Christmas is a
challenge. For example, there is the challenge of finding just the right gifts
for each of the special people in our lives. In my family of origin, my father
was always the most difficult person for whom to buy Christmas gifts. The best
job I ever did, of giving my father a Christmas gift he enjoyed, happened the
year that my car broke down. I was nineteen years old, and one day driving down
the freeway in California, the engine in my little Renault Le Car blew up. I
had failed in a very simple maintenance task—that of putting oil into the
engine. My father payed to have the car repaired. I decided in response, at
Christmas, that I would wrap up all the burnt-out engine parts as a gift for my
father. Then I put a check with the gift—the first installment in my pay-back
plan! He loved it.
Christmas poses
the challenge of finding just the right gifts for those special people in our
lives. Christmas poses some other challenges as well, some challenges that we
share with a man who lived two thousand years ago. The man’s name was Joseph
and his story is told in Matthew 1:18-25. Let’s read his story together….
Now the
birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had
been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be
with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a
righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to
dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do 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 as your wife, for the child conceived in her is
from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him
Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took
place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and
they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which
means, “God is with us.”
When
Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took
her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she
had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
The first thing
I would like to point out in this passage is that Joseph faced the challenge of disgrace if he accepted Jesus into his
life. This may come as a surprise, so allow me to explain….
Matthew tells us
that Mary was engaged to Joseph. It is important to understand what was
involved in the Jewish wedding procedure in the first century. There were three
steps. First, there was the engagement.
This was often arranged by the parents, or a professional matchmaker, when the
persons to be engaged were still children. Sometimes the persons to be engaged
did not even know each other.
The second step
was the betrothal. This was what we
might call the ratification of the engagement. At this point, the engagement
initiated by the parents could be broken if the girl was unwilling to go ahead
with it. However, once the betrothal was established, it was binding. The
betrothal period lasted one year. During that time-period, the couple was known
as husband and wife. However, there were no sexual relations allowed during the
betrothal. The only way to break a betrothal was by divorce. If one partner had
sexual relations with another person during the betrothal period, it was
considered adultery and was punishable by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:23 ff.).
Joseph and Mary were in the betrothal period of the Jewish wedding procedure
when they discovered that Mary was pregnant.
The third stage
was the marriage proper which took
place at the end of the year of betrothal when the couple would come together
and consummate the marriage. This was usually accompanied by a week of
feasting.
Now imagine, if
you will, what Joseph’s reaction would have been when he heard that Mary was
pregnant. Joseph knew that he was not the father. They had not had sexual
relations, nor were they even living together. Mary was still under the
authority of her father and living in his house. Perhaps Joseph was tempted to
feelings of jealousy or even anger. He must have wanted to ask: “Who is the
father of this child, Mary? How could you have forsaken me for another man?”
To go ahead with
their marriage and bring Mary into his home would bring certain disgrace upon
Joseph. People would be bound to say, “There goes Joseph, his wife had a baby
by another man, and he wasn’t even man enough to divorce her. Joseph is crazy
for taking that woman and her baby into his house.”
Those who accept
Jesus into their lives today also face potential disgrace. As Eugene Peterson
has written, “This world is no friend to grace. A person who makes a commitment
to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior does not find a crowd immediately forming to
applaud the decision nor old friends spontaneously gathering around to offer
congratulations and counsel. Ordinarily there is nothing directly hostile, but
an accumulation of puzzled disapproval and agnostic indifference constitutes,
nevertheless, surprisingly formidable opposition.”
But there is
some good news in all of this. Jesus said that if we will accept the challenge
of disgrace then we will be blessed; the Lord himself will speak well of us
even if all the world should hold us in derision. Jesus said, “Blessed are
those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say
all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great
is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who
were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)
In addition to the challenge of disgrace,
Joseph faced the challenge of decision. What was he to do? Even though Mary was pregnant, apparently
by another man, he still loved her. He cared about her welfare more than his
own. Yet, it was against God’s law for him to go ahead with the marriage.
Matthew tells us
that Joseph was a righteous man. This means that Joseph cared most about
pleasing God and keeping God’s law. For Joseph, God’s Word came first, even before
his feelings for Mary. Thus, Joseph decided to divorce Mary.
Joseph had every
right, by Jewish law, to bring public suit against Mary and expose her to a
public trial. If Mary was found guilty of adultery, she would not have been
stoned to death, as the Mosaic law had been tempered by this time. But it still
would have been an ugly affair. Thus, Joseph decided not to apply the full
rigor of the law in this situation, while still being obedient to God’s command
as he understood it. In short, Joseph decided to give Mary a bill of divorce in
private.
Now it was just
at this point, after Joseph had made his decision, that an angel of the Lord appeared
to him in a dream. The angel called him “Joseph, son of David”. Already, in
this form of address, there is a foreshadowing of the tremendous news that the
angel has for Joseph. The angel reminds Joseph that he is a descendant of King
David. Joseph certainly remembers the promises to David of an eternal kingdom. He
remembers that the Messiah, the promised Savior, is to be a descendant of
David.
Then the angel
goes on to say, “do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what
is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 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.”
It is at this
point that I know some of us may feel a bit uneasy. Miracles don’t really
happen, do they? Remarkable healings, maybe, but not babies born without human
fathers. I understand the question, but I want to respond to it more fully, and
to do that, I am going to ask you to wait for the answer until next week when I
talk about Mary’s perspective on Christmas. For the moment, I invite any
skeptics among us to suspend disbelief and contemplate: “What if the God who
made the universe, not only could, but did perform this miracle? What must it
have felt like for Joseph to receive this message from the angel?”
It was an
awesome message! Joseph must have been relieved to know that Mary had not
wronged him or forsaken him. He was probably overjoyed to find out that the
Lord wanted him to go ahead with the marriage, an action that was in keeping
with his great affection for Mary. But Joseph must have been awestruck as he
considered who this baby was. He was to be named Jesus, which means “Yahweh
saves”. And as Matthew explains to us, this baby was Immanuel, meaning “God with
us.” This baby, Mary’s baby, was God in the flesh. How could Joseph, a simple
carpenter, receive God’s Son into his home? How could he raise the Savior? Was
he worthy of such an honor? Questions such as these must have been circling in
Joseph’s mind as he tried to decide how to respond.
We too are faced
with a similar decision: will we accept Jesus? We may be tempted to feel we are
not worthy of having the Son of God in our lives. Yet, that is exactly why
Jesus came—to rescue us. Jesus came to earth precisely because we are not
worthy; we are all sinners in need of a Savior.
As we consider
our decision regarding Jesus we need to remember that if we fail to decide,
other factors may decide for us.
The story is
told about the aunt of Ronald Reagan taking the young lad to the cobbler one
day to have a custom pair of shoes made for him. The cobbler asked, “Do you
want square toes or round toes?” Ronnie hemmed and hawed; he didn’t know what
he wanted. So the cobbler said: “That’s alright, you think about it, then come
back and tell me what you want.” So Ronnie went away. He saw the cobbler a
couple of days later, but he still didn’t know what he wanted. The cobbler
said, “OK. Just come back in a few days and your shoes will be ready.”
When Reagan came
back to collect his new shoes, the cobbler had made one shoe with a square toe
and one with a round toe. Then he said to young Ronald Reagan, “That will teach
you never to let other people make your decisions for you!”
If we don’t make
a deliberate decision to welcome Jesus into our lives, other people may make
the decision for us. If Joseph had not made the decision to bring Mary and
Jesus into his home, his family probably would have made the decision for him
and their decision would have been not to go through with the marriage.
Once we make the decision to accept Jesus
into our lives we are then faced with another challenge: the challenge of
doing. Joseph faced the
challenge of doing what the angel told him to do.
What was
Joseph’s response? His response was immediate and radical obedience. Matthew
tells us that “when Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had
commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”
Once we have
accepted Jesus into our lives we face the challenge of doing God’s will every
day. C. S. Lewis puts it this way in his book, Mere Christianity….
…
the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look
for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and
hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning
consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice,
taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter
life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural
fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.[1]
Have you
accepted the challenge of doing, the challenge of living out a long obedience
in the same direction? That is the challenge that Joseph faced as he brought
Mary into his home and set about raising the Son of God.
Once we accept the challenge of doing,
there is another challenge that goes along with it: the challenge of
discipline. Matthew
tells us that Joseph had no union with Mary until she gave birth to a son. In
other words, Joseph took Mary into his home, he was living with her day in and
day out for all those months until Jesus was born, and during that entire time
he refrained from having sexual relations with her. When viewed from the
vantage point of our contemporary society, this fact comes across as nothing
less than astonishing. Can you imagine getting married to someone and living
with them but putting off the honeymoon night for something like nine months?
Why did Joseph
do this? Perhaps Joseph anticipated the questions that would later be asked
about Jesus. In Matthew 13 we read that Jesus came to his hometown and…
…
began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did
this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this
the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers
James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did
this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him.
Perhaps Joseph
anticipated just such questions as these and he wanted to be able to say with
certainty, “No, this is not my biological son. This is the Son of God.”
I think Joseph sets
a model for us with respect to self-restraint, and I don’t mean simply
regarding sexuality. I think there is a more general application. It may be
that to follow the Lord wholeheartedly we will sometimes need to say “no” to
some good things so that we may say “yes” to better things.
The writer Alexander
Solzhenitsyn spent most of his life, before being expelled from his native
country, either in prison or under KGB surveillance in the Soviet Union. He
once said that while living in a Soviet prison camp he discovered that “the
meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in
prospering, but…in development of the soul.” Perhaps that is why, when he came
to America, he chose to spend much of his time living in a small Vermont town,
writing in a simple cabin, furnished only with the barest of necessities.
To say “yes” to
the things that will develop our souls will sometimes mean saying “no” to some
seemingly good things that may distract us from “soul development”. Whatever
our circumstances may be, if we accept Jesus into our lives we will face the
challenge of discipline amidst a society bent against self-restraint….
Christmas time
is here again with the challenges of long lines in the stores, finding just the
right gifts, and the inevitable tensions that arise when extended families
gather together. But Christmas poses more challenges than these. The birth of
Jesus, the Savior, “God with us”, poses the challenges of disgrace, decision,
doing, and discipline. The question is: will we accept these challenges?
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