Loving Dad, for Dad

When Jacob passes away a very touching moment is recorded between him and Joseph. Some notable things do not happen as well.

Genesis 50:1–3 (ESV) Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him. 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.

Genesis 50:10 (ESV) When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

The first 14 verses of Genesis 50 record a very long process of mourning and burial for Jacob. Egypt mourns 70 days! Pharaoh commissions Joseph to carry him to Canaan for burial and there Joseph mourns another seven days. The inhabitants see the mourning and say something particular: 

Genesis 50:11 (ESV) When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning on the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.” Therefore the place was named Abel-mizraim; it is beyond the Jordan.

You know what I don't see in the chapter? I don't see the other 11 brothers mourning. I see them doing what dad had told them to do. I see them traveling to Canaan and obeying the commandments of their father, but I don't see a whisper of their own grief displayed in a way that would have caused the Biblical writer to jot it down. 

This perhaps reveals the main difference between Joseph and his brothers from all the way back in Genesis 37 and the infamous multi-colored coat. The 11 brothers obeyed and respected dad. I'm sure they loved him too. But Joseph loved his father Jacob with all of his heart, soul and strength. There was nothing he wouldn't have done for his father. Perhaps that fatherly favoritism had its impetus in the special love Joseph showed to him from an early age and now revealed in scripture in his adult life.

You remember how Joseph obeys the father's command to go check on his brothers even when their hostility was clearly evident. You remember Joseph's concern for his father when he first sees his brothers though they don't recognize him. You remember when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers his first statement is "Is my father alive?" And now Joseph weeps bitterly, then travels and works extensively to respectfully bury his father. He loves dad for dad.

This is what Jesus does. He loves the Father perfectly. He loves "Dad" for "Dad." The other brothers loved what Jacob stood for, what he did for them as a father. The other brothers wanted to protect his heart in his old age, yes, but Joseph had a special love with their father that went beyond anything they could know. 

So many Christians love God for what He stands for and what He has or can give them. Some love him simply out of obedience to Him. But Jesus loved the Father because He was Father and He wants us to do the same. How can we? That's the good news!

We see Jesus praying a final high priestly prayer in John 17 right before the cross. In that prayer He prays that we would experience what He experienced with the Father:

John 17:20–23 (ESV) “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

It is clear what Jesus had with the Father, He earnestly wants us to have with the Father. A close-knit intimate unashamed glorious rapturous love of Him and with Him. He wants us to have a deep abiding joy in our Father's love for us. He wants us to experience the glory of God so that we might display the perfect unity of the Godhead. He wants us to do what Joseph did only better:

He wants us to love Dad, for Dad.