Joseph’s Call – 12/17/23

According to Michael Linton, a music professor who examined 381 English language Christmas carols, Mary is featured in 27% of them. Songs like “O Little Town of Bethlehem” have statements like “Christ is born of Mary” or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” lines like “offspring of the virgin’s womb.” Of course, you have more modern Christmas carols like “Mary, Did You Know?” that rightly emphasize Mary’s prominent role in the Christmas story.

However, Joseph is often featured like the ghost of Christmas past. He’s a shadowy figure in the background of the manger. We’re wondering what is he doing there? What is his role? However, in Matthew 1, in contrast to Luke 1, it seems as though there’s an emphasis, a focusing in on Joseph’s role. And so, in a day when television movies often portray men as either abusively violent, sexually addicted, or intellectually doltish, it’s really good for us to pause and take in this passage that features Joseph’s call. What was it like for him? What role did he play? And by extension, I think we’re going to learn a lot about how does God call us. We feel often like maybe Joseph felt. I’m a nobody. Does God call someone like me? So, what can we learn from Joseph’s call in Matthew 1:18-25? Five things at least. Here they are.

Number 1, God calls us in real time. Back in 2012, former pastor Rob Bell wrote in his book Velvet Elvis,

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus has a real earthly biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing …?”

He’s asking does that change anything, whether Joseph was Joseph or Larry or the cable guy? Does that really matter whether Mary was a virgin or she was messing around a bit? Does that change anything? Answer — Yes! That changes everything! History matters in a big way.

And today the story gets very personal in real time. Look at 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.”

History matters.

Now, many philosophers, if not most, really struggle with this. Let me give you a couple examples. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book The Antichrist, wrote,

“The concept of ‘son of man’ is not some concrete person belonging to history, someone individual or unique, but an ‘eternal’ facticity [an eternal reality], a psychological symbol that has been redeemed from the concept of time, … it is everywhere, and it is nowhere.”

Richard Rohr, in his book The Universal Christ, calls this an “important reframing.” He says,

“But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world.”

So, these philosophers and progressive theologians trip over what is often called “the scandal of particularity,” the scandal of particularity.

Atheist Sam Harris illustrates this when he worries about what he calls the “provincialism of religion.” What does he mean by that? Well, Jesus’s having a stepfather who was a first-century, Aramaic-speaking, Jewish man who was a craftsman … that feels very provincial, local, maybe even childish, naive, simplistic. And that means, according to this fear, that means Jesus isn’t everyman; he is a particular man.

Christopher Watkins rightly summarizes the tension here. This is so important.

“The suspicion of particularity can be a healthy instinct against being trapped in the assumptions of one’s own place and time…”

Take that in for a second. Assuming everything needs to be exactly like my little world assumes it will be. That’s a good, that’s a healthy instinct to not do that.

“But it can easily balloon into the prejudice that anything temporally or geographically specific — including Christ himself — must be naive, partial, and blinkered.”

That’s a great word — blinkered, narrow minded.

So, if we don’t understand this tension, we end up either with a vague Jesus of liberalism, which just denies his humanity and deity, or a Jesus of Gnosticism, which denies his humanity in particular. Do you remember we talked about that in 1 John? There were people that John addressed, in our series earlier this year, who denied that Jesus came in the flesh. That’s what Matthew 1 is negating, that God comes in real time, in history. And this has huge implications, way more than we can develop this morning. Let me just suggest a few.

One is the sacredness of the material or the physical. The Word actually became flesh. Second, the significance of the incarnation, specifically in the fact that when God came, he did not come merely as a concept or an idea or even a plan. He came as a person. Another implication is regarding the way to maturity and intimacy. Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, was speaking at UC Santa Barbara in 2012, and she said this.

“The idea of the incarnation is just too fantastic. It is high fantasy, which is high truth. And we do well to remember that, not to push it down and say, ‘Oh, this is childish.’ It isn’t. It’s being the most grown up we can possibly be.”

Last week, our family was all gathered together, and I read a section out of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God Is in the Manger in a section of the book that was called “The Mystery of Love.” Listen to what Bonhoeffer said. He said,

“The greatest mystery is not the most distant star; on the contrary, the closer something comes to us and the better we know it, then the more mysterious it becomes for us.”

Now, with that last statement, that shot our family off into a huge discussion about mystery and familiarity because it seems counterintuitive, right? The closer you get to someone, the more you get to know your spouse, it seems like there’s less mystery. But Bonhoeffer’s saying there’s more. So, what is that? Well, the key is understanding the whole context of the discussion is the mystery of love. Whoa! So, yes, without love the closer you get to someone, you get a familiarity-can-breed-contempt and boredom, right? So, in one sense, the closer you get to someone, yes, there’s less secrecy. But where love is, there is more subtlety.

What does that mean? The closer you get to someone, the more you really know them, if you love them, if there’s love there, the more you realize as you get to know them, you don’t fully know them, and you want to. And so, the subtleties … As you walk through different seasons of life, as you begin to see things that you hadn’t seen earlier, and it becomes this fascinating relationship of love and mystery that dispels presumption and boredom. People who are bored are probably lacking in love, right? We need to pray for love because love evicts presumption and boredom. That has huge implications (I’m getting sidetracked here) has huge implications on our relationships with one another and our relationship with God because as he comes near us in real time in history, that does not wipe out mystery; it actually takes mystery to a whole other level. I have to stop there. God calls us in real time.

Number 2, God calls us away from fear, away from fear. When Joseph found out that his wife to-be, Mary, was pregnant, he had three options — one, he could expose her because in that culture, when a couple was betrothed, it was much more than just being engaged. There was a legally binding relationship that had all the covenantal commitment of marriage without sexual intimacy yet. So, when Mary was found to be pregnant, Joseph was in his right to expose her, and the law would say she could be stoned. It was capital punishment to be unfaithful. Now, it was rarely done then. But option number one — expose her. Second is divorce her. He could wipe his hands clean, end this legal relationship and not mess with it. Third option, marry her and absorb the shame for her apparent adultery. Verse 19,

“And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame [he’s rejecting option number one] resolved to divorce her quietly.”

So, he’s leaning toward option number two. Joseph apparently loved Mary. He did not want to harm her. But he also was struggling with how can I ignore her unfaithfulness? If she’s going to be unfaithful when we’re betrothed, what is our marriage going to be like? It seems like Joseph is a Micah 6:8 guy. Do you remember Micah 6:8? “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God?”

It’s pretty easy to do one or the other. Do justice. Many of us are black and white, right and wrong, give them what they deserve. Or it’s easy to be kind. Let’s just you do you, I’ll do me, no judgments, we just get along and ignore any problems. It’s easy to be kind or just. It’s really hard to be just and kind. So, do you feel that tension? That’s where Joseph is — I love her; she appears to have been unfaithful; what do I do with this? 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.’”

Now, in many counseling centers, they have these rooms where they have one-way glass. And if you’re in counseling training, you sit behind the one-way glass, and you get to look through, and you watch a seasoned, experienced counselor counseling a counselee (you can breathe; the counselor has signed a waiver and agreed) and it is a fascinating experience because you’re watching in real time this counselor asking really good questions that you might not have thought of, listening well, and then drawing out things that you might not even have known to look for. And you’re getting to watch this actually happening. And I feel a little bit like that experience when I’m reading this. The angel is counseling Joseph at a moment when he’s heading with certain presumptions in one particular direction, and the angel is counseling him to reconsider. You’ll see it as the angel is drawing Joseph away from fear.

What fears might Joseph have had? Fear of what he thinks Mary has done, of what Mary might become. If I marry her, what kind of marriage are we going to have if she can’t even be faithful before we even start our marriage? Fear of what people think — there’s no way for us in American culture today to understand a shame-honor culture. Well, we’re getting there with the cancel culture, but the level it was in that day, what this kind of experience would do to you from the whole community and your family. Huge amounts of shame! But the angel helps Joseph see that your fears are preventing you from saying “yes” to God’s call. Now, let that sink in because that is often the experience, I think.

I remember when our kids were younger, and they would come home at times and share a story from the playground. And, you know, kids can be unimaginatively cruel. And someone had been super cruel to someone else, and as we talked about that, I remember times walking them through the fact that sometimes the people who come across the strongest and cruelest are the most fearful. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of being viewed as weak. They’re afraid of losing control. And as adults, that doesn’t change, right? When we snap at our spouse, we disrespect our parents. If we’ll step back and say, “What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of being disrespected? Am I afraid of being misunderstood? Am I afraid of losing control as if I have control? What am I afraid of?”

So, the angel is counseling Joseph to see that the thing you fear is from the Holy Spirit. Let that soak in. In other words, you can say it this way — “God’s call is often hidden behind the thing we fear, and our fear is blinding us to what God is doing.” You can see this in very mundane contexts, in a relational conflict. God is up to something really good, but we’re so afraid we can’t even see it. It’s like driving down the road when the sun is directly in our eyes, not good visibility; we’re just seeing shadows, sparkly things; we can barely see clearly. Fear does that to us. And the Spirit is saying, “Joseph, I’m up to something really good here. Your fear is blinding you. Actually, the thing you fear is from the Spirit.”

“God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind,”

2 Timothy 1:7. God calls us away from fear.

Number 3, God calls us to see our greatest need. The angelic counseling session is still happening as Joseph is told what the Spirit is up to. I love the pronouns of Matthew 1:21.

“She [Mary] will bear a son, and you [Joseph, singular] shall call his name Jesus, for he [Jesus] will save his people from their sins.”

Now, people today generally don’t like to talk about sin. We’re okay with talking about relational problems, got a complicated past, messed-up family, maybe even a psychological disorder, health, financial problems. All these are important. I’m not minimizing any of them. But what the angel is saying here is your need is deeper than a therapist can address. Your need is deeper than medication can heal at the core, not that there’s not a role of any of these. Your need is more than a broker or a banker or a pastor. You need a savior! That’s what he’s saying here. That’s why Jesus came. You need a savior. Look at verse 21.

“Mary will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”

Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua. In Hebrew it’s Yehoshua or Yahweh, which is God’s covenant name, “Yahweh is salvation.” Or there’s a shorter form, Yeshua, which means “Yahweh saves.” So, what is he saving us from? Is he saving us from the Romans, saving us from the IRS, the Democrats, the Republicans? You know, what is he saving? Ultimately what is he saving us from? Verse 21,

“He will save his people from their sins.”

In his new book Sunday Matters, Paul Tripp explains why Christians gather week after week. And the answer is obviously Jesus, his coming, his dying, his rising. But he goes on to say this. This is a whole book about preparing for Sunday. He says,

“It is vital for us to be reminded again and again that his primary mission was not to be our teacher, our healer, or our example. Yes, by grace, he is all of these things to us, but it is important to understand that he came to be our Jesus, that is, the one who would save us from the thing we could not save ourselves from: sin. Sin is the biggest of all human problems, and it lies at the heart of all other human tragedies. Before sin entered the world, there was no sadness, no sickness, no suffering of any kind. Everything was where it was meant to be and doing exactly what God designed it to do. Everything. Sin broke the cosmos in the deepest and most fundamental way. It left a world that is groaning and in need of redemption. Sin is at the root of life’s hardships. Sin is the reason relationships can be so hurtful. Sin is the cause of personal, familial, and international war. Sin corrupts our motives, distorts our desires, and perverts our intentions. Every human being is disappointed in some way. Every human being longs for a better world. Every human being shops for some truth that will liberate them from the mess. Every human being follows some kind of messiah.”

Pause for a moment. Do you see that? Every one of us is manufacturing, seeking some kind of Jesus, some kind of messiah. However,

“Jesus’s birth is the ultimate diagnostic of the human condition. It is the moment in history that we should never stop considering. We are weak, broken, and in need of redemption. That is why Jesus came. That is why the Savior came. So we gather and remember, lest in our delusion we forget who we really are, what we so deeply need, and what God alone has given us in the birth of his Son.”

God calls us to see our greatest need.

Number 4, God calls us within a bigger story. Look at verse 22.

“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).’”

So, Joseph’s call is embedded within a prophecy from Isaiah spoken over 700 years earlier. In 730 BC (or BCE), king Ahaz is ruling over Judah. (Judah is the darkish, bluish thing there next to Edom. That’s the southern kingdom of Israel.) And they’re facing threats from all around. Aram or Syria (which is the green), is uniting with the northern kingdom of Israel (the purple) against Judah. (Philistia is the light blue off to the left. Edom is the orange-ish.) And they are all uniting to attack Judah. But rather than repenting and seeking God’s help, king Ahaz (king Ahaz is the king of the bluish Judah) offers up his first son as a sacrifice to Molech and then turns to Assyria, the big kingdom to the northeast, and asks for help. So, Isaiah confronts king Ahaz, who is terrified. Isaiah 7:2 describes him like a tree in the wind, shaking for fear. And he promises that this alliance against king Ahaz and Judah (the blue) is not going to be successful. But then he gives this wise counsel, [Isaiah] 7:9,

“If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.”

Ahaz, you’re trying to find security in things that will never provide security. You’re always going to be insecure. And then he issues these famous prophetic words. Isaiah 7:14,

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Now, there are a lot of linguistic debates around this. There are even some short-term fulfillments like Isaiah’s wife had a son. So, people think, “Ah, that’s the fulfillment of the promise.” But anyone who looks at the whole section, [Isaiah] 7-9, and you see Isaiah address Judah, and then Isaiah address Israel, and it’s all connected. You quickly see that there is no immediate fulfillment that actually comes close to fulfilling Isaiah’s promise. Even the description of the sign back in chapter 7, verse 11,

“as deep as Sheol and as high as the heaven.”

This is a sign that it’s not just a normal birth. The house of David is fading. Darkness is closing in. You can see on the map Judah is surrounded. But Isaiah goes on to say in [Isaiah] 9:2,

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”

He continues,

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government should be upon his shoulder.”

There’s no Isaiah’s son that can fulfill this.

“And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

This is the child the virgin shall conceive. He is “God with us.” Imagine Joseph, a simple craftsman, being swept into this massive story. God calls us within a bigger story.

One more — number 5, God calls us to a costly obedience, to a costly obedience. Verse 24,

“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,”

“Yahweh is salvation.” So, notice how God’s Word transformed Joseph’s plans. And then energized his actions. He would not divorce Mary. He would marry Mary. But this included some huge sacrifices. So, he was now absorbing all of her shame. People would say, “Oh, Joseph, you were the one. You’re admitting guilt now.” Also, he got all the shame without the pleasure. There was no honeymoon, no first night, no sexual intimacy until a long time later, after Jesus was born. So, anybody who thinks that the only way I will know the call of God is if it’s completely peaceful and pleasurable and understandable. Was that Joseph’s experience at all? No, no, none of those things. We’re resident in this call.

However (and this is so important because I think this brings everything we’ve been learning together), costly obedience, true costly obedience is not the result of some finger-pointing, shame-producing, guilt-driven action. Costly obedience is the joy and the privilege when you know God has revealed himself in real time. He has proven his love in sending his Son to meet your biggest need. He has swept you out of your little narcissistic, enclosed, entrapped story into his big story. And our obedience is simply saying “yes” to all that God is doing as he’s calling us to himself. So, Joseph, in the end, embraced God’s call. Will we?

Let’s review. I know these are too many to take in all at once. So, as I walk through these again, ask the Spirit to put his finger on where you should begin. God is saying, “I’m calling you in real time.” Some of us imagine that if my life were different, God might call me. God isn’t interested in your hypothetical life. He’s interested in you and your real life in real time right now, with all the mess and all the failure and all the what-ifs. He calls us. He comes to us in real time.

Second, I’m calling you away from fear. Some of us are blinded by fear, and the call of God is hidden behind the thing we fear. And what if this morning the Spirit is saying to you, “Let’s set aside the fear for a moment and simply listen?” What is the Spirit up to here, whether this is relational or vocational or any other area?

I’m calling you to see your deepest need today and throughout the Christmas season. I need a savior more than anything, and when I have a savior, it changes everything. Do you believe that? You will never lose the wonder of Christmas when you realize that right now, I should be in hell, but I’m not. I am swimming in the kindness of God. And the wonder never leaves when we realize this is what I deserve. My sin in the presence of a holy God deserves judgment. He hasn’t given me judgment. He’s pouring out kindnesses upon kindnesses. He sent his Son to wash away my sin, to draw us to himself and put me in an amazing family. I have everything I need! And that doesn’t automatically remove the problems we’re walking through, the struggles, the questions, the doubts, the fears. But I can go to God with them in a way that I could not if my sin bound and blinded me. Our deepest need is met. If you have not said “yes” to Jesus today, he is calling your name. He’s inviting you to come, repent, believe.

I’m calling you into a bigger story. The more we get lost in our own story, our little cell-phone world, we can feel how claustrophobic it becomes. We can barely breathe. How narcissistic we become! And God is saying, “Look out, look up.” It’s one of the reasons we gather with a bunch of people who are very different from us, and we look away from ourselves, and we sing songs that maybe aren’t our favorites, and we have to listen to a sermon that I didn’t choose to listen to, the topics. But what we’re doing is we’re saying, “God, show me your story.” And you can feel the liberation as he sweeps us up into something much bigger than ourselves.

And then finally, I’m calling you to a costly obedience. This means some of us have decisions to make now based on what the Spirit is saying to us. Will we say “yes,” or will we ignore? And ignore is a “no.” If the Spirit is convicting us, say “yes, I will turn from that.” If I need to go get help, it’s way better to get help and experience a little humility than to continue on in the bondage I’ve been living in. Obedience is costly.

So, let’s take a moment to breathe and pray in quiet, and then I’ll pray in a few minutes. You might want to walk over those to remind yourself; look over your notes. Or the Spirit may have already spoken to you about something very specific, and you want to pray into that. Let’s take a few minutes, and then I will pray.

Father, help us to see and even feel what it would have been like for Joseph. He had his life mapped out. He knew he loved Mary. The wedding was coming up. Everything was going to go a particular way, and then it all got exploded and changed. And that feeling of confusion, being stunned and disoriented and not knowing what to do, I think we all know that feeling. Sometimes I think we know it too well. But, Lord, you were there, and you led him to a clarity. It wasn’t easy. It actually was very difficult.

Lord, we pray that you would do that same work in our hearts this morning. We’ve got things kind of mapped out. We think we know what it should look like. And you’re, this morning, speaking your Word over us. For some of us, this is going to be disruptive, disorienting, maybe reorienting. For some of us, who have not had a moment of repenting and believing, this could be a moment of saving. Jesus, you came to save us from our sins. So, Spirit, please continue to do your work among us. We want everything you have for us, Lord. We don’t want our fear to blind us from what you are up to in a difficult marriage, in a complicated relationship, in a tough decision or vocational situation or health crisis, Lord. We don’t want to miss what you’re up to because our fear is blinding us. Like with Joseph, this is from the Spirit. You are up to something. Jesus, you have come in real time to forgive and to lead and transform us. We pray that we would experience that this morning. “What then, shall we say to these things? If you are for us, who can be against us? If you did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will you not also with him graciously give us all things?” This story tells us so much about your heart posture toward your people in sending your Son. You did not send him to condemn us, but to save us.

So, Lord, this Christmas, fill our hearts with wonder anew as we see your love. So, we hear your call, and we thank you in Jesus’s name. Amen.