Letting Your Faith do the Walking Part IX
Joseph’s Faith; An Undying Faith
Pm service August 10th 2008
Hebrews 11:22
Introduction
We have come to part nine in our series “letting your faith do the walking”, and we are walking through the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. Tonight we will be focusing our attention at the life of Joseph.
While Joseph was gathered with his children and grandchildren, he began speaking about the divine plan of God for him, his family and for his nation. He said to his family, in Genesis 50:24-25 “I am about to die, but God will surely take care of you, and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel saying , God will surely visit you, and you shall carry my bones from this place.” When he spoke about his bones, he became qualified to join ranks those in the Hall of Faith.
What is amazing is that twenty-five percent of Genesis is devoted to the life of Joseph, but the Book of Hebrews records nothing of his pit, prison or palace experiences. Only Hebrews 11:22 mentions Joseph commenting about the Exodus and his command concerning his bones. By faith Joseph spoke concerning his bones.
In Hebrews 11:6, we read, “It is impossible to please God without faith.” If you please God, it does not really matter who you displease, but if you displease God, it does not really matter who you please. Some of the greatest lessons regarding living a Spirit-filled life of faith are found in the life and legacy of Joseph.
Tonight we are going to be looking back at the life of Joseph, and his unshakable faith.
Read Scriptures: Hebrews 11:22
I. Joseph’s Faith was a faith that believed God despite Circumstances.
Vs. 22 “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.”
If ever a person had an excuse to lose faith it was Joseph.
As a young man, he had been sold as a slave into Egypt, and remember it was his brothers that sold him.
While a slave, he was falsely accused by his master’s wife of trying to seduce her. He had rejected her advances, choosing to follow God in living righteously rather than enjoy the passing pleasure of sin.
He suffered imprisonment because the wife falsely charged him with assault. He suffered a long imprisonment for living according to God’s standards. (That should blow a hole in the boat of the prosperity gospel preachers)
He lived righteously and ministered to people in prison even when they ignored, neglected, and forgot all about him.
The point is this: Joseph never lost faith in the promises of God. He believed God and followed Him no matter the circumstances and no matter what the personal cost was to him. He is the perfect example of a MAN of GOD. Living far away from home in a pagan nation, he was a true man of integrity, he was a Man of God even when no one else was looking, even when circumstances could have pushed against God, he believed God in a foreign land, he was a man who demonstrated an undying faith.
What are you allowing the circumstances of life to do to you and your walk with Jesus Christ? Joseph was a man who believed God despite the circumstances.
II. Joseph’s Faith was a faith that acted despite the impossible
Vs. 22 “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.”
This was Joseph’s great act of faith. After so many years in a foreign land, he still proclaimed the great promise of God: he believed beyond question that God was still on His Throne, and that He could and would fulfill His promise.
So often as we live out our Christian faith, years go by and circumstance after circumstance happens in our lives. Tragedy after tragedy occurs, problem and problem, sickness after sickness, and over time it tends to take a toll on us, and we begin to question what it is that we truly believe in.
I love to see a true older believer who has been through the fire, been through the circumstances, been through the tragedies of life, been through the sickness and pain, and they like Joseph still proclaim the promises of God.
Joseph believed that God had chosen his family to be the promised seed.
Joseph believed that God was going to give the promise land to his family.
Joseph was dying in a foreign land with his family settled and rooted in the land of Goshen, Egypt. Yet he believed the impossible: that God would someday move his family back to the land of Canaan and eventually give them that land.
He so believed the promise of God, that he commanded that his bones be taken when they return to that land. Joseph’s faith was an undying faith. His body was dying but not his faith in God and in God’s promises. He knew that he would rest in the promised land of God.
III. Joseph’s Reward for his faith, God kept his word.
Exodus 13:19 “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He had said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”
This passage in Exodus shows us that God honored Joseph’s life by granting his request, his bones were carried from Egypt when the Israelites left.
Joseph’s reward for is faith, God kept His word, the Exodus took place God came to there aid, and his bones were carried out.
They carried Joseph’s bones out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and throughout the wilderness wanderings. The Israelites carried his bones for more than forty years. There was more faith in the bones of Joseph than in the feet of the Israelites. Those bones did not rattle but laughed all the way into Canaan. The Israelites carried the coffin through the Jordan River, all the way to Shechem.
Joshua 24:32 “And Joseph’s bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph’s descendants.”
Even Joseph entered the promised land when Moses was not permitted to do so. Moses would look at the Promised Land but Joseph would possess it even in his death. Joseph went to places Moses never did during his life or death.
We should always remember that when Joshua and Caleb entered into Canaan, they also brought Joseph with them. We need to remember the unbreakable promises of God; rely on the unshakable power of God and rest in the unmistakable peace of God.
What a great reward for Joseph’s faith, God kept his Word. Real faith is not that we name it and claim it; but God names it and we claim it. Faith is believing what God said would be so, even though it is not so, until it becomes so.
Conclusion
Are you believing God, are you believing Him despite desperate circumstances, are you believing Him even in your human impossibility, are you taking Him at His Word.
(Excerpts from sermon by James O. Davis in Introduction and Thirt Point, also used "The Preacher’s Outline and Sermon Bible")
