Matthew 1:18-25 Overcoming Doubts: Joseph

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his three-part series, Overcoming Christmas Doubts. Let's listen in.

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to Recast Church.

I'm Don Filsak.

I'm the lead pastor here, and if you could come on in and find your seats, that would be awesome. I want to be the first to welcome you to this worship gathering of Recast Church this morning. Hopefully, you've gathered together to hear from God here in this place.

Here at Recast, we value the Word of God. We believe that it is the way that God has revealed himself to us. We believe that it is the power to drive our lives deeper into the knowledge of the God who sacrificed for us, and that is why one of our core values here at Recast, the T in the acronym Recast, stands for truth, and that's why we make the Word of God central in our gatherings, why we read it together, why we study it together, why we dig into it together.

It is not that we worship the book, but we worship the God who has written the book, and in the book, he has written to us about himself, and in these pages, he communicates with us what he desires for us to know about ourselves.

I don't know if you've ever read the Bible and had it make sense of you. It does that to me regularly. It identifies for me my problems, my issues. I'm like, wow, it's like it's in my head in some way, and so it makes sense of ourselves, but then also as we dig in, more importantly, it reveals to us who God is.

It reveals to us his character and identifies for us what he has obviously done for us as.

Well.

The Trustworthy Statement: Jesus Came to Save Sinners

So last week, we saw the Apostle Paul seeking to overcome doubt by giving us a trustworthy statement that he said deserves full acceptance, and within that was the actual Christmas narrative in a nutshell, a very, very concise synopsis of Christmas found in this statement that I encouraged all of us to memorize and to really let it pour over our minds over this Christmas season.

It is simply this statement. The Apostle Paul says it's trustworthy, deserves your full acceptance, and it's simply this, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and I believe that the more that we keep that statement at the center of our Christmas season, the more that we focus in on that, the more that we contemplate it, the more that we will rejoice and we will focus on the truth that matters most this Christmas season.

But doubt has a tendency to creep into each and every one of our lives. As I mentioned last week, doubt is a real part of a human relationship with the immortal, the invisible Almighty God. We don't see him, but we trust he exists by faith, by the things that we see around us and the things that are.

And this morning, we're going to look at a common Christmas story that's full of doubts and deep concerns. And it's interesting that at the core of our passage this morning, we see a man in our text by the name of Joseph, and he's having significant doubts about what God is doing in the life of another, someone he loves, somebody who is close to him, and God is doing something in her life that he's not super comfortable with, as you can imagine.

The fact of the matter is, when we think about this entire scenario, we might miss one of the points, and that is simply that we are designed for community. We cannot have relationships with God in isolation, but how many of you have ever experienced that there are times when God is doing something in the life of somebody else close to you, and it has an impact on your life?

Raise your hand if you've had that experience. Have you had that happen, where God is doing something with somebody else, and it impacts you? We don't live in isolation, and the reality is we have to deal with this way that we process what God is doing in the lives of others around us as well.

And it's not always easy to trust or even to see accurately what God is doing in the lives of those around us. We're going to see that here in a moment, because as we read this text, you're going to see that Joseph is caught in the space between sight and faith, between being able to see and perceive with his five senses and the real thing that's going on in the picture.

You see, everything that in our text Joseph perceives with his five senses, and even the things that common sense would tell him, is very clear. Everything that, if he were just to look at the situation with his faculties, with his capacity, with his ability, then the only reality that he can come to is that Mary, his fiancée, has been unfaithful.

That's the only conclusion open to Joseph in our text. That's the only reasonable thought that he can conceive of, pun intended. Yeah, I did that. Um, it's all, his perception is 100 false. And the thing that makes the most sense.

Do you see that in the life of Joseph?

The thing that makes the most sense is actually false, because he needs to be granted a revelation that is ultimately driven by faith. What faith requires of him, by the way, in our text is senseless.

And it's an obnoxiously illogical truth. The truth is sometimes illogical. It's senseless. It's not common to what we take in with our five senses regularly. See, in our text, his fiancée is preggers.

But good news, the Holy Spirit is the Father, right? Seems kind of convenient, Mary. But we'll get there as we dive into this text. So open your Bibles, if you're not already there, to Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 to 25.

A common Christmas story that I just pray and have prayed this week that God would give us eyes to see the depth of the emotion of the real people in this situation. Matthew 1, 18 through 25. If you grab the Bible in the seat back in front of you, under that seat in front of you, it's page 471.

Easy to get there if you grab that Bible, and then you can follow along. But Matthew 1, 18 through 25. If you're navigating a device, that's awesome. But that we can all be on the same page, reading this, seeing it as coming from God's Word together.

Recast God's very Word for us here at this Christmas season. A common passage that I hope by the end of the text is not so common anymore. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this account of an event that is life-changing, the account of the arrival of our Savior and Lord, and the King and the Savior, and the one who would come to make things right, the one who would come into the world to save sinners like us.

So Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to lift our voices in worship and praise to you, that we would worship as a people who recognize our being changed and being moved in our spirits by this reality.

Father, it's so easy to sing Christmas songs this time of the year, and just even mindlessly be going over other things in our mind, and mouthing the words, or even singing the songs, or even just practicing our pipes, and not even really thinking about the words.

So Father, I pray that you would press in our hearts and minds the glory, the wonder, the awesome reality of this exceptional birth, exceptional in the way that it is unique among all humanity, the only one who arrived in this way.

And so Father, I pray that you would press that in our hearts and remove doubt, and instead replace doubts with faith today through the hearing of your word, and I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You can go ahead and be seated. And a big thanks to the band for leading us in worship this morning. I'm just glad for the time and energy that they put in. I want to remind you to make yourself comfortable.

If you need to get up and get more coffee, or juice, or donuts back there, you're not going to distract me. So even if you just need to get up and stretch out over the next half an hour or so, but I would ask that you please do me a favor and keep your Bibles open in Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 through 25.

If you lost your place, find it, navigate over to there, open up your app, whatever. Matthew 1, 18 through 25, that's going to be the structure of our text. And I want to remind you in this series of overcoming Christmas doubts, the message last week, I kind of mentioned in my introduction this morning, that Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And we looked at that being a trustworthy and faithful statement last week, given to us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy. But this week, we see that coming into the world that we talked about last week in that statement, a little bit, in a little bit more detail.

You see that at the start of verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. It's talking about his coming into the world. And Jesus came in his arrival in the midst of deep doubts and concerns.

He could have come in any way that he wanted, and he came in the midst of deep doubts and concerns. His arrival was controversial and even confusing to those who were involved in the events. Even to those who were right there up front and personal to his arrival, it was still confusing.

It was controversial and it created within them concerns. Now many in this room have heard the story of Joseph, but I wonder how many of us have actually really considered Joseph as a real man in a real context.

Like how many of you put yourself in his shoes and just thought through the emotional side of his feelings on his side of this story? In verse 18, we're introduced to Joseph and his part in the birth of his son, Jesus.

I say his son because we're going to talk a little bit later about how he adopted Jesus as his son. But Mary was betrothed to this guy named Joseph when she was found to be pregnant. Now they hadn't been together, you know, if you know what God means in the text.

And so they hadn't been together, so Joseph had no interest at all in showing up on Maury or Springer to do a paternity test. Okay, that just wasn't on his radar. He knew how the test would turn out if they did a paternity test.

This baby was definitively not his. He knew that for sure. Like you see that in the text, you know that from the historical account and from multiple different angles and just different gospel writers.

This was not his child. By the way, I'm glad that the ESV uses an older and confusing word for us. Sometimes it's good that they don't update the language because in updating the word betrothed to engaged, we would lose something there.

We would immediately associate it with our concept of engagement and move forward and go, what's the big deal here? He just, you know, walks away from the relationship and it's all done. But the Jewish custom of marriage was quite different than the one that we have in our time today, you know, with the ring and the really big proposal and doing it all right and all of that stuff.

This was probably in all likelihood an arranged marriage, which is the way that things have, you know, been for the majority of the history of the human race. And it's only been in recent years. The idea and the notion was that you had some kind of infatuation towards each other first and then, I mean love, I mean that you fall in love.

I'm sorry, did I say that out loud? So the idea that you, you know, that you actually get to know each other and all that stuff and date and all that, that's recent. So it was probably likely an arranged marriage, but then also what would happen is that there would be a year-long process in which the man was to set about to put his household in order to work, to provide a place where he could bring his wife to.

He had been probably living with mom and dad for this entire time and now it's his job during this year to go out and get his own place and establish his own business and get things up and running so that he could care for his own family.

And so that's the period of time that we find ourselves in here in our text, that betrothal period, where it's something a little bit more than our modern day engagement. There's a social identification of these two together.

They are indeed going to be married. It's pretty definitive and to break that is an idea of divorce, but it's something that is not quite marriage yet. They have not had the honeymoon yet, but they were socially considered to be pledged to one another in a way that required, again, an official divorce if they separated during that year.

But the way that verse 18 ends has a dramatic effect, is meant to have a dramatic effect on us. She was pregnant, the child wasn't his, but the way the text says this is almost flippant.

And just very matter of fact.

It's like the child's not Joseph's, but no worries, the child was from the Holy Spirit. Oh, okay, that solves everything, right? Isn't that convenient, Mary? What a convenient truth. Can you feel the doubts that immediately surround that phrase that the child was from the Holy Spirit?

Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Oh, okay, I get it now. Do you get that? Does that make sense? Babies aren't conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Did you know, I mean, just in what you understand.

Of like biology 101, like does that happen? Is that normal? I think we've moved well past the realm of hypothesis, even past the realm of scientific theory, into the realm, I think we're fair to call it scientific law in regard to where babies come from.

Everybody pretty comfortable calling that scientific law? We had that pretty well figured out. Anybody? Raise your hand if you've got that figured out. It's like nobody even wants to, I don't even know if I want to identify myself in that one at all.

Well, those of you that didn't raise your hand, I don't know about you either. But yeah, so I think we pretty much have established that. You know, I mean, the reality is parents who bite the bullet and quickly and awkwardly have the talk with their kids usually don't feel compelled to make any exceptions for the way that babies come into the world unless you're totally a jerk to your kids and had some story about a stork or something like that and took the easy way out.

I don't know.

But you don't feel compelled to give exceptions in that, except in this case, this case, or this case. No, I mean, we know where babies come from. But here in our text, do you see it for what it is?

It's an exception.

It's not just an exception.

It's the exception.

The one. The one who came into the world in a way unlike anyone else. And if this is true, which I obviously believe it is, if this is true and you're gonna take God's word at face value and you're gonna believe it and trust it and put your life to rest on it, then we at least know that this child is exceptional.

This life is exceptional that's coming into the world in our text here. He is not arriving like the rest of us. But what about those real life people living one day at a time through these events like Joseph?

They're not so quick to believe or to trust the exception. Can you blame them? Can you blame them? Do you think that Joseph had an idea about where babies come from? Do you think that it was hard for him to take this in in any faithful way to believe and to trust his fiance in the words and the things that she was saying?

What do those conversations look like between Mary and Joseph during this time? Can't imagine. Real people, real feelings and real emotions going through a real history and real life and my goodness what that must have looked like.

Verse 19 tells us, by the way, some of the character of Joseph.

It tells us what he was like.

And I think we all would have liked him. I think, Joseph, I think the point of verse 19 is to say this was a good guy. He's a good guy who you and I would have liked to do business with. We would have got along with him.

I mean, if he was a carpenter who was building stuff for you, you would have been like, this is a fair guy. You would have referred him to others. You would have been like, he does good work. He's honest, he's fair and he will treat you right.

He's a just man, the text tells us. He was morally upstanding. The word just could even be translated righteous. Now, that's not to get muddy the waters. Not a righteousness that God honored and therefore saved him or something like that or he was righteous like God is righteous.

Righteous is a tricky word that kind of just has a sense of justice in his culture. A sense of justice and desire to honor God and so that's the kind of character that Joseph had. But by identifying him as just, it also identifies that he was a man who probably knew the law.

He knew what was right and wrong. Maybe a little bit even black and white on the way that he saw the world around him. I don't want to speculate too much on the personality. We know that he was a good guy.

He had a reputation for doing what was right according to the law and his social dealings. The law of this time, by the way, if he was aware of it, which I'm sure he had, if he wasn't aware of it before the circumstance, he was aware of it afterwards.

I'm sure that he did a little bit of his study. He may have gone to a local rabbi and said, what do I do in this situation? What should I, what does the law say about these things? If being a just man, being an honest man, being a good man, he probably sought someone else's thoughts about this even if it was just his own father or parents or someone.

And the law of this time for adultery during this betrothal period where she has cheated on him gives Joseph only two socially acceptable options. Now, he's got a lot of options, but there's only two that would have been socially acceptable during this era and this time.

As a just man, he had two options available to him. He could shame her, exposing her sin and submit her to public court proceedings. Possibility, take her right into the public proceedings and the city gate was often where these kinds of proceedings happened.

And he could have taken her right down to the city gate instantly and had a flash judgment made of her right then and there in front of everyone. Or the second option is he could just present her with a certificate of divorce and a private ceremony.

All he needed was the presence of two witnesses to identify, yes, she is indeed pregnant and you are identifying that this is not your child. Therefore, all he has to do is submit to her a certificate saying I divorce you and she goes away into her shame and Joseph into trying to repiece his life together.

Those were the only two socially acceptable options to Joseph. By the way, you're thinking, there's other options, right, that you can conceive of. Like he could just stay with her, couldn't he?

Isn't that an option?

But here's why that's not socially acceptable. To stay with her in that culture was equal to accepting responsibility for the pregnancy. So in other words, he looks guilty if he stays with her. Do you see that?

Because the logic goes this way in that culture. Why would he stay if she was unfaithful? No man in his right mind would stay with a woman who's been with another man during the engagement. That doesn't make sense.

That wouldn't have made sense. That couldn't have tabulated in their culture and so the logic seems pretty solid to them and maybe even somewhat to us. Only a man who is responsible for the pregnancy would stay with her during this time.

That's the logic. So Joseph, being a good guy, the text tells us, resolved to divorce her quietly. He's not just a just man who sees things black and white, but he's also kind. There's a kindness in his heart that he has an option to shame her and drag her through the mud and even potentially to have her stoned.

Now why do I say that? He was a good guy. He was just. He was unwilling to drag Mary. Through that shame and disgrace, but we have an accounting that dates to this era of a woman caught in adultery in John chapter eight, starting at the first verse there and in that verse, a woman's caught in adultery.

She's brought before Jesus and what do all of the religious leaders have in their hand during this interaction with Jesus? Can anybody say it? They got stones. What are they gonna do with those stones?

They're ready to kill this woman for adultery. Do you realize that that would have been a possibility? That would have been a potential in this scenario, in this situation. If he brings her before the public, the outcry could rise up and they could choose capital punishment on the spot and so he chooses to just do this thing privately and he has resolved in his heart to divorce her, but to do so with kindness and quietly.

Joseph's mind was made up at the end of verse 19. You can see that there he had resolved to divorce her quietly, the text says. He was a good guy, but that doesn't mean he was a calm guy. We don't know all of the ins and outs of this discussion and the resolve in his heart and the animosity and anger.

It doesn't mean he was a robot kind of guy, a guy without feelings. What would some of you be feeling if your fiance was pregnant? What kind of thoughts would run through your mind? For you ladies, what if there was clear evidence he was with another woman while you were engaged?

Does anger come to anybody's mind? Raise your hand if anger comes to your mind in that scenario. Wow, some of you are just very calm and a handful of us would really get upset with that. How about shame?

Anybody raise your hand to shame. You'd feel some shame in that for sure.

Betrayal, does that word fit?

I would feel extremely betrayed and this is a weird word to assign to it, but I think many of us.

Would maybe raise our hand to this one too.

How about a curiosity? A little bit of a morbid curiosity. Would any of you ask this question in your mind?

Who's the father?

Would any of you ask that question? Would there be a curiosity about that? Do you think that. Maybe that came to Joseph's mind?

Do you think it crossed his mind?

It seemed like she kind of lingered.

At the market stall with that guy a little bit longer last week. Is he the one? Was it Josephus?

Who was it?

Do you think that Joseph maybe even already had a name in his mind of who it was?

Do you think that that's possible?

I think he probably went there in his mind. I think he's made of the same stuff as you or me so the same emotions that you and I would be feeling would be going through his mind. He's a real person in a real context with real love and real passions and real anger.

And his fiance is pregnant and he's not the father. His mind is made up. It says in the text his mind was made up but his mind is not finished with this issue. Look at verse 20. How many of you have experienced that by the way?

Where your mind is made up. You've made a tough decision and it's done but you don't stop thinking about it. Do you know what I'm talking about? You know what you're gonna do but you don't stop thinking about it and it can still even after you've resolved it in your mind you've got resolution to do what you believe is the right thing.

You're gonna carry it out in the morning but you're still up all night. I think verse 20 we find what is I believe to be a humorous understatement in scripture. I think this is legitimately understated and I think it's intentionally understated but it's an understatement.

It says as he considered these things. As he considered these things. I think that's a tame clause for what's going on in the chest of Joseph during this scenario. The word considered only tells us that his mind was occupied with these things but it doesn't tell us when he was thinking about these things.

Do you think he might have considered these things say around two o 'clock in the morning sometimes? Do you think these thoughts consumed him at the carpenter shop all day while he was trying to focus on his work?

Do you think he considered these things as he saw people whispering and looking his way in the marketplace? These things to Joseph were not things. These things were broken and shattered dreams of life together with Mary.

He pictured that, he had hoped for that and now that's crushed. These things to him were a life of shame in his community. Could he even stay there any longer? Would he need to move? Would he need to get out of town?

Further, do you think people accused Joseph in this? Do you think he had to face some people who falsely accused him and said, we know, dude, you're the father, just admit it, we know.

I don't doubt it.

People being people and all. I'm confident that Joseph considered these things and while he considered these things, in verse 20 it says, during that wrestling period in his life, we don't know how long that was.

We don't know how many weeks it took him to make up his mind on this. We don't know if it was hours, if it was days, if it was weeks, but he considered these things and during that period of time, he's already resolved in his mind what he's gonna do.

He hasn't acted on it yet. In verse 20, an angel of the Lord appears to him mercifully in a dream. The first part of this good news is that Joseph must have actually been asleep in order to dream, so he's at least getting some rest from his considering, but even in his dreams, this is still there.

And an angel appears to him and instructs him, take Mary as your wife. And he tells Joseph about the miraculous and mysterious nature of this child that she's bearing. The baby has indeed been conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Now, it's interesting to note that Joseph is told, do not fear, do not fear, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. This didn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would he be fearful of that until I uncovered this week all of that social stigma that he was signing up for by marrying her.

The assumption by all would be that this child was indeed his, but the angel instructs him to not worry about what others would think. Don't worry what your society, what your culture, what people are gonna accuse you of, you do what's right, you take her in, you protect her, and you be her husband.

The angel further reveals the gender of the child and instructs him to name the child Jesus.

Give him the name Jesus,.

For he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus is a Hebrew word. It means rescuer, deliverer, or the one who saves. So the angel says you shall name him the one who saves because he will be the one who saves his people from their sins.

And here once again is the statement that overcomes doubt, a paraphrase of what we looked at last week, or maybe Paul paraphrasing this, Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Here in our text this week, we see it declared in advance.

This is before he will save his people from their sins. And in verse 22 and 23, we see that it was actually predicted 700 years before his birth by the prophet Isaiah. Joseph's experience in this text is tied to something larger than himself by looking into scripture, by looking into the Old Testament, by looking into what has come before him and seeing that there's a bigger picture of what God is doing here.

Now many times,.

That's exactly what we need in our lives is for God to break in and show us what he's doing in the bigger picture. Anybody else besides me just get caught up sometimes in the small day-to-day things?

Anybody else with me on that? And sometimes we need our eyes open to a bigger picture of what God is doing around us and what he's been doing in history and how he's brought us to this point here today.

Not suggesting that the prophet spoke specifically about your exact situation here in Matawan and had your name in mind like they did Joseph's, but that scripture makes sense of our lives, right? Do that for you?

It deals with our doubts and our circumstances based on principles that we find written there. And remember that all of this situation really comes down to Joseph's doubts about what God is doing in the life of his fiance.

He cannot get to the truth. Joseph cannot get to the truth with his own heart and mind. He needed a revelation from God in order to apply and arrive at the truth. Leaning on his own common sense, leaning on his own five senses, he had resolved in his heart to divorce her quietly.

But when he awoke, after receiving revelation from God, after God spoke to him, then he was moved to obey based on truth. He took Mary to be his wife. I imagine that pregnant weddings were not in vogue during this era.

So my hunch was that this was not exactly the wedding that Mary had been hoping for since she was a little girl. Probably not exactly the crowd that she was expecting to be there if there was a crowd at all and not exactly the same image.

And the honeymoon really sounds a bit lame according to verse 25. You can see how that verse starts. But the last statement in verse 25 has a more cultural punch than we recognize. How would the whole thing ends?

The act of naming a child, according to this era, this ancient custom, the act of naming the child was exercising the right of adoption. There was no formal court event. There was no going before the judge and having them declare and swearing to take care of the child or any of that kind of stuff.

There's no question that Joseph was recognized as the father of Jesus moving forward in his culture based on his right to name the child. And so by naming Jesus, Joseph took on formal responsibility to raise Jesus as his own according to many scholars.

And I read a lot about that this week and it's pretty clear. So in our text this morning, we've encountered and looked at a pretty common Christmas story. I think it's probably one that most of us have read.

Most of us are familiar with. Maybe many of us have even heard a sermon preached on. But I want to go back through the text and consider what it means for us today in Matawan in 2017 so that we can apply this Christmas text to our lives where we live and where we're gonna be this week.

So first, I want to bring to your attention that doubt is written into the text. It's right there. And so my first application point is just to take comfort that you are not the first person.

To wrestle with doubts.

The accounts of scripture are so honest and raw about the reality of human relationships. The way that Joseph interacted with Mary and married with Joseph and he needed a revelation in order to even stay with her.

Joseph was being asked to believe that a virgin could have a baby. And not only that, taking it a step further, he was being asked to believe that this baby would be born to his fiance. But equally, scripture is calling all of us to believe this miracle.

It's asking all of us, calling all of us in the room to believe that a virgin gave birth. But vastly more than just that miracle, which is a pretty impressive miracle if you want to kind of categorize the scope of miracles revealed.

This is a pretty impressive one. God is asking all of us to believe something more amazing than that and that is that he sent Jesus into the world. He sent Jesus into the world to save sinners like you and me,.

To save us.