Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Christmas Chronology: Matthew 1:18-25

Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son
18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[d]: 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. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet[e] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Joseph’s perspective, and Luke tells it from Mary’s point of view. In fact, Biblical scholars believe that the first two chapters of Luke probably come entirely from interviews that Luke did with Mary. Matthew, on the other hand, could not have interviewed Joseph. Joseph is believed to have died while Jesus was a teenager, and Matthew did not become a Christian until Jesus was an adult. We don’t know where Matthew got the information that he put in the first two chapters of his gospel, which doesn’t appear in Mark or Luke. Maybe this was something Joseph told Jesus’ brother James, who became head of the church in Jerusalem later. Maybe Matthew got this material from James, with whom he would have worked closely in the Jerusalem church. It seems likely to me that this passage in Matthew follows yesterday’s passage in Luke in the chronology.

Mary was betrothed to Joseph. In that culture, betrothal was more than engagement is in ours, but less than full marriage. The couple did not live together as husband and wife, but legally, they were husband and wife. That’s why Matthew uses the phrase Joseph her husband in verse 19, and why breaking the engagement required a divorce. In verse 18, Matthew says that before they “came together,” Mary was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. I take that to mean that Gabriel had told Mary the news, and then Mary told Joseph. It’s easy to understand why Joseph would doubt her story. Wouldn’t you? Verse 19 says that Joseph was faithful to the law, or that he was a righteous man. The law stated that Joseph was within his rights to have Mary stoned to death for adultery. He would have had to file a complaint with the local magistrate, stating his reason for divorce. If the reason he gave was adultery, Mary would have been stoned. But Joseph was not just a man who lived according to the law. He was a man of mercy. As verse 19 says, Joseph was faithful to the law, and yet, he didn’t want to expose her to disgrace. Joseph showed the same grace to Mary that God shows to us. According to the law, God had the right to condemn all of us for our sin, and yet, he sent his Son.

Joseph’s method of “divorcing her quietly,” as Matthew puts it, would have been to make out a certificate of divorce, but not state the reason for the divorce. Jewish men in that culture were allowed to divorce their wives for the flimsiest of reasons. Joseph could literally have said that he found someone he liked better, and that would have been accepted by the magistrate. But to divorce her without stating a reason would have been a breach of contract with Mary’s family. Joseph was willing to accept that penalty to save Mary from embarrassment, even though he wasn’t sure that she had not cheated on him. That’s grace. He must have loved her very much. God’s grace works the same way, for the same reason. He extends his grace to us because he loves us so much.

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,[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”

Gabriel had appeared to Zechariah and Mary while they were awake, but the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream. I don’t think this means that Joseph rated less with God than the others. God often spoke to people in the Bible in dreams (Genesis 31:11, 24, 1 Kings 3:5, Numbers 12:6). The fact that the angel’s appearance to Joseph came in a dream made it no less valid. As we will see, Joseph took the angel’s message very seriously, at significant cost to himself.

I believe that Mary must have told Joseph everything that Gabriel had said to her. So this message was all about confirmation. Gabriel had said to Mary regarding Jesus, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.” (Luke 1:32) So right off the bat, the angel calls Joseph son of David. Joseph had been considering divorce, so the angel tells him, “do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife.” In Luke 1:35, Gabriel had said to Mary, “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.” To confirm that with Joseph, the angel tells him, “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” I’m sure Mary also told Joseph that they were to name the baby Jesus, as Gabriel told her in Luke 1:31. So the angel also tells Joseph the same thing in verse 21 here. Joseph receives confirmation after confirmation that what Mary had told him was true. Joseph obviously needed that much confirmation from God to go through what he would have to go through. I think I would have needed that too.

Gabriel had told Mary that the baby’s name was to be Jesus, but the angel gave Joseph the reason for that; because he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means Savior. The only reason we call Jesus Jesus, and not Joshua, is that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. So Joshua becomes Jesus, and Levi becomes Matthew. In many cases in the New Testament, we are given the Greek versions of Jewish names. Most people know that the actual Hebrew name of Jesus was Yeshua. I’d just like to point out here that Yeshua is pronounced YESH-ua, like JOSH-ua, not “Yesh-U-a,” as we so often hear it pronounced.

The Amplified Bible translates verse 21 like this:

21She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus [the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, which means Savior], for He will save His people from their sins [that is, prevent them from [a]failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God].

I’m fascinated by that definition of saving us from our sins: Preventing us from failing and missing the true end and scope of life, which is God. Wow. Chew on that a while. The true end, or purpose of life, and all of the scope of life is ultimately about one thing; God. Jesus came to save us from missing that. He saves us from our sin in this life by forgiving us of our sins and cleansing us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), which was impossible without the sacrifice of Jesus. And he saves us from sin in the next life by providing a home in Heaven, where there is no sin.

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[g] (which means “God with us”).

Here is the first of sixteen instances in Matthew’s gospel where he uses the phrase, “this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet,” or something similar. One of Matthew’s chief aims in this book was to demonstrate to his fellow Jews that Jesus was the promised Messiah, as foretold by prophecy. The familiar verse of scripture that he quotes is Isaiah 7:14. This prophecy is somewhat troubling to me for one reason. Mary and Joseph did not name him Immanuel, nor were they told to by the angel. There is no record in the Bible of Jesus ever being called by that name. So who is the prophecy talking about? I think it may be talking about us. How many songs can you think of that are based on this verse? I can think of four right off the bat, one of which I wrote! Though we mainly call him Jesus, by quoting this verse and singing the songs we sing, we ourselves fulfill this prophecy.

God with us. When Jesus came in the flesh, he was physically present among his people. That fulfilled the prophecy. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, God was present in and among his people everywhere. That fulfills the prophecy. One day we will go to be with him, but until then, God is 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 did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Matthew implies in verse 24 that Mary and Joseph were married before the birth of Jesus, but Luke says that Mary “was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child” at the time they went to Bethlehem. I had assumed based on Luke’s language that they still weren’t married at the time of Jesus’ birth. But that assumes that they went to Bethlehem late in Mary’s pregnancy, which the Bible never says. It could well be that Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem early on in the pregnancy in order to save her embarrassment from the gossip that would surely have spread around their hometown of Nazareth. That would certainly fit with what we know about Joseph’s character. It’s possible that the actual wedding took place in Bethlehem, while they were there awaiting the census.

But the time line is not the point here. The point is that Joseph obeyed God. He did so despite the suspicion and scorn he would experience from everyone who knew them. Joseph displayed mercy, grace, love, and obedience to God’s will throughout this process, regardless of the cost. Jesus displayed those same qualities during his time on earth. Jesus had his divine nature, but he also had a godly example in his earthly father.

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