On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecraft onto the moon, saying, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I wasn’t alive when Neil Armstrong spoke those words, and I don’t remember when I first heard that line. I do remember my reaction as a child when I first heard it, however, and it was that this made no sense to me. How could something be a small step for a man and be a greater leap for mankind? I mean, mankind is greater, bigger than one man. So, if it’s a small step for the smaller of two things, then it should be a really, really small step for the bigger of the two, right? I wasn’t clever enough to joke that Armstrong should have thought about what he was going to say before he stepped out of the spaceship, said something that made absolutely no sense, and made a fool of himself. And now, years later, I’m thankful that I didn’t make that joke because at some point I realized that I was the one without understanding, that Neil Armstrong probably did put a lot of thought into what he was going to say before, and that this forethought turned out to be really beneficial because that was a really clever line: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The fact that I probably would have said something like, “Is my headset working? Is this coming through?” is probably why the Lord doesn’t put people like me in such positions and leaves them instead for men like Neil Armstrong.
But I thought about that quote from Neil Armstrong this week because I think that dynamic of a small step for a man having a huge impact on a great number of people is what we find in Matthew 1:18-25. In this case, however, it wasn’t a literal step taken by a man but a simple decision. But this simple decision has impacted a number greater than anyone can count. The decision that Matthew 1:18-25 records is Joseph’s decision to take Mary as his wife when she was already carrying the Christ child. That is the focus of Matthew birth narrative of Jesus. I mean, it’s really short (only eight verses), mentions very little about Jesus’ actual birth, mentions nothing about a manger or swaddling cloths or there being no room in the inn. And to top it off, much of the focus seems to be on Joseph of all people, who typically gets little fanfare, in our contemporary reflections on the birth of Christ. Russell Moore even begins the opening line of one of his more recent books noting, “I played a cow in my first-grade Christmas pageant, and I had more lines than the kid who played Joseph.”1
But the reality is that Joseph plays a huge role in the redemptive story, and this moment of decision on his part to take Mary as his wife and Jesus as his adoptive son was as necessary for our salvation as the virgin birth. In fact, I think the way that Matthew 1:18-25 fits with 1:1-17 is that the genealogy (1:1-17) proclaims that Jesus is the Son of David who has come to reign over the earth, blessing the nations, and bringing salvation to his people while the birth narrative (1:18-25) tells us how it is that Jesus’ can really be called the “son of David,” who he must be if we are to be saved.
I think Matthew 1:18-25 shows us the important, costly, privileged decision of Joseph that was part of God’s ordained plan that the Father carried out by his sovereign will in order to bring salvation to his people. And it is helpful for us to reflect on it both so that we can consider the necessity of obedience in our own lives as well and trust in the faithfulness of our sovereign Lord. So, with that, let’s walk a bit through the elements of the story. First, I want us to consider:
As Matthew lays out this story, the decision that lies before Joseph is what we feel throughout these verses. First, Matthew tells us that Mary and Joseph were betrothed, and this concept needs a little explaining in order for us to understand it. Betrothal was kind of like an engagement, but it legally binding. It would actually take a certificate of divorce in order to end a betrothal. So, this is a couple, ready to be married, but not married yet. And they had been morally pure. That is, they hadn’t engaged in physical intimacy. This is what Matthew is saying when he uses the phrase “before they came together.” So, while this couple was morally pure, practicing sexual purity in regards to one another, Matthew tells us that “she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (v. 18).
Now, at this point in this story, we need to realize that Joseph doesn’t know this detail. He’s simply beginning to realize that his fiancé, with whom he has never been intimate, is beginning to show obvious signs of pregnancy. That is, she’s going to have a child, and he knows it’s not his. So, what does he do?
Well, it feels like a no win situation. Let’s say that he continues on and marries her. What is everyone going to assume? Obviously they would assume that this couple had been physically intimate before married, that Joseph had gotten Mary pregnant, and that he was therefore making her his wife. And perhaps in our culture where virginity is actually mocked more than fornication condemned, we feel the weight of this very little. But this was an upright couple, who were practicing righteous living, sexual restraint, and had no doubt confessed to others that they were being physically pure. For Joseph to marry Mary would be to go his whole life saying, “I promise we weren’t sexually impure before we got married,” and everyone saying, “Sure, brother,” in a sarcastic manner. It probably meant that many of his friends would say to him, “Look, brother, it’s not the end of the world; just admit you guys sinned.” We might say that Joseph’s decision to marry Mary would perhaps cost him the equivalent of having Job’s “friends” give his “counsel” regarding his “sin” for years.
The other problem that could happen if Joseph didn’t divorce Mary, ending the betrothal is that the Romans actually required divorce for unfaithfulness in the woman, and one reason for this is actually to protect the righteousness of the man and protect the woman. You see, if a man didn’t divorce his wife, whom he was saying was unfaithful, then it established a situation in which a man could be said to be prostituting his wife for money. That alone, in their minds, could be a reason why a man would have an unfaithful wife and not divorce her. So, you could see that staying with Mary simply didn’t look good for Joseph.
On the other hand, Joseph could divorce Mary, ending the betrothal. The problem with this, however, is that Joseph would be required to publicly humiliate Mary. Under the Old Covenant, adultery was punishable by stoning, but the Romans didn’t allow for Jewish courts to execute capital punishment for sexual unfaithfulness. According to Jewish law, Joseph could divorce her, however. Yet, this divorce needed to be public if you were claiming that your spouse (or in this case, the one to whom you were betrothed) was unfaithful. And that is precisely what Joseph thought. There were two reasons why your divorce needed to be a public act. First, it had the effect of serving as a humiliating warning that infidelity shouldn’t be tolerated. That is, the public divorce should serve as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to be unfaithful. The second reason is that unfaithfulness on the part of the woman allowed for the man to recoup any bride price that he paid and likely hold on to any dowry the woman brought into the betrothal. That is, you could divorce privately for unfaithfulness, but you’d forfeit your bridal price and the dowry, and no one would likely forfeit that, especially since the divorce was happening because of the woman’s unfaithfulness.
Now, before we think, well, losing the bride price and losing the dowry shouldn’t have factored into Joseph’s thinking, we should understand that Joseph was likely poor. One indication of this is found in Luke 2:22-24. This records the act of Joseph and Mary bringing Jesus to the temple in order to offer a sacrifice since that is what the law required for “every male who first opens the womb.” And Luke notes specifically that Joseph offer his sacrifice in accord with the law that demanded “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:24). What’s interesting about this comment from Luke, however, is that if you go back to Leviticus 12:8, where he’s quoting, the text says, “And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons.” That is to say, Luke is telling us that Joseph couldn’t afford a lamb. He was a poor man. And when you’re poor, recouping that bride price and getting to keep the woman’s dowry would have been very tempting.
So, here’s what Joseph does. Matthew tells us in verse 19, “And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.” Joseph decided to take the merciful route. He was a just man, and he was going to put her away, that is divorce her. But he was also merciful and didn’t want to humiliate her any more than necessary. So, he willingly lost much money because of his grace toward this woman whom he was confident had been unfaithful to him.
But then something happened. Matthew tells us, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (v. 20). And look what Matthew says is Joseph’s next action in verse 24-25, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.”
That’s a pretty brief statement, but that’s a huge statement. We might say that it’s one small statement for Luke to write and one giant and costly decision for Joseph to make. Joseph was agreeing to spend the rest of his life with self-righteous people whispering behind his back that he and Mary obviously had been unable to control themselves prior to marriage.
Now, before moving on to consider the importance of Joseph’s decision, it’s helpful for us to consider the cost of obedience in our lives. Specifically, we need to recognize that the Lord will indeed call us to obedience that will cost us. Obeying the Lord may lead to greater heartache, pain, loneliness, persecution, mockery, and on and on. Joseph’s obedience came with cost, and so will ours.
There can be this line of thinking that leads us to conclude that if we’re obeying the Lord, then all should go well. We can find ourselves saying that we knew something was God’s will because everything went so smoothly. If things going smoothly were a requirement to know we’re obeying the Lord, then Paul would have to conclude that basically nothing he did was done in obedience to the Lord. After all, he was beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, imprisoned, and on and on. You could almost anticipate Paul saying, “I knew it was the Lord that I was supposed to come to this city because I was imprisoned upon arrival,” a far cry from our modern thinking. And this risk of this thinking that obedience should be easy is that it leads the wife who has decided to leave her husband saying to the person confronting her and calling her to repent, “But doesn’t the Lord want me to be happy?” The answer, of course, is that he wants you to obey him. And when he tells us that to follow him is an invitation to take up our cross, we can’t accuse him of false advertising. He tells us up from that he’s calling us to lay down our lives and deny ourselves.
But maybe we say that it’s not fair to compare us with Joseph. After all, Joseph had an angel of the Lord come to him in a dream telling him what to do. I mean, I think that all of us would say that if God sent an angel to tell us what to do, we’d do it.
But, I think we need to dissect that claim a bit. Why are we so confident that we’d obey? We no doubt answer, “It’s because God is directly telling us what to do.” Then let’s answer this question: “What is the Scripture?” Isn’t it the very words of God? Indeed it is. That means that you and I are in the exact same place as Joseph when we read the Bible, see God’s clear commands, and decide what we will do. I mean, the Bible isn’t unclear in its call to avoid sexual immorality, being faithful to our spouses, not stealing, giving, serving, or the like. The problem isn’t that we need a direct Word from God, is it? After all, we have one. Perhaps the problem is that we’ve simply conditioned ourselves to believe the lie that obeying God should come without cost. So, let’s expose it for the lie that it is. Obeying God is costly. We will deny ourselves temporary and passing pleasures and choose paths that might make us feel great pain. But the Lord calls us to obey, holding before us eternal joy and pleasure in his kingdom forever.
So, first, we see the cost of Joseph’s decision. Second, I want us to see:
Joseph’s obedience is mentioned briefly. He took Mary as his wife. He wasn’t physically intimate with her until after Jesus was born. And then he named Jesus. We see that in verse 25. And this too was in accord with what the angel told him, as he’d said to Joseph, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (v. 21). Then he did. He named him Jesus.
Just note quickly what a privilege this was. The Bible tells us that there is no other name besides Jesus under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Peter said to thousands on the day of Pentecost to repent and be baptized “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 2:38). The Bible even tells us that all of history is leading to the day when “at the name of Jesus” every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11). And the one who gave him that name was a poor carpenter who simply obeyed the Lord no matter what it cost him. We don’t always see what a glorious picture the Lord is painting; we simply obey him in the details of our lives.
It’s helpful for us to consider this in our own lives, but the main point of the text is what I want us to see next, namely:
Joseph’s decision to marry Mary is his decision to adopt Jesus as his own son. And this may seem to be a small thing, but it’s actually a necessary element in God’s plan to redeem a people for himself. Joseph becoming Jesus’ father is demanded for our salvation. Actually the way Russell Moore says it in his latest booklet on adoption is just better. After noting that Joseph adopting Jesus makes Joseph his real and true father, Moore adds, “If Joseph is not ‘really’ the Father of Jesus, you and I are going to hell.”2
Now, some of you might be saying, “Hold on a minute.” I mean the apostles’ creed, for example, doesn’t say that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, adopted by the poor carpenter, Joseph, suffered under Pontius Pilate,” etc. So, isn’t this overstated? I actually don’t think it is.
And the reason why is because of the title of Jesus that Matthew’s gospel starts with. Remember two weeks ago how we saw that Jesus is the “son of David,” which means that he is the promised king of God, who is in David’s line, and who reigns over all the earth. That is, he’s the promised Messiah, the Christ. And that was a specific detail in God’s promise. Our savior would be the son of David.
But what is his claim to be David’s son? Matthew and Luke answer that by pointing to Joseph. Matthew traces Jesus’ line down to “Jacob, the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (1:16). And Luke does the same thing, tracing Jesus’ line back to Adam through Joseph. This is why Jesus ended up being born in Bethlehem, because Joseph went “to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David” (Luke 2:5). Jesus is of the line of David because Joseph was his adoptive father.
In fact, I think Matthew strains to help us see this point. First, he opens with a seventeen verses genealogy that stresses again and again that Jesus is the son of David. Then, he follows with the story of Jesus’ birth that spends very, very little time actually talking about Jesus’ birth (actually, all he writes is, “she had given birth to a son”) and much more time talking about Joseph, who is mentioned throughout this narrative. Then, he shows us why Joseph’s role is so important. We see it in the way that the angel greets Joseph in verse 20, as he said, “Joseph, son of David . . .”
Joseph’s decision to adopt Jesus was a necessary element in our salvation because the promised savior had to be of the line of David, and Jesus’ tie to David is through a dad who adopted him. Praise the Lord for adoption and for the fact that it makes one your son just as sure as if he had come from you physically.
Our salvation hung in the balance. But in another sense, it was never in doubt because we’re also reminded in this text of:
There’s a sense in which if this were a movie you were watching unfold, knowing the importance of all of these events, you’d be nervous, gripped with anxiety. I mean, what if Joseph made the wrong decision and cared more about his reputation than obeying the Lord? What would have happened then? Well, the reality is that the sovereign Lord was at work, and nothing was going to thwart his plans.
One element I’ve not highlighted as much as I should have yet is that Mary became pregnant with Jesus when she was a virgin. And this was prophesied by Isaiah, who prophesied to Ahaz that the virgin would conceive and bear a son, who would be God with us. Why this way?
Why didn’t Jesus have a biological father? Was it because somehow cutting the man out of the mix kept Jesus from having a sinful human nature like you and I have? Possibly. Perhaps it is through the seed of the man that our sinful nature is spread, but the Bible doesn’t make that explicit. Maybe that is the very reason Jesus was in Mary’s womb but didn’t carry Joseph’s DNA. Luke seems to perhaps suggest this very thing.
But if you read the whole Bible, you see one other reason. The Old Testament is filled with infertile women, and that continues all the way into the New Testament with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. I mean, it really is amazing. You have Isaac, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist, all coming from infertile women. Why? I think it’s because of what Paul picks up on in Galatians when he compares Sarah and Hagar. Hagar represents human effort, what man can do. Sarah represents what God does by his promise that can be credited to God alone. That is, God frequently used infertile women in the Scripture to bear those whom he would use to save his people because God wanted to make clear that this was due to his might and work alone. But all of those infertile women and nearly miraculous conceptions were simply pointing us forward to one who would come. They were pointing us forward to the conception of one within a virgin so that we might know that when Jesus was conceived, born, lived, died, and was raised, that it was the work of God alone to bring salvation to his people. There is nothing we could boast of in this regard.
I think this is one reason why Matthew points out that “all this took place” to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the mouth of Isaiah 700 years earlier. There is a right sense in which we ponder the cost of Joseph’s obedience, the importance of Joseph’s obedience, and the privilege of Joseph’s obedience. But we must not miss that behind it all was God fulfilling every promise and making sure everything happened in accord with his plan to bring salvation to a rebellious people whom he loved by his might and power and plan alone. So, even as we are challenged by Joseph’s obedience and marvel at the importance and privilege of his obedience, we must stop and give thanks to the God who fulfilled his promise to send us the Savior, the son of David, God the Son to save us and would let nothing thwart his promise and plan. Let us then give thanks to him now as we come to the table. Amen.