The Hardship of Joseph's Christmas

Have our reading this morning done by Phil, who's going to read from Matthew 1, verses 18 to 25. Matthew's account of the Christmas event. So thank you, Phil, for doing our reading. Matthew 1, verse 18. 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 had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from his 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. Do you know that he never speaks a single word in the biblical record? Not once is he quoted as having said anything.

He is Joseph the silent. Joseph the husband of Mary, the man who stood beside that manger in Bethlehem, the man who carried Christ in his arms is Joseph the silent. If Joseph had been in a Hollywood movie, he'd be considered an extra, someone without any lines. And yet Joseph ranks as one of the heroes of the Bible. A poet once said, what you do is speaking so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Of Joseph, we might say what he did speak so loudly that there was no need for him to have said anything. And although we don't have much detail of his life, and there is something in me that just wishes I had something more, although we don't have much detail about his life, at Christmas time, we do get the opportunity to look at how God worked in and through the life of this silent man. As we do this, we see how God's plan of salvation often breaks away from our expectations and how God uses even difficult things. God uses hardship to bring about things that are amazing. Let's have a look at the birth of Christ through the eyes of Joseph.

Firstly, in the story that we just read, Matthew 1, verses 18 to 25, we see that hardship happens to even the best among us. Verses 18 and 19, we read, 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. Hard to imagine a situation that was more complicated and more devastating at the same time.

Mary, the woman that Joseph had been set to marry, was pregnant. And if we work off the timeline that we have in Luke's account, remember Mary heard that she was pregnant, and she goes immediately to a town near Jerusalem in Judah to visit her relative Elizabeth for three months. That would have taken from Nazareth down maybe a week or two and a week or two back. So we're talking Mary by now being back in Nazareth, presumably around her betrothed husband. It's about four months of pregnancy.

She might be starting to show. And here is Joseph hearing that his betrothed wife-to-be is pregnant. Of all the outlandish reasons to give for her pregnancy, Mary tells Joseph that he somehow gotten her pregnant. Verse 18 says, from the Holy Spirit. If you think it's hard for people to believe in the virgin birth today, don't believe it was easier back then. Yeah.

Right. Joseph thinks to himself. People back then, as well as we do, knew how babies were made. And there is no amount of explaining that Mary can do. No descriptions of angelic pronouncements that she can make, no amount of promises of marital faithfulness that persuades Joseph of anything other than two facts.

He and Mary have not been intimate, and Mary is now pregnant. Add two and two together, and it means only one thing. Mary has been unfaithful. Matthew tells us that Mary and Joseph were only betrothed at this stage, which is slightly different than our understanding of being engaged. To be betrothed is generally to have had your parents choose your husband and your wife, and a legally binding contract had been made that essentially regarded you as being married even though you were not married, even though you could not consummate that marriage yet.

Imagine Joseph's heartache. He's positioned in a way that if he was to decide to go through with this marriage to Mary, this baby would have been born far too early to have even been considered a honeymoon baby. People would have talked as people do now. They would have done the sums and they would have concluded that this was Joseph's baby born out of wedlock. Would Joseph really bear the condemnation from his family for what Mary had stupidly done?

In a wonderfully understated way, the Bible highlights this tension by giving us one of the few descriptive insights of the man Joseph. Verse 19 says that he was a just man. I think the NIV says a righteous man. Joseph was a man who desired to do what is right according to God, so he decided to break off the wedding. For the seriousness of that relational status of betrothed, it means you have to divorce.

That contract was already made. It is as good as done that you were going to be married. And so Joseph, according to Matthew, was going to quietly divorce Mary. In order to spare her and him as much shame as possible, he is going to do this quietly. Rather than dragging her name through the mud, he seemingly wants to preserve some semblance of dignity.

It's amazing, isn't it, how often in the Bible we see God allowing these sorts of morally precarious situations. The prophet Hosea is commanded by God to marry a woman known to be an adulterer only to have her commit adultery on him eventually, which God then uses as an allegory of Israel's unfaithfulness to Him as their God. Hosea the prophet has to marry an adulterer who has a history. She commits adultery, and Hosea uses this to say this is how Israel has been unfaithful to God. Joseph in Genesis, the son of Jacob, is propositioned by Potiphar's wife, remember?

Only to be falsely imprisoned for assault when he refuses her advances. Famously, Job maintains extraordinary moral integrity throughout his life only to be tested by incredible hardship unleashed upon him by Satan but at the permission of God. The Bible never tells us away from the hard things of life. The Bible isn't shy to say that hard things, even bad things, can happen to good people. You and I might experience incredible hardship as Christians.

So why does God allow hardship to happen? Well, the Bible gives us actually a few answers for this. Firstly, because the world is not our final goal. Joseph's reputation was not the be all and end all of his life. This world is not our final goal.

Eternity is the final goal. Paul writes, for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Likewise, hard things can sometimes achieve greater good. Joseph in Genesis would say to his brothers who, remember, had sold him into slavery in Egypt, Genesis 50, verse 20, what you intended for evil, God has intended for good for the saving of many lives. Thirdly, the Bible gives us this indication that hardship can equip us for powerful opportunities to minister to others.

Paul says in Second Corinthians 1, verse 3, praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we may comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. We read this morning, didn't we, how God allows hardship as discipline to grow us and to prove us to be true sons and daughters. So we know how hardship can be opportunities of creating battle scars, and those battle scars, those who have them, are often very valuable to others who are in the battlefield as well. You and I can process hardship accurately then for these simple reasons. Eternity, not earth, is our goal.

Hardship can attain greater good, and hardship equips us for ministry. But perhaps the foundational strength to put up with all sorts of hardship, even unfair ones, is that the worst possible thing has already happened to the best possible person in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Peter writes, if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God because to this you have been called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps. Hardship happened to the just, very righteous man Joseph, perhaps even the best among us. So we aren't surprised when hardship comes our way because we recognise that God is doing something through it.

We may not know in the moment what it is, but God is doing something through it. So even as a just man, we're told that Joseph faced a very difficult situation. Then the Bible says in verse 20 that as Joseph was weighing up his options and he was thinking about considering divorcing her quietly, an angel appears to him in a dream. The angel says to Joseph, 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.

We see another wonderful yet rare insight into the silent man of Joseph. We see here that he was afraid. Why else would the angel say to him, do not fear to take Mary as your wife? Obviously, Joseph is afraid. Joseph is worried.

But in this coming to him of the angel, Joseph is given four significant promises. Have a look again. The promises are essentially this: that yes, this pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit; secondly, that Mary will have a boy; thirdly, that his name will be Jesus; and fourthly, that He will save His people from their sins. Those are four very big promises to believe. But notice that it's in the context, again, very human, it's in the context of fear that Joseph is asked to believe these things.

Joseph, the very noble man that he is, has given yet another challenge to obedience. You, Joseph, must believe in your heart that these promises are true, then you must take action by your faith in going through in marrying this woman with the risk that your reputation is going to be ruined. Ask yourself again. What does Joseph have to go on for believing in this promise? You might say, well, if an angel turned up in my room one day and said, thus saith the Lord, I would do it.

Of course. I would believe. I would obey. But before you say that too quickly, have a think about the Bible and what it says about people when angels have spoken to them in similar ways. Remember the story of Lot and his wife?

Remember that two angels, two angels came and said to them, you have to flee. God is going to destroy the city, the town of Sodom, and you must not turn back. What does Lot's wife do? She looks back. What about the people of Israel in the wilderness?

Forty years, they witnessed the angel of the Lord, the Bible says, who is present every day in the camp of Israel as a pillar of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night, and yet the people constantly threatened mutiny of God's plan. Or remember just two weeks ago, we read the story of how an angel appeared to Zechariah, Elizabeth's husband, in the temple miraculously at the side of the altar and said to him, you're going to have a son, John the Baptist, essentially. Zechariah says, how can I be sure of this? To an angel who appeared to him out of nowhere and was so intimidating. The vision of him was so intimidating that we are told Zechariah had fear descend upon him.

Zechariah to the angel has the gall to say, how am I going to believe this? Why should I believe this? And so the angel Gabriel reprimands him by making him unable to speak for the entirety of Elizabeth's pregnancy. That's the sign: you're not going to be able to say anything. So before we say, oh, it's an angel that says to Joseph, and therefore it's easy to obey.

Remember, if an angel turned up in your room one night, told you to believe in God's word, there is no guarantee of our obedience because it wasn't a guarantee for a lot of people in the Bible. Even though it's spoken by an angel, all that Joseph really has to go on is to trust God's word. And this is remarkably tricky because the word of God was talking about something yet to come. Those four promises, you could maybe argue the first one, that this child is from the Holy Spirit, is past tense, but maybe that's not something that you can say is fully past tense. You'll have to look towards the future to have that fully confirmed, but all the other three are future tense.

These things will happen. He will be a son. His name will be Jesus, and the big one, He will save His people from their sins. These are promises that will only be proven in the future. So what does Joseph have to go on?

He has God's word. He has a promise from God to go on. So on the one hand, it's really important for us as well that Joseph is unique. There's not going to be another Joseph, and so we can't and should never read our life into the story of Joseph and say simply be like Joseph. His situation as the adoptive father of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is never to be repeated.

But do you know what? At the end of the day, Joseph still had to make a decision on something that we are faced with every day, and that is to simply believe and obey God's word. Believe and obey the promises of God. You see, it's the case that very often when God has finished deconstructing us in the hardships that come our way, He then begins in earnest a process of reconstruction based on believing what His word has to say about us. Life may get tough, but for a God who is sovereign and good, that tough situation is never wasted.

There aren't just hardships that need to be endured. There are promises that need to be held onto for getting back up again, for walking the life that God wants us, needs us, directs us to live. The promises of God's word are therefore for believing in. Now, we've probably heard that sort of line in a sermon many times, believe in the promises of God. But let's ask the very reasonable logical question. What are these promises?

What exactly do we need to believe when we are told, believe the promises of God's word? Well, they obviously are contained in the many pages of the Bible, so we're not going to be able to list them all right now. But have a think about how you know the truth of Scripture. Think about what you know to be true from Scripture and you'll be sure to find what those promises are and what we are called to believe. For example, every Christian in this church are called to believe the promise that I am God's possession.

I am God's child. I am beloved. I am God's workmanship created to do good works. I am a temple. I am a soldier.

I am a co-labourer. I'm a light on a stand. I'm the salt of the earth. I have been redeemed by the blood. I've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the sun.

I have a living hope. I have the mind of Christ. I have peace in my heart with God. I can come with confidence to the throne. I can tread the enemy underfoot.

I can extinguish through the shield of faith His fiery darts. I am in all things and all situations more than a conqueror through Him who loved me. Those are the types of promises that we are called to believe. Friends, when I say that we are challenged to believe in God's word, I mean we are challenged to believe these types of statements and to put our faith into action by living by them. This man Joseph, the silent, this man Joseph, elusive, did the right thing and simply trusted the word of God presented to him.

And so he goes on to prove exactly why he is the righteous man he is, that Joseph is a good man. He takes Mary to be his wife. But even so, he is also asked to believe perhaps the hardest thing to believe. And that is that God needs to save even the best among us. That God needs to save even the best among us.

Verse 22 of our passage reads, all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name 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 he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. Matthew gives us the insight that the virgin birth of Jesus had been prophesied seven hundred years before by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah spoke about a boy being born from a virgin and that his name would be given the name Emmanuel, a Hebrew word which means God with us.

Now whether Joseph realised all of this at the moment, at the time of his dream, his vision, we don't know, but there is something significant we do know about the name Jesus, and the angel points it out. Verse 21, the angel says, you shall call him Jesus for, or because, He will save His people from their sins. Joseph, a Hebrew, would have understood the name Jesus, a transliteration of the Hebrew title or name Yeshua, which means to deliver, to rescue, to save. So his name is Jesus, to save, because He will save. So at the start of Jesus' life, we see the end of His life already in view.

And again, very importantly for us in this modern day of Christianity, we have to understand this deliverance, this rescue isn't in some political sense. Jesus doesn't become a great statesman to liberate the Jews from their oppression, nor is it that Jesus is rescuing people from low self-esteem or from poverty or from racial vilification or slavery or cultural misappropriation. As Christians, we need to be very careful of those who claim these things of the mission of Jesus. The explicit reason that God tells Joseph Jesus came is to save people from their sin. So the final act of obedience for Joseph is not simply to go on with making Mary his wife, but the very final act instead is that he names the son born to Mary Jesus. This boy isn't his boy, and yet at the presentation ritual, perhaps even at the circumcision eight days after where generally kids were named, boys were named, Joseph is the one who says his name is Jesus.

I can't think of many people nobler than Joseph, and yet this man, this just man, this righteous man placed on this little infant boy the title Saviour. His name is Yeshua because He will save. But notice who He saves. He will save His people from their sins. Think again of Joseph.

The ones who needed saving are the ones who belonged to Jesus. It's His people that need saving, and who is it that belongs to Jesus? Well, we can obviously argue theologically for the elect, the ones that God had given, God the Father had given the Son to save. That's His people. That may be true.

You can also argue that His people are the Jews, that Christ came to save His people, the elect of the Jews. That may also be true. But for Jesus to come and save His people surely also means at the very least those nearest and dearest to Him, His family. So we see the final bit of obedience that Joseph is required to enter into. Joseph had to believe that this salvation is not for all the bad people of the world out there.

It's for him. Jesus must save him. And so even Joseph, one of the best, needed the work of Christ. The most important promise that Joseph had to believe that night when the angels spoke to him wasn't simply the virgin birth miracle. It wasn't that Mary had in fact been faithful.

The most profound promise that Joseph had to believe was that he was a sinner in need of saving. Friend, if you are ever able to forget that you need Jesus, if you ever think that your life is far removed from Christ, if you wrestle to have genuine love for Jesus Christ, then it is probably because you have forgotten that you need saving. If we have family members who have walked away from Jesus, if we have friends who refuse to listen to the gospel, the reason is that they have forgotten or they don't believe that they need saving. In some way, those people, in fact, you and I might be believing that our life is actually not too bad. It is not too shameful.

In fact, you might believe that your life is pretty together or at least better than the guy next door. Joseph's story tells us that God must save even the best among us. If Joseph the just needed saving, then I certainly do as well. Today, will you place your trust in Christ? This Christmas, will you believe that you need saving?

Will you take hold of the promise that His death on the cross, His resurrection from the grave was for you? And will you love Him? Will you love Him as your Saviour? As we head into Christmas tomorrow, I hope we can stop a little today to remember the often forgotten man of Joseph, that we can remember that hardship happens to even the best among us, to not be surprised by it, in fact, to recognise that God is and can do something through it. Remember also that God's promises are for actively holding onto and believing in, to trust in the Bible, to trust all the truth that it holds out for us, every single bit of it.

And then thirdly, to remember that the greatest promise ever given was the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ, and that the only thing standing in anyone's way is the pride of thinking that this salvation is not for you. But Jesus came for sinners. God needed to save even the best among us. Let's pray.

Lord, even as we hear that thunder rumbling in the distance, as we say amen to Your word, we know that You are speaking. Lord, help us to remember and believe what Jesus Christ came to do. Help us to understand that even the best among us will experience hardship, that it is not an indication of our lostness or of Your hatred towards us or of Your absence in life. But Lord, that there are potentially many reasons for us to be going through hardship and difficulty. In the midst of that hardship, help us then to also see the promises that we are called to believe.

Help us to search them out in Your word, just to understand so many of them and how they apply to us. And then, Lord, help us to believe and trust in them. That Lord, once You have finished Your deconstruction of us, of the bad habits, the sinfulness, the pride, the lovelessness in our lives, Lord, as You have broken us down, help us to hold on to the power of Your promises as You reconstruct us, as You build us up, as You give us the mind of Christ, as You form Christ in us. And Lord then let us also never ever forget. Let us never ever allow ourselves to not love Jesus Christ passionately, humbly, with single-minded devotion because we have somehow forgotten that we needed saving. Lord, we indeed have needed saving.

And so Lord comfort and encourage us by that truth again this morning, that even Joseph, that great man, even the best among us, needed Jesus and His salvation. In His name we pray. Amen.