After a few days off, it’s good to be back. The Advent season is a time for preparing for the arrival of Jesus into our world and into our lives. For the next few weeks, as we take part in the preparation, we are going to spend some time looking at the stories of Jesus’ arrival. When Jesus arrived, heaven met earth in a way that left earth forever changed for the good. These classic stories give us some insight on how that happened. They may be familiar, but there is nonetheless great wisdom here if we will have it. Let’s get started with Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth and see what the Spirit has to say through it.

For Our Good

Many of you know that I enjoy building metal models. They are all over my office. I think what I enjoy most is following instructions carefully and winding up with a neat-looking finished product in the end. There are enough things in this world that don’t have nice, neat endings where you can see and physically hold in your hand the results of your work. These metal models give you just that. And these days, the more complex they are, the more fun they are. I think my last model had somewhere near 200 pieces and 8 double-sided pages of instructions. That felt good to finish. 

In any event, the instructions for these models are really detailed. Given what you are doing, they have to be. They are also really specific. Everything starts as a flat piece of laser-cut steel. The various parts and pieces have to be bent and folded in incredibly specific ways if the whole thing is going to go together properly to create the finished product. Occasionally, though, the instructions will call for something to be folded or rounded in a very specific way that doesn’t make a lot of sense at the time. It could be folded in a couple of different ways and still fit in its spot, but the instructions call for just one. As much as it may not make sense at the time—and you’ve got to be paying careful attention so you don’t miss what you are supposed to do—doing it that way will make it possible to do further assembling later on in the building process. At that point, everything starts to click. 

Well, this morning we are officially entering the season of Advent. Advent season can be tough for preachers. There’s just a single set of stories that serve as the foundation for the whole thing, and how do you say something fresh about those same stories year after year? As a result, sometimes we try to get creative. We explore different parts of the Scriptures in order to see how that central story is informed by and informs the rest of the story of Scripture. Admittedly, sometimes we get too creative and have to rein it back in a bit. For the last couple of years, we’ve been taking the more creative approach, hopping around a bit from place to place, seeing what we can see. As much fun as that is, though, it is good to get back to the basics and refamiliarize ourselves with the foundation for all our storytelling. This year, we are going to dive right into the stories of Jesus’ birth. All of them. Even perhaps one you didn’t know was even there. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out what that one is. 

When Jesus came to earth, it wasn’t simply that a baby was born who would bring us salvation. The great King of Heaven was leaving His throne and coming to dwell among us as one of us. In Jesus’ birth, heaven met earth in a way that had never happened before, and hasn’t happened again since. When heaven met earth, everything changed. I want to spend the next few weeks with you looking at why and how in a new teaching series called, When Heaven Met Earth. 

This morning we are going to start right at the beginning because, as Julie Andrews reminded us, that is a very good place to start. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way with me to the very beginning of the New Testament. Let’s take a look today at what Matthew has to say about the birth of Jesus. 

Matthew’s Gospel actually does not open with Jesus’ birth. Knowing the beliefs and expectations and worldview of his primarily Jewish-background audience, Matthew starts with a genealogy to establish Jesus as the Son of David. Every Jew knew that the Messiah was going to be in the line of David. So, Matthew clarifies that out of the gate. Genealogies like this seem boring to us, but for Matthew’s first audience, these names were the chance to tell exciting stories that defined their family history. But eventually it was time to get to the task at hand. Look at this with me in Matthew 1:18. 

“The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way: After his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.” Jesus was born into scandal. Everything about Jesus’ birth invited suspicion and doubt. It made His parents’ lives apart and life together vastly more difficult than it might have otherwise been. And Joseph, for his part, initially wasn’t interested. “So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.”

Let’s be clear that Joseph could have done a lot more than this. All appearances suggested that Mary had been unfaithful. It looked like she was guilty not only of a moral failing, but a legal offense. What my translation calls an engagement for the sake of cultural understanding was actually a betrothal. This was like our engagement, but stronger. It was a legal contract, the violation of which carried legal penalties. Joseph could have vindictively pulled the trigger on all of these. He could have ruined Mary’s life, preserving his own reputation in the process. But he was a righteous man. He strove to do what was right by God and by people. Because of that, while he couldn’t fathom actually being married to a woman who had been unfaithful to him before they were even legally married, he also didn’t want to subject her or her family to unnecessary relational shame. 

He was justified in his actions, but he was also wrong. So God stepped in to keep things on the track He wanted them to run. “But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save people from their sins.’” In other words, “Joseph, listen to your bride because she really does know what she’s talking about.” There’s some pretty broad wisdom to that idea, but we won’t explore that any further right now. The thing God was calling Joseph to do didn’t make any sense from a human standpoint. But His promise was that good was going to come from it if Joseph was only willing to trust Him. 

At this point, Matthew breaks into the story with an editorial note. He wanted his audience to understand that Jesus wasn’t just special. He was the fulfillment of prophecy. He was the Messiah God had long promised to send to His people. He was God’s plan to be with us in a way He had never been able to be with us before. Verse 22 now: “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel,’ which is translated ‘God is with us.’” God wasn’t acting in some way that was new or different in sending Jesus for us. He was doing exactly what He had long promised to do. His actions were fully consistent with what His character and clearly expressed intentions. 

And much to his credit, even though the practical pursuit of what God was telling Joseph to do wasn’t going to be any easier, Joseph listened and obeyed. He did what God told him to do. “When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married her but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. And he named him Jesus.” God’s plans still didn’t make a lot of sense as far as what Joseph could actually see, but he was willing to follow. And following makes all the difference. 

So, that’s the story of Jesus’ birth as far as Matthew tells it. That’s how heaven met earth. What are we supposed to actually do with this, though? You’ve heard it before. I’ve preached it before. How is this not just a rerun, even if it happens to be one of our favorite episodes? Now perhaps you see the preacher’s dilemma I mentioned before. But here’s the thing about the Scriptures that we have to keep in mind if we want our times in them to be fruitful: This is God’s word. As the apostle Paul reminded us, we aren’t going to be able to make a bit of positive sense out of it without the direct and abiding help of His Spirit guiding us through that process. Without Him, then, we were wasting our time from the start. With Him, even the most familiar of texts can reveal new insights. This is because these insights are not coming from us, and they are not coming first from the text (even though they are directly derived from the text and will never, ever contradict the text). They are coming from God’s Spirit. This is the same Spirit Jesus assured us would come in His absence, remind us of everything He said, and lead us into all wisdom. If we are going to get anything new or fresh out of any text, it’s going to be because God’s Spirit directs us to it. 

That all being said, let me direct your attention to something I hadn’t noticed before as I have been studying this passage over the past couple of weeks. Look back with me at vv. 20-21. Joseph had just discovered Mary’s pregnancy, and had resolved to deal with it firmly, but quietly. He was going to divorce her, letting her out of any legal obligations she had to him, and getting himself out of any he had to her. “But after he had considered these things”—that is, after he had made up his mind to move forward in this direction—“an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’” 

So, think about this for just a second. Do you suspect what God was telling Joseph to do made any more sense after the angel’s visit than it did before? I doubt it. The facts on the ground were unchanged. His bride-to-be was still pregnant, and they were still not married. And they didn’t take the page out of the modern playbook of, “Oh, we’ll just sleep together even though we’re not married because we’re going to be married one day and what’s the real harm?” God didn’t design it to work like that on purpose. And, yes, the angel assured Joseph that Mary’s pregnancy really was from the Holy Spirit, but given the complete absence of any context for this sort of thing ever happening before in the whole history of humanity, it was still a pretty tough sell. 

But then there was that last part. After giving Joseph a super early gender reveal, he was told the name he was to give to his son. He was to call the boy, Jesus. That’s Yeshua in Hebrew, which is also rendered in English as Joshua, and means, “Yahweh saves.” Joseph was to name his son, “Yahweh saves,” because “he will save his people from their sins.” This was Messianic language. That may not seem like such a huge deal to us, but it was an incredibly big deal in that day. The angel essentially told Joseph that this child was going to be the Messiah. The long-awaited Messiah was finally coming, and Joseph was going to be His step-father. The long-awaited Messiah was finally coming, and that meant salvation from sin for all of His people. 

God’s plan as far as Joseph understood it still didn’t make a whole lot of sense. There were no doubt so very many questions Joseph wanted to ask. But His plan was nonetheless for our good; it was for the good of everybody. And so Joseph said yes. How often are we in the same sort of place today? God’s plans as they unfold before us don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Keep in mind that if we were in Joseph’s shoes we would almost certainly be thinking—and having others assure us of the same thing—that being married to Mary clearly wasn’t part of God’s plan for Joseph in spite of how things had seemed. And yet just the opposite was the case. God’s plan for Joseph took him right through something extraordinarily difficult, and the difficulties weren’t done. It didn’t make sense, but it was for good. What made the difference here was that Joseph was willing to trust this—He was willing to trust in God’s character—and move forward on the basis of that trust. God’s plans for us may not make sense in a given moment, but they are for our good if we will trust Him and move forward to receive them. Even when God’s plans don’t make much sense, they are still for our good. 

Let me show you three more things right quick that all point to the truthfulness of this one idea, and then we’ll be all done for today. The first comes right at the beginning of the passage. After Joseph discovered Mary’s pregnancy, the options for how he was going to handle this news were pretty broad. If he had turned to anger or pride, there was a path forward for him that would not have gone well for Mary. He could have absolutely ruined her life. He could have even pursued ending her life. But he didn’t. Why? Verse 19 tells us: Joseph was a righteous man. This means he always sought to do what was right by God and by people. And here’s the thing: What’s right by God will always be right by people as well. Those two are inextricably linked. 

If we want to take part in God’s plan, this same thing has to be true of us. Character counts. Now, God can absolutely use broken and imperfect servants. He does it over and over again in the Scriptures. You don’t have to be perfect for God to use you. But you do have to be willing to follow Him. And His path is one marked by righteousness. If you keep wandering off the path pursuing one sinful rabbit trail after another, you aren’t really following Him very closely, and you therefore won’t be able to get very far with Him in any direction, let alone the one He’s actually trying to lead you on. If you want to be able to take part in God’s plans, character really does count. And you want to be able to take part in God’s plans because even when God’s plans don’t make much sense, they are still for our good.

Okay, but how do we know when something is God’s plan and when it’s not? Sometimes hard things are part of what He’s doing because the world reacts to His kingdom’s advance in hard ways. But sometimes hard things are distractions from the world. How can we tell which is which? We see that here too. Remember that editorial note Matthew included about how what was going on with Jesus was a fulfillment of Scripture? That was not for no reason. God’s plans will always be consistent with the Scriptures rightly understood and applied. If you think God is leading you down a particular path, but the direction He seems to be leading you isn’t consistent with the teachings of the Scriptures, that’s not the path God is leading you to follow. That’s you simply pursuing what you want and trying to give yourself some moral cover for it. God’s word is true and unchanging, and He will never call us to do something that contradicts it. What He’s doing may not make all that much sense to us, but it will always be consistent with the Scriptures. Even when God’s plans don’t make much sense, they are still for our good, and they will always align with the commitments He has already made in His word. 

One last thing here. When Joseph woke up from his dream, he set about doing what the angel had commanded. He got married to Mary just like they had planned, but they didn’t live like newlyweds until after Jesus arrived. Now, when I tell you that they didn’t live like newlyweds, I suspect you know what I mean. You know what I mean because we expect newlyweds to behave a certain way. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s good. That’s how things should be. But Joseph and Mary didn’t do that. Not at first. We don’t need to talk about why because that’s beside the point. The point is this: Taking part in God’s plans may require us to do things a bit differently from the norm. 

Human norms are just that: human norms. The same goes with cultural norms. Those are things we are accustomed to. But God’s not limited to those norms when He sets about advancing His kingdom. And though He doesn’t call us to violate them for no reason because we do still need to be able to minister within a particular cultural context, and frivolously violating cultural norms can make that more difficult, neither does He feel helplessly bound by them. Moving God’s plans for our good forward is ultimately more important than “the way it’s always been done.” If we want to be a part of the work God is doing in the world around us, we need to be prepared to stand aside from that and do things differently than we might otherwise do them. We won’t always understand all the whys of this, but even when God’s plans don’t make much sense, they are still for our good. 

When heaven met earth, God was advancing His plans for our good—for the salvation of the world—in ways that were exciting and challenging. He invited Joseph and Mary to be a part of this advance in ways that would change not only their lives, but the whole of human history from that point forward. Maybe God’s not going about changing all of human history by what He’s calling us to do, but He is nonetheless up to something good. His plans are always for our good. We can’t always see that from our current vantage point, but He has an incredibly well-established record of always having our good in mind. We may not understand what He’s doing, but when we follow Him forward, leaning into His character, remaining rooted in the Scriptures, and prepared to do things a bit differently from the norm, that goodness is exactly what we will experience. We’ll help others around us experience it as well. Even when God’s plans don’t make much sense, they are still for our good. Let’s pursue His plans together.