“The Husband” -- Matthew 1:18-25

In any partnership, there is always the possibility that one of the partners will overshadow the other. If we were to ask the partners who was more important to the endeavor, both would agree that they needed each other equally.

Nevertheless, it is not unusual for one partner to eclipse the other in the public’s eye. Most of us know who Steve Jobs was, but not as many know who Steve Wosniak is. Most people know Stan Lee, but he wasn’t alone in creating the super heroes of Marvel Comics.

In the story of Jesus, He was raised by two parents. There is more known about Mary than there is about Joseph. Tradition tells us that Joseph died when Jesus was still young. Certainly, the last time we hear about Joseph in the Bible is when he and Mary returned to Jerusalem to discover Jesus in the Temple. Jesus was 12 years old at the time. Mary is mentioned numerous other times, even at the cross, but Joseph is never written about after finding Jesus in the Temple. Yet God knew that Jesus would need both parents as He grew into manhood. God knew His Son would need a loving father to guide Him in life.

Central Truth: It was God’s plan that Jesus would grow up with a father who demonstrated godly compassion and obedience.

God chose Joseph because:

Joseph was a righteous man who demonstrated compassion (18-19)

There isn’t a lot we know about Joseph. Most of what we know of him is found in the first two chapters of Matthew, and even that is scant information. What we do know about him, though, is revealing about him as a person and God’s wisdom.

We shouldn’t think that Joseph comes into the story simply because he was engaged to marry Mary. He wasn’t an afterthought, sort of Mary’s plus one. God knew the kind of man Mary was engaged to, and part of the reason God chose Mary was precisely because of her engagement to Joseph.

Having introduced the engagement, Matthew shows us the kind of man Joseph was.

Joseph finds out the woman he loves, the woman who is to become his wife, is pregnant. He also knows that he is not the father. Joseph assumes the worst, since the worst in this case is also the norm. He assumes she has been unfaithful to him, and he cannot and will not continue in the relationship.

Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man. When the Bible declares someone to be a righteous person, the next thing we discover is they are going to be tested. Job was declared a righteous man by God immediately before his testing. Joseph is a righteous man. That is, he has found favor in God’s eyes. Joseph is a man devoted to God and committed to doing God’s will. Being a righteous man of the Jewish faith, it is reasonable to believe that he was conversant in the laws of Moses. His knowledge would include the price an adulterous person could pay under the law. Adultery was a capital offense, and Mary could have paid with her life.

Knowing this, Joseph would have had the right to insist that Mary pay the full price for her indiscretion. But Matthew is quick to let us know that Joseph was not only a righteous man; he was also a compassionate man. I can’t begin to think what was going through his mind as he considered the news of Mary’s pregnancy. The emotional turmoil must have weighed heavily upon him.

And yet, in the final decision, he decided the best thing for everyone was to end the relationship, but to do so quietly. Rather than embarrass Mary, he would simply end the engagement in a quiet manner, sparing her feelings and allowing her the freedom to pursue the other relationship.

What we can learn from Joseph is that a righteous person understands that the law is not written in such a way that we are to be slaves to it. Rather, the righteous person understands that living righteously is seeking to restore relationships, to encourage one another and to grow in grace and peace. Jesus made that point when complaints were made about His disciples on the Sabbath. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:26). The righteous person understands that it is the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law, which is truly important.

As the heart-broken Joseph went to bed that night, he was determined to be compassionate toward Mary, and he was going to divorce her quietly.

Joseph was open to God’s direction (20-23)

When God wanted to speak to Zechariah and Mary, He sent the angel Gabriel to speak to them directly. Not so with Joseph. There are four times mentioned in Matthew 1-2 when God sent a message to Joseph, and each time, it was through a dream. In three of the instances, God sent an angel to Joseph in a dream (cf. Matthew 2:13, 19). The last time, it simply says that Joseph was warned in a dream.

Dreams are many things. Some dreams are so vivid that they seem almost real. Others are so abstract and unreal that they are troubling. Dreams can be pleasant and they can be nightmares. It’s not uncommon to awaken from a dream, and the first thing that comes to our mind is, “That was weird.” We may share our dream with others, but more often than not, we’ll shake our heads, think about it for a few moments, then dismiss it as “only a dream.”

There are those who say God doesn’t use dreams to speak to us anymore, that He uses the Holy Spirit to direct us. To that I respond that God spoke to Peter and to Paul in dreams directed by the Holy Spirit. In my life, I have found that some dreams need to be acted on. I believe God does speak to us in our dreams today. I have had some dreams that led me to opportunities to minister to others. And I believe that God has spoken to me in dreams. I’d like to say the clarity of His message was crystal clear, but I’ve had dreams where I have a sense that He is preparing to do something, I’m just not sure what it is He is preparing to do.

That wasn’t the case with Joseph. When God spoke to him through the dream, the message was very clear. Still, Joseph could have awoken and dismissed it as a dream. To his credit, Joseph took the dream seriously. He understood the dream to be a direct message from God. As a result, Joseph completely changed his way of thinking and reached a new conclusion as to what to do about his relationship with Mary.

The message of the angel was a condensed version of what he had told Mary. In this dream, Joseph was simply told that the son within Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and that she would give birth to a Son who would be called Jesus. “Jesus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew name, “Joshua,” which means “the Lord saves.” This child would be named Jesus because “He will save His people from their sins” (v. 21b).

Matthew is writing to a predominantly Jewish audience, and as such, Matthew wants to bring the Old Testament into relationship with events surround Jesus and His ministry. Here, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 9, and reminds us that Jesus is God with us. As we discussed in last week’s message, Jesus had qualities from His Father in that He was fully God, and that He had qualities from His mother, in that He was fully human. He is God with us, and we are blessed by this truth.

Joseph could have determined that what he had heard at night was simply a dream, and decided not to have chili before bedtime again. Instead, Joseph realized the dream was a message from God, and, being the righteous man that he was, he was open to God’s direction. He could have easily thrown up objections of all kinds, but there is no record of that. Being open to God’s direction, Joseph was willing to change his plans to fit God’s.

The lesson for us here is that God can speak to us in many and various ways—through prayer, Scripture, testimonies of others, sermons, even dreams. We can only hear the voice of God if we are open to His message. We hear His voice when we listen for it, and if we listen, we must be open to what God has to tell us.

Joseph was obedient to God’s will (24-25)

We know that Joseph was a righteous man. The Bible tells us so. We also know that he was compassionate, again because of what we read in the Bible. We know that he was someone who was always open to God’s leadership. The proof of all this is not just that we read it in the Bible, but we also know it because of what happens in v. 24: “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”

I find this to be very interesting. Joseph had gone to bed the previous night determined to divorce Mary quietly. He saw no other course of action. Then he had the dream, and God showed him a better way. It is significant to note that the Bible seems to indicate that Joseph didn’t wait a while to mull things over. It seems to indicate that he woke up, got dressed and went over to Mary’s house, where he told her they shouldn’t wait, but should go ahead and wed. He took her home as his wife.

The next verse is of equal importance, I think. It tells us something more about Joseph the man. He knew his wife was already expecting a child. We have no indication of how long she had been pregnant when Joseph and Mary became husband and wife. But in reading this verse, I think we can see that Joseph’s awareness of what was taking place was truly out of the ordinary, something sacred.

The verse also lets us know that Joseph and Mary were just like any other married couple once Jesus was born. “He had no union with her until she gave birth to a son” (v. 25).

We can do no less than Joseph did. Once Joseph understood God’s will, he willingly lay aside his own desires and committed himself to God’s will. We surrender to God’s will when we trust Him and hear His voice.

Conclusion

It’s a special thing to be declared righteous by God. It is very rare in the Bible when we read this words. It is significant, then, to know that we are made righteous through faith in Christ.

Knowing we are righteous, not by what we’ve done, but by what Christ has done for us, can we really be anything less than open to His calling? Can we do anything other than listen to His voice?

And, having heard His voice, how we can do anything else but trust and obey Him?