December 12, 2023 • 17 mins
Imagine walking in the shoes of the most ordinary couple yet chosen for an extraordinary mission - to parent the promised Messiah. This episode takes you on a captivating journey through the biblical narrative of Mary and Joseph, as we unravel the divine interventions, miraculous conception, and their remarkable perseverance. We bring into light the pivotal role Nazareth played, and the significance of Jesus' lineage through Joseph's ancestral ties to King David, setting the stage for the birth of Jesus.
Intrigued about Jesus' genealogy? We delve into the gospels of Matthew and Luke, piecing together the evidence, both highlighting Jesus' rightful claim to Israel's throne. We'll explore the societal norms of Mary and Joseph's time, the bravery of Joseph, and the risks Mary faced being pregnant outside of wedlock. This discussion will provide a profound understanding of how God masterfully intertwined His entry into human history, fulfilling His promise to Abraham, birthing salvation through His son, Jesus. So buckle up for an enlightening exploration of our family's ancient future story.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to our ancient future story, navigating
Scripture through the Eyes ofFamily, where I share with you
biblical stories like a familymember would share a story
around a dinner table.
As children of God, we are apart of God's family and His
family story has a lot ofhistory.
Each week we will take onestory and talk about it the
cultural, historical,geographical and sociological
(00:31):
impacts.
We will be looking at thesestories through the perspective
of our ancestors, through thelens of ancient times, in hopes
of learning more about ourfamily.
This is our ancient futurestory.
Welcome back to our ancientfuture story.
(01:01):
I'm Vic and I am so excited toshare with you part two of the
Christmas story.
This time we talked aboutElizabeth and Zachariah and
their son John the Baptist.
Today we will be discussingMary and Joseph.
They had a very uniquerelationship.
On the surface they looked likeany ordinary couple, but they
would become the parents of thepromised Messiah.
(01:23):
And all this started with anangel coming to Mary with the
good news.
So sit back, grab a cup ofcoffee or something to drink and
let's get ready to hear parttwo of the true story of
Christmas.
Our story today takes placeduring Elizabeth's six month of
(01:49):
pregnancy and opens.
In the town of Nazareth, wherea young virgin girl, mary, lived
, she was pledged to be marriedto a carpenter named Joseph, who
was a descendant of David.
So, fun fact, the lineage ofDavid is very important to our
family story because it's thefulfillment of many prophecies
in the Old Testament.
(02:10):
Remember that God established acovenant with David that he
would always have a king on thethrone.
So the fact that Joseph comesfrom the line of David is vital
to the cultural legitimacy ofJesus's earthly kingship.
But more on this in a minute.
The angel went to Mary and saidgreetings, you are the favored
(02:30):
one.
Mary, shocked to see an angel.
She wondered to herself whatmessage he might be bringing her
.
The angel said to her do not beafraid, mary, for you have
found favor with God.
You will conceive and bear ason and you shall name him Jesus
.
He will be called the son ofthe Most High.
The Lord will give him thethrone of his father, david, and
(02:51):
he will reign over Jacob'sdescendants forever.
His kingdom will never end.
Great a proclamation.
But Mary, unable to process whatthe angel is saying, rightfully
asked how can this be?
I am a virgin and Joseph and Iare not yet married.
How can I conceive and bear achild?
The angel answered her the HolySpirit will come over you and
(03:13):
the power of the Most High willovershadow you, so that the Holy
One will be born, will becalled the Son of God.
Okay, pause, let me just take aminute and talk about the
insanity of this conversation.
This is just hitting me rightnow, but the Holy Spirit, at
this point in history, wasresiding in the Ark of the
Covenant which was being held inthe temple, not to mention that
(03:37):
the last person who had theSpirit of God on them was a
prophet, over 400 years prior tothis moment.
So when the angel tells herthat the Spirit of Yahweh is
going to come down on her, likehe had with Moses, with Joshua,
with David, with Solomon and theprophets, yeah, of course she
was stunned with amazement.
(03:58):
Let's get back to our story.
But then the angel tells herthe convincing thing that her
cousin Elizabeth is in her sixthmonth of pregnancy, for no word
from God will ever fail.
Mary responds with the onlything she can say I am the
Lord's servant.
May it be done just as you havesaid.
Then the angel leaves her.
(04:20):
Mary became pregnant by the HolySpirit, just as the angel
promised.
But, as you can imagine, thisdid not go over well with Joseph
.
He wanted a divorce becauseclearly Mary had been unfaithful
, but because Joseph knew thelaw, he didn't want to expose
her to the public because heknew they would stone her.
So he decided he would divorceher quietly.
(04:41):
But after he decided this, hetook a nap and an angel appeared
to him in his dream.
Historical Fun Fact Dreams wereoften seen as a way for the
divine to communicate withhumanity, so seeing and talking
to an angel in his dream was notas weird as it sounds.
The angel said to him Joseph,son of David, do not be afraid
(05:03):
to take Mary as your wife,because the child that has been
conceived in her is from theHoly Spirit.
She will give birth to a sonand you shall name him Jesus,
because he will save the peoplefrom their sins.
Historical Fun Fact Jesus isthe Greek name for the Hebrew
name Yeshua or Joshua, whichmeans the Lord saves.
(05:26):
I could talk more about Yahwehtaking the name of Yeshua and
how that impacts and illuminateshistory, but we will have to
save that for another episode.
But all of this happened tofulfill the prophecies of Isaiah
, who said the Virgin willconceive and give birth to a son
, and they will call himEmmanuel.
God with us.
(05:46):
When Joseph woke up from hisnap, he immediately took Mary to
be his wife, but he did notconsummate the marriage until
she gave birth to a son.
And that is where our storypauses.
For now, mary and Joseph newlywed without a honeymoon, both
possessing this incrediblebuy-in that the child Mary is
carrying is indeed the Messiahand that Yahweh is going to do
(06:11):
something supernatural throughthem.
If you grew up in church, youhave probably heard this story
many, many times, and even ifyou didn't grow up in church,
you have probably heard thisstory over and over again, at
(06:34):
least around Christmastime.
But there are a few main thingsthat I think are interesting
and will help shape the contextof this story for us.
First location Our story takesplace in Nazareth, a town in
Galilee in northern Israel.
This was a very insignificanttown until Jesus put it on the
(06:54):
map.
John 1 even says can anythinggood come from Nazareth?
Mary was from this town andJesus grew up here.
He lived here his whole lifeand started his ministry from
here before moving to Capernaum.
Today, nazareth is the largestArab city in the country.
They have many large andbeautiful churches that bring
many tourists each year,including the Church of the
(07:17):
Annunciation, where it isbelieved to be the place that
Gabriel spoke to Mary.
After standing in this place onmy trip to Israel, my first
thought was huh, nazareth was acave town.
Yep, a cave town.
Nazareth at the time of Jesuswas about 300 people in size and
they lived and connected caves.
(07:39):
So let's picture Mary, likely a10 to 12 year old preteen,
standing in a cave when theangel Gabriel comes to her and
says she has found favor withYahweh, so much favor that she
is going to bear the Messiah.
It's absolutely mind-blowing.
(08:00):
The second thing that I feellike we need to talk about is
the genealogy of Jesus.
Now, I know that most peopleskip through the genealogy any
time it is listed in the Bible,because who wants to sit through
a bunch of names that no onecan pronounce?
But it's important for us totake a closer look at the
genealogy of Jesus.
We get two lines of Jesus inthe Bible one in Matthew,
(08:23):
chapter one, and the other inLuke 3.
Though these family lines maylook the same at first glance,
they are actually quitedifferent.
Their differences is importanthere At this time.
Children, but especially boys,were always labeled under the
Father's line So-and-so, the sonof So-and-so, or, in this case,
(08:43):
jesus the son of God or Jesusthe son of the carpenter.
But the fact that Luke usesMary's family tree is different
and we should pay attention toit.
It's important to note thatwomen were not included in the
lineage of boys.
They were typically left out ofthe family tree.
But here Luke not only putsMary in the family tree, but he
(09:07):
uses her family line.
Both in the lines of Matthew,chapter 1 and Luke 3 are the
same, from Adam to King David,but they split between Solomon
in Matthew 1 and Nathan in Luke3.
Luke takes the approach ofJesus' legitimacy through the
line of Mary, because she is theonly earthly bloodline, because
(09:30):
he is the Son of God.
But why do we care if Jesus isthe legitimate descendant of
David or not?
Well, remember that at thistime King Herod was on the
throne and the Jewish people didnot believe he was the
legitimate king of Israelbecause he was a descendant of
Esau.
Luke and Matthew both show thelineage of Jesus to prove that
(09:52):
he is the rightful king ofIsrael.
The next thing that is importantfor us to note about this story
is the engagement of Mary andJoseph.
In ancient Jewish culture, menand women were typically
arranged and married by theirparents.
They were often introduced andengaged pretty early in life.
Women were usually engaged bytheir 12th birthday, where men
(10:16):
were typically engaged in theirlate teens or early 20s.
This was so women would be ableto have children as soon as
they hit puberty and men hadtime to be established in the
community before they took awife and started a family.
Men had a good job and couldprove that they could provide
for their new bride.
Couples were typically engagedfor about a year prior to the
(10:37):
wedding, during which time thegroom would build onto his
father's house the bet off toprepare for his new wife and
future family.
This is likely what Joseph wasdoing when Mary was greeted by
the angel, which leads us to thenext main point, which is the
law of unfaithfulness inmarriage.
To understand this, we have torealize a couple things about
(10:59):
the culture at this time.
According to Leviticus 20, if awoman and a man were caught in
adultery, the priests could havethe right to stone them, but at
this time, men held all thepower in marriage.
They were the only ones whocould divorce their spouse and
they could do so for basicallyany reason.
So when Mary, a preteen, likelybetween 10 and 12 years old,
(11:23):
became pregnant by the HolySpirit with the Messiah, she
runs for her life.
She flees from Nazareth in thenorth and goes to see her cousin
Elizabeth in the south.
She flees because, even thoughJoseph may not stone her, the
community had every right toRemember.
This is an honor shame culture.
(11:44):
A woman who committed adulterywould have brought great shame
on herself and the entirecommunity.
In this culture there is thisthing called honor killings,
where they were allowed to killsomeone, usually a woman, in
order to restore honor in thecommunity.
This community that Mary livedin would have been well within
their rights to stone her forbeing pregnant outside of
(12:08):
wedlock.
So she flees to her cousin'shouse.
Lastly, I want us to talk aboutthe patience of Joseph.
After Joseph decided to stayengaged with Mary, they never
had a wedding night, and I'mthinking they also never had a
wedding because a wedding feastincluded the consummation of the
marriage, but they abstainedfrom sex until after Mary gave
(12:30):
birth to Jesus.
There is some debate on this.
Some scholars have argued thatJoseph never consummated the
marriage and Mary remained avirgin for the rest of her life.
But we know, and others haveargued, that Jesus had brothers
and sisters, so it's more likelythat Joseph just waited until
after Jesus was born toconsummate the marriage to Mary.
(12:52):
So how does our story todaypoint us to Jesus?
As we have discussed inprevious episodes, jesus is the
fulfillment of the Old Testamentthrough covenants, prophecies
and the law.
So each time we meet togetherwe'll discuss how our story
points to him.
I find it so fascinating thatduring the 400 years that leads
up to this moment in history,the Greeks and the Romans spread
(13:16):
their belief that humanity waslike gods.
All of the Greek and Roman godsand goddesses at this time are
starting to show up in humanforms.
Up until this point, gods weredepicted as monsters or abstract
beings, but the Greeks and theRomans loved the human body so
much that they decided to depictthe gods like themselves.
(13:39):
And I just love so much that itwas at this time when humanity
decided they would become gods.
Yahweh decided to become a man.
In our story today, we talkedabout Jesus' earthly parents and
the conception of Jesus inhuman form.
This is the beginning of God'sfulfillment of the promise he
(14:00):
made to Abraham.
Yahweh wrote himself into thestory so that he could fulfill
the broken covenant.
This is the entrance of Jesusinto our story.
He didn't come as a toughwarrior king, like everyone
expected, but as an innocent,defenseless baby to save the
world.
Before we go, I want to closeour time together by reading the
(14:21):
scriptures from which our storycomes from today In Luke,
chapter 1, and Matthew, chapter1.
I hope that as we listen tothis chapter being read, that we
will embrace all that we havelearned and that this passage
will be illuminated for you.
Let's read In the sixth monthof Elizabeth's pregnancy, god
sent the angel Gabriel toNazareth, a town in Galilee, to
(14:42):
a virgin pledged to be marriedto a man named Joseph, a
descendant of David.
The virgin's name was Mary.
The angel went to her and saidGreetings, you are highly
favored.
The Lord is with you.
Mary was greatly troubled at thewords and wondered what kind of
greeting this might be.
But the angel said to her Donot be afraid, mary, for you
(15:03):
have found favor with God.
You will conceive and givebirth to a son and you are to
call him Jesus.
He will be great and will becalled the Son of the Most High.
The Lord God will give him thethrone of his father, david, and
he will reign over Jacob'sdescendants forever.
His kingdom will never end.
How can this be, mary, askedthe angel, since I am a virgin.
(15:26):
The angel answered the HolySpirit will come on you and the
power of the Most High willovershadow you, and the Holy One
to be born will be called theSon of God.
Even Elizabeth, your relative,is going to have a child in her
old age, and she, who was saidto be unable to conceive, is in
her sixth month.
(15:46):
For no word of God will everfail.
I am the Lord's servant, maryanswered.
May your word to me befulfilled.
Then the angel left her.
At that time, mary got ready andhurried out of town to the hill
country of Judea, where sheentered Zachariah's home and
greeted Elizabeth.
(16:07):
This is how the birth of Jesus,the Messiah, came about.
His mother, mary, was pledgedto be married to Joseph, but
before they came together, shewas found to be pregnant through
the Holy Spirit.
Because Joseph, her husband,was faithful to the law, because
he did not want to expose herto public disgrace, he had in
mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had consideredthis, an angel of the Lord
(16:31):
appeared to him in a dream andsaid Joseph, son of David, do
not be afraid to take Mary homeas your wife, because what is
conceived in her is from theHoly Spirit.
She will give birth to a sonand you are to give him the name
Jesus, because he will save hispeople from their sins.
All this took place to fulfillwhat the Lord had said through
(16:52):
the prophet.
The virgin will conceive andgive birth to a son, and they
will call him Emmanuel, whichmeans God with us.
When Joseph woke up, he didwhat the angel of the Lord had
commanded him and took Mary homeas his wife, but he did not
consummate their marriage untilshe gave birth to a son and he
gave him the name Jesus.
(17:18):
Thank you for listening totoday's episode of our HM Future
Story.
I hope that you really enjoyedit.
This episode was written andproduced by me.
Vic Harmon Music is embarkingon an adventure by Evan
MacDonald.
Please support the show bysubscribing and rating us, and
if you want more info or want todive deeper, check out our
website at ourancientfuturestorycom.
(17:39):
See you next time.
Bye.
Welcome to our ancient future story, navigating
Scripture through the Eyes ofFamily, where I share with you
biblical stories like a familymember would share a story
around a dinner table.
As children of God, we are apart of God's family and His
family story has a lot ofhistory.
Each week we will take onestory and talk about it the
cultural, historical,geographical and sociological
(00:31):
impacts.
We will be looking at thesestories through the perspective
of our ancestors, through thelens of ancient times, in hopes
of learning more about ourfamily.
This is our ancient futurestory.
Welcome back to our ancientfuture story.
(01:01):
I'm Vic and I am so excited toshare with you part two of the
Christmas story.
This time we talked aboutElizabeth and Zachariah and
their son John the Baptist.
Today we will be discussingMary and Joseph.
They had a very uniquerelationship.
On the surface they looked likeany ordinary couple, but they
would become the parents of thepromised Messiah.
(01:23):
And all this started with anangel coming to Mary with the
good news.
So sit back, grab a cup ofcoffee or something to drink and
let's get ready to hear parttwo of the true story of
Christmas.
Our story today takes placeduring Elizabeth's six month of
(01:49):
pregnancy and opens.
In the town of Nazareth, wherea young virgin girl, mary, lived
, she was pledged to be marriedto a carpenter named Joseph, who
was a descendant of David.
So, fun fact, the lineage ofDavid is very important to our
family story because it's thefulfillment of many prophecies
in the Old Testament.
(02:10):
Remember that God established acovenant with David that he
would always have a king on thethrone.
So the fact that Joseph comesfrom the line of David is vital
to the cultural legitimacy ofJesus's earthly kingship.
But more on this in a minute.
The angel went to Mary and saidgreetings, you are the favored
(02:30):
one.
Mary, shocked to see an angel.
She wondered to herself whatmessage he might be bringing her
.
The angel said to her do not beafraid, mary, for you have
found favor with God.
You will conceive and bear ason and you shall name him Jesus
.
He will be called the son ofthe Most High.
The Lord will give him thethrone of his father, david, and
(02:51):
he will reign over Jacob'sdescendants forever.
His kingdom will never end.
Great a proclamation.
But Mary, unable to process whatthe angel is saying, rightfully
asked how can this be?
I am a virgin and Joseph and Iare not yet married.
How can I conceive and bear achild?
The angel answered her the HolySpirit will come over you and
(03:13):
the power of the Most High willovershadow you, so that the Holy
One will be born, will becalled the Son of God.
Okay, pause, let me just take aminute and talk about the
insanity of this conversation.
This is just hitting me rightnow, but the Holy Spirit, at
this point in history, wasresiding in the Ark of the
Covenant which was being held inthe temple, not to mention that
(03:37):
the last person who had theSpirit of God on them was a
prophet, over 400 years prior tothis moment.
So when the angel tells herthat the Spirit of Yahweh is
going to come down on her, likehe had with Moses, with Joshua,
with David, with Solomon and theprophets, yeah, of course she
was stunned with amazement.
(03:58):
Let's get back to our story.
But then the angel tells herthe convincing thing that her
cousin Elizabeth is in her sixthmonth of pregnancy, for no word
from God will ever fail.
Mary responds with the onlything she can say I am the
Lord's servant.
May it be done just as you havesaid.
Then the angel leaves her.
(04:20):
Mary became pregnant by the HolySpirit, just as the angel
promised.
But, as you can imagine, thisdid not go over well with Joseph
.
He wanted a divorce becauseclearly Mary had been unfaithful
, but because Joseph knew thelaw, he didn't want to expose
her to the public because heknew they would stone her.
So he decided he would divorceher quietly.
(04:41):
But after he decided this, hetook a nap and an angel appeared
to him in his dream.
Historical Fun Fact Dreams wereoften seen as a way for the
divine to communicate withhumanity, so seeing and talking
to an angel in his dream was notas weird as it sounds.
The angel said to him Joseph,son of David, do not be afraid
(05:03):
to take Mary as your wife,because the child that has been
conceived in her is from theHoly Spirit.
She will give birth to a sonand you shall name him Jesus,
because he will save the peoplefrom their sins.
Historical Fun Fact Jesus isthe Greek name for the Hebrew
name Yeshua or Joshua, whichmeans the Lord saves.
(05:26):
I could talk more about Yahwehtaking the name of Yeshua and
how that impacts and illuminateshistory, but we will have to
save that for another episode.
But all of this happened tofulfill the prophecies of Isaiah
, who said the Virgin willconceive and give birth to a son
, and they will call himEmmanuel.
God with us.
(05:46):
When Joseph woke up from hisnap, he immediately took Mary to
be his wife, but he did notconsummate the marriage until
she gave birth to a son.
And that is where our storypauses.
For now, mary and Joseph newlywed without a honeymoon, both
possessing this incrediblebuy-in that the child Mary is
carrying is indeed the Messiahand that Yahweh is going to do
(06:11):
something supernatural throughthem.
If you grew up in church, youhave probably heard this story
many, many times, and even ifyou didn't grow up in church,
you have probably heard thisstory over and over again, at
(06:34):
least around Christmastime.
But there are a few main thingsthat I think are interesting
and will help shape the contextof this story for us.
First location Our story takesplace in Nazareth, a town in
Galilee in northern Israel.
This was a very insignificanttown until Jesus put it on the
(06:54):
map.
John 1 even says can anythinggood come from Nazareth?
Mary was from this town andJesus grew up here.
He lived here his whole lifeand started his ministry from
here before moving to Capernaum.
Today, nazareth is the largestArab city in the country.
They have many large andbeautiful churches that bring
many tourists each year,including the Church of the
(07:17):
Annunciation, where it isbelieved to be the place that
Gabriel spoke to Mary.
After standing in this place onmy trip to Israel, my first
thought was huh, nazareth was acave town.
Yep, a cave town.
Nazareth at the time of Jesuswas about 300 people in size and
they lived and connected caves.
(07:39):
So let's picture Mary, likely a10 to 12 year old preteen,
standing in a cave when theangel Gabriel comes to her and
says she has found favor withYahweh, so much favor that she
is going to bear the Messiah.
It's absolutely mind-blowing.
(08:00):
The second thing that I feellike we need to talk about is
the genealogy of Jesus.
Now, I know that most peopleskip through the genealogy any
time it is listed in the Bible,because who wants to sit through
a bunch of names that no onecan pronounce?
But it's important for us totake a closer look at the
genealogy of Jesus.
We get two lines of Jesus inthe Bible one in Matthew,
(08:23):
chapter one, and the other inLuke 3.
Though these family lines maylook the same at first glance,
they are actually quitedifferent.
Their differences is importanthere At this time.
Children, but especially boys,were always labeled under the
Father's line So-and-so, the sonof So-and-so, or, in this case,
(08:43):
jesus the son of God or Jesusthe son of the carpenter.
But the fact that Luke usesMary's family tree is different
and we should pay attention toit.
It's important to note thatwomen were not included in the
lineage of boys.
They were typically left out ofthe family tree.
But here Luke not only putsMary in the family tree, but he
(09:07):
uses her family line.
Both in the lines of Matthew,chapter 1 and Luke 3 are the
same, from Adam to King David,but they split between Solomon
in Matthew 1 and Nathan in Luke3.
Luke takes the approach ofJesus' legitimacy through the
line of Mary, because she is theonly earthly bloodline, because
(09:30):
he is the Son of God.
But why do we care if Jesus isthe legitimate descendant of
David or not?
Well, remember that at thistime King Herod was on the
throne and the Jewish people didnot believe he was the
legitimate king of Israelbecause he was a descendant of
Esau.
Luke and Matthew both show thelineage of Jesus to prove that
(09:52):
he is the rightful king ofIsrael.
The next thing that is importantfor us to note about this story
is the engagement of Mary andJoseph.
In ancient Jewish culture, menand women were typically
arranged and married by theirparents.
They were often introduced andengaged pretty early in life.
Women were usually engaged bytheir 12th birthday, where men
(10:16):
were typically engaged in theirlate teens or early 20s.
This was so women would be ableto have children as soon as
they hit puberty and men hadtime to be established in the
community before they took awife and started a family.
Men had a good job and couldprove that they could provide
for their new bride.
Couples were typically engagedfor about a year prior to the
(10:37):
wedding, during which time thegroom would build onto his
father's house the bet off toprepare for his new wife and
future family.
This is likely what Joseph wasdoing when Mary was greeted by
the angel, which leads us to thenext main point, which is the
law of unfaithfulness inmarriage.
To understand this, we have torealize a couple things about
(10:59):
the culture at this time.
According to Leviticus 20, if awoman and a man were caught in
adultery, the priests could havethe right to stone them, but at
this time, men held all thepower in marriage.
They were the only ones whocould divorce their spouse and
they could do so for basicallyany reason.
So when Mary, a preteen, likelybetween 10 and 12 years old,
(11:23):
became pregnant by the HolySpirit with the Messiah, she
runs for her life.
She flees from Nazareth in thenorth and goes to see her cousin
Elizabeth in the south.
She flees because, even thoughJoseph may not stone her, the
community had every right toRemember.
This is an honor shame culture.
(11:44):
A woman who committed adulterywould have brought great shame
on herself and the entirecommunity.
In this culture there is thisthing called honor killings,
where they were allowed to killsomeone, usually a woman, in
order to restore honor in thecommunity.
This community that Mary livedin would have been well within
their rights to stone her forbeing pregnant outside of
(12:08):
wedlock.
So she flees to her cousin'shouse.
Lastly, I want us to talk aboutthe patience of Joseph.
After Joseph decided to stayengaged with Mary, they never
had a wedding night, and I'mthinking they also never had a
wedding because a wedding feastincluded the consummation of the
marriage, but they abstainedfrom sex until after Mary gave
(12:30):
birth to Jesus.
There is some debate on this.
Some scholars have argued thatJoseph never consummated the
marriage and Mary remained avirgin for the rest of her life.
But we know, and others haveargued, that Jesus had brothers
and sisters, so it's more likelythat Joseph just waited until
after Jesus was born toconsummate the marriage to Mary.
(12:52):
So how does our story todaypoint us to Jesus?
As we have discussed inprevious episodes, jesus is the
fulfillment of the Old Testamentthrough covenants, prophecies
and the law.
So each time we meet togetherwe'll discuss how our story
points to him.
I find it so fascinating thatduring the 400 years that leads
up to this moment in history,the Greeks and the Romans spread
(13:16):
their belief that humanity waslike gods.
All of the Greek and Roman godsand goddesses at this time are
starting to show up in humanforms.
Up until this point, gods weredepicted as monsters or abstract
beings, but the Greeks and theRomans loved the human body so
much that they decided to depictthe gods like themselves.
(13:39):
And I just love so much that itwas at this time when humanity
decided they would become gods.
Yahweh decided to become a man.
In our story today, we talkedabout Jesus' earthly parents and
the conception of Jesus inhuman form.
This is the beginning of God'sfulfillment of the promise he
(14:00):
made to Abraham.
Yahweh wrote himself into thestory so that he could fulfill
the broken covenant.
This is the entrance of Jesusinto our story.
He didn't come as a toughwarrior king, like everyone
expected, but as an innocent,defenseless baby to save the
world.
Before we go, I want to closeour time together by reading the
(14:21):
scriptures from which our storycomes from today In Luke,
chapter 1, and Matthew, chapter1.
I hope that as we listen tothis chapter being read, that we
will embrace all that we havelearned and that this passage
will be illuminated for you.
Let's read In the sixth monthof Elizabeth's pregnancy, god
sent the angel Gabriel toNazareth, a town in Galilee, to
(14:42):
a virgin pledged to be marriedto a man named Joseph, a
descendant of David.
The virgin's name was Mary.
The angel went to her and saidGreetings, you are highly
favored.
The Lord is with you.
Mary was greatly troubled at thewords and wondered what kind of
greeting this might be.
But the angel said to her Donot be afraid, mary, for you
(15:03):
have found favor with God.
You will conceive and givebirth to a son and you are to
call him Jesus.
He will be great and will becalled the Son of the Most High.
The Lord God will give him thethrone of his father, david, and
he will reign over Jacob'sdescendants forever.
His kingdom will never end.
How can this be, mary, askedthe angel, since I am a virgin.
(15:26):
The angel answered the HolySpirit will come on you and the
power of the Most High willovershadow you, and the Holy One
to be born will be called theSon of God.
Even Elizabeth, your relative,is going to have a child in her
old age, and she, who was saidto be unable to conceive, is in
her sixth month.
(15:46):
For no word of God will everfail.
I am the Lord's servant, maryanswered.
May your word to me befulfilled.
Then the angel left her.
At that time, mary got ready andhurried out of town to the hill
country of Judea, where sheentered Zachariah's home and
greeted Elizabeth.
(16:07):
This is how the birth of Jesus,the Messiah, came about.
His mother, mary, was pledgedto be married to Joseph, but
before they came together, shewas found to be pregnant through
the Holy Spirit.
Because Joseph, her husband,was faithful to the law, because
he did not want to expose herto public disgrace, he had in
mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had consideredthis, an angel of the Lord
(16:31):
appeared to him in a dream andsaid Joseph, son of David, do
not be afraid to take Mary homeas your wife, because what is
conceived in her is from theHoly Spirit.
She will give birth to a sonand you are to give him the name
Jesus, because he will save hispeople from their sins.
All this took place to fulfillwhat the Lord had said through
(16:52):
the prophet.
The virgin will conceive andgive birth to a son, and they
will call him Emmanuel, whichmeans God with us.
When Joseph woke up, he didwhat the angel of the Lord had
commanded him and took Mary homeas his wife, but he did not
consummate their marriage untilshe gave birth to a son and he
gave him the name Jesus.
(17:18):
Thank you for listening totoday's episode of our HM Future
Story.
I hope that you really enjoyedit.
This episode was written andproduced by me.
Vic Harmon Music is embarkingon an adventure by Evan
MacDonald.
Please support the show bysubscribing and rating us, and
if you want more info or want todive deeper, check out our
website at ourancientfuturestorycom.
(17:39):
See you next time.
Bye.
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