A Life-Changing Christmas for Joseph

You know that there is a man in scripture that never speaks a word. Not once is this man quoted as having said anything. He is Joseph of Joseph and Mary. Joseph the silent. Not once is there a word that he utters that is recorded in scripture.

And yet, Joseph is a hero of the Bible. If Joseph had been in a Hollywood movie, he'd be considered an extra. Someone that didn't have any lines to speak, someone that was just in the background. A poet once said, what you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

But of Joseph, it might be said, what he did speaks so loudly that there was no need for him to say anything. We don't have much detail about the life of Joseph. Joseph is on the scene at Jesus' arrival, at his birth. Joseph is mentioned another time later in Jesus' adult ministry where people are astounded by what Jesus does and they say, isn't he the son of this carpenter? But Joseph seemingly fades from the scene pretty quickly.

Although we don't have much detail about that life, at Christmas time, we do have the opportunity to stop and reflect, and we reflect on Jesus and we reflect on Mary, but we have an opportunity in the lead up to Christmas this morning to look at the life of Joseph as well. And this morning, as we do this, we will see how God's plan of salvation often breaks away from expectations, often breaks away from what we would think God would naturally or logically do. And we see how God can happily, easily turn people's lives upside down before God calls them to remarkable things. We're going to look at Matthew chapter one this morning.

It is probably a passage that you'll read or hear a number of times over this Christmas period. You may have been reading it in your personal reading leading up to Advent to Christmas. Matthew one verse eighteen through to twenty five. The birth of Jesus. Matthew chapter one verse eighteen.

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfil what the Lord has spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Three points that I want to share from this passage this morning. As we look at the life changing Christmas for Joseph. Firstly, we see just in this small passage how God deconstructs a life before he starts reconstructing it. We see this happening in the first two verses of our passage. Verse eighteen, now the birth of Jesus took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. Now it would be difficult to imagine a more complicated situation than hearing the news that Joseph heard. Mary, the apple of his eye, the one that he had resolved himself to marry, tells him that she had somehow gone pregnant and so called through the working of God. Yeah.

Right. You've got to be kidding me, Joseph is thinking. You think it's hard for people now to believe in the virgin birth? It wasn't any easier back then. People knew how babies were made.

And so there was no amount of explaining that Mary could do to say that this miracle has happened in this way. No amount of promises from Mary of her faithfulness, that she had been faithful all along. Nothing that she could have said was persuading Joseph that something dodgy didn't happen. In fact, we know two things that he would have understood. Firstly, the fact that he hadn't slept with her.

He knew that. The second thing is that Mary was now pregnant. And that could only mean one thing: Mary had been unfaithful. Can you imagine the heartache? Imagine the pain of that rejection and betrayal.

If Joseph decided to go through with the marriage, this baby would have been born way too early to have been considered a honeymoon baby. If he had gone through with that marriage, people would have talked. They would have assumed that something happened between him and her before the wedding day. And so Joseph was really going to bear the pressure and the condemnation of a community that would not and could not possibly understand and believe a virgin birth. Was Joseph willing to go and bear that, to bear that behind the back criticism of people in the streets of Nazareth saying, have you heard?

Do you know? For someone that had nothing to do with that process. And Jesus thought to himself and said, no. I can't. I won't.

Mary, obviously, for some reason, doesn't love me. Some reason, Mary has fallen for another man. In a wonderfully understated and actually a delightful way, the Bible gives us this one descriptive insight into Joseph, and that's in verse nineteen we read. Verse nineteen says that Joseph was a just man. Joseph, it means, was a man who desired to do what is right.

To do what is right by Mary, to do what is right by himself, to do what is right by God's law. Matthew says, because he was a just man, he decided to divorce Mary, but to do so quietly. To not pile on shame, not to put a Facebook status up to say, you know, it's all over and these are the reasons why. He decided to say, well, Mary obviously loves someone else, belongs to another man. And so Joseph decides to divorce her.

Respectfully, Mary is her name, would not be dragged through the mud, so to speak. She could go back to this other man in her life. He could start moving on with his own. Meanwhile, God is busy with something. God is busy doing something and it is something big.

Joseph has no idea. Mary has some idea, but Joseph has got nothing to work with. He's only received this news. He has to decide what he does. God's incredible blessing, however, is on its way.

God's incredible blessing, the honour of being the father, or you could say the step father of Jesus Christ the Messiah would be his forever. That is the blessing that awaits Joseph. Imagine it. Of all the honours, of all the most magnificent things that could happen to any of us. Being the father of Jesus Christ would have to be up there.

But so often, God takes away something before He gives something. So often God breaks down before He builds up. So often God deconstructs before He reconstructs what is needed. Why did Joseph have to think about this. Why did Joseph have to wait in ignorance all that time before the angel confirmed to him what happened?

In that moment where Gabriel saw Mary and said, you're going to be with child, why not go to Joseph and say the same thing to him? Why that length of time, those weeks, those months in between? Why did Joseph have to go through all those sleepless nights worrying, crying that Mary, the apple of his eye, had been unfaithful? Because there was something that Joseph had to see, something that he had to learn in the process of deconstruction. Joseph had to feel the incredible miracle of the virgin birth.

He had to feel it. He had to doubt as much as we all do that something like that could be real. He had to be brought to a point of humility in acknowledging that in his own strength, he could not have imagined something like the incarnation in a million years. God, in the flesh coming to earth. So often, God breaks us down and humbles us before He begins a work of building us up in order to call us to something.

He brings us low in order to break us in, and I think that's what's happening here with Joseph. So that's the first point. God deconstructs before He reconstructs. The next thing we see happening in that passage is that God holds out a promise for Joseph to grab onto. The Bible says, verse twenty, that as Joseph was weighing up his options considering how he would quietly divorce Mary, an angel appears to him in a dream.

The angel says to him, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now again, we see a wonderful insight in this passage happening here. We see that Joseph is afraid. Why does the angel say, do not fear to take Mary as your wife?

Because Joseph is afraid. Joseph is worried. But here is God then giving a promise, giving a message, a word for Joseph to grab and to believe. The promise is that, yes, this pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit. The promise is that Mary will have a boy.

The promise is that this boy will be named Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Three promises are made. Joseph has to believe them. The angel simply says, this is what the word is. This is the message that you must believe.

Believe. This pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit. This pregnancy will cause a boy to be born to you. This boy's name will be Jesus because he will save people from their sin.

Those are promises. And Joseph has to believe that. He has to grab a hold of that. Joseph is given, in other words, the challenge of obedience.

Will you obey? Will you obey? Will you do what God is asking of you? Marry this woman. Raise this boy as your own and name him Jesus with the belief that he can save people from their sin.

Joseph, despite his fear, obeys. Think about it again. What does Joseph have to go on? What does he have? I mean, he's got this incredible dream of an angel and perhaps some of us will say, if only I could have a dream like that.

I could be as strong in the faith as Joseph. I wonder how many times, times when he has to flee with Jesus after he's just been born into Egypt for years because Herod is after them to kill them? How many moments did he think maybe that dream wasn't real? Maybe it was just, you know, a weird nightmare. Is this really what's happening?

What does Joseph have to go on? As Jesus disappears twelve years later into the temple courts, remember when they go to Jerusalem and they start heading home? They're already halfway there and they realise Jesus is not with them. What does Joseph have to go on? This boy that is so unlike him.

He is sitting with the Pharisees teaching them. Joseph is a humble carpenter, a quiet guy. What does Joseph have to go on? He goes on God's word. He holds to a promise.

And you think, well, does Joseph is pretty special to have received a message like that from an angel. And yes, that's true. Joseph is unique. There are and will never be any more Josephs. It's futile to read Joseph's story and say to ourselves, be like Joseph.

We're not in that situation. But do you know what? At the end of the day, Joseph needed to obey God's will just like we do. At the end of the day, an angel did speak, an angel did proclaim a promise, but Joseph still needed to believe and obey it. And again, so often when God is busy reconstructing us after He's broken us down, He begins that process of calling into place, calling into motion something else.

And He does that by giving His word. He does that by promising something. You must believe and obey. Friends, there have been many people that have been brought low by God in that process of deconstruction. And there have been many that have been able to acknowledge that God has done that.

Many people that say, I'm going through this hard time. I've been brought low because God is doing something. But once they reach that low, instead of taking the promise of God, the promise that if they will live for Him, if they will abandon the things that God is wanting to rid them of, if they will obey and believe and sell their lives over to Him. Some people choose the alternative.

In the furnace of that deconstruction, when they have been brought to that point of aloneness, some choose to take their own life instead. Others sell their souls to Satan, to the prince of this world to get the earthly comforts that their minds need to take their attention off, their environments. Even as they do that, they forfeit their eternal lives. God has been working on them to reconstruct them, breaking them down to that part and they don't realise it and they choose the alternative. And I want us to say from Joseph's example, from Joseph's life, that life may get tough.

Before a God who is sovereign, a God who is in control, we believe of absolutely everything in our lives. Nothing that happens to us is ever wasted. There are promises that you need to hold on to. Words that you must believe are true. There is a purpose that God has given your life that you must fulfil and only you will fulfil it.

It doesn't matter how insignificant you think your life is. It doesn't matter how small your purpose is in this massive world. There is a promise and there is a calling that is only yours. And so our response, God tells us, is to trust Him, to obey Him, to follow that promise. So God holds out a promise for Joseph to grab onto.

But then perhaps the most amazing out of this passage is this third and final point which shows us that God needs to save even the best amongst us. We've just heard many times how remarkable Joseph was. He was a good man. He was a just man. He was a fair man.

This man who in so many ways remains mysterious and elusive. It was a man who sacrificed greatly for his wife and for that child, but that didn't belong to him really. He fled Egypt for many years. He was a man who accepted that he would play second fiddle his whole life to this son of his. Joseph was a good man, but even so, he is brought to the point here, even here at the beginning, of realising that God needs to save even him.

Verse twenty two. This is what it reads. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Verse twenty four, when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, Mary, but knew her not. In other words, did not sleep with her until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. Matthew, the gospel writer, gives us the insight that the virgin birth of Jesus is fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah. This prophecy was written seven hundred years before this moment.

And it tells of a virgin giving birth to a son and this boy is given the name Emmanuel, which in the Hebrew means God with us. Now whether Joseph realises the significance of this moment, whether he remembers or knows this prophecy or not, I'm not sure. I think this is an editorial that Matthew inserts into the story. It doesn't seem like the angel has even explained this to Joseph at the time. But there is something significant in what the angel tells Joseph in how he is to name his son.

Jesus, in Hebrew, means salvation. That's why the angel has to explain, you are to call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Even at the start of Jesus' life, the end of his life is in view. And do you notice this wasn't salvation in some political sense? It's not he will save his people from oppression of the Romans.

It's not he will save the people from their boredom. It's not he will save the people from a low sense of self esteem. It is explained by the angel that he will save them from their sin. What would it have been like for Joseph to have held that baby in his arms on that night in Bethlehem, looking at this small, naked, vulnerable little thing. My brother has just had a baby.

It is a bag of meat. They can hardly fend for themselves, defenceless. And he has to call this baby Jesus, the one who will save me. Joseph, one of the best, needs the love of Jesus, needs the work of Jesus on the cross because it is on the cross that Jesus would pay for my sin. Perhaps the greatest promise that Joseph had to believe that night was when the angel spoke to him and said, well, this miracle of the virgin birth is pretty great, but that's not the greatest promise.

And the greatest promise isn't that Mary has been faithful to you. The most profound promise Joseph had to believe was that he was a sinner in need of the arrival of this little bag of bones and flesh. Friend, if you forget sometimes that you need Jesus, if you live your daily life sometimes very far removed from any affiliation or affection for Christ, you are probably forgetting that you need salvation. In some way, you might be thinking that your life is not too bad, it's not too shameful. Today is a good day.

Tomorrow, it might be a train wreck, but today, I'm okay. I'm not. My life is not too bad, not too shameful. At least, I'm not as bad as the guy next door. This moment in Joseph's life tells us that God needs to save even the best amongst us. So I wanna ask you, will you trust in Christ for your salvation?

Will you go to Him with your sin, believing that it is your sin and that it is your sin that you must be saved from? Will you take hold of the promise that His death on the cross, His resurrection from the grave was for you? Not for the good person next to you or the bad person in front of you, was for you. And do you believe? Will you take hold of that promise that you must make Him the Lord of your life in response to His grace?

As we head into Christmas, I hope that we can stop just a moment to remember the often forgotten man of Joseph. Even as we reflect on what God was doing in the life of Mary, and the wise men, and the shepherds, and the life of Herod. As we move into the next couple of weeks of Christmas, let's stop to remember that God often builds us up after He's broken us down. Remember that God often draws us to Himself through an invitation to take Him at His word and to trust and believe that word. But may we also remember that the greatest of all these promises is the promise of salvation in Christ Jesus. And that the only thing standing in our way of receiving that promise is to think that this salvation is not for me.

Jesus has come to save sinners from their sin. And all along, the plan was that God needed to save even the best from amongst us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these words as we move into this Christmas period as we start focusing our attentions, Lord, on our Christmas carols where we will sing of how the herald angels sung, of how the world in its gloom awaited the light of life. Help us to see, Lord, that amongst all the magnificence and the promises of hope and peace, the sentimentality of goodwill to all men.

Lord, that in this process, the plan was always the same, to save sinners from their sin. But we thank you for the life of Joseph. We thank you, Lord, that you used him in an incredible way to be the facilitator of his adopted son, to produce for him a platform by which he would live, teach, and eventually die in order to save the world. We thank you for his humble testimony, his humble account. We thank you for his faithfulness, the faithfulness, Lord, that you produced in him.

But Lord, we pray that we may also, in some way, remember and believe what you have done, what you are doing in the lives of people, that you will deconstruct us in order to reconstruct, that you will overhaul us in order to believe, that you will call us to something we could never in a million years believe for ourselves. We commit our lives to you again, Lord, and we receive this Jesus Christ as our Saviour. Amen.