“Mary and Joseph and the Case for Marriage” Matthew 1:18-25
One of my favorite radio programs, when I get the chance to listen to it, is the Prairie Home Companion, In one episode Garrison Keillor tells the fanciful tale of John Tollefson. John leaves Minnesota, moves to New York, and makes a life for himself far from Lake Wobegon. One day John Tollefson calls home and tells his parents about something his girlfriend had said: "There’s no such thing as a successful marriage. There are marriages that give up, and marriages that keep on trying; that’s the only difference."
The question I pose to you today is not one I pose lightly. Its one I have had on my mind now for quite some time- What is Marriage?
In reflecting about the Biblical account of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus there is a message for all of us here about what marriage is and about the morality of what we are doing in our society today. The relationship of Mary and Joseph teaches us about what God has defined marriage to be. Its time we think critically about these issues because we are facing them, and increasingly we have less and less to say about it because by and large we are taking ourselves out of the picture. And if we do have a response its usually throwing up our shoulders and saying we don’t have a definite answer on anything. Meanwhile the church stands by and watches all this happen feeling it doesn’t have anything meaningful to say to a world that already perceives us as anything but relevant. Its because we should have spoken up sooner. It answers the question about why did God send His Son to a man and woman? Its says something to us about the reason and necessity for marriage. .The marriage of Mary and Joseph and their understanding of it and family life upholds the standard that God expects. Marriage needs to be between a man and a woman. Marriage is to be a commitment. And Marriage where ever laws are in place to establish it, needs to be legal.
I. Marriage- One Man, One Woman.
We live in a society that tries to paint the picture of marriage and family in broad strokes. Indeed I don’t really think our society even knows what the picture is going to look like when its finished. It has certainly rejected the model God has given us. So without a model to go by, its going to look like one of those wild, impressionistic post-modern pieces of artwork. It has really clouded what we thought we understood marriage to be now with almost any combination of people living together, not living together, children, no children, related, unrelated, opposite sex, now even same sex. Based on a thorough study of God’s word, the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message defines the family as the ’foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption." I doubt that will make any difference to Hollywood, or to the Supreme Court. It may not even make much of a difference to you. But I believe it does make a difference to God, and it ought to make a difference to us. It made a difference, I believe, to the earthly parents of Jesus.
Why did God place His one and only son, the baby Jesus, in the care of a husband and wife? A man and a woman. True, Mary and Joseph at the point that the announcement was made were legally married but they were not living together as yet as husband and wife. They had not consummated the marriage yet. There were many reasons for this. The Jews would have their married partners to live apart initially to build the commitment and love relationship between them first. They prepared themselves financially, emotionally to manage the stresses of bringing two distinct persons into one. Joseph was building up the money to establish his home through his trade. Mary was learning what it meant to be a wife and a mother. We also know that people didn’t date then as they do today. Marriages were more often than not arranged as a partnership between families which is another reason why they did not live together initially, so that they would learn to love and trust one another, and build the relationship of commitment. But aside from all the differences in the culture, the very first thing that ought to be said about what marriage means is that it is between one man and one woman- not two consensual partners, but a husband and a wife, one male and one female.
Josh McDowell said a few years ago that “when God created the first two people and placed them in the Garden, He created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”. Still, all funny stuff aside- now we are not just advocating marriage between same sex partners, it is going on right now! Its reality, its not funny, it is happening, and its wrong. Its wrong because God said its wrong. Aside from God telling us that same-sex partners is an abomination, God tells us from the very beginning in Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall CLEAVE unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. This is the way God designed and built man and woman- to be together, to express sexual intimacy, to work together and build a life together. That is interesting because when God made Adam and Eve, they did not have a father and a mother the way we have a father and a mother. They weren’t brought into the world that way, but this is the way God designed every human being after them to be. They were not born with certain inclinations for the same gender. Jesus alluded to the creative design of His Father when He said in Matthew 19: 4. And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.” Well, okay so those people won’t listen to God, so who will they listen to?. Well, the very essence of our biological nature says that its wrong. By the simple way that God, in nature made us shows us that a man and a woman belong together. A man and a man and a woman and a woman were not built to express the kind of intimacy that a man and a woman can provide. Paul says this in Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: It is self evident in nature who needs to be together and who does not. But Paul goes on: for this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” In same sex unions, how are we going to sustain any life for the future? How are we going to build a life for a future legacy? You can’t tell me that these same sex unions are committed to a life for the future? What it really comes down to is this- homosexuals are not coming together because they are building a life for the future: they are coming together out of lust for today.
Think about it. Can you imagine what Jesus’ linage going back to King David, and beyond that to Adam and Eve, would have looked like if homosexual marriages or any kind of same-sex union had taken place? The answer to that is obvious. There would be no Son of God even to talk about. There would be no Jesus descended through the generations.
I know this sounds distasteful to have you all hear about this from the pulpit. I don’t like to talk about it any more than you like hearing about it. But that is just our problem. We don’t want to tackle issues like these because they are just too messy and ugly to hear about. We would rather just do church and idealize about a world like what we remember back in the 1950’s and 60’s. That’s the world many of us were brought up in and learned to deal with. But that is not the world we know any longer. And the time will come when an issue like this is going to touch your family. I rather suspect that it has already. I know that it has touched mine. I have a cousin who is involved in a same-sex relationship and has been for over 20 years. Now, we love her, and treat her respectfully, and we invite her to come to the family Christmas dinner. I don’t think Grandma knows about it- maybe she does. But we refuse to countenance her actions or support them in any way. Apparently she is ok with that because while that is a life she has chosen for herself, she cannot rub it in our face and expect the rest of us to go along with it.
II. Marriage means Committment
I know people are tempted to say, “Well if two people want to be together then why should we keep them from being happy?” We can ask this question of other relationships, too.
What Mary and Joseph had was not just happiness. What they had was commitment. They had a commitment to a promise that they had made to one another and before God that ensured their happiness and built upon it to new levels of happiness. God saw the strength of that commitment and that love, and that is why He decided to place his Son into their care
Lewis Smedes wrote this not long ago in his book, “A Chorus of Witnesses”. Yes, somewhere people still make and keep promises. They choose not to quit when the going gets rough because they promised once to see it through. They stick to lost causes. They hold on to a love grown cold. They stay with people who have become pains in the neck. They still dare to make promises and care enough to keep the promises they make. I want to say to you that if you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you will not abandon, then you are like God. What a marvelous thing a promise is! When a person makes a promise, she reaches out into an unpredictable future and makes one thing predictable: she will be there even when being there costs her more than she wants to pay. When a person makes a promise, he stretches himself out into circumstances that no one can control and controls at least one thing: he will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be. With one simple word of promise, a person creates an island of certainty in a sea of uncertainty. When a person makes a promise, she stakes a claim on her personal freedom and power. When you make a promise, you take a hand in creating your own future.
Let’s look for a moment at Mary and Josephs’ commitment in the context of marriage. Yes, there were a lot of differences in the culture and the roles that they played in marriage. As much as we would like to idealize Mary and Joseph’s marriage, it was not perfect. It was not perfect because as they were they were just like us- two people who had sinful natures. But God did not choose them because they were perfect, but because they were not perfect. Through their adversity combined with their faith they laid the groundwork for a marriage that God was pleased with. Hebrews 13:4 tells us “MARRIAGE is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremonger and adulterers God will judge.” While Mary and Joseph’s marriage may not have been perfect, it was pure. Our text tells us that And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS. That means that Joseph and Mary did not have intimacy until after the baby was born. That tells us that if they did not do this prior to the baby being born, that they did not have this relationship before the Holy Spirit conceived the child within Mary. Mary and Joseph teach us much about withholding sexual intimacy before marriage- and that marriage is the only relationship in which God is glorified when such an act takes place. Its because they had already made a commitment and a promise to each other that was not only legal, but it was also deeply spiritual and before God. That intimacy- done with commitment, done legally, done right- brings glory to God. Anything less does not.
III. Marriage Needs to Be Legal- but is that all?
We all need to think critically about what this means. What makes marriage a marriage? Is marriage simply a piece of paper that the state sanctions? Many people have considered this, and that is why they choose to live together and not get married. “If it is no more than that, they say, why get married at all?” Cohabitating couples, people living together, or whatever you might call them have not considered the fact that if a person could not be bothered to make a formal commitment such as a wedding ceremony, or even get the relationship established by the state- such as by a justice of the peace- that says something about the level of commitment the couple have made to one another because marriage is not just a ceremony with white dresses and tuxedos. Marriage is not just about a legal document you pay the Courthouse Clerk for a piece of paper and get a blood test for. I even heard a preacher say not long ago that if you have had intimacy together then before God that makes you married. No, marriage is not even about just about sexual intimacy. If you can’t act responsibly before marriage, how are you going to act responsibly after marriage? Marriage is not just about all these things, marriage is more than all these things combined. It is a relationship of trust and commitment that, come Hades or High Water, we are going to build a relationship that will last. It means if you love that person and are committed to that person, you are going to do what you can emotionally, you are going to do what ever it takes spiritually, you are going to do whatever it takes legally to keep you together, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as you both shall live.
That is the kind of relationship Mary and Joseph had. We know it had to have been in light of Joseph’s bitter disappointment when he learned that Mary had conceived a child. He was plagued by all kinds of confusion, anger, jealousy, betrayal. Not exactly the high point of their marriage even when they hadn’t as yet lived together. He even considered divorcing Mary. He wasn’t even sure of what he wanted to do but I can’t imagine him being very happy about all this. Yet because of his commitment to the marriage God had given he and Mary- and with a little help from the angel Gabriel, Joseph stayed committed to that relationship. In a way, God tested Joseph and his resolve to stay committed to this young girl from Nazareth. Testing him like this at the beginning would only seal the resolve when other issues came up in their marriage- like 12 years later when they both forgot Jesus in Jerusalem and found him sitting in the Temple. Or the commitment to Mary’s son and to teach Jesus what it meant to be a man and learn a trade and to love God.
What do we have to offer that the world is not finding? Does it really do any good to preach against things we don’t like to see? Perhaps the answer lies at our door first. With statistics that tell us that 1 out of 2 marriages end in divorce, and that it is the same for Christians as well as non-Christians, this ought to tell us something. Perhaps its because we are not demonstrating the difference that Christ makes in our own lives and marriages.
In closing I leave you with the words of the Apostle Peter who said: 17. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (I Peter 4:17-18)
