Joseph's First Dream

This Advent Season, we’ll be preaching from Matthew 1 and 2. Compared to the nostalgic romanticism of the Luke’s Christmas story, Matthew offers a shocking realism to these events. Matthew 1:18 – Matthew 2:23 offers us a distinct pattern. What ties these verses together is the fulfillment of five key Old Testament prophecies. Two from Isaiah and one apiece from Micah, Hosea, and Jeremiah. Add to that, every other passage includes one of Joseph’s three dreams.

As Matthew writes his Gospel to a Jewish audience, it is important for Matthew to ground his Gospel into Jewish history. They were all the more likely to accept Matthew’s Gospel as true. And what better way than to tie Jesus’ birth to the fulfillment of God’s Old Testament prophecies. Beyond these Christmas stories and their five associated prophecies, Matthew includes seven more fulfillments for a total of twelve.

Today, we’ll begin with Isaiah’s prophecy from 7:14 written roughly 750 years before the events of Matthew 1.

This prophecy was given as a prophecy of hope to wicked King Ahaz, Judah’s king, as they face doom. At that time, King Rezin of Damascus and King Pekah of Israel had Jerusalem under siege. God told King Ahaz to ask for a sign of proof they would fail. But King Ahaz is angry and refuses to ask God. The Lord sends Isaiah with this message – So you will not ask the Lord as commanded for a sign, the Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel which means God with us. As they are ready to give up all hope of survival, this child to come would be a visible, physical assurance that God is present in Israel. Yet King Ahaz refuses God’s encouragement – a final straw so to speak. Just three verses later, Isaiah prophecies that the king of Assyria will conquer Judah. For King Ahaz and his people, it was tragically evident how essential faith is: No faith, No future.

Now let’s jump ahead 750 years: Tying Jesus’ conception and birth to an Old Testament prophecy reveals just how shockingly unique this baby would be. With this prophecy on the ears of Matthew’s Jewish audience – there was a spark of hope beginning with Jesus’ birth. A new light was dawning in Israel. God’s presence was being restored. The 400 years of God’s silence from Malachi was coming to an abrupt end. For Luke it was marked by the angel appearance to Zechariah = John the Baptist’s soon to be father. But for Matthew it was marked through dreams. Twelve such dreams are documented just in Genesis. Unlike our dreams, these dreams came to be understood as supernatural communications from God.

Please turn to Matthew:1:18-25 .

As we said earlier, Matthew’s take on these stories offers us the shocking realism behind Christ’s conception and birth. Verse 18 is the insider’s secret as the narrator clues us in. Unlike Luke, there is mention of the angel Gabriel’s appearance to Mary. Mary’s glorious response of being the Lord’s servant is nowhere to be found. Nor is Mary’s song. Reading this as a Jew would have been both shocking and confusing. Shocking because a pregnancy outside of marriage would have warranted a death sentence. Confusing because the pregnancy came by the Holy Spirit. This was not good news as far as Joseph was concerned. This came to him as a huge surprise and not a good one at that! So Joseph plans to divorce her:

But wait a minute, why didn’t Joseph just cancel the engagement? They weren’t married! Why was a divorce necessary? Today’s engagements were very different from today. Today’s engagements are stories of romance. The guy dropping down to his knees – proposes to the love of his life and places a ring on her finger.

But in Joseph’s day, engagements were legal affairs with the force of law. They were legal arrangements so love had little to do with it – at least at first. Love would hopefully come later as a result of the marriage. The engagement was far more a social contract. Joseph would pay a brides price to Mary’s parents for the privilege of marrying her.. During the engagement Mary would stay living in her own home with her parents. But socially, she was committed and unavailable to consideration by anyone else. Engagements could only be broken by a divorce – often times a humiliating process.

So the Bible doesn’t tell us whether Mary tried telling Joseph the story about Gabriel’s appearance. We don’t even know anything about what Joseph was feeling. Instead, the Bible reveals two things about Joseph.

First, he was a righteous man – righteous in the ways of the law and obedience to the laws of God. That didn’t mean Joseph was perfect as Jesus would be, but it did mean Joseph was attentive to obeying God. He knew what the severe consequences would be for Mary’s pregnancy to become public.