Twelve men walk to Egypt. All of them die. One walks back.

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.”  Genesis 50:25

Twelve men walk to Egypt. 

I can't imagine what was going through Joseph's mind when he was walking down the dusty road to Egypt, bound as a slave to be sold at the market. The only thing "objective" he had to hold on to was that somehow what was happening to him at that moment was connected to two dreams God had given him that he would be the Ruler over his brothers...the brothers that were exulting in their triumph over him and the profit they had made from his sale. 
I can't imagine what the brothers were thinking as they took their sheep back to report to their father, but I am certain they did not envision that one day they would be traveling the same dusty road to Egypt, begging the vice-Pharaoh for food!  After all...they didn't believe Joseph's dreams! 

Yet by the end of Genesis, the exact fulfillment of the dreams has happened in reality! 
​All twelve men have walked that road to Egypt and their families are there with them. 

All of them die. 

Jacob, their father, dies in Egypt.  He knows that Egypt is not his home, not his "final resting place." Because of the promise God had made to Abraham and Isaac and his descendants, Jacob makes his sons promise to bury him in Canaan. (Genesis 50:5) After the burial, the twelve sons of Jacob once again walk down the dusty road to Egypt, where their families and possessions are waiting for them.
​Time passes, and they die...in Egypt. For eleven of them, it is their final resting place. But one of them knows he will return to the land of Canaan to "claim" his inheritance.

One walks back. 

Joseph had seen the faith Jacob had in the promises of God and in hanging on to his inheritance. Jacob was residing in Egypt at the end of his life, but he had not assimilated into Egypt.
Joseph had seen the fulfillment of the God-given dreams, worked out through the lowest valleys of distress. God's faithfulness had been proved through the darkest nights of his own life in Egypt. 
The very last verse of Genesis ends with his solid faith in God's continued faithful care...no matter what low valleys or dark nights the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren would go through. 

Joseph knew the outcome. The inheritance promised to Abraham was a sure thing. His death would not keep him from getting there, because it was dependent on God's faithful care to bring it about. 

In Exodus 13:19, almost 400 years after Joseph tells his brothers to take him back to Canaan, the footnote is given: "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him." 
The Joseph who had waited...lifeless...helpless...now was "walking" out of Egypt! (with a little bit of assistance from Moses!) But then Moses dies before getting into the land...and there is Joseph, still in his boney, helpless, dead condition.

One of Joseph's great-grand-descendants, Joshua, comes into the land and receives his portion.
​The final footnote is attached in Joshua 24:29-32: "Now they buried the bones of Joseph, which the sons of Israel brought up from Egypt, at Shechem."  

Maybe the faith Joshua displayed when he spied out the land and knew with certainty that "God will give it to us!" was a direct result of Joseph's faith that had been carried down for the generations before it got to him.

What about the eleven brothers who hadn't believed Joseph's dreams? Evidently their bones stayed in Egypt. And their unbelief was also passed down for hundreds of years to their descendants so that when it came time to go into the land, ten leaders said to the rest of the family: "God can't do this."

May I be living for the promises of God that will only be realized after my death, certain that God's faithful care will bring them about!  May I not look at the situation in front of me and think for a second that it is a picture of reality, without viewing it in light of the end of the story that God has already revealed. 

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