Sermon Tone Analysis

Family Matters

We’ve taken quite a break from this series about the family.

If you remember all the way back to the first week, we kicked off this series by talking about the one thing that matters most in every family.

The one thing that every family needs.

God.

Every family needs God and needs to make God more important every single day.

God created the structure for family and laid it all out when He created the world.

He created family because He cares deeply for the family.

He cares about your family.

If we want our families to be strong and successful, we have to put God at the top of the family.

We must adhere to His family structure and be intentional with our family.

We also talked about creating healthy habits within the family and getting rid of bad habits.

The key thing we can do to create healthy habits is create and maintain a healthy habitat for those habits to grow.

A healthy habitat is one of selflessness, encouragement, and respect.

Today I want to look at another family in the bible.

It’s November.

The holiday season is in the air.

Christmas and Thanksgiving are right around the corner.

Let’s talk about the most famous family who has ever walked the planet Earth.

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.

To refresh our memories of their story, I want to read how they became a family real quick.

As we look at this story, think about how you might relate to someone in the story.

Do you connect with what any of the people must have felt or experienced?

How crazy would it be to experience something like this?

How shocked would Mary have been to find out she was pregnant?

Granted, this was a blessing from God and not brought about by some mistake that Mary made, but in the context of your family, have you ever experienced something that came as a total shock that completely changed life for your family?

What about Joseph?

How must he have felt?

You know he felt betrayed.

Hurt.

Confused.

Even when he found out the truth, it must have been a hard pill to swallow.

Maybe he had plans, but now they will never be the same.

Life in Joseph’s time was much different from ours.

It’s important for us to know some of the customs for marriage in their day.

According to “The Bible Knowledge Commentary”…

Marriages were arranged for individuals by parents, and contracts were negotiated.

After this was accomplished, the individuals were considered married and were called husband and wife.

They did not, however, begin to live together.

Instead, the woman continued to live with her parents and the man with his for one year.

The waiting period was to demonstrate the faithfulness of the pledge of purity given concerning the bride.

If she was found to be with child in this period, she obviously was not pure, but had been involved in an unfaithful sexual relationship.

Therefore the marriage could be annulled.

If, however, the one-year waiting period demonstrated the purity of the bride, the husband would then go to the house of the bride’s parents and in a grand processional march lead his bride back to his home.

There they would begin to live together as husband and wife and consummate their marriage physically.

Matthew’s story should be read with this background in mind

Mary and Joseph were in the one-year waiting period when Mary was found to be with child.

They had never had sexual intercourse and Mary herself had been faithful (vv.

20, 23).

While little is said about Joseph, one can imagine how his heart must have broken.

He genuinely loved Mary, and yet the word came that she was pregnant.

His love for her was demonstrated by his actions.

He chose not to create a public scandal by exposing her condition to the judges at the city gate.

Such an act could have resulted in Mary’s death by stoning (Deut.

22:23–24).

Instead he decided to divorce her quietly.

Have you ever thought about their relationship from that perspective?

Joseph and Mary did everything right, but from the beginning of their marriage they would be a blended family.

In today’s world blended, mended, and extended families are the norm.

In fact, in one of his shows this week, Ben Shapiro discussed the rising stats for broken families.

If you are interested, it is episode 1609.

In that show he discussed the rising number of singles since the 70’s due to the almost militant push in the US for people to co-habitate rather than get married.

He contrasted that viewpoint with that of his religion as an Orthodox Jewish person, which is much like the practice Joseph and Mary would have been a part of.

He describes marriage for a person in his community to be a community affair.

The whole community is invested in their families success.

He claims, that is why you will see other people in his community support families when their is a wedding or when someone has a baby.

Having experienced some of the heart ache that comes with being a part of a broken family, I love Joseph and Mary’s story.

I find it very encouraging.

Here are just a few of the things we can see Joseph do when he was faced with the heart ache and realization that Mary might not have been faithful to his love.

When Joseph learned that she was pregnant he didn’t get angry and start throwing stuff.

He didn’t show up on an episode of ‘COPS’.

He didn’t even go off somewhere to hide and cry.

1. JOSEPH WAS HONORABLE AND RESPECTFUL

He was respectful to his family.

Scripture called him a “righteous man”.

That means he was just, especially in the eyes of God.

He was living in a right relationship with God.

In other words, no matter how much she had hurt him, he would treat her with honor and respect.

Next…

2. JOSEPH HAD DEEP FAITH

While Joseph was thinking about breaking up with her the angel appears in a dream and explains everything to him.

When Joseph woke up he said, “Oh, okay!” and everything was fine again.

Actually, who knows how Joseph felt when he woke up.

In all reality, he was probably still pretty bummed out.

I’ve had a lot of dreams that made me see reality differently when I woke up, even to the point of thinking I could fly, but I’ve never been lucky enough for relational pain and deep cuts to just disappear.

We may not know how Joseph felt, but we do know what he did.

He trusted in God.

He had deep faith.

He didn’t do like Jonah and look for the nearest ship to somewhere else, he went straight to work trusting in God.

Then Joseph does 2 more things that I think are noteworthy…

3. JOSEPH MAKES SACRIFICES

This is probably one of the most difficult things for us to do as humans.

I believe it is why physical sacrifices are so important to God.

God wants to be the most important thing to us, even to the point of giving up the things that are of utmost importance to ourselves.

What do I need to sacrifice for the love of my family?

This was just the least of the sacrifices that Joseph made.

Think about how much of a social affair the family was in his day.

Joseph was taking on a broken family and it was a big deal.

In the eyes of tradition, Mary must have been unfaithful.

How important was the tradition itself to Joseph?

That would have to be sacrificed.

Another thing we see from Joseph from the 25th verse is that…