“Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, because Joseph had made the Israelites swear a solemn oath, saying, ‘God will certainly come to your aid; then you must take my bones with you from this place.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This morning we are going to wrap up Exodus 13. Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will jump into one of the most exciting, but also most challenging, parts of the story we have yet encountered. Verse 19 here isn’t the last verse in the chapter, but it is essentially an editorial note, so I saved it for the end. This one of those notes we find in the Scriptures that seem a bit random and really don’t help to advance the story at all. In spite of that, though, I think there are two quick things worth noting here. Let’s talk about each of them briefly today and that’ll be that.

The first thing worth seeing here is the reminder that God had been planning for the event of the Exodus for a very long time. In fact, He had told them about it long before this moment. We’ve already talked about His telling Abraham He would lead his descendants out of bondage and that they would plunder the Egyptians in the last chapter. That was even further ago than what Joseph had said to them just before he died and which Moses quotes here.

In Genesis 50:24, as Joseph was on his deathbed, Moses writes this: “Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die, but God will certainly come to your aid and bring you up from this land to the land he swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ So Joseph made the sons of Israel take an oath: ‘When God comes to your aid, you are to carry my bones up from here.'”

Now, given that he was one of the youngest of the twelve, and that he lived 110 years, he probably didn’t literally say this to his brothers as most, if not all, of them had already died. He was talking to his gathered family which would have consisted of various of his brothers’ children. The point, though, is that Joseph had said this when he died, more than 300 years before this moment. And here they were.

God almost never…and in fact I’d even go so far as to say never…acts in ways that come completely out of left field. He tells us what He is planning long before He executes those plans. Then He does what He has planned. If we’re surprised, that’s on us. Of course, part of the challenge here in a contemporary setting is that we are looking back from the standpoint of multiple thousands of years’ worth of history on this stuff. The old cliche tells us that hindsight is 20/20. Well, 3,500 years’ worth of hindsight is even better than that.

We don’t have any record of prophecies from 300 years ago that should give us a clue as to what God is going to do today. No, but we have better than that. We have the Scriptures, where God lays out for us in broad, sweeping terms how the arc of history is going to progress from Jesus’ ascension to His second return. Most notably: we know that He is going to return and bring human history to its end. We know that sin is going to multiply and increase. We know that sinners will come after the righteous with increasing vigor and apparent impunity. We know, though, that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church. And in the end, we know that the righteous in Christ will be resurrected as He was and receive the gift of eternal life. When any of those things happen, we should not be surprised. God told us they would. In fact, we are wisest to live as if they are guarantees…because they are.

The second thing to see here is this: we need to keep our promises. A given word is a sacred trust. It should not be given lightly. And when it is given, it must be honored and kept. Even if that takes a long time, it must be honored and kept. Israel promised Joseph that when God led them out of Egypt and to the land He swore to give the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they would take his bones back to be buried in the tomb of his ancestors. The people remembered that promise over all these years later. That’s pretty impressive in its own right. Joseph’s story must have been one the people told and retold around their fires at night. Here then, even amid the chaos of their hasty departure, Moses stops to make sure they brought Joseph’s remains with them. I hope it was just bones because whatever was left was going to be toted through the desert heat for the next 40 years, but Moses made sure the nation kept its word. And indeed, when the people at long last arrived in the Promised Land, there’s a note at the end of Joshua’s story that they buried Joseph’s bones at Shechem in his father’s tomb.

Let me add one more bonus third thing to our list here. Joseph was concerned that his bones would be buried apart from his family. For ancient peoples, being buried apart from their family was a big deal because they wanted to be able to be together in the afterlife. By separating their bones, many believed their spirits would be separated. Although the belief structure has changed, we still often bury family members close to one another today.

In Christ, we have a better hope than they did, or that many have today. Because He was raised from the dead, and because Paul assured us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that we would be too, we don’t have to fear or give any thought at all to where our bones are laid. We don’t have to give instructions for them to be moved around 300 years after we die. In Christ and on the resurrection, we will receive brand new bodies that will be fit for eternity no matter where our final terrestrial resting place happens to be. Wherever that is, it won’t be the last place we rest. Our final rest will come in God’s kingdom, we’ll be fully alive for it, and it will last forever. That’s a very sweet hope indeed.