So, I was thinking this week if uh if Joseph uh the earthly father of Jesus were to jump out of our nativity scene this morning and speak to us, he might say something like this. He might say, “I’m Joseph. I’m the least notable. I’m the most unobtrusive guy in the Christmas story. Unlike my wife and my sons, I don’t get a speaking part in the Bible.” Gospel of Mark makes no mention of me. Gospel of John only refers to me twice in passing when it describes Jesus as the son of Joseph. And I don’t hang around in the Bible for very long. I make my last cameo appearance when my son Jesus is 12 years old and then I’m not heard from again. My wife and children are on the scene for Jesus’ ministry years, his death, his resurrection, the early days of the Christian church. But I’m out of the picture. And you can you can only guess what happened to me, but it’s probably going to happen to you someday as well. So, I’m a background character in the story of Christmas. That’s fine with me. I’m like the father of the bride at the wedding who mostly hangs out in the periphery, but ends up paying for the whole thing. And I’ll tell you a little bit of what that first Christmas was like for me. What it cost me to be part of the story that you’re celebrating this month. I came from a pretty ordinary family. Only little faint brush with celebrity was the fact that we happened to be direct descendants of David, Israel’s greatest king. Wasn’t much to be gained from that. David had lived, he had died a thousand years before I was born. By the time I came along, there were thousands of people in Israel, surrounding countries who came from that same branch of the family tree. And by the time I lived, it scarcely resembled the glory of David’s reign. Our nation had long lost its independence. We’d been swallowed up at various times by empires like Babylon and Persia and Greece. When I was born, the Roman Empire was dominant. Rome exerted its authority over every square inch of our promised land. So despite any pride that we felt as Jewish people in our heritage and in the laws and the promises that God had given us, we really were more like a colony than a country. Occasionally, some of our more zealous citizens would create a disturbance and they’d announce that the promised messiah was coming or that he was already here. They’d make a fuss about the Romans ruling over us. But the Romans would quash any opposition very quickly. So, as a result, most of us didn’t dare to dream for any change in our lives. We just tried to live quiet lives, get by without any trouble. I grew up in a small town called Bethlehem, little over 10 kilometers south of the capital city of Jerusalem. It was not easy to make a living there. Uh so when I was young, I went up north to the hill country near the big lake called Galilee. The north was a land of bluecollar towns, had grain, had a good fishing industry. The saying of our day was, “If a man wanted to be rich, let him go to Galilee. If he wanted to be wise, let him go to Jerusalem.” Myself, I just wanted to make a decent living. So, I settled up north in the small community of Nazareth. People would sometimes look down on my town. They’d say, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” But I didn’t go there because it was a high status place to live. I just wanted to work, make a living. I’m a carpenter. I ca became pretty good at it over the years. If you stood next to me in my coveralls, I’d smell like sawdust and fresh cut wood. And I was a practical person. I wasn’t a priest or a poet or a philosopher. working with wood, running an honest business, going to the local synagogue on Saturdays. That was the life I enjoyed. And of course, like most young men, I wanted a wife. I looked forward to getting married and having kids, coaching soccer. And the best thing about Nazareth was that’s where I met Mary. And she was still a teenager, had little cute little Galilean accent. And I eventually got the nerve up to ask her out. I don’t know what she saw in me, but it wasn’t long before we were very much in love. that naturally progressed toward engagement. What we called betroal, it was a much more formal arrangement than an engagement in current times. Our betroals were often sealed with a a gift or a written declaration, a little like buying an engagement ring today, unless the woman was already a widow. Betro typically lasted about a year. And during that time, where Mary was viewed by our community very much as my wife. To break off a betroal required a formal divorce, and the death of a fiance would actually render the woman a widow, even though she’d actually never been officially married, and any infidelity during betroal was considered adultery. And that fact figured into our story. She was a wonderful combination of woman and girl. She danced, laughed with joy. She was solid and thoughtful. She pondered life. She liked to sing, could express her thoughts beautifully in song. Like me, she wanted to be a sincere follower of God. We had many long talks of what life might be like together. I thought of building a home, a house for Mary for the children we’d have. I dreamed of what life would be like with her. But plans and dreams have a way of going sideways very quickly. And that’s what happened with us because in the midst of our wedding planning, I noticed that Mary became quiet. She was withdrawn. Uh she like she had some secrets she didn’t want to share with me. I asked her what was wrong and she said she didn’t want to talk about it. And that left me really puzzled and wondered if I’d done something wrong or was she mad at me or didn’t like the idea of marrying a poor carpenter. So I pressed her to tell me what is going on. And then she at last said the last thing on earth that I expected her to say. She said, “I’m pregnant.” And I couldn’t believe it. I I I wondered, do I even know this girl at all? Girl I thought I was marrying would never have cheated or betrayed me. But I guess I was wrong. And I didn’t see how this could have happened without me or her friends or her parents knowing anything about it. And then she told me this fantastical story about some angel appearing to her and telling her that she, a teenager in a little third class rural village, was going to be the mother of Israel’s Messiah and that the spirit of God had mysteriously planted a baby in her womb even though she was still a virgin. That was too much for me. I was shocked. I was confused. I was hurt. I was really angry all at the same time. It was one thing for her to betray our love, but another thing to treat me like such a fool that she could tell me a story that was part fairy tale and part blasphemy and expect me to believe it. In the law my people held to, it said that if a woman was found to have committed adultery, she she could be stoned to death. I’d never seen that happen, but here I was in the middle of that exact situation. It was tempting to make her pay for the damage she had done to our relationship and to the faith that I’d placed in her. My reputation was going to take a big hit in the community when the word got out because everyone’s assumption would be that I was the father. And looking back to that awful time, you know, the Bible says I was a righteous man. And I don’t know about that, but at some point I did decide that I really didn’t have it in me to make things worse for Mary than was already coming her way. because in a small town like ours, she couldn’t hide and uh what she had done for very long. She’d faced a lot of scandal, a lot of shame. And I decided I’d do my best not to pile on. I thought I’d let her out of our relationship as quietly as possible, cut off our betroal, make as little fuss as I could, privately divorce her, and then just try to live and get on with my own life. Wasn’t surprised at all when Mary decided to skip town and go south to where her relative Elizabeth lived. Elizabeth had always been like a mother to Mary. Her and her husband would give her a home, a place to stay. They’d shelter her. They’d look after her. Maybe she could stay there until the baby was born. Oddly enough, Elizabeth, even though she was in an advanced age at the time, was also unexpectedly pregnant. And her husband wasn’t able to speak a single word from the time an angel announced that they were going to have a baby until the time that their own baby was born. nine months without any conversation with a pregnant wife. That’s either uh either discipline or a great blessing. You can you can decide. But Mary stayed away for 3 months. Miserable, lonely time for me. And after Mary left, I’d try to work, but I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing. Tried to pray, tried to sleep. Nothing seemed right. And then one night, I had a dream. And I’m not the kind of guy who usually remembers anything about my dreams. They’re usually pretty dumb. nothing to pay attention to. But this one dream that night was so vivid, it got my full attention. Sounds strange even talking about it now, but this bright angel stood up in the middle of my dream, scared me half to death. She spoke to me and she said, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because this child she bears is of the Holy Spirit, and you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” I was pretty shaken, pretty confused when I woke up, but at the same time relieved because I knew that what the angel had told me was true. It confirmed everything I’d known about Mary since I met her. She wasn’t a liar. My dream also made sense of a dusty old scripture in Isaiah written 700 years earlier that said, “The virgin will be with child, will give birth to a son, and they’ll call him Emanuel, which means God with us.” When Mary came back home, I I apologized for doubting her word, and she tried her best to look annoyed with me, but didn’t last very long. We quickly uh moved our wedding day up, but she was certainly showing on the day of. Not a great look in our community. And after we were married, with all this strange supernatural stuff going on, it just seemed inappropriate um to have marital relations until after the time the baby was born. As the due date was approaching, the people in our town were still talking about us. Everyone could do the math. It almost came as a relief that during the ninth month, the Roman government decided it needed an accurate count of its citizens for taxation purposes. And that meant that all of us males had to go back to their place of birth for registration. I didn’t want to leave Mary just by herself with a due date so close. So, as uncomfortable as it was for her, she made the trip with me. A hard 3 days journey to Bethlehem. We got there. We had no idea how large the crowds would be, where we’d stay. I thought I I might be able to find some distant relatives who could help us out, but because of the census, there were so many people milling around, scrambling for places to stay. All the motel were full. And when Mary’s contraction started, I was desperate to find any place, someplace that she could lie down. I felt horrible. I was her husband, supposed to take care of her. I wasn’t able to take care of her the way I was I was meant to. So, the only place I eventually managed to find was a cave out on the edge of town where a farmer kept his oxen. At least we’re out of the weather. Mary lay down on the straw. There was no place else. There’s no bed. There was nothing really. We were just on our own. And we were we were afraid. I lit a fire to keep us warm. And when the baby did come that night, I didn’t know what to do. I’m a carpenter. Mary had to be both both wife and both mom and midwife. I did cut the cord. I cleaned the baby as best I could, wrapped him in cloths, and the only place I could think to put him was in the manger. It was the only even close to sanitary place in the room. So, I wrestled with a lot of unanswered questions that night. That dream that I’d had months earlier, that wasn’t fresh anymore, and our circumstances sure didn’t seem to line up with anything that the angel had told me about the baby. If this wife of mine was truly highly favored of God, and if this was something that God had planned for centuries to occur, how do you explain a cave for a birthing room and the dirt and the cattle and the loneliness? I felt very much also the stepdad that day when I gave the baby the name the angel had told me to give him. It was hard to do because it was always the father’s right. It was mark of authority in the home for a father to be able to name their baby. But that prerogative had been taken away from me. The name the angel had instructed me to give him Jesus. That wasn’t a typical family name in our line. In Hebrew, the name would be Yeshua or Joshua. And the Greek helanized version of that is Jesus. In the name Yeshua, Joshua, Yah means the Lord and Shua means saved. So plainly in English, the name Jesus means the Lord saves. So, taking the baby boy into my arms in the middle of a cave, despite all the circumstances, I submitted to the angel’s word and declared that his name would be Jesus, the Lord saves. Angel had told me that this baby would save his people from their sins. There were no people around. There wasn’t anyone to care about his arrival in the world. No one came from Jerusalem to celebrate the birth of our son. No one even came from Bethlehem. We were alone. Completely alone. Not not really true because there were some shepherds who later that night found their way to the cave somehow and they came in with the smell of sheep and dirt and wine skins and they told us that they’d seen and been spoken to by an angel. And then they saw a great chorus of angels on the hillside. They had been told that a baby would be found in Bethlehem wrapped in cloths lying in a manger who would be Christ the Lord. That’s the honored title for the promised Messiah. So the se she shepherds had come that searched for that found the place and then after seeing our baby they went out and told everyone they could leaving people utterly amazed at their story. Everything about that night was ragged and surreal. Nothing at all like I’d imagined from the dream I’d had months before. Then days later after all the confusion of the census had died down and the crowds had gone back to their homes. I decided it would be better to remain in Bethlehem for the time being. So we rented a house. I took whatever work I could find. We didn’t have much to live on. Our religious law says that 40 days after a male baby is born, he would need to be purified at the temple in Jerusalem. And two offerings were to be given at that time, a lamb and a dove. But there was a concession made for people like us who couldn’t afford the lamb. We could offer two doves instead. And that’s all we could do. While we were at the temple, again, we were amazed when two random elderly people, a wise and devout man named Simeon, an 84year-old widow named Anna, they each spoke words of honor and destiny over our little baby. And we went back to Beth Bethlehem, very mystified by it. Time went by and things got stranger and stranger when one day we had a knock on our door and we found some oddly dressed foreign visitors from far off in the east. They were astrologers from as far away as Persia. And they said they’d come to find us. They told us they’d seen some uh a uh ast a astrological anomaly. They’d seen a star and they’d somehow gleaned from that that a new king of the Jews had been born in Israel. And they were impressed enough by that sign to journey for several months, many hundreds of kilometers just for the purpose of worshiping our child. They’d been directed by the religious leaders at Jerusalem to go to Bethlehem because there was an ancient prophecy that Bethlehem was the place where the Messiah would be born. None of the religious leaders though really believed their story. Not enough to accompany them and come down with them. And we were blown away when those guys arrived at our door. Mysterious foreigners bowing down in front of our little baby’s crib, worshiping our son. We couldn’t really understand what they were saying, but then they opened their packs and they presented our son with expensive gifts of gold and frankincense and myrr. Then as suddenly as it arrived, they left and went back to their own country. Gifts of those foreigners came in handy very quickly because we needed the money. I had another wild supernatural dream. This is my second dream in a in a year. An angel told me to get my family out of the country, go to Egypt in a hurry because Herod, the ruler at the time, was going to search for my son and kill him. Suddenly, we were on the run. We were refugees. We made it to Egypt. We scratched out a living for the next couple of years. And we learned later that after we’d left, a horrible tragedy came to Bethlehem because a furious Herod had sent his soldiers down and they’ killed all the male babies who were 2 years of old, 2 years old or under. And that would have been our our fate had we stayed. My baby would have been slaughtered along with the rest of them. After those years, those two years, I had two more of those wild supernatural guidance type dreams. I was told to take my family back to the land of Israel. And then I was warned against settling in the dangerous southern region of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. So we ended up right back in that sleepy town of Nazareth where everything had be begun. And I went back to my carpentry business. We were kept busy. We had a bunch of kids of our own, sons and daughters. And you know, to be honest, you can’t live off uh the fumes uh the supernatural fumes of four dreams in all your life. Most of my days, those next years involved looking after kids, going to my workshop, making tables and chairs and dressers for people who wanted some work done. Sometimes carpenters like me would be given the awful job of making the crosses that the Romans used to execute people. And that wasn’t that certainly wasn’t the kind of work that I wanted to do. As for Jesus, to tell the truth, he’s a pretty normal little boy. As his dad, I didn’t look on him as the savior of the world. He was good. He was obedient. He didn’t give Mary and me the kind of trouble that his uh younger brothers and sisters did over those years. And during those years, my faith was up and down like everyone else’s. The wild dreams had faded away. The uniqueness of our first couple years of marriage were memories, but they just became subsumed by the normal stuff of life. One other instant I might mention, the Bible talks about it took place when Jesus was 12. You know, when your kids are babies and they’re toddlers, you can pick them up anytime you want and you can kiss them and snuggle them, but they get to be three or four years old. They develop more agency and a life of their own. They decide if and when they want to be hugged by an adult. They have a will of their own. that was uh on display when Jesus was 12. We went up to Jerusalem for the regular Passover feast, highlight of the year. All of our friends and relatives made the trip with us. But after the feast, on our way back home, we’d gone a full day’s journey, we realized we didn’t have Jesus with us at all. We thought he was with our relatives. They said they hadn’t seen him either. So, while the rest of them went on, Mary and I quickly retraced our steps. Didn’t find Jesus anywhere. quite a panic. We climbed back up the long hill to the city of Jerusalem. Finally did find Jesus in the temple talking with our nation’s highest spiritual leaders um and asking them very intelligent questions. I would have been pretty proud if I wasn’t so disturbed at the time by our panicked looking for him. I said to Jesus, “Look, you’ve driven us frantic. We didn’t know where you were.” He looked back at me and kindly but very matter-of-actly said, “Don’t you know I have to be about my father’s business.” You know, when we read that in the Bible, that sounds like a pretty good answer. But to the father of a 12-year-old, that’s not what you expect to hear. I never felt more like a stepdad than I did that day. There are huge areas of my son’s life that I couldn’t relate to. I had no way of going there. It was all completely unreachable for me. So, that’s where I make my exit from the Bible. My faith certainly wasn’t constantly strong and impregnable all my life. I struggled to understand things. I couldn’t see how my son’s destiny would ever be lived out. Mary’s faith always seemed more devout and obedient and rich and unwavering. And maybe your faith is a little more like hers. But for people like me, for practical people, you like things that you can touch and feel and measure, like wood, like lumber. And you don’t always find it easy to believe. Faith seems to have its moods. After I was confronted by the angel and those couple years when I had those dreams, there were times I thought, I’m I’m never going to doubt again. But there were many times afterwards where the whole thing didn’t make any sense to me at all. And times like that, I really was tempted to believe my doubts and to doubt my beliefs. And sometimes I wondered if I believed at all. All I can tell you from my courage v current vantage point is that when faced with those questions, I ended up coming down on the side of faith. I often had to work hard at believing things I had no evidence for. I felt I had to trust when I didn’t feel like trusting. But that’s the way God used me. And despite who I am, God gave me, Joseph, a simple man, the honor of putting my thumbrint on Jesus Christ. I taught him how to be a good carpenter. And he was a very good one. He became known in our community simply as the carpenter. Had a reputation for quality work, and I’m proud of that. But any thumbrint I was able to put on Jesus, nothing at all compared to the thumbrint that he put on me. Before he was born, I was told that he would save his people from their sins. And though I was his earthly dad, I’m also one of those people that he needed to save from my sin. He had to be hung on one of those crosses we carpenters sometimes had to build. He allowed himself to suffer and die in my place so my sins could be forgiven. He had the real father, the eternal, holy, heavenly, loving father. My son’s suffering made my eternal relationship with his real father possible. So, I’m a guy who just ended up serving God and being used by God without knowing what I was doing half the time. But that’s the way I think that God uses any of us. This is a season when you want to celebrate Christmas and you want to worship and think again about the birth of Jesus. And you ought to. And I, Joseph, am glad that I was able to have something to do with it all. When God sent his boy to earth, he put him in care of a in the care of a carpenter. A carpenter like me who sometimes believed his doubts and doubted his beliefs, but by raw faith somehow made it through to the end. So, I’m certainly not the main character in the story. But God still used a guy like me. And as you celebrate Christmas this year, don’t let any doubts you have discourage you. Even if it seems like it’s been a really long time since you’ve heard clearly from God, since you felt any of his direction in your life, don’t let that rob you of your joy. God loves and entrusts some of his most important eternal work to ordinary guys like me. So don’t be surprised if he’s doing some of that same important eternal work through you today as well. I’m just going to have Irma come up and lead us in prayer.