Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] But I think it's okay that I'm not cuter than that since I made a bunch of them, so.
[00:00:11] All right.
[00:00:13] Good morning. I'm gonna trip on these stairs.
[00:00:22] All right, we're good.
[00:00:27] All right. It is just such a privilege to be with you today.
[00:00:33] We're going to be continuing our Advent season with looking at faith today. I know each of us engages with this whole Christmas season in different ways.
[00:00:45] And whether Advent is a new thing for you or it's something you've been doing for a long time, I think that it can be really easy for all of the other things surrounding Christmas to kind of drown out the story of Jesus, birth, Christmas lights, shopping, gifts, family, functions, all of the different things that kind of go into the busyness of the end of the year.
[00:01:14] All these things can be fun and good on their own, but when they all crowd together in a few weeks, maybe it's just me, but I know I often kind of dread the Christmas season, and I just want to kind of put my head down and get through it because there's so much added onto this. I think it's really easy for us to engage with the Christmas story and have it just be kind of the same thing every year. I think it's easy for us to love and appreciate Jesus as an adult, but the story of him as a baby kind of becomes something that is just the same. It's cute. We talk about it, but then we move on.
[00:01:58] Maybe I'm alone in that, but I think that's the temptation that I'm facing this year to just get through it.
[00:02:08] Can we take a minute to acknowledge this temptation and move past it?
[00:02:15] Can we truly try to look at the story with fresh eyes?
[00:02:21] If possible, can we even try to tap into our own inner child and look at this story with a sense of wonder and the fact that it is an incredible miracle?
[00:02:35] As we work our way through the Advent season, that's what our hope and prayer is for everybody, that we would engage with the story of Christ's coming and being born as a human with a new sense of wonder and appreciation for the miracle that it is.
[00:02:56] As we go through the Advent season here, we focus in each week on a specific theme. So last week was hope, and this week is faith.
[00:03:07] A. And faith is one of those things that I'm sure you've heard talked about a lot.
[00:03:12] I'm sure that we've all heard a bunch of different sermons and teachings on faith, but I know I still struggle with it. It's not easy to have faith.
[00:03:23] So today we're going to be looking at the stories of Mary and Joseph and the angel coming to each of them, and we're going to talk about their faith. So go ahead and turn to Luke chapter one, verses 26 through 38. We're also going to be in Matthew chapter one in a little bit.
[00:03:43] If you don't have a copy of the scripture, then there are some in each row so you can look around for that. And we say this every week, but if you don't own a copy of the Bible, please take one of ours or come and ask one of us. As pastors, we would love to make sure that you have God's word to be regularly engaging with it.
[00:04:08] So before we jump into Luke chapter one, I want to remind us of the people and the place that sets the stage for this story.
[00:04:19] We're looking at God's chosen people, at the nation of Israel.
[00:04:23] 700 years before this story, because of the cycle of their sin and their refusal to follow God's covenant that they had agreed to, the Israelites began to be conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians, eventually resulting in the almost complete removal of the Israelites into captivity in these foreign nations.
[00:04:48] 500 years before this story, the Babylonians began to allow the Israelites to come back to their nation. They began rebuilding, but they were still under the control of these other nations.
[00:05:01] Under the leadership of God's prophets, they rebuilt the temple and then they rebuilt Jerusalem.
[00:05:08] 400 years before our story was the last time God sent a prophet to his people.
[00:05:16] 300 years before this story, the Greeks conquered most of the known world, including the nation of Israel.
[00:05:24] 150 years before this story, the Jewish Maccabee family led a rebellion against the fractured Greek empire, which led to Jewish independence. For a time, until 60 years before the story, the Romans came in and they conquered Israel again.
[00:05:43] So the people here have been conquered time and time again. They're currently under the brutal control of the Roman Empire, whose corrupt tax system has led to just a harsh thumb that is on them.
[00:06:01] Six months before this story, God finally spoke again to his people, to a priest in the temple through an angel. But the priest left the encounter unable to speak, unable to tell anyone about it. And now God is going to speak again to a young woman living in Nazareth. Mary, let me pray for us. And then we'll look at Luke chapter one.
[00:06:26] Jesus, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for just the incredible wonder of your story.
[00:06:35] I pray that you would be preparing our hearts that you would allow us to engage with this story in a fresh way, that we would see the incredible miracle that you have done in becoming a baby and coming down and becoming a human for us, and that we would be able to engage with it and see Mary and Joseph and their faith and take steps like theirs. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
[00:07:04] All right, so let's read. In Luke, chapter one, we're going to start. In verse 26, it says, in the sixth month, that's the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came to her and said, greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you. But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. Then the angel told her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
[00:07:49] So we have Mary, this young virgin, engaged to be married to Joseph. The way that marriage worked in this culture is that the parents usually would contract together for their children to be married. And that contract was the legally binding marriage contract. So legally, the two were considered married at that point, whether or not they knew each other or had met at all.
[00:08:13] Then there was this waiting period where the preparations were completed. And sometimes that took months, sometimes it took a year, sometimes even longer. This period of time was one of testing for these two people to ensure that the man was able to care for his wife and new family, and to ensure that the two were able to remain pure, avoid their lusts, and be ready for the marriage night.
[00:08:42] So the angel Gabriel is sent to Mary. He calls her favored woman and tells her that the Lord is with her.
[00:08:49] Mary, as I'm sure any of us would be, was terrified and confused by this greeting. And Gabriel reassures her that she doesn't need to be afraid because she has found favor with God.
[00:09:04] Now, I think that because of the Catholic veneration of Mary and raising her up to this divine status, we sometimes can swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and maybe minimize Mary's role. Mary is a normal person, but God himself says that she has found favor with him.
[00:09:27] Is this because something she did? Was she somehow better than other women? Probably not. But I think Scripture gives us a picture of Mary. It tells us of this woman who is normal, full of the same hopes and dreams, flaws and sins as the rest of us. But she has found favor with God.
[00:09:48] Why? Well, I think it's simple because he chose her, she was chosen by God in this time, in this place, to receive his favor.
[00:09:58] I hope that we can set aside any issues or problems that we have with Catholic or really any other depiction of this young woman and really try to see her as we look at this story, maybe even try to put ourselves in her shoes if we can.
[00:10:14] This is a young woman that lives in a culture where she has almost no intrinsic value.
[00:10:21] Her people are practically enslaved. The hopes that they had built up around their own independence were destroyed when their nation was reconquered by Rome. The prophets that God had regularly sent to them throughout their nation's entire lifespan had not appeared for over 400 years. And she lived in this incredibly strict patriarchal society.
[00:10:44] The Jewish people of this time had accepted a lot of the cultural views and customs of the Greeks and other cultures that they had been conquered by. And their view of women and their treatment of women was dramatically worse at this time than how God had set up their nation to work.
[00:11:04] Women were seen as property of their father to be passed on to their husband.
[00:11:09] They were allowed into the temple, but only to a certain point. They were confined to the women's court, a place that had no record or appointment in God's original plan for the temple.
[00:11:23] When they went out, they were forced to cover themselves.
[00:11:27] They were discouraged from going in public, from doing any sort of commerce or trade or job, because their role was to stay at home caring for their children.
[00:11:39] It was very possible that Mary was unable to read as the rabbinical teaching of the time discouraged women being allowed to study the scriptures themselves.
[00:11:49] And as a woman, she was unable to participate in most of the public temple prayers.
[00:11:56] This was a woman who her culture considered a very little value or importance. She was probably a teenager, probably 15 or 16 according to the marriage customs of the time. Her entire future was wrapped up in this man, Joseph that she was engaged to. Her economic future rested on his ability to support her. Her happiness in day to day life rested on his treatment of her. And her future value rested on her virginity on her marriage night.
[00:12:30] This was the young woman that God chose.
[00:12:34] He didn't see her worth or value as her culture did. He saw her worth and value as he had made her his precious child, his chosen daughter, the young woman that he chose to bring the Savior into the world.
[00:12:52] Let's look at the rest of this story. So Mary is troubled. She's afraid at the appearance of the angel and him calling her favored.
[00:13:00] And then he reassures her that she does not need to be afraid. And then he drops the bombshell on her.
[00:13:07] Let's continue in verse 31.
[00:13:10] Now listen. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.
[00:13:31] Wow, what a thing to be told.
[00:13:35] I know we all know this story, but try to set that aside and think about how you would respond if an angel showed up in your house and told you this.
[00:13:45] The long awaited Messiah, the one prophesied to be your people's savior, was going to grow inside of you and you were supposed to raise him.
[00:13:56] That's a lot.
[00:13:58] I'm sure it took a moment for this to sink in for her, but then the other shoe drops. She realizes what this means.
[00:14:08] Mary asks the angel, how can this be since I have not had sexual relations with a man?
[00:14:15] She realizes that how is she going to have a son?
[00:14:21] She hasn't had her wedding night yet. And the angel's response to her?
[00:14:26] The angel replied to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative, Elizabeth. Even she has conceived a son in her old age and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.
[00:14:49] The Holy Spirit. God himself would be the Father.
[00:14:53] The story here doesn't record whether Mary responded immediately or she took a few moments to understand what was being said. But I have to imagine that the consequences and the reality of what was told to her was hitting her in this moment.
[00:15:09] Her betrothed husband, Joseph was not going to be the father.
[00:15:13] No human man was.
[00:15:16] I don't think Mary was a fool. I think she knew the consequences of an engaged woman showing up pregnant and even worse, the baby not being her betrothed husband's.
[00:15:28] The law at the time very clearly gave Joseph the right to have her killed, or if he chose not to go that route, to have her publicly humiliated as a prostitute.
[00:15:43] I think that she would know that even if he didn't do those things, there was very little chance that this man wouldn't break off the engagement and have her sent back to her father's house in shame.
[00:15:56] And after that, well, her value to her father was effectively zero now. So her son and her would have to basically just exist on her father's mercy for the rest of her life.
[00:16:08] I think Mary knew the possible earthly consequences of what this angel was telling her.
[00:16:15] She knew how hard it could make her life.
[00:16:18] And yet, despite knowing those consequences, her response is amazing. She says, I am the Lord's servant, said Mary, may it be done to me according to your word. Then the angel left her.
[00:16:35] This response is incredible, and it is why we should elevate Mary to a place of someone to be honored and to be looked up to.
[00:16:45] Despite knowing the consequences of what God was asking of her, her response is, yes, yes, Lord, I am your servant. Do with me what you will.
[00:16:56] We haven't even really started talking about faith yet, but come on, that has to be what faith looks like. What an amazing response to God's call in her life.
[00:17:09] Okay, we still have another person in this mix to look at, so put a pin in this. We're going to come back to faith and to Mary in a bit. Let's look at Joseph for a minute. So turn with me to Matthew, chapter one, verse 18.
[00:17:26] I know we're spending a lot of time talking about these stories, but track with me. I think it's really important for us to engage with these people with their stories and try to understand them and their choices.
[00:17:39] So we're going to read this story from Joseph's perspective, starting in verse 18. It says the birth of Jesus Christ came about this after his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph. It was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit. So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.
[00:18:07] So now we have the story from Joseph's perspective.
[00:18:11] Now a lot of trying to put ourselves into Joseph's shoes is the same as Mary. He's the member of an oppressed people. His people have not heard from their God in 400 years. They've been at the whims of one conquering nation after another. The economic expectations on him are high because he has to live under these corrupt taxes. And the expectation is that he has to be able to support a family as well.
[00:18:37] The religious expectations of him are high because the current religious leaders have decided to add on lots and lots of different rules and regulations onto God's law in order to try to make the people holy enough for God to accept them again.
[00:18:53] But a lot of putting ourselves in Joseph's shoes is not the same. Joseph is a man living in a patriarchal society.
[00:19:01] He was raised with the idea and the expectations about women the same that Mary was, except from the Other side, We don't know if Joseph has any say in getting engaged to Mary, as it was usually a deal between the parents. We don't really even know how old Joseph was, if he was younger like Mary or not. Probably not. Catholic tradition puts Joseph as much older than Mary, but that is just based on their wrong idea that Mary stayed a virgin all of her life. So Jesus's brothers and sisters must have been Joseph's from a prior marriage. We don't know a lot about Joseph. We do see that Joseph seems to have died by the time Jesus is crucified, since Jesus puts the care of his mother in John's hands. But we don't really know much about him. What we do know is what the text tells us, and it says that Joseph was a righteous man.
[00:19:55] We see in the story that at some point Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant. It could be that she told him, or it could be that it just became obvious. But at some point before their marriage was consummated and they began to live together, he found out.
[00:20:10] Now, like I said earlier, Joseph knows the same things that Mary knows about their culture.
[00:20:15] He was raised with the belief that her value in his culture is mostly based around her being pure when they get married, and that her value to him was mostly based around the children she could give him.
[00:20:29] He also knows that the law gives him the right and the ability to have her put to death for adultery.
[00:20:36] The text says that he found out she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.
[00:20:41] I'm sure there's plenty of jokes that could be told about men not believing something a woman says until another man tells them, or in this case, an angel. But in reality, this would be really difficult for anyone to believe.
[00:20:54] If you were engaged and found out that your fiance was pregnant, she told you that God did it, would you believe her?
[00:21:01] Unlikely.
[00:21:05] Joseph did not believe Mary when she told him it was the Holy Spirit.
[00:21:09] Joseph also would have known the social stigma that would have followed him for the rest of his life if he chose to continue on with the marriage.
[00:21:19] If he married her, everyone would assume that this baby was his and that he had not waited for his wedding night.
[00:21:27] It would be the talk of the town, and in a religious society, everyone would treat him differently.
[00:21:35] There was a waiting period between the marriage contract and the actual wedding for a lot of different reasons. But one of them was to put these people through a test to make sure they were mature enough to actually be married. And their sexual purity during that time was a part of that test.
[00:21:51] The text Tells us that Joseph was a righteous man. And so he decides to divorce her privately, rather than the very public methods that were available.
[00:22:02] This would send her back to her father's house in shame, but it would at least allow Mary to live and Joseph to keep his honor intact.
[00:22:11] But then God sends him a dream of an angel.
[00:22:16] Let's continue to read starting in verse 20. But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
[00:22:40] Now, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord's angel had commanded him. He married her, but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son and he named him Jesus.
[00:23:04] So the text tells us that this angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him all the things that Mary had told him, tells him to go ahead and marry her to bring this son into his household, which means he would be legally adopting this son and claiming him as his own to name him Jesus.
[00:23:29] And we see from the text that this was the result of prophecy.
[00:23:34] So Joseph does so he wakes up, he follows God's command, and he does it again. Joseph wasn't stupid. He knew the consequences of what God was asking him to do. He knew that social stigma that would follow him.
[00:23:49] I think most of us know how small of a town St. Louis is, where where you went to high school and who you knew continues on with you throughout your life.
[00:23:59] Joseph lived in a much smaller community, and it was a heavily religious community where something like getting your fiance knocked up before the wedding night would have a big deal. That would be something that would follow them throughout their whole lives.
[00:24:15] And it did.
[00:24:17] A lot of historians and people just assume that if Jesus was real, he was Joseph's.
[00:24:27] So we have these two stories.
[00:24:30] What are we to do with them? How do these relate to faith?
[00:24:34] Let's take a couple of minutes to talk about faith and especially their faith. I'm sure you're familiar with the biblical definition of faith. It's given in Hebrews 11. 1. We already heard this in the Advent reading. Now, faith is the reality of what is hoped for. The Proof of what is not seen.
[00:24:55] The text says that faith is the reality of hope, the proof of what we cannot see.
[00:25:01] Last week, Jim talked about hope.
[00:25:04] And we see here that God says that where the rubber of hope meets the road of reality, that that right there is faith.
[00:25:12] And then God gives an example in verse 3 of Hebrews chapter 11 of what faith is. He says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
[00:25:26] So the text says that while we do not see the creation of the world, we didn't see it. Our belief that God created everything around us that we do see is called faith. Believing that what he tells us is true even when we haven't seen it is faith.
[00:25:44] He says we can't prove it right in front of us, but the proof is in what God has told us is true.
[00:25:51] And then the author continues on and gives a whole list of examples In Hebrews, chapter 11 of People and what their faith looked like. We're not going to go through them, but I would encourage you to do so.
[00:26:04] The text gives us example after example of people who believed God and did what he told them to do. Even though they couldn't see how it would work out, they couldn't see what the consequences would be on them.
[00:26:19] They couldn't prove that it would work out well. Their only proof was that God had told them to do it and so they believed him and gave their yes to Him.
[00:26:29] That's exactly what Mary and Joseph did in these stories. They knew the consequences, the possible consequences of what God was telling them to do. Mary knew that she could die, that that Joseph could have her put to death, and if not that, it was very likely that she would be disgraced and have to raise the Son.
[00:26:51] Joseph knew the social stigma that would follow him.
[00:26:56] They couldn't prove that they would make it through this, but they chose to give God their yes, no matter the consequences.
[00:27:05] They knew that bad things could happen to them, but their proof was in God telling them to do it. They knew that God was in control and if he told them to do something, his will would be carried out.
[00:27:18] So they gave him their yes.
[00:27:22] Now, a lot of people, when talking about faith, I think, wonder if they had rejected what God had told them to do here. If they had not had faith, if they had not believed that God would carry them through and they had said no, would that have stopped God's will?
[00:27:37] No, it wouldn't have. Faith doesn't work that way. Scripture tells us that God gives us the faith we need and that his will cannot be thwarted.
[00:27:47] His plan would still have been carried out. He gave them the faith to say yes, but that doesn't mean that it was easy for them.
[00:27:57] You guys are probably familiar with the story of Jonah. Jonah was a man that God called to go and give a message to the Ninevites. The Ninevites? The city of Nineveh was an evil city. They were the enemy of the Israelites. God called Jonah to be his prophet to the Ninevites.
[00:28:17] God told Jonah to go and tell them that God was going to destroy their city if they did not repent of their evil ways.
[00:28:24] Jonah knew the consequences of following God's will. Here he could go to that city and they could laugh at him because they didn't believe in his God anyway. And then they could just have him killed.
[00:28:39] Added on to that, Jonah didn't want them saved anyway. He would be happy for them to be destroyed.
[00:28:45] So Jonah said no. He ran away from God's will. But did that stop God's purposes from being accomplished? No. We see in the story that God continues to follow Jonah as he runs, that his circumstances get worse and worse and worse until finally he gives up and he says yes, when he's sitting in the belly of a whale.
[00:29:11] We have to wrap up.
[00:29:14] But I think the application of the Scripture is very clear. And I think it's incredibly relevant for each one of us.
[00:29:22] I can guarantee that each and every person sitting in this room has something that God has called you to do.
[00:29:31] That may be something in Scripture that He's called all believers to. Or it might be something specific to you.
[00:29:39] Maybe you're sitting there and God is calling you to repent of a specific sin.
[00:29:44] Or God might be calling you to be more disciplined with your time and spend more of it with Him.
[00:29:50] Or God might be calling you to care more about your neighbors and spend time in prayer for them.
[00:29:55] Or God might be calling you to take the next step and start a relationship with those neighbors and bring the gospel to them.
[00:30:02] Or maybe God is calling you to something different. Maybe he's calling you to stop trying to control your own life and give it up to him, even knowing that the consequences could be dramatic.
[00:30:14] Listen, I know this call intensely.
[00:30:18] I know what it's like for God to call me to give up my own plans for my life and live for him instead.
[00:30:24] But even differently than that, I know what it's like to have God call me to give up a specific sin and live in Holiness.
[00:30:34] On top of that, I think I know what it feels like to resist God's call.
[00:30:39] I genuinely wonder how many of us are sitting in this room, sitting in the belly of a whale like Jonah was. Because we are resisting God's call in our lives.
[00:30:54] Our lives can be difficult. The things that we go through can be difficult.
[00:30:59] And I think a lot of us are adding on to that difficulty by running away from God's call.
[00:31:09] God makes it clear in Scripture that if he's calling you to something, he will also give you the faith needed to follow him in it. You just need to give him your yes.
[00:31:19] And that's it. That's the application today. Band can go ahead and come on up.
[00:31:25] The question that we're going to spend a few minutes in our ministry time with is, are you going to give God your yes and what he's calling you to or not?
[00:31:36] There's no guarantee that those consequences you're considering might happen or not. Joseph's almost certainly did.
[00:31:45] If you read through the end of Hebrews 11, the text tells us that many of these heroes of the faith experienced awful consequences for their faith. They didn't receive any sort of reward in this life. But God guarantees that they will receive their reward after, and so will you if you give your yes to Him.
[00:32:04] Just like the angels told Mary and Joseph, don't be afraid.
[00:32:08] Giving God your yes is worth it.
[00:32:11] He will give you the faith and the strength to see it through.
[00:32:15] And yes, there is an incredible reward on the other the other side of it.
[00:32:21] At the end of your faith. Jesus, our Savior is standing there waiting with arms open to tell you, well done, good and faithful servant.
[00:32:32] We don't have to be like Jonah. The world is hard enough as it is. The consequences of following God can be hard enough. Don't make it worse by running away.
[00:32:44] God's plan for your life is good. It's better than your own plans. It's better than what you would experience if you run away.
[00:32:54] Let's give him our yes.
[00:32:57] The effects of what he's calling you to may not seem as dramatic as literally giving birth to the Savior of the world.
[00:33:05] But each one of us is being called to join God in His plan. And the end result of that plan is Jesus coming back again.
[00:33:13] This is the reality of what we hope for.
[00:33:19] We do not see Jesus here, but God wants to give us the reality of our hope, our faith, and that is what our hope and our faith will lead to, Jesus coming back.
[00:33:32] So let's spend a couple of minutes asking God what he's calling us to and see if we can give him our yes, let's pray.
[00:33:46] Jesus, thank you for your story. I thank you for the incredible heroes of faith that we can see this great examples that you've given us.
[00:33:59] God, I pray that you would make clear to us what you're calling us to, that you would give us the courage and the faith to say yes, thank you, Jesus. Amen.
