December 20, 2025 • 40 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, Merry Christmas.
Are you ready?
Yeah
I asked somebody that yesterday at one of the stores I went into and they told me, yes, I'm ready.
I looked at her and I said, Seriously?
You ready?
She said, well, not really.
(00:21):
I still have a few things left to do.
But it's coming, isn't it?
Um it's coming whether we're ready or not.
Big celebration
I'm happy today I have family here with me.
(00:42):
It was nice to have uh uh Jason and Sarah up front uh singing.
Nice to have my parents with us today.
Uh so if you haven't had a chance to meet them, take that opportunity.
You saw their picture a couple of weeks ago.
You should recognize them.
Uh they look the same in the as they did in the picture.
(01:02):
Uh
My eldest daughter's here, Jessica.
She came with Jason.
I'm glad he brought her.
Or you brought her?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm glad we're together.
It's great to have family here.
Last week uh Byron sent me some uh statistics.
(01:22):
About our live stream.
Uh, those of you that are watching online, I want to say thank you for watching.
Thank you for being here.
He he told me, I'm gonna read some of this to you.
We have an 83% increase in viewership via the church website.
549 average people per day throughout the week visiting and watching the service.
(01:51):
Yeah, wow is right.
Last week on Sabbath we had 103 people view the bulletin online.
Thank you for doing that.
354 people listened via the podcast so far this week.
We had 304 individuals view from Japan.
(02:13):
673 from Singapore, 210 from South Korea, 157 from Hong Kong, 176 from China.
360 from Belgium, 121 from Germany, 131 from Ireland, and 103 from France.
Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord is right.
I mean this is this is good news.
(02:39):
Good news indeed.
And if you're watching today via the website or online, we say thank you and a Merry Christmas to you.
In the small church that was nicely decorated, it was Christmas time, the children had been practicing for the play that the church was going to be putting on that day.
(03:07):
Some were still practicing their lines, some were practicing the music that they were going to sing.
Everyone seemed to be excited.
There was talk that maybe a live animal would be involved.
Some of the shepherds were excited about going and looking at the baby Jesus.
(03:32):
The wise men were excited, especially the one or two that was going to have words to share.
And then the pastor received a phone call.
It seems that the boy that was going to play Joseph was not feeling well that day.
(03:52):
The flu had been going around town, and his mom was afraid that Joseph had it.
He had a high fever, his stomach did not feel well.
And the pastor did not know what to do.
And so the words that he spoke to the Mom, the words that he spoke to the rest of the group that was going to be putting on the play, it's not that big a problem.
(04:18):
We will simply write Joseph out.
It seems that's kind of what we do, isn't it?
I mean, we have a fantastic church hymnal with wonderful songs and
(04:40):
And and we open those up and we sing those hymns, and I love singing the Christmas hymns out of there.
But I went through and looked at those this last week, and do you know how many of them mention Joseph?
Zero.
Now maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I overlooked something.
I have a habit of doing that.
(05:00):
But when I looked through the hymnal, now I don't want you to go looking through the hymnal right now and counting.
Checking me out.
Do that this afternoon or sometime.
You don't have to do it right now.
But when I looked at it, I did not see any.
It seems like it just happens that we
Don't talk about it.
He's not mentioned.
(05:21):
He's not said.
Now I did I I've already told you before I do a little Google thing.
And so I did Google and I say, how many
Hymns are there written about Joseph, husband of Mary.
And wow, there were a hundred hymns there that I had never seen before.
(05:47):
Evidently, in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition, they have venerated Joseph as a saint.
And there are a number of hymns that have been written in his honor, especially that they sing during the month of March, because
In their church tradition, he died in the month of March, and so they march is to honor Saint Joseph, they say.
(06:16):
And I was surprised by that.
And so I asked again, are there any songs about Joseph in the Protestant traditions?
And there were a few.
Let's see.
I I found one uh
Oh, Michael Card has one entitled Joseph's Song.
Mercy Me has one entitled Joseph's lullaby.
(06:37):
Uh Mike Laud has one, Joseph.
I was not his father, he was mine
Uh interesting that there are very few that talk about Joseph.
Today I would like for us to focus.
(06:58):
our Christmas service on looking at it a little bit from Joseph's perspective.
We're going to turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 1.
As we do that, I invite us to bow our heads for an added word of prayer.
Our gracious Heavenly Father.
(07:20):
As we open your word, as we look at the words that are written here, Lord, I pray that you would open our hearts and that your Holy Spirit would come inside.
we would be touched, that we would be drawn closer to you, that we would have a better and clearer understanding of Jesus.
(07:44):
That we would have a clearer and better understanding of Jesus and your will for our life.
So I pray today, Lord, that you would grow us so that we are more like you.
I ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Luke chapter 1, and we'll begin reading in verse 18.
(08:08):
Luke 1, verse 18, and we're going to read all the way to verse 25.
So uh
I know I don't have it on the screen for you, so you're going to have to, you know, open your Bibles.
Luke, I said Luke, Matthew 1.
Matthew 1.
Let's try that again.
Matthew 1.
(08:31):
Beginning in verse 18.
Says now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.
After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.
Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.
(08:56):
But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph.
Son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit
And she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
(09:25):
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated.
God with us.
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn son.
(09:53):
And he called his name Jesus.
One of the first things we find out about Joseph in this introduction was that Joseph was a just.
Man.
You know what it means to be a just man?
(10:14):
Just.
What is that?
Righteous?
Fair.
I looked up some of the other translations and it translated as honorable, kind, good, upright, faithful.
For a complete description, I looked up the definition of just, and it defines just this way
(10:46):
And in light of the religious laws that one lives by, and in the eyes of the people
Have you ever tried to be a just person with that definition?
I mean, to be just and to live up to the laws of the land, that's one thing.
(11:07):
To be just and to live up to the laws of your religious upbringing, what you have been taught or trained, that's a second thing.
But to live up to what is right and just in the laws of the eyes of the people.
I mean, you can't please all the people.
I mean, no matter what you do in the eyes of people, it's going to be wrong.
(11:31):
Or you're going to be second guess.
People are just pickle.
You can't please them.
So why try
Correct?
Why even bother?
The good news is that in this Bible text we are looking at, when Matthew writes that
(11:59):
Joseph was a just man.
He gives us a context in which this justice that
Joseph is supposed to demonstrate, supposed to live the context in which he is talking about.
Joseph is a just man.
It tells us that this is in the context of Joseph being betrothed to Mary.
(12:28):
It tells us that this he was betrothed to Mary, and then she was found to be with child.
Then it says verse 19, then Joseph, her husband.
Sometimes we get confused with that.
(12:48):
We think we understand and what these words mean until we begin reading the text.
I mean, when you think of betrothal, if you were going to think of our American equivalent, we think of engagement, right?
But be if a couple is engaged, would you ever say it is her husband?
(13:18):
Why not?
Because we have that other word, fiance.
Right?
But in the English Bibles we have, they don't call him the fiance, they call him husband because there is a process that they went through in their culture.
(13:42):
Now we have another word that we often use, espoused.
If I was going to ask you for the English equivalent for the word espoused, what would you say?
Engaged.
Yeah, see, that's part of the problem.
In the Jewish culture, they had a uh several words here.
(14:04):
You could be espoused at the age of five, six, seven, eight.
Because an espousal is an agreement that is made between two families.
It is an agreement that is made between these families.
That may include the parents, or may include the older brother or older sister, or may include whoever has been working to find someone a spouse.
(14:33):
And once they have found this spouse, this this verbal agreement, and so when you're going through grade school, you could know who you're a spouse to.
Isn't that wonderful?
Some of you are saying, oh no, I'm glad we don't live that way anymore.
Some of you are thinking, oh, that would have been fantastic.
(14:57):
But then when you got of the marriageable age, usually for men, that's somewhere between 19 and 25.
For women, that was as young as twelve, up to fifteen, seventeen.
There was a betrothal that took place.
Now, the betrothal that took place was not simply the young man going to the woman and doing something official and saying, Will you marry me?
(15:23):
It was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was
much more elaborate than that.
It was the families, the the young man and the families would go to to the bride's house and there was there was
Gifts that were given to the bride's family, to the bride's father, to the to the bride's mother, to the bride herself.
There was money that was exchanged, a dowry that was given.
(15:48):
The priest was called in.
There were documents that were signed in front of the priest, in front of the elders of the community.
This was a
A legal ceremony that was taking place.
So when it says that one was betrothed, that means that you had gone past the espousal portion and that you were in
(16:10):
Well, to use their words, you were bound legally.
I mean to to get out of this something
Something desperate had to happen.
One of you had to die.
That was one way of breaking it.
You were released from it if one of you died, obviously.
(16:33):
Or if you just changed your mind, it was a it was a there was a process that one had to go through.
Joseph, we are told, was a just man, and he was thinking through the
(16:56):
process because when when Mary went to to to visit her aunt
Oh, what a joyous visit she had with her aunt.
How excited they were that both of them were pregnant, both of them were going to have a child.
(17:18):
When she comes home, she wants to share that excitement with Joseph.
And can you picture their their their their first meeting as she comes back?
And
It was supposed to be an exciting time.
This was supposed to be a kind of a reunion.
She had been away for three months and
The words that he says to her are something like, uh, your aunt is cooking well, I see.
(17:48):
You have put on a few pounds.
And she says, No, Joseph, it's not like that.
And then she begins to share with him the good news that she is with child.
As Joseph hears this good news in his ears, it is not so good news.
(18:11):
They are legally bound to each other, and he knows that this child is not his.
And so he begins to ask questions.
Was it the priest that was up there?
Did somebody and Sheepy says no no no it wasn't like that it wasn't like that this is from God Think about that man
(18:38):
You hear your young lady say this is of God.
You mean God told you to do this?
No, it's not like that, Joseph.
This is from God.
That reunion did not turn out the way Joseph pictured it.
(19:00):
And my guess it did not turn out the way Mary had pictured it.
Because when I read between the lines here, I kinda get that Joseph.
began to give her the silent treatment because he did not know what to say.
He didn't know what to do.
He did not know how to respond.
(19:22):
And he began to ponder.
These things.
You see, if Joseph was a just man, what was he supposed to do?
A just man wasn't going to to act rashly, and so he wanted to think about it.
He wanted to do what was best for
(19:43):
for him.
He wanted to do what was best for his his village.
He wanted to do what was best for for Israel as a nation.
He wanted to do what was best for God.
He was a just man.
He knew what the law said.
Deuteronomy 22, 23.
If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband and a man finds her in the city and lies with her,
(20:08):
then you shall bring both of them to the gates of that city, and you shall stone them to death.
So you shall put away the evil from among you.
He understood what the law said.
(20:28):
His options
If he marries Mary quickly, it's going to bring shame on both of them
The community is going to talk.
They will think that somehow they got carried away.
(20:53):
Oh, this was not going to be good
If he divorces her publicly, if he goes and takes care of the documentation, says that he has changed his mind, there are there are are big ramifications here.
He he wants to to not do this, and then
When she goes ahead and proceeds to have a child, this will bring shame, great shame upon her
(21:24):
And possibly the community could decide that they would stone her.
If Joseph is doing this.
Publicly, he knows it is not his child.
Scripture tells us he decides to divorce her quietly.
(21:44):
And he uses that word divorce because this is the breaking of legal documents.
They are for all practical purposes married legally
(22:05):
If he goes quietly, dissolves the documents, allows the family to keep them.
Money that has been exchanged, then he himself will bear most of the shame
(22:30):
And that is why he has chosen to do it quietly.
Because he is taking the shame upon himself and trying to release it from Mary.
He does not want her to be stoned.
He doesn't want her family to be disgraced.
(22:53):
Oh, that may happen a little bit, but if he does it quietly, it will be much.
Smaller amount.
This is what Jesus wants to do for us.
He wants to take away our shame.
Jesus is a just man who came to take away our shame as if
(23:23):
It was her his own while pondering
During this process, he has not yet acted it out, but he has come to the conclusion of what is best.
While pondering, it says, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
(23:47):
And we might think, I mean, we are Bible scholars, we read our Bible regularly, and we read about a lot of dreams in Scripture.
But if you read about the dreams in Scripture, there's really not that many of them.
Joseph received several of them.
(24:10):
Several times it says in a dream the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph.
Would you like an angel to appear in your dreams?
Do you need an angel to appear to you?
(24:31):
I mean, we're told in Joel 2 that in the last days it says, Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall
See visions, and also on my maidservants and men servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days.
Are you looking forward to having dreams?
(24:52):
See the dreams it says we're the old man.
Just to clarify.
Do we believe in these dreams anymore?
I know the time is moving.
I'm not going to tell you the stories about dreams that are going on in Muslim countries these days.
(25:17):
People coming to Jesus at a rather fast pace because they have had dreams.
AWR stories
Missionary stories of people that are working there.
I mean, if you just find some of the missionaries that are working in those locations, every single one of them has a dream story to tell you.
(25:42):
Joseph had a dream
And it tells us that the dream, in the dream, the angel comes to him and says, Marry your wife
That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
(26:10):
Something must have gone off in his his head.
That that's that sounds like the same thing Mary was trying to describe to me, and I wasn't understanding, and I wasn't believing, and I could not comprehend.
And the angel says the same words to him Duh
(26:32):
Sorry man, we do that sometimes, don't we?
We have to hear it two, three, four, five, seven
Six.
That's okay.
Researchers tell us all of us, not just men, we need to hear something seven times before it clicks.
So if you hear some of the announcements one, two, three, five, seven times, it's because we wanted to click.
(26:59):
All right?
Joseph got it the second time.
Ecliphed.
This is of God
Now, Joseph grew up in the town of Bethlehem.
(27:23):
He knew had heard the story.
I say grew up there.
Maybe he didn't grow up there.
Maybe his family left when he was very young.
He was from the town of Bethlehem.
He knew the stories.
He knew what Scripture said.
He knew that the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem.
He knew the lineage of what was supposed to take place with the Messiah.
(27:44):
He understood the Bible prophecies.
But when the angel said, you shall name him Jesus, for he will save.
What's it say?
His people.
Well, if only he had stopped it, he will save his people.
Because you see, that's what the Jewish tradition was.
(28:06):
He was going to save his people.
He was going to to free them from the Romans.
He was going to free them from their bondage.
He was going to exalt Israel back to the place where it was during the time of David and during the time of Solomon.
Israel was going to become this great nation again.
Ruling the world.
(28:26):
That's what Joseph had been taught, and my guess is that's what Joseph believed
You, Bethlehem, though you are among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel.
(28:48):
whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.
Micah five two.
Bethlehem, the meaning is house of bread
Bread often referred to as the Word of God.
At this point, Joseph did not realize that the Word was going to become flesh and dwell among us.
(29:12):
God was going to come near, and he was going to take away the sins of the world.
I'm glad somebody said amen.
Because taking away the sins of the world is not usually what we pray for.
(29:33):
I mean you think about it.
When you write down your prayer list, do you pray, God take away my sins?
You know, I listen to people pray quite a bit.
Have other people pray in my presence.
(29:54):
And seldom, seldom do we, do, seldom do I, in my prayers, especially my public prayers.
Do I pray, Lord, take away our sins.
Take away my sins.
(30:16):
We don't often pray for, Lord, take away my overeating.
Take away my my propensity to get even to other with others.
Take away my greed.
I just go through the the the big sins listed in scripture.
(30:36):
Take away my gluttony, greed, slothfulness.
That's laziness.
Wrath, lust, envy, pride.
We don't usually pray for those things to be taken away.
We tend to think of God as Santa Claus.
And we want to sit on his lap and we want to say, I would like you to dispense this for me.
(31:01):
Please give me.
And we often ask for health or or healing or or a new car or a house or a job or uh
We kind of have a list of things, don't we?
That we pray about and they aren't usually sin the Messiah.
(31:27):
To take away my sins.
That's what Christmas is about.
Name him Jesus.
In the Hebrew, Yahshua, Yahweh saves.
(31:49):
Or salvation is of the Lord.
But we have the in the Greek Aesus and we have Anglicanized it to Jesus.
Jesus is going to bring salvation, not to overthrow the government.
(32:15):
Salvation is not to overthrow the United States government.
Salvation is not to overthrow the Russian government.
Salvation is not to overthrow the Chinese government.
Salvation is to overthrow the government that rules me, my sins.
Come on, a hallelujah there
(32:36):
Because I need to get rid of my sins.
I need deliverance from my sins.
Matthew inserts here, so all this was done that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, saying
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us
(33:09):
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
Joseph was a just man.
He had the vision, he had the dream, he understood what his responsibility was.
(33:36):
And it says that when Joseph was aroused from sleep, he acted
On God's will.
He did what the angel said.
He was obedient.
Now we don't know the timing of it, but it says that he went and he he he married Mary, and then he had no relations on her in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.
(34:03):
And then we know from scripture he went after the birth and he named him Jesus.
He didn't name him Joseph Jr.
He named him Jesus because he understood that Jesus was to be the Messiah to deliver.
(34:26):
Israel from their sins.
Joseph was a just man doing what was right.
Not necessarily in the eyes of the people, not necessarily in the eyes of the legal system of his day.
(34:49):
But he was a just man because he was doing what was right in the eyes of God.
Joseph must have made a habit out of this.
Matthew 2, 13 tells us he had another dream and he went to Egypt.
Matthew 2, verse 19 tells us he had another dream that it was okay to come back to Israel.
(35:15):
Matthew 2, verse 22 tells he had another dream that it was okay for him to go to Nazareth.
And he did what the dreams told him to do.
He made a habit of doing what God asked him to do.
(35:35):
How about us?
Are we in the habit of doing what God asks us to do?
But God, I don't want to spend my money like that.
I don't know those people.
(35:58):
I have other uses for the resources that you have placed in my pocket.
Yes, God, I know you put it there.
I know it's your money.
And I
Uh God do you ever argue with God sometimes?
I mean any of you have your car break down?
(36:19):
Has it ever happened to you?
Yeah?
No?
Just me?
The car breaks down?
What do you have to do when the car breaks down?
Get it repaired.
Do you understand what is happening when you do that?
(36:43):
God is taking his money.
Whose money?
His money out of your pocket
Right?
Out of your pocket.
And he is giving his money to the repairman.
(37:04):
And he is putting his money in the repairman's pocket.
Is that the way it works?
What's new theology to me?
We don't like it when God asks us to do that, do we?
God, you want me to go where?
I can't talk to them.
(37:25):
I don't even know them.
God, you know I'm shy.
I I can't I I I don't have the nerve.
What?
Pray for holy boldness?
Oh God.
I don't want to do that.
You want me to go where?
(37:48):
I'm too old to go to the mission field.
Boy, I got a story for that one.
Wow, we had a retired man.
He retired in Australia and then he came to the country of Mongolia during his retirement years.
(38:08):
Oh man, what a difference they made there.
And I asked him why he did it.
He said, the Lord told me it was the right thing to do.
Some people are like Joseph.
They just they just do what God asked them to do.
(38:32):
This Christmas, I want to be more like Joseph
I want you to be more like Joseph.
I want us as a church to be more like Joseph.
I want us to have an understanding that Jesus, the Messiah, came to deliver us from our sins.
(39:00):
I want us to be individuals that are just.
I want us to do the right things in the eyes, not necessarily the law of the land.
Not necessarily in other people's eyes, but in God's eyes.
I want us to do actions.
What does God want us to do as a church?
(39:26):
When God gives us a dream and he tells us to do it, I want us.
I want to be an individual.
that acts and does what God wants me to do.
I want us as a church to be individuals
That does what God wants us to do.
(39:50):
Do you think that's possible?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Friends, it's Christmas time.
I'm asking you to be like Joseph.
Oh, Merry Christmas.
Are you ready?
Yeah
I asked somebody that yesterday at one of the stores I went into and they told me, yes, I'm ready.
I looked at her and I said, Seriously?
You ready?
She said, well, not really.
(00:21):
I still have a few things left to do.
But it's coming, isn't it?
Um it's coming whether we're ready or not.
Big celebration
I'm happy today I have family here with me.
(00:42):
It was nice to have uh uh Jason and Sarah up front uh singing.
Nice to have my parents with us today.
Uh so if you haven't had a chance to meet them, take that opportunity.
You saw their picture a couple of weeks ago.
You should recognize them.
Uh they look the same in the as they did in the picture.
(01:02):
Uh
My eldest daughter's here, Jessica.
She came with Jason.
I'm glad he brought her.
Or you brought her?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm glad we're together.
It's great to have family here.
Last week uh Byron sent me some uh statistics.
(01:22):
About our live stream.
Uh, those of you that are watching online, I want to say thank you for watching.
Thank you for being here.
He he told me, I'm gonna read some of this to you.
We have an 83% increase in viewership via the church website.
549 average people per day throughout the week visiting and watching the service.
(01:51):
Yeah, wow is right.
Last week on Sabbath we had 103 people view the bulletin online.
Thank you for doing that.
354 people listened via the podcast so far this week.
We had 304 individuals view from Japan.
(02:13):
673 from Singapore, 210 from South Korea, 157 from Hong Kong, 176 from China.
360 from Belgium, 121 from Germany, 131 from Ireland, and 103 from France.
Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord is right.
I mean this is this is good news.
(02:39):
Good news indeed.
And if you're watching today via the website or online, we say thank you and a Merry Christmas to you.
In the small church that was nicely decorated, it was Christmas time, the children had been practicing for the play that the church was going to be putting on that day.
(03:07):
Some were still practicing their lines, some were practicing the music that they were going to sing.
Everyone seemed to be excited.
There was talk that maybe a live animal would be involved.
Some of the shepherds were excited about going and looking at the baby Jesus.
(03:32):
The wise men were excited, especially the one or two that was going to have words to share.
And then the pastor received a phone call.
It seems that the boy that was going to play Joseph was not feeling well that day.
(03:52):
The flu had been going around town, and his mom was afraid that Joseph had it.
He had a high fever, his stomach did not feel well.
And the pastor did not know what to do.
And so the words that he spoke to the Mom, the words that he spoke to the rest of the group that was going to be putting on the play, it's not that big a problem.
(04:18):
We will simply write Joseph out.
It seems that's kind of what we do, isn't it?
I mean, we have a fantastic church hymnal with wonderful songs and
(04:40):
And and we open those up and we sing those hymns, and I love singing the Christmas hymns out of there.
But I went through and looked at those this last week, and do you know how many of them mention Joseph?
Zero.
Now maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I overlooked something.
I have a habit of doing that.
(05:00):
But when I looked through the hymnal, now I don't want you to go looking through the hymnal right now and counting.
Checking me out.
Do that this afternoon or sometime.
You don't have to do it right now.
But when I looked at it, I did not see any.
It seems like it just happens that we
Don't talk about it.
He's not mentioned.
(05:21):
He's not said.
Now I did I I've already told you before I do a little Google thing.
And so I did Google and I say, how many
Hymns are there written about Joseph, husband of Mary.
And wow, there were a hundred hymns there that I had never seen before.
(05:47):
Evidently, in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition, they have venerated Joseph as a saint.
And there are a number of hymns that have been written in his honor, especially that they sing during the month of March, because
In their church tradition, he died in the month of March, and so they march is to honor Saint Joseph, they say.
(06:16):
And I was surprised by that.
And so I asked again, are there any songs about Joseph in the Protestant traditions?
And there were a few.
Let's see.
I I found one uh
Oh, Michael Card has one entitled Joseph's Song.
Mercy Me has one entitled Joseph's lullaby.
(06:37):
Uh Mike Laud has one, Joseph.
I was not his father, he was mine
Uh interesting that there are very few that talk about Joseph.
Today I would like for us to focus.
(06:58):
our Christmas service on looking at it a little bit from Joseph's perspective.
We're going to turn our Bibles to Matthew chapter 1.
As we do that, I invite us to bow our heads for an added word of prayer.
Our gracious Heavenly Father.
(07:20):
As we open your word, as we look at the words that are written here, Lord, I pray that you would open our hearts and that your Holy Spirit would come inside.
we would be touched, that we would be drawn closer to you, that we would have a better and clearer understanding of Jesus.
(07:44):
That we would have a clearer and better understanding of Jesus and your will for our life.
So I pray today, Lord, that you would grow us so that we are more like you.
I ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Luke chapter 1, and we'll begin reading in verse 18.
(08:08):
Luke 1, verse 18, and we're going to read all the way to verse 25.
So uh
I know I don't have it on the screen for you, so you're going to have to, you know, open your Bibles.
Luke, I said Luke, Matthew 1.
Matthew 1.
Let's try that again.
Matthew 1.
(08:31):
Beginning in verse 18.
Says now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.
After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.
Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.
(08:56):
But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph.
Son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit
And she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
(09:25):
So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated.
God with us.
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn son.
(09:53):
And he called his name Jesus.
One of the first things we find out about Joseph in this introduction was that Joseph was a just.
Man.
You know what it means to be a just man?
(10:14):
Just.
What is that?
Righteous?
Fair.
I looked up some of the other translations and it translated as honorable, kind, good, upright, faithful.
For a complete description, I looked up the definition of just, and it defines just this way
(10:46):
And in light of the religious laws that one lives by, and in the eyes of the people
Have you ever tried to be a just person with that definition?
I mean, to be just and to live up to the laws of the land, that's one thing.
(11:07):
To be just and to live up to the laws of your religious upbringing, what you have been taught or trained, that's a second thing.
But to live up to what is right and just in the laws of the eyes of the people.
I mean, you can't please all the people.
I mean, no matter what you do in the eyes of people, it's going to be wrong.
(11:31):
Or you're going to be second guess.
People are just pickle.
You can't please them.
So why try
Correct?
Why even bother?
The good news is that in this Bible text we are looking at, when Matthew writes that
(11:59):
Joseph was a just man.
He gives us a context in which this justice that
Joseph is supposed to demonstrate, supposed to live the context in which he is talking about.
Joseph is a just man.
It tells us that this is in the context of Joseph being betrothed to Mary.
(12:28):
It tells us that this he was betrothed to Mary, and then she was found to be with child.
Then it says verse 19, then Joseph, her husband.
Sometimes we get confused with that.
(12:48):
We think we understand and what these words mean until we begin reading the text.
I mean, when you think of betrothal, if you were going to think of our American equivalent, we think of engagement, right?
But be if a couple is engaged, would you ever say it is her husband?
(13:18):
Why not?
Because we have that other word, fiance.
Right?
But in the English Bibles we have, they don't call him the fiance, they call him husband because there is a process that they went through in their culture.
(13:42):
Now we have another word that we often use, espoused.
If I was going to ask you for the English equivalent for the word espoused, what would you say?
Engaged.
Yeah, see, that's part of the problem.
In the Jewish culture, they had a uh several words here.
(14:04):
You could be espoused at the age of five, six, seven, eight.
Because an espousal is an agreement that is made between two families.
It is an agreement that is made between these families.
That may include the parents, or may include the older brother or older sister, or may include whoever has been working to find someone a spouse.
(14:33):
And once they have found this spouse, this this verbal agreement, and so when you're going through grade school, you could know who you're a spouse to.
Isn't that wonderful?
Some of you are saying, oh no, I'm glad we don't live that way anymore.
Some of you are thinking, oh, that would have been fantastic.
(14:57):
But then when you got of the marriageable age, usually for men, that's somewhere between 19 and 25.
For women, that was as young as twelve, up to fifteen, seventeen.
There was a betrothal that took place.
Now, the betrothal that took place was not simply the young man going to the woman and doing something official and saying, Will you marry me?
(15:23):
It was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was
much more elaborate than that.
It was the families, the the young man and the families would go to to the bride's house and there was there was
Gifts that were given to the bride's family, to the bride's father, to the to the bride's mother, to the bride herself.
There was money that was exchanged, a dowry that was given.
(15:48):
The priest was called in.
There were documents that were signed in front of the priest, in front of the elders of the community.
This was a
A legal ceremony that was taking place.
So when it says that one was betrothed, that means that you had gone past the espousal portion and that you were in
(16:10):
Well, to use their words, you were bound legally.
I mean to to get out of this something
Something desperate had to happen.
One of you had to die.
That was one way of breaking it.
You were released from it if one of you died, obviously.
(16:33):
Or if you just changed your mind, it was a it was a there was a process that one had to go through.
Joseph, we are told, was a just man, and he was thinking through the
(16:56):
process because when when Mary went to to to visit her aunt
Oh, what a joyous visit she had with her aunt.
How excited they were that both of them were pregnant, both of them were going to have a child.
(17:18):
When she comes home, she wants to share that excitement with Joseph.
And can you picture their their their their first meeting as she comes back?
And
It was supposed to be an exciting time.
This was supposed to be a kind of a reunion.
She had been away for three months and
The words that he says to her are something like, uh, your aunt is cooking well, I see.
(17:48):
You have put on a few pounds.
And she says, No, Joseph, it's not like that.
And then she begins to share with him the good news that she is with child.
As Joseph hears this good news in his ears, it is not so good news.
(18:11):
They are legally bound to each other, and he knows that this child is not his.
And so he begins to ask questions.
Was it the priest that was up there?
Did somebody and Sheepy says no no no it wasn't like that it wasn't like that this is from God Think about that man
(18:38):
You hear your young lady say this is of God.
You mean God told you to do this?
No, it's not like that, Joseph.
This is from God.
That reunion did not turn out the way Joseph pictured it.
(19:00):
And my guess it did not turn out the way Mary had pictured it.
Because when I read between the lines here, I kinda get that Joseph.
began to give her the silent treatment because he did not know what to say.
He didn't know what to do.
He did not know how to respond.
(19:22):
And he began to ponder.
These things.
You see, if Joseph was a just man, what was he supposed to do?
A just man wasn't going to to act rashly, and so he wanted to think about it.
He wanted to do what was best for
(19:43):
for him.
He wanted to do what was best for his his village.
He wanted to do what was best for for Israel as a nation.
He wanted to do what was best for God.
He was a just man.
He knew what the law said.
Deuteronomy 22, 23.
If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband and a man finds her in the city and lies with her,
(20:08):
then you shall bring both of them to the gates of that city, and you shall stone them to death.
So you shall put away the evil from among you.
He understood what the law said.
(20:28):
His options
If he marries Mary quickly, it's going to bring shame on both of them
The community is going to talk.
They will think that somehow they got carried away.
(20:53):
Oh, this was not going to be good
If he divorces her publicly, if he goes and takes care of the documentation, says that he has changed his mind, there are there are are big ramifications here.
He he wants to to not do this, and then
When she goes ahead and proceeds to have a child, this will bring shame, great shame upon her
(21:24):
And possibly the community could decide that they would stone her.
If Joseph is doing this.
Publicly, he knows it is not his child.
Scripture tells us he decides to divorce her quietly.
(21:44):
And he uses that word divorce because this is the breaking of legal documents.
They are for all practical purposes married legally
(22:05):
If he goes quietly, dissolves the documents, allows the family to keep them.
Money that has been exchanged, then he himself will bear most of the shame
(22:30):
And that is why he has chosen to do it quietly.
Because he is taking the shame upon himself and trying to release it from Mary.
He does not want her to be stoned.
He doesn't want her family to be disgraced.
(22:53):
Oh, that may happen a little bit, but if he does it quietly, it will be much.
Smaller amount.
This is what Jesus wants to do for us.
He wants to take away our shame.
Jesus is a just man who came to take away our shame as if
(23:23):
It was her his own while pondering
During this process, he has not yet acted it out, but he has come to the conclusion of what is best.
While pondering, it says, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
(23:47):
And we might think, I mean, we are Bible scholars, we read our Bible regularly, and we read about a lot of dreams in Scripture.
But if you read about the dreams in Scripture, there's really not that many of them.
Joseph received several of them.
(24:10):
Several times it says in a dream the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph.
Would you like an angel to appear in your dreams?
Do you need an angel to appear to you?
(24:31):
I mean, we're told in Joel 2 that in the last days it says, Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall
See visions, and also on my maidservants and men servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days.
Are you looking forward to having dreams?
(24:52):
See the dreams it says we're the old man.
Just to clarify.
Do we believe in these dreams anymore?
I know the time is moving.
I'm not going to tell you the stories about dreams that are going on in Muslim countries these days.
(25:17):
People coming to Jesus at a rather fast pace because they have had dreams.
AWR stories
Missionary stories of people that are working there.
I mean, if you just find some of the missionaries that are working in those locations, every single one of them has a dream story to tell you.
(25:42):
Joseph had a dream
And it tells us that the dream, in the dream, the angel comes to him and says, Marry your wife
That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
(26:10):
Something must have gone off in his his head.
That that's that sounds like the same thing Mary was trying to describe to me, and I wasn't understanding, and I wasn't believing, and I could not comprehend.
And the angel says the same words to him Duh
(26:32):
Sorry man, we do that sometimes, don't we?
We have to hear it two, three, four, five, seven
Six.
That's okay.
Researchers tell us all of us, not just men, we need to hear something seven times before it clicks.
So if you hear some of the announcements one, two, three, five, seven times, it's because we wanted to click.
(26:59):
All right?
Joseph got it the second time.
Ecliphed.
This is of God
Now, Joseph grew up in the town of Bethlehem.
(27:23):
He knew had heard the story.
I say grew up there.
Maybe he didn't grow up there.
Maybe his family left when he was very young.
He was from the town of Bethlehem.
He knew the stories.
He knew what Scripture said.
He knew that the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem.
He knew the lineage of what was supposed to take place with the Messiah.
(27:44):
He understood the Bible prophecies.
But when the angel said, you shall name him Jesus, for he will save.
What's it say?
His people.
Well, if only he had stopped it, he will save his people.
Because you see, that's what the Jewish tradition was.
(28:06):
He was going to save his people.
He was going to to free them from the Romans.
He was going to free them from their bondage.
He was going to exalt Israel back to the place where it was during the time of David and during the time of Solomon.
Israel was going to become this great nation again.
Ruling the world.
(28:26):
That's what Joseph had been taught, and my guess is that's what Joseph believed
You, Bethlehem, though you are among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel.
(28:48):
whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.
Micah five two.
Bethlehem, the meaning is house of bread
Bread often referred to as the Word of God.
At this point, Joseph did not realize that the Word was going to become flesh and dwell among us.
(29:12):
God was going to come near, and he was going to take away the sins of the world.
I'm glad somebody said amen.
Because taking away the sins of the world is not usually what we pray for.
(29:33):
I mean you think about it.
When you write down your prayer list, do you pray, God take away my sins?
You know, I listen to people pray quite a bit.
Have other people pray in my presence.
(29:54):
And seldom, seldom do we, do, seldom do I, in my prayers, especially my public prayers.
Do I pray, Lord, take away our sins.
Take away my sins.
(30:16):
We don't often pray for, Lord, take away my overeating.
Take away my my propensity to get even to other with others.
Take away my greed.
I just go through the the the big sins listed in scripture.
(30:36):
Take away my gluttony, greed, slothfulness.
That's laziness.
Wrath, lust, envy, pride.
We don't usually pray for those things to be taken away.
We tend to think of God as Santa Claus.
And we want to sit on his lap and we want to say, I would like you to dispense this for me.
(31:01):
Please give me.
And we often ask for health or or healing or or a new car or a house or a job or uh
We kind of have a list of things, don't we?
That we pray about and they aren't usually sin the Messiah.
(31:27):
To take away my sins.
That's what Christmas is about.
Name him Jesus.
In the Hebrew, Yahshua, Yahweh saves.
(31:49):
Or salvation is of the Lord.
But we have the in the Greek Aesus and we have Anglicanized it to Jesus.
Jesus is going to bring salvation, not to overthrow the government.
(32:15):
Salvation is not to overthrow the United States government.
Salvation is not to overthrow the Russian government.
Salvation is not to overthrow the Chinese government.
Salvation is to overthrow the government that rules me, my sins.
Come on, a hallelujah there
(32:36):
Because I need to get rid of my sins.
I need deliverance from my sins.
Matthew inserts here, so all this was done that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, saying
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us
(33:09):
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
Joseph was a just man.
He had the vision, he had the dream, he understood what his responsibility was.
(33:36):
And it says that when Joseph was aroused from sleep, he acted
On God's will.
He did what the angel said.
He was obedient.
Now we don't know the timing of it, but it says that he went and he he he married Mary, and then he had no relations on her in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.
(34:03):
And then we know from scripture he went after the birth and he named him Jesus.
He didn't name him Joseph Jr.
He named him Jesus because he understood that Jesus was to be the Messiah to deliver.
(34:26):
Israel from their sins.
Joseph was a just man doing what was right.
Not necessarily in the eyes of the people, not necessarily in the eyes of the legal system of his day.
(34:49):
But he was a just man because he was doing what was right in the eyes of God.
Joseph must have made a habit out of this.
Matthew 2, 13 tells us he had another dream and he went to Egypt.
Matthew 2, verse 19 tells us he had another dream that it was okay to come back to Israel.
(35:15):
Matthew 2, verse 22 tells he had another dream that it was okay for him to go to Nazareth.
And he did what the dreams told him to do.
He made a habit of doing what God asked him to do.
(35:35):
How about us?
Are we in the habit of doing what God asks us to do?
But God, I don't want to spend my money like that.
I don't know those people.
(35:58):
I have other uses for the resources that you have placed in my pocket.
Yes, God, I know you put it there.
I know it's your money.
And I
Uh God do you ever argue with God sometimes?
I mean any of you have your car break down?
(36:19):
Has it ever happened to you?
Yeah?
No?
Just me?
The car breaks down?
What do you have to do when the car breaks down?
Get it repaired.
Do you understand what is happening when you do that?
(36:43):
God is taking his money.
Whose money?
His money out of your pocket
Right?
Out of your pocket.
And he is giving his money to the repairman.
(37:04):
And he is putting his money in the repairman's pocket.
Is that the way it works?
What's new theology to me?
We don't like it when God asks us to do that, do we?
God, you want me to go where?
I can't talk to them.
(37:25):
I don't even know them.
God, you know I'm shy.
I I can't I I I don't have the nerve.
What?
Pray for holy boldness?
Oh God.
I don't want to do that.
You want me to go where?
(37:48):
I'm too old to go to the mission field.
Boy, I got a story for that one.
Wow, we had a retired man.
He retired in Australia and then he came to the country of Mongolia during his retirement years.
(38:08):
Oh man, what a difference they made there.
And I asked him why he did it.
He said, the Lord told me it was the right thing to do.
Some people are like Joseph.
They just they just do what God asked them to do.
(38:32):
This Christmas, I want to be more like Joseph
I want you to be more like Joseph.
I want us as a church to be more like Joseph.
I want us to have an understanding that Jesus, the Messiah, came to deliver us from our sins.
(39:00):
I want us to be individuals that are just.
I want us to do the right things in the eyes, not necessarily the law of the land.
Not necessarily in other people's eyes, but in God's eyes.
I want us to do actions.
What does God want us to do as a church?
(39:26):
When God gives us a dream and he tells us to do it, I want us.
I want to be an individual.
that acts and does what God wants me to do.
I want us as a church to be individuals
That does what God wants us to do.
(39:50):
Do you think that's possible?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Friends, it's Christmas time.
I'm asking you to be like Joseph.
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