The Miracle in the Mess

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.

Introduction

A little boy and girl were singing their favorite Christmas carol in church on the Sunday before Christmas. The boy concluded "Silent Night" with the words, "Sleep in heavenly beans." "No," his sister corrected, "not beans, peas."

How quickly time flies, and here we already find ourselves at the final Sunday of Advent, indeed the Sunday before Christmas. In the eyes of the Israelites, who had been waiting through four silent centuries for the fulfillment of life-saving and soul-saving prophecy, their joy was about to ignite.

The Christ Child was on the verge of arriving, and the wait was about over. (P)

Waiting...

If you’re like me, it’s a miserable experience. Most of you know me enough to know that this is a serious weakness of mine. I preach it because I know it’s right, not because I’ve mastered it. Those of you who struggle with this, too, just know we are on that journey together. (P)

But that’s what this Advent series has been about - just some of many waiting experiences we find in Scripture:

Waiting for the first arrival of the Christ child.

Waiting for the second arrival of Christ, now the King.

John the Baptist, whose job it was to tell everyone that their wait was almost over.

And then last week, John, now in prison, himself waiting for some of the prophecies of what Christ would accomplish to be fulfilled, like freedom for the captives, which he now was.

And today, we see the waiting Joseph, the earthly father of this long-awaited Messiah, would have to endure, and what kind of toll this might have taken on him. (P)

Many people today can relate to Joseph, because it’s in the kind of waiting he experienced that so much doubt and skepticism arise:

How do I know any of this faith stuff is real?

Why am I going through the mess I am in my marriage?

Why am I going through the mess I am in life?

What is God doing?

Where is He? (P)

In the absence of these answers, doubts prevail for so many people. (P)

Can you imagine how this young couple, who would become Jesus’ parents, would be contemplating these questions, especially Joseph, as he had so much he had to hash out during this process.

It’s what you hear in this first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, some of: {CLICK}

The Barriers Joseph Faced as Jesus was about to arrive.

Here’s Joseph, recently betrothed to this amazing young woman he had absolutely fallen in love with.

And this betrothal was his commitment to her.

In Jewish custom, it was a step stronger than engagement is in today’s culture. Even though the “benefits” of marriage had still not kicked in, they were considered legally together. This was often the result of an arranged type of marriage, though we don’t quite know the story of how Joseph and Mary found each other and how all that came together. But it was definitely a good arrangement for Mary and Joseph, and one based on love, as we will see. (P)

This was a happy couple, but this road of betrothal for Mary and Joseph, which was set to last about a year, became quickly paved with many bumps and potholes, and a whole lot of barriers in the form of tough questions. {CLICK}

Who is the father?

Not long into their betrothal, it was discovered that Mary was expecting, and that was an incredibly huge issue - it’s what kicked off the other barriers we will talk about, because it became a chain-reaction very quickly. (P)

Now, we know the story today, but how much do you think the explanation we have come to understand from our reading was going to fly as these events were unfolding for them?

How many people were going to believe that Mary had remained faithful with a baby bump starting to appear?

How many people might have even thought this was Joseph’s fault - that he was unwilling to wait?

But Joseph knew the truth - he knew he had abstained from the consummation part, because it was not yet time - so he was trying to figure out how the baby got there!

How easy would it be to believe, or convince people (Joseph included), that this was the work of God, preparing to save the world? (P)

As I said, we know it now, but that would have been quickly dismissed in that day.

And that’s just the emotional shock - what would the law have to say about all of this, and that would have been the second barrier: {CLICK}

2. What is the law?

The first thing people would have been thinking about was what Deuteronomy would say about this: {CLICK}

Deuteronomy 22:22–24 NIV

If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. {CLICK} If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, {CLICK} you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

(P) {CLICK}

So how is Joseph going to respond to all of this, who is hurt that her first child would not be his, and who is trying to figure out who he’s competing against for Mary’s affections? What motivator is going to win this battle between his love for her and his hurt?

Should he expose her to get even and achieve justice, or protect her because of his love for her? (P)

While Joseph is wrestling with all of this, the Bible says that God tried to come to the rescue in a dream. But I suspect even that dream would not be as easy for Joseph to digest at first as it is for us to read today. He is trying to process everything that has happened, trying to make sense of everything, and so, as cool as the dream is for us to read about, Joseph still had to deal with barrier number 3: {CLICK}

3. What do I believe?

What Joseph was told in the dream is found in verses 20 and 21 of today’s text: {CLICK}

Matthew 1:20–21 NIV

“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. {CLICK} 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.”

{CLICK}

How easy would it be for Joseph to believe this was actually from God? (P)

Now we have all had a lot of dreams. You know how real some of them seem, and we might even wonder if God was trying to tell us something through some of them, and this is what Joseph is wrestling with now. (P)

This is a traumatic time for him, so a wacky dream would certainly not be a surprise.

But man, he would think, between my dream and Mary’s dream, it sure is fulfilling a lot of prophecy. (P)

In Mary’s conversation with her angel in Luke 1:34, she recognized that her being pregnant would be impossible because she was a virgin.

But there is the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, some 700 years before: {CLICK}

Isaiah 7:14 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.

And the angel’s response to Mary in verse 35 was similar to what was revealed to Joseph. {CLICK}

Luke 1:35 NIV

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Two names were specific to this Christ Child:

Emmanuel - which means God with us. You heard that name in the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy. And you hear how God would make this happen in Ezekiel: {CLICK}

Ezekiel 37:27 NIV

My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.

He was also given the name we most commonly hear, Jesus, which means God will save. We find this prophecy in Jeremiah 31: {CLICK}

Jeremiah 31:33–34 NIV

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. {CLICK} No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

(P)

So, in Joseph’s stress, could he really believe that God had nothing to do with this dream - that his mind would be able to coherently pull together all these prophecies in his sleep, when he couldn’t even think of them when he was awake?

Or would he believe that it was God giving him this clarity by actually communicating with him through an angel in his dream? (P)

Joseph had some big choices to make moving forward with this entire situation, didn’t he? (P)

I love how Jeff Hood and Kyle Sigmon portray this situation, and hence the inspiration behind the title of this message this morning.

They say:

Mary and Joseph didn’t have a clue what was going on … until they did. When we find ourselves in unexpected places, we can either choose to panic or to believe. Mary and Joseph chose to believe and got to be the parents of God.

The first blended family was not all that different from blended families today. Everybody was trying to figure out their role in the midst of new situations. Christmas is a time for grace in the midst of uncertainty. Mary and Joseph showed us that.

The Incarnation of God didn’t happen in the perfect family … God made the imperfect family perfect for the Incarnation of God. In the midst of all the issues we face, it is important to remember that God is still in the business of making imperfect situations perfect. Mary was a teen mom. God used her … not in spite of her situation … but precisely because of it.

The miracle was in the mess.

(P)

The miracle was in the mess.

And Joseph sure did have a mess on his hands, didn’t he? (P)

Maybe today, as you work through these last four days before Christmas, you find yourself in a mess with someone you love, too - or maybe just a mess in life in general.

And right now, you have to decide how you’re going to respond; how you’re going to choose to work through that mess. (P)

Your details are different than Joseph’s, no doubt, but there are lessons in the choices Joseph made in the midst of his mess, and maybe somehow you can find ways to apply these to your messes.

So let’s close by quickly reviewing: {CLICK}

How Joseph Chose to Respond.

We see the things he did scattered throughout this Matthew 1 text, and all are incredibly profound.

But the bottom line to all of this was that Joseph chose to trust. He didn’t have all the answers. Not everything made sense. But he chose to trust in God’s plan and trust in what he, as a noble man, knew to be right, no matter how difficult it would be to employ these virtues.

And Joseph’s trust manifested itself in three actions. First, he demonstrated his: {CLICK}

Trust in loving.

This is especially applicable when the messes we face involve another person, as it did with Joseph.

Now again, today, 2,000 years later, and reading the written account that describes how this event transpired, we know that Mary was absolutely innocent and did nothing wrong.

But Joseph did not believe that or understand that right away, and long before he was able to come to fully trust and be at peace with what God had revealed to him, Joseph had already chosen to do everything he could to make sure she would not be publicly exposed or ridiculed.

We see that in verse 19: {CLICK}

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.

He wanted to divorce her because he did not yet believe she was innocent, and it wasn’t until the next couple of verses, probably some days or weeks later, that God appeared to him in that dream. But he did not want her ridiculed because he still loved her. (P)

We see the love he had for Mary in another way here - and this is before she was pregnant, but still significant.

We talked a little about the legal commitment of betrothal, and how serious a relationship had gotten if it had reached that stage.

What I didn’t mention yet was that it was not uncommon for the groom, as part of that commitment, to put down some money on that relationship - bride money - in essence, to reserve that person and the commitment of that relationship.

It wasn’t because of the desire for ownership that a groom would do this, as some might expect, but because of the value someone like Joseph would have found in someone like Mary. (P)

Doesn’t that sound familiar to what his son, Jesus, would ultimately do, in 1 Corinthians 6: when Paul reminds us in verse 20 that: {CLICK}

1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV

You were bought at a price.

Jesus bought us with His life, out of absolute love for His bride, the church, of which each believer is a part.

How good it feels to be loved in this way! (P)

Who do you need to find this kind of love for, whether they did do something wrong or you’re simply having a hard time understanding what they are going through, that you need to be patient with, while it causes some bumps in your relationship with them?

What does that love look like for you? (P)

Second, we find Joseph’s: {CLICK}

2. Trust in obeying.

Nowhere in this passage does it say that all the lights came on for Joseph and everything suddenly made sense.

What this passage does say is simply: {CLICK}

Matthew 1:24 NIV

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

He really had to find comfort and take heed in the words of Proverbs 3: {CLICK}

Proverbs 3:5–6 NIV

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; {CLICK} in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

How is God asking you to trust Him in whatever conflict or mess you find yourself in?

Or, if you aren’t getting any situation-specific answers, what words can you find in scripture that God may be asking you to obey while you’re waiting for everything to make sense again? (P)

And that brings us to number 3, Joseph had to: {CLICK}

3. Trust in waiting.

This text closes in verse 25 with Joseph having a lot of waiting left to do:

He still had probably several months to wait until the arrival of Jesus, when hopefully everything would make more sense.

The Bible indicates that Joseph took Mary in right away, meaning an earlier-than-expected wedding, perhaps so Joseph could help her through the pregnancy, but he had to wait to consummate that marriage. Usually, that would happen for most couples on their wedding night, but they waited until the baby was born. We underestimate how difficult a wait that would have been.

And, like everyone else, there was still the waiting for Jesus to bring completion to the plan He had come to implement - and in the meantime, the pressure was on Joseph and Mary to raise the Son of God, in the way they needed to, to have Him ready for God’s work to be fulfilled. And it would be a decades-long wait to see how well they passed the test.

And so Joseph would have to rely heavily on the words of his ancestor David in the 27th Psalm: {CLICK}

Psalm 27:14 NIV

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

So we wrap up by once again returning to this idea of waiting.

Can you find the peace of God, to wait on God, while He helps you through whatever messy situation you find yourself in, as only God can?

And more important still, can you see Him working in the loving, the obeying, and the waiting you are trying to do? (P)

Conclusion

Rolf Jacobson calls to our attention an annoying phenomenon we have all been through.

He asks: “Ever look for your glasses for 10 minutes, only to realize that they were on your head the whole time? Or you look for your keys, but they were in your hand?

Here’s what he says about that:

God’s immanence — meaning ‘within’ or ‘near-ness’ (where that name Immanuel comes from) — says that God is like that. Even as you search for God, God is already near. ‘For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?’

(P)

I wish I could say that I never wrestled with some of those questions I started with - wanting God to operate in a certain way and time so I can avoid occasional doubts.

But like everyone else, I have to realize that while God rarely answers prayers or questions or shows up - exactly the way I want Him to, He always shows up in a way that says, Yes, it’s Me, and I know it couldn’t be anything or anyone else. We call those God-winks. (P)

I wish I could share those experiences with the same intensity and realness as I experience them, so I could convince others I speak to, especially those who struggle with belief.

But that’s not how it was meant to be - any more for us than it was for Joseph when He had to face the same spiritual wrestling matches we face. (P)

God knows His presence and work only mean something significant to us when we can experience it for ourselves. We can certainly be a testimony of what God has done, as I try to do all of the time. But no one can program someone else’s brain with the intensity or reality of those experiences in a convincing way. Each person has to experience God - and that’s what God wants for each of us - to fully experience Him. (P)

As I mentioned before, He is there, waiting for us. We aren’t the only ones waiting, we just have to reach out to Him, say yes to Him, and give Him a fair shake. (P)

There is a Bible full of people who had to go through that, like John, Joseph, and all of the Israelites. Hebrews 11 is a great passage to review to see all the waiters and trusters and strugglers - and see how their story panned out.

Now, it’s your turn. How can you allow God to work an experience in your life that you will be ready to tell to others all about?

Think about that as we close in prayer this morning.