Matthew 1: 20 NIV
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.”
What Makes You Important?
Recently I came to the church office and discovered
a woman sleeping on the concrete behind the sanctuary. She was wrapped in a pure white comforter and
had boxes and papers and the remains of her meal scattered around her. She looked up at me as I went to unlock the
kitchen in the back building and she asked me if I remembered her. It is funny as I get older how often people
recognize me but I can’t recall having met them. After talking a while, I realized that it was
not Alzheimer’s that led to my inability to remember her but the fact that we
really had never met. She was young and
beautiful, maybe late twenties, early thirties, deeply tanned with bright green
eyes and an easy smile. It was not long
though before I began to see what a broken soul she was. Her past clearly had traumatized her and she
was bitter and angry. Gina kept talking
about the demon possessed police who were following her and trying to trap her
as well as evil forces that were trying to destroy her. She was clearly a meth addict, but worse,
deranged and emotionally unstable. I
brought her something to eat, gave her access to the bathroom and spent some
time listening to her rants and then praying for her to have God’s peace. After Gina left, I wondered what God wanted
to do with her. Did He have plans for
her still? Was she too wrecked to be
reclaimed by God? As Gina limped away,
her damaged leg seemed to offer hope to me that if a doctor could fix her leg,
surely God could remake her broken heart.
Perhaps He has plans for her that she can still fulfill?
You too are damaged in many ways, some visible but
others hidden even from you. You care
about how your life is going, what it is and what will become of it despite the
broken parts of you. If you didn’t, it
would probably be because you are at some level feeling hopeless. Maybe it matters to you what God wants to do
with you. Perhaps you have thought about
His plans for you and how you fit into the bigger scheme of life. How ready are you for Christ to jump into
your conscious thinking and redirect you, shift dramatically the direction you
are going? Do you believe that God has
plans for you and that you play a part in what He wants to do? Are you willing to go where He leads, do what
He tells you to do?
Not long ago I spent some time pondering just how
immense it was for Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, the mother of Jesus to
agree with the Lord’s plan for him. When
Joseph heard from his fiancée that she was pregnant but not with his child, he
immediately assumed that she had cheated on him. Because
Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her (his
fiancée, Mary) to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. (Matthew
1:19 NIV) However, God intervened and
sent an angel to Joseph during a dream. 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.” (Matthew 1:20 NIV)
You have the benefit of being able to look back on
all of this through history, knowing the supernatural circumstances of this
pregnancy. Joseph had none of our tools
to process what Mary had just told him.
In addition, the vision of the angel was one embedded in a dream and we
all know how convoluted and distorted dreams are. Dreams are not very trustworthy and you
cannot be sure what to do with them. Some most interesting conclusions can be
drawn from this short description of how God got across to Joseph His plans for
him. Why don’t you consider each of
these point by point?
Joseph was afraid, really afraid of the news that
Mary was pregnant. His plan to divorce
her quietly was born out of a desperate situation. How do you divorce someone quietly when you
both are from a small village where everyone knows everyone else and weddings
are community events that take in the entire town practically? He would have had to spend months and more
likely years to get to the place where he could even wed Mary. He would not have on the spur of the moment
proposed to her; she was his most important investment in life. It would have scared Joseph to death to
contemplate tossing all of that aside and quietly walk away from this marriage
without being able to explain the reason behind his decision. Worse than that however was staying with Mary
and having to wait nine months for her baby to be born, knowing the child might
not look like either one of them. How
could he explain what had happened to her?
Second, it really was God who was speaking to Joseph
in the dream, despite how hard it would have been for him to believe. The tension would have been difficult to
resolve; how to know for certain He had heard from God and it was not just the
wild nature of his imagination that put together his dream. Perhaps he wanted the Lord so badly to
intervene and guide him that he concocted in the depths of his unconsciousness
a “God moment”. Plenty of crazy people
think they have heard from God…or Moses…or Adam… Joseph could have lost his mind in his grief
over his fiancée’s pregnancy and the dream may just have been an emotional
coping device. It was an act of great
faith for Joseph to decide his dream really had come from God.
Third, it was Joseph that God wanted to act as the father
of His child. No one else was
selected. Joseph alone was chosen for
this great task of raising and caring for Jesus. When Joseph looked at himself and pondered
the immensity of what stood before him, he could not hunt about for someone to
take his place. He alone had been given
the charge and it was his duty to live up to the Lord’s expectations. No one could take his place.
Fourth, Joseph was a part of God’s prearranged plan. There was a history to what He was called to
do. At some point, the Lord picked out
Joseph and arranged circumstances so that he would be a perfect fit for what
the Lord wanted him to do. After Joseph
accepted his part in God’s plan, there was an entire chain of events that would
follow that would be directly connected to Joseph and what he did. This was not an arbitrary determination on
God’s part that Joseph might work out as Jesus’ father. He thought through it all before He contacted
Joseph and was all in on being there for Joseph as he fulfilled the task given
him.
Fifth, Joseph was a very ordinary human being. There are no unique qualities described in
the text telling us about him. We know
nothing about his intellect, his talents, his athleticism or even his age or
how he looked. We could never have known it was him if Joseph walked up to us
on the street because we have nothing in the Biblical record to make us
recognize him. His skill set and talent
base are irrelevant to the story. God
picked Joseph out to raise His Son and that is all we can say about why He did
so. It would be nonsensical for us to
think God did not have good reasons for choosing Joseph, we just don’t know
what they were and Joseph most likely did not know either.
You also fit into what God is doing and you too have
been selected by Him for something…most likely an entire list of somethings.
Why He has chosen you we cannot say.
What your qualifications are for the challenge is irrelevant to
you. This is not something God just on
the spur of the moment considered but from eternity He has been thinking of you
for this. No one else is fit for what He
has for you or He would have called that person instead. But how can you know it is God who has given
you the responsibility laid in front of you?
You just must! At some point you
have to resolve the tension between believing that God is directing your life
and not believing it. You might be
afraid of what is before you, completely befuddled by what you have to do but
at some level that only you and God can access you know it is God pointing the
way. No one else may see what you see or
grasp what you know is true but you do know God has something for you to do and
it is no one else He has to do it. What
might it be? None of us here know but
you will know and you must not talk yourself out of knowing you know. The Bible clearly tells us the way God has
His people do things, how they are to act when faced with the challenges before
them. It is not a matter of how to do
what He wants you to do; it is whether you will do what He is showing you to do
in the way He has said to do it.
In some way, you fit perfectly into the plan God has
for this world and He is certain you can live up to the challenge. He knows your capabilities, your strengths
and weaknesses and He has thought through what He can do with you and through
you if you will just accept His challenge.
You cannot know what value there is to what you do nor can you see all
the ramifications of following Him. All
you can know and this is the most certain fact you can ever come to discover. God will connect you to Himself and together
you will form a union that is as binding and full of love and joy as the union
the Father has with the Son. Are you
willing to be united with Christ in His plan for you? Are you willing to let Him work through you
that you might be joined to Him in His plan for the world? What do you say to God when He lifts your
head up and points out to you the way that you are to go?
