Joseph, Do Not Fear

the following message is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthfortheworld.org Matthew chapter 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 fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the Prophet behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel 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 amen Lord God with the Bible opened before us we come earnestly seeking your help guide and constrain our thoughts my words our understanding in order that as we look forward to the celebration of all that is contained in Christmas that we might do so with minds that are fueled by your truth and hearts that are stirred on you by the wonder of your grace for we ask it in Jesus name Amen well a number of us were here this morning and we considered Luke's record of the announcement by the angel to Mary and we ended up with the understanding that after three months in the camp of Elizabeth Mary returned home she returned home Luke tells us believing the word from the Lord believing that the word from the Lord would be fulfilled and that word from the Lord you will remember was you will conceive in your womb and you will bear a son and then that the Holy Spirit will come upon you the power of the most high will overshadow you and the child that will be born in you will be Christ himself and so Mary has ended that encounter with the firm conviction now that God will fulfill his purposes both in her and through her however once aware of that reality she is faced with the prospect of telling Joseph after all they are betrothed to one another how is she going to tell him when will she tell him and and can she assume that he will believe her the song that she sings to which will come later on is a determination on her part to trust God to work things out she has said let it be so according to your word I am happy for you father to fulfill your purposes and so here you have this young girl and she is now becoming aware of this reality and it clearly is a job for an angel and of course wonderfully it is - an angel that the assignment is given and that's why we've read here in Matthew's Gospel because here we have the record of this angelic appearance - Joseph not in the same way and the individual not identified by the same name indeed we're told that this occurred for Joseph in a dream no less real but nevertheless that was the context and he was informed of the fact that he would be the father of Jesus but only in a secondary sense and in that sense which would become apparent to him as a result of the Angels message now I hope you like the very matter-of-fact way in which Matthew begins what is an immense occurrence now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way all right and then we go from there when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph let me just remind you again of this betrothal something more weighty something more binding than our view of engagement betrothal was a judicial bond between two parties in this case between a man and a woman while betrothal was in place the woman lived in her own home under the patria potestas and in other words under the control and rule of her father and while her father looked after her during those 12 months the anticipation that would be hers along with her betrothed would unfold after a year then her husband and we use husband in in commas here and because I'm saying to you the betrothal regarded their relationship as husband and wife without the marriage being consummated and so this man to whom she was betrothed would then take her into his own home and the whole community then would understand exactly what had taken place and the fulfillment of the plan and purpose of God would be worked out in their lives for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and the two will be and they will be united to one another and that and the two will become one flesh it is a reminder again of the priority and the place and the increasing peculiarity of the nature of marriage it's not our purpose this evening to to sidetrack to it but let's just acknowledge it was a man and it was a woman as God intended and only a man and only a woman and that that marriage was to be marked by the radical difference that now had taken place in their lives formerly they lived separate from one another they did not cohabitate with one another they did not anticipate the privileges of marriage in any of its dimensions before they were married and the whole community then would be able to see as a result of the groom welcoming the the bride into his home that this amazing event had taken place now what makes this be cooler of course is that meri is expecting that she is found to be with child and as the gospel writer points out here this was something that had taken place before they came together and the language again of Scripture is is wonderful in its terminology and it needs no exploitation does it really they'd had no relationships with one another in terms of knowing one another in the biblical sense and therefore Joseph now being made aware of this if for no other reason than presumably by the change in her profile whereby he would suddenly realize whoa what is he to assume he knows that he hasn't known her he can only assume that somehow or another they engaged but must have been broken that she must have been unfaithful to him and therefore his only recourse is to do what the law required and that is to put her away and because of the nature of the man himself being a just man and because he was unwilling to put her to shame he resolved to divorce her quietly so it was possible in fact it wasn't unusual for an occurrence like this to become an occasion for a man to publicly shame the woman and that didn't have to happen but it could happen and so Joseph we're told here being just and because he loved her I determined that he would not do that that there is a way in which he could do it quietly he can produce the papers if you like is stating the facts but without stating anything behind the facts the Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 17 which I want to quote to you for just a moment distinguishes in the way that the psalmist does between the the wicked and the righteous in this way I read this because of the righteous nature of Joseph thus says the Lord this is Jeremiah Jeremiah 17:5 cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength whose heart turns away from the Lord he's like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come he shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an uninhabited salt land contrast blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord whose trust is in the Lord he's like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when the heat comes for its leaves remain green and so what we're told here by Matthew is that Joseph is a man whose roots go down into the living waters of God's Word God's truth he is if you like Joseph is a Sam one fellow he is the man who's blessed who knows the attended blessing of God he walks not in the counsel of the ungodly or stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scoffers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night so here we have this just man called Joseph betrothed and he is a thoughtful soul and she's a pond or some creature together I can just imagine them sitting eventually after they're married and and and having these very quiet what are you thinking about well I'll tell you in a minute what do you think about well I'm just pondering for a little while though there we go as he considered these things verse 20 he's he's considering stuff and she's pondering stuff and he has made up his mind he's made up his mind to divorce her quietly but it says he's considering these things well that doesn't mean he's trying to make up his mind he's made up his mind presumably he's considering what his approach should be and considering the implications for both of them and then just at the very right moment as he was considering these things Ben held an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying to him Joseph descendant of David son of David standard greeting fear not fear not let's just notice in passing that the interventions of God are always dead on time dead on time if this dream had happened before he had already resolved it wouldn't have the same impact now he's already made this decision he's already made his determination and now comes the intervention of God the psalmist talks of how light Dawn's in the darkness for the upright light Dawn's in the darkness for the upright and here is the darkness that has now presumably gripped his young mind as he realizes what what he is faced with and the darkness that would come over his heart as he realized that this girl upon whom he has said his affections who is the love of his life who is the dream of his heart is now about to be vanquished from him as a result of his own doing as a result of all that has taken place that's dark hello darkness my old friend and in the darkness the light shines because the psalmist says I'm 112 for that light shines in the darkness for the upright just that God just as God has prepared prepared Mary to bear a son so to what we discovered is that he has prepared Joseph to bear this news but the message was of course beyond anything he could have foreseen don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit and here Joseph is drawn in to the mystery of the Incarnation what John in his introduction to his gospel reaches at the very epicenter when he says and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and what is unfolding now for Joseph as it was for Mary is something that cannot be explained merely in human categories that Jesus owed his earthly origin to the work of the Holy Spirit and here as in Luke this is presented not as some kind of pious legend but is presented as historical fact the Council of Kassadin by the fourth century hammering out these things trying some are another to put it in an encapsulated form spoke of how Jesus born of Mary is fully man and fully God without confusion and without separation by the time the Athanasius creed is put together which was different from the Nicene Creed in the Apostles Creed in as much as it contained not only affirmations but it also contained in it essentially rebuttals of false views but the enact the Athanasian Creed describes it in this way our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God is God and man perfect God and perfect man who although he be God and man yet he is not two but one Christ one not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh but by the taking of the manhood into God small wonder that in the book that I recommended to you a couple of weeks ago knowing God by Jim Packer he says nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation and he puts it quite masterfully let me give you just a brief quote the the staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man that the second person of the Godhead became the second man the second Adam determining human destiny the second representative head of the race and that he took him without loss of deity so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human here are two mysteries for the price of one the plurality of persons within the unity of God and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus it is here in the thing that happened at the first Christmas that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie God became man the divine son became a Jew the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child and there was no illusion or deception in this the baby hood of the Son of God was a reality the more you think about it the more staggering it gets nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation now when we process this along with a Joseph here you realize what an amazing reality it is and it's worth pondering the fact at least I think it is and that when one is brave enough to seek somehow or another to articulate these things let's say in a conversation over coffee you vited someone to the Christmas concert and they've decided to come and they came and the music was lovely and everything and afterwards you decided just to push a little and said well you know what do you make of the fact that what the songs are really saying is this in most cases you will find that the notion that is affirmed in this Christmas concert is a scandal to the modern mind it's a scandalous thought the Incarnation is a scandal to the modern mind as is actually the resurrection at the other end that people say well I've prepared to consider many of these things but as to what you're saying here no why is this because modern man is prepared to tolerate God in quotes as an idea as a concept as a philosophical construct as a spirituality if you like but you cannot dispense with God in that way because what the Incarnation is saying is this that God reveals himself and rules over the material world the material world and contemporary spiritualities have no place for this and therefore it is a peculiar challenge says the German theologian Ratzinger if God does not have power over matter then he simply is not God what is at stake when we consider this is if you like the godhead of God so Joseph she will bear a son his name is to be yeshua goddess salvation and that is exactly what mary heard but in Joseph's case a little word of explanation his name will be called Jesus Mary heard Joseph take her as your wife son you will call his name Jesus here comes the explanation for he will save his people from their sins from their sins now think about this when we've gone through the Gospels what was the Jewish expectation of salvation it had to do with their the re-establishment of the Davidic Kingdom it had to do with the overthrow of their oppressors it had to do with the security and independence of their lifes and it had to do with the prosperity that accompanies those things in other words their expectations of salvation were actually different from what was being conveyed here and he you will give him the name Jesus and He will save his people from their sins it doesn't say he'll save them from the Romans it doesn't say he will save them from living and obscurity it doesn't say he will save them from living in the Exile it says he will save them from their sins and you understand how it is that when Jesus then exercises his ministry he comes up against this very same dilemma doesn't he it classically in the story of the the four men who brought their friend who was paralyzed to be healed remember and they and they brought they brought the man to Jesus for healing they carried him because he couldn't walk and when Jesus sees the man let down on the the pallet or the power yeah there on the bed down through the roof he looks at him what does he said son your sins are forgiven your sins are forgiven what an anticlimax it was his legs he needed he didn't need his sins forgiven at least that's what he thought that's what everybody thought but the great need of this man's life was here in this physicality but Jesus says now the real meet the real malady is the malady of the broken relationship between me as a sinner at speaking for man and God himself and sure you've got a problem here in fact in in order to satisfy the muttering Pharisees he says you know in order that you might know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins why don't you just pick up your bed and walk and go home and so that the healing of his legs was a secondary matter in relationship to if you like the saving of his soul and that what he thought he needed which was something observable and physical was actually not the case he came for an observable physical healing and he received first of all an unobservable spiritual transformation it's very important that we keep this in mind again so that we don't get into the whole Harry Phillip Harry Harry Belafonte Christmas you know and man will live forever more because of Christmas Day sounds very nice but no man doesn't live for evermore because of Christmas Day and you cannot isolate the Incarnation from the atonement if you take for example the events of cradle and divorce it from the reality of the cross you immediately go wrong the reason for the crate the reason that the cradle is there is because of the cross that is coming because you will give him the name Jesus he will save his people from their sins think about it from another perspective think about it in this way the idea of a Jesus who saves people from their sins is not a popular message not a popular message not only in terms of those who hear it but also in terms of those who preach it if you listen carefully to some preaching you could be forgiven for assuming that they believe the message of the gospel is that Jesus came to save you from poverty or he came to save you from war or he came to save you from intolerance or from racism or from sickness or a whole myriad of things that's not the message of the gospel all of those issues are ultimately addressed in the effulgence of the gospel well they're not the gospel the salvation and the transformation of one soul is an event of far greater significance than the eradication of temporal evil from an entire kingdom that is to paraphrase Smeaton in his book on the atonement so when we look at this and we allow the scriptures to inform us we realize that we have no legitimacy in seeing anything other than what the Bible says the underlying malady of the human race is addressed and is only addressed in the wonder of Christ now verse 22 were hastened to an end all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the Prophet now this is so wonderful the Gospel writers do this again and again with one hand as it where they reach back into the Old Testament and with the other they point forward to all that is still to come reminding us that it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian that all is contained in pointing forward to Jesus then takes us forward to the expectation one day of his return and of course he's quoting here from the seventh chapter of Isaiah behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they'll call his name Emmanuel Mathew here is quoting from the Septuagint that is from the Greek translation of the Old Testament don't get tied up with people who tell you but it's not actually virgin it is virgin in the in the Hebrew of Isaiah the word that is used is not the most routine word for virgin when it is translated from the Hebrew into the Greek in the Septuagint from which Matthew is quoting the word that is used is absolutely clearly and unequivocally the word virgin it means exactly what it says and as a result of that we have no freedom to fiddle with it it is an amazing thought isn't it because if you go back to Isaiah 7 what are you dealing with well you're dealing with a specific historical occasion in the 8th century BC of 730 BC the king is a has and so in that context this prophetic word is spoken 733 BC fulfilled in the Lord Jesus and intended for the whole world you see when it says unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given who's the arts humanity humanity I mean the prophetic passages in relationship that Jesus bursts the boundaries of any kind of immediate historic application the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they will call his name event and manual which means God with us who's the arse humanities the in the same way that Isaiah 53 he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities that was written hundreds of years before Christ who's the hour whose iniquities are iniquities and the wonder of it is that he is not only God for us but he is God with us and his name will be Emmanuel which means God with us you see the Incarnation didn't happen in order to let us know that God exists it happened to bring him near to bring him near this is a staggering statement especially for an Old Testament believer because the one thing in the Old Testament believer knew was you can't get near to God when they when they were when they came to the revelation of God at the mountain it was all surrounded by drama and sights and sounds and fires and Steve back but now you can run into the arms of God you see how staggering it was for the Pharisees when Jesus told stories like that and there was this man and he had a couple of boys and they suddenly begin to put the pieces together they realize that this is a this is a metaphor he's speaking of God and they couldn't conceive of a God who runs down the street they couldn't conceive of a God who runs out to welcome those who are lost and aware of their lawlessness but that's the message unto us a child is born unto us a son is given a fellow called Marius Reiser says of this prophecy the prophets prediction is like a miraculously formed keyhole into which the key of Christ fits perfectly you think Cinderella and the slipper there's only one food that will fit there is only one key that opens this store namely the Lord Jesus Christ himself and look how it ends when he woke up from his sleep he did as the angel of the lord commanded him he took his wife Wow you imagine those early conversations but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus we shouldn't mistake the fact that is called for peculiar courage again as we said earlier in relationship to Mary and also in relationship to Joseph because the community would see that the timing of the birth had to mean either that they had come together before marriage or that she had been unfaithful during betrothal so either way their submissive obedience to the Word of God through the angel would be for them the occasion of shame and the occasion of shunning in actual fact every time that we are prepared to take Jesus at his word when we are prepared to bow down under this struction and authority of his dictates when we are prepared to stand against the tide of a culture that has no place for a god who engages in these things then we put our reputation at stake we put our life at stake for the sake of the kingdom and therefore we too are encouraged to know that not only is God for us but God has almost promised to be with us well let's pray it is a thing most wonderful almost too wonderful to be that God's own son would come from heaven and die to save a child bite me father we bow we bow before the unfathomable mystery of your person and your grace and your provision in Jesus grant to us the submissive trust of this young girl and this young man help us to understand what it really means to take you at your word no matter what it means for us in terms of reputation in terms of our status in the culture grant that we might care far more about your approval than our own estimation of things or of the approbation of others who are tempted to disregard the faith we profess thank you that we are able to affirm these things as we gather around your table thank you that we're able to declare the fact that you Jesus Christ our Lord to the glory of God our Father amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with Alistair beg visit us online at truthfortheworld.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 14,085

Rating: 4.8762889 out of 5

Keywords: Biblical figures, Christ's birth, Deity of Christ, Humanity of Christ, Incarnation of Christ, Obedience, Redemptive history, Alistair Begg

Id: B89IFku2VU0

Length: 32min 58sec (1978 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2016