Finding The Gift Of Purpose (Joseph) Series

Finding the Gift of Purpose (Joseph)

Series: Finding the True Gift of Christmas

Brad Bailey – December 3, 2023

INTRO

I would venture to say that most of us have come here today…with a sense about our lives…that is related to the hopes and dreams we have had. … that is… we have ideas about how we hope our lives will go…goals and plans… and how we feel about our lives…is generally related to those plans.

If things are going according to our plans… life is good…we sense we are blessed…and if not…our lives can be marked by regret.

We tend to see our lives in relationship to our plans.

When we look at the nativity scene … the lives engaged in the actual events we celebrate at Christmas… we see something very different.

When we engage the actual events at the very root of Christmas… what we see are lives that have been confronted by something much bigger than themselves.

Look again at a nativity scene… every life was marked by changes and challenges.

being disrupted…none of their lives and near chaos… and the good news?.... God was in it.

What lies in the lives that we see in the nativity… is not elusive sentimental peace… but the very substance that changed their lives forever.

Today…we are launching into the Christmas season… and a series entitled Finding the True Gift of Christmas.

Series… The true gift of Christmas changes everything… in each of those drawn into this intersection of divinity and humanity when Christ was born… their lives were changed forever… not merely added to… but changes forever.

Today we begin with Joseph.

Matthew 1:18-19

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

For many…these lives seem familiar… for others… perhaps a bit vague.

• They lived in the village of Nazareth…in Israel…. which probably had 300 to 400 people at the time.

• Each would have been living in the home of their parents…

• Every reason to believe they were devout… at a time in which God seemed to have left His people.

Joseph was a man who lived with the roots of simplicity and the longings for significance.

He was a common man…but his name carried the weight of significance

Joseph's name was a proud name, recalling the ancient Jewish name of one of the twelve patriarchs, Joseph the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into Egypt and who later became second to Pharaoh in power over all Egypt, saving his family from famine (Genesis 30-50). His name means "to add."

And he may have been a simple man …but his lineage spoke of significance… family line… flowed from the great heroes who carried the promises of God.

Two figures stand out in this list: Abraham and David.

Two thousand years before Jesus, God made a promise to Abraham: all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through your nation of offspring (Gen. 12:3). In Jesus, God kept that promise.

One thousand years before Jesus, God made a promise to David. When David became king of Abraham’s nation, God promised to raise up one of David’s descendants to rule over an eternal kingdom (2 Sam. 7:11–16). Jesus was the fulfillment of that promise: the anointed one, the Messiah, who would rescue the people and establish an eternal kingdom.

> His lineage speaks of hope… of God’s purposes amongst such people.

As for wealth…we know that Joseph would be deemed among the general poor of their day…

The offering Mary and Joseph brought to the temple on the occasion of Mary's purification from childbirth was the offering of a poor man, a pair of doves or pigeons (Luke 2:24; Leviticus 12:8).

…but Joseph would also have the respect and advantages of his trade as a carpenter…which Matthew’s Gospel tells us of. (Matthew 13:55).

Being … In the agrarian society of rural Galilee, a carpenter amidst such a small village didn’t become rich… they would have also had a home farm…but when people needed to build homes or plows… they relied on the carpenter. (As a rule the common man built his own house, probably with the help of family and neighbors. A family might have a knife and hammer of some kind. But a carpenter would possess both specialized tools, some fairly expensive, and the skills to use them -- saws, axes, awls, drills, plumb lines, chisels, and planes, some of which have been recovered by archeologists.)