LOVE FOR THE LIVES TO COME

ADVENT 2016 “Our Coming Savior”

Fourth Sunday 'Love for the Lives to Come:  Mary and Joseph'

CONNECT

Have you ever made great plans only to see them squashed by something or someone outside of your control?  What if that Someone is God?

Proverbs 16:9 (NLT) We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.

TENSION

The Christmas story has many elements and themes. One of these is obedience to a divine command. It often takes courage to follow God's leading.  All the characters in the Christmas story demonstrated a level of courage: the prophets, the Wiseman, Zacharias and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, Anna, Simeon.  You can see how each demonstrated a resolve to be obedient to God had called them to do in the face of overwhelming difficulty.

How do we respond when God calls us to do something that threatens everything we have dreamed of and hoped for?

SOLUTION

It has been said that 'God gives His best to those who leave the choice to Him'!  The driving force behind our following God regardless of the cost is love: love for God, love for others, and love for ourselves. We literally live our lives out of love for the lives that are to come!

1 Timothy 1:5 (NASB95) But the goal of our instruction is love...

PRAYER

INSTRUCTION

TEXT Matthew 1:18-38 from the New Living Translation

Matthew 1:18 (NLT) This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit.

VIDEO: “Mary and Joseph”

What would Joseph do?  Let's read on...

Matthew 1:19 (NLT) Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

Joseph loved Mary. He did not want to hurt her. He could have had her stoned in disgrace, but instead chose to have a quiet annulment of the betrothal. God had other ideas…

Matthew 1:20-25 (NLT) As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: ²³“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

What would Joseph do?  Mary had already made her decision…

Luke 1:26-38 (NLT) In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a ²⁷virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. ²⁸Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

²⁹Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. ³⁰“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! ³¹You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

³⁴Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”

³⁵The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

³⁶What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. ³⁷For the word of God will never fail.”

³⁸Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.

Mary chose to be obedient regardless of the cost. And there was a cost! She could have lost her fiancé. She could have lost the love of her family. She could have lost her life!

She did lose her reputation. Even after Jesus was grown and in the middle of His ministry, He was called the illegitimate son of Joseph and Mary!

Now it was Joseph’s turn. What would he do?

²⁴When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. ²⁵But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

Let's examine what Joseph did more closely...

1.  He did...

He was obedient to the command of the angel in his dream.  He could have said it was just too much pizza, or too much hummus or too much falafel or too much wine, but he didn't.  He saw it as a confirmation of what Mary had said.

2.  He took...

The Greek word here, paralambano, is significant.  It means "to join one's self to someone else" and "to accept or acknowledge that someone is who he professes to be".  Joseph is saying to Mary, "I believe you and I receive you".  It is the same word that is used in the Gospel of John:

John 1:11 (NKJV) He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. They rejected Him because they did not believe Jesus was who He said He was.

John 14:3 (NKJV) And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

When Jesus returns in glory, He will take us as His bride in the same way that Joseph took Mary.

The word also means "to receive an office to be discharged".  Joseph saw his sole as husband to Mary and earthly father to Jesus as his spiritual office given to him by God! 

It is still the same today.  In the marriage ceremony, we say, "I take thee to be my lawfully wedded wife." It is a holy vow before God.  Men, our roles as husbands and fathers is a heavenly office.  It is not to be taken lightly!

3.  He married...

The couple moved from the engagement to the marriage.  This spoke of his total dedication to Mary and the command given by God!  He went against his own reasoning, even as loving as it was, and social constructs to obey God.  Brothers and sisters, God will often lead us contrary to our own desires and human reasoning; it will very often lead us contrary to the norms of the day.  Let us realize that the voice of God is 'counter-intuitive'; it goes against normal thinking!

Proverbs 14:12 (NKJV) There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

4.  He did not...

This point is extremely important.  After the wedding, Joseph did not have sex with Mary until Jesus was born!  This was not normal!  In the Jewish wedding, after the ceremony and banquet, the bridal couple would go to the bridal chamber to consummate their marriage.  This was part of the legal process.  The best man would wait outside the chamber until he heard the bridegroom say, "It is done".  Then the feast would begin again in earnest.  This was pictured in the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.  Listen to what John the Baptist said about his ministry:

John 3:27–30 (NKJV) John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven. ²⁸You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ ²⁹He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is fulfilled. ³⁰He must increase, but I must decrease.

Joseph broke with custom because of a command.  He kept the prophecy intact.  Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born!  He let go of personal pleasure and public esteem for the sake of the Gospel!

Why was it important for Jesus to be born of a virgin?

Let me give you some reasons:

1.  Prophecy foretells it.

2.  Jesus' genealogy records it.

3.  The Gospels preach it.

4.  His Deity requires it.

5.  Salvation demands it.

In his work, The Person of Christ, Donald Macleod writes,

"The virgin birth is posted on guard at the door of the mystery of Christmas; and none of us must think of hurrying past it. It stands on the threshold of the New Testament, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order as itself and that if we find it offensive there is no point in proceeding further." 

Joseph knew that his platonic relationship with Mary would cost him temporary pleasure but would yield an eternal harvest!  Oh, that we would live that way!

5.  He named...

He called His name: Jesus! He would save His people from their sins!  He is able to save 'to the uttermost'!  He was also called Immanuel, God with us!  Whatever we face today, God is with us as a Savior, a deliverer, a friend that sticks closer than a brother!  Call on Him today!  Cry out to Him today!  He is here for you!

INSPIRATION

Joseph chose obedience, an obedience out of love for God and love for Mary and love for the Son he would raise that was not his!  Joseph showed love for all of us who would come because he was the earthly father to Jesus, the gift of love for all the world!

John 3:16–17 (NKJV) For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ¹⁷For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

ACTION STEPS

1.  Be obedient out of your love for God.

No amount of law can make us obedient!

 Colossians 2:20–23 (NKJV) Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—²¹“Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” ²²which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? ²³These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

2.  Be obedient out of your love for others.

John 15:13 (NKJV) Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

3.  Be obedient out of a love for yourself!

James 2:8 (NKJV) If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well;

Ephesians 5:28 (NKJV) So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 (NKJV) Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. ²And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NKJV) And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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