The first Sunday of Advent, we began taking
a look at the end of the age,
the first Sunday of Advent, the end of
this present age in the consummation of Christ
and his bride, the church.
And I still remember that awesome sermon that
Father Les gave about the marriage supper of
the lamb and the preparations and all the
Jewish typology that was in that gospel passage
that we read for that first Sunday of
Advent.
And it is an odd way to begin,
it's almost like one of those back to
the future situations, you know, we began with
the end of the world.
The first Sunday of Advent lets us know
that we're not pretending that we're waiting on
the birth of Christ.
We're waiting on, as it were, another birth,
another appearing.
His final advent, his final appearing, the reconciliation
of all things, all things disordered.
He's come to reconcile all things that are
disordered by the reign of sin and death.
Heaven and earth become reunited in the second
advent of Jesus.
So today we enter the climax of the
advent season.
We celebrate what Israel has been waiting for,
longing for that first advent of Messiah and
how the coming of Christ revealed the universal,
this is what they didn't know, the universal
redemption of the whole world.
First coming of Christ came in such paradoxical
ways, few recognized him until after the resurrection,
until the book of Acts begins after the
day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes
and begins to open the eyes so that
we could see that this Messiah is not
only the Messiah for a little plot of
land right in the Middle East, all of
creation is being made new.
The reconciliation of all things is taking place.
So it's much bigger.
It's much bigger than Israel had anticipated.
Thank the Lord.
This Messiah is not merely the king of
the Jews, but the Lord of the whole
created order.
And so today's gospel, we are in year
a again today, we're going to look at
Joseph more than we're going to look at
Mary.
Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place.
In this way.
We didn't read the context, but the first
17 verses is dealing with a lot of
births.
There's a lot of births in those first
17 verses, and there's a lot of drama.
There's a lot of sin in those first
17 verses.
You've got Tamar, you've got incest in that
story.
For some reason, Matthew is trying to hook
the disordered life of God's people.
This is all he has to work with.
We're it.
And this disordered life under the reign of
sin and death, there was nothing perfect about
it, but there was a plan set forth
in the midst of the disorder after Adam
and Eve disobeyed in the garden and set
the trajectory towards sin and death.
That's what the people of God had to
labor under, even though the promise was there,
the promise was there, the promise that God
would make all things new.
And now that promise is coming to fulfillment
in a very particular way.
Matthew is not shy in pointing out the
disorder and seeming flaws in Jesus' ancestry.
This is the ancestry of Jesus.
We see children of incest, Perez of mixed
races, Boaz and Ruth, which was against the
law, right, a Moabitess and a Jew and
of adultery.
Solomon is in that and there's more.
And so in the ancestry of Jesus, we
read of many births resulting from the broken
condition of humanity.
And this is really nothing new to our
experience.
It's not really new.
We say, yeah, we connect to this, but
we find it may be odd connected to
the ancestry of Jesus.
But when you think about it, all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God.
Right.
And so the ancestry of Jesus is going
to be in that same predicament.
In this way, we enter the world.
God enters our human history with all the
dilemmas that most of us would be ashamed
of.
Think about that.
Your ancestry, you know, you may have some
very colorful episodes in your own ancestry.
I sure do.
Yeah.
Just think about it where you came from.
Paul asked that question to the Corinthians, right?
He says, think about it.
Not many wise, not many noble, not many
of high birth, but God has chosen the
foolish things of the world to confound the
wise.
And that's showing up in the ancestry line
of Jesus, even.
Because all God can choose are the foolish
things of the world.
In light of God, everything's kind of foolish
in this broken condition that puts the light
on God as being the loving, gracious one
who has come to rescue us in some
way.
He's going like, I am coming to rescue
my creation and coming to rescue them in
a certain particular way.
And I am not ashamed.
It says that Jesus in the book of
Hebrews is not ashamed to call us brothers
and sisters.
Isn't that amazing?
Advent is about resolving the reign of sin
and death, bringing a resolution, bringing a rescue
plan.
And so Matthew provides a unique contrast in
God's plan.
Seventeen verses of just very shameful situations, especially
David and Bathsheba, you know, Jesus is taking
that lineage and he will reign forever and
ever because of the seed of David out
of the house of David, your seed will
reign forever and ever.
And Jesus is the the great fulfillment of
that.
And yet Bathsheba is in that line giving
birth to Solomon.
Nothing is too difficult for God, it seems
right.
The birth of Jesus Christ then happened.
In this way, not quite like the first
17 verses right in the beginning of the
announcement and right in the beginning of the
initiation of that plan, it seems like it's
just more of the same.
We've got a guy who is very, very
troubled and disillusioned because.
The one in whom he is engaged to.
Is pregnant.
And he knows something.
There's one thing Joseph knows, I'm not the
guy.
Right.
Think about that.
The restoration of the cosmos starts out with
a sex scandal, supposedly, supposedly the climax of
God's redemptive plan starts out with a broken
hearted man, a disillusioned man.
This is real stuff, right?
It's not like the Hallmark greeting cards that
we're going to send out to people, maybe,
you know, where everything is nice and the
manger is cozy.
And and Mary and Joseph just, you know,
no problems in their lives whatsoever.
Well, this is before all of that's happening.
And they're having to deal with some marital
conflict here, even though they're not fully married.
Some of the passages will say that they
were married, they were betrothed, right?
They were engaged.
And there's a two stage marriage plan in
the Jewish economy there.
And so it was an arranged marriage.
And so they're right there in the middle
of that engagement and coming together as husband
and wife.
And Joseph finds out right in the middle
where we're finding out everything about our lives,
right in the middle of all of this.
Right.
The first advent and the second advent.
Joseph is right there with this dilemma.
He's presented with news that would require an
uncommon trust.
Think about this, an uncommon trust in the
midst of a broken heart.
He's being challenged.
He's being asked to do something in utter
weakness already because he's his heart's broken, you
know.
And he's not really making it about Mary.
Or himself, he's he's trying in his sense
of justice.
Think the Lord that the Lord knew and
chosen Joseph, that Joseph would be able to
handle this dilemma.
And he's in turmoil.
And it doesn't really say there's a lot
of gaps in this gospel reading.
And it doesn't really say how long that
took place, how many nights that he couldn't
sleep, you know, how many conversations with Mary.
Say it one more time.
Say it one more time, Mary, that this
is the Holy Spirit.
And then he goes to the phone book
and he says, now, is there a guy
by the name of Holy Spirit here?
I'm going to call him.
But that Holy Spirit's not in the phone
book, you know.
And so he's trying to get his head
around this because this has never happened before.
It's never happened before.
And so as he's thinking, he's devising a
plan that's very, very proper and loving.
He decides to put her away quietly.
He doesn't want to bring shame on her.
And yet it's very hard in these village
situations.
Everybody knows already that they're probably engaged.
Right.
And so how are you going to get
yourself out of this?
How are you going to explain this one?
You know, we've had a lot of incidences
in our lives where we go, how am
I going to explain this?
I think this tops it all.
So he's called to grapple with all the
inner turmoil that we all face.
I mean, we face different kinds of inner
turmoil, demands and letdowns and, you know, dashed
hopes and expectations.
And so he searches his heart and he
thinks of her best while grappling with his
own heartache.
And so I just think, again, you know,
I have to underscore it in my own
mind that God's climactic plan first introduces a
struggle.
You know, in Luke's gospel, it's really cool
because the angel appears to Mary and sets
her up, but she has to go back
to Joseph.
Right.
And so it'd been nice of the angel
to go first before Mary arrived and told
him the news.
But that didn't happen.
And so here's the dilemma.
God didn't send the angel like in the
right timing.
You get me.
Is God always on time for us?
I mean, it seems like Advent is about
waiting.
And I know I've been waiting for certain
things for a long, long, all of that,
longer than that.
I've been waiting for some things like my
house to close and it still hasn't closed.
And I you know, it's just like poor
me.
You're buying a house and you're complaining.
Yes, I'm sorry.
I've had to do a lot of repenting,
you know, just because of the just all
of the things that have been thrown into
that closing.
And I won't I'll spare you.
But yeah, God doesn't seem to always be
on time, but he's never late.
He's never late.
He might be on my time, but he's
never late.
So shall the birth of Jesus Christ happen
in this way where Joseph sat right there?
When he's thought it through and he's got
a plan to really divorce her and put
her away quietly, he goes to sleep one
night.
And apparently he was able to sleep because
he had a dream and there is a
calling in the dream to live the dream.
He's being called to live this dream because
of the content of this dream.
It wouldn't be something that he dreamt and
then it was over and he went on
with his life.
It would be something that when he woke
up and that's the phrase that's in Matthew,
when he woke from the dream.
He responded immediately, I mean, it was something
that he realized, oh, I'm caught up in
a drama now, I'm caught up in a
story that I didn't realize that I was
going to be brought into.
You know, I didn't seek entryway into this
chapter.
He's coming to faith, really, because the angel
is showing up in the dream and he
tells him some information that he has to
believe or reject.
Joseph, son of David, that's huge.
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.
You're going to name this child, Joseph, and
by naming him, you're adopting him.
That's what happens.
That's how he becomes his legal son when
he names him.
Because of the name Jesus, it says he
will save his people from their sins, illustrated
in the first 17 verses of the genealogy
of Jesus Christ.
That's some of the sins, the effect of
the sin of the world, the whole sin
issue that actually introduces death into our lives
and we become mortal.
The wages of sin is death.
That's what Jesus is coming to rescue us
from.
You're to give him the name Jesus because
he will save his people from their sins.
Their sins does not put him off so
that he refuses to save.
It's their sins as the very reason that
he's coming.
He's coming into the muck and the mire
of this present evil age.
As the king of glory.
To be despised, to be rejected by his
very own.
That's how he saves us.
And all of this took place to fulfill
what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah,
the virgin will conceive and give birth to
a son and they will call him Emmanuel.
Emmanuel, which means God.
God is with us.
OK, so that's the information.
This son of Mary is conceived by the
Holy Spirit.
You are to take him and name him
Jesus, because this is what's prophesied in the
scriptures in Isaiah seven, which we heard this
morning.
And they shall call him Emmanuel, God with
us, God with us becoming one of us
saves us.
That's the way in which he saves us
from our sins.
It's the only way he could do it.
The blood of bulls and goats could not
take away the sin.
The blood of the Lamb of God could
not take away the sin, but the precious
blood of the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world is coming
to be God with us.
And so when Joseph woke up and just
read that figuratively with me, wouldn't that cause
you to wake up in becoming Christians and
coming into faith?
We all have to wake up.
And the only way we can wake up
is by the Holy Spirit, by the spirit
of wisdom and revelation opening our blind eyes.
Right.
There's a veil over our eyes, it says,
until the Lord removes the veil.
The veil was removed in Joseph's life when
the angel showed up and announced the gospel.
See, the angel was preaching the gospel.
You're going to name him Jesus and he's
going to be the savior of the world.
He's going to save your people from their
sins.
That's gospel, right?
That's part of it.
It's part of it.
There's a lot more, but man, that's core.
Everything gets bigger and bigger because of that.
He believes the gospel and responds to the
gospel.
That's the way we become Christians.
That's the way Christ is incarnate in us.
That's the way his birth.
That's the way he's conceived in us.
It's the same way.
It's the same kind of conception.
The Holy Spirit implants that living seed in
us.
And it's Jesus.
Jesus is that seed of Abraham.
That puts us into that genealogy of restoration.
And so when Joseph woke up.
Oh, God, let us wake up.
He did what the angel of the Lord
had commanded him.
And took Mary home as his wife.
But he did not consummate that marriage until
she gave birth to a son.
And he gave him the name Jesus.
That's the name above every name.
And every knee will bow and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Every day brings something to us that we
have to struggle with.
Sometimes some days we don't struggle, but there
are many days that we are struggling.
And sometimes we find it difficult to trust
in the midst of the struggle because the
struggle wears us down or the struggle is
like Groundhog Day.
It's been there for a long time for
some of us.
Right.
And it never seems to go away.
And yet God wants to give us dreams.
He wants to give us dreams.
He wants to visit us and he wants
to take that sense of.
This is my life, you know, and this
is the way it's always going to be.
And he wants to take that inner self
twisted talk.
Right.
And he wants us to arise and wake
up and say.
God is with us in this struggle.
It doesn't always take the struggle away, but
to know if God is for you and
with you and in you, who can be
against you.
Right.
And so I think the challenge for us,
I know for me, is to believe that
God is for me, in me and with
me.
In the midst of the struggle, because sometimes
I go, oh, this is here because he's
not for me.
He's angry, he's ticked off, you know, and
it's kind of like your view of God
is going to determine everything about the way
you live.
It's so important to have the right view
of God because some of these things don't
change.
But this is the one Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday, today and forever.
And he's come to pour his love into
our hearts by the Holy Spirit and he's
given us.
And so just ask yourself during this time
of stress and trial, maybe increased pace in
life and demands from family.
And I mean, it's a hard time for
certain people.
The holidays are a very, very hard time,
a challenging time because we live in the
genealogy of one through 17.
Right.
We may be visiting broken homes and broken
families and children from multiple situations.
All of that's real.
That's all what we live in.
Joseph and Mary knew about that and their
lineage was the same way.
And somehow in the midst of that, God
wants to be with us by becoming one
of us.
I mean, he dares to become one of
us.
One of us.
Absolutely, one of us for the joy set
before him, he endured the cross, despising its
shame and sat down at the right hand
of the majesty on high in the name
of the father and the son and the.