We end our journey into the amazing book of Genesis in this study. It is a journey of majestic proportions—the story of God unfolded from creation—to the beginning of His redemptive work after the fall. This study will end with the last of the patriarchs Jacob, and his blessing of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob was the most unworthy—if that can be said of anyone—of the patriarchs, and yet, in a show of immense and undeserved grace, God gave him a most prominent and well-attended burial—not only acknowledged for his greatness and his legacy by his own clan but by the Egyptians, as well. It was noted by the Canaanites that “This is a grievous mourning…” But it can also be said that Jacob was honored by the Egyptians because of Joseph.
Jacob and his descendants were rescued from extinction and exalted in Egypt because of Joseph. Joseph, as his father Israel had declared in his blessing: “The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob: (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel…”
The book of Genesis ends with a declaration of faith by Joseph to the children of Israel: “God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” It ends with hope that God will surely bring to pass all that He had promised. It took 400 hundred years for this promise to be fulfilled.
In the same way, the same God who fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had promised his adopted children—the church, that he will return and bring us to His millennial kingdom. Our promised redemption that was declared in Genesis 3:15 had come and He will restore all things. Let us wait with faith and hope for the fulfillment of God’s promise. His promises had never failed: His name is Faithful and True. Hallelujah!