The problem with this passage
is that we know it to well. We read it every Christmas. But if we are to really
understand this passage, we need to shake the jingle bells off it and see it as
a testimony to faith. Consider what Joseph had to believe:
1. He had to
believe that his pregnant fiancé was still a virgin. This is so ridiculous it’s laughable. It sounds like something a desperate young
girl would tell her fiancé if she had been unfaithful and was trying to cover
up her sins. There is no doubt that Joseph did not believe it at first. Being a
good man, he was willing to put her away quietly—essentially taking the blame
for her pregnancy. But at first, he believed that she not only had been
unfaithful, but either crazy or a liar. To believe anything else defied common
sense.
The Bible doesn’t record how
much the people of Nazareth and the closest relatives and friends of Mary and
Joseph knew. We don’t know what was said to them about Mary’s pregnancy, if it
was well known. But it’s not a stretch of the imagination to picture what would
be said. “Joseph, what are you thinking?
If Mary is already unfaithful, what will she be when she gets older? If
she’s claiming that God is the father of her child, what other nonsense will
she put out later? Dump her!”
But Joseph did not do the
sensible thing. He did the believing thing. He took Mary as his wife, and believed
the message God gave him. As a result, he became the earthly father of the
Messiah. His faith made it possible for Him to receive the greatest blessing a
father ever had. He believed God and received his reward.
2. He had to
believe that something he dreamt was the voice of God. Scientists who study dreams say they are hallucinations
our brain produces while we sleep. They express the mood and feelings of our
day in symbolic terms.
David Benner, a therapist and
spiritual director has written about the value of dreams to reveal our inner self
that our conscious mind covers. He suggests keeping a dream diary by our beds
and writing down our dreams first thing in the morning. This doesn’t mean that our dreams reveal God,
but just out inner thoughts. There are times in the Bible where God speaks in
dreams, but most of the time, they are just our own feelings coming to the
surface. The ancients knew this, just as
we do today.
But Joseph believed God was
speaking to him in his dream. Would you
make a major decision based on a dream you had last night, when practical
common sense pointed in a different direction?
God speaks to people in two
ways. One way is objectively, through the Word of God and through nature and
His laws. We observe what God has said or done and use our brains and common
sense to interpret what we see and hear. This keeps us from following
presumption and fantasy. The other way is subjectively though inner voices in
our hearts. Both are important. Joseph chose to follow the inner voice in his
heart revealed in a dream over common sense. Most people would say that is a
little crazy.
3. He had to believe that out of this
ordinary girl, God would produce the Savior of the world. Great ideas and
great people seldom come out of nowhere. We need families and we need networks
of cooperators to be successful. Great men and women are usually the result of
generations of preparation, or the work of cooperative communities. It’s no
accident that famous people have famous children, scholars have children who
are scholars, and great preachers have children who are great preachers. Generations
have gone into making us who we are.
We also need networks. Writers
get published, because they know some publisher. Scientists must submit their
ideas to peer review. Politicians get elected through political parties. The
“lone wolf” or the lonely prophet seldom make a difference.
Why then would Joseph presume
that a child born in an insignificant place like Nazareth, the son of a
carpenter and a little girl would redeem Israel? It was a crazy idea. Even so, he
believed.
His belief involved three
things. First, he had to look beyond what the world thinks impossible. Second, he had to believe that God Himself
would speak directly to his heart. Third, he had to believe that people who
were “nobodies” could be used by God to change the world—that their own baby could
be the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies.
We talk a lot about people
hearing God’s voice. Preachers hear from
God a vision for the church. People heard from God in previous generations—the
foundation of the church, the Protestant Reformation, the founding of our denomination.
As a denomination we believe that elders and ministers hear God’s voice. But
can we believe the same guidance when we believe God speaks in the present as
He spoke in the past? Can we believe that we can hear God in the same way the
apostles and prophets heard Him? Or is the voice of God only for people long
ago, or for a select few today?
Think about the implications
of it. If God is able to put an idea inside the brain of Joseph, then he is
able to do it to us. He can inspire us to believe and do, the same way he did
to Joseph and Mary. God is with them, but the child they brought into the world
is called Immanuel—God with us. He is still with us.
I have never believed that
faith was one of my most prominent. Faith doesn’t come easy to me. When I hear God’s voice, I usually regard it with
suspicion and skepticism. But this passage teaches me something. God really can
speak, and the voice inside my head in a dream can really be a Divine message. God
can make ordinary people like us part of His cosmic plan. He really can and
does speak to us.
The virgin birth is a
one-time miracle that will never be repeated. But something similar can and
does happen all the time to believers across the world. God can conceive in us
an idea and put it in our heads, just like He put Jesus in Mary’s womb.
It may be an idea with no
human source, to someone who has no legitimate credentials to carry it. It can
be an idea that comes directly from God. It doesn’t come, because we are smart,
or because we have the right upbringing, or because someone else has put it in
us. In fact, if we think that the idea is the result of our wisdom or
experience, it isn’t from God. But God can put in us a thought or feeling that
comes directly from Him. It may defy logic, but it is real and we need to obey.
We know God’s voice, not
because it’s practical, but because it isn’t. It doesn’t match what we would
ordinarily do. When we see a problem, we solve it using our education, experience
and common sense. If we can fix it ourselves, that is good, but it is no
miracle. We have simply used the tools at hand, and the glory for solving it is
ours. That’s enough for people without
God—find a need, fix it, take the glory for it.
But if there is a need
without an earthly solution, then God must solve it. When things are humanly
impossible is where miracles occur. We can’t solve our children’s problems, for
example. So the only place we can look to is for God. When something happens
with no earthly solution, then the miracle comes from God and He gets all the
glory. Our cleverness and self-assurance doesn’t help miracles to happen, and they
just get in the way. Real miracles are
virgin births, coming out of the barrenness of our soul. God births a solution in
us where there is none. Others may not hear the voice we hear, but God is
there. If He can cause a child to grow in a virgin, He can cause a new idea to
grow in an old heart.
God speaks to us inside our
hearts. My scholar and educator friends hate this. In scholarship all truth
must be verified. They are right to say this. There are a lot of crazy people
in the world who think they have heard from God, but haven’t. But how could
Joseph verify a voice of a dream? He could only believe or not believe.
Notice the first thing the
voice said to Joseph “Do not be afraid.” It didn’t say people would believe them. It
didn’t say everything was going to work out the way they hoped. It didn’t say they
wouldn’t be rejected by their family and have to sleep in a stable. The voice
of God simply said, “Don’t be afraid. This is from me.” God doesn’t give
details. He just says, ‘Do this and don’t be afraid.”
The GPS on my phone gives me
directions when I drive. I can’t read the map and drive at the same time, so a
nice lady’s voice says, “Turn left,” and I turn left. She says “turn
right” and I turn right. She says, “Stop,”
so I stop. God doesn’t give us a map. He just gives me directions today. I
don’t know what the next turns are going to be. That’s all he needed to know. I
must trust the subjective, internal voice of God in my inner being.
God’s message to Joseph’s did
show him a destination, though. God told him that this child would fulfill Biblical
prophecy and be the savior of the world. He and Mary were nobodies, but to God,
they were very, very important. When we look at ourselves objectively, we can’t
see what God is capable of doing.
Don’t try to measure your
worth by looking at what you are or what people think of you. Measure your worth
by God’s love for you. It is God who works through you and in you.
The child who is coming was
given two names—one by Isaiah and one by his parents. Both names came from God.
He is Emmanuel, which means “God with
us.” He is also Jesus, which means “Salvation.”
Mary and Joseph aren’t better than anyone else—they are just the ones who bore
the God and salvation into the world.
And so are you. You bear in yourself the
Spirit of God. Do you have faith to believe this? Can you accept that you might
bear God’s word to the people around you, that the Spirit of Christ within you
is greater than all the power of this earth?
This is a small church with a
lot of problems. Sometimes, they seem
insurmountable. But our problems don’t matter. All that matters is that you can
deliver God’s love to others. You are not nobody. You are the holy ones of God.
As long as you are here, God is with you.
Don’t despise small things. When
Bach was selected to be the church organist, the committee complained that they
had to settle for second best. When Fred
Astaire was given a screen test, a reviewer said, “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Can
dance a little.” The world doesn’t know
what it has, but God does. Wherever God is working there is a miracle. You are
a miracle of God.
Expect miracles, and God will
give them. Expect the ordinary and that’s
what you get. God has great things for you if you believe.
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