Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Matthew 1:18-25

THE CHRISTMAS STORY: JOSEPH & MARY

I want to take us into the Christmas story. I specifically want to focus on Joseph and Mary, and you’re like, Didn’t we look at Joseph last week? We did. But I want to focus maybe a different lens than what we looked at last week. 

Last week, Pastor Gary shared with us the character of Joseph– put it on display, really– with a focus aimed at Joseph’s ability to walk in forgiveness, which is an incredible story in its own right. I really feel like the Lord’s been revealing some stuff to me that I want us to look at. 

And that is sometimes I think we miss an obvious question, which is, why did the Lord choose Joseph and Mary? Why them? I think oftentimes we just assume what was just random. He could have picked anybody. I don’t think that’s what the narrative reveals. I would just from the beginning tell you, I think there are things about the way they lived that caused the Lord to lean their direction. 

IS THE FEAR OF THE LORD PART OF OUR LIVES?

Sitting with the Lord this morning, and He asked me a question. I had built this teaching during the week, and He asked me a question: He said, if one puts 1000 to flight and two puts 10,000 flight– how many understand that principle in Scripture? How many have ever heard that before? Let me see your hand so I make sure enough. One puts 1000 in flight, two puts 10,000 in flight. What does that mean? 

In the Kingdom, there is an exponential law when we come together. There is supposed to be a coupling in unity that causes us to be more powerful, more authoritative– more influential is maybe a better word. Now, when it’s talking about 1000 in flight, 10,000 in flight, we’re talking about being able to push back darkness. 

He asked me a question this morning. He said, if one puts 1000 in flight, two puts 10,000 in flight, why do we see so many marriages that are fifty percent as strong as they should be spiritually? My response was, Huh? 

I want to give you the punchlines early. I think there’s something that happens when we fail to walk in the Fear of the Lord in our homes and in our relationships. So I’m not just speaking to married people, I’m speaking to all of us as individual believers. When we fail to put the Fear of the Lord on display in our micro relationships, what ends up happening instead of a coupling that makes us more influential, it makes us less in the marketplace. 

Randy Remington, who’s now the head of the Four Square, when I was in Bible college at Christ For The Nations, he came to school, and he taught a principle that I’ve never forgotten. His principle was, you will always only ever be in public who you authentically are in private. He called it the Private-Public Equation– that our influence in the marketplace, our ability to change the world, is validated in the secret place, in the private place. 

I didn’t really intend on leaning this message directly into marital relationships and home relationships. And if you’re here and you’re like, I’m single, and I just have roommates, this applies. If you’re like, I live alone, still applies. 

You see, the Fear of the Lord is not a thing that only happens when we deal with people. The Fear of the Lord is something we walk in privately. And it should govern and affect all of our lives. 

MARY AND JOSEPH’S SITUATION 

You’re like, How are you wiring this to the Christmas story? Because if we open up in Matthew, there’s this phrase that I love. It says, “Now, this is how Jesus the Messiah was born.” And so all of a sudden, we have to start looking at the narrative in its total picture, like, okay, everything about it matters. This is kind of the layout of how God sets up the intersection of the Divine with humanity. 

Now, my first lean in teaching this was just to look at it and go, Really? This is how? It’s a mess. You’re like, What do you mean? Mary’s a teenager, fifteen to seventeen, by most scholars’ accounts. A lot of scholars will say Joseph was in his forties, probably doubtful. Here’s why: average life expectancy is forty to fifty at that time. 

Joseph is not part of the aristocracy. He’s a working-class guy. Most working-class guys got married young because they didn’t have a long life. Probably nineteen to twenty is more like what we see here. How many men with me, when you were nineteen or twenty felt dumb? You felt really intelligent then. How many, looking back on nineteen and twenty, went, Wow, I was dumb? So here we have a guy who’s probably in his latter teen years, maybe early twenties at most. And his character’s on display, pretty amazingly. 

We learned some things about this story: being pregnant is in violation of her wedlock vow. The way Jewish marriage worked, he would pick her more than likely fall in love. I think we strip all the humanity out of the story. We try to make it something like, Oh, they were just put together. They didn’t really care about each other. It was just a familial encounter where two families decided our kids should get married. Doubtful. Highly doubtful. They were in small communities. They would have spent a lot of time together. 

More than likely, he selected her because he actually liked her. And what he would do is exchange a dowry or exchange a payment to her father; the payment said she’s mine now, and I’m gonna go away, and I’m gonna prepare our home, and a year from now, we’re gonna get married. We’re gonna actually have the ceremony. 

You know where Paul says the Holy Spirit is a down payment? He says this in the Book of Acts, he says it in Ephesians. The Holy Spirit is like this down payment that lets us know God meant what He said. It’s the same principle. 

So for her to be pregnant, when you look at it, “now Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant.” At this moment, she’s in pretty real legal trouble. 

GOD DOESN’T NEED PERFECT PEOPLE

What’s my point? At the beginning of the Christmas story, our Father, our King, doesn’t need fantastic situations to create fantastic results. And I think there’s a reason He enters the narrative this way. I think there’s a reason He chooses something that is this pseudo-dysfunctional to look at. Because I think He’s always trying to communicate to us, I will never be limited by your circumstances. So I’m gonna put it on display from the beginning. 

If He doesn’t need perfect situations, why do some of us think He does? Why do we disqualify ourselves so quickly because of our lack of perfection? How many would be honest to say I’ve kind of disqualified myself at times because of my history? Let me see your hand. You’re in church, you can’t lie. We tend to disqualify what we believe we can do future-forward because of what we’ve done in the past. 

One of the best principles I learned early in life was the only way to outrun a broken past is to live a redeemed future. Am I trying to sweep it under the carpet? No. What I’ve learned from this story, what you should be learning from the story, is He doesn’t need perfection to create fantastic results. 

So then the next question that has to be asked is, Okay, what does He need? Well, theologically speaking, He needs nothing. He’s God all by Himself. So if we want to be really theologically accurate, we can put on a very pious voice, be like, He needs nothing. Great. It’s the right answer. 

But I might ask a different question because the Scripture is full of stories of how He moves through people, using willing people and their brokenness to accomplish His purpose. So that causes me to go to the next logical place, Okay, if that’s the case, what is He looking for? 

And here’s why we’re going to jump into this: I would submit that Joseph and Mary together are really unique people who live their lives in a way that drew the Lord into their circumstance. So I want to mine the story for truths that might have caused God to lean into them to do incredible things. 

MATTHEW 1:18-25

Okay, so let’s pick up. “Joseph, her fiancé, being a just man, decided to break the engagement quietly, so as not to disgrace her publicly. As he considered this, he fell asleep, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. ‘Joseph, son of David,’ the angel said, ‘do not be afraid to go ahead with your marriage to Mary. For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All of this happened to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: ‘Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Emmanuel, meaning God is with us.’ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord commanded. He brought Mary home to be his wife, but she remained a virgin until her son was born.” 

THE CHARACTER OF JOSEPH AND MARY

Last week, we looked at Joseph. Pastor Gary did a great job of leading us to see Joseph with this lens of how he chose to forgive. I think that’s an incredibly powerful idea. But I want to add a layer to it, and I think there’s a dynamic here that’s revealed between Mary and Joseph that’s worth considering, a few attributes of who Mary and Joseph were together that drew God into their situation to use them for something amazing. 

Why would I want to look at this? Because if we are going to be a people who shape our region, if we are going to be a people that the Lord uses to do something amazing in our region, wouldn’t it go to figure that He might look for the same things in us that He looked for in them? That it might cause Him to lean towards us when we put on display the very same thing that they did? Why? He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He hasn’t changed His mind about what He wants to work through. 

There’s phrases in this narrative that I think will help us with this lens. The first one is this phrase: “Joseph, her fiancé, being a just man, decided to break the engagement quietly.” I believe this statement says a lot about them both, not just Joseph. 

What does it say about Joseph? It reveals he’s a man that has a deep desire to do what is right. I don’t think we can miss that. I think we would err if we just bypass the fact this guy lived in a way prior to this where he wanted to do things right. 

It also reveals a man who’s not just black and white in his judgment but is honestly trying to do life correctly by others. How many understand that if you’re just black and white in your judgment, it doesn’t actually work? Because, unfortunately, humanity is kind of gray. And there are times where we have to be considerate of a circumstance. And what I see here is a guy who’s not just austere, he’s not just black and white, saying, Nope, you screwed up. Get out. But it shows a man who is governed by a compassion. 

What does it reveal about Mary? I think we miss this all the time. She is with a just man. If Joseph is a man who says, I want to live life right; I want to do things right, he’s not going to go choose a prostitute. He’s not going to choose a shoplifter who, every time she goes to the market, comes home with a lot more stuff than she paid for, and she’s all excited because she got away with it. Why? He’s not going to connect his integrity to that. What it says about her is her character. That she’s of the kind of character, she’s the kind of person, that a just man would say, I want to be connected to that. 

I want to highlight something that I think is so easy to miss: in all of this narrative, we do not see one moment where Mary fights the process of him desiring to break the engagement. Do you? There’s no place in the narrative where she fights. 

How many have been in a relationship long enough to know that a raised eyebrow can say a thousand words? How many are married to someone who sighs a lot? You know, like when they breathe out and they exhale– Belinda will ask me all the time, What’s the sigh for? I’m like, I was breathing. She’s like, No, you breathe different when you’re mad. 

That happens by being connected together, happens by being in relationship. We learn each other’s nuances. So we cannot strip the humanity out of this story and assume that Mary had no idea Joseph was irritated. 

In fact, if we really give ourselves space, we probably could imagine that the conversation went something like this: Hey, God told me I’m pregnant, and it’s His. And Joseph’s answer was probably something unto, Oh, really. I think I’m out. Think I’m done. I think we have to consider a conversation that would have happened, that would have maybe had some awkward silence in it. 

But what this tells me about Mary is that she walked in an understanding of authority as a person and a deep surrender to God’s ability to protect her. She refused to fight the process. How many would be honest enough to say, I kind of fight the process when I don’t like the circumstance? Right? It’s kind of the human condition.

BEING A JUST PERSON

So together, what I want to bring out is that they walked in the condition of what I would call being just, which means they walked in this thing called the Fear of the Lord. The Fear of the Lord is a concept that I think is missing in the people of God by and large today. 

And I’d love to just suggest a couple things based on this narrative: being a just person is actually possible. It is something God wants for us. And being just and walking in the Fear of the Lord simply reduces down to a mindset that we could comprise in three things: number one, it is to do what is right. The word “do,” if we look at the Hebrew and the Greek, it’s the idea of fashioning or making; it’s the work of our hands. It’s our life process. To do what is right, as Proverbs says, those who do the right thing or stay on the right path fear the Lord. 

The second thing is to live according to His path, which means I’m going to live the way Jesus said to live. I’m going to work to align my life with His direction, or what we call the way of Jesus.

And thirdly, it is to trust his ability to control life on your behalf instead of trusting your own ability. How many are control freaks in the room? I hate this because I think I’m the president of the club. But I think being a control freak really is the kind way of saying, I don’t really trust God. I’m more comfortable when I’m in charge. I don’t know how to rest under His care. 

I would love to suggest that their desire to be these people together made it possible for God to do something through them that I don’t think He could have done if they hadn’t desired to be those kind of people. In other words, the way they chose to live drew God into their circumstance, which means the way we choose to live either attracts the Lord into our circumstance or it repels Him. 

Scripture says God resists the proud but embraces the humble. To live the way you think is right instead of the way God thinks is right, is to live proud. Humility says, While I am not God, therefore I cannot know what is best, I will surrender to the way You say to live. 

MARY AND JOSEPH’S RESPONSE TO EACH OTHER

The second phrase I want to point out is the narrative says that Joseph made a choice “so as not to disgrace her publicly.” I believe this is one of the most challenging verses in the Scripture narrative and maybe in all of the Bible. 

We looked last week at Joseph’s desire to forgive offense, but I want to highlight something that I think is even more amazing, and that is Joseph didn’t want vengeance and Mary wasn’t interested in defending her rights. We can’t miss those two things in the narrative. 

How many of you, when you’re wronged, want vengeance? How many are like me, and you discover something in yourself that wants to go back on the attack? You can’t lie in church, remember? How many, when someone accuses you of something that you know you’re not guilty of, instantly want to go into the defend-your-rights mode? And you feel righteous in it? No, you are wrong, and you go. 

Neither one of them do this. They both had grounds to fight from their individual perspectives, but what we see instead is that Joseph actually wants to protect Mary, and Mary wants to honor Joseph. 

We cannot miss this truth: Joseph wanted out of the marriage. But he wanted to do it in a compassionate way, which I think is more miraculous than anything else. I think he gave himself permission to say, I’m hurt, and I’m wounded. I think she’s young. I think she made a mistake. I don’t want to put a stain on her life by the way I handle this, which is mind-blowing. 

Anybody else instantly convicted by that? Because I would say that rarely my first reaction is to protect the people who hurt me. I’m not usually comfortable being like Mary and just trusting God and going with the process. Going with the flow is not really my idea of a good time. I like to swim against the stream. 

So Joseph becomes a beacon to learn from in the way he chooses grace in the midst of difficulty. And Mary becomes a beacon to learn from in the way we can learn how to surrender to God’s process. When we really believe God’s in control, we tend to not want to fight the process. 

And I just wonder if we could become a people that would follow their examples to disconnect our emotions from the woundings of others and actually choose to have compassion on people that hurt us. How crazy is that? 

The thing I would love to highlight is I don’t believe this is the first time this character comes out; I think this was their natural response pattern. I think it reveals that they understood the power of how they handle everyday situations, they understood that that mattered to God. 

So therefore, maybe we should look at the fact that how we handle our day-to-day life situations, how we handle conflicts, how we handle relational situations, actually matters to God because it determines whether or not He can partner with us. 

CONSIDERING AND PONDERING

Third thing I see here: it says, “As Joseph considered this, the angel appeared to him in a dream,” and then we pull from Luke’s account, “Mary pondered these things in her heart.” So notice, Joseph considers, and Mary ponders. 

This phrase, “Mary pondered,” it means to talk herself through it. Anyone else, when you drive in the car, do you talk to yourself? How many of you process relational stuff that way? You’re kind of working it out. This is what Mary’s doing. 

She’s doing an old Hebrew concept– the rabbis would call it murmuring– where they would take a passage of Scripture, and they would just chew on it throughout the day. Steadfast love of the Lord never changes. The steadfast love of the Lord never changes. They would just process it and consider it and think about it over and over and over again, mining it for truth. This is what she’s doing; she’s talking through everything, thinking through it. 

With Joseph, “considered” is the word. This word in the Greek means “to revolve in the mind, take to heart, to consider.” It is to think and mull on things privately. It’s the opposite of I need to sit down and have a conversation with you because I need you to help me figure out what I’m thinking. And don’t we do that all the time, where we want to put somebody on blast by talking to somebody else so they can help us through? It got quiet. 

But there’s another layer to it that’s really important. The word that’s used in the Greek here actually indicates with its tense, that prior to Joseph encountering the angel, he had already considered, he’d been thinking about it. What do we take from that? It means his consideration, while he had thought it through, I think it meant he was considering What’s the Lord want me to do? Instead of just, What do I think I should do? 

What I see is that neither of them were the kind of people given to overreact. Any overreactors in the room? Both of them react in ways that are in stark contrast to making snap decisions or rash decisions. They take the time necessary to process in making their decision; they thought it through to make sure it was right. Right by whom? Right by God. I believe it reveals that they were careful with behavior, not letting emotions govern them.

One of the best principles that I’ve ever learned was this phrase: emotions are wonderful servants and terrible masters. Emotions are a gift given to us to process in life, they were never given to lead us. We are to be in charge of our emotions. 

And perhaps we need to see in this narrative that the Holy Spirit is presenting something for us to pay attention to, that our decision-making process is something that can protect us if it’s done correctly. And our emotions– though wonderful gifts– must be managed if we are to be righteous people. I will say it this strong: you cannot be a righteous person and not manage your emotions. Those two things are antithetical. You must manage your emotions and be in control of them to be righteous.

WHY GOD CHOSE MARY AND JOSEPH

Mary and Joseph seem to reveal the type of people He loves to work with are people who pursue living in the Fear of the Lord. What am I getting at? I go back to what the Lord whispered to me this morning: if one puts 1000 to flight and two puts 10,000 to flight, why do we see so many homes that are fifty percent as strong as they should be? Because I believe our enemy understands this principle. If he can undermine the Fear of the Lord in the secret place, in our private area, he undermines who we are in the public place. He doesn’t even have to worry about what we’re going to accomplish in the marketplace if he can get us to live outside of the Fear of the Lord in our relationships. 

What God’s after is that you and I carry the nature of Jesus in every place we live. That every person we encounter, whether that’s our spouse, whether that’s our coworkers, whether it’s our roommates, what they see when they look at us is someone who’s clothed in the image of Christ. 

But too often, we give ourselves a pass, and I think what we’re missing is I think God chose these two because they were people who walked in the Fear of the Lord. Consider this: God chose Joseph to raise His own son. We can’t miss that. There was something so righteous in the nature of Joseph, in the character of Joseph– something so submitted to God is what I would really say– that God the Father looks down and says, That guy can raise my kid. There’s something that is so governed in Mary, that she’s so settled in the authority of Heaven, that she trusts God so much that she’s entrusted with the Son of God. 

They’re people who’ve decided to live in obedience to Scripture, people who’ve decided to clothe themselves in kindness, discipline, and integrity, people who’ve determined to reveal God with the way they live their daily lives, not with what they say, but with how they live. 

LIVING IN THE FEAR OF THE LORD

Now you’re like, Oh, this is heavy. You see the beauty about the Fear of the Lord is it’s in a moment we can just go, You know what? That was a mistake. I’m moving towards the Lord. So it doesn’t matter how you’ve lived. Doesn’t matter if you’re like, Man, this is so convicting. 

Maybe you’re in a marital relationship, and you’re like, We have not handled each other in the Fear of the Lord. We have not been loving, we’ve not been kind, we’ve not been gracious, whatever it is. Maybe you’re in a roommate situation. Maybe it’s work. What matters is that you hit pause, say, Lord, You’re right. Why? He’s not looking for perfect people. He’s looking for willing people. 

And if we will be a people who walk in the Fear of the Lord, what we’re saying to Him by doing that is, Use me to shape the world around me. My life is available to You. Here’s how I want You to know it: I’m going to walk right before You, so when You want to use me, You can find a vessel useful for You. I think the Christmas story here is about what God can do with those who are committed to live His way. 

Could I suggest that we become those people in our day and in our time? So, I want you to consider your life patterns. I want you to consider your pursuits. I want you to consider how you live every day. Does it align with the Fear of the Lord? We’re in a really natural transition season, we’re coming up on a new year. What happens if we are people that would say, All right, Lord, search me. 

I don’t think this is a one-and-done on a Sunday morning type thing; I think this is a process we step into to where we get serious, where we go sit with the Lord and say, Will you search my heart? Will you assess in me this question: am I walking in the Fear of the Lord? 

If you’re like, Well, I don’t know, I don’t read the Bible. That’s a good place to start. Did you know the Scriptures say that His people err for lack of knowledge? In other words, they don’t read what He says, and then they don’t know that they’re violating it. Maybe a good place to start is to read what He says. 

But I want us to consider our lives and ask the question. If you’re married in here, I feel like the Lord put such a highlight on marriages this morning. I want you to ask the question, Am I walking in the Fear of the Lord towards my spouse? Maybe ask a better question: What excuse am I offering instead of the Fear of the Lord? What wound am I holding on to instead of the Fear of the Lord? What perspective am I honoring instead of the Lord’s? Those are hard questions, but they will lead us to the right answer, which is repentance and the Fear of the Lord. 

But I would suggest that we do business with God, assessing where we need to grow in obedience to His will, and then we put a line in the sand and say, You know what, Lord, every place of rebellion stays in ’24. I’m just going to put a natural line in the sand where we’re embarking into a new year. I would say, do it today. It’s great, but I’m just giving you sixteen days of grace. 

But to be honest, because I think part of why the church at large is not winning, is because we’re not walking in the Fear of the Lord in the private place. And I think it grieves the heart of the Lord, and I think He’s trying to assess that in us, He’s trying to grow that in us. 

Here’s where the Fear of the Lord will lead you: it will lead you to be a really loving person. Because when we put on the nature of Christ, we start to adopt the character of Christ. The Son of Man didn’t come to be served, He came to serve, give His life away. And we start to become like Him. That’s what’s going to happen if we choose this life. 

CONCLUSION

Stand with me, please. I want to lead us into bread and cup. I think it’s a great time– bread and cup. Communion tables are all around the room. I think this is a good bread and cup time to take alone. Maybe you’re here, and you’re like, I’m in a marriage, we have to take it together. We got some stuff to work on. Great. Maybe you’re here with your roommates, and you’re like, We have to talk. 

The wrong answer is to be too proud to admit your failure. The right answer is to say, Man, Lord, I just want Your grace in my life, and I’m just going to admit where I need to work on. The wrong answer is, Well, I’m not perfect. I’m okay with that answer as long as it ends, But I am repentant. 

But I believe we’re in a premier moment to put aside childish things, to stop letting the enemy undermine our authority in the marketplace because of how we live in the secret place. 

How amazing would it be if this entire room walks out today and says, You know what, I put a line in the sand and went, no more. I will not allow for myself anything except the Fear of the Lord. 

So if you’re new with us, you’re like, I don’t know how you guys do bread and cup. It’s just really on your own. You come, and you grab a cup, you grab a piece of bread, welcome you to just get alone, get a place. We’ll have prayer teams up here. They have yellow tags that say “Prayer Team.” If you’re like, I need somebody to pray with me, great. It’s our privilege to do that. 

I’m going to pray us in. Holy Spirit, thank You for Your grace and Your mercy and Your wisdom. Lord, we want to be a people that don’t undermine our own authority but instead can partner together and create a powerful dynamic of the Kingdom in our region. So Lord, as we step into the bread and cup, Holy Spirit, would You whisper and speak and highlight the things that need to be addressed? We love You. We honor You. Let’s take the bread and cup.