So – what now?

Jacob had made his sons promise. They would not leave him in Egypt. He wanted to go home to Canaan, to a precise place.

Promises are easy; keeping them is another thing entirely.

“So Joseph went up to bury his father. All Pharaoh’s officials accompanied him—the dignitaries of his court and all the dignitaries of Egypt— ⁸ besides all the members of Joseph’s household and his brothers and those belonging to his father’s household. Only their children and their flocks and herds were left in Goshen. ⁹ Chariots and horsemenalso went up with him. It was a very large company. ¹⁰ When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and bitterly; and there Joseph observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father. ¹¹ When the Canaanites who lived there saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “The Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony of mourning.” That is why that place near the Jordan is called Abel Mizraim. ¹² So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them: ¹³ They carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite. ¹⁴ After burying his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, together with his brothers and all the others who had gone with him to bury his father.” (Genesis 50 v 7-14)

It was a big funeral, probably the largest in the ancient world. That’s the first thing we notice. All for an old shepherd. But this old man had touched more people than he ever knew. His son was the second-most powerful man in Egypt, so when he died, the nation mourned him.

My eyes this morning hovered over not so much the enormity of the funeral, but a very small word, in verses 7 and 12.

So.

“So Joseph went up.”

“So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them.”

All that went before, the deathbed blessing, the charge to bury him in Canaan, the oath Joseph swore with his hand under his father’s thigh, he dies and then a very small word, so.

How many things do we know we should do, maybe even plan to do, but we never arrive at the ‘so’? We intended to do it. We may have even promised we would. There can be a huge gap between what we said and what we actually did.

His sons said they would do it. Jacob died with that promise. And when the moment came, it can be said, ‘So, they did it.’