Sermon Tone Analysis

Tonight I am going to focus more on Joseph than the other participants in the Christmas Story.

Joseph was given a call to protect and a call of prompt obedience.

As every husband is given charge to protect his family, Joseph had already made a commitment to protect Mary.

For Mary and Joseph, their betrothal was a commitment that was just as binding as the marriage itself would be for us today.

Today engagements can called off before the marriage without any legal implications, but a betrothal was a covenant.

It was a serious commitment.

The couple betrothed was legally bound to each other, and expected to be true to one another, and to prepare themselves for the eventual consummation of their marriage, at such time the groom would take his bride into his own home and they would live together.

Until this happened, they were celibate.

There was to be no hanky-panky.

The man expected his wife to remain a virgin, and she also expected him to remain a virgin until they came together.

Anything else would be very shameful.

And as it happens, when couples are not chaste before their marriage, there is not evidence found in the man’s case, but if a pregnancy results, the woman finds herself in a difficult, possibly life-threatening position.

If she is betrothed and it is her husband that she has been with and he does the right thing, then he will take her immediately as his wife, and while some shame still exists, life can go on.

However, if a woman is found pregnant and it is not by her husband, then she is in big trouble.

Because she is legally bound to her betrothed, she would now be an adulteress, and the penalty could be death.

This is how seriously God took sex and marriage.

His demand was for purity, and the stiff punishment was to be an example and a warning to everyone that God expects the marriage bed to be undefiled.

We are reminded that in the same way, God considers the church to be his bride, in a betrothal period, and as we prepare for the wedding, we are to keep ourselves pure as well, as individuals as well as the church body as a whole.

We cannot have impurities such as gossip, grumbling, sexual immorality, or division in the church, because He is looking for a bride that will prepare herself for the wedding.

So it was also for Israel, God’s chosen people.

Throughout the history of Israel, when God commanded allegiance and loyalty, he again and again used the terms of marriage and adultery when he spoke through the prophets about his relationship to Israel.

He used words like “whoring” for those who allowed impurity into their lives that stained the relationship between God & man, and when idols were worshiped.

He called himself a jealous God, taking the position of a husband who has a healthy, loving desire for his wife to be his alone.

He demonstrated this through the prophet Hosea and his wife Gomer.

Hosea had a wife who was disloyal, who kept leaving him to be with other men, and Hosea would keep bringing her back home, and this illustrated to the people how God feels when his people leave him and seek after other gods, and yet he lovingly seeks out to bring back the wandering ones.

Yes, God had made a big deal about marriage and purity, and that was built into the culture that Joseph and Mary found themselves in, a culture that demanded that husband and wife come together in purity, and at the right time, not earlier, but when the time of preparation was complete, and that once they were together, they were together until death, and this was what God intended for marriage then, and it is still the case today, that marriage is to be taken very seriously, not casually, and rather than seeing marriage as something people just do that can be undone, God wants us to see it, as Joseph did, as a once in a lifetime event, that ideally people would only do it one time, and that time would be for life.

The only exception to the one time was to be is a spouse died, and only then was anyone supposed to consider remarrying.

So in this context of a society that took marital purity much more seriously than our culture today, let’s watch how this might have played out for Joseph:

Matthew 1:18–25 (ESV)

Joseph’s impulse to protect his wife was strong.

Times were a little different then.

A man was to protect his family, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

He was the provider of the shelter and the food.

He was the one that protected from the weather and from hunger.

He was an emotional protector as well, who was to model God’s love to his wife and family, and he was the priest of the household, a spiritual protector.

Joseph had chosen to be all of these things for Mary.

He loved her, had committed to life with her.

Of course he wanted to do those things, but men don’t only marry to be protectors, they also marry to enjoy their wife.

Joseph, like any man, surely looked forward to the time when he would come together with his wife.

We don’t know how close it was to the time they would come together, whether it was days, weeks, or months.

A betrothal would typically be a year or so, but we are not told how long they were betrothed when this happened.

Regardless of how long it was before they would consummate their marriage, however, we can certainly imagine the feelings Joseph must have had when Mary told him about the situation she found herself in.

While Joseph was part of a culture that believed in the supernatural intervention of God not human affairs, and had heard the great miracles of the old testament time and again, when faced with the situation himself, he just found it unbelievable.

He loved Mary, but he couldn’t imagine that this had happened the way she said.

Perhaps he thought she was covering for an abusive person who took advantage of her by making up a story, or was too ashamed to admit that she had been unfaithful.

Joseph probably considered many far-fetched scenarios that led to Mary’s pregnancy, but he was having trouble believing the truth.

He was a just man, he didn’t want her to have the shame of this, and so he thought he would quietly divorce her.

Yes, Joseph, even faced with what he thought were unbelievable circumstances, still felt a call to protect.

And even as hurt as he must have been, he still was considering a solution to protect Mary.

However, Joseph’s call to protect wasn’t just from within himself, it wasn’t because his society said that this is what men do, his call to protect was a holy calling, just as it is for men today.

So God sent a special message to Joseph.

While Zechariah and Mary had direct encounters with an angel, Joseph has a dream.

God doesn’t do everything in the same way all the time.

He chooses the way he will act, and despite our best efforts to box him into particular methods, we continue to find that God will surprise us.

When God calls us to something, he gives us what we need to complete it.

2 Peter 1:3–4 (ESV)

Philippians 1:6 (ESV)

1 Thessalonians 5:24 (ESV)

God is the one who calls, and God is the one who sees to it that his call is not unheeded.

He is the one who draws us to himself; we can’t do much without his call.

So Joseph had a call to be Mary’s protector and a call to prompt obedience, and now his call is expanded to be the protector of Jesus until he becomes a man.

And though God has called him, Joseph is unable to do this on his own, so God sends help in the form of a dream, and he would again give Joseph help through dreams.

If you read on in chapter 2, you will see that God warned Jospeh in a dream to flee to Egypt, and then gave him a dream to return to Nazareth.

Imagine this life!

On the run, called to protect a wife and baby, and going on long journeys.

Today, we would look at the map and think perhaps that wasn’t so far.

About the distance from here to Miami.

There was great difficulty in traveling in Joseph’s day, particularly with a wife and young child.

So God gives Joseph just what he needs for encouragement and direction.

He isn’t the first Joesph in scripture to have his life largely influenced by dreams, but that is another story for another time.

We have now looked at Joseph’s call to protect.

He was to be the protector of his family physically, emotionally, and spiritually, as all husbands and fathers are.

But what if you are not a father?

How can this call to protect apply to you?

Well, we are all called to protect.

A husband and father may have a specific calling to protect wife and children, but in the same way, every person has a call to protect others.

But Joseph also had a call to prompt obedience.

There wasn’t a lot of time for him to sit around and contemplate, to draw together a council of advisors, to survey the community, or anything of the sort.

Mary was already pregnant.

Before long, it would be obvious to everyone.

Not only that, Joseph had in mind protecting Mary, but also to some extent protecting himself.

Ultimately, he chose protecting Mary and trust in God over his objections.

Joseph’s call to protect and call to prompt obedience was a call he heeded.

His example to all of us, men and women, boys and girls alike, is evident.

God calls us each to something.

He has good works for us to do, works that he has prepared for us.

What is he calling you to that requires prompt obedience?

What I want you to observe in the story of Joseph is that his prompt obedience to God, his submission to God’s plan, was part of God’s one big master plan, to bring salvation to the world.

Joseph’s part in this story is not insignificant.

God continues to use those who are called to prompt obedience today to continue carrying out his master plan to bring salvation to the world.

Perhaps we think of ourselves as much less than Joseph, perhaps we feel that our part must be much smaller in the grand scheme of things.

We may think that even our obedience cannot have nearly the impact of Joseph’s.

Joseph had a part, but he is not the savior.

Mary had a part, but she is not the savior.

Zechariah and Elizabeth and John the Baptist had a part, but they were not the savior.

They all followed God’s commands in prompt obedience, but none of them are the savior.

Jesus is the one who saves.

No church, no pastor, no organization can save anyone.

But Jesus can.

We may all have favorite preachers and teachers, and we may even tell others “you have to listen to this or read this book”, and yet none of them are the savior.