Joseph: How A Good Man Goes Great

Joseph: How A Good Man Goes Wrong Great

Matthew 1: 18     Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. 19     Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.

Read Matthew 1: 18-25. In this passage for the Advent (Coming of Jesus) , Joseph is waiting. For what? He’s waiting for Mary, his betrothed. And Joseph has a good plan for Mary and him.

Maybe he’s been working and saving for awhile now.Maybe he expects to have his house built pretty soon. Pretty soon he’ll be ready to approach Mary’s father and receive Mary as his wife.

Luke 1:39, 40 tells us that after Gabriel’s announcement to her, Mary left Nazareth and traveled into the country of Judah to visit her cousin Elisabeth. This is not a trip around the corner. Nazareth to Judah was about 60 miles (for a lone, pregnant girl in 4 B.C.) . And that doesn’t even account for the extra distance if Mary took the traditional route around the country of Samaria. So Mary was most likely out of town when Joesph gets the news that she is pregnant. Their plans are ruined and he can’t even have a face-to-face with Mary about the whole thing. (No cell phones, no email).

It’s all messed up for Joseph.

Joseph is at a point in his life that is familiar to many of us. He has done everything he was supposed to do to receive the rewards of the good plan he had made. And suddenly something crazy goes wrong. And there we are, like Joseph, alone, trying to figure out how what in the world we’re going to do now.

Joseph figures there’s no way he can marry Marry now. But, Joseph is a “just” man (The word is dikaios and is also translated “righteous.”), and he really does love Marry. He doesn’t want to destroy her life by calling her out for adultery, so he decides to quietly cancel the betrothal (Matthew 1: 19).

When our good plans go really wrong it is human to think that God has somehow tricked us. We think that God has unfairly changed the rules in the middle of the game and we get upset. Sometimes we decide to just quit the whole thing. But remember Malachi 3:6 For I am the LORD, I change not;…

God never changes. But sometimes, God interjects change into our plans so that we can line up with his will.

Gabriel appears to Joseph (busy time for Gabriel). He explains what’s happening and tells Joseph, “fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Gabriel explains that all the changes in their plans are a fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 1: 22,23). Get it? This was God’s great plan all along.

Joseph is a righteous man, so of course he will follow God’s will. The question is how will he follow this new plan.

The answer: Just as he always had. Joseph had been a good man when he and Marry where betrothed. Now he takes her as his wife and becomes a good husband. Joseph had planned to be a good husband, provider, and protector once he’d gotten everything in his life lined up just right. Now, with everything thrown in disarray, he becomes a good husband, provider, and protector.

It is not circumstances that determine how we follow God, it is character and faith in Him.

Joseph would have had to go to Bethlehem for the census anway. Now, he goes and takes the very, very pregnant (“great with child”) Mary. Joseph doesn’t have the connections to get a room in the overcrowded town of Bethlehem. Perhaps the relatives Joseph had in his ancestral hometown refused to let this couple they considered to have conceived out of wedlock sleep in their home.

And consider this: Why was Mary, 9 months pregnant, even with Joseph? Yeah, they were married, but why wasn’t she at home being cared for by the women of her own family? Perhaps her family had cast her off at well. In any event, Joseph did not abandon her. He stayed with her, getting the only shelter they could find---a stable, because (v. 7) there was no room in the inn.

(This, by the way, is an example of a man who may not have 2 cents, but is worth a million dollars.)

If you have been serving God faithfully and you see your good plans falling apart, keep serving God faithfully. If you planned on faithfully helping out with the kids at church once a month and now you feel called into leadership of a youth ministry, lead as faithfully as you would have helped.

If you had planned to do good by deliver a couple of plates to the homeless and go home, but your heart has been called to spend great amounts of time ministering to them even though it means exposing yourself to their unpleasant circumstances, be now as faithful in this greater ministry as you would have been in the good one.

If you planned to be good by staying with your boyfriend/girlfriend, but trying to stay out of the partying and sinfulness of their lifestyle and now you feel convicted to break off the unhealthy relationship; be as strong in the difficult great thing as you’d planned to be in the good thing.

Like Joseph and Mary, doors may be shut to you that had been open before. Like Joseph, you may be unprepared in every visible way for this great plan God has revealed. That’s O.K. Keep being righteous. Keep being faithful.

Philipians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Galatians 6:9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Next: Shepherds: From Outcasts to Evangelists