Well, this December, we're looking at the birth of Christ through the eyes of various ones of the key participants. And this morning, we're going to look at it through the eyes of Joseph. So Matthew and Luke both narrate the events that surround the coming of Jesus into the world, but they do so from different points of view. Luke, especially, looks at this from Mary's point of view. And Matthew, Joseph's. And Matthew begins his gospel with a family tree. And the point of the family tree is to demonstrate that Jesus is, in fact, the son of David, the long-promised king. So let's stand. We'll read verses 18 to 25 together. And let's pray. Gracious Lord, Let the light of your spirit come and bring light into our hearts and minds. Make us soft and receptive. Grant, oh Lord, that we would hear your voice and see ourselves here in the scripture today. For we thank you, there is no other book like this book that knows us. For we pray in Christ's name, amen. 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 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. And 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 his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had 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. Please take your seats. So Matthew begins with a genealogy of family tree and then he takes us into a very private moment in the life of Joseph. He tells us that God interrupts Joseph's life and creates a dilemma for him. Now Joseph discovers that Mary, whom he's engaged to, is pregnant. And he knows that he's not the father. Now God, in his grace, is interrupting Joseph's life. And this is, in fact, what we experience as well. God interrupts our lives with unwelcomed events. He forces upon us difficult decisions which are, in fact, gifts of grace that are disguised. Now, Joseph's dilemma has a number of sides to it. And one of the things we really need to appreciate is the difference between engagement then and our practices around that today. So engagement was far more serious and binding in Joseph's day and time than ours. You might think, well, there ought to be a better word, but there really isn't a better word for us to use. We just need to take that word and fill it with its fuller meaning. So in Jesus' day, parents would, with the consent of their children, arrange a marriage. And typically, the betrothal period lasted 12 months. And by law, they were married. And they were waiting, though, for the wedding feast to consummate their union. And so advances by anyone toward them or them toward someone else would be viewed legally as acts of adultery. And in case you're wondering, Mary is probably as young as 12 and no older than 16. And Joseph is 18 to 22 years of age. Those are the normal ages to get married at that time. And the binding character of engagement was such that if a man died during the period of betrothal, his wife-to-be was viewed as a widow. And so to break the engagement actually required a legal action. It required a formal act of divorce witnessed by two men. Now there's another big difference between that time and our time that you really need to appreciate to read this story right. Engaged couples didn't know each other nearly as well as they do in our day. Premarital privacy was permitted in Judah, but in rural Galilee, where more conservative social expectations existed, it was not. An engaged couple was never left alone. And if that seems very strange to you, you need to appreciate there are places in the Middle East to this day that assume if a man and a woman are together for more than 20 minutes, that they've been physically intimate. Now, the reason I mention this is that Mary has not told Joseph how it is that she's become pregnant. She doesn't relate to him the story of Gabriel's having come to her. Joseph never heard that the Holy Spirit had caused her to conceive a child. If he had, the angel wouldn't need to tell him. But you see, Joseph's dilemma is not, well, do I believe this story that Mary's told me? That's not his dilemma. Do I believe it? Could I believe it? No, his dilemma is from the fact that he can tell she's pregnant. Well, just how can he tell? Well, the ordinary way. She's showing. And Joseph's dilemma is how he will respond to Mary's betrayal. how he will respond to her infidelity, which was, as I've told you, it was an act viewed as adultery. And so this is, well, it's a very difficult dilemma for Joseph. And really, if we think about it, the most difficult dilemmas in our lives aren't so much from the circumstances of our lives, although at times they can be very perplexing, but it's the ones that arise in our relationships. Your aging parent is ill, or they can't manage life by themselves anymore, and you live a day or more distant from them by car. Just what is your duty to your parent? Or your teenage child is sullen and angry and won't communicate. Perhaps the form of their rebellion is passive and they're sneaky, or perhaps they're just openly defiant. How do you respond to that? or your marriage has become like a field filled with landmines. There are just a whole series of things that are taboo. It is not safe to bring up that topic, and so you don't. or your workplace has one or more relationships that are so fragile that when you come to work you feel like you're walking on eggshells and you're not sure what it will take, the smallest thing that you might do that will set that person off. or your closest friend wounds you when you're hurting. You know, they come to you and they offer unsolicited advice. And it's just obvious from the expression on your face that it's unwelcome. And so they distance themselves from you. They just withdraw. And I don't know about you, but when these things happen, you kind of wonder, where is God in all of this? And Joseph must have wondered this too. Why had Mary betrayed him? Was he that poor a judge of character? And so he devises a plan. He devises a plan to free her from the betrothal, from the obligation to be married. But he's a just man, and so he's going to fulfill the legal requirements. He is going to enact a legal divorce. But he's also a kind man. He doesn't want to humiliate her or shame her. So he's not going to ask for a public trial. He's going to do this very quietly. But of course, this action would leave him with a broken heart. It wouldn't heal the wound of betrayal. And it wouldn't repair his shattered dreams. He would need time to heal. And Matthew tells us as he's considering this, and perhaps his head's on the pillow, you know, and he's been mulling this over, and he's finally reached this plan as he's drifting off to sleep. And it's in the midst of his sleep that God appears to him in a dream. Now, this is not like the kind of dream you had last night. This is unmistakable communication from God. Joseph has no difficulty. He doesn't wake up and wonder what that was. No, he knows that God has spoken to him. And God's coming to him in this way shows that he deeply cares for Joseph. He knows his name and the dilemma he's facing, and so he says, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Now God not only vindicates Mary's honor, but assures Joseph that she's chaste. He hasn't been betrayed. But God also tells him that the son she carries, he is to name Jesus. and he is to adopt as his own. In fact, God gives him what every father needs for every child. He gives him insight in the purpose of his life, that he has a unique purpose, that he will save his people from their sins. And God's solution to Joseph's dilemma is to take Mary home. And it not only provides a home for Mary, but to spare her from the shame and humiliation of never being married. But it was costly for Joseph. Joseph would be viewed forever on as the father of Mary's child and looked down upon as a result. He would be viewed as either impatient or lacking self-control, as one who had dishonored God and his family. That might be hard for us to fully appreciate in the time we live in, but premarital sex was viewed as a profound evil in that day, and it would have shamed a family, as well as displeased God. But don't miss this. The reality of Joseph is this, that he, because he's committed to God, it's a commitment that exceeds a concern for his own honor. It's above what people think of him. He does this even though he knows people are going to think poorly of him the rest of his life. But he does it because he loves God and will obey him and leaves his reputation in God's hands. Now, this story speaks about our lives. It's not just an account of how God did things. Oh, it's that. But it's gospel for us. It addresses us and tells us something about God's involvement in our lives. God's communication to Joseph is the way he communicates with us. Not necessarily in a dream, but God knows us by name. He cares about the things we're experiencing. He understands our needs. And it is in his purpose to disrupt lives. And he does this in the life of Joseph. He's making very significant demands on Joseph. In fact, he does this in the life of everybody who's close to the birth of Jesus. Joseph trusts God enough, though, to obey him. God has interrupted his life in order to draw him into something much bigger. than himself. God is drawing Joseph into the, he's got a front row seat in what God is doing to bring about redemption into something much larger than himself. But it's also very disruptive. It is a gracious disruption, and it's a window on how God works in our lives as well. Let me tell you about Norma. So Norma was the granddaughter of Christian missionaries, the daughter of devout parents. She was very involved in the local church till she went off to a Christian college, and there she met her Christian husband, whom she married. And she'd been following Jesus a long time, and her story was almost happily ever after, until they discovered that they couldn't have children. Well, they did everything they could over a long period of time. They prayed. There was a lot of effort. And what they ended up doing is they began to adopt children. The first three adoptions went quite well. Norma really took to the role of being a mother, and she was good at it. Norma and her husband moved out of the city and bought farmland to live on. He commuted every morning into work. He owned a large business, and he was there all day, often into the evening. And Norma was alone on the farm with the kids. And during that time, there was no miracle that enabled her to have children. And that disappointment, as well as her reaction to a very conservative and strict, rigid even, Christian upbringing as a child, sent her into a long drift from church. The best dream she had didn't involve Jesus at all. It involved her being a mom to children. Well, one day a social worker came to Norma and asked if she would consider adopting Debbie, who was an older child who came from a very troubled background. Now, Norma just jumped at this opportunity. After all, this is what she was good at. She was sure she could change this little girl's life by filling it with love. But she was wrong. Debbie's troubles were not about to be exercised by good parenting and fresh air. Her early years had been ravaged by abuse and emotional scars that ran very, very deep. And after valiant efforts to do everything she could, Norma realized she didn't have what it took to feed this hungry soul that called her mom. In her bravest moments, she began to face the reality that she didn't have it within her to love this angry child. She simply didn't know how to love this child in all her anger. But it was what she was supposed to be good at. And so she, in her desperation, began to pray for God's grace. But it had already come. And it was taking her to a place she'd rather not go. For nine long years, Norma and her husband continued the downward road of trying to raise this little girl, Debbie. And after she graduated from high school, on the very day that her parents had planned a wonderful graduation party and invited in relatives from out of town, she didn't show up. She went to Chicago to be with her friends, and she moved out. Norma had taken Debbie into her home because she thought this poor child needed to be rescued. And certainly it was another opportunity for Norma to demonstrate that in fact she was a good parent, that she in fact should have been a parent because she was good at it. But Debbie was actually a gift from God to her. It wasn't given, Debbie wasn't given to Norma to prove anything. Now this troubled, troubling gift proved that Norma herself was a needy one. That Norma herself actually needed to be rescued. And so, as that began to dawn on her, she realized she needed Christ, and she turned to Christ. She accepted God's unconditional love for her, and it enabled her to give grace to her children without this sense that she was somehow rescuing them. That disappeared. And that happens to us too. When we actually come to see Christ and see our need for rescue, we no longer relate to people in the sense we're here to rescue you or fix you. So I need to tell the end of this story so you'll, because people always wonder, I leave this, I stop these stories right when I've told you what I want to know. Norman and her husband eventually sold the farm and they moved back in the city, became very involved in the church. In fact, they had leadership roles in the mission program and the life of the church. And the church started a program to show love and commitment to, well, troubled youths. And Norma spent a lot of time telling the volunteers. You know what? Don't try to fix these kids. In fact, these kids are likely not to appreciate what you do. They may very well reject you. And the point is not whether they're grateful or not. The point is that you show them love. You see, our biggest relational dilemmas are those disruptive gifts of grace that expose us as people who don't know how to love. We know we're supposed to love God. We're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. We're even supposed to love our enemies. And that includes all those impossible people God populates family and work and school with, maybe even church, I don't know. Jesus was very clear on this. And when someone dishonors us, they think badly of us, they're unkind with us, they disagree with us, after all, we know we're right, right? You know that, don't you? You're right. or attacks us, we just discover how limited our love actually is. We don't have it within us to forgive repeat offenders, to forgive when they don't see the harm that they're doing, to forgive when they won't admit they're wrong or hurtful. We don't have the humility to overlook the offense of being ignored or dishonored or slandered. We lack the power to love our enemies. Even if it's a rebellious child, or the person we happen to be married to, or a demanding older parent. We don't have what it takes to love the way that Jesus loves, the way he commands us to love. And so, we tend to justify our lovelessness. And we withdraw from the relationship. We either just write them off, Or what we do is we create so much distance between us and them that they can't hurt us anymore. Joseph and Mary were asked by God to live their lives with a scarlet letter on their foreheads. with gossip and whispers, with dishonor and shame, and to leave their reputations to God. To do that, they needed a power outside of themselves that would enable them to forgive. So they didn't carry the resentment and the bitterness with them all their days. They needed the power to love. They needed what God was doing through the son that the Holy Spirit had conceived. And 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 is with us. Our lovelessness is what the Bible calls sin. And it needs to be forgiven. And we need to have the power of our lovelessness, the power of our sin broken. And that forgiveness and power would come. Because Mary's baby boy was in fact God incarnate. Who had come to die as a substitute for his people's sin. And he would bear their sins and he would heal them. And he would give them a gift of a new heart. And he'd set them free from bondage. The bondage of bitterness and unforgiveness and resentment. This love of God was displayed in the very death of Jesus, and it's that love that changed us, just as it changed Mary and Joseph, who could love those neighbors and relatives who looked on them and shamed them. It's a love that has to be received as it's offered without conditions. And you'll never love as Jesus intends until your heart is made soft by his love. You'll never be free from the need to protect yourself and rehearse all the hurtful things that have been done to you until you see that Jesus was hurt in your place. And you'll never be able to forgive those who don't understand how they've wounded you until you hear Jesus' voice saying to you, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. knowing that you would have held him down as he was being nailed to the cross, you would have gladly taken the hammer and hit the spikes, that if you were there, you would have cheered on his execution. It is your sins and mine that made the incarnation and the cross necessary. And until you see that your lack of love for God is at the center of your inability to love others well, you'll never come to Jesus and be empowered to obey his commands to love. This table displays love's stores. And it summons us to admit the worst about ourselves, that we're loveless toward enemies, whether they be those people, or they be the neighbors, or maybe the person you're married to. that we are poor, we're really poor in spirit. And we don't love freely, wisely, bravely, or wholeheartedly. And come to this table this morning. If you know Jesus Christ, this table's for you. And admit the worst. And receive not only forgiveness, but power. The power to forgive, the power to wisely love those who harm you. Let's pray. Gracious Lord, we come to you. We're just stunned by what you have done. Lord, that you would disrupt the lives of Joseph and Mary in the way that you did and that this was a gift. That Lord, you send into our lives gifts like this, like the gift you sent to Norma. to drive us out of ourselves and to show us once again how we need to be rescued. As we come and remember and celebrate the rescue that Christ has achieved for us, we ask that we might be changed in our coming, that these elements that are tokens of the grace accomplished by Christ would impact us afresh. that the power of the gospel would be unleashed and peel back another layer of our coldness, our hardness, our defensiveness, and we would become soft, more like Jesus, we pray. It's in his name we ask this. Amen.