Christmas Series | What happened to cause Joseph's transformation? (Dec 12) Paul Little

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Welcome everybody.

Second service.

I like the second service people because I'm a second service person.

I don't think anyone should have to get up as early as we get up to come to the early one.

But that's another point.

Welcome.

It's good to have you here.

Socially distant and smiling.

I got a couple of announcements.

So first of all, did you guys know Christmas is coming?

It is.

It's just around the corner.

So, in light of that, December 24th.

What do you do in December 24th?

We want you here with us either at 4 or 6 o'clock.

We are having a special Christmas Eve service.

You can sign up online at redemptionnewmarket.ca.

And uh make sure you sign up.

Sign up your neighbors, your friends, your family.

And we want to fill this place up for both those services.

Now, in light of that, let's talk about Sunday, which I guess is the 26th Boxing Day.

You can come here on Sunday, the 26th, if you want, but we won't be here.

We are not having a service.

So just want to make sure that announcement is out there.

We want you to come and worship and celebrate with us on the 24th of those two services.

We will not be having a service on Boxing Day.

So just a reminder of that.

Another reminder, too, just one quick thing.

We didn't get a chance to put this in the announcement, so that's why I'm up here.

Just in terms of our of our givings, our financial state, the Lord's been good.

And our church has really been protected and provided for financially throughout this pandemic and throughout as ministry continues and people continue to be ministered to and people continue to be called and added to the kingdom.

And that's an amen moment for sure.

But we are we have fallen behind a little bit financially.

So we ask you to just continue to be faithful in your regular ties.

But we also remind you of the opportunity to consider additional giving as our year-end offering was launched a couple of weeks ago.

So our year-end offering, what are we targeting?

We're hoping to have, I don't think we have it up there.

We're hoping to raise$20,000.

On top of our regular of meeting our regular budget requirements, we're looking at raising$20,000.

So one of the places that's going to remember is the Life Center.

And what a better time of year to support single moms with the love of Christ than at Christmas.

It's a sort of foundational part of our story that we're going to talk about today, in particular, as Pastor Paul comes.

But it's a great opportunity.

This is a great ministry right in our town to minister to young single moms, single moms to be in our community with the love of Christ.

And so that's one of the things that our our year-end gift is going towards.

And then the other thing is just to kind of catch up on some capital items.

We are not moving backwards as a church.

We are moving forward.

We are reopening ministries that had been closed down through COVID.

And those are going to require resources in the year and some infrastructure.

So we have some capital expenses to get caught up on.

And so that's some of the things that this special offering is going towards.

Everybody feeling good?

Are we ready to go?

Okay, so it's my pleasure now to bring up Pastor Paul.

Pastor Paul Lettle, he's going to introduce himself a little better than I can do.

But uh, this is a dear brother of ours.

Um spent a long uh ministry in a town not too far away at all, so part of our GCC too.

Amen.

Thanks, Pastor Paul.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm uh I said in the first service that I I spent um 32 years pastoring the Living Hope Church in Georgetown.

Uh we started off as a Christian missionary alliance church, but at some time on their journey, the alliance started to go sideways, and we sort of fought that for a long time, but uh eventually we felt that it was just necessary to get out.

And so we uh we had to buy our church back, which was a real drag.

That was a big challenge financially, but we did, and um and we joined the Great Commission Collective, and so um I'm just thrilled to be here because I I didn't know much about the GCC.

I I I knew a little bit about Oakville Church because my daughter and her husband attend down there, but other than that, I really was kind of in the dark about about the Great Commission Collective.

But we found a home, and our church is just so thrilled to be part of this um this family of churches and to be part of um this fellowship.

And so we're we're excited about that.

And I'm excited to be able to be here this morning and to to break uh the word of God with you and preach it.

So if you would just pray with me as we begin, we'll ask God's blessing on our time together.

Father, I do thank you for your word.

I thank you for how it challenges us and impacts our lives and changes us.

And so I pray, Father, now that you would, by the working of your Holy Spirit, uh be gracious to us and open our minds and hearts to understand the things that are contained in this passage of Scripture, that we might be transformed by it through the working of your spirit.

And we ask, Lord, that the incarnation of Jesus, which we celebrate over this season, would be uh just become real to us again, perhaps more real than it ever has been, and that would temper and influence and impact the way that we live our lives.

So work in us to that end.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So if you're with us last week, we worked through the first 17 chapters of uh Matthew chapter one, and we talked about the genealogy of David, and Matthew's point was to help us to understand, one of his points was to help us understand that Jesus was from the line of David and from the tribe of Judah, which is which is an important thing in his lineage.

Um we saw last week that the actual paternity of Jesus wasn't really dealt with in those 17 verses, and that it's in the next section that we really begin to understand who Jesus' father really is: God Yahweh.

And so, in this passage of scripture that I'm gonna read for you now, we have one of the most breathtaking, startling statements that we're gonna read in all of Scripture.

And it says this when Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

Like that just should cause us to take a huge deep breath and go, my goodness, isn't our faith amazing?

So let me just read this story to you about the paternity, the the uh who the father of our Lord Jesus Christ was, as it's told by Matthew.

Verse 18.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

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.

And she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, Joshua.

For he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took Mary, his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

Without giving us any details, without giving us any specifics, Matthew makes it absolutely clear that God the Spirit, God the Spirit, miraculously accomplished the incarnation of Jesus.

Mary became pregnant by the working of the Holy Spirit.

The second person of the Godhead was conceived in the womb of a young woman, probably 15, 16-year-old.

Mary.

And this is a profound mystery.

It's something that we'll never be able to fully get our heads around, how it happened, how God did this.

But I want to tell you as we begin this morning in this passage of scripture that the virgin birth is the foundation of our faith as Christians.

Without the virgin birth, Christianity crumbles.

The theology of our faith is built upon the premise that Jesus was both God and man.

He was fully God and he was fully human.

He was both human and divine.

But here's the key: his humanity was not a fallen humanity.

Hebrews tells us he was like us in every respect except with this one provisal.

He was without sin.

And what the author of the book of Hebrews is getting at in that passage of scripture is not just that Jesus never sinned, but that he didn't have the capacity.

He didn't have a nature that would incline him or allow him to sin.

He was God in the flesh.

He was divine in every respect, and he was human in every respect, except he did not have a fallen, Adamic sin nature.

He lived a sinful, perfect life, perfectly obeyed the law of God, and as a consequence, two really critical things became possible for Jesus.

One, he was able to offer himself as a sinless, perfect, final, substitutionary sacrifice on the cross on our behalf.

He was the Lamb of God, the perfect, unblemished Lamb of God, who by his death, his substitutionary death, would take away our sin.

God punished Jesus on our behalf.

And secondly, and here's the important thing, another important thing we've got to remember.

Secondly, Jesus was able to give us his righteousness.

You see, Jesus didn't just die for us, Jesus lived for us.

Jesus lived a perfect law-abiding life so that on the cross, he not only took our sin upon himself, but he imputed to us his perfect righteousness.

That's why the Apostle Paul is able to say that right now all of us who trust Jesus are covered over in the righteousness of Christ.

God sees us as righteous and holy as Jesus is, because Christ lived his life for us.

So he died for us and he lived for us so that we could be forgiven and counted holy and righteous, as righteous as Christ is.

God made him who had never known sin to become sin on our behalf, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So today as I stand before you, and believe me, I have sinned this week.

God sees me completely righteous because God's Son's righteous account was given to me when I was saved.

None of that would be possible were it not for the virgin birth of Christ.

Our entire faith is predicated on this principle, this truth, that the Holy Spirit somehow, in ways that we don't understand, impregnated Mary with the second person of the Trinity, Jesus.

Now, obviously, none of that would have made any sense to Joseph at all.

That would have not made any sense to him.

He wouldn't have been able to get his mind around that.

So we know that Joseph was a good and just man.

He was a righteous man, as far as fallen sinful men are concerned.

And he was engaged to Mary.

He was betrothed to her.

Back then, in the first century Jewish culture, betrothal was even more of a permanent relationship than engagement is today.

You were as good as married, except that you just hadn't consummated the relationship yet.

And a betrothed couple would have a celebration of their betrothal.

They'd live apart as married people until they consummated the relationship, usually about a year later after their betrothal.

It was a legally binding relationship that you couldn't get out of except through divorce.

At some time during that year of their betrothal, Mary comes to Jesus, Mary comes to Joseph and says to Joseph, I'm pregnant.

And she explains to Joseph what we read in Luke chapter 1, verses 30 and following.

Luke 1:30

Gabriel came to her, she was living in Nazareth at the time.

Gabriel comes to her and says, You have found favor with God.

You were going to be the mother of Emmanuel.

You are the virgin that Isaiah has spoken about.

And so she comes, she's pregnant, she comes to Joseph and she says, Joseph, I'm expecting a child.

And Joseph obviously doesn't believe her.

She says, I have been made pregnant by God.

And he just simply says, I don't believe it.

And so he decides to put her away secretly, meaning just to have a very quiet divorce.

Let's just try not to make this too public.

I don't want you to be shamed, Mary, but I can't marry you.

I was intending to marry a virgin, and we're not getting married.

So, in order to prevent Joseph from doing what he had intended to do, God sent an angel, and while Joseph was asleep, God revealed to him what he needed to understand.

He needed to know that what Mary had told him was in fact reality.

He needed to understand that God was at work in Mary's body in order to bring the Messiah into this world.

This revelation that the angel gave to Joseph in his dream radically altered his life.

It completely changed the course and the direction of his life.

And the same is true of us as believers.

When we understand the incarnation of Jesus, when it grips us, when we get it, it can't but radically change our lives.

Now, a lot of people can understand the theology of the incarnation.

You can understand it in your head and not be transformed by it.

I think sometimes a lot of Christians are in that situation.

But when the incarnation genuinely goes through the brain and grips our hearts, when we really begin to understand what God did in becoming a man, we can't but be changed.

I think for many Christmases now, I've probably said this to my congregation, well, what used to be my congregation.

I would say something like this the second coming of Jesus will be amazing, it will be wonderful, it will be glorious, it will be breathtaking, it will be awesome, but it will not compare.

As a matter of fact, it can it pales in comparison to what Jesus did at the incarnation.

His first coming is so spectacular, so breathtaking, that there is nothing in all of history that can compare with it.

Think about what happened.

The one who spoke creation into existence, the one whose very word put all of the planets out in space, the billions and billions and trillions of them, the stars.

That one was conceived in the womb of Mary.

He was born in Bethlehem.

He walked the earth for 30 years, perfectly and sinlessly.

He fulfilled the law of God absolutely.

And he went to the cross for you and me.

And when he comes again, he will still be the God man.

With holes in his hands and holes in his feet and a hole in his side.

He will forever, forever be God with us in the flesh.

Like that is breathtaking.

And when that grips us, as it gripped Joseph that day, although he didn't understand all the implications, he didn't understand everything.

But when it grips us as it gripped him, it's got to change our lives.

It's got to radically change how we think, how we behave, how we lead our lives.

So I want to show you what happened to Joseph.

Four very simple things that I believe the incarnation has done and needs to do for us.

And the first thing is this for Joseph, skepticism became sight.

He went from an unbeliever to a believer, essentially.

So I have no doubt that Mary came to Joseph and told him everything that the angel Gabriel had told her.

She talked about her experience.

She talked to him that and she said, Joseph, I have not been unfaithful to you.

And I'm sure with tears begged him to believe her.

Now Joseph couldn't.

He didn't.

I'm sure she told him the power, the angel told me that the Spirit of God will come upon me, and the power of the Most High will overshadow me, and I will become pregnant with God.

And she'd experienced that, and now here she is, a 15, 16-year-old young woman wrestling with this reality.

And the one that she loves simply can't believe.

I don't blame Joseph.

It's been a long time since I was engaged, but if Cindy had come to me 30 some odd years ago and said to me, Paul, I'm pregnant a little while before our marriage, I would have had a really hard time accepting that.

Because I know how children are made, like Joseph.

We understand this.

And you might say, sort of with the with the hindsight that we have and the theological perspective that we have, you know, 20 centuries later.

But didn't Joseph know the prophecy in Isaiah 7?

That a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he will call his name Emmanuel, God with us?

Didn't he know that was a prophecy?

Didn't he know chapter 9 about a son will be given to us and the government rest on his shoulders?

Micah chapter 5, verse 2 about this ruler who is coming from outside of time, from eternity into sp into space and time.

Micah 5:2

Didn't Joseph know all those things?

Didn't Joseph have it right there in black and white?

What was wrong with that guy?

Why was he such a nasty fiance to marry?

Joseph knew for sure that the Messiah had coming.

He had the story in black and white.

He would have heard it in the synagogue, but he couldn't believe.

And in that respect, he is exactly the same as us.

So what did God do for Joseph?

God opened his eyes, God revealed the truth.

He took him graciously from being a skeptic to a believer.

He went from skepticism to sight.

And you know, that's exactly what God has to do for us.

We have to move.

We've got to come to that place where we believe.

Really understand and truly appreciate what God has done.

And I'm here preaching today, and I believe you're sitting there listening today because God has done that miracle in your heart, in your life.

There was a time when you were skeptical.

Although you had it in black and white, you may have had a Bible sitting on your shelf at home.

And you could have read it.

You could have read the story about Jesus, his incarnation, his life, death, resurrection.

You could have read it all, but you looked at it askance.

I don't believe that.

That's crazy.

That's irrational.

People don't come back from the dead, people don't walk on water, people don't do miracles, people don't touch lepers and make them well.

That is irrational.

I've read Dawkins, I've listened to Christopher Hitchens, and I've listened to all these guys, and suddenly, suddenly, out of the blue, here you are believing what is fundamentally preposterous.

You're accepting as true what is really unbelievable.

So how do you go?

How did Joseph go from unbelief to belief?

From skepticism to sight?

How did you do it?

How did you get here?

How did I get here?

It's only one answer to that question, and that is the working of the Spirit of God.

See, we're all like Joseph, we're all skeptical, we're all unbelievers, even though we have it in black and white.

By nature, we are programmed to reject the truth.

It's who we are in our fallen state.

Paul's diagnosis of our condition is most succinctly presented in, although he says it over and over and over again.

But in 1 Corinthians 2, 14, he says this the natural person, meaning the unsaved, the unregenerate person, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.

Mary says, I am pregnant.

God has done a miracle in my body.

Joseph, in his natural state, said, That is stupid, Mary.

I can't believe that.

That's us.

It is folly to him.

And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned, spiritually understood.

Without revelation, without the intervention of God, both Joseph and you and I would be blind to the truth today.

But God in his mercy has intervened.

God in his grace has given us sight.

He has eradicated our skepticism and given us belief by grace.

Think about the conversion of the Apostle Paul.

It's exactly the kind of same thing that happens.

The Apostle Paul had the story of the gospel in black and white.

The Old Testament points to Jesus.

There isn't a chapter in the Old Testament that doesn't point forward somehow to the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He had it.

He was a Pharisee, he had it memorized, and yet he couldn't see.

He was blind.

So the church begins.

The Spirit of God rushes into that mighty, like a mighty rushing wind, to that upper room, and the gospel begins to be preached, and the church begins to grow.

And Paul says, I've got to crush this thing.

I've got to destroy this thing.

I've got to put an end to this fledgling church.

And so he's given letters by the chief priest to go to Damascus and arrest Christians.

He threw stones and participated, well, he watched them throwing stones and participated in the murder of Stephen because he hated Jesus, he hated the gospel, and he hated the church.

And there he is on the road to Damascus.

And I've kind of walked that road a couple of times now.

And somewhere on that road between Jerusalem and Damascus, the same thing, the same thing that happened to Joseph happened to the Apostle Paul.

The amazing grace of God burst into his life, and where before, in a moment he couldn't see, in an instant he was able to see.

And he said, Lord, I don't know.

I just know you're Lord.

You're the Lord.

And his life was radically changed.

Think about the first two chapters of the book of Ephesians.

If we had more time, I'd take you there.

But someday go to the do this afternoon.

Go to the first chapter of the book of Ephesians and circle all the pronouns that refer to God.

He just begins by talking about He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, right?

That we would be holy and blameless in love.

He predestined us to adoption the sons.

And it just goes, oh, He did this, God did this, God did this, God did this, God did this.

And the whole chapter is this beautiful, magnificent story about what God has done to redeem people like you and me.

And then you get to chapter two, and it is a huge come down.

Because Paul says to the Ephesians, but as for you, you can almost hear him say, as for you, clowns, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, you bunch of losers.

Like you were dead.

But when you were dead, because of his great mercy that he has for you, because of his love for you, when you were dead, God made you alive.

God quickened you.

God poured his spirit into you.

He flooded you with light.

He opened your eyes.

He did a miracle that brought you from death to life.

And whereas before you were skeptical and couldn't see, now you see and you believe.

You see, that's what happens.

That's what God has done in our lives if we're Christians.

And if that hasn't happened in your life, pray.

Ask God, open your heart to believe, to see, to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that what the scriptures say is true.

And when that happens, you'll begin to read about the incarnation and it will take your breath away.

You begin to understand the gospel and it will be overwhelming.

And I think that's what happened to Joseph because the next thing is to ask yourselves the question well, what did Joseph see?

What was it that he understood?

So the angel is speaking to Joseph in the dream, and in verse 20 or 21, it says this.

Mary is going to bear a son, Joseph, and you will call his name Yeshua.

Jesus, Joshua.

And I think, stop there right there if you're looking, following along, we just want to stop there.

And I think that would have made perfect sense to Joseph as he is thinking about what the angel is sort of downloading into his mind.

Jesus or Joshua or Yeshua was a very, very popular name amongst first century Jews because Joshua was a hero to the Jews.

He had lived a thousand years before this, more than that.

And he had led the people of Israel after Moses out of the wilderness into the promised land.

He had led the conquest of Canaan, and he was one of those sort of those superheroes of the Jewish people.

And so you're thinking about a name for your son?

Well, let's call him Yeshua, Jesus, because this guy is the savior of his people.

And I have a hunch, and this is just my opinion here, but I have a hunch that when the angel was speaking, Joseph's mind may have gone ahead.

And when he was expecting the angel to say something like this Mary will have a son, and he will save his people from the Romans is what Joseph would have thought.

Because that's what everybody thought.

That's what salvation was all about.

That was what the Messiah was supposed to do, wasn't it?

Israel had lived under the heel of Roman tyranny for so long.

The exile, as I said last week, really wasn't over.

The Spirit of God hadn't come rushing back.

The throne of David wasn't filled with a godly Jewish king.

We're waiting for the Messiah who will come and free Israel from its political bondage and reestablish the throne of David forever.

That's what Joseph would have expected the angel to say, 150%.

So when the angel said, and name him Jesus, this champion, because he is going to save his people from their sins, he'd kind of gone like, hold it a second, their sins?

Their sins?

Not the Romans?

Their sins?

But I think in that moment, for Joseph, the nature of salvation changed.

It went from a political, earthly deliverance to a freedom from sin, the penalty and the power of sin.

Joseph died sometime between Jesus' 12th year and his 27th year.

We don't know when in that period of time.

But Joseph didn't live to see what happened on the cross.

He didn't live to see the resurrection of Jesus.

He didn't live to see the great, amazing work that Jesus accomplished on the cross.

But he did know this.

He knew, like the thief on the cross, that Jesus was the Savior and that he would save him from his sins.

He would save him from the penalty of his sins.

And therefore he died with a hope and a confidence.

Now there's a lot of people today who kind of co-opt Jesus and redefine him and the work that he came to accomplish.

A lot of people, like liberation theologians, will tell you that Jesus' ministry was all about liberating people from tyranny and political oppression.

Other people will tell you that Jesus was about liberating us from ourselves.

And he gave us a great example how to live, a moral and ethical example about how we should live our lives.

And that's what Jesus came to accomplish.

Others will teach us that he came to be the savior of the poor, that he came to love and care for and minister to the disenfranchised and the downtrodden.

And if you want to be a good Christian this Christmas, give money to people who need help.

Now, there's probably truth in all of that and the various other ways that Jesus and his ministry is co-op as being co-opted to be understood as.

But here's my point.

All of that is ancillary, all of that is secondary.

All of that comes after this one fundamental truth.

That the bullseye of the gospel is this: that Jesus came to save us from our sins.

And Joseph understood that.

Joseph understood that.

And if the Jesus that we worship at Christmas does not deal with the issue of sin, then we are not worshiping the Jesus that Joseph held in his arms.

Because the Jesus that Joseph held in his arms 2,000 years ago was what Paul refers to as the second Adam.

The second Adam.

We know when we read the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15 particularly, but other places in the New Testament, Paul's writings, that Jesus essentially, in order to save us from our sins, retraced the steps of the first Adam and undid the damage caused by the first Adam.

So think about this with me for a second.

That little baby that was conceived in the womb of Mary, that grew up to be a man, was the second Adam to undo the damage by his obedience that the disobedience of the first Adam caused.

So here we have Adam in the garden with Eve.

And Satan tempts Eve, and Eve is entirely deceived by this serpent.

But Adam, his eyes are wide open, fully cognizant of what is going on, chooses to rebel against God.

And as a consequence of Adam's sin, sin flooded our world and creation fell.

As a consequence of Adam's sin, although God was gracious, and we see that in Genesis, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden.

And their children were born with a fallen nature and were subject to the ravages of sin all their lives.

And their children were born with a fallen nature, separated from God, subject to the ravages of sin all of their lives.

From generation to generation to generation, it continued until one man came who wasn't born with an adamic nature.

The man Jesus.

John baptized him, and the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God descended, and they heard the voice of God saying, This is my beloved son, my son.

Listen to him.

And instantly he was taken out into the wilderness, further out into the wilderness, because the Judean, the Jordan River is out in the wilderness.

He was taken further out into the wilderness, and there he had a confrontation with Satan.

And Satan tried to do to him what he had done to the first Adam.

And Jesus won a victory and began a journey, a three-year journey, constantly being bombarded by Satan and resisting him, that led him to a garden, the garden of Gethsemane, where Satan tempted him again.

And he sweat drops of blood, and he said, Father, if there's any way that this cup can pass from me, please.

Because he knew what was about to happen.

But he made a decision in that garden that was diametrically opposed to the decision that the first Adam had made.

He chose to obey God on our behalf.

And as Adam's sin damned us, Christ's obedience saved us from our sin.

And he went to the cross, and God poured out his wrath on his son.

And he gave Jesus, gave us his righteousness.

And in that moment, redemption was accomplished because of what the second Adam did, because of his obedience.

Did Adam know all that?

No.

But he knew that Jesus would save him from his sins.

And that's what Jesus did to save his dad, and to save me, and to save you, if you'll simply trust him.

And so, like Joseph, we can die in hope.

We can die confidently.

We can die boldly.

We can live boldly and we can die boldly.

We can die well because we know that death is not the end.

Our sins have been dealt with.

And God in his grace has delivered us today from the power of sin, from the penalty of sin.

And one day, at the moment of our death, he will deliver us from the presence of sin eternally.

And we can look forward to that with great joy.

He will give us a glorious body like Christ's glorious body.

And we will be in heaven with him forever because God became a man and dwelt among us.

Because God went to the cross, the second Adam did what the first Adam didn't do.

I told the story in the first service, and I got kind of emotional.

I don't think I'm getting emotional here, but this past Thursday marked the death of my best friend.

Guy led to the Lord back in way in the early 90s.

Came to our church.

He was a businessman.

His name was Bob.

In time I mentored him, discipled him.

He became an elder.

In time he became a pastor on our staff.

I would, my approach was to raise people up from within the church, train them, and then sort of send them out.

And so Bob went to Alliston in about 2000 to be a pastor there.

And he served there for nine years.

And then he came back and he joined our staff, and he was in charge of our seniors' ministry and outreach ministry.

And he was just such a blessing in my life.

Three years ago, I went to the doctor, wasn't feeling great.

The doctor told him that he had late-stage prostate cancer, about a year to live.

And so it was he died on December the 9th.

That was a Monday.

The previous Friday, Cindy and I went to the hospital in Brampton fairly late at night.

He's in the emergency.

He's conscious, we're talking, we're holding hands.

And I'm praying with him.

And uh he looks at me and he says, Paul, don't weep?

Don't weep.

He said, I was saved for today.

I was saved for this moment.

I can face it.

Because I know where I'm going.

It was a very, very emotional time for his whole family and for myself and for Cindy.

I did the funeral.

He died on Monday.

I did the funeral on Thursday.

Did the wedding rehearsal for his daughter on Friday, and I had the wedding on Saturday.

In 30, close to 40 years of ministry, I've never had anything like that.

But the entire funeral, wedding rehearsal, wedding celebration was infused, like it was just alive with hope, undergirding the grief that we all felt.

And still feel.

Still feel.

Because he's not dead.

He's alive because of the incarnation.

Because of what Jesus has done.

Because of what the second Adam accomplished on the cross, because of his obedience.

Bob is with the Lord.

That's the joy of the incarnation.

That's the joy.

We celebrate the cradle, but you gotta have superimposed over the cradle a bloody cross.

Always because the two go hand in hand.

You can't separate them.

Okay, it's just the weirdest thing.

The older I get, the more emotional I get.

I watch commercials for like uh whatever, and I just burst into tears.

I think my wife thinks I got a brain tumor or something.

Anyway, okay, let's move on.

Thirdly, that's secondly, national salvation became personal.

Thirdly, the mundane was filled with meaning.

So I'm sure that when Joseph woke up, he would have thought exactly what Matthew wrote here.

The virgin will be with child and it will bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, God with us.

That's exactly what Mary told me had happened, and I didn't believe her.

Now I believe.

I get it.

I see what God's doing.

God with us.

There can be little doubt that Joseph, again, who was who was a very, very religious first-century Jew, would have gone to the synagogue regularly, would have had these passages of scriptures read to him.

One of the great prophecies of Israel was found in chapter 9, just two chapters after that 714 passage, where the prophet said, talked about a day when a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, his name will be wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, father of eternity, and prince of peace.

Of the end, and the government will rest upon his shoulders, and there will be no end to the increase of his kingdom or to peace that he establishes in our world.

And the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish all of this.

And I'm sure that as Joseph sat there contemplating the dream, contemplating everything that Mary had spoken to him, he was stunned with the realization that he, little old Joseph, little old Joseph from Nazareth, was smack dabbed right in the middle, the bullseye of God's redemptive plan of history.

I'm sure he was blown away by the thought that the child that Mary was now carrying was the central focus of all Old Testament prophecy.

That she was carrying the Messiah, Joshua.

And when he realized that, when Joseph got that, when he understood what the incarnation meant, suddenly his life was flooded with meaning.

When Joseph realized who Jesus was to be, at that same moment he came to realize who he was to be.

And the same is true of us.

The incarnation defined Joseph.

It gave him purpose, it gave him meaning, it gave him calling, it gave him a reason to get up in the morning.

But here's the thing I want you to know.

The story of redemptive history that Joseph found himself smack dab in the middle of is continuing.

It's continuing, it's still going on.

God is still doing his work in this world.

He is still building his church.

He is still saving the lost.

He is still pushing back the gates of hell.

He is still liberating people from the dominion of darkness.

He is still at work.

And he will continue to work until the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea, until he comes back again to be worshipped and acknowledged by every human being who.

Has ever lived.

The thing is, we are in the center of God's redemptive plan for history.

You, little old me, each of us have a calling placed on our lives.

And our lives are flooded with meaning as a consequence of that.

If you understand the incarnation, we're part of the same story.

And as the Messiah defined the purpose of Joseph's life from that moment on, the incarnation of Jesus defines our purpose.

Or at least it should, if we get the incarnation.

You see, God located Joseph in his story, and it gave him a purpose for the rest of his earthly journey.

But I want you to notice this, and this is important.

Joseph's role didn't change.

Joseph's role didn't change.

He was still a carpenter.

He still got up every day and he would look in the crib.

There's Jesus.

He put on his overalls, he grabbed his hammer and his saw, and he went off to work.

Like he had, you know, the blue overalls.

It said Joseph, right here.

Take his lunch pail with him, just a blue-collar guy looking after the Messiah.

Make him home at five o'clock.

Hey, honey, I'm home.

What's for dinner?

Meatloaf.

Okay.

Again?

Okay.

Just a blue-collar guy.

And the point is this: it's not what he did that gave his life meaning.

It's who he did it for.

A lot of us think, you know, if I'm going to serve the Lord and if my life has got to have meaning, and if I'm going to find a purpose in God's redemptive history, then I got to preach sermons, or I've got to go to the mission field, or I've got to do something spectacular for the Lord.

And the Lord just says, bloom where you're planning.

You're a student, be there for me.

You go to work in the factory, be there for me.

You're looking after four kids at home and you're pulling your hair out, be there for me, mom.

Just do what the Lord calls you to do with all your heart and do it to his glory.

And watch what God will do.

Let that be the meaning of your life, that you serve the King of kings and the Lord of Lords.

You find purpose in the mundane, you find meaning in the mundane, because this is what God has called you to.

And God uses it.

So, like the apostle says, whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for his glory.

And we can do that when we understand the incarnation.

That God became a man, that he is here with us by his spirit, that he is pushing back the gates of hell, that he is crushing Satan's head still.

That nothing can stop him.

The gospel is the most powerful force in the universe, and it doesn't need a preacher to tell it.

You can sit there and share it with your kids.

You can share it with somebody at work.

You can share it on a Zoom meeting.

He can just talk about Jesus and the Spirit of God takes skeptics and makes them see.

It's an amazing thing.

And you give honor and glory to him for what he does through us.

It's an amazing thing.

But lastly and quickly, the fourth thing in Joseph's life is that desire or passions gave way to duty.

So what does Joseph do?

He does what the angel tells him to do.

He gets busy being Joseph, Jesus' dad.

Ultimately, like he moves in with Mary.

They start, they're just together, a little family.

Everybody's talking about them now because she's pregnant and they've obviously just gotten together, but they go to Bethlehem because there's a census.

Herod wants to kill all the babies all of a sudden.

They're down in Egypt, and there's Joseph caring for his son.

Comes back to Egypt, set up home in Nazareth, and there they are.

And Joseph is raising his son.

But I find it fascinating that twice in this passage, once at the beginning and once at the end, Matthew alludes to and then says openly, Joseph did not know Mary until they were, until Jesus was born.

He did not have a sexual relationship with her until Jesus was born.

Matthew takes pains to tell us this the question we've got to ask ourselves is why?

It's important to say that twice, why?

Well, the answer is the reputation of Jesus.

Jesus was known to be born of a virgin.

He was scoffed at and mocked at, and people made fun of the fact that he claimed that, but that's who he was.

And Joseph knew that if he had had a sexual relationship with Mary, even after they were married, living together as husband and wife, before Jesus was born, he could besmirch or sully the claim of Jesus to be a virgin, to be born of a virgin.

And so, although it would have been perfectly legitimate and natural and normal for Joseph to fulfill his passion and have a sexual relationship with his wife, it would have been completely legitimate and appropriate for him to do that because of the reputation of Jesus, he chose to put duty over desire.

I don't think there's anything more natural, anything more normal than a young husband wanting to consummate his relationship with his bride on their wedding night.

It is the most appropriate, the most beautiful thing.

But despite the fact that it was a legitimate desire, Joseph said no.

For the sake, for the honor, for the glory, for the reputation of Jesus, I will say no to what is legitimate.

How many of us say yes to what is illegitimate and by our behavior sully the name of Jesus and bring dishonor to him?

How many of us live in such a way as to deny the gospel by how we live our lives and bring shame on Jesus because we choose to allow passion and desire to trump duty?

Joseph is an exemplary man, a godly man.

And we need to follow his example.

We can never forget that we individually and we corporately, Redemption New Market, represent Jesus in our community, on our street, in the place we work.

If you claim the name of Jesus, people will look at you and make a judgment about Christ.

Either it will enhance him and bring him honor and glory and perhaps lead to their salvation, or it will convince them that their skepticism is in fact true.

That we are a bunch of hypocrites.

If there's anything that the incarnation says to us, is it says that we need to take the reputation of Jesus seriously and live in such a way as to bring him honor and glory and praise.

Now, this is not easy.

It's all very difficult.

And sometimes we can be overwhelmed by our desires.

Sometimes our sin gets the better of us.

And that's why we celebrate communion.

I want to take a few seconds.

And just if you have your communion cup with you, I want you to open it.

If you don't have one, can I just see your hands?

If you need one, a couple over here, thank you.

I want you to open the top layer.

Oops, I just opened both of them by accident.

Open the top layer, and I want you to take that little piece of wafer, and I want you to touch it.

And I want you to think of it as substantive.

It's not theoretical.

You're holding something genuine and real.

And it represents to us the living presence of Jesus with us.

Now let me really be careful.

This is not Jesus.

We don't believe in transubstantiation.

It's a symbol of his dynamic living presence in the room with us.

John Calvin used to say that God is never more present with his people than at communion.

So I want to tell you, because of the incarnation, Jesus Christ is here right now.

And he is here to strengthen and to enable and to empower us.

That's why he gave us a piece of bread and not some other symbol.

So when I told the first service this morning, I'm going to go home after this because I'm tired.

When you're 64 and you preach two sermons and you have a bad hip, that's why I was sitting over there, not standing during the worship.

You get tired.

And I'm going to go home and I'm going to make myself a pizza.

I've decided.

I'm going to sit down and I'm going to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers thrash the Buffalo Bills, which is going to be so heartbreaking, but it's going to happen.

You can pray for a miracle, but I'm going to watch football, I'm going to eat the pizza.

And you know what that pizza is going to do?

It's going to strengthen me.

It's going to revitalize me.

It's going to energize me.

It's going to give me strength.

That's what this is about, folks.

That's why he said, take, hold it, because I'm the bread of life.

And when you're weak, I'm there for you.

And when you lack strength, I am your resource.

And when you don't think you can go on, feed on me.

You see, I believe that when we do communion, Jesus is here for us, and he is a reservoir of righteousness.

He doesn't just forgive us for our sins, he empowers us to live above them.

And that's why we do it regularly.

We do it all the time because we need him every single day.

So I want to pray for you.

And we're going to take this in a second, but I want you to think about that challenge, that struggle, that thing that you do that besmirches the name of Jesus, that robs him of glory.

And I want you to say, Lord, I need to change, I need to grow, I need to be different.

Can you, by your grace, give me strength and help me to be a different man, a different woman, a different kid?

And if the gospel is true, if the incarnation is real, then he's here.

And he will give you off his strength, his enabling grace.

Because when we talk about our weaknesses and our inabilities and our frailties, we know that his strength is made perfect in that place, right?

So I want to pray for you, but you tell him where you need his strength.

And let his, let the resource that he is, the reservoir of righteousness of him, let him just flood into your life.

And let's be changed together by the presence and the power of the incarnate Son of God with us.

Lord, we don't understand the mystery of communion, but we do know that you are here with us right now by your spirit.

The one who resisted every temptation, the one who called himself the bread of life is to help, is here to help people like me who fall on my face all the time, who wrestle with the flesh and with the devil, who struggle with sin.

Lord, I need you.

I know that my brothers and sisters gathered here need you.

We need to know your strength made perfect in our weakness.

And so, Lord, I'm thankful that you gave us a symbol, a tactile symbol that we can hold in our hands and feel that represents your living presence with us.

And so I pray that in a few moments as we take this bread that you would answer our prayers.

That you would fill us with your holiness and your righteousness, and that we would be different people as a consequence of the transaction that you're going to do in our souls right now.

Lord, I thank you that the night that you were betrayed, you took bread and you broke it.

And you gave it to your disciples, and they handled it.

You told them what to take and eat.

And do this in remembrance.

Remembrance of the fact that you are not dead, you are alive.

You are with us.

So demonstrate your reality to us now, I pray, as you change us as we take this bread and eat it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Father, I just thank you so much that you vented your wrath on your Son.

In order that you might be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.

I thank you that you have given us peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That there is now no condemnation, no matter how many times we messed up this week.

There is no condemnation for that man, that woman, that young person who is in Christ.

And that, Lord, I just thank you so much for that.

I thank you that your heart is for us.

That it can't change.

That you see us covered over in the righteousness of Christ and you love us with a passion that all eternity will never, and all eternity will never be able to understand.

So in a second, Lord, as we drink this cup, I just pray that you would draw us to yourself, welcome us to you.

Help us to remember again that your love for us and our relationship with you is not predicated upon our behavior but on the finished work of Calvary, which ultimately tempers and controls how we live our lives.

So I thank you for that.

In Jesus' name.

After supper, he took the cup and he said, This cup is a new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's do this together.

Amen.

So my prayer is that we will each of us leave here together today with a passion to bring honor and glory to Jesus.

We'll pray for one another, encourage one another to do that.

And I want you to know that as you go, that not only are you deeply loved by the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, with an eternal, unchangeable love that nothing can shake ever.

Nothing in all eternity.

Heaven, hell, nothing in heaven or hell or under the earth can change that.

And know too that you're in a group of people that love you.

So go knowing that, that you are loved.

God bless you.