Before he died, Joseph made a remarkable request: “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” Long after his heart stopped beating, Joseph’s faith remained alive — his bones served as a testimony that Egypt was not Israel’s final home. In this message, we will explore how neither the lows of Joseph’s trials nor the heights of his success could blind him to the promise of God’s Word that would be fulfilled some four hundred years later.

GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

<p>Before he died, Joseph made a remarkable request: “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” Long after his heart stopped beating, Joseph’s faith remained alive — his bones served as a testimony that Egypt was not Israel’s final home. In this message, we will explore how neither the lows of Joseph’s trials nor the heights of his success could blind him to the promise of God’s Word that would be fulfilled some four hundred years later.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Jermaine Gayle

Carry My Bones

I've been very blessed and I'm happy that I get to be here with you this evening.

I'm ready to get down to business, what about you?

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter 50, verse 24 through 26.

The Bible reads, and Joseph said to his brethren, I am dying, but God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land "'to the land of which he soared to Abraham, "'to Isaac, and to Jacob.' "'Then Joseph took an oath "'from the children of Israel, saying, "'God will surely visit you, "'and you shall carry up my bones from here.

So Joseph died being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

And here is the ending of the book of Genesis, A Coffin in Egypt.

The title of my message is Carry My Bones.

So there Lord, I pray that you use this vessel of clay.

Break it if you have to, but let your light shine.

We pray that you may speak to your people, myself included.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior, and we all say, amen.

It was my very first time riding shotgun in a hearse.

When the invitation was extended to me I was unsure.

I had conducted a funeral and the funeral director had come up to me and said Pastor Gail We appreciate all that you've done for us here today.

If you're open to the idea, we would love for you to ride in the hearse with 1 of our staff members to the gravesite.

And with me being Jamaican and all, some of those old superstitions were coming back to mind.

You see, my dear friends, I did not grow up a Seventh-day Adventist, and the years that I am an Adventist today are becoming slowly more than the years that I was not.

And the moment he said this, I thought back to my upbringing and the things that I learned growing up.

In fact, I'll tell you this with all honesty.

Between my house and my grandma's house, there was a grave.

And my dad used to tell me these crazy stories about the dead.

And I remember being so terrified that I would run from my front porch to my grandma's house nonstop until I get there.

My Dear friends, I ran in the dark so fast that I was before Usain Bolt, the Usain Bolt.

I got to my grandma's house and I picked up the thing that my dad told me to get and right there I would line myself up on that porch and I would get ready and run straight back to my house non-stop.

Because in my mind those superstitions were there.

If you slow down, the ghost would get you.

Friends, I am grateful for our message concerning the state of the dead.

It frees us from those old superstitions, but I'm going to be honest with you, sometimes the past revisits and we have to recenter ourselves, stay on mission.

And so here I am, sitting in this hearse.

I buckled my seatbelt and I closed the door, and the driver came in, young lady in her 20s, and now I feel I have to have a lot more courage.

And as I'm sitting there, we start talking.

We pulled off together, and my first question to her was, why did you choose this line of work?

And then she says to me, Pastor, this is not a job for me.

This is a calling, and I'm happy that I get to serve people at their lowest and and I hear her saying all of these things and I didn't respond for a little while there was a pause and she might have thought that I was thinking of my other question but what was going on in all honesty was those superstitions were coming back to mind and I felt myself with those intrusive thoughts taking the form of a prayer and I in my mind was there telling the Lord please don't let anything move back there and then I had to remind myself Jermaine you are a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and God wants you in a hearse because there are hearse drivers who need salvation.

I refocused my attention, surrendered my heart, and I said, Lord, this is where you want to use me today.

And friends, that day, More than just sitting shotgun in a hearse, I became co-pilot for a hearse driver.

I knew the area, we started talking and she would ask me where do I go next, I would tell her turn right, turn up the light.

We were driving, we were talking so much.

By the time we ended our conversation back at the funeral home, she turned to me and said, "'Pastor Jermaine, where is your church?

"'I would love to attend.'" There are moments in our lives when God calls us to face our fears so that he can use someone as fearful as you to save someone who is fearless, not about the job they do, but about the future that lies ahead of them.

God is in the business of saving hearse drivers.

And he can use whoever he chooses, whenever he wants to, wherever he wants to, to save people.

Are you willing to go the distance to save the people that God wants to save?

So 2 lessons I learned that day while riding shotgun in a hearse.

Number 1, God can use anybody he chooses.

Number 2, God is in the business of saving people wherever they are, including hearse drivers, and he needs you in these places, in these spaces, because friends, we have the message that the world is dying to hear.

By the time the children of Israel were ready to leave Egypt, Moses had already fought a good fight.

He had approached Pharaoh about 7 times, and they had these conversations, these negotiations, and Pharaoh refused to let the children of Israel go.

And I would imagine that by the time Moses ended the last meeting, if he came to a group of Israelites and they would ask Moses, well, how did it go?

Moses would have said, well, the final meeting, the good news is Pharaoh is willing to let us go.

Poor fellow, He could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

When I first came and told him, let my people go, he didn't believe me, and now Egypt is in a free fall.

The economy is tanking and all of society is in trouble, but now he's finally ready to let us go.

He lost his firstborn last night, but now he wants us to leave in a hurry.

Turn with me in our Bibles to the book of Exodus chapter 12 and verse 33.

I believe that this would have been Moses' response to the children of Israel that leaving Egypt was going to happen quickly.

The Bible says in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 33, and the Egyptians urged the people that they might send them out of the land in a haste.

For they said, we shall all be what everybody?

All were now off to the races, I imagine.

All the Israelites gathering their last bit of belongings.

There were the Israelite shepherds gathering their herds from the fields in Goshen.

If you go down with me to verse 38, this is what the Bible says, Exodus chapter 12 and verse 38.

A multitude went up with them also, and flocks and herds, a great deal of what, everybody?

There would not have been enough U-Haul trucks to accommodate this mass evacuation.

When Pharaoh punched the numbers back in Exodus 1, and verse 9, he had this to say about the Israelites.

He told the Egyptians, there are too many of those Israelites in our country, and they're becoming more powerful than we are.

To move this many people out of Egypt, therefore, for a scrappy 80-year-old guy like Moses would have been crazy.

The logistics team would have had to go door to door and I imagine a lady inside hearing the knock.

Hey, Moses sent us, It's time to leave Egypt.

The Bible tells us, my dear friends, in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 35, notice what it says, so the people took their what everybody?

I imagine the women are probably there trying to finish the baking for the night, for the evening.

The Bible says Exodus 12, verse 35, so the people took their dough before it was leavened, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes and on their shoulders.

Can you see them stepping beyond the threshold of their doorways with pots and pans clanging and perhaps in that moment if an Israelite were to look back above his doorpost, he would see the blood symbolizing, signaling that this trip was paid for by the blood of the Lamb.

Praise God, Jesus pays for slaves to leave Egypt.

My friends, pardon me for a moment, but in my sanctified imagination, I see the people of God spilling out into the streets and alleyways of Egypt.

I hear the bleating of sheep as shepherds coax them forward.

I see families rushing, calling names, gathering their children.

I see animals with their backs all loaded down with their silver and gold.

And while it would have been a miracle in itself to gather this many people in an emergency, which it was, what stands out to me, my dear friends, is not the chaos, but the pause.

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Exodus, chapter 13 and verse 19.

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Carry My Bones

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