Sermon Tone Analysis
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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
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.
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