Good Monday morning. I trust you had a great weekend. I truly think studying this is helping me not get caught up in the frenzy of the season and that is a great thing! I hope it is that way for you too. Financially, this is a slim year for Christmas for many of us, but I think even that is by design, so as to take our eyes off the material and place them on the spiritual meaning this time holds for us. Let’s look at it as an act of grace. For the past, at least 10, years, I have usually gotten sick at Christmas, and I think it is from the stress of getting caught up in the dizzying activity of the season.
Today, we are going to jump over to Matthew, chapter 1, since Luke did not record the story of Joseph. Matthew wrote about Joseph and what happened to him before Mary gave birth to Jesus.
18This 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. 19Because 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.
The Bible says that Joseph was a righteous man. Joseph was now already in a legally binding contract of betrothal with Mary. And he found that his fiancée was pregnant by some person other than himself! It may have been before she left to see Elizabeth, or after she returned three months later, that she had “the talk” with Joseph. In my mind, I think she probably told him before she left, and that it gave Joseph the time he needed with the Lord to deal with it before she came back home from Elizabeth’s house three months later. Regardless, according to Jewish law, any man who was engaged to a woman who turned out not to be a virgin, was entitled to bring evidence against her and she could be tried publicly and possibly stoned to death (Deut 22:20-21). He could also divorce her, as during the betrothal period they were legally bound together already and the only thing that could break the betrothal was death or divorce. Interestingly, those that keep Jewish law were considered righteous. But God saw a different righteousness in Joseph. HIS kind of righteousness – grace that went beyond the law. Joseph did not want her publicly humiliated, and he certainly did not want to have her stoned to death. So, he decided to quietly divorce her. Just that one act speaks volumes to me of Joseph’s character. His very manhood and ego had been insulted, his fiancée was pregnant, it wasn’t his child, he would be ridiculed by his peers, and probably encouraged by his buddies to “teach her a lesson” and save face! What a humiliating situation for a man to be in! Some of you men reading this can probably imagine the kind of struggle this brought up in Joseph. Trying to be a Godly man, and then this! Why? Why was God doing this to him?? He was a righteous man. But something within Joseph’s spirit, a man in the lineage of David (and Bathsheba), found grace for the situation, and put aside his own ego and reputation, in Mary’s behalf. Divorcing her quietly was an act of mercy on his part. An act that was the very picture of the child he would soon raise.
BUT.....now here comes another angel! Zechariah, Mary and now Joseph. Joseph’s visitation was different in that it was in a dream. However, do not discount the significance, as dreams and visions have carried an incredible amount of weight all through Jewish history. (Look at how big a part dreams played in the other Joseph’s story in the Old Testament, among countless others.) In our day, we can tend to discount dreams and attribute them to the pizza we ate the night before. And some of them are just that! However, I truly believe God is still active in our dream life. I have had many dreams that were definitely God speaking to me. See, when we dream, our logical conscious mind is at rest, and I believe that sometimes, people like me would explain away things in the daytime with our mind, but at night God has full access to my mind. He’s shown me some amazing things at night. And what he showed Joseph that night was an angelic visitation, a night vision, another divine intervention. No doubt, Joseph’s mind was churning and reeling and trying to figure out the best way to handle this situation, and when he finally fell asleep one night after having toiled through an unending torrent of thoughts and solutions all day, his mind became available and quieted so that he could hear the Holy Spirit. And this dream would not be the end of Joseph’s dreaming, as you will see later.
20But 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. 21She 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 angel identified Joseph by his name, but also by his lineage, son of David. By this point in the story, I’m coming to realize that no word spoken by an angel is insignificant! I believe each word carried weight, such as the fact that he greeted him as the son of David. I think later Joseph would recall that phrase, maybe many times throughout his life of raising Jesus, and realize that even though he was not the earthly father of Jesus, that he was in the lineage of David, as was Mary, and that he was also part of the divine design to fulfill the prophecies that David would always have a descendant on the throne, that Jesus was a son of David. He was chosen to be a part of this prophecy just as much as any other person in this story. God himself chose Joseph to be the man he knew would raise his son and love him as his own. He chose Joseph’s hands to place Jesus into to be the man in his life. His financial status didn’t matter – he was just a poor carpenter, a man who created things with wood. But it was his heart that God was after.
Joseph was told not to be afraid to take Mary home as his wife. In the end of the betrothal period, the custom was that the groomsmen would come to the house of the bride and her bridesmaids and bring them through a procession at night, to end up at the house of the groom, and to come into the house to live with him from that point forward. (That’s a whole different study, because there is so much significance in it comparing this Jewish tradition to our bride and groom relationship we have with Jesus.) So the angel was telling him not to be afraid to go ahead with the final traditional act of making Mary his wife, by bringing her into his home. That sort of nixed the divorce idea! But the angel, again graciously, told him why.... “because what is conceived in her is from God himself, she is innocent, she is still a virgin, she is God’s divine instrument chosen to bring a Messiah to Joseph’s people.” I find the next phrase very interesting. The angel told Joseph, “YOU” are to give him the name Jesus. He told Mary the same thing, but he didn’t have to include Joseph in this. He had no physical contribution to this birth. I’m sure he at times must have felt like a total outsider in this divine relationship between God and Mary and Jesus. But God said that Joseph was to name Jesus. God wanted him to be a part of Jesus’ life, not an outsider. As all fathers did in that culture, he was told to name his “son”. God was entrusting Joseph his very own son. God chose Joseph to be the father to his child. Wow!! I believes that speaks volumes of Joseph’s character. It is hard for a man to be a Godly father, to love his family deeply, provide for the family, spend time in relationship with his children and his wife, but it is a great step further to be asked to do the same for a child who is in no way a part of you – a step-child. How appropriate in our time today in our century, when divorce is rampant, yet God in his grace still wants to place children in homes where there is a father figure and a mother, both willing to sacrifice their personal agenda in order to raise a child to know God. What a high calling. It to me echoes the very nature of Jesus and God, in that we are ALL adopted into his family. Every one of us is adopted, and God has chosen to love us as if we were his own birth child!
I have a step-daughter. I know a lot of you reading this have step-children. Step-families are hard. I was not a good step-mother when it all started. I was caught up in all the blended family issues that inevitably occur, and unfortunately in a lot of selfishness on my part. But I can say today that I love Olivia like she is one of my own children. She is a part of me in some way, even though she is not mine by birth. In fact, some of her traits and talents are as much like some of mine as if we were related by blood. She is a blessing in my life, and has provided me with an experience I would not have known apart from her being in my life.
22All this took place to fulfill 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."
24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And HE gave him the name Jesus.
Joseph completed the betrothal at some point before Jesus was born and took Mary into his home as his wife, although he kept her a virgin.
Joseph loved God, but he learned that loving God was about loving the woman he thought was unfaithful, and about being willing to change his own view about what is the right thing to do in life. Not just follow the Law, but follow the higher law of love. Joseph was a righteous man who was opened up to God, God’s love and God’s purposes, even though Joseph probably didn’t understand them fully anymore than we always do. But Joseph was willing to go with God, and that meant going with Mary, and the birth that was about to take place.
Who is it in your life that God has called you to be in relationship with? To love like your own? What is it in your life that sort of stopped your plans and changed the direction of your life? Do you understand that God must see a depth of character in you to have chosen you for the thing he is asking of you? If he can send his own son into the safe-keeping of human hands for your well-being and salvation, can you accept what he wants to send into your life for another’s safe-keeping and well-being and possibly their eternal salvation? Can you accept that your life is about more than just you? Can you do the selfless thing he asks of you when he asks?
It is a hard thing to ponder, but God will ask it of you at some point, if he hasn’t already.
Be blessed. Love beyond your bloodline.
Teresa
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