And again he wept, when, after his father's death, his brethren began to suspect his love. He was disappointed. An unworthy return to the ways of a constant, patient, serving love, made him weep--in the spirit of Him, I may say, who wept over Jerusalem. For years had he been doing all he could to win their confidence. He had nourished them and their little ones. Years had now passed, and not one rebuke of them do we find either in his life or in his ways. Grief over their departed father had just freshly given them to know what common affections they had to bind them together. He had supplied them with every reason to trust him. And yet, after all, they were fearing him. This was a terrible shock to such a heart as Joseph's. But he did not resent it, save with his tears, and renewed assurances of his diligent, faithful love. And have not such tears as these, I ask, as fine a character as tears can have? They were as the pulses of the aggrieved spirit of the Lord. "How long shall I be with you?" "Why are ye fearful?" "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?" These were kindred pulses of an aggrieved heart in Jesus. Jesus has sanctified tears, and made them, like everything else that went up from Him to God, a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour; Joseph and David and Paul, yea, Jonathan and Timothy too, have made them precious, and put them among the treasures of the Spirit in the bosom of the Church.
Such an one was Joseph, and in such company we put him; again, I say, perhaps the most attractive character in the Book of Genesis. We see in him the grace and blamelessness that we get in Isaac, the "piety," as we speak, marking him in all his relations in life. But withal, there was combination which we do not find in Isaac. There was firmness--energy as well as sensibility.
It remains for him to do the last office of this piety to the memory of his father; and he does it, we need scarcely say, in all grace and faithfulness. He buries his father, as his father had willed it, in the land of Canaan. But the whole is conducted with much solemnity--and the occasion is such, that we must wait upon it for a little moment.
In other days, worship was a magnificent ceremonial. Temples, altars, feasts, holy days, sacrifices, and the like, furnished it, and officers of different orders, in appropriate vestments, conducted it. Because in those days worship pointed onward to certain great mysteries which had then to be realized. But now these mysteries have been accomplished in the manifestation of Christ, His person, work, sufferings, and victories--so that gorgeous worship is now but a reproach on all that which is found in Him, in its full substance and efficacy.
So as to funerals, as well as worship. In other days they were to be gorgeous. Because resurrection was then only in prospect; and funerals then were a kind of pledge of the expected resurrection; and it was fitting that the pledge should be magnificent according to the glory of that which it pledged. But now, since resurrection has been realized in the person of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, the gorgeous funeral, like the ceremonious worship, is rather a reproach, as though the great mystery itself had not been yet realized in its substance and efficacy. For it is not funereal pomp which is now the pledge of our coming resurrection--the resurrection of the Lord is that, the first-fruits of a promised harvest.
Accordingly, worship and funerals are now, in like simplicity, to bespeak the Church's faith in accomplished mysteries. We are now in sight of the victory of the Lord Jesus. We no longer give or receive pledges of it, as in ordinances, but we celebrate it. Joseph of Arimathea gave His body a costly burial, as Joseph the son of Jacob here gives the body of his loved and honoured father. We read of Jesus: "He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death." In that day of Joseph of Arimathea the grave had not been spoiled; and pledges therefore--like pledges with these in the day of the Patriarch--might still be given. But in the burial of the Lord Jesus we properly see the last of these pledges; because in Him we see the first-fruits of them that slept. The grave-clothes and the napkins lie in the empty sepulchre as spoils of a glorious war, and trophies which tell of glorious victory. Death was overthrown, and faith now celebrates what offices and usages, as well as ordinances and ceremonies, had once only pledged and foreshadowed. And let me add, that faith did learn this lesson, for the burial which followed that of Jesus had neither its embalming nor its magnificence. It was shortly disposed of, reverently withal, and lovingly. "Devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him."
Had we faith, deeply should we prize all this. Our privileges are great indeed. In the services of the house of God now, the table has succeeded the altar, and instead of a sacrifice we have a feast upon a sacrifice. And so have we to see death and burial, too, in the light of the resurrection of Jesus.
These things we notice in connection with Jacob's funeral. His death has its moral operation in the family, bringing out (as is often the case when the head of a family is removed) what before was not suspected to be there. But I must meditate on this for a while.
The simplicity of patriarchal faith is very remarkable. It was like their manners--beautiful from their artlessness. There was nothing of the spirit of bondage in the Genesis-saints. The patriarchs walked in the assurance of this, that God was their God, His promises their portion, and the city and land of the glory their inheritance. They lived and died in this spirit of faith. No suspicions or reserves, no questionings, no mistrust of grace, defiles their souls. And this is surely the more strange because, while we nowhere among them trace this spirit of bondage, we see it everywhere else, immediately after we leave the Book of Genesis, and then all through Scripture. It would be vain to follow all the notices of it which Scripture furnishes. It works naturally and abundantly in us. Surely we know it in ourselves, and see it in all around us.
How is it, then, that it does not betray itself in the Patriarchs? Was it because they were such constant witnesses to themselves of the grace and election of God, and had never heard the voice of the law? This helped to form their minds, we may be sure. But besides this, this absence of the spirit of bondage was beautifully consistent with their dispensational standing; for they were as children who had never as yet been from home. They were in infancy, and they could no more move in the presence of God in a spirit of fear and uncertainty, than a child, ere he left home, could be tempted to question his title to the nurture and shelter of his father's house. And it is of the moral beauty and perfection of this infant Book of Genesis that we see this child-like, unquestioning faith in the saints of God there. They are faulty, and that, too, at times, through want of faith, when certain circumstances press them; but their souls are never defiled by a spirit of mistrust and bondage. We see this throughout--at least till we reach the moment when we are taking leave of the Book, and have gone beyond what is properly the patriarchal character of it. I mean, in Joseph's brethren, as soon as Jacob's funeral is over.