The Last Word

1:05There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites. When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed, and he breathed his last and was gathered to his people. Then Joseph fell on his knees. His father's face, and he wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father.

1:38So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for the embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days. And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, I am about to die, in my tomb that I have hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan.

2:08There shall you bury me. Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father. Then I will return, and Pharaoh answered, Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear. So Joseph went up to bury his father, with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father's household. Only their children, their flocks, and their herds were left in the land of Goshen.

2:44And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company. When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a great and grievous lamentation, and he made Made a mourning for his father seven days. When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning on the threshing floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians. Therefore, the place was called Abel Misraim. It is beyond the Jordan.

3:20Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Makpalah, to the east of Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephraim the Hittite to possess as a burying place. After he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father. This is God's word. May be seated.

3:49Have you ever known someone who just had to have the last word? See a lot of people looking around right now at the person they came with. Maybe you know that person. Maybe you are married to that person. Why do you think we care so much about having the last word? I think in some sense, we want the last word so much because it seems to carry more authority. It feels to us as though if we don't have the last word, we are implicitly agreeing that whatever the other person said was right. It was true. At some level, we all want the last word. Last word because we want to seem right to ourselves and to others. We want to be able to declare victory in some sense.

4:38Well, friends, today we're in the last section of the book of Genesis, which marks the end of the beginning of God's saving work in and among his people. And so far, we've seen God make great promises and do great work among his people, and yet at the same time, his people are still struggling with sin, and as a result of their rebellion against God, all of them still die. But the book of Genesis doesn't end in discouragement, it ends in hope, both for the original readers of Genesis and for us today.

5:16Many of us live our lives defined by the sins that we've committed. We live our lives defined by the sins others have committed against us. So many today live in paralyzing fear or uncertainty about death in the afterlife. But what we're going to learn as we close the book of Genesis today is that God's grace, not sin or death, has the last word in our lives. So let's look now at the text together in verse 28 of chapter 49.

5:51You may remember as we look at this section together that Israel had lived in Egypt with his family for 17 years. He's now 147 years old. And we saw a couple of chapters ago that he blessed Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and he didn't just bless them, he adopted them into his family. He took them as his own sons with all of the rights and the privileges that belong to a son. And we learned that adoption into God's family is the greatest blessing that we receive in Christ.

6:23And then Jacob or Israel prophesied over his twelve sons, and he blessed them with a blessing suitable to them, as we just saw. But many of them had made choices that made future blessing all but impossible. All of them had a shameful past, some of them more than others. And we saw that God redeems our shameful past for a glorious future. And so at this point in Genesis 49, halfway through this chapter, Israel is about to die. And so he charges his sons to take him to Canaan and to bury him there, where his ancestors died and were buried, rather than in Egypt.

7:01And that's because God was his true king. And Canaan, the promised land, was his true country. Pharaoh was not his true king, and Egypt was not his true country. Israel believed God's promises to give the land to him and to his descendants. And by his sons taking him and burying him there in the exact same place that Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah and his wife Leah were buried would remind all of them of God's.

7:30God's promises, that one day he was going to visit them, one day he was going to bring them back to that promised land, and one day his descendants would possess that land. That land that was now possessed by so many other tribes, so many other nations that did not worship God. And so he gives them this final charge. And then in verse 33, if you look there, our author says, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.

8:02He was gathered to his people. That's such a beautiful, comforting phrase because it implies that there is life beyond the grave. It implies that death does not have the last word for the believer in God and in God's word. You see, many years later, Jesus was confronted by all kinds of religious leaders who had questions for him. Most of the time, these questions were designed to test him. What did Jesus of Nazareth think about this subject, or what was his theological position in this area? And so one day, these Sadducees, this group of religious leaders, came up to him with a question.

8:46And you have to understand that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They believed that once you died, that was the end. And so they gave him this question that was about a woman who married a man who died. And then she married each of his six brothers in succession as each one of them died. And the question that they pose to Jesus is: in the resurrection, whose wife is she going to be? Because she married seven different men.

9:15And the question is designed as a riddle. It's designed to stump Jesus. It's designed to put him in a position where he has to say, I don't know, or I guess she'll be married to all of them. But he doesn't say that at all. He says, This, look on the screen. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

9:45Now, he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him. You see, Jesus' point in this interaction with the Sadducees is that God's grace and not sin or death has the last word in our lives. Because for the believer, like Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, or for ourselves today, death is not the end. Death does not have the final say. God is not the God of the dead, he is the God of the living. And that is our great hope. So those who trust in Jesus, the word made flesh, will live forever, even though he or she will eventually die. And friends, that means the things that we do in this life do matter. And they matter greatly. Because this life on earth is merely a prelude to our life that we will share in eternity with God and with one another.

10:42And that's why Jesus says that we should store up treasure in heaven rather than on earth. Because every single believer is going to be rewarded or not based on what we did in this life, with the time and the resources and the money and the talents that God has entrusted us with. That's why Jesus commands all of us to build on his foundation, the foundation of the gospel, not with hay or straw or anything else that's going to burn up, in other words, with useless works, but instead to build on the foundation of the gospel with precious stones, with things that will last, with good works done unto the Lord.

11:29And it also means, friends, that Christians shouldn't fear death. Death is an enemy. It is the last enemy. But remember, death is a defeated enemy. Jesus has already won victory over death through his resurrection. And so every time we're faced with the prospect of death, either of our own death or of the death of someone that we know and love, every time we're faced with death, it should challenge us to consider how are we spending the life. That God has given us? Are we using it for eternal purposes? Are we storing up treasure in heaven? Are we building on the foundation of the gospel with those precious stones by honoring and loving the Lord with our lives? Or are we wasting our brief life on this earth?

12:20Are we frittering away the opportunities and the resources and the talents that God has given to us, given to us to store up treasure in heaven with? Every time we're faced with death, we're reminded of that, and we're reminded that we shouldn't grieve as the world does. Because our grief is based in the hope of the gospel, that Jesus conquered sin and death, and that through his victory we will have victory as well. Because God's grace, and not sin or death, has the last word in our lives.

12:58And so we come to the end of Jacob's life here, and he's gathered to his people. He's going to go and spend eternity with the other believers before him, with Adam and Eve, and with Noah, with Abraham and Isaac, his father and his grandfather. He's going to be gathered to his people. But you see at the beginning of chapter 50 now that Joseph is heartbroken over this. He weeps over his father. And so we're reminded here that it's okay to grieve. It's natural and expected to grieve. It would be strange not to grieve. Over death. Death is an enemy.

13:35This world is not the way that it should be. But we don't grieve as the world grieves. We grieve with hope based on truth. The truth that this life is not all that there is. And the truth that for every believer, we'll be spending eternity with God and with one another in the new heavens and the new earth. And so Joseph grieved understandably, and we should grieve as well. Grieve over sin and its consequences, grieve over death, but we grieve with hope, not as the world grieves. And so Joseph commands the physicians to embalm his father Israel.

14:14And this process was a long process, as you see from the text. It took a long time. It involved removing the organs inside the body and then stuffing the body with rolls of linen and spices and then wrapping it tightly in cloth. All the kids now are paying attention once again. See, kids, sometimes you think the Bible is boring. You just haven't read enough of it. There's tons of this great stuff in the Bible. Now, this practice of embalming was not normative outside of Egypt. And it reflected their flawed views of the afterlife. The whole reason that they embalmed, the whole reason that they entombed in the way that they did with food and with gold and jewelry and clothing was. Because they believed that you would need all of those things in the afterlife. You have to take it with you.

15:07So, this whole process is based on a flawed view of the afterlife. We don't have to embalm. We don't have to do any of these kinds of processes. There's nothing wrong with it necessarily, but we don't have to do it because Jesus is going to make all of our bodies new. It's one of the beautiful things that we read in 1 Corinthians 15. But Joseph commands this, both to honor the Egyptians that he's lived with for so long, as well as to preserve his father's body, because they've got a long journey ahead of them. They're not just going to be burying him there in Egypt, they're going to be taking a weeks-long journey back to Canaan. And so, this process also preserved his body. And so, Joseph commands them to embalm him. And then he sends messengers to Pharaoh. And he asks Pharaoh for permission to go and bury his father. Now, you might think, why does Joseph ask permission? I mean, he's second in command, he can do anything that he wants to do. Well, he was made unclean through this whole process. His father had died. He was embracing his father. He's there among this dead man, and so he's unclean. He can't approach Pharaoh. So he sends messengers instead to ask for permission. And Pharaoh grants that permission. And so Joseph and his family and dozens of important officials from Egypt make this trip to Mach Pelah.

16:25You see that they pause to mourn once they cross the Jordan River and they lament greatly. Over Israel's death for a week. And it's such a sight that the Canaanites renamed the place. They call it Abel Mizraim, or the place of weeping of Egypt. It made a real impression on them. And they bury Israel there next to Abraham and Sarah, and next to Isaac and Rebekah, and next to his wife Leah. And no doubt, as they engage in this practice, they were reminded and they had the opportunity to tell all of the Egyptians who were with them: the whole reason we're doing this is because God made promises. He made promises to our great-grandfather, our grandfather, Abraham.

17:10He said that he would give him, who was childless and 100 years old, a child, and that he would make him into a great nation, and that one day we would possess this land. And even standing before them now, they weren't just a few people, but they were over a hundred people. Abraham's son and his grandson and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren are present here. Over a hundred people are present as fulfillment of God's promises back in this land that God would one day give to them. And so it was a reminder to them, and it was a witnessing tool to all of these Egyptians who did not believe in God, that God was one who made promises and kept those promises. And so Jacob is gone now, and the question that we are left with is: what's going to happen? To the brothers and their relationships. What effect is Israel's death going to have on the relationship between his sons? And so join me now in verse 15.

18:15When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him. So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, Your father gave this command before he died. Say to Joseph, please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you. And now please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.

18:46Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants. But Joseph said to them, Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. So do not fear. I will provide for you and your little ones. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

19:28You may remember back in chapter 45. That Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and he expressed his desire to forgive them and to provide for them. But now, after Israel has died, the brothers are concerned that Joseph only said that out of respect for Israel, their father, and that now that he was gone, Joseph was going to exact revenge on them for the sin that they committed against him. And his brothers, who have lived under his provision, under his protection, for all these years, are too scared even to approach him. And so they send a messenger in their place to say that their father had said that he needed to forgive them.

20:13I think it's very unlikely that Jacob said anything of the sort. Not because that wasn't Jacob's desire. Obviously, Israel wanted his children to live in harmony, to live forgiving one another and bearing with one another and at peace. Obviously, that's his desire. That's any father's desire for his children. But we have no record of Jacob saying this ever to Joseph, and he gave him such a charge at the end of his life that if this really was his expressed will, he would have said that.

20:46And so this is likely the brothers just manipulating once again to try to get something that they want because most of them still don't trust the Lord to take care of them. And so Joseph breaks down and he weeps. When this messenger comes to him with this message. And he weeps probably because it's yet another reminder that because of his brother's sin, he lost 13 years of his life. 13 years of his life where he was a slave or in prison. 13 years of his life where he didn't know if he would live or die.

21:27He lost decades away from his father. Some 25 years passed between the last time that he saw his father Jacob and when they were reunited in Egypt together. And so he probably weeps as he thinks about all that he endured and all that he experienced, but I think he weeps even more because the brothers completely misunderstand his motives. They think after all this time that his kindness toward them and his grace toward them has only been because his father was still alive, and now he intends to exact revenge on them.

22:07So the brothers come and they fall down in front of him again, fulfilling the dream that Joseph had as a teenager of his brothers bowing down before him. And Joseph's response at this point is one of the most remarkable moments, not just in the book of Genesis, not just in the Bible. This is one of the most remarkable moments in human history. Look at what he tells you. Tells them. He says, first, do not fear. Do not fear.

22:39He says it not once, but twice. And if you're familiar with the Bible, you know that almost every single time that God appears to his people, he comes before them, and the first thing that he or the angel of the Lord says to the people that he is addressing is, do not fear. Because to come face to face with God or God's messenger is a fearful thing. It's a fearful thing to anyone who understands who is addressing them.

23:13The God of the universe, the creator and sustainer of all things, the only holy, uncreated being. So Joseph tells his brothers, do not fear. He's not God, but as second in command in Egypt, Joseph can do anything that he wants with his brothers. They are completely and totally at his mercy. And yet, Joseph refuses to take revenge on his brothers because he knows that God will avenge all of the wrongs, all of the injustices, all of those things will be made right one day because God is a God of justice.

23:56And justice is not Joseph's jurisdiction. It's God's. And so he tells them, do not fear. And then look at what he says. You meant evil against me. You meant evil against me. Joseph does not excuse, he does not minimize his brother's intentions or their actions. He says, you meant evil against me. They wanted to kill him. We cannot forget that. They wanted to kill him and they only sold him into slavery because they realized it would be better to profit off of him than merely to kill him. That's the only reason that Joseph was still alive, humanly speaking, was because they decided it was better to profit off of their brother than to put him to death. And so Joseph confronts them with the reality of their intentions and their actions. You meant evil against me.

24:58You see, friends, when we extend forgiveness to others, it's imperative that both we and both parties, really, understand there is a real cost to be absorbed. There's a real cost to be absorbed. Those who have sinned against us have to understand that their actions weren't just a little mistake or a miscalculation or an error in judgment. They were sins. And they were sins with real cost that has to be absorbed. By someone, not just actions that can be easily overlooked. And those who are sinned against have to understand that forgiveness includes choosing to absorb the cost of someone else's sin against you, and it includes choosing not to hold the sin against that person any longer.

25:53Joseph says, You meant evil against me. And that's something that both parties in a situation where one person has sinned against someone else have to come to terms with. That real evil has been done. And that real evil and its cost has to be absorbed by someone. He says, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But God meant it for good. It's easily one of the most profound statements in Scripture. Not only for the grace and the perspective that it shows that Joseph had at this point, but for what it teaches us about God.

26:40You see, friends, the Bible teaches us that God can use the sinful motivations and even the sinful actions of people to achieve his good purposes. I mean, just stop and think about that for a moment. How many times have your plans been frustrated? Because someone else made a decision that you did not want them to make or that you could not foresee. How many times have your plans been derailed because someone made a choice that you didn't want or didn't expect?

27:17And yet, billions and billions of people have lived or do live on this earth today, all of them with sinful hearts, all of them making free choices, pursuing their own agenda, pursuing what they think is best for them, many of whom without regard for God at all, and yet not once have God's purposes been derailed. Not once has a human being made a choice that has thrown God's plan off. And we see this most clearly in the gospel.

27:55Most clearly in the gospel. Look on the screen at Acts chapter 3. This is such an amazing passage. The crowd stands in awe because Peter and John have healed this paralyzed man. And so Peter begins to speak to them and he says, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. You see all the language about human choices here?

28:30But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. And you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all. And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.

29:02But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Peter says to the Jews, You delivered Jesus to Pilate. You denied him. You asked for a murderer to be released in his place. You had him crucified. All of those were your sinful human choices, and yet, Peter says, none of that happened apart from The will of God.

30:02Not one of those sinful human choices derailed God's plan. In fact, God had stated that this was his plan through the prophets for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is what's going to happen to the Christ. You see, friends, because of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, sin doesn't have the last word in our lives. Not the sins that you've committed. Not the sins that other people have committed against you. Sin does not have the last word in our lives. If you are a believer in Jesus, you don't have to live as a victim of your own sinful choices. And you don't have to live as a victim of the sinful choices that others have made against you.

30:50Sin doesn't have the last word in our lives. God's grace does. You see, Joseph understood this. And that's why he was able to extend forgiveness and grace to his brothers. They meant evil against him. He doesn't mince any words about that. But God meant it for good. And so the question that all of us have to ask when we come face to face with Joseph and his choice to forgive his brothers is, do we understand and believe that God's grace and not sin or death has the last word in our lives?

31:28Do we understand and believe that? Because, friends, if we are living our lives, viewing ourselves as victims of our own sin or of the sins of others, we are not viewing ourselves biblically. According to God's word, believers in Jesus are not defined by the sins that we've committed. And believers in Jesus are not defined by the sins that others have committed against us. We're defined by the grace of God that has been shown to us in Christ.

32:11And so Joseph comforts his brothers with these words. He extends forgiveness to them and he promises to provide for them. And so now let's wrap up this section in the book of Genesis in verse 22. So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house. Joseph lived 110 years, and Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were counted as Joseph's own. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die, but God will visit you and will bring you up out of this land to the land. That he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here. So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

33:26About 50 years have passed. Joseph was about 56 years old when his father died, and now he is 110 years old. He's old enough to see his great-great-grandchildren. And before he dies, he addresses his brothers who are still alive, probably many of their sons as well. And what I want you to notice in Joseph's words is his total confidence in the word of God. He's about to die, but he says, don't worry, God is going to visit you, and he's going to bring you back to the land that he promised.

34:03Joseph is so confident that he makes them swear that they would not leave his body in Egypt, but that when God visited them, that they would carry up his bones from there, and that he would be buried in the promised land along with his ancestors. I want you to look at what Baldwin says as she sums up this section. Years later, when Joshua had led Israel into the promised land, the bones of Joseph were buried in. Shechem, in the territory of his son Manasseh, but close to the border with Ephraim. Joseph's faith had not been misplaced, and God did not forget to be gracious, nor fail to keep his word.

34:49So they embalm him and they place him in a coffin in Egypt. And that's how Genesis ends, setting the foundation for the book of Exodus. Friends, what a journey that we've been on. 50 chapters, 40 sermons, 10 months, all helping us to answer some of the most important questions in life. Where did we come from? God created us. God, the only uncreated, morally perfect being, created the universe and everything in it and created us, you and me, starting with our first parents, Adam and Eve, in his image and likeness. That's where we came from. We were created by God in His image and likeness.

35:45What is wrong with us? And what's wrong with the world that we live in? Genesis tells us that the first people, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God and His good command, and instead they chose to believe the lies of the devil. Disguised as a serpent. And their sin led God to curse the world, but also to curse man and woman. And as a result, we live in a fallen world, and all of us are born with sinful hearts.

36:17Our sinful actions don't make us sinful people. Our sinful hearts make us sinful people that lead us to do sinful actions. That's what's wrong with us, and that's what's wrong with the world. The world is cursed, and we too are under the curse. We too have fallen. That's why this world is broken. That's why we are broken, and that's why all of us experience death. It's because we have rebelled against God and His good word. Is there hope for salvation?

36:53Genesis answers that question with a resounding yes. God is merciful and gracious, and after covering Adam and Eve's sin, he promised that one day a Savior would be born who would crush the head of the serpent. This Savior would come through God's chosen people, the spiritual descendants of Abraham, who believe God's promises. And through Jacob and his family, we see all of these truths, all of these answers to these great questions played out in real life. Jacob and his sons, Sons sinned against God. They sinned against others, and they sinned against each other. Some of them seem unchanged by God's grace and his promises, while others among them, especially Jacob and Judah and Joseph, are profoundly changed by God's mercy and grace.

37:52And so, friends, today we come to the end of this long journey through the book of Genesis. And if you are already a Christian, my hope is that you have been strengthened by the Word of God and the grace of God that is found on every page of this book. I pray that if you are already a Christian, you've been reminded that you've been accepted by God not because you are a good person, not because you've been religious enough, not because you've done enough good things, but rather you are accepted by God because you have put your faith in Him and His Word, just like Noah, just like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and many others. Your sin no longer defines you. Not the sins that you have committed, and not the sins that others have committed against you.

38:46Look on the screen again at 1 Corinthians 15 that we read at the beginning of the service. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God. who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Friend, if you are a believer in Jesus, the sting of death, the power of sin, no longer has a hold on you. Jesus was victorious over sin and death in your place. He lived that perfect life of obedience for you. He died on that cross for you. And you are accepted by God now, not because of what you do or what you will do, but because of what Jesus has done. It is finished. And now the sting of death and the power of sin has been broken in our lives. Praise God.

39:46And friends, if you are not yet a Christian, perhaps you came today or started coming last August when we began our study of Genesis, or maybe you started coming somewhere in between because you're looking for answers and you're looking for hope. And the book of Genesis doesn't answer every single question that you have about God or about yourself or about this life. But the book of Genesis answers the most important questions about God and about yourself and about this life because it answers where we came from and it answers what's wrong with us and what's wrong with our world. And it answers, is there any hope for salvation?

40:36And my hope that either today or through the course of this series, you have come to believe that God does exist and that we have sinned against Him and that there is no hope for reconciliation with God outside of Jesus, the promised seed of Adam and Eve, who came to live and die and rise again for you. And I hope you see that God is gracious and merciful. And He is not waiting for you to do the impossible. He's not waiting for you to clean your life up to the level that He can finally accept you. But He is simply waiting for you to turn in faith to Christ and to receive His Son and His perfect work on your behalf. To turn from your sin and to believe His promises, specifically His promises about salvation that is only found through faith in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

41:40Friend, you don't have to live your life defined by the sins that you have committed. You don't have to live your life defined by the sins that others have committed against you. And you don't have to live your life in paralyzing fear of death. Because the good news. Is that God's grace, not sin or death, has the last word in our lives? Let's pray. God, we thank you for the book of Genesis, that you have seen fit to reveal yourself and your word, your promises, your grace, and your mercy to people like us.

42:40We don't deserve that kindness. And yet you have made yourself known. You have made your work in human history known to us. And we see on every page of this book how it points us back to you, our creator and our sustainer, the one who is the perfect king and righteous judge, the one to whom we will give an account one day. And yet at the same time, you reveal that it is you. Who will come down in history into the messy lives, the broken lives of your people to save us?

43:42God, I pray for every man and woman and child here who is living their life defined by sin, defined by the sins that they themselves have committed against family members or friends or co-workers or neighbors. And they've come to believe that that's who they are, and there's no changing that. That there's no way that you, a holy and righteous God, could ever accept them as they are. And they're right in one sense. We cannot be accepted by you as we are, but thanks be to God.

44:39You sent your Son to live and die and rise again to make us acceptable. I pray for every man, woman, and child here who is living their life defined by the sins that have been committed against them. Some have suffered grievous sin, and they've allowed that sin to define who they are. I pray that they have seen through Joseph's life one who is sinned against so greatly that those sins don't have to define them. And even though others meant evil against them, you, God, in your perfect and sovereign, and yes, even mysterious will, meant those things for good.

45:42What good sometimes we can't see. Sometimes we don't understand. But I pray that we believe that by faith. And Father, I pray for all of us because we live in a scary world. We live in a scary world with diseases and hunger and thirst and terrorism that is on the rise every single day. And I know so many, even professing Christians, live in paralyzing fear of death. And yet, Lord, we see, as Jacob and Joseph both die with confidence, That they will be with you and with others who have believed in you. I pray, God, that we would share that confidence and that we would not fear death. It is an enemy, it is the last enemy, but it is a defeated enemy.

46:47So, God, would you take away our fear and replace it with faith, Father? You have been exceedingly gracious to us, and we express our gratitude that your grace and not sin or death have the last word in our lives. We pray that we would be a gracious people, a grateful people, a worshipful people, because that is true. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.