The Final Words Of The First Book

Questions This Sermon Answers:

1. What were the deathbed blessings of Jacob?

Genesis 49 records Jacob blessing each of his twelve sons with prophetic words about their tribal futures. Some blessings were positive (Judah, Joseph), others were warnings (Reuben's instability, Simeon and Levi's violence). The blessings were not merely fatherly affections — they were prophetic declarations about the character and destiny of Israel's twelve tribes. They were fulfilled across Israel's history: Levi became the priestly tribe, Judah the royal tribe, Joseph's descendants (Ephraim and Manasseh) became the most prosperous northern tribes.

2. What is the prophetic significance of the blessing of Judah?

Genesis 49:10 is the most important messianic prophecy in Genesis: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the peoples." The scepter represents royal authority; the promise is that it will remain in Judah's line until "Shiloh" — understood across the Reformed tradition as a messianic title — comes. The New Testament's fulfillment is explicit: Jesus was of the tribe of Judah (Matthew 1:2-3; Hebrews 7:14; Revelation 5:5 — "the Lion of the tribe of Judah"). The entire royal-messianic trajectory of the Old Testament begins with Jacob's deathbed words.

3. Why did Jacob insist on burial in Canaan?

Genesis 49:29-33 records Jacob's insistence on burial in the cave of Machpelah in Canaan, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, and Leah were buried. The request was an act of faith — a declaration that Egypt, for all its power and provision, was not home. The Promised Land was home. Hebrews 11:13-16 interprets the patriarchs' entire orientation as confessing "that they were strangers and exiles on the earth... they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one." Jacob's bones in the cave of Machpelah were his most eloquent sermon: I belong to the land God promised, not to the world that fed me.

4. Why did Joseph request that his bones be carried out of Egypt?

Genesis 50:25 records Joseph's oath: "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here." This is the last act of the last patriarch in the book of Genesis — an act of faith pointing forward. Hebrews 11:22: "By faith Joseph, when dying, made mention of the exodus of the children of Israel and gave directions concerning his bones." Joseph believed God would fulfill the promise to Abraham — that Israel would return to Canaan. He wanted his bones to make that journey. Exodus 13:19 records Moses faithfully carrying Joseph's bones out of Egypt. Joshua 24:32 records their burial in the Promised Land.

5. What does "God will surely visit you" mean in Genesis 50:24?

The phrase translated "visit" (Hebrew: paqad) means God's active, purposeful intervention in history — an appearing to accomplish what He has promised. Joseph used the same phrase that God would use to Moses at the burning bush: "I have surely visited you" (Exodus 3:16). The repetition is deliberate: Genesis ends with Joseph's faith-declaration of a future divine visitation, and Exodus opens with that visitation beginning. The last words of Genesis point directly to the first words of the next chapter in God's redemptive story. The promises do not end with Joseph's death — they accelerate.

6. How does Genesis as a whole prepare for Exodus?

Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt — numerous, prosperous, fed by Joseph's position, but not in the Promised Land. The stage is set for the next act: oppression, multiplication, divine visitation, and exodus. Genesis establishes all the foundational categories that Exodus will dramatize: the covenant promises (land, seed, blessing), the pattern of election and grace, the failure of human effort to accomplish what God alone can do, and the certainty of God's faithfulness despite every obstacle. Genesis is the prologue; Exodus is act one. The whole Bible is the story of how God brings His people home.

7. What is the theological summary of the entire book of Genesis?

Genesis answers the most basic theological questions: Who is God? (The self-existent Creator, covenant-maker, sovereign over all history.) Who are we? (Image-bearers, fallen, dependent on grace.) What went wrong? (The Fall — human rebellion against divine order.) What is God doing about it? (Calling a people through sovereign grace — from Abraham to Joseph — through whom all nations will be blessed.) How does it end? (The promise is certain: God will visit His people, the land will be theirs, and from the tribe of Judah will come the One to whom "shall be the obedience of the peoples.") Genesis poses the question that the rest of the Bible answers: who is the promised seed?

8. How does Genesis end by pointing to Christ?

The final verse of Genesis — "Joseph... was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt" (50:26) — seems like an ending. But it is a cliffhanger. The greatest story of redemption ever told does not end with a coffin in Egypt. It ends with a promise: God will visit, the bones will be carried out, the scepter will not depart from Judah. Every reader who has followed the story from Eden to Egypt knows that the promise is still outstanding. The seed of the woman who will crush the serpent (Genesis 3:15) has not yet come. The son of Abraham through whom all nations will be blessed (Genesis 12:3) has not yet been born in Bethlehem. Genesis is incomplete by design. Its last word is a coffin; the Bible's last word is a resurrection.