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Matthew 1:18-25
12/12/2010
Introduction
How would it have felt to be Joseph? To be looking forward and working toward being married, only to find out that your fiancé has become pregnant by someone else?
We’re going to spend a bit of time getting to know Joseph and learning some more about what God did in his life. By doing this not only will we get to know the Christmas story better, but we will be better prepared for those times in our lives when we feel sinned against and we’re not sure how to respond. It happens to all of us in different ways, and we can learn a lot from Joseph and a lot from God’s word this morning to help us with that.
The Story
18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
Verse 18 summarizes for us what we already know from looking at Luke’s gospel last week. Mary and Joseph were betrothed but God announced to Mary that she would have a child that would not be the result of a normal physical union but would be through the power of the Holy Spirit.
This has in fact come about, and it’s now been found out that Mary is pregnant. We don’t know how it’s been found out. Perhaps Mary went straight away to her parents or to Joseph and explained to them.
Perhaps she’s kept her encounter with Gabriel to herself (how would you feel about telling your parents that God made you pregnant?) but is beginning to exhibit signs of pregnancy.
I want us to think for a moment about what this means for Joseph.
He’s described in verse 19 as being a righteous man. We can assume that as he and his parents looked for a suitable bride, they would have been looking for someone who would share Joseph’s commitment to live rightly, to live according to God’s laws. We can assume that Mary’s parents and Mary herself also had this as a high priority in weighing up whether Joseph would be a suitable husband for Mary.
We need to understand this cultural aspect of how marriages were arranged. The biggest issue was not “falling in love”, but a careful process whereby both sets of parents as well as the couple concerned evaluated the suitability of the man and woman for one another.
Anyone who has been married any length of time can tell you that feelings of attraction and the emotional rush of “falling in love” are terrific, but not enough to sustain a marriage.
The first thing that Carolyn found attractive in me was my eyes. I won’t tell you what she said to her friend, because that would be weird, but she really liked my dark brown eyes!
But imagine if we got together at that point (which we didn’t) and Carolyn then discovered that I was selfish, chauvinistic, lazy and so on. The value of my brown eyes wouldn’t last very long! They wouldn’t keep our relationship going.
Our society places a huge emphasis on physical attraction and other qualities that actually don’t mean a lot for successful long term relationships.
When Joseph became betrothed to Mary he believed that he had found a virtuous woman. He thought that he had found someone who was committed to what he was committed to – living according to the laws of God.
This thinking is reflected in the writings of the Apostle Paul, a fellow Jew, as he wrote about how we should evaluate potential partners – not just in marriage, but in life in general.
2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? [1]
This is a strong value for Jews – the idea of remaining separate in order to be holy was ingrained in their thinking. That’s why Jews tried not to have too much contact with Gentiles – people who did not worship the true God.
I want you to remember though that Paul was a man who desperately loved unbelievers and did everything possible to reach them with the gospel. He became all things to all men so that by all possible means he might save some (1 Cor. 9:22).
But with the wisdom God gave him he also recognised that you can’t tie people together when they are pulling in different directions. You can’t be a full partner with someone who does not share your values. You can’t follow God and at the same time travel a path with someone who is in rebellion against God.
Many Christians have found them in this situation, and we need to remember that the grace of God is always enough. We’ve seen God do great things in families through one believing spouse/parent (see 1 Cor. 7:10-17). However when given the choice God’s word is clear – do not choose to be unequally yoked.
That’s the dilemma that Joseph now faces. It appears as though the woman he thought was going in the same direction as himself is actually a person who does not follow God’s laws. As a righteous man Joseph could not see himself bound together with someone who did not share his values.
I want you to understand the great character that he shows here. He’s been hurt. He probably feels betrayed, deceived even humiliated – things no bloke wants to feel.
The normal response to feelings like these is anger and retribution. You want to get back at the person who has hurt you. You want other people to know what a villain that person is.
But we see that Joseph did not want to punish Mary or see her disgraced, in fact he hoped to deal with the matter quietly. What a great example. When someone sins against you do you try to work out the matter quietly or do you go tell people about it, recruit people to your side, punish the one who has hurt you? The Bible has a lot to say on this subject, but if I were to sum it up it would be in these two instructions: follow the law of love and keep the offense small. Don’t let it spread and contaminate others unnecessarily.
Joseph was trying to do that. He is the one who has been apparently sinned against, but he’s wrestling with a decision that will be in the best interests of Mary while at the same time keep his own life on track with God.
But then an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and addresses the issue on Joseph’s heart. He’s afraid to be married to a woman that he has lost confidence in. He’s possibly afraid that one infidelity may lead to another. How is love going to grow without trust? If Mary was prepared to disobey God and betray him before their marriage was completed, what sort of wife and mother will she turn out to be?
There’s another reason that Joseph may have been afraid to take Mary home as his wife. At this stage Joseph has a reputation that is intact. Mary has apparently done the wrong thing, but Joseph hasn’t. He is the victim.
If he takes Mary to be his wife, it would be like admitting that he was the father of the child, that they had not waited until they were married. Why else would he accept responsibility for it?
Joseph has a tough choice. He can expose Mary to public disgrace, or he can marry her in which case they will both likely be disgraced. Or he can call off the marriage as quietly as possible. The word for divorce is literally “send away” or “release”. Perhaps Joseph is thinking that Mary could go live with relatives. Her pregnancy could be explained in a number of different ways.
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.”
Had Mary already tried to explain this to Joseph or to her family? We don’t know. But Joseph needed to hear it from God.
God in his grace gives Joseph the assurance that what is going on is in fact God’s plan and it’s a very special plan.
First the angel reminds Joseph that he is a “son of David”, in other words a descendant of David. As we saw last week, it is important for Jesus to have that legal status as well. The thing to note here for Joseph is that he has a role in what God is doing. It’s not just about Mary and the child she bears, it’s important that Joseph be the legal father so that Jesus inherits the royal lineage of David.
Secondly the angel reassures Joseph of Mary’s faithfulness and her part in God’s plan. She is a virgin, despite the fact that she is pregnant. The baby she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Mary really is the person Joseph thought her to be. She is someone who is committed to following God’s ways. She is someone he can marry with confidence in her character.
Thirdly, the angel reveals the reason that this has all come about…
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.”
The Jews were eagerly anticipating a Saviour, but this was not the sort of Saviour they had in mind. They wanted political and religious freedom. They wanted their country back.
Now God through the angel announces to Joseph that the Saviour has come, but it’s a very different type of salvation – it’s salvation from our sins. It’s not oppression from without but the sin that is within that is humanity’s greatest problem.
I listened to a sermon during the week from a very popular international speaker, but his message of salvation seemed pretty different from the salvation that the angel announced to Joseph.
Jesus did not come to save you from being financially poor in this life. He did not come to save you from being physically sick in this life. He did not come to save you from being emotionally low in this life. He did not come to save you from being relationally distressed in this life.
Don’t misunderstand me – I believe that Jesus blesses us in every area of life and sometimes we should pay a lot more attention and have a lot more faith in His love for us and His power to work in our lives as we do what He says.
But He came first and foremost to save us from our sins. He came to reconcile us to God. He came to take the punishment we deserve so we could inherit the blessing He deserves. You don’t know Jesus if you don’t know that. It’s no mistake that the people who had the hardest time accepting Jesus were the people who had the hardest time acknowledging their need to be saved from their sins.
So God through His angel communicates these things to Joseph, with the result that…
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 had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
When we read Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus (which we will next week!) we discover that Luke says Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph. However in Matthew we read that Joseph took Mary home as his wife before they travelled to Bethlehem
The reason for this is quite simple. In ancient Jewish culture (as in many cultures even today) a marriage was not considered complete until the bride and groom had been physically intimate. Still today we refer to this as consummating (completing) the marriage.
As Matthew explains in verse 25, Joseph and Mary had not completed their marriage, and would not do so until sometime after the birth of Jesus.
It was certainly not usual for a man to take a wife home and not be intimate with her, but these were special circumstances. Once again Joseph’s righteousness is demonstrated in self-control.
Going back to verse 22..
22 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
I used to find this a bit odd – Joseph is told to name the baby “Jesus” (which he does in verse 25) and this apparently fulfils a prophecy that He will be called “Immanuel”!
In fact, the prophecy in Isaiah 7 is being fulfilled not in the name Jesus but in who Jesus is – God with us. Jesus has been called by the name Immanuel through the centuries just as Isaiah predicted. This is because of what Joseph was told in verse 20 and what the New Testament affirms in many other places – Jesus was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. It was something only an Almighty God could do. God the Son, through whom the Universe was made, was somehow transformed – made flesh – inside Mary. God became one of us.
Isn’t that amazing? The One who created everything – the one who is vast beyond our understanding or imagination – changed to become a collection of a few cells with incredible DNA inside a young woman’s womb. How is it possible? We don’t know, it’s just part of the wonder of who God is and what He does.
Application:
What can we take away from this story that will change how we live?
- Remember and follow the example of Joseph, a righteous man. We will be hurt, we will struggle to understand what God is doing at times, we will wrestle with tough decisions when there seems no good outcome to be found. Follow the law of love, keep any offences small and when God reveals His will, don’t be afraid to do it.
- Remember the name “Jesus” and the explanation – for He will save His people from their sins. Let Him change you from the inside out. Remember that your greatest problem is not what others do or what circumstances you face, but the sin that is within you. Confess your sins, He is faithful to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-10).
- Remember the name “Immanuel”. God is really with us. He is God of the infinite and the infinitesimal. Whatever is going on in your life He is aware and He cares. Experience His presence in every part of your life, and you will discover the incredible difference He makes.
[1]All Scriptures from The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984. Grand Rapids
