Ordinary People, Extra Ordinary Deeds
Joseph
Matthew 1:18–2:1 (NIV)
18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:
23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.
25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
The condensed version (readers digest)
Imagine it this way. The angel Gabriel comes to a teenage Palestinian girl and says she is to give birth to the Lord, the King. ‘I think you must have the wrong Mary,’ she would have replied. ‘I mean, you’ll need someone influential, important, of royal descent, well off (you can’t have the Lord running around in rags, or receiving a sub-standard education)… If the Lord is to be born into poverty, well, you’d need an experienced mother who’s got several kids already (who are healthy and well-adjusted)… I don’t even know how to hold a baby, and you’re telling me that my first baby will be the Lord. What if I drop him? And, by the way, what is Joseph going to say?’
Mary continues: ‘Then imagine the scene with Joseph. “Why Mary you’re looking big… Why, Mary, you’re pregnant! Who with?” And I answer, “With the Lord.” What’s his line after that?’
Doesn’t happen every day, eh?
Joseph would have to be one of the most amazing people – not merely because of what happened to him, but in his response to those events.
What do we know about Joseph? He was a descendant of David, a carpenter, maybe older than Mary who was alive when Jesus was twelve but may have died before Jesus’ public ministry. That’s it.
Oh no, it isn’t. When he learned Mary was pregnant – presumably by someone else – Matthew gives us some interesting insights into this amazing man. This must have been a staggering blow to him. His bride-to-be had betrayed him. She’d been ‘sleeping around.’ Most fiancées would have exploded in vindictive rage. His gut reaction might have been to humiliate Mary as well as drop her. But he didn’t.
But my point this morning is not about what happened, but what he did with what happened. Here is a man who is invited to collaborate with God in the most dramatic event in history: God being clothed in human flesh.
How should we respond to a situation like this? There are six very helpful clues in the Joseph-story.
First, Joseph was a thoughtful person.
· So the first thing he did was to do nothing.
· He ‘considered’ the situation.
· For days, weeks, months… who knows?
· No doubt he prayed fervently as well.
The moral for us: when you have to make a difficult decision, don’t be in a hurry: more mistakes are made by haste than by delay.
Second, Joseph was a ‘just’ man (verse 19).
· That is, he lived under the law of God.
· His obvious question here would have been, ‘What does the law of God say?’ Answer: (see Deuteronomy 24:1): he had to put Mary away.
· According to Jewish custom, a betrothal could only be terminated by ‘divorce’. Indeed, Mary should have been stoned.
So the moral for us: Always ask ‘What does the Word of God in Scripture say about this?’ Nothing is ever right if it contradicts God’s will for us.
Third, Joseph was a tender, compassionate man (verse 19).
· He believed that justice must be tempered by love.
· He had to obey the law of God, that was clear. But how to do it in Mary’s interests?
· How could he avoid embarrassing her? Joseph did not want to put Mary to shame.
· We know the sequel: it was revealed to Joseph that Mary was not guilty of adultery at all, but was highly favored by God, impregnated by the Spirit of God.
The lesson here for us: Always ask, not only what God’s law requires, but how to apply that law in love.
· Not even Joseph’s hurt feelings or his religion’s legal requirements could overrule something more important: his compassion for someone who was ‘down’.
‘In spite of the terrible thing he thought Mary had done to him and to their dreams, Joseph still had deep feelings for Mary the person and could not find it in his heart to add to her burden, or to use the modern phrase, “to stomp on her while she was down’.’ (John Claypool, in an unpublished sermon).
Fourth, Joseph was open to mystery, to the incredible.
· Now he was a male and would have prided himself on his logical approach to things (and carpenters have to think in those terms too!).
· Mary impregnated by God? What? Is there a precedent for this? Ridiculous!
· But no, Joseph’s response was not circumscribed by his logic or his experience. What Gabriel said to Mary, Joseph also obviously believed: ‘With God all things are possible.’
· That’s what faith is all about – letting God be God, not restricting God within the limits of human experience…
Find an example!
Fifth, Joseph was humble enough to be willing to listen to the voice of God, even in a dream.
· Where has our child-like wonder gone
· We talk last week about listening to the quiet voice of God
· That we all somehow miss that
· God can come to us in many ways
o His word
o Through other believers
o Through circumstance
o And yes even in our dreams!
Sixth, Joseph was a man of action.
With only the word of Mary and words in a dream to guide him, he took Mary to be his wife and took her away from Nazareth (supposedly to register in his home-town of Bethlehem, but also, I have no doubt, to get Mary away from the Gossip!). He later moved the little family to Egypt to get away from the murderous Herod, then back to Nazareth rather than Bethlehem to avoid the political climate.
‘Sam Keen defines a wise person as one who knows what time it is in life, and Joseph qualifies for that title…
· He was aware of what was going on around him, and just as importantly, had the courage to act.
· The courage to trust Mary, an angel, and a God who he had faith in.
· It was that courage that allowed God to use him, an ordinary man to do extraordinary things!
What is the Bible all about ‘It’s about a God who gives us laws but who then gives Himself permission not to enforce them sometimes,’. When Jesus was confronted with a woman who had committed adultery, He first said ‘I do not condemn you’ before He said ‘Go and sin no more.’ Pharisees, ancient and modern, who only ask ‘What does the law say?’ and not ‘How can I act like God, with compassion?’ could never say that. Jesus had learned some wonderful lessons from this wonderful man named Joseph.
So this Christmas, I invite you to use this wonderful man Joseph as your guide when confronted with a difficult moral situation. Let us do what Joseph did, namely: reflect deeply, for as long as it takes; ask ‘How does the Word of God instruct me here?’; act always with compassion; be open to mystery; listen for the voice of God, in whatever medium God chooses to speak; and then act.
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