A Good Reputation Put to Good Use

When Jim Caviezel took the role of Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, he was told that he would never work in Hollywood again. Hollywood does not think the way we do, they want an actor who will take any role (except devoutly Christian roles), they have to be willing to appear nude, to say anything the script calls for and all that. So, his reputation as an actor would suffer if he was seen to be a devout Christian. He took the role anyway and one of the most important movies about Jesus ever made is the result.

Sometimes your reputation has to suffer for you to be useful to God. What is your reputation is worth? I know that it is important to you to have a good reputation, it certainly is to me. My father taught me to always uphold the family name, that I should never do anything to endanger it or bring shame to it. Perhaps your family did as well. I don’t know how many time I heard, “You are a Montgomery” when I was growing up.

In the unfolding of God’s plan for the redemption of mankind, we can see some reputations being put on the line in order to fulfil God’s purposes.

First of all, we see Joseph. Joseph was a young man, probably somewhere between 15 and 18 years old. You men remember when you were that age? That is an age where the hormones are flowing freely through a young man’s body. But even so, Joseph tried to live a righteous life before God. He tried to live out the Law of Moses in his life.

Later on, Jesus criticized the Pharisees because they were so dogmatic with the Law, they were all about the rules. But that is not the kind of view of the Law that Joseph had. He obeyed the rules, but saw past them to the essence of them. He understood that first of all the Law was about justice and mercy. So, he wanted to protect his reputation, but not at the expense of Mary’s reputation.

What did he think when he found out that Mary was pregnant? Well, this was an agrarian society, so they knew where babies come from. And here comes Mary home from seeing her cousin Elisabeth and she is clearly pregnant, probably four months along. Joseph knew that he wasn’t the father, right? That’s the kind of thing you pretty much know. So, he must have thought that Mary was unfaithful to him. It was really the only option available to him. Even in those days women had babies out of wedlock. But it was a shameful thing.

If he went ahead and married her, then everyone would think that he had taken advantage of his young bride, if he divorced her publically, everyone would know that she had been unfaithful to him. So this was his dilemma. In the the Ancient Near East a man’s reputation was everything because it was and still is, a shame/honor culture.

The penalty for adultery was stoning according to the Law of Moses. It rarely came to that, during Joseph’s day, but that tells us how serious this was. But Joseph’s sense of the Law, would not let him publically humiliate Mary. So, he decided to divorce her privately. A private divorce only needed two witnesses, he probably had two close friends that he could trust. He would divorce her and that was that.

And this was as the best option he could think of. He could keep his honor and his reputation. but not shame Mary more than was necessary.

You can see a lot of Joseph’s character in this decision. He could have been vindictive. Surely his feelings would have been hurt to find out his fiance had been unfaithful to him. But instead of getting even, he thought about how to protect Mary from public shaming, but still be faithful to the law.

But before he could do this, he had a dream. In the Bible there are many cases of God speaking to people through dreams. There are also warnings that demons can speak to people through dreams in the Bible. And of course there is the ordinary dreams that we have every night in the Bible. But this dream is a dream from an angelic source. Matthew does not say how Joseph knew that this was one of those dreams, but he did.

When the angel showed up in his dream, the first thing he said to Joseph was “do not be afraid.” What is the most common thing an angel will say to someone when they appear? “Do not be afraid.” Normally it is because seeing an angel will scare a person. But in this case, the angel tells Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife.”

Why would Joseph be afraid of that? Because Mary had already shown him that she could be unfaithful. Joseph was a righteous young man and he was intent on maintaining his righteousness. He knew that yoking himself with Mary the adulterer would be a big mistake. But the angel assured him, no Joseph, she is not an adulterer. This baby is a miracle from God, the Holy Spirit caused her to conceive.

Here’s another place where we sell ancient people short. How many times had this happened in history? Approximately zero. Did Joseph know that? Yes, of course he did. He knew the only way to get pregnant. But here he was being told that Mary was pregnant by the hand of God. And you are to name him Jesus.

A couple of verses later, Matthew tells us something. He says, that this is to fulfil a prophecy. The prophesy comes from Isaiah 7

Let’s turn there and see it, because it is important to understand prophesies and how they work because this phrase, “this is to fulfil the prophecy...” is all over the gospels.

This was in the days of the divided kingdom, there was Israel to the North and Judah to the South. Judah included the city of Jerusalem, where the temple was. Ahaz King of Judah was a pretty miserable king as far as God was concerned. He had two other kings who were coming against him, the king of Israel and the King of Aram.

God told Isaiah the prophet to go meet with Ahaz and tell him to trust in God and not do anything, God would defeat both of these kings for Ahaz. After Isaiah delivers the message, he also tells Ahaz to ask God for a sign, anything he wants and God will do it to prove that this is going to happen.

It is like this. God knows that Ahaz wants to get the army ready for battle, but he is telling him to stand down and let God take care of this. So, to prove that he will take care of this, He wants Ahaz to ask for a sign, anything he wants, so He can be assured that God is going to come through. You know, like make the sun stand still for a few hours, or dividing water, some kind of miracle.

Now Ahaz acts all pious and says, I will not put the Lord to the test. He is not really being serious, he wants to assemble his army and get busy defending himself, he doesn’t really have faith that God is going to help him, he probably doesn’t even believe that Isaiah is really a prophet. He’s just going through the motions. Here’s the biggest prophet in the land, I will act all religious.

When he refuses, Isaiah provides him a sign in spite of himself. He says, Isaiah 7:14-15

Isaiah 7:14–15 NIV

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right,

Now do you think Isaiah or Ahaz thought this sign would be fulfilled in 700 years? No, in order for the sign to mean anything to Ahaz, it had to be fulfilled shortly. So, there was probably a young woman in Ahaz’ household who became pregnant and had a baby that she named Immanuel. The word that is used in the Hebrew can mean an actual virgin or just a young woman.

But the word that Matthew uses when the angel is talking to Joseph means virgin only.

What Matthew is saying is that the prophecy that Isaiah gave to Ahaz had its fullest fulfilment in Mary.

God was going to rescue his people, not from two foreign kings but from sin. And he was going to do this through the baby growing right now in Mary’s womb. Not just a young woman, a virgin, this is a miracle from God to the world.

As an aside, I want to point out something. There is nothing about the sex act that is in itself sinful. It is a gift from God. Mary is not pregnant as a virgin to make a statement about sex between a husband and a wife being part of the sin equation. No, the statement is that this is a miraculous birth, this baby is different from every other baby in His origin. He is not only from man, but he is also from God.

Joseph wakes up from his dream and did what the angel commanded. He took Mary home to be his wife. Isn’t that really amazing in itself? He woke up and did what the angel said to do. No hullabaloo, no pontificating, nothing but obedience.

Was he going to be shamed publically by this? Yes, he was. His family would talk, his friends would talk. You know how they are. You have been there. Me too. His reputation suffered as a result of this. Sometimes your reputation has to suffer for you to be useful to God. For the rest of his life, I will bet, there were people who whispered behind his back, maybe to his face. But we see no sign that he ever complained about that.

How do we know that his reputation suffered? Because someone else’s reputation was ruined. Mary’s.

Matthew does not cover the story of the angel visiting Mary, that is in the Luke account. I am not going to go there this morning, but Matthew just skips from Joseph’s dream to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. His audience knew all this. But what was Mary doing in Bethlehem?

Well, the Luke account says that she went there with Joseph because he had to register there for a census. He had to go, but did he really have to drag a nine month pregnant teenager with him 90 miles through rough and somewhat dangerous terrain? Wouldn’t she had been better off staying home with her family and the village in Nazareth? It is not a man’s job to deliver a baby, that is what midwives are for, but back in Nazereth, Mary would have been on her own.

There was no one to help her back there because she had brought shame to the family. Joseph had to take her for her safety and for the baby. Because she was pregnant out of wedlock, her reputation was in shambles.

But sometimes your reputation has to suffer for you to be useful to God.

There is a third person in this story. And we do not want to forget about him! Jesus. We see Jesus at Christmas as a little baby in a manger. And if we could go back there to the actual birth of Jesus, that is exactly what we would see, a little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

But Jesus was truly God as well as truly human, right. When they looked at this little helpless baby, they were looking into the face of God Almighty. Not God the Father, not God the Spirit, But God the Son. God with all authority from all eternity. God who was present at the creation of the universe. What was he doing in Bethlehem lying in a manger?

It is in the prophecy. They were going to name him Jesus, but he would be called Immanuel, which means God with us.

Imagine that you had an ant farm, have you ever seen one? But every time you tried to interact with the ants, they’d get all in an uproar because they were afraid of you. The ants would never know you no matter how much you knew them, right. But if you could, just for a moment, become an ant....

God became man, not so he could know us better, but so we could know Him better. Much bigger deal than a human becoming an ant. God became a human.

Paul wrote about it in Philippians 2:6-8, which many theologians believe is an ancient hymn that Paul is quoting, written just a decade or so after Jesus ascended to heaven.

God the Son understood that sometimes your reputation has to suffer for you to be useful to God.

The rest of the hymn goes like this: (9-11).

You see, Jesus’ reputation suffered, but his name is above every name now.

Mary’s name suffered, but she is revered among women.

Joseph’s name suffered, but he is forever known as the earthly father of Jesus, the Messiah.

What about you and me? I can remember when I first began being a Christian. I was baptized as a young man, but did not really start being a Christian until much later. I was going to work one day and I knew that many people who knew me did not know that I had changed. I wanted to make a statement, but I was afraid that people would think less of me, that they would think I was a hypocrite because of the way I was before.

So, Ruth got me a desk calendar that was a Max Lucado devotional. Later on, she got me a small Bible to put on my desk. Now, of course, everyone who knows me knows what I believe. But I remember how hard it was at first.

Some things are still hard, though. I have to admit that it is a little hard to pray in public in restaurants. I do it, and I am glad I do, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I am often feeling judged.

You see, the Bible tells us that a good reputation is a good thing, more precious than expensive perfume. But trying to maintain a reputation in the world out there can conflict with being a follower of Christ. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)”

Our reputations have value, but only if they have value to God. The opinions of the folks around you are important, but they are not the most important thing. The more important thing is God’s opinion.

Think on these things the next time you have to make a tough moral decision. Maybe you will find yourself in a conversation among friends that you know you shouldn’t be having. Can you quietly and graciously walk away from it?

Maybe someone will wrong you. Maybe right now you can think of someone who already has harmed you? Can you deal with that harm without being vindictive? Can you seek even that person’s greater good without forsaking the truth that you have been harmed?

Living out tough moral issues cannot and should not be done by yourself. Fortunately, you don’t ever have to.

Remember Jesus? He suffered great wrong and the scriptures tell us he did not speak one accusing word in response. Instead, on the cross he prayed for the forgiveness of those who had harmed him. Forgiveness for them, while providing forgiveness for us.

And I want you to remember what the angel said to Joseph. He will be called Immanuel, God with us.

Look all the way from the manger to past the cross, to one of the last things he said to the disciples before he ascended into heaven. Look to the last sentence of the book of Matthew. “And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age.” I am. The name of God. With you. God with you. Always.

When you face difficulty and hard decisions in this life, always remember this: God is with you.