This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - This is day three together of our look through Matthew chapter
one. We spent the first couple of days starting the story, looking at the
genealogy where Jesus came into history, how he came out of history, how God had
planned from the very beginning that Jesus would come. And now we come to the
day.

Now we come to what God did. As you take a look down in verse 18, here's how the
story continues. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.

His mother, Mary, was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came
together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because
Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to
public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had
considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
"Joseph, son of David, "do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,
"because what is conceived in her "is from the Holy Spirit.

"She will give birth to a son. "And you're to give him the name Jesus "because
he will save his people from their sins. " All this took place to fulfill what
the Lord had said to the prophet.

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call
him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did what the
angel of the Lord had commanded him and he took Mary home as his wife. But he
had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.

And he gave him the name Jesus. Now as you look at what happens here, one of the
things that bugs me sometimes is we read God's word as if it were some unreal
fairy tale, forgetting the real people, the real emotions that were going on. I
think when we do this, we miss much of what God wants to teach us.

We miss the story of what God wants to do in our lives. Example number one is
right here with Joseph. Put yourself in the place of Joseph.

You're engaged to be married and your future wife tells you she's going to have a
child and you're not the father. How would you react? Now it says here he plans
to divorce or that confuses us because for us, divorce only happens after
marriage.

But in their day, engagement was such a strong commitment to break the
engagement you would have to get a divorce. So they had not been together as
husband and wife as yet. They're just engaged.

But in order to break it off, Joseph starts to think I'm going to have to divorce
her. She has disappointed me. This is one of those situations where Joseph shows
us the kind of man that he really is.

How would you have reacted in this kind of situation? Joseph was chosen by God.
He knew that Mary was to be the mother.

He knew that Joseph was to be the stepfather, the earthly father to his only
son. He knew that Joseph would be the one that would help Jesus to grow in
wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. He saw something in Joseph.

What did he see? Well, as I look at the life of Joseph in Matthew chapter one, I
see that Joseph is a man of character and he's a man of obedience. In just a few
verses here, a few words here, you see that he is a man of character.

The Bible says he decided he would divorce her quietly. Now, if you look back at
the law, he had every right to put her to a public trial, to put her to public
shame and even under the law to have her face capital punishment for what she
had done. That's the seriousness of this sexual sin in their society.

Now, you can argue about whether that should have happened or not, but the truth
of the matter is that was their law. Instead, Joseph thought, I'm going to divorce
her quietly. He shows his character.

He shows to me there are a couple of things, that he's a man of love above law
and he's a man who placed others above himself. He's a man who placed love above
law. He was not willing to disgrace her.

Love won out over the law. Relationship to him was more important than rules.
People were more important than punishment.

Even though he might have been angry or hurt or disappointed, his love for Mary
continued and it won out over the law and he was a man who placed others above
himself. In this planned action that he was going to take, Joseph was setting
himself up for accusation that somehow he had been with Mary before they were
married and that's why he had set her aside. That's why he hadn't been angry.

That's why he hadn't brought it to the courts. He had done something wrong. The
only reason you hide something is because you've done something wrong and yet
instead, he places Mary above himself.

He exemplifies the attitude that Jesus had. In Philippians chapter two, Paul
talks about it, this attitude of humility, of putting others above yourself. In
fact, you see that Joseph shows the very heart that Jesus was to have.

Jesus put love above law. He went to the cross. He put others above himself.

He gave himself for us. Joseph was a man of deep character and you see that
again and again in these few glimpses we have into his life. Even more strongly,
you see in these glimpses into Joseph's life, not only in this chapter but in
chapter two, that Joseph was a man of obedience.

Again, when God chose Mary to be the mother, he knew that he would be choosing
Joseph to be the stepfather. So what qualities was he looking for in this man
who would be the earthly father of his only son? The most striking thing to me
in the Bible, in the story of Joseph's life, as you see it unfold, is not his
job or his physique.

It's not his magnetic personality or his business instincts. The quality of
Joseph's life that strikes like a lightning bolt is his willingness to obey. He
was an obedient man.

He followed God in the most difficult of circumstances. When God told him to wed
Mary, to marry Mary, even though she was pregnant, he obeyed. When God told him
to flee Egypt to protect the baby, he obeyed.

When God said, "Return to Israel," he obeyed. Now, sometimes for us, the word
obedience, it can have a negative connotation. It's like an unthinking kind of
connotation.

Just Google the word obedience. The first hits are all going to be on dog obedience
schools. That's a great picture, isn't it, of our relationship with God?

Dog obedience schools, heal, sit, bark, or our relationship with God is sing,
read, pray. But a lot of people, that's what they think of when they think of
obedience, is this unthinking action. But God is not asking for our unthinking
obedience.

Obedience instead, it's a quality of our relationship with him. What is
obedience? To me, it is the three words, love, trust, and act.

That's what obedience is, love. You know that God loves you. That's where it
starts.

You know that he has your best interest at heart. And out of that comes trust.
You believe what God says.

And out of that, you act. You act on that belief. It takes all three.

Action without love, that's just rote religion. And that can happen. That's not
obedience, though.

That's just rote. That's just religion. Love without action, that's just words.

That's not obedience either. To say it but not do it, there's nothing in that.
The truth is, there's nothing more beautiful than genuine obedience.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said one act of obedience is better than 100 sermons. That's
the reason we preach sermons. That's the reason we teach.

That's the reason we study God's word is so that we can do what God has made us
to do. The truth is, you and I, at least I'll admit this for myself, we tend to
be better at obeying when we can clearly see where we're going. God, if you
could just give me the whole plan, give me the map, then it's very easy to obey.

But many times we have to obey when we don't understand it. When I don't
understand it, God does. What do I do when I don't understand what's happening
to me?

The answer is, do what God says, because God does know what's happening. I may
not understand, but he does know what's happening. And that's the moment when
you obey.

Now those three words again, what does it mean for you to obey? You love, you
trust, and you act. Let's spend just a moment doing that together.

Because if I'm going to learn from the life of Joseph this quality of obedience in
my life, and we'll talk more about this tomorrow, I gotta learn to do these
three things. So right now, determine, like never before, that as you walk
through this study of who Jesus is in the Gospel of Matthew, that your love for
God will deepen. Your love for Jesus will deepen.

And determine by God's strength through the Holy Spirit that your trust in who
God is, what his word has to say, will strengthen. And out of that, that your
actions, that you will decide to act in brand new ways, act in ways of
obedience, act in ways that show the love and trust that you have for him. Let's
take a moment as we pray together, as we end today's study, ask that God would
do that very thing in our hearts, our lives today.

Lord, I pray today, we pray today, you'd help us to love you, knowing that you
love us, that you love us in Christ in ways that are above and beyond our
imagination. And out of that love for you, Lord, let that love lead to a
deepening trust in you. It's so easy for us to trust ourselves, trust our
instincts, trust the way we've done it a hundred times, even though it may have
led us into trouble a hundred times.

It's so easy for us to trust ourselves, and so hard for us to trust you
sometimes. But Lord, you're trustworthy, because you're the one who loves us the
most and understands us the best. So let our trust in you today deepen.

And out of that love and trust, let there be the action. That moment we act in
obedience, that moment when we do what you've asked us to do. Whether it means
picking up your word and letting it become a part of our lives, or talking to
you about a circumstance instead of just moving ahead on our own, or loving a
person that's hurting, reaching out to them, or caring about somebody that maybe
has hurt us, and we decide to forgive them by your power and strength.

Whatever it means, Lord, help us to act in obedience today, because we love you,
because we trust you. We pray that you strengthen us to do this in the power of
the Holy Spirit, we pray for this. In Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow, we're going to begin to look together at five specific qualities of
obedience that you and I can learn from Joseph.