Joseph’s Perspective

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Like I said in the announcements, Tim Oster is coming to preach for us today. Tim Oster is a great guy. I've known Tim for the better part of eight years, and I trust him and his wife Cindy. He and Cindy, the parents of Daniel Oster and Daniel and Candace are our members at South Berlissen. And Tim is just one of the most kind and gentle men I've met. Tim is really all about prayer. You know, you want to ask him about anything. He will tell you about prayer and about how we can be praying for. Tim's just been an inspiration to me for a really long time. I always love hearing him preach, and I know he's going to do a great job with you guys today. So give a listen, Tim Oster. Okay, good morning, South Burleson Baptist Church. I'm so glad to be here this morning and wish that I could be with you in person and be able to see your faces and worship with you. But I really appreciate the

opportunity that Drew gives me to come and to share with you and to be partners with you and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so excited to do that this morning, especially in this season of the year. I mean this is a time of year where we know that a lot of people are a lot more friendly, they're more kind. We get the excitement of the Christmas lights and the trees and the ornaments and all the things that go around Christmas and the expectation of opening gifts and seeing our children and grandchildren open their gifts. But if you came into my house right now, you would realize that we love nativity scenes. And if my wife collects nativity scenes in all the shelves in our living room, you'll see the nativity scene all around the house. And we've got nativity scenes from Poland, from Spain, from Ecuador, from Madagascar. We've got nativity that are depicted with black bears,

with cardinals, snowmen, veggie tails, just a wide variety of the different types of nativity. And not only do we have them on shelves, we have pictures around our house of nativity. And if you look at our Christmas tree, you're gonna see that 90% of the ornaments on our Christmas tree are related to the nativity. And one of the things about the nativity so exciting is every one of them are the same in one respect that they have all the same characters. They have the shepherds, the king, the angel, they have Joseph, they have Mary. And so in this series sermon or sermon series that Drew is leading this over this Christmas season, we're talking about Christmas in first person. So part of that is just looking at Christmas through the eyes of those characters that were there during that first Christmas and getting their perspective and not only the perspective of what Christmas was but also about

their character and about who they were and what they did and that first Christmas and things that we can learn from them. So this morning we're going to look at the the character of the father Jesus Joseph and so I want to turn to Matthew chapter 1 and read the verses from 18 through 25 this morning about Joseph and his story during that first Christmas. So let's begin in verse 18. It says, this is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph but before they came together she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit because Joseph her father, her husband was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace. he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be

afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. And this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which is God with us. When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until he gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus. So let us pray. Heavenly Father we're so grateful. We're grateful for what your son Jesus Christ did for us and we're so grateful that we can celebrate his birth and we're so grateful that you give us your holy word that we can read it each and every year, Lord, it just brings refreshment and newness to the fact that we have a

Savior in Jesus Christ and we celebrate His birth during the season. So this morning Lord, as we look through this passage, we just pray that you will continue to teach us, to guide us, and direct us, convict us where we need conviction, but Lord, just help us to enjoy the peace and the joy through this season that comes from knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Amen. So Matthew began writing to this book to the Jewish audience and he began by going through this genealogy. But one thing I want to remind you about all the characters that are there at Christmas, all the characters that we're looking at, we're looking through their eyes, we're looking at their experience at that first Christmas, they all play a role, but they play a supporting role in the Christmas story. The lead role we know is played by Jesus and without him there's no story, there's no

dativity, there's no Christmas, and most importantly there's no salvation for us or eternal life for us. So although we look at these characters we want to also focus on the fact that Jesus Christ is the reason for the fact that we celebrate Christmas. So Matthew begins by going through this genealogy and I began reading this morning from the verse that most of us read from when we read through the Bible because when we get to Matthew, we read through the Bible, we get to chapter 1, the first 17 verses are this genealogy and a lot of times we'll just kind of glance over that and begin reading Matthew in verse 18. But Matthew wanted them to understand the fact that this Jewish audience had to know that this person, this child that was being born, would meet the requirements that were prophesied about the Messiah. And so part of that prophecy was that he would be from the lineage of David. And so he wanted to set

the foundation for his Jewish readers that this child is the Messiah. And so he began in Abraham and came through the genealogy through David to show that Jesus was in that lineage of David. But I want you to notice something in verse 16. He begins by talking in all these verses. He goes Abraham is the father Isaac, Isaac the father Jacob. And he goes all the way through the genealogy with that same pattern until he gets to verse 16 and he says, in Joseph the Father, or Jacob the Father Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus, who is called the Messiah. And I want you to notice, and I'm sure you've already noticed the difference in verse 16, is that he doesn't say Joseph the Father Jesus. He says, Jacob the Father Joseph, but then he changes up and he says Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother Jesus who was called the Messiah. He doesn't say Joseph the father of Jesus

because Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. He changes it up because of that. He calls him the husband of Mary. And if you look in verse 18 and verse 20 we see why. And he mentions this two times in these verses that we read this morning that she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. In verse 18. And in verse 20 he says, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. But even though we know that Jesus was conceived and married through the Holy Spirit and not biologically through Joseph, I promise you that Joseph still considered Jesus his son and Jesus considered Joseph his earthly father. I'm reminded of Cindy's brother. She has four sisters, three biological, one adopted and adopted brother. And a few years ago when Cindy's dad passed away at the funeral, one of the things that her brother always pointed out said that he

never in his entire life heard his father ever introduce him as his adopted son. He always referred to him as his son. And I'm sure that Joseph did the same with Jesus. That's my son Jesus. And we see him in that light because Joseph served as that earthly father of Jesus Christ, even though he was not the biological father. But can you imagine the situation that Joseph was in when this happened, as we read through this passage this morning, that he finds out that the life that he is to be wed to is now pregnant, that he was engaged to, and understand that engagement in the first century in that time was totally different than engagement today. We know that engagements today can be broken at any time throughout the engagement, even up to the last minute a person can walk away from the altar and say I'm done it's over and that's it. But not in that day and age. When you were engaged or betrothed to someone it was

a legal marriage and for that year you were referred to as husband and wife. You lived separately but they knew that in one year the two of you were going to be wed and live together. Some people say that that year was to allow families to prepare financially everything for the services, but also some thought that it was also to make sure that what was happening in this situation didn't happen, that the wife was not pregnant, that there would have plenty of time for them to determine that she was a virgin and not pregnant, and in this case we see that this is happening, that Joseph just found out that the wife, his wife is pregnant, and he could only assume at the moment that he found this out that it was by another person because he knew that he had not had that physical relationship with her. But we see in his passage that he was a golly man, he was a good man, and in those verses in 18 and 19 it talks about how he

he just decides that he's just going to put her away quietly. He's not going to make a big deal of it. He just recognizes what type of person that he is because he could very well have exposed her and it would have been an embarrassment to her and to her family. She could have even been stoned at the time for what is happening to her. But maybe he just loved her. He really cared for her so he didn't want to hurt her and so he planned to just secretly end the relationship. Now how would you react if you received news like that? Do you think you could react in the manner that Joseph reacted? When I read this story reminds me of years ago not long after Cindy and I were married we were living in Eastern, Kentucky and we're going to this small Presbyterian church and I remember I can still remember after all those years a Sunday where this young man got up and gave a testimony

And he was given a testimony you can understand this was back in the early 80s And it was not quite as acceptable especially in a very conservative area for your teenage son or daughter to be in a relationship where they became pregnant. And so this young man was sharing the story that his parents were well-known in community. They've been in that church for many years. They were just a well-known Christian family, had a great reputation in that area. And so he was telling the story of the time a couple years prior to this where he and his girlfriend had had a sexual relationship and was pregnant. And so you can imagine just the devastation, the nervousness, the panic in him and her that they had to go tell his parents. And so he shared the night that he went in to tell his parents what had happened. And you can imagine how petrified he was, what they were

going to say, the yelling, the anger, the disappointment, all those things that were going to take place. And he said that when he shared with his mom and dad what had happened, he said the response was totally 180 degrees from what he expected. The first words out of his dad's mouth was you go in the other room, pick up the phone, call your girlfriend and tell her that we love her and that we want her to know that we're going to get through this. Now I would hope that I could react that way if that had happened in my life, but somehow I kind of doubt that that would have been my reaction, that I think maybe I would have shared some of that anger and disappointment and maybe shouted a little bit. Daniel can probably testify that he would probably agree with that. But this parent reacted just like Joseph did here. Joseph didn't react based on the emotions of the moment. He reacted out of just this

unconditional love. He reacted out of this care for the other person. Isn't that what unconditional love is that he first thought of Mary, not just himself, not the selfishness in his life. And those parents did the same thing. They first thought of their son and this girl who were in this situation and panicked and they loved them enough that they wanted to make sure that they would help them through this. And Joseph demonstrated the same thing in this relationship with Mary. You know, I've heard, we've all heard the saying that they're going to know we are Christians by our love. And sometimes we say, well they're going to know we're Christians by the way we act. But I think one of the things that we ought to learn to say is they will know we are Christians by how we will react. Because you know sometimes we can pretend to love other people. We can definitely pretend to act like Christians at times, don't we? Churches

are full of people that pretend to be Christian. But we know they're not or they know they're not. We don't because they're pretending. But man, whenever something happens at a moment and something said or done unexpectedly, it's hard for us sometimes to fake reaction. And it can tell a whole lot about a person and about us personally in the way we react. Do we react based on the emotion and the anger of the moment or do we react guided by the Spirit of God out of love? And Joseph gives us that great example that we should react out of love, not out of the emotion of the moment.

So Joseph, in those couple verses, I mean, he had thought about this and he had this plan, that he was just gonna put her away quietly, and that would just take care of everything. And even though that seems like an honorable plan, a wonderful plan, it was totally wrong. Because when we look at the next couple verses in 20 and 21, we see that God had another plan, And he spells that new plan out to Joseph, and this was probably something Joseph may not have even considered. So he says in verses 20 and 21, he says step one of God's plan was not to put her away quietly. God tells Joseph, it's all right, go and take her home as your wife. The angel appeared to Joseph and said, don't be afraid, take Mary home as your wife. That was God's plan. Now there's a problem with this plan for Joseph. You know, and we didn't talk about this earlier, but when you look, when you think about it,

Joseph's putting away Mary quietly. That's also helps Joseph a little bit as well. Because if he does take Mary home to be his wife, there's some cost to him. Because as we said, Joseph is this righteous man, this good man. He has this great reputation in this area. And now if he takes Mary home to be his wife, it's not gonna be very long that everybody's gonna realize that this woman's pregnant. And since he has taken her home to be his wife, the assumption is gonna be that the child is his. And now his reputation would be damaged because they're gonna think that they had had this relationship prior to when they were legally married. So there is some cost in accepting and following God's plan here for Joseph to be obedient to that. aren't we in that same situation many times?

That our plan is not God's plan? And that we need to learn to follow God's plan? And sometimes we have to learn as Joseph is here that following God's plan is not always the easiest way. It's not always a way without pain, without difficulty. But it's important to be obedient and follow God's plan. And that's exactly what Joseph did in his story. In verse 24, it tells us that God obeyed this plan and he went and he took Mary to be his wife. So he demonstrated this obedience to what God, the message God sent him through the angel. So then step two of God's plan was first, you take Mary home to be your wife. He says, next, you're gonna give him the name Jesus. In verse 21, he says, you're gonna give him the name Jesus. So what's important about that name Jesus? I mean, it's not the only person who's ever been named Jesus. It was kind of common. Some say maybe it's so important that he be named Jesus

because of what the name means. Because the name Jesus means to save. That he was given that name because that it means to save which is eventually what he tells us he's gonna do. But what's in a name? I mean, for you and I in America, You know, we don't typically choose our children's name based on what those names mean. I mean, we all know that most of us typically choose our names by what's popular at the time, maybe a popular person, maybe a famous person, maybe there's somebody in our life or relative that we think highly of, and we wanna name our children based on that. We don't really look at the meanings of names and decide, I wanna name my son this because that's what it means. And so when I was looking at this, I thought, well, what if I had done that? How did I name my children? And so I just looked it up to say, okay, what's Daniel, my son, and Jessica, my daughter,

what's their name's name? So Daniel's name, which is a biblical name, it says his name means God is my judge. And you know, look up Jessica, my daughter's name, and it means to behold. So I think, if you think about the meaning of the name, it looks like I kind of favored my daughter in naming my children in that case. But then I thought, well, what about Daniel and Candace? how do they name their children? Well, when you look at Emma, her name means my God has answered.

And then you look at Heath, his name. And I want you to understand that first of all, Daniel's middle name is Heath, and we chose Daniel's middle name as Heath because there was this popular show back in the day called Big Valley, and on that show was a character named Heath who was played by Lee Majors. And I think really my wife just loved the fact that Lee Majors was a very handsome man and his name was Heath. And so that's how Daniel ended up with the middle name of Heath. And then he names his son Heath. So I looked that up and this is an old English word and it means someone who lives on a moor which is like an open space of rough grass. So I think in the meaning of names here, Heath gets the short end of the stick. But here's the important part, Heath, I want you to know. It doesn't matter what your name means. matters who you are and what you do. And that's the truth of what is happening

now. Even though he named him Jesus, we don't celebrate Christmas and remember Jesus because his name means to save. Now we celebrate Christmas and the name Jesus because of who he was, because of what he did, because he is the Anointed One. He is the Savior. He is the Messiah. He is the one who will save us from our sin. See Peter, the apostle Peter, understood that when he said you're a Christ, the Son of the living God. And so we know that his name means to save, but the third thing that God's plan involved was the fact that this Jesus was going to live up to the meaning of his name to save because he says in verse 21 that he is going to save us from our sin. And you know when we think about saving, when the first century, the Old Testament, when they heard the word saved, one of the first things they taught about was this or understood was this physical

deliverance. Now somebody's gonna save me they're gonna deliver me they're gonna save me from my enemies they're gonna save us from disease they're gonna save us from death and some in that day wanted to be saved from Roman rule but the angel makes it very clear that that's not the salvation that's gonna happen through Jesus Christ. Now he says Jesus Christ is going to come and save us from our sin. It's not a physical delivery, it's a spiritual delivery. But we're the same as those people, aren't we? Because there's people that all the time, and we do it ourselves sometimes, we come to Jesus expecting to be saved, to be rescued, to be delivered. And we want to be delivered from our illnesses, from our financial difficulties, from difficulties in relationships, and just difficulty emotionally. There's all these different things that we want Jesus to deliver us

from, but the Bible makes it clear that He came to deliver us and save us from our sin. That sin is the one thing that's important that we understand that that separates us from God. That if we're believers it separates us from having this intimate relationship with God. Joseph was obedient and listened to God's plan and he went and took Mary home. Oftentimes we need to be obedient and listen to the words in Scripture that remind us that we need to confess our sins to the Lord, that we need to be honest about who we are and what we do and have this relationship with Him. The angel made it clear it will be a spiritual deliverance saved from our sin. Scripture reminds us that there's no other name under heaven and earth which you must be saved. It is through Jesus Christ. We are confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and it says you

will be saved. He doesn't say you might be saved, he says you will be saved. Jesus came, he did not come to provide allowances for sin. He came to make atonement for our sin, to pay the debt for our sin. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Philippians 2 gives us this beautiful picture of how Jesus just fumbled himself even to death on the cross. That we celebrate Christ not because of what his name means. We celebrate not because he was born. We celebrate the fact that of Jesus because he was raised on the third day and he sits beside the Father today interceding for you and I. There's this great little quote called the incomparable Christ and here's just a few excerpts out of that that reminds us of just who Christ is. It says more than 2,000 years ago there of man, more than contrary to the laws of life. This man lived in poverty and was reared in obscurity.

He did not travel extensively. He possessed either wealth or influence, had no training or former education. As an infant, he startled a king in childhood. He puzzled doctors in manhood. He ruled the course of nature, walked up on the waves, and hushed the seas. He healed the multitudes without medicine. He never wrote a book, yet perhaps all the libraries of the world cannot hold all the books that have been written about him. He never wrote a song, yet he has furnished the theme of more songs than any ever saw the songwriter. He never founded a college, but all the schools put together cannot boast of having as many students. He never practiced psychology, and yet he has healed more broken hearts than all the doctors. Each week, multitudes of congregations come to worship and assemble to pay homage and respect to him. The names of the past, proud statements

of Greece and Rome have all gone. The names of past scientists, philosophers, theologians have come and gone. But the name of this man multiplies more and more. Though time has spread 2,000 years between the people of this generation than the mockers of his crucifixion, he still lives. His enemies could not destroy him and the grave could not hold him. He stands forth under the highest pinnacles of heavenly glory, proclaimed God, acknowledged by angels, adored by saints, and feared by devils as the risen personal Christ, our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. This passage reminds us that his name is Jesus and he will save his people from their sin. Every one of the nativity scenes that we have in our home, all the characters are the same. And there's one other thing that's identical is the fact that all those characters in the nativity scene are looking in one place. They're looking at the manger

which holds the baby Jesus. They're focused on him. You know we're looking through this series at Christmas in first person. We're looking through the lives and those who were there at that first Christmas. Joseph was a godly, a righteous. He was an obedient man that responded our love and compassion and he's a great example for you and I. But as we look at him and as we look at other characters of the nativity, we should never forget that they are looking at Christ. That we are to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on Jesus Christ. It's so easy to get distracted with the characters that surround the manger and lose sight of the one who's in the manger. I mean think about it for a moment. If we could see Christmas through your eyes right now, what would we see? What are you looking at this Christmas? Because the fact is that Jesus is Christmas. That if you celebrate Christmas without Christ, you might be

doing all the Christmas things, but you are not celebrating Christmas because Jesus is his name and he will save his people from their sin. You know the greatest gift that was ever given is Jesus Christ to us and the greatest gift that you can give yourself this Christmas if you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior is to give yourself the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Take that step of believing in Him and seeking Him and knowing that He is the one who is going to bring peace. But if you're a believer and you're not experiencing the joy and the peace that comes with knowing Jesus, part of that reason may be the fact that there's sin in your life that you're just unwilling to acknowledge. That's why this passage reminds us that Jesus came to save us from our sin. Put your trust in Him. Turn your heart and mind to Him. And as you go

through this season, celebrate this season because you have the greatest gift of all. That's Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Amen. Let's pray. Father, so full of joy and happiness and peace because of who you are. Father, we live in a world right now where there's so many things that are just bringing us down emotionally. And Father, even the fact that we can't be in this church this Sunday together is depressing thinking about it. But Father, when we're reminded that we worship someone greater than all that, Lord, that we trust You and know that You're in control. And Father, there's some that are hurting. And Lord, we just pray that Your Holy Spirit will just draw them into that relationship if they don't know You. And Lord, if they know You, Lord, may your Holy Spirit just indwell in them and strengthen and courage and comfort and may the family of believers that surround them even though we cannot

be in this room we can definitely continue to pray and care for and love one another. Lord we thank you for the example of Joseph and we thank you for the message of the fact that we worship of God who is here to save us from our and to give us the gift of eternal life. We thank you for that and praise your name this morning. It's in Jesus's precious and holy name we pray. Amen. Thanks Tim. Look, if you want to take that next step, if you want to deal with the sin in your life, and if you need help doing that, if you don't really know what that next step would look like, you can go to southurlison.church slash connect and it's it'll be right here on the screen for you but when you go there you can fill out a card and that will begin a conversation where I will respond personally to you and I will help you take that next step whatever it is and if you want to be just texted if you want to be just emailed that's fine you

can indicate that on the card now look when you take that next step and you Confessor said it is a it's life-giving it is a brand new start and so if you're interested in doing that please do so and like like Tim said you know we hate not being here together but soon we will be and so stay tuned to our Facebook page for more updates as we go have a great morning