Lessons of the Christmas Story
#2 – What We Can Learn from Mary & Joseph?
Matthew 1:18-25
December 17, 2006
(Idea for this message from AboutSunday.com)
Opening comments:
Rules of chocolate:
If you’ve got melted chocolate all over your hands, you’re eating it too slowly.
Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices and strawberries all count as fruit, so eat as many as you want.
The problem: How to get 2 pounds of chocolate home from the store in a hot car. The solution: Eat it in the parking lot.
A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place. Isn’t that handy?
If you can’t eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer. But if you can’t eat all of your chocolate, what’s wrong with you?
What do we call equal amounts of dark chocolate and white chocolate: a balanced diet.
Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger.
Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you’ll get one thing done.
(SermonCentral.com. Contributed by: Davon Huss)
That had absolutely nothing to do with the message today, but I thought you’d enjoy it.
If I were to tell you that God wanted you to do something, would you do it? Hopefully you’d say yes.
And then I told you that God wanted you to walk around naked because God wanted to teach Aberdeen a lesson.
Or I told you that God wanted you to build a scale model of Aberdeen and pretend to attack it like an invading army.
Or I told you that God wanted you to marry a prostitute who will cheat on you and have children by other men because God wanted to prove a point about the people of Brown County.
You’d think I was nuts.
But God did tell people in Scripture to do these things.
He told Isaiah to walk around naked because He wanted to teach Judah a lesson.
He told Jeremiah to build a model of Jerusalem to illustrate what was about to happen to it.
And He told Hosea to marry a prostitute to show Israel how they were unfaithful to God.
In every one of these situations, God asked someone to do something that made them look like they were nuts.
But they did it anyway.
If you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that God Himself was asking you to do something, would you do it, no matter what the possible consequences were?
Joseph and Mary did, and I want us to look at their part in the Christmas story.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew 1:18-25. If you’re using the Bibles in the seats, this is on page 681.
There are a number of lessons we can learn from Joseph and Mary. We can talk about how spiritually aware they were so they could distinguish that the visit by the angel and the dreams of Joseph were actually the words of God.
We could talk about how prompt they were in obeying.
We could talk about their fortitude in journeying to Bethlehem in spite of Mary’s pregnancy.
We could talk about how Joseph risked his business by leaving it to go to Bethlehem – putting obedience ahead of financial considerations.
All sorts of stuff we could talk about. But as tempting as it is to explore all those things, I want us to focus on one lesson in particular.
Here is what I think we can learn from Mary & Joseph:
It’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
Joseph and Mary are probably the best examples in Scripture of people who fully submit to the will of God.
The courage they showed in the face of public pressure is something we can all learn from.
Let’s take a look at a passage from Scripture that gives us a bit of insight into these two incredible people.
Matthew 1:18-25 (p. 681) –
18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 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. 21 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."
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" --which means, "God with us."
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
I said that I wanted to focus on the fact that Joseph and Mary teach us that it’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
But think with me for a moment.
Can you imagine the pressure these two must have felt?
In Bible times, and according to the Old Testament laws of God, a woman who was guilty of sexual relations outside of wedlock was eligible to be stoned.
In fact, both parties – the guy AND the girl were to be stoned. And I don’t mean by using mind-altering drugs.
But here’s Mary. Pregnant and scared, for sure. She has to convince her parents and her fiancé that her baby was conceived by God, not a human father.
If my teenage daughter came to me with a story like that, I wouldn’t believe it. At least not at first.
And I would be looking to hurt someone with a baseball bat for doing that to my sweetie pie.
Okay, dads. Tell me you wouldn’t do the exact same thing!
Mary was between a rock and a hard place in the truest sense of the phrase.
And then there’s Joseph.
Here’s a guy who had a reputation for being a righteous man.
Can you imagine what his friends and family must have said to him when they found out about Mary?
They knew that normally there were only two possibilities:
Either Joseph had gotten her pregnant, nullifying his reputation as a righteous man, or Mary had gotten pregnant by another man.
And could a righteous man marry a woman who was pregnant with the baby of another man?
He would have had every right to see that Mary pay the penalty for adultery, and my guess is that he got plenty of pressure to do just that.
Think for a minute about what you might do in that situation.
I’d be tempted to run, to be totally honest. Just get outta Dodge and not look back. Start over in a new place where they didn’t know me or my wife.
But what did Joseph and Mary do? They went right on the plans that were set into place by God.
Society only saw the outward, but God was working in ways they couldn’t see and wouldn’t understand if they could see.
Joseph and Mary chose to trust and obey, even when it looked foolish to everybody else.
They understood what I’m trying to get across to you today, that –
It’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
I wonder how many dirty looks Joseph and Mary got, even after Jesus was born and growing up?
Or maybe even the gentle ribbing and the winks of some of the guys thinking, “You sly dog, Joseph…”
But Joseph and Mary knew that God had asked them to do something, and they were committed to obeying God no matter what it cost them personally.
They saw the cause of serving the Messiah as greater than being socially accepted.
Let me repeat a question I asked a little earlier: If you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that God Himself was asking you to do something, would you do it, no matter what the possible consequences were?
“But Brian, I don’t think God is asking me to do anything in particular, and I know He’s not asking me to do any of those things you mentioned at the beginning of the message!”
Well, maybe God’s not calling you to prepare the way for the Messiah or take on a grand project of some sort.
But could it be that God is asking you to do something?
Is there something that God’s been prompting you to do for a while that you know you’re supposed to do, but you’ve been putting it off because you thought people would look at you differently?
Is there a confession you need to make to someone you’ve sinned against?
Is there a relationship that you know will only be healed if you do something?
Is there something going on at work that you know is wrong, and God wants you to step away from it, even though it will cause others there to think less of you?
It’s coming up on tax time. Is God prompting you to make absolutely sure that you’re completely legal and ethical?
You know, making sure that you don’t claim your pets as children so you can get an extra deduction or thinking that your boss is a slave driver and slave wages don’t count as taxable income.
Is there someone God is asking you to bless with some of your surplus or even your deficit (!), but you’re afraid that others will look down their noses because of it?
Maybe God’s telling you to take some specific action to strengthen your marriage or your relationship with your kiddos.
Maybe it’s something as simple as just getting more consistent time with God in the Bible and prayer.
Folks, I’m not talking about anything real major, here.
But what I want to emphasize is that Joseph and Mary took a chance – they had to take the chance that God would take care of them, no matter how society viewed them.
Are you willing to take the same chance for the situation you’re in?
Are you willing to say, “God, my friends are gonna think I’m from another planet. But I know that You’re asking me to do this, so I’m gonna trust You to help me through it, even if they never understand. I believe that it’s better to obey You than worry about what others think or say.”
Folks, what set the early Christians apart, particularly as you read the book of Acts?
To me, it’s the fact that it didn’t matter to them how they were viewed. All that mattered was that they were obedient to Christ.
They knew that it’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
They didn’t care if the rest of the world thought they were weird. They were more concerned with following Jesus and His commands.
But here’s the ironic thing: they weren’t looked on as weird. In fact, they had a great reputation, especially in Jerusalem.
They saw these people living out the Scriptures in every area of their lives, and it attracted them to Jesus and to the fellowship of believers.
What would happen if more Christians in our area would live for Jesus regardless of how others might view them?
I’ve been convinced for some time, and you’ve heard me say it before, that if people saw us living for Jesus as we really should (and I include myself in here – I’ve got work to do just like anybody else), our area would see people come to Christ in droves.
I’m convinced that we wouldn’t have to worry about what we can do to reach more people with outreach events and such, we’d be worrying about how to handle all the new believers to get them grounded in their walk with Christ and getting them involved in the life of the church.
Why? Because they’ll see that living out our faith in the real world brings life and hope to a community because God works through those who are sold out to him.
It can start right here. Today.
It can start by acknowledging in our own hearts that it’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
Not just hearing me say it. Allowing God to put it into your heart in a way that you cannot forget it and you cannot ignore it.
It can start with every single one of us making a commitment to obey what we know God is telling us to do, no matter what that is.
Folks, let this Christmas season be a life-altering one for you.
Sell out to Jesus like never before. Decide to become a person who lives life by the principle that it’s better to obey God than worry about what others think or say.
Jesus did it. Joseph and Mary did it. And with the help of God, you and I can do it as well.
Let’s pray.
