The Light Has Come: Witnesses to Love: Joseph

Pastor Fletcher preaches from Matthew 1:18-25 about Joseph, the father of Jesus. Discussion points: The Lord worked through a dream to convince Joseph to move forward with marrying Mary, Joseph is Jesus’s real father while not being his biological father, we are not outsiders or second rate children in God’s family.

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  Scripture reader: [Matthew 1:18-25] 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 fulfill 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 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.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: Good morning. My name is Fletcher. It's a joy to have you all, today. And a joy to be able to bring God's word for you this morning. Do you ever have any example in your life of a time that you were roped into something that you maybe did not sign up for? Like maybe you were volun-told to organize a holiday party for your, your office? Anybody ever have one of those situations occur to them. for me, when we first got married, my wife was very adamant that we needed a dog. Very adamant that we needed a dog. I made like a PowerPoint presentation for her, with all the reasons why we did not need a dog, you know, I pulled up the charts. This is the total investment that a dog is going to actually take. It's like thousands of that you have no idea. It's like it would be better for you to buy a BMW than for you to buy a dog, OK? It is very expensive owning a dog.

  And as things went on though, as things do happen, she won and we got a dog and there I remember I came to her one morning I was like, OK, I've been praying. I think that we can get a dog that afternoon we had a dog like it it went quickly we had a dog, a little white fluffy named Maggie. She's absolutely ferocious and I talk about her a lot now, um. To this day, I don't think I understood. What I was getting myself into or what I was getting roped into. I didn't want a dog. I didn't want someone to pick up poop after and take outside 2 or 3 times a day and feed and to this day I'm still roped into that task of caring for the elderly dog. I'm bandaging the wounds from the bite marks on my fingers that she leaves on me. If you know my dog, she is um. A very ferocious West Highland white terrier, yeah, who's grumpy.

  Anyways, maybe you were drafted into a nativity play when you were a kid and you, some of you may have been all about that, like nativity. Play Let's go. I, I can't wait to be Mary or be Joseph or or be a shepherd but some of you might have been there standing with a, a shepherd staff made out of cardboard and a bathrobe on being like, how did I end up here? we get roped into things that we don't necessarily sign up for.

  And I can't help but think that that must be a little bit of how Joseph felt. Getting roped into something he did not sign up for. I mean, he's just living his life. He's a carpenter, he's working, he's betrothed to a woman, he's excited about the future he has, and all of a sudden the angel appears and says that your wife is pregnant. Deal with it, stick with her. That's basically his life. And so Joseph in that moment has to figure out what to do.

  Today is the 4th and final Sunday of Advent, and we're walking through the traditional hope, peace, joy and love themes through a series that we're calling The Light Has Come Witnesses to the Birth of Christ. And so today we're considering love from the perspective of Joseph and as. As we often do, I'm just going to walk through the passage and help us to understand the fatherly love that Joseph shows to us.

  So let's dive in the first verse, chapter 1 of the Gospel of Matthew, verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother, Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Now for many of us, it's a familiar story, but I don't want to skip over any of the details in case it's new, and I hope that maybe some of these old details might become new to us today. But in the ancient society of Israel, betrothal was not the same thing as we think of as engagement. Engagement is an exciting thing today, and it comes with commitment like you spent money on that ring. There's some commitment that went that's going between these two people. You tell all your family and friends you might update a status on Facebook or post a picture on Instagram. There's certainly some social shame to breaking off an engagement.

  But if you were to break off an engagement, no one is calling a lawyer to help you negotiate the divorce. It just doesn't work that way in today's society, but in an ancient society, a betrothal was a more serious commitment because oftentimes in ancient society, you would have arranged marriages between two families and everything would be drawn up. There would be a dowry involved, there would be financial commitment. You were bringing two families together. It wasn't our Western individualized society. It was a near eastern society where you were bringing families together. And so this came almost as a legal contract between two family groups.

  So to break off a betrothal in the ancient world, this is not a small deal. This is a big deal. It doesn't just come with social shame, it comes with legal responsibility, but Joseph has been. he's, he is currently betrothed to Mary. And just to give you a little bit of detail about what we expect with their ages, Mary most likely is a young teenager. this is, if it's following Jewish customs, she would be 1314 years old, somewhere around there. Joseph, we really have no idea how old Joseph is. He could be as young as 15 or 16. He could be much older than that, as Jewish customs would go. The scripture doesn't tell us how old Joseph is. We do know that Joseph is in this story, and he's in a story of Jesus being left at the temple, when Jesus is 12, and then you don't see Joseph mentioned again. So we assume that Joseph dies. Most scholars have assumed that Joseph dies by the time that Jesus is later in his life into his ministry, but we really don't know, and we have no idea how Joseph, how old Joseph is in this.

  But there's this peculiarity to their engagement, which is Mary is found to be pregnant. So the second half of verse 18, before they came together in a biblical sense, should we say, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Before the marriage had been consummated, Mary was found to be pregnant. And so Joseph discovered this either. Because Mary told him or because he started to notice her appearance changing and you know, Joseph knows how these things work, and he assumed the only logical reason that she could be pregnant is that she has betrayed him. That is the obvious conclusion. That is what he is to assume here.

  And how terrible that must have felt as Joseph. To be betrothed to a woman, to have your family united together and expecting the marriage, all that's waiting is the marriage ceremony and for her to move in. Everything else is a done deal. Undoubtedly, he had feelings for Mary. But now he's been betrayed. And being a just man, a man who cares that other people are cared for, he decides to handle it quietly. He could have made a big deal of Mary's betrayal to him. It, it would have been within his rights to make a large deal of this. He could have shamed her publicly and let everyone know what had happened, but instead, Joseph decides to issue her a quiet divorce. He could have given her a scarlet letter, but instead he handles things quietly.

  Verse 19, and her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. And I love how God's timing works here, because God's timing always works like this. It's not the 11th hour. It's not actually salvation unless it's the 11th hour. It's not the 11th hour unless it's actually the 11th hour. And here we see him, it's as if he is drawing up the divorce papers and what happens to him. Maybe he said let me sleep on it one more night, and he goes to bed and he has a dream. And like his namesake from the Old Testament, Joseph's dreams mean things. He has a dream of an angel appearing to him and declaring to him the truth.

  Verse 20, 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. So the angel appears to Joseph and says, move forward with the wedding, Joseph. You do not have to fear. This is Mary's being truthful. This is from the Lord. This is of the Holy Spirit. I'm sure it came with some apprehension. It's not as if shotgun weddings were necessarily kosher in the Jewish world. But that is what Joseph decided to move forward with.

  I love how the angel addresses Joseph, and this is very important. It's kind of the heart of our sermon here today. The the angel addresses Joseph as Joseph, son of David. He reminds Joseph of his royal lineage. Joseph is of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah. And what do we know about the house of David, but that all of the prophecies throughout the Old Testament foresee the ruler, the Messiah, the king to come, the one that would restore the fortunes of Israel as a member of the house of David that he again would have a son. That would come and reign and rule. And restore Israel to her glory. And so we know that all of Israel is waiting for a son of David to come, and here we have Joseph, a son of David.

  But this child, it isn't even his. Not a single piece of Joseph's genetic material is used. In the person of Jesus. He's not a legitimate, so to speak, child of Joseph. Yet Joseph is the real father of Jesus. I want us to contemplate this truth for a moment. That when Matthew writes his genealogy, just a couple verses earlier. Just a couple verses earlier. Actually, it's just the verses before this. So we have a genealogy that leads into this story, and he traces the genealogy from Abraham, Father Abraham, all the way through to Joseph. But Joseph is not Jesus's genetic biological father. Yet, the lineage is traced through Joseph.

  How powerful is that? That as Joseph welcomes Jesus as his real son, that the biblical authors do too, that God sees Joseph as Jesus' real father, so much so to where the lineage, the genealogy can be traced through Joseph's line. And this is important because if Jesus doesn't come from the line of David, he's not fulfilling the prophecies. Joseph has to be Jesus' real father. You see, we see Joseph so often as just an usher to get married to the stable in Bethlehem, and we don't see the significance behind him actually being the father of Jesus. We have further proof that Joseph adopted Jesus in this sense.

  In just a couple of verses in Matthew chapter 1 verse 24, it says, when Joseph woke woke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife. But knew her not, again, in the biblical sense, wink wink, until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. So who calls his name Jesus? Is it they called his name Jesus? No. In the ancient society, the father was to give the name to the child. And Joseph is the one who named Jesus. He gave Jesus the name. Joseph sees Jesus as his real son, though he is not his biological son.

  This, I love adopted families. I think adoptive families are some of the most amazing families in the world, but this is not how our culture handles adoption many times. I've spoken to so many adoptive families and just heard stories of people putting their foot in their mouth, their feet in their foots in their mouth, their foot in their mouth. By saying things like, so which child is your real child? As if the adoptive children are fake children and not real children. Joseph sees Jesus as his real child.

  For years, if you had asked me what my favorite movie is, OK, little illustration here, but if, if you'd asked me what my favorite movie is, I would have told you that my favorite movie is The Royal Tenenbaums. Now I don't know how many of you have seen the Royal Tenenbaums a couple of years ago I decided that movie might be a little too dark, to be your pastor's favorite movie, but I still, I have a warm spot in my heart for the Royal Tenenbaums. It's a Wes Anderson movie with the normal cast of characters from a Wes Anderson movie. it might also be a little too pretentious to be your pastor's, favorite movie, but thus it is, or it was. I don't, I don't claim it anymore I don't suppose.

  But it's this Wes Anderson movie and one of the children, it's a, it's a story about three children who are geniuses and their father also being a genius, and they're brought up and they're all very highly successful people and one of the children is named Margo Tenenbaum. And Margo is played by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. And Margo Tenant Bob is is introduced in the story. By this, Margot Tenenbaum was adopted at age 2. Her father had always noted this when introducing her. He would say, this is my adopted daughter, Margot Tenenbaum. And throughout the whole movie, Margot is seen as an outsider. Throughout the entire movie, she's addressed as an outsider.

  At one point, the father's telling his, children, they're adult children by this point, he's telling them your grandmother died and his son says, Well, I haven't seen her since I was 6, and Margo says I've never met her and he says, well, she wasn't your real grandmother. I wasn't sure that if you wanted to meet her or not. He, she's just treated as this outsider all moving along, and it's as if she really wants to be accepted into the family and so she does all kinds of things to figure out who she is. In fact, her style even today is influencing runways. Runways, whatever those are called, catwalks, you know, where the, yeah, fashion runways. Is that is that the right word? OK, thank you. I saw a Vogue magazine article written about the style of Margo Tenenbaum this week, quite a stylish person.

  At one point in the movie, she decides that she wants to meet her, her real parents, her, biological parents, and so she takes a trip to Indiana, and this is not how I know any of the Indiana people in our church to be, but these people were quite country and my country accent comes out as I speak of them, and as she meets her, the only thing that we see with them is when she helps them chopping wood and she has her hand on the, on the block of wood and he chops off her finger. Which symbolically shows that she does not belong in that family, that she's been chopped out of that family, and that there's a piece of her always missing.

  And so in the movie, I think that that's really a a huge symbol throughout the whole movie is that there's a piece of Margot missing. Margo ends up marrying a neurologist obviously drawn together because of the deep brokenness in one in one another. I say all this about Margo Tenenbaum. Because I think she's the perfect illustration of what it feels like to be an outsider in your own family. She's just as successful and acclaimed as the rest of the family, if not more so. She has seen her need to prove herself and has sought hard and worked hard to prove herself. But she never truly feels accepted or that she belongs. She feels the need to express herself through her wardrobe and through her mysterious persona. She hides her promiscuity and her smoking habit. But no matter how successful she becomes, she never feels complete.

  Now, I don't know what Christmas has in store for you. I, I appreciate looking around. I see a lot of our Boston natives here, OK? A lot of people from the area or at least from New England, or with family too far away to visit easily for Christmas. And I don't know who you are watching online today, but. I will say this, that many of us. We are going to go be in a place for Christmas, whether that be with family near or far. And many of us will feel like an outsider in some way at Christmas this year. Like we don't truly belong, whether it's with your family, your friends, or or just with Netflix, there's a chance that you might feel a bit like Margo Tenenbaum as an outsider.

  Whether it's from the crippling expectations from your family, broken relationships within your family. Many of us do not feel like we have a place where we can belong with our family. It's the natural way that many of us feel that we're not completely known, that we might be known in part, but that we're unknown in many ways. Maybe you have a loving family, but you just get the subliminal message that your feelings don't matter. And if your feelings don't matter, then you don't matter. Or maybe it's something way less nefarious. Maybe it's just that your parents moved. And so all of those childhood memories are forever locked away. You'll never experience those again. Or maybe you lost someone dear to you that unlocked a piece of your personality, that only that person could unlock. And the feeling of wholeness and acceptance and belonging is missing.

  In my own story, I will tell you that I have been, I have thought of myself oftentimes throughout my childhood, especially as an outsider. I grew up in Memphis. And then when I was in early elementary school, we moved to rural Mississippi. And at that point I had no interest in hunting or anything like that, which the other boys did. I was more into like Star Wars, you know, I was, I've always been a nerdy kid still to the day, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, to show that all the time. I, I. I'm just a nerdy guy and I wasn't accepted by others. I felt like an outsider school and in many ways I felt like an outsider in my family because why my, my mother's family is very loving and warm and I love them and hi Nana, she watches online every Sunday morning.

  I, I didn't really know my father's family very well. He left when I was young. And so it leaves a sense of brokenness in who you are, to grow up feeling like your father doesn't care to know you. Even in my, I always felt loved by my mother and I am very loved by my mother, but I, my mother had a partner who lived with her, who outwardly did not care for children. It just wasn't something he didn't care for children, so I spent a lot of time in my room as a child trying to avoid him for the most part, including meal times and and all times. I just didn't, which wasn't weird to me until I had kids and then I realized how much time we spend around the table spending with one another.

  I, I always felt like a bit of an outsider, and if I'm honest, I, I still do in some ways. And that is what made my relationship with Christ so significant. Because my wife and I often joke that if the statistics were in favor for me, that I would be selling meth somewhere in Mississippi. But by the Lord's grace, that is not the plan that he had for me. Because for me, and I think this might be easier in some ways, because I felt like so much of a father because my father wasn't around. God is my real father. In all the ways that I can express that he is my father. That he counsels me and cares for me, that he has provided for me. And has loved me. And I felt so accepted by him. Because he's all that I've ever had.

  And so I've found my identity as a child of God. Not, you know, a lot of times we look at, at being a child of God, and you, I might preach this, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, a child of God. I get it. But it's like an adoptive child of God, like a Margo Tenenbaum, like, hi, this is my adopted child, Fletcher. And the, the one I'm proud of is Jesus over here, and I've adopted him into my family as well. And we think that we're second-rate children of God, and so we've had this. Feeling as like second rate adoptive children of God, that, that we had to prove ourselves to Him. Like, look what I did, God. I, I've finally achieved enough. I've earned enough, or, or even to ourselves.

  But to God, Adoption doesn't work that way. That when we come into his family, We're stamped with full approval. That we are given full status to be the children of God, that he loves us as he loved his very own Son Jesus. That everything that's true about Jesus is true about us. You see, God sent his son to become the child of Joseph, that you and I might become the child of God. The heart of God is that of an adoptive father, which is a real father. Just as Jesus is the real, just as Joseph is the real father of Jesus, God is our real Father.

  It's not that God merely tolerates us as his adoptive children in a Margo Tenenbaum kind of way, it's that he loves us and cares for us that we cannot earn his love. Romans chapter 8 verse 15. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of what? Adoption. As sons. By whom we cry, Abba Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. The spirit himself bears witness. That we are the children of God, and if children then heirs, full rights to everything that's true of Jesus, true of us. And fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

  You see the mystery of the gospel is that Jesus came as the son of Joseph, son of God, fully human, fully God at the same time. To make a way for us to be adopted. Into the family of God. And delighting in the Trinity, which is just a book that I keep coming back to over and over and over again to quote, because it's so quotable. Michael Reeves says this. The father sent his son to make himself known. Meaning not that he wanted simply to download some information about himself, but that the love the Father eternally had for the son might be in those who believe in him, and that and that we might enjoy the son as the Father always has. Ultimately, the Father sent the son because the father so loved the son and wanted to share that love and fellowship.

  See, that's the goal, is that God shares the kind of love and fellowship that he's had with Jesus, the Son, throughout eternity past with you as you're adopted as a child of God. His love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his son.

  Let's continue through our passage. Verse 21. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from. His The name Jesus means Yahweh saves. The, the sacred name of God saves. Because of our sin, we are separated from God. But that is why Jesus came to save his people from their sins that we might be called children of God. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, but having no hope and without God in the world. But now Jesus has saved us from our sin. He's given us a new identity. We're no longer strangers, but we're children, accepted, co-heirs with Christ. Our Father delights in us.

  To finish things up, verse 22 and 23. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear his son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. Jesus is God with us. The message of Christmas is that God sent his son not only to be with us, but also to make us a part of his family, no longer outsiders. But daughters and sons of the king. And so as we have those feelings of outsiders like we don't belong, that, that points us to this deep longing in our heart that we have for who God is.

  I can't tell you how to avoid those feelings. But I can tell you that they're a, a dim reflection of the longing in your heart that says that you Belong with God. And I know that many of you are looking around here this morning, and you may be even asking. I know, hopefully for many of you, the answer is yes, you, you do, but many of you may be looking around here saying, do I belong here? Especially if you're a guest, this is your first time. That's, that's a very natural question to be asking yourself when you visit a church for the first time. Do I belong here? Are these my people? Am I dressed appropriately? Am I looking strange at the moment? Can I be myself here? Can I be really known or do I have to put on that face that I put on for my work friends, so that they don't judge me?

  Maybe you feel like a bit of an outsider even here, and these are all just very normal feelings. I want to just acknowledge that. And I hope that in some ways you do feel like a little bit of an outsider because I do not want the church to be a place where everyone is just the same culturally, the. Church is to reflect the diversity of God's kingdom and there's lots of churches where you can walk into and be like, yo, I feel understood here because everyone here also likes Texas college sports and so everyone else here is from Texas, so I feel known. We want people from everywhere. We want to be that diverse community, but it is gonna come with feelings that you're an outsider.

  But let me tell you, you were crafted by the same God who crafted the person sitting in front of you, behind you, and maybe to your left and right. And that God wants to know you and adopt you as his own. You belong here. And we as a community need to and have to work hard to help you to feel. That belonging. Cause it's not always easy. We have to work to make sure that we love and welcome outsiders.

  Now, no church is perfect. The church that I found when I was 1213, 14, when I first started going to church wasn't perfect. I felt loved, but I still felt like an outsider at times. But there were definitely people that loved me there at the same time, and I hope no church is perfect. If you find a perfect church don't join it because you'll mess it up, OK? Because you're, you're just not perfect, but we, we are really glad to have you here and you do belong, and we want you to feel that belonging in the family of God, but ultimately, it's a belonging with God Himself. So you can only belong so much to broken people, because we all have those feelings of being an outsider. But we're pointing you to the belonging that you can have with God.

  So I don't know what your Christmas festivities might look like this year, but I pray that you might find love and acceptance, a place of belonging with God your Father in heaven. I pray that you might know him as Father, as Joseph knew Jesus. I pray that you might no longer be seen as a stranger or an outsider, but a participant in the hope that we have in the gospel.