Back when Mary and I were teaching high school students at our church in Albuquerque, I came across a Christmas quiz that we used to give to the kids each year. Since then I’ve also used it with adults and found they often don’t do a whole lot better than the kids did. That’s because there are so many traditions that have made their way into the Christmas story that just aren’t in the Bible although many people assume they are. One of those questions on that quiz asked where in the Bible we can find the Biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus. And in answering that question, it’s interesting to think of how each of the gospel writers deal with the birth of Jesus:
• Mark just ignores it altogether and he begins his gospel account with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus
• John doesn’t deal with the birth of Jesus directly although his gospel account does begin with the idea of Jesus becoming flesh and coming to dwell or “tabernacle” with His people.
• Matthew begins with the genealogy of Joseph and then he briefly deals with the birth of Jesus from Joseph’s perspective and records the visit of the magi, probably about a year later.
• Luke gives by far the most detailed account of the birth of Jesus. He is the only gospel writer to give an account of the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth, the only one to record the shepherds coming to visit baby Jesus and the only one to record Jesus being presented in the Temple when He is 8 days old where He is blessed by Simeon and Anna.
He is also the only gospel writer who gives a comparatively lengthy account of the first Christmas from Mary’s perspective. He dedicates 13 verses to describe the scene where Mary found out she was going to have a baby and another 17 verses describing Mary’s visit to see Elizabeth. We read part of that account earlier this morning.
But nowhere in that account do we get even a clue about how Joseph found out about Mary’s pregnancy. So we might assume that perhaps Matthew will give us that information since he writes about the birth of Jesus from Joseph’s perspective. But as we’ll see this morning, that just isn’t the case. The fact is we don’t really know exactly when or how Mary told Joseph she was pregnant. The Bible doesn’t give us those details. All we know is that at some point he did find out. Perhaps the conversation with Mary went something like this.
[Show the video]
For the remainder of our time this morning we’re going to look at Matthew’s gospel, which gives us the little bit of information we do have about how Joseph responded to this news. So you can turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 1 this morning and follow along as I begin reading in verse 18.
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.
In today’s culture, the fact that Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph were married would unfortunately not be such a big deal at all. Though it is certainly not consistent with God’s ways, we know that over 40% of the children born in the United States each year are born to unmarried women. As a result there is no longer the kind of stigma associated with being pregnant outside of marriage like there once was.
But that was certainly not the case for Mary and Joseph. So when Mary tells Joseph she is pregnant, he is faced with a real dilemma. In order for us to understand why that was the case, we need to understand Jewish marriage practices during Biblical times.
We tend to equate the practice of betrothal with our practice of engagement. And in our culture it is not uncommon for an engagement to be broken for a variety of reasons, in which case the wedding is just cancelled. In fact, it seems that one of the most common plot lines in many romantic comedies revolves around two people who really aren’t right for each other, but who are engaged anyway, who finally figure that out and end up falling in love with someone else.
But the practice of betrothal was a far greater commitment. It usually began with the families of the bride and the groom arranging a marriage, often without even consulting the prospective couple. While that seems really strange to us, there are actually some advantages to such arrangements. First they focus on the importance of the entire extended family rather than just the bride and groom alone. But perhaps even more importantly, it establishes the idea that love is a lasting commitment of the will rather than just an emotional attachment that can easily change over time.
The betrothal contract would be signed by the fathers and the family of the groom paid a “bride price”, known as a “mohar” to the bride’s family. That mohar served to compensate the father of the bride for wedding expenses and to provide compensation in the event the groom became dissatisfied with his prospective bride and divorced her.
Once the betrothal contract was signed, it was considered to be legally binding even though the marriage ceremony, the huppah, and the consummation of the marriage often did not occur until as much as one year later. The betrothal period was considered to be a time of testing of the fidelity of both the bride and groom during which they were not to engage in sexual relations.
So when Mary became pregnant during that time, it was a big cultural “no-no” that would bring shame on her and Joseph and both of their families. While we know that Mary’s pregnancy was not due to a violation of her betrothal fidelity, you can imagine what was going through Joseph’s mind when Mary revealed she was pregnant. The one thing he did know for sure was that the baby wasn’t his, but beyond that it’s not hard to imagine how Joseph struggled with accounts of angels and a baby being conceived by a virgin when the Holy Spirit came upon her. Nothing like that had ever happened before – ever.
As we pick up our account in verse 19, we’ll see how Joseph responded to this revelation:
And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
We learn a lot about the character of Joseph’s love for Mary here. Under Jewish Law, he had several options. If he wanted to carry things to an extreme, He had the right to have her stoned as an adulteress (Deuteronomy 22:23-27). He also had the right to divorce her publicly and shame her (Deuteronomy 24:1-4). That is probably the option most men in that culture would have chosen because it would have publicly put all the shame on Mary and removed any doubt of his own complicity in the matter. And no doubt, that is the option Joseph would have chosen had he been interested only in his own reputation and not that of Mary.
But instead, Joseph resolved to divorce her quietly. While most divorces had to publicly reveal the reason for the divorce, there was a provision in the Jewish law that allowed a man to file for divorce privately without stating a reason. Joseph decided to proceed in that manner in order to do what he could to protect Mary’s reputation.
We learn that Joseph acted in that manner because he was “just”. At this point, I think we can reasonably conclude that he still didn’t believe Mary’s extraordinary story. He probably thought she was either lying or that she was crazy. So because he was just, he needed to deal with the situation by divorcing her. But because he loved her so much, he did that in the most merciful way he could. His love for Mary was not just based on his feelings, it involved acting in a way that would best meet her needs, not his own.
Isn’t that exactly how God deals with us? In fact the entire reason that Jesus was born into this world in the first place is because that is how God deals with us. Because we are sinners, God must deal with us justly and punish us for our sin, But He did that in the most merciful way possible by sending His Son into this world to take that punishment on our behalf. God’s love for us is a lot like Joseph’s love for Mary – it is not merely based on some emotional feeling, but it consists of taking actions that meets our deepest need.
But just like Zechariah and Mary prior to this and the shepherds sometime later, Joseph is about to have an encounter with an angel that will turn his world upside down. Let’s continue reading Matthew’s account in verse 20:
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.”
It seems that even after Joseph had decided to divorce Mary, he continued to consider all he had been through. Perhaps he wondered if all that Mary had told him, as inconceivable as it was, could possibly be true. So apparently, he didn’t act in haste, which gave God time to come to him and let him in on what was going on.
We really don’t know how long this occurred after the angel Gabriel had come to Mary or Mary had told Joseph she was pregnant. But at some point, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to reveal God’s plan. As we saw in our recent study on angels, this is actually a pretty common way for God to use angels as His messengers.
The angel addresses Joseph as “son of David”. Although Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, a fact that I’ll address a bit more in a moment, he was his father for legal purposes. That is why Matthew begins his gospel account with the genealogy of Joseph where he traces his ancestry back to both Abraham and David to prove that Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah that God had indicated would be a descendent of both of them.
Just as we have seen with Zechariah, the shepherds and Mary, the first thing that the angel tells Joseph is “do not fear”. The reason that Joseph does not need to fear taking Mary as his wife is that she has not violated their betrothal agreement. Her pregnancy is not due to any kind of infidelity, but rather, just as Mary had told him, the result of the Holy Spirit coming upon her.
And then the angel repeats the instructions he had earlier given to Mary concerning the name that was to be given to the child. He was to be called “Jesus”, a name that means “the salvation of YHWH”. That was actually a fairly common name in that day. It is the same name as Joshua and the Jewish historian Josephus mentions 12 different men named Jesus in his writings. But in this case the name had particular significance because Mary’s son was going to save the people from their sins.
Before we go on, I want to call you attention to one more seemingly insignificant, but important, thing that the angel says here. Notice that he says “she will bear a son”. The angel never tells Joseph he is going to have a son. In fact, the Bible is very careful to never call Joseph Jesus’ father. Let me show you a couple of examples really quickly. If you’re still in Matthew 1, go ahead and turn to chapter 2 and look at verse 13:
Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.
(Matthew 2:13 ESV)
Notice that the angel specifically says “the child and his mother” and not “your child” to Joseph. Then go down to verse 20 and you’ll see the same thing again:
saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead.”
(Matthew 2:20 ESV)
So while Joseph was considered to be Jesus’ father for legal purposes, which was crucial to Jesus being a king from the lineage of David, the Bible is careful to consistently show he was not Jesus’ biological father.
As we’ve mentioned before, the primary purpose of Matthew’s gospel account is to show that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah that had been promised to Abraham and David, so he frequently quotes from the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah to confirm that truth. He does that here in verses 22-23:
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 Immanuel”
(which means, God with us).
Here Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Those who want to argue against the virgin birth of Jesus like to point out that in the Hebrew Old Testament, theword translated virgin in that verse (almah) merely means a “young women” and that it does not necessarily refer to a virgin.
While that is actually true, we need to consider the context of Isaiah 7 in order to understand why it is appropriate that those who translated the Old Testament in into Greek and Matthew both use the Greek word that clearly means “virgin”. In Isaiah 7, the prophet Isaiah tells King Ahaz of Judah that God is going to give him a sign. A young woman – probably referring to Ahaz’s wife – will conceive and give birth to a son. Before that child comes to the age of accountability, the two rival kingdoms of Israel and Syria will be cut off so that Judah would be saved. And all that actually happened in the time of Ahaz. That was the near term fulfillment of that prophecy.
But we know from our prior studies that many Old Testament prophecies have both a near term and a far term fulfillment. Here Matthew, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, confirms that the far term fulfillment of that prophecy is going to occur when the Messiah is born to a virgin.
I will grant that if all we had was just Matthew’s quote of Isaiah 7:14 to prove the virgin birth of Jesus, that would be pretty tenuous. But both Luke’s account of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and Matthew’s account that we’re looking at this morning make it clear over and over again that Mary did not get pregnant as a result of sexual relations with any man.
The prophecy from Isaiah reveals something else significant about the birth of Jesus. He is going to be known as “Immanuel”, which, as Matthew explains to his readers, means “God with us”. Not only does that confirm the idea of the virgin birth by revealing that this child to be born to Mary is God in the flesh and therefore couldn’t have an early father, but it also tells us something important about the nature of the Messiah. Rather than the conquering hero that most of the Jewish people expected, the Messiah was coming to live with the people He had created. As the write of Hebrews remind us, the only way Jesus could save the people from their sins was to become like us:
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
(Hebrews 2:17 ESV)
This account comes to a close in verses 24-25:
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
In each of the accounts we have looked at this Christmas season we’ve seen people who had a choice of whether or not to be obedient to the command of the angel who appeared to them. And although in Zechariah’s case there was a lack of belief at first, we find that in each of these cases, the people chose to obey the message they had received. I’ll come back to the implications of that obedience in a moment.
We see that Joseph chooses to obey as well. As soon as he awoke from the dream, he took Mary as his wife, regardless of the shame that he knew it would bring to him personally. And he does exactly as the angel instructed and named Mary’s son Jesus.
Matthew adds one last piece of information to confirm the truth of the virgin birth by telling us that Joseph had no sexual relations with his wife until after Jesus was born. By the way, the implication here is that after that birth Joseph and Mary had a normal married life, which is confirmed by the fact that they had other children who became Jesus’ half brothers and sisters. So Mary was not, as some claim, a perpetual virgin.
As I mentioned a moment ago, over the past four weeks, we have looked at the accounts of people who chose to be obedient to God when God revealed His plans for our coming savior. Do you ever what would have happened if each of those people had chosen not to obey God?
• What if Zechariah had refused to go home to be with his wife Elizabeth so that she could bear the son that God had promised? What if that son had been named Zechariah rather than John? What if Zechariah and Elizabeth hadn’t raised that son in the manner that God had commanded? Who would have been there to prepare the way for the Lord?
• What if the magi hadn’t heeded the dream in which they were warned not to go back to Herod? What if Herod would have learned where Jesus and his family were and had tried to kill the Messiah while he was still a baby?
• What if the shepherds hadn’t gone to find the baby Jesus? Who would have taken their place as the first evangelists to share the good news of great joy that was for all the people?
• What if Mary and Joseph hadn’t obeyed God? What if Joseph would have refused to take Mary as his wife and he did what he first planned to do and quietly divorced her? How would she have ever made her way to Bethlehem for the birth of her son so that the prophecy of Micah 5:2 could be fulfilled?
I am not suggesting in any way that the disobedience of any human could ever thwart God’s plans. So neither Zechariah nor the magi nor the shepherds nor Mary and Joseph’s disobedience would have prevented Jesus from sending the Messiah into this world. But had those people chosen to disobey God what would have happened is that they would have missed out in the blessing that came from being a part of God carrying out that plan.
So as we close this morning, I want to encourage you with two thoughts:
First, let’s start with the idea of obedience we just talked about. The accounts that we’ve looked at over the past four weeks remind us that Christmas is also about the blessings that come with obedience. God’s story is being written each and every day and it is God’s desire to include us in the unfolding of that story, not just have us be spectators. God is going to write his story regardless of whether we chose to be participants in that story. But when we obey and allow God to use us within His story we are blessed beyond what we could ever imagine.
As I’ve explained before, I’m not suggesting that we obey God just because we’re going to get something out of it. The heart motivation for our obedience ought to be our gratitude for the love of God that He has demonstrated through Jesus. But the result of obedience that is motivated by that kind of gratitude is that we are blessed like Zechariah, the magi, the shepherds and Mary and Joseph. Or as I’ve put it previously:
We are blessed in our obedience, not for our obedience
Finally, and most importantly, Christmas is a love story – a story of God’s love for us. In a sense that love is a lot like Joseph’s love for Mary, but obviously much greater than that. It is not a love that is based merely on how God feels about us, although I believe the Bible is clear that God cares for us deeply. It is not a love based on what God is going to selfishly get out of the relationship, although God does receive glory as a result of that love. It is not a love based on our obedience or what we do, although God is pleased when we obey Him. Rather, it is a self-sacrificing love that is demonstrated by the sacrificial actions He takes on our behalf to meet our deepest needs.
Christmas is the confirmation that your life matters to God and that He loves you more deeply than you will ever know. But the only way you will ever experience that love is to receive it by making Jesus your Savior, Christ and Lord. If you’ve never done that, then I encourage you to do that today. I promise you that will be the greatest gift you will ever receive.
