Advent
Sermon ~ “The Little Warrior is Coming!”
Matthew 1:20-21
As the night chilled the air and the moonlight, perhaps, sifted between the clouds to spotlight here and there over the landscape, Joseph lie sleeping... And an angel came to him to announce a big thing coming in a small way. Reading from Matthew’s gospel:
20. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
Joseph lay sleeping, but what had his day been like before he took his night’s rest. We don’t know, but we can make some suppositions. We can guess at what a day–a most unsettling day–might have been like for Joseph. It may have been like this...
Joseph stood by his woodworking table that was standing to the side of the house under a thatched canopy that offered some relief from the relentless sun. Sweat beaded over his brow as he worked a piece of wood into a yoke to be sold to a local farmer.
“Ouch!” A sliver jammed into Joseph’s hand, right at the base of his thumb. He was not paying attention... once again he was thinking about Mary, his fiancee. She was going to have a baby, and it wasn’t his. She had told him stories about angels, and that the child within her was a special child. A child from God.
Although Mary had always demonstrated strong character and had always maintained her virtue with him and from what he could tell, was a moral and honest women, the
story she wove around this pregnancy stretched his confidence to the extreme.
He would need to deal with this quietly. He, a virtuous man, could not marry her, but he
did not want the situation to come to the attention of the religious authorities. That could literally mean Mary’s death.
How could she have allowed this to happen! And the story that she told; that an angel had said that this child would be a boy... to be named Jesus... that He was destined to be great, called the Son of God, and to be given the throne of his ancestor King David.
This was just too much! Who could believe this, even if it came from a woman as solid as Mary?
Still, just the other day he was talking with some other men of Nazareth and the topic was once again about the Messiah who they, and most Israelites, felt was going to return soon. Could Mary be carrying the Messiah?
But the Messiah would come as a mighty warrior king, not through a common women of Nazareth! No, not his Mary, perhaps from the family of Caiaphas would come the Messiah, but not from common people. Mary should have thought of another story. And yet, it was just like Mary to tell the truth, even if she would not be believed.
Well, so much for our suppositions. We know that Joseph doubted Mary’s account of her becoming pregnant, and we know that it took an angel to come to him in a dream and set things straight.
So Joseph takes Mary as his wife. The day comes when he and all of Nazareth are informed that they must return to their place of birth to register for a Roman census. “Cursed Romans,” Joseph must have muttered to himself, “forcing me to take out my wife and her special child on a long journey at the end of her pregnancy!”
There is no indication that Joseph ever connected the prophecy from the prophet Micah:
2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of
Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times."
And there is a word from the Lord to us in this: When we go through difficult times, like Joseph being forced to travel with Mary at the critical point of her pregnancy, we can trust God to be working out His will-- a sovereign purpose stretching back beyond our
birth... from everlasting to everlasting.
We need not say, “God if you loved me, how can you allow this to happen!” Just think of Joseph. What if he had muttered along the way, “God, how can you allow this to be happening to my Mary and this special child? Maybe the angel in my dream was not real, but really just that-- a dream? How could You allow this to happen if this child, to be named Jesus, is to be really special?”
Yet working high above Joseph’s understanding was the LORD, fulfilling His word of prophecy, and all the time the sovereign Lord knew that He and His angels would keep Mary and Joseph and the child safe from the hazards of travel and thugs along the way. All the time God knew where Jesus would be born, and that Joseph and his family would be kept safe.
Well, the day came for the birth of baby Jesus. Was it a quiet night like the Christmas hymn suggests? No--it was bustling with life! But I’ll not say much more on that, for Pastor Daul will be telling you all about the situation of Jesus’ birth in his Christmas
sermon.
But what about us? Are we tired of Christmas, so that it has become like a “Silent Night” within our hearts? The years go by... Trees decorated go up and trees undecorated go down and we too easily begin to hush within our hearts the wonder of that day which we celebrate. How easily we forget that the angels were so electrified by what was happening that they could not contain themselves within the heavens. At the birth of Jesus they ripped open the barriers between heaven and earth to walk among the children of men and tell... and tell... and exclaim the excitement!
The day of the Savior’s birth was not hushed. Armies had gathered. The soldiers of evil hoarded... dark principalities that watched silently... dominions of Satan hiding in spiritual darkness, unaware that they were being tricked by the vulnerability they saw.
A baby being born, who they recognized to be the son of God. We know that the demons were first to recognize the true identity of Jesus. “How foolish the Patriarch of Heaven,” they may have hissed, “to clothe His Son in mortality! Doesn’t He know that
Satan as the prince of this world is the master of torture and death over all flesh!”
Satan and the demons must have drooled at the sight! In heavenly glory God had been inapproachable and beyond any of their black arts. But now He was clothed in flesh... Now he could be hurt.... Now He was in the reach of Hell’s weapons. How could this little child ever stand against Satan and his dark armies?
And we know that Satan had already planned his first attack against the Son of God. He placed the demon of murder into the heart of Herod and Herod dispatched his men to kill the first born of Bethlehem. But an angel of light foiled the plot. Jesus was taken
to safety in Egypt.
But this was only the first round. Satan in his dark pride was confident that he would take apart the flesh of this child–this insignificantly born Messiah of God.
Little did Satan know that high above even His understanding God had fashioned in this child the heart of a warrior. A little baby, yes, but with a heart of strength and steal that would forge His own purity and righteousness into weapons far exceeding the arsenals of hell.
Yes, the little warrior would grow, continually assaulted by the weapons of hell–often wielded within human hearts–until Satan finally seemed to destroy Him on Calvary’s mountain.
There Jesus, no longer a baby, but just as precious to the Father in heaven as a baby held in loving arms... There the beloved son of God–the warrior of heaven–is broken piece by piece under the weapons of hell.
And He dies... and just as He dies, when Satan thought he would experience the greatest pleasure of His existence, demons from hell arrive saying that the doors of hell have been broken down. The Son of God is not dead, but he is routing hell, and cannot be stopped!
And Satan wailed the cry of a condemned soul whose neck is stretched onto a guillotine as the blade is released... knowing that it was just a matter of time.... just a matter of time....
And three days after his death, the Warrior returned, spoke with us, and then went into heaven. And in my mind I hear the angels cheering as He entered its gates--GATES NOW FLUNG WIDE OPEN to receive all those who would be washed clean in His blood... to gather all those robed in His righteousness... to accept all those terrible sinners forgiven in the oceans of God’s grace through faith in God’s mighty warrior against evil, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
