A Simple Trust (Matthew 1:18-25)

Sermon

Key Text

Matthew 1:18–25 NIV

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 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 of 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 from 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.” All 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 Immanuel” (which means “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 she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Series Introduction

Over the next three weeks, we are going to simply look at the Christmas story.

In past years, I have tried to get creative and find some angle to present the Christmas story. This year, we are going to do it simple.

We are going to navigate the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus by taking a text and covering that part of the text and moving on to the next text.

We will get a clear picture of the account of the life of Jesus.

Also we will draw simple application points from each of the sections of this story and embrace use the elements of this story as building blocks of truth for the circumstances of our lives.

This year, we are not going to do a Christmas Eve service. It is something that we will likely restart when we have our own building

In place of the Christmas Eve service, I encourage you to talk to Jodi in the lobby and sign up for a Family Christmas Worship Gift.

In that gift, we will give you an order of worship for you and your family to celebrate Christmas and worship together.

You can do that on Christmas morning like my family or on Christmas Eve for those of you who are really sad that we are not doing a Christmas Eve service.

Sermon Introduction

Today, we are going to take a peek into the topic of God’s will.

In my nearly 20 years as a leader of this church, I would have to say that the greatest number of questions I have received from people navigating life revolve around this question.

It may come in a number of varieties:

I need to make a decision and I want to know what God’s will is for me.

I have difficulty in my life. How can this be God’s will?

Even accusatory: “If this is God’s will, then He needs to explain Himself.”

We define a disciple by using Matthew 4:19

Matthew 4:19 ESV

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

This is an easy definition to remember.

But when He says, “Follow me” sometimes that path is a difficult one.

Sometimes it walks us through some pretty dark places.

In fact, one of the greatest misconceptions I have heard in the church is this: “The safest place to be is in the will of God”

There is truth in that statement, but the truth of that statement revolves around how we define the word “safest”.

The will of God is never safe.

In the prayer of John 17 that we covered for the last three weeks, he said that His disciples would be rejected by the world.

The middle of God’s will can be a dangerous place. It can cost you friends, reputation, and even your life.

But the safety of being in God’s will is that you are aligned with Jesus.

Suffering is never without cause. It is always for the glory of God and His truth to be seen in the world.

This is the point of where we are going to explore today. We will see the will of God, but it is going to be quite difficult in the lives of Mary and Joseph.

Let’s dive into our passage for today:

Sermon

4 TRUTHS ABOUT GOD’S WILL

#1- God’s will can be confusing for us

Matthew 1:18 NIV

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.

I want to stop at the first phrase from Matthew here.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about:

We can go into tremendous depth into this phrase.

To the people of that time, The Messiah was something that everyone was looking forward to.

He was going to be their savior. There were prophecies and predictions that had been around for generations.

The Messiah would be sent by God.

But what we find in this passage is that the Messiah was born.

The one who would free the nation, came as an infant.

Helpless

We will dive into these thoughts more as we move on into this sermon and series.

Here we find a miraculous event.

Matthew sets the stage for us. Mary is engaged to a guy named Joseph.

Mary gets pregnant, but not in the conventional way.

We find later in this passage that she is a virgin. She has not slept with any man.

But she is pregnant, by the Holy Spirit.

Now, I want to pause here and use this as a thought processing point.

What do we learn about the will of God in this situation? I believe there is quite a lot, just from this verse.

First of all, was it the will of God that He would send His Son into the world.

Yes.

When we are talking about God and His activity in this world, it is usually pretty good in theory!

The will of God is not theory. It is reality.

But I want you to think about the will of God according to Mary.

She finds out that she is pregnant, but she didn’t do anything to get pregnant.

As we look at the life of Mary, we find a young lady who desired to obey God and have a humble heart before Him.

But she was placed in the will of God. Not by her choice, but rather by the will of God.

Sometimes God places us in His will. Sometimes we have to pursue His will.

Did the will of God have an impact in her life?

I would say that pregnancy would have a massive impact in her life.

Matthew 1:19 NIV

Because Joseph 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.

Joseph is presented as a pretty good guy here.

He was faithful to the law.

He didn’t want her to be disgraced

So he chooses to follow the law and divorce her, but with some dignity for her.

Did Joseph believe Mary?

No. I want you to pause here.

If you are Mary and an angel tells you that you will be pregnant, and she goes to her fiance and tells him and he doesn’t believe you, is there a negative consequence to the will of God?

Yes.

God’s will and the ways of this world will rarely align with each other.

I want to drive this home for us.

When we talk about discipleship and following Jesus, what do we think that means?

That we just read the Bible and go to church and that is all it takes?

No, this is the engagement of our entire lives.

Jesus is Lord. His will is what matters. His purpose in this world is our obligation.

Romans 12:2 NIV

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 tells us that when we follow Jesus, our very process of thinking must change and when we look at the will of God, it is always good, pleasing and perfect.

Again, these are words that we all nod our heads and say, “Yes, I love that God’s will is good, pleasing and perfect.”

But, let’s take a look at Mary.

Did God’s will seem good at this point? No!

Did God’s will seem pleasing at this point? No!

Did God’s will seem perfect at this point? No!

She was humble and obedient before God. He made her get pregnant, and Joseph doesn’t believe her and chooses to dump her.

But I also want to ask, at the conclusion of the matter:

Was God’s will good? Yes.

Was God’s will pleasing? Yes.

Was God’s will perfect? Yes.

It certainly did not seem like it at the time. In fact, Mary may have thought, “If this is the will of God, don’t sign me up for any more of this.

God’s will will always be contrary to the ways of the world. The world will reject the will of God because the world is sinful and God is Holy.

4 TRUTHS ABOUT GOD’S WILL

#1- God’s will can be confusing for us

#2- God’s will is rarely our will

Matthew 1:20–21 NIV

But after he had considered this, an angel of 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 from 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.”

We looked at the first two verses through the lens of Mary.

Now we look at this through the lens of Joseph.

Joseph had done everything right. He had studied the Scriptures and strived to obey the law.

He finds a good Christian woman and asks her to marry him and she says yes.

Then she ends up pregnant. He knows it isn’t him. She claims it is God, but he had taken biology in high school and knew this couldn’t be the case.

He could have publically humiliated her, but he chose to quietly break up with her.

I want you to imagine Joseph at this point.

His whole life to this point had been good. He had been on a plan.

His future was about to be linked for the rest of his life to Mary.

She was the woman he would choose to love and build a family with.

I cannot imagine the hurt.

The anger because he knew she was lying and wouldn’t admit it.

It’s like, “The truth is right here Mary. Just admit it!”

But she wouldn’t

Hurt, anger, humiliation, and every other emotion that goes along with this.

Do you know what happens when we feel these emotions?

We usually do two things.

We justify ourselves

We stop listening

We justify ourselves and say, “I am right for feeling this way. I was hurt. I was betrayed. I am not at fault. My anger, my grudge, my emotion is justified because of what happened to me.”

Because we justify ourselves, we justify our emotions.

Because we are justified, there is no need to listen any longer.

The case is closed. I’m right. They were wrong.

There is nothing else that needs to happen here.

We no longer need to listen.

Why should I ask for direction from God when I am in the right? There is no need.

Here is what we see in Joseph.

We can read between the lines and see that he was likely hurt and humiliated.

But He didn’t justify himself. He wanted to maintain her dignity.

He didn’t stop listening.

God revealed His will to Joseph.

God spoke and Joseph listened.

I know in our lives, we experience all sorts of struggles. Some as the result of sin. Others as a result of just living in a fallen world.

In this case, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and shared his message.

I’ll tell you, I’ve had some hard days in my lifetime and God has never appeared to me in a dream.

But God will often reveal His will when I am in a difficult time. And His will rarely matches up with what I want to do.

Joseph had decided to quietly break up with Mary.

God tells him to do the opposite.

Do you think that this was a good choice for Joseph?

“Hey Joseph, congrats on the baby!” “Yeah, it’s not mine, it’s Gods”

That wouldn’t likely go over very well.

Joseph didn’t believe Mary.

Do you think neighbors and co-workers would believe Joseph?

No!

But God’s will was to do what would glorify God, not be easiest for Joseph.

In fact, we can circle back around to our first point here.

Did Joseph discover the will of God?

Rather than he being placed in the work of God like Mary, he was presented with the crossroads.

To Joseph, was the will of God good for him? Pleasing for him? Perfect for Him?

But through the lens of God’s work in this world, we know that it was.

On a side note here, I think it is important to note that God didn’t need Joseph here.

Joseph didn’t make the baby.

God brought Joseph along so Mary wouldn’t be alone in following His will.

In Genesis 1 we see that God said about Adam, “It is not good for man to be alone”

Here we see that God says the same thing, but this time He says, “It is not good for Mary to be alone”

This is the power and necessity of relationship, especially when following the will of God.

It is hard for all of us. We need each other if we are going to follow the will of God.

I think that we may be thinking in terms of big items here.

But God’s will is that we live holy lives, that we forgive, that we love.

The problem is that God’s will is usually to forgive and love those that we don’t want to forgive and love.

Also, can you imagine the “You were right, I was wrong conversation between Joseph and Mary after the angel came in the dream?

On to the next text.

4 TRUTHS ABOUT GOD’S WILL

#1- God’s will can be confusing for us

#2- God’s will is rarely our will

#3- God’s will always aligns with His Word

Matthew 1:22–23 NIV

All 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 Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

For Joseph, how would he know if the dream of the angel was his own mind trying to find an excuse to not break up with Mary or the truth of God?

He didn’t have to make the judgement on his own. He had to look to the word of God.

God’s will never contradicts His Word.

And God’s Word will never contradict His will.

Too many Christians listen to their emotions and believe it is God.

I’m not happy, this must be God telling me to get out.

My marriage is hard. God must be telling me there is someone better.

My job has too many unbelievers, it must be God telling me to quit.

Christians try to read the tea leaves in seeking God’s will far more than they read the Word of God.

In fact, I will tell you that the more you are in the Word of God, the more you will be familiar with His voice.

When people come to me asking about this topic, it’s amazing how few of them come and say, “I’ve been in the Word and prayer for weeks and I am now confused about God’s will.”

No, those people will have direction. They may seek wisdom about God’s will from others. But they have direction.

4 TRUTHS ABOUT GOD’S WILL

#1- God’s will can be confusing for us

#2- God’s will is rarely our will

#3- God’s will always aligns with His Word

#4- God’s will always demands obedience

Matthew 1:24–25 NIV

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 she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

As a disciple, I want to define this for us again.

We follow Jesus. When He reveals His will, it is rarely in line with our will.

But it will be in line with Scripture.

We can either obey Jesus or reject Him.

Think about Mary. She could have taken the route of Jonah.

She found out what God had done and run away, never to be seen again.

Rather she went to Joseph. It didn’t go well.

Joseph finds out his fiance is pregnant, and it isn’t his.

He had the dream, but he could have assessed the situation and said, “It’s not worth the hassle or my reputation.”

But He didn’t.

It’s possible no one believed them for the next 30 years until we see Jesus turn water into wine, his first miracle.

We often want to know what God’s will for our lives is.

But we often find ourselves frustrated because we don’t get a clear answer.

I would argue because it is the wrong question. God doesn’t have a will for our lives.

God has His will and invites us to align our lives with His will or reject His will.

If it was His will for my life, then God would be glorifying me as I follow my life out.

But this is not my life. This is His life. I need to know what His will is, then surrender my life to Him

In this way, God is glorified through my life.

When we discover God’s will and we adjust our lives to His will, it will be confusing.

We will have a ton to lose. God is more concerned about His Kingdom, not yours.

There is a cost to following His will in this life.

But at the end, He is glorified. This is the outcome that He created me for.

May we seek and follow Him in our lives—come what may.

Real Life in Action:

Head- Does my life look like I seek God’s will?

Heart- What fears do I face as I face the crossroads of belief?

Hands- Seek His will. Know His Word.

God’s will is good. Sometimes the response in our world to God’s will is not good. But He is glorified through our hardship.