THE COURAGE OF JOSEPH
Matthew 1:18-25
The Main Idea
Because of his allegiance to God, Joseph displayed moral courage and manly courage.
Moral. He showed courage in his personal life, by being a morally and spiritually strong man in a corrupt world.
Manly. He demonstrated his courage when, despite personal embarrassment and in the face of social ostracism, he believed God and married the pregnant girl who was not carrying his baby.
He revealed his sustaining courage in protecting the mother and child during the life-threatening years of Jesus’ childhood.
Applied To Today
· The world needs morally strong men, men who have cultivated such a deep relationship with God that they have begun to share His character.
· Wives need husbands strong enough to defend them, even at great personal cost.
· Children need fathers who are morally strong enough to protect them against the hostile world.
Outline
MORAL COURAGE
· Joseph Was An Ordinary Man
· Joseph Lived A Morally Upright Life
MANLY COURAGE
· Joseph Restrained His Anger And Chose To Treat Mary With Love
· Joseph Resisted Societal Pressure
· Joseph Obeyed God And Took Mary Home To Be his Wife
· Joseph Protected The Child Whenever His Life Was In Danger
INTRODUCTION
It was not until I saw the movie World Trade Center that I realized how courageous the rescuers were in the days following 9-11. The movie told the story of one team of rescuers and two policemen whom they dug out in time to save their lives. These rescuers had to be extremely courageous men to climb down into the chasms formed by broken concrete and steel to rescue trapped people.
Film Clip Form “World Trade Center” Movie
Show the scene of the rescuers reaching the first policeman.
At any moment the massive wreckage above and around them could shift, trapping or killing them as well. They also were aware of the danger posed by the dust and smoke they were inhaling.
And yet they did their duty. They did what they had been trained to do and what the trapped people needed them to do. The nation was right to honor them for their courage even though many of their stories may never be told.
There is a story of courage that is told every Christmas season. But it is a story we often miss because the hero of the story is usually in the background. In nativity scenes he stands silently next to the manger in which the baby Jesus is laid. His name is Joseph and he seems to play a secondary role in the nativity story. He is not even given a single line to speak! Then he disappears completely from history after the teenage years of Jesus.
And yet the courage of Joseph was what made it possible for the child to be born in Bethlehem and to survive the life-threatening early years of his life. Joseph was the man to whom God entrusted the task of protecting the mother and her child from the time she conceived Jesus. He was the rugged and brave man who led Mary safely along the dangerous roads to Bethlehem, to Egypt and eventually back home to northern Israel.
God selected this man to protect the infant Jesus in the dangerous first years of his life. As we look over the span of his life we see that Joseph had the courage to:
· Live a morally upright life in an immoral world
· marry a pregnant girl who was not carrying his child
· protect his wife and son in their flight to Egypt and then again upon their return to Nazareth
God the Spirit has included the story of Joseph to encourage each one of us to live courageously, even if it means living dangerously, in doing God’s will. Before we study his courage, we must remember that Joseph was not some kind of super being. He was an ordinary, flesh and blood man.
1.
JOSEPH WAS A MAN OF
MORAL COURAGE
JOSEPH WAS AN ORDINARY MAN
In the midst of this story of the miraculous birth of Jesus, one that features visitations from angels, we find this ordinary man by the name of Joseph. One of the themes of the Bible is that God uses ordinary people to do His work – people like you and me (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).
Joseph was the kind of man God could trust to be strong in the midst of a crisis. He was strong and resilient enough to protect his family during hazardous journeys to Bethlehem and Egypt, before they were finally able to return home to Nazareth years later.
The reason Joseph had such courage was because of his relationship with God:
JOSEPH LIVED A MORALLY UPRIGHT LIFE
Matthew 1:18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
Joseph was known as a righteous man. This means that he had such a strong relationship with God that he became like God in character. This means that Joseph was courageous enough to stand up against his own sin nature. He had disciplined himself to live the way God wanted him to do, not out of duty but because it was what he wanted to do.
He was courageous enough to live a moral life in a corrupt culture. He grew up among people who were very religious but not very righteous. Even the religious leaders of the day were corrupt men, more interested in politics, power and possessions than in living for God. Truly righteous people make the rest of us uncomfortable. Just by the way they live they make us aware of our shortcomings. So the people had never treated righteous men very kindly. They killed the prophets. They would later reject Jesus.
Even today, moral purity is sneered at. The movie “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” made fun of the idea that a man could live to such an age and be sexually pure. The long line of business leaders who have gone to jail over accounting fraud and insider trading during the past few years lets us know that “business ethics” is all to often a buzz word rather than a corporate code.
Joseph was an unusual man. The kind of man is what every child would wish for: a father who knows the right way to live and who follows the right way no matter what the cost!
In the movie “Cinderella Man,” we meet a man like Joseph. He is a boxer who has lost everything and whose family is starving. His son steals a loaf of bread to help his starving family. The father rebukes his son and makes him apologize to the storekeeper from whom he stole it. This God-fearing father may not have been able to fill his children’s stomachs but he nurtured their spirits! I have the courage and integrity of this father?
Joseph was a man of moral courage. He was also a man of manly courage.
JOSEOPH WAS A MAN OF
MANLY COURAGE
JOSEPH COURAGEOUSLY RESTRAINED HIS ANGER AND CHOSE TO TREAT MARY WITH LOVE
We can only imagine how Joseph reacted when he found out that Mary was pregnant. The only way he could explain her pregnancy, since he and Mary had not consummated their marriage, was that she had been unfaithful to him with another man. She was an adulteress!
A scene from the movie “The Nativity Story” shows how Joseph must have agonized over what to do about Mary.
The Nativity Story
Film Clip: “Honor”
Joseph agonizes over what he should do
Any man would respond under such circumstances with:
· Shock. Joseph thought that Mary was a pure and chaste girl. He must have been shocked to the core.
· Deep sorrow. His dreams of marriage to this young girl now seemed to be forever shattered.
· Anger. Joseph must have felt betrayed. His manly pride would have made him want to punish somebody! No one would have blamed him if he had caused a terrible scene in the village.
But Joseph’s godly character enabled him to rein in his anger. His love for Mary, even under these circumstances, compelled him to seek for a way to protect her. Love covers over a multitude of sins!
Paul teaches that God the Spirit empowers us to love. When we live in the Spirit’s power, the fruit of the Spirit always trumps uncontrolled human emotion, even and anger and rage. And that the Spirit empowers us with supernatural love (Galatians 5).
Joseph faced down his own emotions and courageously chose to forgive Mary. But he also had to face down the society in which he lived . . .
JOSEPH RESISTED SOCIETAL PRESSURE
As Mary’s pregnancy became obvious to the people in their small town, Joseph knew that he also would be publicly embarrassed. To save face, Joseph would have been justified in publicly divorcing Mary. In fact, the society he lived in expected him to express outrage and to punish Mary.
But because of his strength character he decided to divorce her privately and protect her from public disgrace. But, after an angel explained to him that Mary was pregnant because of a miracle, Joseph decided to marry her.
JOSEPH OBEYED GOD AND TOOK MARY HOME TO BE HIS WIFE
Matthew 1:20 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.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
When the angel told Joseph that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, it is likely that Joseph would have thought of the role of the Spirit of God in creation (Genesis 1:2; Psalm 33:6). So the Word of god reinforced the word of the angel.
But even now, with the Scriptures and an angel to direct him, Joseph had to make a courageous decision. He had to take for his wife a woman who was not bearing his child and, in so doing, share in the unjust shame that was heaped upon her. He would be also undertaking to provide for the child and function in a fatherly role as he raised him.
But Joseph did what the angel commanded him. Joseph’s faith in God was what enabled him to overcome the stigma of becoming the husband of Mary and to accept the responsibility of the child.
The writer of Scripture adds a comment that displays the integrity of this man. Although he had the legitimate right to it, he did not have sexual relations with Mary until after Jesus was born. And this simple fact underscores the truth of the virgin birth of Jesus!
It takes courage to say no! We tend to treat our sexual urges as if they have some kind of overwhelming power. But, for the higher purposes of God, Joseph was able to restrain himself. The fact that they did have sexual relations after the birth of Jesus models for us that, in within the boundaries of marriage, sex is a pure and beautiful gift of God.
Joseph’s courage was tested again after the child was about two years of age. Wise men from the East had visited the family and had worshipped Jesus! The night after their visit, Joseph was again visited by an angel who commanded him to take the child and flee to Egypt for Herod was seeking to kill him.
JOSEPH COURAGEOUSLY PROTECTED THE CHILD WHENEVER HIS LIFE WAS IN DANGER
Mt 2:13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
Mt 2:14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Mt 2:16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
Mt 2:18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
Mt 2:19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
Mt 2:21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”
Having heard from the wise men that they were seeking for the one who had been born to be king of the Jews, Herod commanded that all boys under the age of two were to be killed.
An angel of the Lord commanded Joseph to take the child and his mother first to Egypt and then later back to northern Israel. This meant months of dangerous travel over hostile terrain. Joseph probably walked most of the way! But God knew that Joseph was courageous enough and strong to handle the task.
Summary
Next time you look at a Nativity Scene and see Joseph standing in the background, think of the courage and ruggedness of this man.
We have learned that:
Joseph was a courageous man because of his belief in God.
He showed courage in his personal life, by being a morally and spiritually strong man in a corrupt world.
He demonstrated his courage when, despite personal embarrassment and in the face of social ostracism, he believed God and married the pregnant girl who was not carrying his baby.
He revealed his sustaining courage in protecting the mother and child during the life-threatening years of Jesus’ childhood.
PRINCIPLES
1.
Courage shows up when we least expect it and when we most need it.
Joseph had no idea that his tranquil life was going to be thrown into upheaval. But because courage had been growing inside him it was there when he needed it. But how do we cultivate the growth of courage?
2.
Courage is cultivated by learning that God is more powerful than any threat that may come our way.
David learned about God from nature, from history and from the Scriptures while attending his father’s sheep. That’s why David fearlessly faced up to Goliath, confident that the Commander of the Armies of heaven was with him.
Joseph had cultivated his relationship with God and so he was ready when the day of testing came.
3.
Children Need Courageous Dads!
Children want to be able to boast “My Dad’s bigger than your Dad!” It gives them security to know that their Dad is brave enough and strong enough to protect them.
4.
Wives Long For Courageous Husbands!
One of the greatest statements of a husband’s love is when he protects her regardless of the cost to himself. Here is the story of one such man.
CONCLUSION
God is still at work creating courageous men like Joseph. Men with moral courage and manly courage. Chris Spielman is such a man.
When Chris Spielman played for the Buffalo Bills, he was everything a middle linebacker should be: tough, strong and smart, with passion, total commitment and loyalty to the game. He played the entire 1995 season with a torn pectoral muscle that he sustained in the season opener.
But the game took a distant second place in this thinking during the 1998 season. He chose to stay home. He cooked, took care of his kids, and cared for his wife—by choice. Stephanie, Chris’s wife, was struggling through the stark reality of breast cancer. Surgery, chemotherapy and nausea were Stephanie’s opponents. During her fight Chris was at her side; his actions supported his "family before job" credo.
Asked by a reporter from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle if he’d consider a return to the Bills late in the season, Spielman said, "I’d play in a heartbeat, but what kind of man would I be if I backed out on my word to her? I wouldn’t be a man at all."
Football fans saw Spielman as a man because of his aggressive, leave-it-all-on-the-field style of play. But what really makes him a man? It’s his personal sacrifice and unending commitment and loyalty to his wife.
—Rob Bentz in Sports Spectrum
