SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning and Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: You are there.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: Today is Sunday, the twentieth of December, two thousand and fifteen.
SPEAKER_00: And before the next Lord's Day, we will have occasion to remind ourselves that God the Father is on the throne and to celebrate that God the Son has come to earth.
SPEAKER_00: He's on the throne, he was all last week.
SPEAKER_00: He is today, and he shall be forever.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy, for a Savior has been given, who is Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I remember very vividly the first Christmas after I came to faith in Christ as a young college student.
SPEAKER_00: That first Christmas was actually ended up being a pretty emotional experience for me, in part because we sang Christmas carols.
SPEAKER_00: And for the first time in my life, I got it.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember it very vividly.
SPEAKER_00: I had grown up in a church-going home, but I had not known Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when I came to understand the gospel, then those Christmas carols came alive.
SPEAKER_00: I remember very distinctly the amazement and the awe, the wonder of it all.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: I remember distinctly singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and I'm not going to sing it for you.
SPEAKER_00: You will be thankful for that.
SPEAKER_00: But just listen, this is kind of the way I felt when I started hearing it for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: It was, Hark the Herald Angel, listen! Wow! You hear that?
SPEAKER_00: Hark, listen! Angels! How unlikely is who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Really, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Angels would come and talk to us about what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: Glory to the newborn king, peace on earth and mercy mild.
SPEAKER_00: God, listen, God and sinners reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: And when I heard that, I thought, yes, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: God and me.
SPEAKER_00: There used to be hostility, there used to be enmity, I used to not give a rip.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, suddenly, God and I have been brought together not by what I have done, but by what that baby who was born in a cradle to die on a cross has done.
SPEAKER_00: And I got it just like that.
SPEAKER_00: It was just, it was almost overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Really, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Joyful all the nations rise, join the triumph of the sky.
SPEAKER_00: The angelic hosts are proclaiming, Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ, the everlasting Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly that made sense.
SPEAKER_00: Veiled in flesh the Godheads see.
SPEAKER_00: Hail the incarnate deity.
SPEAKER_00: Late in time, that doesn't mean he came too late.
SPEAKER_00: It means just recently, old-fashioned way of saying, he just came.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Offspring.
SPEAKER_00: Offspring of a virgin's womb.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: How implausible, how improbable, how unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: Just began to astound me.
SPEAKER_00: Veiled in flesh?
SPEAKER_00: Pleased as man with man to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: Pleased as a man.
SPEAKER_00: God was pleased as a man to dwell with us.
SPEAKER_00: God with us.
SPEAKER_00: My Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Never, ever had I thought about that.
SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly something changed within, and everything changed.
SPEAKER_00: Hail the heaven born Prince of Peace, hail the Son of Righteousness, light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings, mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give me second birth.
SPEAKER_00: The wonder and the amazement of Christmas carols.
SPEAKER_00: When we sing real Christmas carols, and I don't mean like the frothy Frosty the Snowman, and I saw Daddy kissing Santa kissing Santa Claus, that'd be a contemporized form, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Whoever's recording this, would you excise that portion, please?
SPEAKER_00: Yikes.
SPEAKER_00: No, when you sing real Christmas carols.
SPEAKER_00: Carols that cause you, if you're awake and listening and expectant, cause you to be amazed.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Astounding.
SPEAKER_00: The passage that Debbie read for us and that we're going to be looking at is a very familiar passage.
SPEAKER_00: I could read that without thinking a bit about it.
SPEAKER_00: And you could too.
SPEAKER_00: My goal this morning is to just in a very simple way walk through this passage with you.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to help myself.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: I want to help myself just stop and be amazed.
SPEAKER_00: How how unexpected this is.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have come up with this.
SPEAKER_00: Duh.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not God.
SPEAKER_00: But God did.
SPEAKER_00: How unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't seem very likely that a teenager in a backwater peasant village would be impregnated by the Holy Spirit, and out of that would come the very Son of God who saved me.
SPEAKER_00: That would not have been my plan for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: It just happened to be God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: How improbable.
SPEAKER_00: How audacious to think that that child, we just sang, who would have dreamed that we could hold God in our arms?
SPEAKER_00: Now we can't hold the totality of God in our arms, but but Mary and Joseph, there was the God incarnate, God in the flesh, in her arms.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: And what I'd like to do is not try to convince you of anything, especially not try to convince you of the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: What I'd like to do is walk through this passage and I'd like to just be amazed and marvel and worship and say, isn't that just like God?
SPEAKER_00: It's not like me.
SPEAKER_00: How how unexpected God is when He works in this world and when He works in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: How improbable the things that God does.
SPEAKER_00: How implausible, how audacious, how bold, startling.
SPEAKER_00: So put your intellect aside for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about intellect, this is about a heart response.
SPEAKER_00: And just being amazed.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very simple and a very familiar story.
SPEAKER_00: I have nothing new to share with you this morning, for which you should be profoundly thankful.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we sing the Christmas carols, we are singing words of awe and amazement and worship.
SPEAKER_00: God made flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Well, just real simple.
SPEAKER_00: We have in this passage a series, one of a series of four, absolutely stunning, unexpected, improbable, implausible, audacious announcements by angels to simple people.
SPEAKER_00: The first announcement, already it happened by the time Matthew, the part that Matthew I is talking about, the angel appeared to an elderly woman who was well past the age of childbearing, Elizabeth, and said that she would have a child in her own age.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how improbable is that?
SPEAKER_00: How unexpected was not expected by her, I assure you.
SPEAKER_00: And not only would she become pregnant in her old age, but the child that she would bear would be the one who would announce get your hearts ready for Christ who is coming.
SPEAKER_00: It would be John the Baptist, the forerunner.
SPEAKER_00: How unexpected, what a privilege, what how amazing would that be?
SPEAKER_00: It only gets better and better.
SPEAKER_00: The second astounding, stunning, improbable, implausible announcement was to marry herself.
SPEAKER_00: There was no one more surprised about what was going to happen than Mary.
SPEAKER_00: You will bear a child, you virgin.
SPEAKER_00: She knew that there was no way.
SPEAKER_00: She knew what hadn't happened.
SPEAKER_00: So she was not prepared for what would happen.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_00: God does things that seem impossible to us.
SPEAKER_00: How improbable.
SPEAKER_00: How like God that is.
SPEAKER_00: This is the third of the four major announcements, and uh we will see Joseph struggle in this passage with it.
SPEAKER_00: He was surprised, no doubt not quite as surprised as Mary.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like a husband who says, Well, you know, childbirth's really hard.
SPEAKER_00: Guys don't ever say that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not that helpful.
SPEAKER_00: So he was surprised, but not nearly as surprised as Mary.
SPEAKER_00: But this put him in a conundrum, uh, unresolvable.
SPEAKER_00: He came up with a couple of options, and none of them were very good.
SPEAKER_00: And then God gave plan C, which was his plan all the way along.
SPEAKER_00: And Joseph woke up.
SPEAKER_00: God was doing something that wasn't expected.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, uh the account to the shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: The shepherds were kind of the lowlifes of that society.
SPEAKER_00: They were simple, rude, crude, smelly, hardworking men, kind of at the bottom of society.
SPEAKER_00: And who would have thought, who would have thought that the angels would appear to the shepherds?
SPEAKER_00: You would have thought that the angels would appear in the palace in Rome or to the high priests in Jerusalem, but but no, to these lowly little smelly people.
SPEAKER_01: I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which will be for all the people, and I'm telling you about it.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_00: Now go and worship him.
SPEAKER_00: Stunning announcements.
SPEAKER_00: Improbable?
SPEAKER_00: Unlikely?
SPEAKER_00: Unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: This is more amazing than the force awakening.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is not only improbable, it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: Unlikely, it didn't happen, audacious, uh, unexpected, well, we've come to expect good things from but that we know.
SPEAKER_00: We know that's just a story.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe the people who stayed up all night to be the first ones to see it are a little confused about reality here, but there's no problem hearing things that that are bizarre, unexpected, maybe intriguing, but just stories.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is far more improbable, implausible, unexpected, and audacious, and it is true.
SPEAKER_01: It's just true.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever stopped at at Christmas and said, This is really true?
SPEAKER_00: And then let that just kind of come over you.
SPEAKER_00: The wonder of it all.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what we have here is uh um an unexpected exclam uh explanation.
SPEAKER_00: I I want to put this in its context.
SPEAKER_00: We're jumping in to the second half of the first chapter of Matthew, but I want you to go back a few verses and follow the line of thought, and you will understand how this answers something that was really uh a serious question that would have been in the minds of the readers, especially the Jewish readers to whom Matthew's gospel was primarily written originally.
SPEAKER_00: So at the beginning of uh Matthew, Matthew begins with a genealogy, so-and-so and in the King James begat somebody and begat somebody who begat somebody, who begat somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, as it's translated in the SV, so-and-so is the father of so-and-so is the father of so-and-so.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll begin in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: After the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Sheeltiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abaiud, and Abayud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadek, and Zadok the father of Ahim, and Ahim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eliazar, and Eliazar the father of Maton, and Maton the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: And do you notice what it doesn't say about Joseph?
SPEAKER_00: Everything would have expected now to hear, and Joseph the father of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's astounding and to the readers initially, no doubt confusing.
SPEAKER_00: What it does say is Jacob, the father of Joseph, and Joseph is the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You ever notice that?
SPEAKER_00: Now, how did that happen?
SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on here?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to explain.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to explain that unexpected thing, that improbable, implausible, unexpected, audacious thing, that God would take on humanity that he might be born as a baby and die as a man, that we might have life eternal.
SPEAKER_00: And it came about in this way.
SPEAKER_00: What this passage is really talking about is where Jesus came from.
SPEAKER_00: The birth of Jesus was unlike any other human being there ever was or ever shall be.
SPEAKER_00: He did not come from the result of his father and his mother, at least those who were his father and mother on earth.
SPEAKER_00: It came as a result not of impregnation of a woman by a man, but by the work of the Holy Spirit in the life and body of a woman.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how this happened.
SPEAKER_00: What we do know is that in fact, while Joseph was the legal father of Jesus, and that's what the lineage, especially in the Jewish context, going back to Abraham and David, the right to the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He was the legal father, but he was not the birth father.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've gotten used to talking about, in cases of adoption, the birth father and the legal father.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this wasn't by adoption, this was by divine impregnation.
SPEAKER_00: Huge difference between the birth father and the legal father.
SPEAKER_00: God is the birth father of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Would you have come up with that way of doing it?
SPEAKER_00: I sure wouldn't have.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if we've sung this here.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't been around long enough to really know for sure, but this is how it came about.
SPEAKER_00: He came from heaven to earth to show the way.
SPEAKER_00: From the earth to the cross, our debts to pay.
SPEAKER_00: From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord, we lift your name on high.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happened.
SPEAKER_00: This is the story, and this is the first part of it.
SPEAKER_00: He came from heaven to earth.
SPEAKER_00: It happened in this way.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth singing about.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth singing new songs about.
SPEAKER_00: It's worth just being quiet about and allowing the awe and the unexpectedness and the amazement that God doesn't do things our way.
SPEAKER_00: Duh! Why would we expect we would understand and find it plausible that God does what he does?
SPEAKER_00: Who are we?
SPEAKER_00: And just relish in a God who surprises us with joy in ways that bring great praise and glory to him.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, where he came from was heaven, and why he came was salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We see this in the implausible and brash, audacious name which the son of Mary bore.
SPEAKER_00: Not a name which Mary and Joseph came up with.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't go through the first century list of the most popular male names and pick one that sounded good to them.
SPEAKER_00: They were instructed by God's messenger to give him this name.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived of her is from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We need to stop for a moment and just think about this name.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, our English word Jesus is a transliteration, letter by letter, from the Latin.
SPEAKER_00: The Latin is a translation, not a transliteration, but a translation from Jesus, the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And Yesus, the Greek, is a translation from the Hebrew Yeshua.
SPEAKER_00: And Yeshua is a contracted form, it gets kind of complicated, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Yeshua is a contracted form of Yeshua, which means Jehovah is salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
SPEAKER_00: The name that would be given is a shortened form of Jehovah is salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And the shortened form has the meaning, He will surely save.
SPEAKER_00: That name was not, didn't flash into Mary and Joseph's mind.
SPEAKER_00: That was given by God.
SPEAKER_00: It was given by God for a reason.
SPEAKER_00: His name was already moving him towards the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He came to save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: Grant glad tidings of great joy, for unto you is born a Savior, and his name ought to inspire amazement and awe.
SPEAKER_00: There is a way out of this mess.
SPEAKER_00: God is doing something unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: He will surely save.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are people who own the reality of that, that He surely saves us.
SPEAKER_00: There's a transformation from within, but even or as important as that, there is a total change of our futures.
SPEAKER_00: From this life, where the best in this life is the best it'll ever be, to the life that is to come, the life for which we are destined, the life to which we are going, where the worst in this life for us is the worst it will ever be, and the best is the life that is to come.
SPEAKER_00: There's a dramatic change.
SPEAKER_00: We've been saved.
SPEAKER_00: We've been, our sins being forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: He shall surely save.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saves is not just a slogan to put on a bulletin board and irritate non-Christians as they drive by.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus saves goes to the very essence of who Jesus is and what by his amazing grace he does.
SPEAKER_00: And he did in the life of a dumb college kid all those years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Astounding.
SPEAKER_00: Unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: If you had known me, quite improbable.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: To this personal name, Christ is affixed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is not Jesus' last name.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Walt Barrett, Jane Barrett.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is not Jesus' last name.
SPEAKER_00: It's a title.
SPEAKER_00: Christos in Greek is a translation of Mashiach in Hebrew, which is Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He's the long-promised one.
SPEAKER_00: For centuries the promises had been given, and the Jewish people were anticipating the coming of Messiah, or were they?
SPEAKER_00: Were they anticipating the coming of the Messiah that God would send, or had they their own idea of what God was going to do?
SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is he came to his own and his own received him not.
SPEAKER_00: The baby in the manger was not the Messiah that Israel expected.
SPEAKER_00: And quite frankly, it wasn't the Messiah that Israel wanted.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God doesn't do things our ways.
SPEAKER_00: And they had focused on certain promises of what Messiah would do, and they had interpreted those in their own way, and it didn't fit into what God had done.
SPEAKER_00: But for centuries the coming of the Christ had been foretold, and then when he came, most people didn't expect or want it in that form.
SPEAKER_00: But there were sure and certain promises that had not been fulfilled and that would be fulfilled, and they were fulfilled in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: There are sure and certain promises that have not yet been fulfilled, and just as surely as he has fulfilled those promises about the coming of Christ, there are other promises which have not yet been fulfilled, and that's why we look to the future in a certain way with a sense of expectation, because God is going to do what he said.
SPEAKER_00: And there were promises given to the nation Israel, which have not been fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the foundation of our understanding of the future as we look ahead.
SPEAKER_00: There is a kingdom coming.
SPEAKER_00: It's still been promised.
SPEAKER_00: And after that the end will come.
SPEAKER_00: So are we really listening to what God is saying?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we have it all figured out?
SPEAKER_00: And then when he does it, he doesn't do it in the way we expect.
SPEAKER_00: God is so gracious.
SPEAKER_00: And he does things that I would never expect.
SPEAKER_00: And gradually I begin to long for what he is going to do and who he is and what he does instead of just the God I want him to be doing the things I expect him to do.
SPEAKER_00: And there is a sense of awe and amazement as we live our lives with God.
SPEAKER_00: Or there ought to be.
SPEAKER_00: Because God does not do normally what I want him to do.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he does for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about what I want God to do for me, it's about what God has chosen to do for me.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not what I want him to do now in the midst of these circumstances, but that God is here in the midst of the circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: You'd think I was back in James, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00: Improbable, audacious names.
SPEAKER_00: A problem pregnancy.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: This gets very practical here.
SPEAKER_00: The birth of Jesus took place in this way.
SPEAKER_00: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they had come together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's pretty clear this was an illegitimate birth.
SPEAKER_00: At least that's the way Mary.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way it was looked at, certainly.
SPEAKER_00: But it I mean, it really is problematic.
SPEAKER_00: And Mary hasn't heard all that the angel is going to say, and Joseph hasn't heard everything.
SPEAKER_00: But right away we have a problem here.
SPEAKER_00: And just put yourself in Joseph's mind.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this announcement focuses on.
SPEAKER_00: And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we need to understand the customs here, just real simple.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage in New Testament times, or actually throughout most of human history, was not viewed the way we view marriage in our modern times.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage was not the result of romantic love.
SPEAKER_00: And it still is not, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I'll have to get off on this another time, but marriage is not the result of I've fallen in love and she swept me off my feet, and so I'm going to marry her.
SPEAKER_00: That's what our culture does.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is not the result of love.
SPEAKER_00: Love, true love, is the result of a lifelong commitment, one man, one husband, for life.
SPEAKER_00: And you learn to love each other.
SPEAKER_00: I won't get into the hold of Fiddler on the Roof.
SPEAKER_00: I did enough of that last week, but we happened to watch it last night, so it's still in my mind.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, towards the end of the film, Tevya asks Golda, Do you love me?
SPEAKER_00: It had not really crossed his mind that love would be a part of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That was not the thinking, and it should not be our thinking.
SPEAKER_00: If love is the foundation, what happens when you wake up one day and don't happen to like your spouse anymore?
SPEAKER_00: That's not the issue.
SPEAKER_00: The issue is I have made a sacred commitment before God with this individual.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I like her and sometimes I don't.
SPEAKER_00: More often she has reason not to like me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, so what?
SPEAKER_00: We've made a commitment.
SPEAKER_00: And we learn to love one another.
SPEAKER_00: So Tevius says, Golda, do you love me?
SPEAKER_00: And she goes through all of this, you know, 25 years, washed his clothes, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: But the point being, love and marriage is not what it appears to be in our society, is not the biblical foundation.
SPEAKER_00: The marriage process itself was very, very different.
SPEAKER_00: There was, it was a long, extended process.
SPEAKER_00: It began with a business deal between the father of the bride and the father of the husband.
SPEAKER_00: Really, very commercial business deal.
SPEAKER_00: Exchange of dowries, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: There was a betrothal ceremony.
SPEAKER_00: So the betrothal period is not like our engagement period.
SPEAKER_00: It's really quite different.
SPEAKER_00: There was an agreement between families.
SPEAKER_00: Try to get away with that now, fathers.
SPEAKER_00: See if you can get a good dowry, will you?
SPEAKER_00: But there was a betrothal ceremony, and if you know the Jewish customs, there were phenomenal customs, great celebration, the bride and the groom on chairs and carried around at a canopy and great celebration and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: That was only the beginning of the wedding or the marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Then there would be, and at that point, the husband and wife did not live together.
SPEAKER_00: The marriage was not consummated.
SPEAKER_00: And so there was an extended period of time, and that's the period of time that Mary and Joseph were in.
SPEAKER_00: They'd already been betrothed, but they were not living together.
SPEAKER_00: They had no sexual relations.
SPEAKER_00: They did not sleep together.
SPEAKER_00: And during the betrothal period, there was this, they called it marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He was called her husband, she was called his wife, but not in the sense that we do.
SPEAKER_00: And after this long period, and it could be a few weeks or it could be a few months, it could easily be up to a year, then the marriage would be consummated, and the husband would take his wife home with her, with him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually what happens here.
SPEAKER_00: So it was in this in-between kind of a phase, and it was really problematic for Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: And Joseph now was faced with, okay, what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: The only conclusion that Joseph had was that she had been unfaithful.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what else would you conclude?
SPEAKER_00: Would you conclude she's been impregnated by the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Really, who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: So Joseph had a choice.
SPEAKER_00: There were two options open to him.
SPEAKER_00: One was to go public with this, set in motion the legal penalties of unfaithfulness during the betrothal period, which in the Old Testament were in the Mosaic covenant was the wife could be stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: We see no sign of that in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: By the New Testament time, uh the Jewish traditions had gotten away from the word of God and the law of God as it had been given.
SPEAKER_00: We're not aware of that being carried out in the time of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But still she would be subjected to shame and humiliation and would be shunned.
SPEAKER_00: She would be a marked woman.
SPEAKER_00: And it says that Joseph, Joseph, being a just man or a righteous man, not righteous in the sense of Pauline righteousness, but righteous in the sense of a godly man, someone whose heart was Godward focused, and he was, he had become kind and gentle, and he had no heart to put her to shame.
SPEAKER_00: That would have been path one.
SPEAKER_00: But being a godly, compassionate, gentle man, he said, Well, we'll just kind of privately give her a bill of divorcement and be done.
SPEAKER_00: And he was he was wrestling.
SPEAKER_00: Plan A, he didn't like.
SPEAKER_00: Plan B wasn't very good either.
SPEAKER_00: He was wrestling with this.
SPEAKER_00: He was mulling this over and he fell asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I find that implausible, incredible, unlikely.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm mulling things over and have problems I can't get resolved, it keeps me awake at night.
SPEAKER_00: But Joseph, he apparently fell asleep.
SPEAKER_00: As he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for us in our society, that's pretty implausible, unlikely, unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we should be a whole lot more open to God speaking to us in dreams.
SPEAKER_00: Another subject, another time.
SPEAKER_00: Among Muslims who come to faith in Christ, it is often as a direct result of God speaking to them in dreams.
SPEAKER_00: They're open to that.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of their thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And God does that.
SPEAKER_00: And he glorifies himself through it.
SPEAKER_00: For us, pretty improbable.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord appeared to him in dreams, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He shall surely save, for he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: How like God to solve Joseph's problem in a way that was totally unexpected to him.
SPEAKER_00: There are, I hope, things in your life that you can't figure out, that you can't solve, that don't make a whole lot of sense, and you don't know what to do about them.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go to sleep?
SPEAKER_00: God's solution to our problems are often not what we expect.
SPEAKER_00: Do we have a big enough picture of God to expect Him to do things that don't make any sense, that don't seem logical, that aren't probable, that are rather audacious?
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have a picture of God who works that way, we don't have a picture of God.
SPEAKER_00: Or we have an inflated view of ourselves, one or the other.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there was obviously a divine intervention.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph was startled by this.
SPEAKER_00: He woke up.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure in the context that just means he woke up out of his dream.
SPEAKER_00: But boy, I tell you, when we see God at work in unexpected ways, we wake up.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to have eyes to see things that we were formerly blind for.
SPEAKER_00: That's just part of what happens when God breaks in.
SPEAKER_00: There was an intervention of God in this.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: The angel goes on and says, This took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: A quote from Isaiah 7, 14.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is really a little bit hard to believe.
SPEAKER_00: When you stop and think about the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: And there are many people today who struggle with it.
SPEAKER_00: And I get that struggle.
SPEAKER_00: If it hadn't been revealed in Scripture, I would have said this is a fable just like a thousand other fables.
SPEAKER_00: Parthenogenesis.
SPEAKER_00: There's scientific cases where female species or animal of females of a given animal species have produced offspring without the intervention of a male, although that's the normal process.
SPEAKER_00: In mythology, there's all kinds of stories about this.
SPEAKER_00: I would have said this is either just a freak of nature or it's a myth.
SPEAKER_00: But God had said long before that a virgin would bear a son, Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: Now, many people, and I understand it in their wrestling with this, is this possible, go back to the Old Testament, look up Isaiah 7.14, find that the word virgin that is used there can mean virgin, but can also just mean a young woman, and say, okay, well, Matthew got it wrong in quoting this.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that would be possible, I suppose, but but the word that is used here is indisputable.
SPEAKER_00: The word that is used elsewhere, it means a virgin.
SPEAKER_00: It means a woman who has not been impregnated.
SPEAKER_00: And Mary, that was Mary, and that was going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And this was a major, major issue.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Timothy says that God was made manifest in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That at its core is the issue.
SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
SPEAKER_00: It happened by a virgin bearing a child whose father was God, not her husband.
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple and it's that offensive if we're not careful.
SPEAKER_00: And I get that that is hard to swallow.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, if you're saying that can't happen, then you're saying you know more than God.
SPEAKER_00: And that God has to conform to your thoughts and your ways of doing things.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph responds in faith and obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He wakes up.
SPEAKER_00: God initiates and Joseph responds.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way it always is.
SPEAKER_00: We get it screwed up.
SPEAKER_00: We think that we initiate and tell God what to do, or by if we pray in this way, we're going to convince him to do something he doesn't want to do, or if we're really good, then he will bless us, as though we're the center of it and initiating everything.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in Scripture, it's God breaking into our existence, and we are the responders, not the initiators.
SPEAKER_00: God intervenes, and our response, the response of Joseph was faith and obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Response of Mary was just exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00: May it be done unto me as you said.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, God, have your way.
SPEAKER_00: When you see God doing something unexpected, the only response is faith and obedience and praise and getting really small because we have a really big God and we don't understand it and we can't explain it, but God is amazing and he does things that doesn't make any sense and I worship him.
SPEAKER_00: That is the attitude of a believer.
SPEAKER_00: Not to stand above and say, this is what God has to do, not to read the scriptures and pick and choose the verses we want.
SPEAKER_00: Who are we?
SPEAKER_00: A couple of things by way of application here.
SPEAKER_00: Who am I to dismiss who God is?
SPEAKER_00: Who am I to dismiss what God says?
SPEAKER_00: Who am I to dismiss what God does just because it doesn't make any sense to me?
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I totally get it.
SPEAKER_00: And there are reasons to have questions, intellectual questions, but if we cannot leave our intellect aside at some point, then God has to fit into the way we structure the universe, the laws of reality that we see, and then God has to follow our limited rules.
SPEAKER_00: Who are we to tell God how he has to do things?
SPEAKER_00: Who are we to dismiss what God is doing when he does them?
SPEAKER_00: God constantly surprises us, and it doesn't seem to bother him a bit.
SPEAKER_00: God constantly does things that make no sense to us.
SPEAKER_00: And if we are wise, we will revel in that.
SPEAKER_00: We will become small.
SPEAKER_00: We won't have to get it all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: But I understand the concerns.
SPEAKER_00: My father on his deathbed, uh, I was there for one last time sharing the gospel with him, and I started out, and he said, Walt, I understand, but I don't believe it.
SPEAKER_00: I had tears in my eyes, but I also had great respect for a man of integrity.
SPEAKER_00: If you have honest doubts and disagreements intellectually, I can respect that.
SPEAKER_00: But I cannot respect you picking and choosing what you want from among what God says, does, and is?
SPEAKER_00: That's arrogance.
SPEAKER_00: So we can talk about the intellectual issues, but ultimately it comes down to who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_00: If God says he wants to and did create the world in seven literal days, who am I to come up with a zillion reasons why that can't be?
SPEAKER_00: And there must be some other explanation to it.
SPEAKER_00: Who am I to tell God what he's going to do?
SPEAKER_00: Who am I to contradict what Scripture says?
SPEAKER_00: Who was Joseph to contradict what the angels said who came to him?
SPEAKER_00: There is arrogance bound up in that.
SPEAKER_00: And I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I am by nature an arrogant man who wants to have it all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: And God by his grace entered in and changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean I put my mind on the shelf.
SPEAKER_00: It just means when I bump up against things that I cannot figure out, I fall in my face and worship a God who is greater than I am and greater than my mind.
SPEAKER_00: So all I'm saying is we can't pick and choose.
SPEAKER_00: We can't say the moral teachings of Jesus we think are good, be kind, be loving, and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: As though the Bible is some kind of a religious cafeteria line where you can go through and take this, no, I don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't look like it's going to taste good.
SPEAKER_00: Ooh, yeah, it's good here.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, here's deserto.
SPEAKER_00: And take and pick and choose what you want.
SPEAKER_01: Who in the world do we think we are?
SPEAKER_01: Did we create ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: Do we rule the universe?
SPEAKER_00: Or is there someone who is on the throne?
SPEAKER_00: He was all last week and he is today and he shall be in the week ahead.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of why we keep saying that.
SPEAKER_00: We're just these little people.
SPEAKER_00: And God.
SPEAKER_00: God is this great and gracious and awesome and inexplicable one.
SPEAKER_00: We can't plummet the depths of God.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 11, oh, the depth and the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: How unsearchable are his judgments and his paths beyond finding out.
SPEAKER_00: Who's known the mind of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Who's been his counselor from him and through him and to him are all things.
SPEAKER_00: To him be the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: That's the attitude of a believer.
SPEAKER_00: And it goes along with a sense of awe and amazement and just reveling in that which makes no sense to us.
SPEAKER_00: If that bothers you, then there is much about the Bible that will bother you, and much about the spiritual life that will bother you.
SPEAKER_00: God is with us.
SPEAKER_00: He intervenes in our world and our lives.
SPEAKER_00: I would like to suggest that we, as people who name the name of Christ, be on the lookout for what we might want to call Emmanuel moments, where God is doing something.
SPEAKER_00: I would like to suggest that we be on the lookout in the circumstances of our lives for God doing something in them which we would not expect.
SPEAKER_00: We may not even at one level want.
SPEAKER_00: But God is God, and as He's revealed, we know He's good.
SPEAKER_00: Good you are and good you do, and I don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: But could we be on the lookout for the good things that God would do?
SPEAKER_00: Can we be on the lookout for God's intervention when we're confronted with problems that we can't resolve?
SPEAKER_00: Could we just kind of have the attitude, you know, God must have something else in mind here?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder what it is.
SPEAKER_00: And then when God shows up, I don't even like that term.
SPEAKER_00: But when God when you just can't escape, that God has intervened, and it may just be in your thoughts, it may be in some hidden area of your heart, it may be in the circumstances around you, that you will all wonder and awe and amazement and worship confess that he is God and I am not, and I'm so happy with that.
SPEAKER_00: Could we, as a group of believers, focus more on the unexpected things that God is doing than the things that we don't like that are going on around us?
SPEAKER_00: Could we spend half the energy that we spend complaining about the government and focus on God?
SPEAKER_00: That would be a radical thought.
SPEAKER_00: But I would just say, who would have thought ought to be part of our vocabulary?
SPEAKER_00: And the wonder and awe and worship of a God who doesn't do things our way, whose ways are beyond us, plummeting to their depth.
SPEAKER_00: He lets us in a little bit on his plans and purposes, but there's so much more.
SPEAKER_00: And could we, maybe in the spirit of Christmas, just say, I never would have thought of that.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy.
SPEAKER_00: For today in the city of David there is a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: May our expectation of the unexpected be a major part of our spiritual lives.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask that we sing that uh final Christmas carol, Heart the Herald Angels sing, and and after uh Patrick, would you come on up and lead us?
SPEAKER_00: We'll be dismissed when uh we're done singing.
SPEAKER_00: But just think of the words.
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
SPEAKER_00: Can we revel in the mystery and the glory and the amazement of a God who is so much bigger than we are?