Not Until
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”
Genesis 50:24-25 (NIV)
Joseph can’t warmly shake hands with death until he gets the promise of his family that when God opens up a door of opportunity and provides them exit from this land—where relations will turn sour and the people will be forced to make bricks without straw—that when they leave, they will take him home to the land of God’s promise.
Joseph says, in effect, “God’s going to deliver you one day, and when he does, when you step foot out of Egypt, I want somebody to promise me that they will go back and dig up my bones and take me home to be buried in the place of my birth. Don’t leave me here.”
Joseph teaches us that a relationship with God will not let you ever be satisfied with anything less than the complete work of God in your life. The apostle Paul would say that keeping the faith and running the race are certainly important, but he also adds that life is not complete until we finish the course (2 Timothy 4:7).
Joseph went into the pit focused on getting back home. He went into the caravan focused on getting back home. He spent time in prison focused on getting back home. He stewarded his responsibility in the palace focused on getting back home. He went around Egypt collecting grain focused on getting back home. He reconciled his relationship with his brothers, he peered at last upon his father, and he parceled out land in Goshen. Now he stands at the end of 110 years, and the one preoccupation in his life is, “When you come up out of here after I have died, dig up my bones and get me back to my ancestral homeland and bury me there.”
No matter how much you have to walk a circuitous route in order to get there… No matter how many people arrive there before you… You cannot quit. Why? Because the faithfulness of God compels you to keep taking step by step, and crawl if you have to. But you have to fulfill the vision that God has released in your life. Joseph looks at his family three generations deep. He looks back on the faithfulness of God and looking back makes him give God praise. But he has to look forward based on the faithfulness of God as well. And when he looks forward, he has to trust God.
God will remind you through His Spirit that until this, you are not living your complete life. You might live a good life. You might even live what some label a great life, but it’s not a complete life until you have completed what He has placed before you.
