INTRODUCTION
When we read and ponder the story of Christmas, we
rightly give more of our thoughts to Mary, our Lord’s mother than we do to Joseph. Scripture gives more attention to Mary. It even gives her some speaking parts.
Mary has five sentences and a long poem, while we only read about Joseph. The gospels
don’t record a single word Joseph said.
But Joseph is important too. And when God chose the
family in which the Savior was to be raised, he chose both Mary and Joseph as
the parents to whom he would entrust his Son, the Savior.
Mary would nurse her baby, change his diapers, and
teach him to his first words. Together, Mary and Joseph would teach their
toddler to say “please” and “thank you,” to follow the rules, to share his
toys, and to be considerate of others. Little Jesus—even though he was the
incarnate Son of God, was still a thoroughly human little child. Mary and
Joseph were his first teachers.
From his parents, Jesus learned to pray. From them he
learned his Bible verses. With them he went to church—it was called “synagogue.”
Mary and Joseph took seriously the instructions in the
Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, where they read:
“The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
Keep these words that I am commanding you today in
your heart.
Recite them to your children
and talk about them when you are at home
and when you are away, when you lie down and when you
rise.”
(Deuteronomy
6:4-7)
We can be sure that Mary and Joseph talked about these
things in their home. They made sure that their holy child learned what it
meant to love God. And they taught him the other commandment that goes with it:
“You shall love your neighbor as
yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).
Mary and Joseph not only repeated these words to their
child, but they showed in their lives what it meant to love God and to love
others.
This is not to deny that, even while a child, Jesus often
surprised his parents with insights into God’s working, that came, not from
human teaching, but from his Father in heaven. As little Jesus grew, we believe
that even as a child, Jesus became aware that he had a special relationship with
his heavenly Father.
And that is why, when Jesus as a lad of twelve sat
among the teachers in the Temple asking questions, he amazed them with his
understanding and his answers (Luke 2.47).
Mary and Joseph guided Jesus through childhood, and
the teen years, and into adulthood.
Joseph taught Jesus the woodworkers’ trade. And when
Joseph died—apparently sometime before Jesus’s public ministry—Jesus continued
to work as a carpenter and help his mother in her responsibilities for his
younger brothers and sisters.
Our purpose today is to look with you at the character
of Mary and Joseph, and see what these exemplary people might teach us.
I. First, let’s talk about Mary, our Lord’s mother.
A. Luke introduces us to Mary with these words:
The angel Gabriel
was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a
man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
But she was
much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
The angel
said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And
now, you will conceive in your womb and bear 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 to him the throne of his ancestor David.
He will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.”
Mary said to
the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
The angel
said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will
be called Son of God. …”
Then Mary
said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your
word.”
B. Mary was especially dear to God. The angel calls
her “Favored One.”
Jewish girls married young. Mary was probably a
teen-ager, but she was now destined by God for a role in the history of
salvation that would be the greatest privilege and the greatest responsibility
that any human could be given.
Mary was perplexed. So the angel explained how this
would come about.
This miraculous pregnancy confronted Mary with a big problem.
She was pregnant, and she was unmarried. Who would believe her story?
I suppose—overwhelmed by the problems she would face—she
could have declined the honor. But she made this magnificent response: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it
be with me according to your word,”
Mary accepted God’s mission for her with humility,
obedience, and faith.
C. The next thing we read is that Mary set out on a
long journey to see a relative of hers, Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with a
miraculous child.
Maybe, facing all the talk that her unexpected
pregnancy would cause, Mary chose to get out of town and seek the counsel and
support of this godly relative.
Anyway, Mary journeyed many miles from her home in Galilee,
through Samaria, and into the hills of Judah to see Elizabeth.
And when she arrived at Elizabeth’s house, Elizabeth
greeted her enthusiastically: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb! And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord
comes to me?”
Then Elizabeth said, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what
was spoken to her by the Lord.”
When Elizabeth emphasized Mary’s faith, she indicated
that Mary had a choice whether to accept this responsibility. And being woman
of faith, she obeyed.
We don’t know whether Mary was pretty or plain. We
don’t know whether she had a brilliant mind—or whether she had great spiritual
insight. We don’t know whether she had lots of friends, or whether she was shy.
But we can be sure that she was a thoughtful girl—good and kind and loving.
D. Generally, in the Bible it is in response to faith
that God does his mighty works. When Elizabeth said, “Blessed is she who
believed…,” Elizabeth bore witness that it was because of Mary’s faith that this
great event came to pass in this way—the incarnation of the Son of God.
When we consider the splendor of the Incarnation, we
can believe that Mary’s faith was great indeed. Elizabeth saw the grace that
came to Mary, and she saw Mary’s faith that made her fit for the grace that God
bestowed on her.
II. Now we come to Joseph. Joseph also had a role to
play in the story of redemption.
A. Joseph shows up in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke is
Mary’s story. Matthew is Joseph’s story.
Now the
birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had
been engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with
child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.
(Although they were not yet married, because they were
betrothed, they were considered already husband and wife. Joseph would need to
dismiss her to break the engagement. Not willing to put her to any more shame,
Joseph resolved to do this privately. Joseph was disappointed; Joseph was perplexed,
but he was tender-hearted, and he wanted to do the right thing.)
But just
when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a
son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their
sins.” …
When Joseph
awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as
his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son, and
he named him Jesus.
B. So Joseph also got a visit from an angel, but with
him it was in a dream. From the angel, he received welcome news. And Joseph
obeyed.
Evidently, Joseph was the decision-maker in the
family. When King Herod set out to kill the baby Jesus, the angel appeared
again to Joseph, and Joseph took his little family to Egypt.
And later when King Herod died, the Lord appeared
again to Joseph and told them they could return to Bethlehem. But when he
learned that one of Herod’s unsavory sons was ruling over Judea, Joseph decided
to take Mary and the baby to Nazareth, where Jesus would grow up.
C. I think that God chose Joseph to be Jesus’s human
father because God knew that Joseph was a humble, obedient, believing man.
Joseph appears only one more time in the gospel story.
When Jesus was 12, the family went to the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was there
that Jesus got separated from his parents when they started back home to
Nazareth. When his parents missed Jesus, they went back to Jerusalem and
searched all the likely places where the boy might be and found him in the
Temple among the teachers, asking his questions.
But here again it is Mary who gets the speaking part.
She says, “Son, why have you treated us like
this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
We can be sure that Joseph also had something to say
about this distressing event.
I think that one reason why we don’t have any
quotations from Joseph in our gospels is that the reminiscences come from Mary.
If, as we believe, Joseph had died sometime before Jesus began his ministry,
Luke and Matthew wouldn’t have been able to learn from his memories. So they had
to rely on Mary’s memories for the story.
One other feature of Matthew’s gospel shows Joseph’s
importance. Matthew begins his gospel with a long genealogy that ties the story
of Jesus to Old Testament history. But he doesn’t trace Jesus’s descent through
Mary, as we might expect. Matthew begins his gospel by tracing Jesus’s descent
from Abraham, through David, and finally through Joseph—Jesus’s foster-father.
Abraham was favored at the beginning of the line
because he was a person of faith who obeyed. Joseph was chosen at the end of
the line because he was also a person of faith who obeyed.
Genetically, Jesus was not Joseph’s son, but Joseph
was the human father God chose for his Son, our Savior.
D. God didn’t choose a ruler to serve as father for
his Son. He didn’t choose a rabbi. He chose a humble working man—a carpenter.
But he chose a godly man.
I like it that Mary’s role in the story overshadows
Joseph’s. I think Joseph was all right with that. Joseph and Mary were both
devoted people. They were the people who guided Jesus through infancy,
childhood, and adolescence, and early adulthood. All they aspired to was to be
faithful to that which God had entrusted them with.
CONCLUSION
When we think of Christmas, both Mary and Joseph fade
into the background. Because the Christmas story is about Jesus—the human baby
who came into the world as God incarnate to show us the glory of the Father.
I like it that we don’t have a lot of detail about
either Mary or Joseph. Mary and Joseph didn’t crave fame; they were servants. A
wise teacher said, “No Christian ought
to be ambitious of anything but to fill as unobtrusively as possible the place
in life which God has given him” (James Denney, on 1 Thessalonians 4:11, in
The Expositor’s Bible). Mary and Joseph
unobtrusively filled the place God gave them.
The way God chose to give his Son to the world is
instructive. He chose two ordinary, working people, people who were examples to
us of faithfulness, obedience, and humility.
And that is a lesson for us at Christmas time.
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