part 2 "Uncomplicated Christmas"
In the second part of this series, I want us to take a look at Joseph’s part of the story. We find his part of the story in Matthew 1 and we see Joseph wrestle with a really complicated situation.
In Matthew 1:18, Joseph is pledged to be married to Mary. This was the second stage of the marriage process in the times of Jesus. The stages were engagement (which was often arranged by the parents), betrothal (made the engagement binding and could only be broken by divorce and the couple was referred to as husband and wife), and then marriage (after a year of betrothal). [1] This is important to know because Mary and Joseph are said to be husband and wife and engaged at the same time in the Bible.
In the second part of verse 18, Mary found that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Now this news caused some great concern with Joseph. You could that it complicated things just a little bit. This is not news. This is true today as well. So when Joseph found out that his betrothed was pregnant and he knew he didn’t do it, he decided that it was best to seek divorce because Mary had been unfaithful to him. Joseph also didn’t want to make a scene and cause Mary and extra hardship, so he was going to do the divorce quietly.
All of this is just complicated! First, Joseph finds out that the woman he had been with for an unknown number of years, but given the times it can be assumed they were together several years, has possibly cheated on him. Second, he decides that it is best to pursue a divorce and that is never a quiet and easy process. Thirdly, he was faithful to the law, and circumstances like this could expose him to public disgrace as well.
So after Joseph thought about all of this, he had it in his mind that the best thing to do was seek divorce and run away. But what Joseph had in his mind was not going to make things easier, it was only going to make things more complicated. Joseph’s engagement to Mary was known. The engagement wasn’t a secret to everyone. When I proposed to my wife, I recorded the moment and later put it up on Facebook for my friend and family to see. They didn’t have Facebook in Joseph’s time, but these engagements were known. So there was no way that Joseph was going to break this engagement off and no one notice. There were too many people that knew of his engagement to Mary. In the case of my engagement to my wife, if I or we had decided to break off the engagement, there would have been no way to do it in secret. There were too many people that knew we were engaged.
After Joseph had made up his mind to pursue the divorce, he went to sleep. He was then visited by an angel of the Lord in a dream. This was not the same kind of visit by an angel like Zechariah and Mary experienced. This dream came while Joseph had all this stuff on his mind. But he was told in the dream to take Mary as his wife and the baby was to be named Jesus and that the baby was from the Holy Spirit. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel told him to do.
The interesting thing that I find in the little story is the words “he had in mind” (Matthew 1:19). This is where we can get into a lot of trouble sometimes. We get things running in our minds and choose an outcome based on our racing minds. This is what Joseph did. He got all these thoughts running in his mind about the situation he was facing. He was probably thinking about all the possibilities that happened. “Maybe Mary cheated on me. What will people think of me because she’s pregnant? What will people think of her? What will people think of us? What will people think of the whole thing? Maybe it’s best to just file for divorce and put it all behind me?”
Just like Joseph, we can also let our thoughts run away with us. We can look at situations and weigh all the odds and come to the conclusion that we think is best. This is what Joseph did. He processed and came up with what he thought was best.
But sometimes we can forget that God always does what is best and He’s got it all worked out if we trust Him. Joseph didn’t trust the situation at first, but when he realized what God has in store, Joseph realized that it was all God, to begin with. God can do the same for us in our situations if we only trust Him through.
------------------ [1] https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/matthew-1/amp/
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