with me and your Bibles to the end of Genesis 49. I want to backtrack just slightly this morning in Genesis 49 starting in verse 29, but we will enter into chapter 50. I had planned to conclude Genesis today. That was my original intention, but after giving time to reading, translating, and spending time with this text, I couldn't let it go. And in fact, I was thinking in my mind, three more sermons, but I thought, you know, I could probably do a fourth. Just now I thought of that. So what I love about Genesis 50 is that, in one sense, it ends with a cliffhanger. The very last words of Genesis 50, verse 26, is the words, in Egypt, or in the land of Egypt, rather. And so it's almost as if to say, what's going to happen? They're in Egypt. They're not in the Promised Land. What's going to come about? Yet on the other hand, there's full closure of the entire story of Jacob and Joseph, the twelve patriarchs. They are taken care of. God has been faithful to His promises to them. But it concludes, chapter 50 of Genesis, it concludes almost completely opposite from the way that Genesis began. And I think we're to see something of that when we come to chapter 50 that the Bible, Genesis, opens with creation, with the making, the teeming of life. with His creation in Adam and Eve in this unestablished, unfulfilled righteousness, but sinless. It was good. It was very good. And then by chapter 3, you have sin. You have the plagues of sin and the curse. And how does Genesis end? Instead of creation of life, it's ending with death. The death of Jacob. The death of Joseph. And all around, the results. Death is not a part of life, brethren. It is the enemy. And so we're seeing still in Genesis 50 the results that happened way back from Genesis 3. This was not what God intended at creation. And so there is this very distinct opposites, if you will, between Genesis 1 and Genesis 50. Nevertheless, there is hope. There is hope in Genesis 50 that though sin and sin's friend death seem to be reigning, there is hope that we have in Genesis 50 the burial of bodies in the promised land. It's a sign that these patriarchs are believing that God's promises would be fulfilled. That they were committed to God and to His promises in faith no matter what, whether they were alive or whether in death, they were committed to God's promises, to God's covenant. So this morning, I want to focus our time as we merely take up and focus our thoughts on the death of Jacob and his burial. From our vantage point, it might seem inconsequential. However, there are facets of this story that I think are very profound in their significance. They're profound in terms of the doctrine that they teach, and of course, as we come to the word of God being preached, they're important for application. And there's a function of this passage that I think is so amazing, this is why I couldn't get away from Genesis 50 with just one sermon, that offers or functions as if it is foreshadowing the Exodus. It's almost as if Genesis 50 was written and what God had done in the lives of Jacob and Joseph and the patriarchs to broadcast and foreshadow that yes, you're in sin, yes, you're in Egypt, But there will be redemption. There will be exodus. So there's a function to this passage that foreshadows and prophetically foreshadows the exodus. And it's going to teach us that while we might be depressed, around mourning and death, We have the hope that God will indeed fulfill His promises, His righteous promises, that He will redeem His people, He will bring them spiritually in salvation, but not just spiritually, but physically, He will bring them out of death and into resurrection. That is that driving theme of our text. Let's come to Genesis 49, begin reading in verse 29. Then he charged them and said to them, I am to be gathered to my people. This is Jacob speaking. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite as a possession for a burial place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife. And there I buried Leah. the field and the cave that is there, which were purchased from the sons of Heth. And when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he threw his feet up into the bed and breathed his last. And this is a very important phrase, and was gathered to his people. Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for him, for such are the days required for those who are embalmed. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days. Now when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak to the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, Behold, I am dying in my grave, which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan. There you shall bury me. Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back. And Pharaoh said, go up and bury your father, as he made you swear. So Joseph went up to bury his father, and with him went all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as all the house of Joseph, his brother. His brothers and his father's house, only their little ones, 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 gathering. And they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan. And they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation or mourning. He observed seven days of mourning for his father. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, this is a deep mourning of the Egyptians. Therefore, its name was called Abel Mithraim, which means brook of Egypt, or a play on words, mourning of Egypt, which is beyond the Jordan. So his sons did for him, just as he had commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham bought with a field from Ephraim the Hittite's property for a burial place. And after he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers and all who went up with him to bury his father. Let us go to the Lord now in prayer. Our God, we come to You asking that You give us help, insight, accuracy of understanding, correct interpretation and presentation of the Word. Lord, we need You as I preach. I need Your help as Your people listen. They need You. Lord, we especially pray that You would, by Your Spirit, to bring the Word to us in a very effectual way. That we not just listen with our ears and tune out, but that we would be edified, we would be grown, we would be encouraged, we would be strengthened. Help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. From this passage of Scripture, I believe we are taught a very major truth We might call it the big idea of this passage. The big idea that I'm going to reiterate again and again this morning is this, that the redemption of the body is the believer's hope in death. The redemption of the body is the believer's hope in death, and I'm choosing these words specifically. I could have said resurrection, but I didn't. I said the redemption of the body is the believer's hope in death. Now why am I using that language? Well, it comes right out of the Bible. Romans 8, 23-25, I'll read it for you. It says this, Paul says, we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, speaking of our spiritual resurrection, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, Paul says. But hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. So brethren, I believe that this text is teaching us, reinforcing to us, that the redemption of the body is the believer's hope in death. Now in order to unpack that and to bring that to you this morning, in our text I want to observe three facets of Jacob's death. Three facets. In chapter 49, verses 29 to 33, I want us to observe the faith of a dying man. And then in chapter 50, verses 1 and 3, we notice the mourning for a dead man. And then in chapter 50, verses 4 through 14, we see a prophetic funeral procession of a dead man. So the faith of a dying man, the mourning for a dead man, and then a prophetic funeral procession of a dead man. First, we begin with the faith of a dying man in chapter 49, verses 29 through 33. There we see the telling of Jacob and his death. And what he says to Joseph and to his sons at the point of death is remarkable. The faith of the dying Jacob displays at least three concepts that I want you to grab hold of this morning. That we see in Jacob at his dying breath, The faith of dying Jacob, we see the hope of the afterlife, we see trust in God's promises, and we see in his words the expectation of resurrection. First of all, we see the hope of the afterlife in verse 29. He says, I am to be gathered to my people. This is an expression that indicates the idea of life after death. It was said again in verse 33, that after he breathed his last, it was at that point that he was gathered to his people. Now, at first glance, we might say, that's just a reference to burial. Except it's not. Because it was only later that we find the long process of bringing Jacob to the burial. He's saying, I'm about to be gathered to my people at the point of death. And then when he dies, he's gathered with his people. The idea is the hope of an afterlife. This expression was used earlier of Jacob's father, Isaac, in Genesis 35, 29. Isaac breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. The expression was used of Ishmael. The expression was first used of Abraham. If you go with me to chapter 25, very quickly, Genesis 25, verses 8 and 9, this is the first time this expression is used. In Genesis 25, verse 8, Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. How do you know this is not a reference to Baal? Well, the next verse. After he's been gathered to his people, his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in that cave, that oh-so-important cave of Machpelah. And so to be gathered to his people is to refer to some kind of afterlife. This is proven by the events. First there's death, then there is this gathering to the people, and then there is burial. So to be gathered is more than being buried. It's more than just going into the ground and joining in the family tomb. All these ideas are separated out that to be gathered to your people is to consciously go into the presence of saints who have gone before you. The point here is that Jacob's soul, he is confident in his dying breath. His faith is in a hope of an afterlife that his soul continues on after his physical death. One commentator said it this way, very helpful, that he continued to exist as a person with the rest of his ancestors, for there is an existence beyond death. Now I'm at a church, and as the expression says, you're preaching to the choir. But I wonder. I wonder if we have lost this hope of the afterlife. That we live in such a secularist, anti-supernatural world. We're saturated with materialism. And I don't just mean greedy materialism. I mean that we're just governed by what only we can see, what we can touch and taste and smell. And I want to ask you, friend, have we become so governed by our senses, because that's the scientific method, have we become so governed by reason that we do not allow for the world of the unseen? Do we truly believe that we are wrestling more with spiritual forces than with physical ones? Are we actually living as if there is more to come after death, either life and glory or a torment in hell? Do we live with that worldview? That's the biblical worldview, but I'm asking you, do you have that worldview? What we see in Jacob on his deathbed, when he is staring death in the face, the faith of a dying man is hope in the afterlife. It's so deeply rooted that he can stare death in the face and say, I'm about to be gathered with my ancestors, with the other saints. I'm about to go into glory in the afterlife. You see a hope, you see a confidence in the life to come after his physical death. So the faith of a dying man ultimately is the redemption of the body. That is Jacob's hope. Next we see, in verses 29 through 32, trust in God's promises. How do we observe the faith of a dying man? First of all, a hope in the afterlife. Then secondly, trust in God's promises. He says, bury me in the place of my fathers in the promised land. Don't leave me in Egypt. God didn't promise me Egypt. I wasn't guaranteed Egypt. The covenant was for the promised land. But Jacob knew it was no light thing to say, take my bones, walk, because they had no cars, Bury me in that place, in that cave, that Abraham, our father, purchased. And maybe you might even have to hue out the cave a little bit more, but bury me there. For Jacob, this was necessary. It was necessary because it evidences his God that if God promised to give him the land of Canaan that if God had promised to give them a land a seed and a blessing this is all the way back to Genesis 12 with Abraham if God has promised to give him the land if that was a guaranteed then only to neglect that land would be tantamount to rejecting God's promises Remember, it was God who told Jacob. Jacob was hesitant to go down to Goshen, hesitant to go to Egypt. God said, it's okay, I'll go with you. But Jacob is resting in God's promises. Jacob's commitment was to the promises that God gave to Abraham, that he gave to Isaac, and then himself later to Jacob. The evidence of his faith was not only the commitment that he would be buried in the land that was promised, but it implied a faith in the associated promises. Not just that he's going to be in the land, but because of that, he's also showing commitment to the seed. That God has promised that in you, all nations will be blessed. In your seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. He's saying that is still true. That God will bless the nations through Jacob, through Israel, through the seed of Jacob. Let me say to you who has weak faith this morning, that you would throw yourself before the throne of God as we have been reading from Hebrews, that you would plead with God in Christ that He would strengthen your faith. Those of you who are closer to death, And you can't approach this as the faith of a dying man. Jacob, that you would pray to God that He would strengthen your faith. That you would be trusting in God's promises. Especially in those times when you're walking through the valley of the shadow of death. That's when you need the promise of God most assuredly rested in your heart. Then how do we see the faith of a dying man? Thirdly, we see the expectation of resurrection. because his body is prepared for burial. Now we find out later in chapter 50 that his body is preserved in the custom of Egypt, that he might be later prepared and buried in the promised land. And we might think of it this way, that one only goes through such trouble if he believed that not only the place of his burial was significant, but also that his bones would be raised, that the sinews of his bones would be rejoined and the muscles restored, that he believed that preserving the body was important because there is an expectation that one day that very body would rise from the ground in resurrection. Now I am not going to get into the tangent of is it wrong to incinerate your body? That's not my point here. My point is Jacob goes to his death expecting resurrection. His family preserves His body in a way that shows we expect Him to come back. Physically. And it's so crucial we understand that the hope of salvation, please hear me Christian, it is not a bodiless existence in heaven. That has become such the dominant theme of the last 200 years. Some kind of translucent existence, like we're floating around like ghosts. No, what Paul said in Romans 8, and I think what was baked in at the very beginning back in Genesis, is that the redemption of the body is the believer's hope. Why is the resurrection of the body such good news? Why do we look forward to the day that this mortal is put off and we put on the physicality of immortality? Why ought we to desire a resurrected body? Well, let me put it to you this way. Those of you with poor or failing vision. I think of our sister down in North Carolina, Sandy Lynetta. She so desperately wants to be able to play the piano, but because her vision is failing, she's unable to use that gift to praise God. Those of you with poor or failing vision, how you ought to long for that day. with restored eyes and perfect vision, that you will visually behold the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those of you with diminishing hearing. how you ought to long for the day with restored ears and perfect hearing. You will hear from the lips of your Savior, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master. Oh, to hear with ears the voice of Jesus. how we ought to long for the day of the restored body. A resurrected body we will embrace. We will walk with. We will dance around. We will run toward. We will praise and worship the Lord of glory in a body. That is good news. This is the hope of the believer. The redemption of the body. This was Jacob's dying faith. I'm about to be gathered. Take my bones, because there is a day I will be resurrected. We come to the next part of our text in chapter 50, verses 1-3. That until you come to the resurrection, there is for those who are left behind, those of us remaining, there's a time for mourning. There's a time to cry for the dead. And so we see number two this morning in our text, the mourning for a dead man. And you can imagine, you can actually gain a great measure of a person, his imprint left behind in life by the sighs of the mourning and the weeping of the procession of the person who has died. Now, royal dignitaries, like we've seen this past summer with the Queen of England, how that was drawn out, and I really enjoyed that. It shows you the dignity of the office that the person was holding, whether it be the royalty in England or a past president, In ancient Egypt, it was recorded that Pharaoh would have 72 days of mourning. Jacob's official mourning in Egypt was just shy of that by two days. And the scene in our text depicts Joseph and Jacob as they are main characters in this part of Genesis in verses 1-3 of chapter 50. It also fulfills what was said back in chapter 46 in verse 4, that Joseph's hand shall close your eyes. In other words, at death, he will be the one to literally close your eyes when you breathe your last breath. And Joseph, being second in command in Egypt, he orders healers or physicians to embalm Jacob. Now that's not incidental either. These are not the ones who normally do that. That was a separate enterprise in Egypt. If you know anything about Egypt and mummification and embalming, they had it down to a science. It was its own trade. You had literally people who part of the cult practice of Egypt was to embalm. That was their trade. Jacob doesn't use them. He doesn't want to have anything of the Egyptian mythology and religion and cult tied to his father's death. So he uses the physicians, the healers, to embalm his father. He separates any religious connotation from the ceremony. It's merely to ensure that he can be buried back in Canaan. We're told that the embalming process took 40 days. This is exactly what we'd expect. Historically, it's known that it takes somewhere between 30 to 70 days to embalm. And I take the 70 days of mourning to include the 40 days. And so that's left with after he has been embalmed 40 days, you have another 30 days. to continue the mourning, this probably set the precedent for other important leaders in Israel, like Moses and Aaron, who would be mourned for 30 days. And I want us to consider that this is no small thing, that Egypt would mourn for Jacob. That Egypt, remember what's Jacob's other name, that Egypt would mourn for Israel. You have to read this passage and partially chuckle, but partially be reminded of what's coming next. Knowing the next book of the Bible is Exodus, that the Egyptians will enslave Israel. It seems almost ironic that they would mourn for Israel 70 days. And it's forecasting, I believe, what Israel's Exodus will be like. Because at the end of it all, Israel is going to be released from Egypt, bringing Egypt to great tears and mourning. And why would they mourn for Jacob? because he was the father of Egypt's Savior. He was the father of Joseph. And when the world's superpower of that day, when they pause and they reflect and they mourn for an Israelite patriarch, that tells us, the readers, that something significant is happening. that causes not only the entire world, the entire ancient world to take notice, it ought to say to us, we need to sit up and pay attention. There is something important about Jacob, and we don't want to miss it. Now, we've been reading Genesis, so we know what that is. He is the promised seed of blessing, and he'll pass that seed of blessing on. But this is just further confirmation that Jacob indeed was God's chosen seed of blessing to carry out the promise, or to carry on, rather, the promise of Genesis 3.15. And so it would be true, it would be later that true Israel, Israel himself, the embodiment of Israel, the seed of Israel, the son of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, that he would be the one that would come and bring salvation in a greater and more significant worldwide event that would benefit not just Egypt, but all the families of the earth. And thirdly and finally this morning, we come to now a prophetic funeral procession of a dead man. I hope you found it interesting the way that the funeral procession goes, and if you caught the references to beyond the Jordan, those are subtle clues that they didn't take the direct route to Canaan. After the 70 days of mourning, Joseph is going to get permission from the Pharaoh to leave Egypt and to go to the Promised Land. Now this journey is going to mirror, it's going to foreshadow the Exodus journey, that they didn't take the direct path through the Promised Land. They went the southern route and come around. I'll do it from this way. They come from Egypt, go south, and then come around and cross into the Promised Land from the east, crossing through the Jordan. That's exactly what we see here. Why? It's a prophetic foreshadowing. This journey is going to mirror, it's going to prophetically foreshadow the Exodus journey of Israel, and it does so in very odd and glaring ways. First of all, Joseph would even ask permission of the Pharaoh. Did you notice that? He has the house of Pharaoh, the attendants, the servants say, go ask Pharaoh for me. He asked Pharaoh permission to leave, just as Israel is going to ask permission to leave, using a spokesman on behalf, just as Israel would use Moses and Moses would use Aaron. And the appeal to bury Jacob in Canaan, to base that on a covenant promise that my father swore to me, just as God swore to Israel. At the ninth plague, we find in Exodus, the one just before redemption happened, Pharaoh will offer Moses and Israel to, I'll let you leave, you just have to leave your children behind and your herd. This was to ensure that Israel would return. Well, the same thing happens in verse eight of chapter 50, that they leave the children, they leave the herds behind. And the procession of the Egyptian chariots and horsemen in verse 9, going with Jacob. They go willingly, reminds us that the charioteers in the book of Exodus, that will be chasing Israel to the Red Sea. In Genesis, it's probably to protect the funeral procession from the Canaanites and anyone else who might be a marauder. But later in Exodus, it will be to enslave Israel and bring them back. Again, the route they take, it's not direct, but it's through the south. And they come from the east of the Jordan. Verse 10-11, we see that they're beyond the Jordan at this place called Abel Mithraim. The brook of Egypt. Or the mourning of Egypt. And there for seven days, there's this great wailing, a great mourning from Egyptians in the land of Canaan. Outside of, on the east side of the Jordan. This is likened to the crying at the tenth plague. In Exodus 11, 6, it says, there will be such a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt. So it was not like it before, nor shall it be like it again. Only the Israelites, as we find in verses 12 and 13, will cross the Jordan to enter the promised land, just as in Exodus. And though Joseph and his family return, as we concluded in verse 14, they go back to Egypt. We know in the Exodus account, Israel will stay in the promised land, thus completing, fully bringing about the Exodus redemption. And then lastly, in chapter 50, we didn't read this section, but in verses 24 and 25 of chapter 50, Joseph's words to his brothers, he uses the word twice, that God will visit. God will visit you. God will visit you. I'm dying, but God will visit you. Twice, he says, visited. And that same word will be used twice in Exodus. In Exodus 3.16 and in Exodus 4.31, God says, so the people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, that He had looked on their faces, and then they bowed their heads in worship. And I told you that the very last words of this book of Genesis is in the land of Egypt. Because that's where we're going to be leaving. Now, why use a funeral procession of Jacob as a prophetic act that would foreshadow Israel's exodus? Why do it that way? Well, I'm going to offer you three answers to that question. First of all, it's to reassure the promise of exodus that was given multiple times back in Genesis 15. God told Abraham, your people are going to go down to a land, but I'm going to bring them out 400 years later. Jacob Israel was in Canaan then surely all of Israel would be in Canaan one day if we're gonna bury his bones Yet we're gonna return a whole fear not fellow Israelite fellow Brother or sister of God we will be back in Canaan to it's to reassure the promise of Exodus The the funeral procession was a means of promising what God had already sworn to do making any new promises He's reminding them of what he'd already promised He promises in to Abraham in Genesis 15. He promises the Isaac in Genesis 26. He promises Jacob in 28 He says in 28 13. I am the Lord God of Abraham your father the God of Isaac the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. It's already promised Brethren, God's promises are not broken. So this funeral procession reassures the promise of Exodus. Secondly, it highlights the theme of Exodus. It highlights the theme of Exodus. In other words, the theme of Exodus, if I had to summarize the book of Exodus in one word, it would be the word redemption. This is why I've been saying repeatedly that the hope of the believer at death is the redemption of the body. It connects the exodus and redemption with a theme of resurrection. Jacob's burial was focused on resurrection from leaving Egypt and going to the promised land. That the theme of exodus is connected with resurrection. That's the point of this passage. That the redemption of the body would be your hope, believer. Redemption of the body. That is the final blessing of salvation. That we would be delivered from death to restored, resurrected life. And then lastly, to demonstrate, why do a prophetic funeral procession this way? It demonstrates the means of exodus. That Jacob, who is Israel, he himself has an exodus. from Egypt, fulfilling all the promises that God gave him, but I want you to consider this, brethren, with the expectation of resurrection, yes, but it happens when he's dead. He is brought out of Egypt to the promised land doing zero. The means of his exodus was totally God. His redemption out of Egypt occurred wholly and completely apart from any of His effort or any of His ability. He's dead. It was totally and completely the grace and the power of God that delivered His body out of Egypt to the Promised Land. What better illustration offered to Israel that come the time of your exodus out of Egypt, it won't be you, it won't be your efforts that will get you out of your slavery. Your redemption is accomplished by a sovereign king. The sovereign power of God who delivers Why is that issue of deliverance and redemption so important? Because that's the theme brought into the New Testament. What are we delivered from, brethren? From sin. We're delivered from Satan. We're delivered from hell. We're delivered from the condemnation. What's the meaning of our exodus? Same exact meaning. We were dead. We were a corpse. just as Jacob was brought out of Egypt, so we who are dead in our sin are made alive by Jesus Christ. So we have the promise, the theme, and means of Exodus in this prophetic funeral procession. And I think our funerals should be taken up with such themes. That in our funerals, when we consider our death, there should be the promise laid out. That we would reinforce the promise of God. That He promises to bring release and redemption from sin. That He promises to deliver any who would believe in Him, deliver the body of sin to a glorified body. The funeral must be saturated with that promise. And the theme that coordinates with that promise. That smile surrounded with mourning. mourning for the passing of a loved one or for a friend. The theme of the funeral must ultimately be that the hope of a believer is the resurrection of the body. The redemption of the body. And what are the means to fulfill the promise? To bring about that theme? The means? It's not achieved by the person who has died. It's not achieved by our own efforts and our own merits. It's achieved only by the work of Christ. We cannot manufacture redemption in ourselves. We cannot bring ourselves to resurrection. We couldn't even control our physical life. Do we really think that we can control how we die? Or our spiritual life? Or our physical resurrection? No, this resurrection comes to a humble, penitent sinner who owns his or her sins, who confesses those sins to God, grabbing hold of the promise of redemption, the theme of resurrection, believing and owning Christ. Nothing of your own works to this redemption you bring. Only to Christ. and the cross, the eucalyptus. How appropriate, then, it is that we conclude with these three concepts. The promise, the means, and the theme of redemption. The promise is simply the promise of restored, of renewed, resurrected, redeemed life. And its promise is offered by Jesus. John 6.35, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. Verse 33, for the bread of life is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Verse 48, most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. John 10.27, I give my sheep eternal life. and they shall never perish. John 11, 25 through 26, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die physically, he shall live physically in the resurrection. Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Then he asked, do you believe this? Well, do you? Because that's what a promise does. A promise can only be received in faith. It's offered. Believe. Here it is. I give it to you freely! It's yours! Do you believe? Jesus makes the promise. He offers. It's a real promise. It's a real offer. But it's contingent on you owning all of Christ. Bringing nothing of yourself. It is a well-meant, honest plea that anyone who comes to Jesus will be saved, will have life. And because it is a promise, it can only be received with an open hand, that empty hand of faith, laying hold of Christ. Yet faith, it's not conjured from within you, it can be given to you. Not only do we have the promise, but we have the means that because salvation by faith is a gift of God, it's all of grace, thus also the faith that grabs and lays hold of Christ, even that is a gift of God. And so if you're lacking faith, you're saying this morning, I don't have that kind of faith. You ask God, you pray to God that he would grant you that saving faith. And I even suspect those of you who are sitting there praying, I would love to have that faith. I suspect that even at that point that you're praying such a prayer, it is because you're already having faith in Christ. At that point, really, it's becoming a matter of you simply owning it. Stepping out and making it known by your word and deed. Young child, that could be you this morning. That you're wanting Christ. You're believing in Christ. You prayed to God, Lord, I want to believe. And maybe you are believing to pray that prayer as a sign of faith. And tell a friend, I think I believe in Jesus perhaps. Tell your parents. Tell me, I'd love to hear. Tell the world in baptism, I believe in Christ. He died to save me from my sin. I want to own Him as my Lord and Savior. That's the theme then. The theme is that in baptism, we see new life pictured. We see resurrection. What do we say? Buried with Him in the likeness of His death. Raised to walk in newness of life. That's your spiritual life being raised, but it's also looking forward to the resurrection of your physical body. The raising now is spiritual, but the promise is a resurrection. Because that is the believer's hope in death. The resurrection, which is the redemption of your body. Dear son, will you lay hold of that? When you're staring at death, whether your death or the death of a loved one, be comforted by the promise that though the enemy death has its sting, Yet its sting could not hold back Jesus. He conquered death in His dying and His rising from the grave. And therefore, if you're in Christ, He conquers death for you as well. And He promises, He guarantees, just as I've come back from the grave, I will bring you back with me. One interpreter of Genesis 50 said of this passage that if death weren't for God's saints, then death would be God. But we are assured from the death of Jacob, God has the last word. Thanks be to God that Christ is the last word on death. And that for those of you in Christ who is the incarnate Word, He promises to bring you out of the grave and breathe life into you. It is our hope for the redemption of our bodies. He is our guarantee that we will be raised on the last day and we are comforted. May God be pleased to comfort us. Our Father, how we, your children, are so needy to be reminded of these vital truths The very reason we celebrate and worship on the first day of the week is to commemorate that our Lord rose from the dead. Having completed the seven days of work, He rises again on the first day. As so throughout the Old Testament that the eighth day was set apart. Looking forward to the Lord's Day, the first day of the week that would celebrate resurrection. We worship on the Sabbath day to celebrate resurrection. Lord, how we need to be reminded that our hope is the redemption of our body. May we have faith like the dying Jacob and look forward to the day of resurrection. Thank You, Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.