BULLETIN ARTICLE
22 December 2019

PHYSICAL DEATH & ETERNAL LIFE

Genesis is a book of beginnings. It starts with God and his creation. There is new life and a garden in a world that God deemed good. Then, sin came into the picture and with it the corruption of God’s perfect creation. Death is the inevitable result of the consequence of sin. Genesis ends with a coffin in Egypt. This final chapter records the death of both Jacob and Joseph. What can we learn about life from these deaths?

Jacob was in the presence of his sons when he blessed them and prophesied over them. “When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.” Jacob faced his imminent end in this world without fear and with full confidence that God will keep his promises to make them a great nation and to bless all peoples through their offspring. Though Jacob was far from being a perfect man, he was confident of his standing before God, the righteous Judge. Like his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac before him, Jacob “believed the LORD and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Closing his eyes in this world with his family around him, he would on leaving this world and in the next moment be in the presence of those who preceded him – Abel, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac and others alive in the eternal presence of God.

Fifty-four years later, Joseph would prepare his own family for his death. Joseph had the same confidence in God to keep his promises to his people. He told them that God will surely visit them and rescue them. God will bring them out of Egypt to Canaan, the land he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Joseph made his people promise that on his death to carry his bones out with them when they finally leave Egypt and proceed to Canaan, the Promised Land. Like his father Jacob before him, Joseph had unshakable confidence that God will keep his promises – he always does. Joseph’s coffin would be a constant reminder to the people of Israel that God is always faithful. This would encourage the people who would come generations later when Moses, a prince of Egypt, would lead them out of slavery in Egypt and into Canaan, the Promised Land.

Both Jacob and Joseph had no fear of physical death. They were sinners before God but justified before God by faith because they believed God’s promises. They were righteous in God’s sight. The only way we can be righteous in God’s sight is to believe in the Son of God, in Jesus Christ. The Bible clearly teaches us that: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Christians pass from physical death in this temporal world to be with Jesus forever in heaven. Have you taken hold of this free gift from God of eternal life in Jesus Christ? If not, do it now so that you will know that: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.”