Dancing With God - Step By Step Series

Theme: Discovering God’s Will – Advent Style – Joseph

Title: Dancing with God – Step by Step

Go with us as we travel with Joseph as he learns how to follow God’s Will one step at a time.

Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6; Matthew

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

I can’t dance – it’s just not in me – oh, I have tried but to no avail.

I remember as a child we had this record album that was to tell you how to do certain dances. There were even some illustrative pages that were to show you how to do certain moves and steps.

I tried, oh how many times I tried as a child to do just the simple steps. But it was all lost on me. I just couldn’t get my feet to do the right things to the right music.

Even though I loved the song “Dancing in the rain” and have a least 1,000 times or more tried to dance in the rain – I mean who doesn’t like to dance in the rain – it just hasn’t worked.

I can jump in the rain, skip in the rain or even do a stutter step or two but no real dancing.

It’s hard to follow directions or to follow steps.

That’s not only true of learning how to dance or how to march or do a million other things, but it’s also true of learning how to live out God’s life plan for our lives.

And there is no one better to help us learn how to do that step by step than the man we are going to look at this morning – the man who adopted Jesus as his own son and raised him – the man we know as Joseph.

His whole story is remarkable to say the least. Perhaps even more remarkable given the fact that we have no recorded words coming from the mouth of Joseph.

That’s right. None of the Gospel writers record anything he said. All we have is his actions which when you look at them in detail say a great deal.

So, let’s look at this man named Joseph who according to the genealogy given to us in the Book of Matthew is a descendant of King David himself. Joseph is from the Tribe of Judah.

And he has an arranged marriage to a young lady named Mary but let’s not get ahead of our story.

I. Joseph dances superbly with the LORD in His Faith Walk

Joseph is walking the walk of obedience and faith with the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY.

He is a righteous man; he was following God’s life plan to the letter.

If we look at his life as a dance – then Joseph was an amazing dancing partner of the Lord God Almighty.

He was in the habit of listening to the LORD and obeying the LORD. He didn’t want anything in his life that was unholy or unrighteous.

He went to work, he went to synagogue, and he lived a life that was a model life.

I am sure that his parents were proud of him and I am very sure that Mary’s mom and dad were thinking that their daughter was going to have a very happy life with a man who was both a hard worker and a man of the law, of righteousness.

Joseph is the kind of guy that we in the church would look up to and want to have our children look up to as well. He is the kind of person that we would want on our church board or perhaps teaching a teen class.

So, when we first meet Joseph, we are impressed. He is a hard worker; he has his life together with family and God and is on the right life plan to enjoy a great life.

II. Joseph has a sidestep

Every now and then someone who is dancing happens to hit a snag; their feet get off track, and they find themselves either out of step or getting ready to face plant on the floor.

More than one dancer has found themselves in trouble.

Sometimes it is not them that get in trouble but their dancing partner.

You think the two of you are getting better at this dancing thing and suddenly you both find yourselves reaching out to either steady yourselves or falling to the floor.

Most of the time you just get off the floor and smile at one another, give a laugh or two and get back to dancing.

But in Joseph’s case – the sidestep that happened to him – was quite a sidestep.

His partner, or at least the one he wanted to be his partner appears to have taken a huge sidestep. A sidestep that would ruin everything for them both.