Seize the Moment – Day 443
Egypt is not your Home!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, June 3.
As we approach the end of Genesis, God’s chosen people have finally found refuge from the famine in Egypt. The story now moves to Israel’s final sojourning towards death.
Observe a significant moment in Genesis 47:29-31:
When the time for Israel to die drew near, he called his son Joseph and said to him, “Please, if I have found favor in your sight, place now your hand under my thigh and deal with me in kindness and faithfulness. Please do not bury me in Egypt, but when I lie down with my fathers, you shall carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place.” And he said, “I will do as you have said.” He said, “Swear to me.” So he swore to him. Then Israel bowed in worship at the head of the bed.
Israel made a request of Joseph, that he not be buried in Egypt, but that he be returned to his own people in the land that God had promised them.
This is a strategic request because Israel was reminding his sons that Egypt is not Israel’s home! Joseph fulfills his promise in Genesis 50:13: “For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field for a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.”
Joseph gets the import of this and with his final words before death makes the same request of his brothers in Genesis 50:25. It would be nearly four hundred years before the people of Israel would keep this promise during the exodus out of Egypt, when God rescued them from slavery.
Seize the moment and remember that Egypt is not your true Home—you are set free in Christ as Paul said in Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free.”