Some of you may remember that several years ago we conducted a
tournament to see who the favorite Bible character of the Wheatland Parish was.
Mary, Jesus’ earthly mother, won the tournament. Joseph, Jesus’
earthly father, got knocked out a couple of rounds in.
And
that’s kind of the way we think of Mary and Joseph. Mary gets all the
publicity. There’s way more in the Bible about Mary than there is about
Joseph. Joseph is around for the first couple of years of Jesus’ life,
and then he’s never mentioned again. Oh, there’s that story about Jesus
at age twelve being left behind at the temple and his parents looking for him,
but Joseph is not named in that story. Mary is, but not Joseph.
That’s really how the Bible tells the story.
Mary is the main parent of Jesus. Joseph is just kind of an
afterthought. The gospel of Mark does not even mention him. The
gospel of John only makes a couple of references to “Jesus, the son of Joseph”.
And here’s another thing. When you read the story of Mary in the gospel
of Luke, you get a lot of statements from Mary. In fact, the gospel of
Luke gives us an entire song from Mary. You know how many quotes there
are from Joseph in the Bible? Zero. None. We are not given
one sentence, one word, not even one syllable uttered by Joseph. For all
the Bible tells us, Joseph might never have said a word in his entire life.
But here’s the thing. We may not know
anything Joseph said. But we know several things Joseph did. And
every time we’re told something Joseph did, Joseph obeyed God. He did not
hesitate. He did not ask questions. He simply did what the Lord
told him to do.
Look at our reading for today. Joseph
finds out that Mary is going to have a child. He’s not sure what he
should do. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go
ahead and take Mary for his wife. And we’re told, “When Joseph woke up,
he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his
wife.”
Joseph heard from an angel a couple of other
times. When Herod is trying to have the young Jesus killed, an angel
appears to Joseph in a dream again and tells him to take Mary and Jesus and go
to Egypt. And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother
during the night and left for Egypt.”
And when Herod died and it was okay for them
to return, an angel again appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to go back
to Israel. And we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother
and went to the land of Israel.”
We’re never told anything Joseph said.
We’re never told anything Joseph thought. We’re never told anything
Joseph felt. But we are told what Joseph did. And each time, what
we’re told is that Joseph was obedient to God.
I have to think that there were times Joseph
really did not want to do what the angel was telling him to do. In fact, I suspect that after a while, Joseph
really did not want to hear from the angel any more, because every time the
angel appeared, it told Joseph to do something hard. After all, it could not have been easy to
take Mary for his wife. Even assuming he loved Mary, there were still
going to be all the questions, all the rumors, all the gossip about the two of
them, with Mary getting pregnant before they were married.
It could not have been easy to take Mary and
Jesus and go to Egypt. Think about it. They were leaving behind
everything they owned other than what they could carry. And probably they had to carry Jesus himself
a lot of the way—he’d have been at most a toddler at this time, maybe still a
baby. They were going to a foreign country, to a place where they
probably did not know anyone. They may not even have known the language.
Would they be accepted there? What were they going to do there?
How would Joseph make enough money to take care of his family?
Where would they find a place to live? This was quite a thing
Joseph was told to do. And he got up and did it.
And it could not have been easy to go back to
Israel, either. We’re not told how long they were in Egypt, but people
think it may have been up to two years. Think about that. They’d
probably gotten established in Egypt by that time. Joseph may have even
had a good business for himself as a carpenter. And now, here they are,
having to leave everything behind again. Yes, they were going home, but
it had been a long time since they’d been there. Would they be accepted
when they came home? Would Joseph be able to re-establish his business?
Were they going to have to find a different place to live, again?
But again, Joseph did not let any of that stop him. An angel of the
Lord told him to do something, and he got up and did it.
Joseph did not know what was going to happen
when he did all these things. The angel did not tell him the future.
The angel does not say that after Jesus is born they’ll need to go to
Egypt, and they’ll be there a couple of years, and then they’ll be able to come
home again. In fact, the angel does not give him any assurances at all.
The angel never says, “Don’t worry, God will protect you.” The
angel never says, “God will reward you for your faith.” The angel never
even says, “God will be with you wherever you go.” The angel just tells
Joseph, “Do this.” And Joseph gets up and does it.
And when you think about it, what we get up
and do is really the bottom line of our faith. It’s not about what we
say. It’s not about what we think. It’s not about what we feel.
It’s about what we do. Faith is acting in obedience with what the
Lord wants us to do.
Now don’t get me wrong. Our words are
important. But if our actions don’t back up our words, our words are
meaningless. Our thoughts are important. But if we don’t put our
thoughts into actions, our thoughts are meaningless. Our feelings are
important. But if our feelings are not translated into actions, our feelings
are meaningless.
This is what the apostle James was getting at
when he made the statement, which I’m sure many of you have heard, that faith
without works is dead. It’s important to have good thoughts and good
feelings, but if we stop there, our thoughts and feelings are worthless.
They don’t do anyone any good. Our thoughts and feelings are only
worth something if they’re translated into actions. Our faith itself is only worth something if
it’s translated into action.
You’ve probably noticed that I often pray for
God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and inspire us. I believe that
God wants to lead us, and guide us, and inspire us. But God leading us
won’t do any good if we don’t follow where God is leading us. God guiding
us won’t help if we don’t go the way God is guiding us to go. God’s inspiration won’t change anything if we
don’t follow up on what God has inspired us to do.
It’s not always easy. It was not always
easy for Joseph. It’s not always easy for you and me, either. It
takes a lot of faith to truly put our lives in God’s hands. It takes a
lot of courage, sometimes, to do the tough things God sometimes asks us to do.
It takes a lot of trust to go wherever God wants us to go, to do whatever
God wants us to do. That’s especially true when as with Joseph—and often
with us—we have no guarantee of what the outcome is going to be.
Joseph followed where God led him.
Joseph went the way God guided him. And these were some incredibly
important things God was leading Joseph to do. Think about it. The
Bible does not tell us anything about Joseph’s background. I mean, it tells us his genealogy, but it
does not tell us if he was old or young, rich or poor, intelligent or
average. But there’s no indication that
Joseph was anyone special or powerful or important. As far as we can tell, Joseph was a fairly
common, ordinary man. And here he was, this common, ordinary man, trying
to protect his family. Protecting the life of the Savior of the world!
And who was he protecting them from? Common, ordinary Joseph, this
one guy, is protecting his family from King Herod! A powerful king with a
big army who would’ve had Joseph killed without even thinking twice about it.
The Bible appears to treat Joseph as an
afterthought. But if you think about what Joseph did, you can see that he
was not an afterthought at all. God chose Joseph to be the earthly father
of Jesus. God put every bit as much thought and care into the selection
of Joseph as God did with the selection of Mary. The obedience of Joseph,
the faith of Joseph, were incredibly important in the story of Jesus.
Joseph’s faith, expressed through his actions, is every bit as amazing as
the faith of Mary.
There are things that God wants you to do.
And there are things God wants me to do, too. We may not always
know what they are, but a lot of times, we do. We probably don’t know our
entire future, just as Joseph did not know his entire future. But a lot
of times, we do know what the next step is that God wants us to take. The
question is what our response would be.
Once Joseph found out the next step, he got up
and did what God wanted him to do. May we have the faith, and the
courage, and the trust, that Joseph had. May we be obedient to God.
May we see what God wants us to do, and may we get up and do it.
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