How do I overcome my feelings of hopelessness?

Introduction

This is chapter 50, and in just a moment we’re going to begin our study there. Before we do, let me say thank you to everybody who’s come out tonight. I know that Monday is not an ordinary night where you come to this place to do what we’re doing tonight. In fact, you may have other activities that you ordinarily do on nights like tonight. And so I know you’ve had to make some arrangements and set some other things aside so that you could be here for this occasion. And I want you to know how much I appreciate that. It says something about your dedicated dedication to the Lord and to his work and to his word. And that’s an encouragement to me tonight. And for those who are guests of the church here at South Bumby tonight, we’re especially glad that you’re here, and we’re so hopeful that as we talk from the Word of God tonight, that you’ll hear something that will encourage you in your efforts to serve the Lord.

We’re glad that you come. We want you to know you’re among friends. You feel comfortable being right here with us this evening as we study together. Well, we’re going to begin in Genesis chapter 50. What I’d like to do is ask you to read with me the last few verses of this chapter as we bring to a close the life of one of the great heroes of the book of Genesis. We bring to a close the life of Joseph. Read with me, beginning at verse number 22. It says, Now Joseph stayed in Egypt, he and his father’s household, and Joseph lived 110 years. Joseph saw the third generation of Ephraim’s sons. Also the sons of Makir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees. Joseph said to his brothers, I’m 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. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here. So Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. Now, I wanted you to notice this story with me, this closing moment of Joseph’s life, because there are some things that happen right here at the end that are particularly interesting and I think worthy of our consideration. Let me mention three of them to get us started tonight. First of all, I am struck by the fact that Joseph knew about this promise that he alludes to here in these closing verses of Genesis.

You see, long before this moment, the end of Joseph’s life, God had made some important promises to his great grandfather Abraham. In fact, let’s talk about those. Go back in the book of Genesis for a moment, this time to chapter 12, and let’s just review for the sake of our memories these promises made to Abraham. Genesis 12, beginning at verse 1, the text says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father’s house to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. Verse 3. And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse the one who curses you, and in you all families of the earth will be blessed.

Now, folks, these are momentous promises. In fact, they go to the very core of the Bible story. Look at that promise at the end of verse 3 that in you all families of the earth will be blessed. It is the seed promise, the promise that the coming Savior would flow through the seed of Abraham. We follow that all the way through the Old and New Testaments till the coming of Jesus. But there’s something else. Look at verse 7. It says, The Lord appeared to Abram and said to your descendants, I will give this land. Our kids also learned when they’re little in Bible class that there was a land promise made to Abraham that his descendants would be given the land of Canaan. And it is to that promise that Joseph alludes years later, here at the end of his life.

A lot of time has passed from the time of Abraham and these promises to the end of Genesis when Joseph is about to die. But before he does, I want you to notice that he speaks to his family about these promises. Again, back in chapter 50 and verse 24, he says, 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. There it is, the land promise. Because of that promise, Joseph knew something. He knew that whatever their current circumstances were in Egypt, they weren’t going to stay there. That God had something else in mind for them. In fact, one day they would be brought out of Egypt and taken to the land of Canaan, and there they were going to dwell.

And so in verse 25, he’s making arrangements for his remains. He says to the people, God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here. Now, may I say again, I am impressed that he knew this promise, and maybe some of you are scratching your head and are saying, What’s so impressive about that? Well, would you remember that for a good period of Joseph’s formative years, his early life, that he lived away from his family all alone, way down in Egypt. There was no one there during his formative years to rehearse the spiritual heritage of his family. Nobody to go back and remind him of these promises that had been made to his forefather Abraham. Remember also that Joseph was not just another foreigner living in Egypt.

He was a powerful man, a man of some prestige and position, second only to the ruler of Egypt, Pharaoh. A position that brought important responsibilities and duties. Listen, it wasn’t as though Joseph was over dabbling as a carpenter somewhere. He was running the nation, folks. He was busy, certainly, with the affairs of state. How easy it would have been for a man in such a position to allow the crush of pressing things to dull his memory of these promises made a long, long time ago to his great grandfather. And so when we look back and we find now that Joseph, all this time later, knows about this promise. I think that’s impressive. Whatever else happened in Egypt, whatever important things he might have been doing, he still remembered this.

And yet, when we say that he knew the promise, that just seems insufficient, doesn’t it? That’s not saying enough. I want you to notice secondly that not only does he know about the promise, but Joseph believes this promise. I want you to look back at Genesis 50 again. And I want you to look at the language of verses 24 and 25. He says, I am about to die, but listen to him now. But God will surely take care of you. And again in verse 25, then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely take care of you. He knew with certainty God was going to bring them up out of Egypt and into Canaan. There isn’t the slightest hint of doubt in his voice.

Do you hear it? He was absolutely confident that although the promises had been made a long, long time ago, God would do for the nation of Israel exactly what he had said he would do. One day Israel would leave Egypt and they would go to the land of Canaan because God had said it. And listen. Joseph had every reason to have confidence that God would deliver on his promise. He and God had some history together when you think about the time he had spent down in Egypt. He’d been through some rough stuff, beginning with being sold by his own brothers into slavery, who then sold him as a slave into Potiphar’s house. And yet God had been with him there. Do you remember that? Genesis 39 helped him advance to become Potiphar’s number one slave.

And then you go on through the story, and false accusations are brought against him, and he’s thrown into an Egyptian dungeon. That wasn’t so good, but listen, God was with him there too. And he saw him through that crisis. And eventually God worked it out so the entire family, his entire family would wind up back in Egypt. He would be a great ruler in Egypt. He would save the lineage of the Messiah from the terrible famine that afflicted the land. You know what Joseph had learned during all these years? He had learned that whatever life through his way, he could always count on God. God always came through for him. He was always there for him. And so as he looks to Israel’s future now and thinks about those promises made to Abraham, he is absolutely convinced that God will do just exactly as he has promised.

In fact, just saying that isn’t enough. Will you notice with me thirdly, as we reflect on this last scene of Joseph’s life, that Joseph was willing to act on this promise God had made. You know, ladies and gentlemen, it is one thing to say that we believe something is true. It is quite another thing to start living your life differently because you believe it’s true. To allow that to impact our behavior. May I suggest that’s what we see happening with Joseph here? Joseph is taking actions. He’s making some plans and preparations because of his absolute belief that God would do what he said he was going to do. Knowing that God would deliver on the promise. Listen to what he says to his family. He says, Don’t you guys leave me down here in Egypt.

Don’t you leave my remains here. When the time comes that you’re going to go. You take my bones with you. You take my remains. You carry me along. Don’t leave me in Egypt. I don’t think that that is as frivolous as it may sound. Maybe we might be tempted to take that, to think that this guy’s kind of hung up about where he’s buried. I don’t think that’s the point. You know, his actions on this occasion. For the nation would become a living reminder, not just of the promise, but of one man’s belief in the promise. You know how I know that? Because they never forgot. Israel would eventually leave Egypt. God would deliver on his promise. And when that time comes, if you look to chapter 13 of Exodus, go one book over.

And verse 19. When that time come, guess what they did? Verse 19 says, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones from here with you. When the time for the Exodus came, and they were carrying all their possessions out of Egypt, guess what was carried along with them? The bones of Joseph. And if you’ll go a little further to Joshua chapter 24, right at the end of that great Old Testament book. Joshua 24 and verse 32, after they go into the land and they conquer their enemies and they begin to settle. This interesting little historical footnote is tacked onto the end of the book.

It says, Now they buried the bones of Joseph, which the sons of Israel brought up from Egypt at Shechem in a piece of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem for 100 pieces of silver, and they became the inheritance of Joseph’s sons.

1. Our Hope Is an Anchor of the Soul

Well, what a remarkable ending to a remarkable life of faith. And perhaps as we stand here and think about that interesting aspect of Israelite history, we may wonder to ourselves, okay, so why did I need to come out on Monday night to hear about a dead guy’s bones? What possible benefit could this have for Christians living today in Orlando, Florida? Well, I think it has a lot to say to us. It has a lot to say to us, ladies and gentlemen, because our, think about this now. Our hope for the future rests upon promises God has made to us and our confidence that he will be faithful to those promises. Isn’t that not so? Isn’t that what in fact it is all about to be a Christian?

Looking forward to what God has promised us beyond this life and believing that when this life is over, he’ll deliver on that promise. Now don’t misunderstand that. I know there are some benefits that come with serving God right here. In fact, life will never be lived better than when we live it according to the things that God has told us to do. But having said that, let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that whatever good thing may come our way in this life, because we choose to serve God, that’s just the fringe benefits. That’s just the icing on the cake. The thing that God’s people are looking forward to, the hope, the promise that we anxiously await is that time when this life will be over and we will be with God forever in heaven.

Look in John chapter 14. I love this passage. Jesus is trying to comfort his disciples shortly before his death. And I want you to listen to what he says. John 14 and verse 1. He says, Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. Here it is. That where I am, there you may be also. That is our hope, ladies and gentlemen. That one day, when all of this is over, we’re going to go home to be with God in heaven.

The Hebrew writer tells us something significant about that hope. I’m going to put it on the slide behind me. In Hebrews chapter 6, beginning in verse 17. Think about what he says here. He says, in the same way, God desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his purpose interposed with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. Now look at verse 19. He says, This hope we have, listen to his language, as an anchor of the soul, a hope which is both sure and steadfast, and one which enters within the veil. He says that this hope that we have serves as an anchor of the soul.

What does that mean? It is our hope, what we are looking forward to, our confidence in God and what he has said about our future that is the stabilizing force in our life when we are afflicted by life’s storms of adversity. Do you ever get afflicted that way? How do we keep on serving God? How do we keep on staying on that path of doing right and living right when I’ve got to go to a high school with hundreds and hundreds of other kids who are all doing the wrong thing and trying to get me to do that too? How do I keep doing the right thing in a circumstance like that? How do I keep on serving the Lord when I’ve got brothers and sisters in Christ who sometimes do things that hurt me and devastate me?

How do I maintain my optimism and my positive outlook when the doctor says I have cancer and they can’t treat it? How do I keep pressing on when some brother that I was counting on to stand shoulder to shoulder with me and to keep fighting this battle? But he quits. He betrays everything that he stood for. How do I keep fighting when that happens? And how do I stick with it when I keep making the same mistake over and over again and become convinced that God doesn’t want to hear from me even one more time? He’s just forgiven me too much. Ever felt that way? How do I go on? When my loved ones die. Life isn’t always easy, is it? And if we haven’t been afflicted by life storms, we’ve just not lived long enough.

In fact, sometimes life is just really, really hard. How do we stick with it? What did the Hebrew writer tell us? It is the unimaginably wonderful prize that is the anchor that stabilizes our soul when adversity beats against us. Think about the words of Paul. I’m going to Philippians chapter 3. In Philippians 3, down in verse 12, he says, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on. Where? Toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Do you see it? For the prize. It is our hope that serves as the anchor that keeps us steady when the storms of life afflict us.

But I will tell you tonight that if our hope is to be that anchor that keeps us stable, then ladies and gentlemen, it has to be a hope that is real. And not just some vague notion that maybe when all this is over, maybe, just maybe, there will be something a little better than what we’ve had here and now. I think that’s why people slip away. They don’t have an anchor. They have a little metal fish hook stuck in a branch, and when a storm closes in, they’re gone. Something to hang on to. We’ve got to have a hope. That’s real. And I think in this passage, Joseph gives us some insight. This chapter here at the end of his life, I think helps us understand what has to happen to make our hope real.

2. We Need to Know About Our Promise

And so let’s wrap up with some thoughts about that tonight. Building on this thought from Hebrews chapter 6, beginning at verse 17, let me suggest to you that I think, like Joseph, we need to know about our promise.

Then I’m not just saying that it’s important for us to be aware that the Bible talks about heaven. Yeah, we need to know that. But folks, heaven needs to be real to God’s people. It was a couple of years ago that I was visiting a couple who had just finished building their dream house. And we had come to stay for a couple of days, and after we got our things sort of put in and settled down, they took us on a tour. No, I wasn’t forced to do that. I wanted to see the house. I’m kind of interested in that kind of stuff. And so they started and they took us all around the house and they showed us the kitchen and the family room and the bedrooms and the bathrooms and all the different things that they had done.

And I’m really kind of interested in that kind of stuff. So as we’d go through, I had a hundred questions. What made you decide to put this in your kitchen? And why did you arrange the room this way? And this is kind of different. Where’d you get that idea at a hundred questions? And so finally, I think, somewhat exasperated with all my questions, the wife said, Come over here. She took me into the kitchen and set me at the table and she got out the book. And she had one. It was this huge notebook. I thought she’d have to have a forklift to get it off the shelf. And she gets out this book and she lays it on the table and it has all these tabs.

One was labeled kitchen, and one was labeled family room, and one was labeled master bathroom and so on. And she started opening up the notebook and flipping through the pictures. And over the years of her married life, she’d been looking at the magazines and finding things that she liked, and she said, I want that in my house. And when I do my kitchen, I want to be sure I’m one of these. And I want my rooms right out laid out just like this one. And she had clipped all these pictures from the magazine and she’d put them in her notebook and used those pictures over all those years to construct that dream house in her mind. Ladies and gentlemen, before that house was ever built, it had already been built over and over again in her mind.

She knew exactly what it’s going to look like. And as I reflected on that, it occurred to me, that’s what heaven ought to be to us, don’t you think? God has already given us the scrapbook. You’re holding it tonight. Have you ever thought about that? As we flip through the pages of our New Testament, periodically God throws in a little word picture of what heaven’s going to be about. I will resist the urge to detour down that tangent, but I can preach about heaven, folks. I like to do that. All the wonderful things the Bible tells us about that, of its beauty, of the provision that will be made for us there, of the security we will enjoy there. Who’s going to be there with us?

The fact that it will be a place of no more tears and no more sorrow, no more sickness, no more aging. Won’t that be nice? No more death.

No more death. Don’t you get sick of going to funerals? Cemeteries.

If this promise is going to be something that stabilizes us through life storms, then heaven’s gotta be real to me. And let’s just get down to a real practical level with that. I need to study what the Bible says about heaven. I need to go back and look at the picture, but trust me, this lady didn’t clip her pictures and put them away in a shelf and never looked at them again. She went back and looked again and again. And that’s what we need to do with heaven. At regular intervals, we need to read the passages that make our hope real. And once we have them placed within the filing cabinet that is our mind, we need to go back periodically and meditate on those passages, pull out the files and dawdle over them again.

I think about the words of Paul when he wrote to the Colossians in Colossians 3 and verse 12. I’m sorry, in Colossians 3 and verse 1. And I can’t help but think that this is at least part of what he had in mind. When he said, Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. And then in verse 2, he says what? You see it? Set your mind on the things above. And now he stomps all over our toes when he says, not on the things that are on the earth. You ever been guilty of being more attracted to the sales flyer from Best Buy than what your Bible says about heaven?

Okay, I’m stomping all over my toes when I say that, okay?

I need to think about that. And as I’m meditating on these word pictures that the Bible gives me of heaven, one of the things I need to appreciate is how much better that is than anything in this life. I got an email a while back. I made the mistake of opening it because it said forward on it. You should never open an email that says forward. It’s just not worth reading. That’s going to make some of you mad that I said that. But it was supposed to be pictures of Tiger Wood’s house. I think that wound up to be a myth, and it’s actually a hotel somewhere, but it was palatious. Oh, it was a beautiful place.

This gorgeous home with pools and beautiful rooms and ornate bathrooms, and I think a lot of people looked at that and said, wow, what a place. You ever done that? Folks, God wouldn’t park the lawnmowers there. It’s nothing. It’s cheap, workless tinsel. When you understand our prize and our hope and what we’re looking forward to. A disciple’s treasure cannot be found scattered among the worthless material things of this earth. In fact, what did Jesus say about that? Go back to Matthew chapter 9. Matthew chapter 6, I’m sorry, verse 19.

What did he say to us?

Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth. Where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, and if that had been written in 2009, where the downplunge of the stock market takes it all away would have been added. Store up for yourself, verse 20 treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. But where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. There’s ours. That’s what we promise. Please remember that while Joseph was a very wealthy and powerful man with lots to do, he never allowed the trinkets of Egypt to distract his mind from the promise. And ladies and gentlemen, we need to be sure that we always remember what he never forgot.

3. We’ve Got to Believe That Promise

And that is that we are strangers living in a foreign land with residency elsewhere. Philippians chapter 3 and verse 20, Paul says, For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior. We need to know about our promise. But that’s not enough. Because once we firmly have it fixed in our mind, then secondly, ladies and gentlemen, just like Joseph, we’ve got to believe that promise. And when I say that we need to believe it, bear in mind that I’m not suggesting that we just need to have the hope that it’s true. It’s not enough to want this promise of heaven to be true. Like Joseph, we have to be absolutely convinced of it. We must not allow the devil to sow seeds of doubt in our mind that leave us wondering, does heaven really exist?

Have you ever wondered about it? Will all the labor that I’ve invested in this life trying to serve God and do the right things and be the right person, will there really be a reward at the end? Will I really feel like it was worth it when this life is over? Am I going to get to the end and be disappointed? You ever wonder about that? Do those doubts ever lurk in the dark recesses of our mind that maybe we don’t even express them, but we wonder. Go back to the words of Jesus in John 14. Seems to me that in this passage, he would take direct aim at the devil’s efforts to plant those seeds of doubt. He says to his disciples, do not let your heart be troubled.

And if you’re given to marking your Bible, just mark those next three words. Believe in God. And he says, believe also in me. That’s the real issue. Do we trust God? I mean, folks, we know that God exists. He’s left witnesses of witness of himself everywhere around us. We talked about that in Bible class in the morning. Somebody’s got to choose to be ignorant of the facts, to be an atheist, to be an unbeliever. The evidence for God is every word. As well as he has powerfully testified that the book you’re holding and reading from tonight is his word. This is his book. We can know it without a doubt. So that when we pick it up and begin to read of these references to the promise and the discussion of heaven, we can know with certainty that it is a reality because God is real and this is his book, and it says so.

In fact, this inspired book is literally filled with examples of God giving his word and always following through and doing what he said. And so when God has promised paradise with him in heaven when this life is over, we can know that it’s so. We don’t have even for a moment to have a doubt about it. Do not let the devil deceive you on this critical point. Heaven is not wishful thinking. It’s not something men have dreamed of because they want there to be something better. What God has done is overwhelmingly supplied us with what we need to be absolutely confident. Jesus said, believe in God. That’s really what it’s about. And when we believe Him, we can believe the promise. But now you know where we’re going next, don’t you?

4. We Need to Start Acting Like It

Because if we know the promise and we believe the promise, and ladies and gentlemen, we need to start acting like it. And this is where it’s going to get a little unpleasant. But we need to go here. We can’t say that we believe and then go day to day living our lives like we’re doubters. You know how doubters live their life? They live their life with a foot in both places, or they try to. They want to maintain at least a facade of spirituality on the outside chance that maybe all this stuff in the Bible is true. And I certainly don’t want to be out of step with God if that’s the case. And yet, again, in the back of their mind, there are these lingering uncertainties that maybe it’s not true.

And if the stuff in the Bible really isn’t, so well, I want to live it up a little bit. I’m not going to overly indulge, but maybe just have a little bit of fun as the world proceeds of it. You realize that the person who lives that way really doesn’t believe the promise. True believers are different. They’re not embarrassed to talk to their friends about Jesus anywhere, any place. Because they really believe that eternity is at stake. And I might say something to this person that makes a difference. And whether they spend eternity in heaven or not, I can influence that process. True believers are not casual or careless about their morality because they really believe that how you behave makes an eternal difference. They like going to worship services.

And I mean, not just showing up at Sunday morning at the official time, as some perceive it, that we ought to be here. They like going all the time. Bible class, coming back on Sunday night, gospel meeting every night, someone says, David, we’re here. You’re preaching to the choir. Okay, go tell someone that’s not here. And devotions and Bible studies and singing’s whatever. They love that kind of stuff because it’s things like that and opportunities to look at the book that make the promise real again. True believers are more concerned with their children learning the Bible than what grade they got in advanced algebra out. Or how well they excel at band or sports. Because more important than anything else our kids might do in life is our concern that they share the promise with us.

And true believers aren’t too concerned about trying to store up a lot of stuff in this life, having a lot of material possessions. If God blesses them with that kind of prosperity, that’s okay. And if he doesn’t, that’s okay too, because we kind of understand that that’s just stuff that’s destined to be destroyed at the end anyway. We don’t take any of it with us. And that our true treasure is found in heaven. And I will tell you, when you start living that way, ladies and gentlemen, realize that it is faith-building. It starts this cycle that shoots our spirituality through the roof. Think about it. When we believe the promise and we start living that way every day, it helps keep us focused in that direction.

Conclusion

Our minds on heaven, which in turn makes heaven all the more real to us. Do you see the cycle? And how it just builds and builds and makes us stronger. Maybe you look at your life tonight and you say, That’s not me. Maybe if you had to reflect back on your past, you would have to confess that you tend to be the kind of person whose moorings are cut loose every time the slightest little wind of adversity blows into your life. Maybe you’re the kind of person that throughout your days on this planet, you’ve been constantly sort of drifting away from the Lord. And when things get a little better, you sort of drift back and get a little closer, but it’s back and forth, back and forth, tossed here and there all the time with whatever’s happening in life, good or bad.

It’s time to stop blaming other people and circumstances in life for that predicament. The problem is you’ve never developed a faith that you can hang on to. A faith that will anchor your soul and keep you stable when the winds of adversity blow through your life. You’re tired of living that way. Joseph’s given you the answer. God, through Him, provides it in His Word. Got to know the promise. Got to believe it. And go away from here determined that I’m going to act on it and live it every day. Well, go ahead and get your songbooks out and turn to the number. We’ll sing as the invitation song. You’ve been so attentive tonight. Thank you. Thank you for being here. There is one last thought that I would like for you to ponder with me before we conclude.

As you think about what choice you will make about your faith, will you please remember that each of us, like Joseph, will leave behind a spiritual legacy? Joseph’s legacy.