trusted.

Let’s pray.