Joseph, Mary, and a huge test of faith

In the Gospel of Matthew, a young couple named Mary and Joseph receive some truly shocking news. Mary is expecting! Despite the fact that they have never consummate their relationship and that Mary is a virgin. 

Joseph faced a dilemma.What does he do? They lived in a small village. Inevitably Mary was going to start to show. With the cultural sensibilities of their day, this pregnancy in an unmarried couple would have been scandalous. 

Mary would make it appear as though either Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph, or that Mary and Joseph together had violated the betrothal custom and conceived a child together. 

Jewish teaching at the time essentially forbade marrying someone to whom you were betrothed who had been unfaithful. 

In Matthew 1:19, Joseph initially does not see it as an option to marry Mary. But he doesn’t want to shame her either, so he just wants to try to make the breaking of the betrothal as painless as possible for both of them. 

There appears to be a sensible course of action until Joseph is greeted with the most unexpected news. 

An angelic messenger appears to Joseph in a dream. 

Matthew 1:20:
But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes the Lord can quickly change our plans. Joseph is told not to fear taking Mary as his wife. 

The reason he needs to be told not to fear is that the religious and social expectation would be that Joseph would not take Mary as his wife, due to her apparent adultery. 

For the town gossips in Nazareth, the explanation that Mary is pregnant with a child that has been conceived via divine conception is not exactly the easiest story to believe. 

It would have been just as hard for someone in the first century to believe this was possible as it is for us in modern times. They knew where babies came from! 

So to marry Mary is to also have to deal with the social ostracism of marrying an apparent adulteress. 

But Joseph is told not to fear. 

Now just because he’s told not to fear taking Mary as his wife, that does not mean that it’s going to be easy. 

We don’t know a ton about the life of Joseph after Jesus was born. But the gospels give us a few snapshots, and it was hard. 

In Luke’s narrative, when Jesus was born, there was no room for them. 

A story that I plan to preach in a couple weeks, but when Jesus was just a baby, the King, a man named Herod hears about this King of Israel who was born and in his jealousy, seeks out to try to have Jesus killed off.  

The family was forced to leave Judea and go into hiding in Egypt. 

So we see an inhospitable world, danger, exile. Hardships. Church tradition holds that Joseph was already deceased by the time that Jesus began his public ministry. 

Joseph is told to fear not. Why? Because he was following the will of God. But again, that doesn’t mean that following the Lord will be easy. 

The disciples followed the Lord. But they had lives of difficulty and persecution, ultimately leading to the martyrdom of all but one of them. 

We celebrated Thanksgiving last week. 

I always think about the Pilgrims who came to this country in the 17th century. They came here in order to live out their faith. And they probably never could have imagined it at the time but they set forth a legacy which has extended into America to this day. The rich religious history that we have in this nation. 

Was it wrong of them to come? Was it a bad idea to come? No. 

But half of them died by that next winter. They had lives of hardship. 

I think of the great missionaries over the centuries. 

People who were serving a purpose greater than themselves. But the centuries of missionaries who have faced persecution and death for that calling. The work they did, the challenges and hardships they faced. 

Father Damien was a priest who served a leper colony in modern day Hawaii. He served people who were the outcasts of society. He contracted leprosy himself in 1885. But he continued to serve until he died of the disease four years later. 

Maria Taylor was the wife of Hudson Taylor, perhaps the most well known missionary of the 19th century. He ministered in China. Maria herself had been the daughter of missionaries. Born in Asia, her parents both died when she was ten years old. She was sent to England to be taken care of by family but married Hudson Taylor when she was 16. 

In China, they faced opposition, persecution, and financial hardships. Of the nine children she birthed, only four reached adulthood. She died of cholera when she was just 33. 

That’s so often not what today picture as the Christian life. We want to believe in a prosperity gospel that sells on the lie of just be good and everything in your life will be good. The problem is that it’s not true to reality and it’s not true to what the Bible teaches. 

Sacrifice, difficulty, hardship.

Why would anyone want that? 

Because of the great God we serve. Because of the great savior we have in Christ. Because of the great cost that he paid for our forgiveness. 

God gives grace. His power is perfected in our weakness. God sanctifies us through our difficulty. As we serve the Lord through challenges, and walk with him, it is also an opportunity to grow with him. 

The Bible doesn’t teach that just have faith and it’ll always be easy. The Bible teaches to trust in God even when things are difficult. 

It makes no sense in the eyes of the world. But God is the only thing that truly matters. And if all we have is God, that is all we need. Again in the eyes of the world, that is laughable. It’s worthy of mockery. 

Why would a good God allow his most sincere followers to suffer so greatly? 

But it’s a byproduct of doing ministry in a world that is fallen. We have a savior who can identify. Jesus went to the cross. He suffered. He was betrayed. He was mocked. 

In life, everything that’s truly worthwhile and worth doing involves hardship and suffering and challenges. 

Marriage is a great blessing. Marriage has its difficulties. It’s difficult seasons. Difficult conflicts. 

But its’s worth it. 

Having kids is a great blessing. But it’s hard. You’re trying to civilize a sinful person. Now no one forces you to get married. No one forces you to raise kids. You choose those things, even though they’re difficult. 

I think of those great missionaries. They had difficult lives. But still they chose that life. They could have walked away. They could have left the mission field. At the first sign of danger or death, they could have given it all up. 

But things that are worth doing are hard. 

In life, all of those challenges bring their own blessings, in spite of the hardship. And truly living for God, in spite of the difficulties brings the blessings of knowing God and growing with God and living to the glory of God. 

It’s not always easy. But it is always worth it. 

In the gospels, there’s a story of Jesus and the disciples when they got caught up in a tremendous storm. Why were they on that boat? Because Jesus had led them to it. 

In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites cross the Red Sea. Why were they at the banks of the sea between the water and the Egyptian army? Because that’s where the Lord had led them. 

God is not always leading us to what’s easy. But he is always leading us to what’s right. 

Our world has bought into this unbiblical lie that, in this life, you’re always being led to something really great. 

Not always. Sometimes you’re being led into something really hard. Sometimes people suffer, sometimes people die. 

It is in eternity and in the presence of God, when everything is ultimately made right and perfected. But in life, there are trials and challenges. The good news is that we have a savior who will be with us through it all. 

And so Joseph is told to fear not. Not because it’s easy. But to fear not because of who God is.