In nativity scenes he stands silently next to the manger in which the baby Jesus is placed. His name is Joseph and some might think that he plays an unimportant role in the Christmas story. In fact, he is not even given a single line to speak! Should we neglect Joseph? Should we skip Joseph’s story and go on to more prominent characters like the angels, the shepherds, and the wise men? I don’t think so. Because if we do, there are some valuable lessons that we will miss.
Matthew 1:18-25:
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. Because Joseph was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
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. 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.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
1. Joseph was known as a “RIGHTEOUS” man.
Joseph was known as a “righteous” man (v 19). This means that he was known for his uncompromising obedience to the Torah, the Law of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy). Joseph didn’t eat unclean food. He didn’t mix with the wrong kinds of people. He didn’t keep his carpentry shop open on the Sabbath to make a few extra dollars. He was a righteous man; that was his identity. Everybody knew this about him. Nobody invited Joseph over to have ham sandwiches with tax collectors. He was what people wanted to be. Like a businessman in our day wants to be a CEO, or like an athlete wants to be an all-star, a Jew wanted to be a righteous person. Becoming one meant you were admired and looked up to. You were somebody. And that was Joseph.
But now he’s a righteous man with a problem. The girl he has promised to marry is going to have a baby, and whoever the father is, Joseph knows it’s not him. Nazareth is a small town, and as a general rule, word gets around in a small town. So we have a righteous man and a pregnant fiancée in a small village where, as a general rule, everybody knows everybody’s business.
Because we live on this side of Christmas, we want to rush to the end of the story where everything turns out okay. We miss the anxiety in a young woman’s announcement, “I’m pregnant” and the tension on a young man’s brow as he searches for answers. You might even be tempted to think that Joseph was spiritually slow and should have figured out what was going on a lot sooner. But if you do that, you miss the whole point of what Joseph is learning, and of what we can learn from him—that there’s some amazing stuff going on around Christmas besides how Jesus got here. You miss out on how God is already beginning to redefine what true righteousness is.
2. Joseph AGONIZED over Mary’s pregnancy.
Put yourself in Joseph’s place for a moment. Your fiancée is pregnant, and your whole reputation and identity revolve around one thing—your commitment to the law. What the law says, you do. That’s who you are. Martha Stewart doesn’t go to McDonald’s for her Christmas dinner. President Bush doesn’t invite Saddam Hussein to his Christmas party. And a righteous man doesn’t disobey the law.
Unfortunately for Joseph—and especially Mary—the law has some clear instructions about what to do to somebody in Mary’s condition. A section in Deuteronomy 22 covers marriage violations. If a woman pledged to be married is unfaithful, it says, “She shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from Israel” (v. 21). (Why God would set down such a harsh punishment for sexual immorality is a subject for another sermon.)
The law is clear. It says this sin must be publicly exposed and punished. But Joseph can’t bring himself to do this. Matthew 1:19 literally says, “Joseph, being a righteous man, did not want to make a public example of her.” The question is: How do you translate the phrase “being righteous”? You can translate it: “because he was righteous.” The idea here would be: because he’s righteous he doesn’t want to cause a ruckus. Or you can translate it: “although he was righteous.” Although he was a righteous man he didn’t want to bring harm to Mary. In the old system, righteousness would have demanded she be exposed. Sinners need to be excluded. Standards have to be maintained. In the old system, righteousness always separates itself from sin and sinner. A righteous man would not hesitate…and yet Joseph hesitated. He can’t bring himself to go public, even though he is a righteous man.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that Joseph must have agonized over this dilemma day after day. When the angel comes to him, Joseph already knows Mary is pregnant. How did he find out? Mary might have told him. Put yourself in his place. Your fiancée comes to you and says, “I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is I’m pregnant even though we’re not married yet. The good news is I haven’t been with anyone else. An angel came to me and said, ‘The Holy Spirit is going to put a baby inside you.’ Joseph, I’m going to have a miracle baby, and all generations will call me blessed. I know it’s never happened before, but it’s going to happen.”
Imagine how she must have protested to him about her innocence. Imagine Joseph’s struggle. He probably didn’t know her very well at this point. She seemed to be sincere. But an angel? A virgin birth? No way.
Eventually, Joseph decides to divorce her quietly. A betrothal was a legal act in that day, so to end it required an act of divorce. That way he could minimize her suffering but maintain his status as a righteous man. Then God sends a message to Joseph. Verse 20 says, “After he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.” Why did God make Joseph agonize over Mary’s pregnancy? Why didn’t God send an angel to him ahead of time and explain everything and remove the anxiety?
Is it possible that anxiety removal is not God’s number one goal for Joseph—or maybe for you and me? Is it possible that in getting his world turned upside down, in having to struggle between what he thought a righteous man ought to do and his desire to show compassion to this young girl, maybe Joseph was being prepared by God to come to a new understanding of what righteousness is?
Is it possible that God is allowing this struggle to take place in Joseph’s life so he’ll come to a new era of growth? Is it possible in your life, maybe right now? If you’re confused or disoriented or uncertain about something, maybe it’s not because you’ve done something wrong. Maybe you’re about to grow. Maybe what you need to do is wait on God and trust God’s going to do something in your life you don’t even know about yet!
3. Joseph sacrificed his REPUTATION.
The angel says, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife” (v. 20). Why would Joseph be afraid to wed Mary? Of course Joseph would be afraid of offending God and violating the law, but it’s not just that. Joseph would be afraid of losing his reputation. He would be afraid of what everybody would think of him. Joseph knows about his own doubts when Mary told him about the angel. There’s no way people in his own town are going to believe an angel came to a poor couple in an obscure village and caused the conception of a child in the body of a virgin teenage girl. He knows that if he marries her, his friends will never accept his account of what happened. He will not be invited to their homes, he will not be given their business, and he will never again be admired and respected as a lover of the law. If he commits himself to his baby—to the one who would be known as Jesus—he will do so at enormous sacrifice. His whole reputation, the work of a lifetime, will be trashed.
The angel said, “Do not be afraid,” and Joseph does what the angel had commanded him. He does two things. In verse 24, he takes Mary home as his wife. That’s a legal step. It means he has publicly claimed her as his wife. And then verse 25 says he names the baby. This too is a legal action. In the act of naming the child, Joseph is publicly adopting this child as his son. Joseph has now deliberately tied his destiny to the lives of Mary and her child. Joseph has made a decision that will amaze anyone who comprehends it. His days as a righteous man are now over. Whatever the future has for him, it will not be polite respectability.
I want to show you how fully Joseph risked everything to obey God’s will. Mark 6 says Jesus had four brothers. They were named James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. It’s hard to tell from the English translation, but each name is the Greek version of the Hebrew for one of Israel’s great patriarchs—Jacob, Joseph, Judah, and Simeon. Scholars say Joseph and Mary may have given their sons these names because they believed that through their son Jesus, God was going to act one more time to help His people. That’s what God was up to in the birth of this little baby.
It may also be that we see part of the price Joseph paid in Mark 6:3, when the people say about Jesus, “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” Probably Joseph is dead by now, but even if the father died, a man in Israel was always referred to as the son of his father. To refer to the man as the son only of his mother often was an insulting expression. We have similar crude expressions today. Mark 6:3 may well reflect that decades later, not just years but decades later, Joseph’s reputation still has not recovered.
Since that time, millions of people have made sacrifices for the sake of this one called Jesus. Many have given up status, possessions, convenience, freedoms, even their lives. But Joseph, who gave up his identity and reputation for Jesus, had not even seen Him yet. When Joseph looked into the people’s eyes after he obeyed God, things were never the same. They never looked at him with the same respect and admiration. But when he looked into the eyes of that child, Jesus, he knew he had done the right thing.
4. Joseph exemplified the righteousness of JESUS.
Maybe God decided that Jesus, who would be called a friend of sinners, should be raised in a family that knew firsthand what it felt like to be regarded in the second-class category. Maybe part of why Jesus had a heart for unrespectable people is that He was raised by a father who sacrificed his respectability for his son. Maybe one reason Jesus had compassion on women who were walking scandals is that he knew what it meant to his mom that his father had stuck by her when she was single and pregnant, and when all the self-righteous folks would have said “take a walk.” I think of how Jesus, as He was growing up, must have admired Joseph’s courage.
Later, when Joseph was long dead and Jesus was a grown man, He taught in Matthew 5:20, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus may have been thinking inside, I’ve seen the better kind of righteousness firsthand; Joseph was such a man.
Big Idea: Joseph’s part in the Christmas story exemplifies this new—and higher—righteousness.
Two essential characteristics of this new righteousness are:
(1) Compassion
One dictionary defines compassion as “sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help.” Joseph felt sympathy for Mary and helped her. He showed compassion to her.
(2) Self-denial
Joseph sacrificed his reputation as a keeper of the law in order to obey God’s command to take Mary as his wife.
The righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law was much different than Joseph’s righteousness. They were preoccupied with following a list of do’s and don’ts and neglected the needs of others. Their “righteousness” was focused primarily on themselves.
So often we are like the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. We have our weekly Christian checklist. Did I attend church? Check. Did I tithe? Check. Did I pray? Check. Did I read my Bible? Check. I must be very righteous! God must be impressed! Those spiritual disciples are very important, but I think that God’s checklist for us would read a bit differently. It would include: Have you shown compassion to others today? Have you sacrificed anything for others today?
The righteousness that Joseph possessed was a righteousness of compassion and self-denial. This is also the kind of righteousness Jesus possessed. Philippians 2:7-8 says that He “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Jesus, filled with compassion, saw our hopeless condition in sin and did something about it. He became a man and gave His life for us. This is the kind of righteousness God wants us to have—a righteousness that is willing to make sacrifices in order to show compassion to others.
Right now, I would like you to think of one person in your life who needs to be shown some compassion this Christmas season. It may be a spouse, a child, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, or someone else. Think of one specific way you will show compassion to that person. Allow yourself to move beyond your comfort zone—as Joseph did.
I believe God had a reason for this odd, painful, lonely way to start a family. And I believe God still calls people to be willing to die to reputation and status and comfort for the sake of others. When Joseph made the decision to wed Mary, he thought it was the end of his being known as a righteous man. He did not know fully that that child he would adopt would bring to the human race a new kind of righteousness. That’s what we celebrate this Christmas.
[This sermon relies heavily on a sermon by John Ortberg called “Recognizing Divine Interruptions.”]
Advent Reading
Second Sunday of Advent
The Angels’ Candle
As we light the Angels’ Candle on the second Sunday of Advent, we proclaim: Glory to Christ who is the highest; glory to Christ who stooped the lowest; glory to Christ who loves the deepest.
Scripture: Luke 2:8-14
Communion Meditation
Joseph was told by the angel in his dream to name Mary’s son “Jesus.” The name means “the Lord saves.” It was popular among the Jews of the first century and was given to sons as a symbolic hope for the Lord’s anticipated sending of salvation. But the name had a much greater significance for the son born to Mary. The angel told Joseph to give Him the name “Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
This child would fulfill the words of Psalm 130:7-8: “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.” The psalmist declared that the Lord Himself would be the Redeemer. And so the baby who was born to Mary was the Lord veiled in human flesh. The baby who was placed in the manger was the one who would save mankind from their sins. The boy who grew up in Joseph and Mary’s home was the Savior who would one day lay down His life for us.
CHRISTMAS ACCORDING TO JOSEPH
Matthew 1:18-25
5. Joseph was known as a _______________________ man.
This means that he was known for his uncompromising obedience to the Torah, the Law of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy).
6. Joseph _____________________ over Mary’s pregnancy.
The law was clear: Deuteronomy 22:21.
Matthew 1:19 literally says, “Joseph, being a righteous man, did not want to make a public example of her.” The question is: How do you translate the phrase “being righteous”? You can translate it: “because he was righteous.” Because he was righteous, he didn’t want to bring harm to Mary. Or you can translate it: “although he was righteous.” Although he was righteous, he didn’t want to bring harm to Mary.
7. Joseph sacrificed his _____________________.
Mark 6:3: “Isn’t this Mary’s son?” To refer to a man as the son only of his mother often was an insulting expression. This verse may reveal that decades later, Joseph’s reputation still had not recovered.
8. Joseph exemplified the righteousness of ____________.
“Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
Jesus may have been thinking inside, I’ve seen the better kind of righteousness firsthand; Joseph was such a man.
Big Idea: Joseph’s part in the Christmas story exemplifies this new—and higher—righteousness.
Two essential characteristics of this new righteousness are:
(3) ______________________
(4) ______________________
Challenge: Will you deny yourself and show compassion to someone this Christmas season?
