12-22-13 Joseph

It’s not fair, you know -

what we have done with Joseph and Mary throughout history.

We have refused to allow them to be real.

First of all we’ve made them appear older-

lots older than they really were.

Most of the Joseph and Mary figurines we create for our manger scenes

look to me like they’re in their mid 30’s,

rather than in their in their late teens

or early 20’s like they really were.

I hate it when we do that.

I hate it when our religious world tells the next generation

that faith,

and obedience,

and trust in our God

are qualities that belong mostly to old people.

It’s a lie, you know.

Faith and submission to God

are qualities that know no age.

I remember being 19 years old

and discovering that my God was real

and that He was calling me to submission to Himself.

And I remember my first choices of faith.

They were certainly not easy choices.

They were choices

that, even then, I knew had profound implications

literally for the rest of my life.

And in my own experience throughout the past nearly 50 years, now,

many, of the hardest choices of faith I’ve seen in the lives of my fellow Christians

have been choices made

by those in their late teens and early 20's.

They have been choices

that have called the young adult

to an approach to life

that puts them in direct opposition

to their entire generation.

To be sure,

it gives them a purpose, and an identity, and a life significance

that they could never know any other way,

but they are frequently choices

that are filled with turmoil, and questions,

and sometimes very painful social, and emotional, and career consequences.

The true life of faith

knows no age,

and it frequently shows itself in greatest purity and power

in the earliest days of our walk with the King.

And if anyone ever suggests to you,

either with their words or with their attitude,

that faith belongs mostly to old people

please know that whatever they’re pushing is not the real thing.

Joseph was in his late teens

or early 20's when we first meet him in Scripture.

Do you remember yourself at that point in life?

Maybe you’re there right now.

Mary and Joseph were young newly weds,

married less than a year when Jesus entered our world.

In the pictures and the figurines generated by our religious industry during the past 2000 years

they usually have little glowing halo’s around their heads,

if not literally

then certainly in our minds.

And they have really strange, unreal, glowing expressions on their faces.

And of course their clothes are always spotless,

and they never sweat,

and they never seem even the least bit exhausted,

or confused,

or concerned.

“Serene” is the word that comes to mind.

To look at those pictures and figurines

I think we would tend to believe

that nearly everyone who met them

honored them

and respected them for the unique role bestowed upon them by God.

I hate it when we do that.

I hate it when we rip truth from the pages of Scripture

and refashion it so that we can be more comfortable with it,

so that it fits more easily

into the cultural settings we have created for it.

You know why we do it, don’t you?

We do it because we like the idea of Joseph and Mary

being in some way “special”,

unique works of God

that were fundamentally different than you and me.

But when we do that it robs us of precious gifts

that our God intended to give us.

I certainly see one of those lost gifts

in the person of Joseph.

What do we know about Joseph...

I mean what do we really know?

We know that Joseph was one remarkable young man.

And he was young.

He wasn’t a prophet,

or the son of a prophet.

He wasn’t a rabbi or a preacher or a teacher.

He was an apprentice carpenter in a small town,

and he was in love with a girl in her late teens,

a girl by the name of Mary.

I was an apprentice once, a very long time ago.

I was an apprentice electrician.

Being an apprentice means you get all of the jobs

that the other guys on the crew don’t want to do.

And I’m sure it was no different for Joseph at that point in his life.

And I can’t let this pass without offering another observation

about where our God looks

for the people through whom He will live out His life on this earth.

He doesn’t look within our system.

He doesn’t seek out those who hold positions of prominence

in the eyes of our society.

He doesn’t look at the places we consider to be significant.

He is not impressed with

and certainly not influenced by any of our social systems

or relationship games.

He’s not drawn to the rich just because they’re rich,

or the unusually gifted by our social standards,

or to the socially prominent

so that He can then use their power and positions for His goals.

Certainly He doesn’t reject such people if they turn to Him,

but He has no need for

and is not drawn to any of those things that our human system considers significant.

Do you know where He looks

when He seeks out those

with whom He will share this life

and through whom He will express Himself to our world?

He looks within human hearts,

no matter where they may be in this world or in our society structure,

and He seeks those who are willing to trust His voice

and follow His lead.

Do you think I made that up?

Listen to this!

It’s a statement found In 2^nd Chronicles 16:9.

For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.

Do you think you need to be somewhere else

in order to be noticed by your God?

It isn’t where you are

that determines whether your God takes notice of you,

it’s who you are

in your heart response to Him.

That and that alone

is the only thing that matters.

Do you want your life to make a difference?

Do you want to know that your being here

has purpose and meaning?

Don’t seek to do great things.

Just seek your God,

and learn to trust His voice,

and He will express Himself through you

in the way perfectly matched to His design of you.

Joseph was a nobody in the 1^st century Jewish world.

He was a social zero,

an apprentice carpenter.

But in God’s world

Joseph was a man that God could trust

and that was all that really mattered.

Most of what we know about Joseph

we know because of Matthew’s Gospel.

He’s also mentioned in Luke,

but the other two Gospels begin their accounts 30 years after the birth of Christ

and so don’t even mention Joseph.

When we first meet Joseph

we learn that Mary has accepted his proposal of marriage

and the two are officially engaged.

We know nothing about where or how they met,

but it isn’t hard to imagine.

It was a small town,

and I think Joseph and Mary’s engagement came as no surprise to those who knew them.

They were a good match -

good kids, both of them,

with good attitudes,

and good reputations...

good reputations, that is,

until Mary suddenly turned up pregnant.

Matthew says,

Mat 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

The only way for us to begin to appreciate what that must have been like for Joseph

is to try to put ourselves in his position.

He knew, of course, that he was not the father.

There had been no messing around with Joseph and Mary,

no games,

no pushing the limits.

The news of Mary’s pregnancy

could only have filled him

with both grief and terror -

grief because it meant that Mary

was not the girl he thought she was.

There was some other guy in her life.

And terror because everyone who knew them

would think he was the father.

Her pregnancy was the ultimate social disaster for both of them.

It destroyed both their lives

and their reputations.

Not only did the people in their world

not see halos above their heads,

they saw them covered in shame and disgrace.

Matthew gives us a powerful glimpse of Joseph

at this point in his life.

He writes,

Matt. 1:19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly.

He didn’t want to hurt Mary,

but neither could he in good conscience

go ahead with a marriage

to someone he could no longer trust,

and at the same time bring on himself

the shame for a sin he had not committed.

But then Matthew goes on:

Matt. 1:20-25 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins." And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.

And I hope you can see what’s really being said there.

Apparently Joseph literally got up,

went and got Mary,

and married her that same day.

And tell me,

what do you think everyone thought?

“Hey Joseph! How come you moved the wedding date up?

Why didn’t you invite anyone to the wedding?

What’s the big hurry, huh?”

And there was more, too.

He kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son.

For Mary and Joseph

there was no wedding night,

there was no honeymoon,

and there were certainly no halos

and no respect,

and no honor bestowed on their new family.

There was only gossip,

and reputations ruined for a lifetime.

Don’t you find that fascinating...and refreshingly honest?

God’s people,

and certainly those in His family

who seek to live lives in submission to Him on this earth

will at times find that there choices of submission

don’t play out well for them socially or according to their own personal desires.

The key to survival, of course,

is to carefully choose the audience we will play to.

If we choose the people around us,

if what others think -

our fellow students,

or our co-workers,

or our club members,

or our neighbors -

if what they think really is the bottom line in our life,

then our history and our future is already written.

When I was a child

my mom had her ultimate trump card

in her efforts to try to get me to be

the person she thought I should be.

When I did something

that she found offensive in some way

she would say in her most severe voice,

“What would PEOPLE THINK?”

I grew up knowing that what people thought

was very, very important,

in fact it was the most important thing of all.

I didn’t know who those people were,

but I knew they were watching me very closely

and they were not pleased.

But what my mom failed to realize,

and certainly what she never told me,

was that even if we live in such a way

so that we manage to achieve some recognition,

some affirmation from those around us,

in the end our life will end up like nearly everybody else,

lost in an endless flow of humanity going nowhere,

and it will certainly never bring us peace with ourselves.

But if we choose a different bottom line,

a different audience,

if we choose to live our lives most of all before our God

then at those times when the world laughs at us or calls us a fool

we will still know peace with ourselves

because we live at peace with Him.

And before we leave this part of Joseph’s life

there’s one more comment I want to make.

I know that what I’m about to say

will make me sound utterly out of step

with the most fundamentally accepted values of our messed-up nation,

but I will say it anyway

because I know it to be the truth.

Matthew tells us that Joseph kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son.

Which means, obviously,

that Joseph chose to trust what His God said to him

and what He asked from him in the area of sex.

OK, I know, of course,

that Joseph’s situation was in some respects unique.

But I also know that what God asked of Joseph

is fundamentally no different than what He asks of each of us who come to Him,

“Will you trust what I say to you

about where and when sex fits in your human relationships?”

That certainly doesn’t mean our God walks away from us if we refuse to listen.

He never ever walks away.

But it does mean that His Spirit keeps working within us

to bring us back to that one central issue

upon which everything else is built -

not the issue of sex, of course,

but the issue of whether or not we will choose

to trust His voice in our life.

He wants us free - truly free,

and freedom never enters our lives in any area

until we can say to ourselves and our God,

“In this, too, I will trust Your voice, and Your love, and your leadership.”

So why do I bring all of this up?

Simply because we live in a world

desperately in need of real life role models,

and Joseph is one of the best we’ll ever have.

We live in a world

filled with people

who fight no battles for righteousness,

who choose the easy way,

and who offer as their excuse,

“Oh, my God understands me.”

And, of course, He does understand,

He understands us all perfectly.

But through the life of Joseph

I’d like to offer us - the people of God -

and alternative.

For, you see, Joseph was not just

a man God understood,

Joseph was a man God could trust,

even when that trust would make Joseph look like a fool,

or worse.

All throughout human history,

and especially at the critical times in God’s plan for mankind,

God has skillfully revealed Himself

through those He could trust.

We have a whole world full of people God understands.

But we seem to have very few whom He can trust.

Joseph was such a man.

We see Joseph only briefly in Scripture,

but every time we see him

we see him obeying God at great personal cost to himself.

He wasn’t flashy.

He wasn’t oozing with charisma.

He certainly wasn’t famous.

He was simply a man God could trust,

and as such he served a crucial role

in the most crucial event in all of history.

Joseph was one of those rare men

who didn’t have to make excuses.

He didn’t have to justify or rationalize.

He just trusted the voice of his God,

and through that trust he offered us

a quiet, powerful example of the character strength

our God seeks to build into each of us.

None of us start there, not even close.

But if we trust His voice more than we trust our own,

and hold tight to His hand each day,

and immerse ourselves in His grace,

He can and He will build into our lives

a courage,

and strength of character,

tempered with deep compassion

and change the world around us for the good in the process.