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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022
10:30 AM (kids! + communion)
ADVENT 4: Love
Biblical Manhood with Shel Boese
Matthew 1:18-25
“When male pastors call on us to recover something called “biblical manhood,” I suspect they’re not thinking of the silent, loyal Joseph submitting himself humbly to his wife’s God-given calling”  -Michael Frost. On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we read one of the classic accounts of the birth of Jesus, and zoom in on Joseph—a model of openness and maturity in the face of cultural pressure and his own expectations.

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THROUGH THE TEXT: Matthew 1:18-25 (NET + The Message)

Images depicting Joseph

Image 1: by Matt Chinworth

Image 2: In this picture by 18th-century French printmaker Antoine Alexandre Morel, the carpenter Joseph gazes at the writ of divorce he is considering drawing up against his betrothed Mary. He has decided not to condemn Mary publicly as an adulteress but to divorce her quietly. Here he solemnly contemplates the paperwork that will whisk her from his life. But Morel has placed a sprig of lilies across Joseph’s lap to remind us of his faithfulness, alluding to Hosea 14:5—“The just man shall blossom like the lily.”

• Which will he choose? The lilies or the writ? Grace or legalism?

Image 3: by João Fucci 
What age was St. Joseph? Was he old or young?

THROUGH THE TEXT
Matthew 1:18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah[a] took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 

• It’s a who-is-the-father moment. Joseph had not been with Mary, said in a very culturally sensitive, but clear way.
• The Holy Spirit is the father.
• “The Christ" = “The Messiah”
  • Stanley Hauerwas, “But incarnation [God becoming human in Jesus] properly understood means that Jesus’ person and work cannot be separated because Jesus saves by making us participants in a new way of life. The name of that way of life is church” (Matthew, 30).

Matthew 1:19-20a Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,

• Righteous man
• Angel
• Dream
• Does not want to [expose her, quiet divorce]

1. BIBLICAL MANHOOD is... 
Hauerwas, 35 “One of the great enemies of the gospel is sentimentality, and the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth have proven to be ready material for maudlin sentiment. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ conception and birth is unapologetically realistic. Joseph, not Mary, is the main actor. John Chrysostom praises Joseph as a man of exceptional self-restraint since he must have been free of that most tyrannical passion, jealousy. Unwilling to cause Mary distress, to expose her to public disgrace, he planned to dismiss her discreetly. Joseph, therefore, refused to act according to the law, but rather chose to act in a manner that Jesus himself would later exemplify by his attitude toward known sinners” (Matt 9:10-13).

2. BIBLICAL MANHOOD

• “Righteous man”

3. BIBLICAL MANHOOD
Matthew 1:20b “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 

• “...Matthew’s community would resonate. His predicament is a parable of theirs. Like them, he faces a difficult decision: to maintain the status quo of the old orthodoxy or to follow a new and wonderful dream from God at an enormous personal cost. Joseph, the namesake of a dreamer, clearly follows the dream. Though his life is made vastly more difficult as a result, on every hand he is protected by God. Matthew’s first hearers have reason to embrace the same hope” -Michael Card, Matthew the Gospel of Identity, 29.
• Note in Matthew the Angel addressed Joseph, in Luke we learn that Mary as well is visited by the angel.
  • Mary did you know? Luke 1:26-38 - Yes. But that does not lessen the pain of then living through the crucifixion.
• “Do not be afraid”

4. BIBLICAL MANHOOD is naming fear...

• When the Holy Spirit moves in special ways, fear can be an initial reaction.
  • When God shows up through angels or other ways “do not be afraid” is common communication. (Luke 1:13, 30; 2:10; Matthew 14:27; 28:10, etc.)
• “conceived”

5. BIBLICAL MANHOOD is about humility
“Intellectual humility—knowing that one might be wrong—restrains bullheaded fanaticism. Humility enables civil discourse. Humility underlies science. Humility facilitates critical thinking, which puts testable ideas—including one’s own—to the test. Nullius in verba (Britain’s Royal Society motto): Take nobody’s word for it. To accept everything is to be gullible; to deny everything is to be a cynic.” -Excerpted from How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind by David G. Myers. Copyright © 2022.

‘Humility also supports healthy relationships. Humility’s opposite is pride, which so often feeds contempt for others. Even Dale Carnegie, America’s twentieth-century positive thinking apostle, foresaw the danger: “Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism—and wars.”’

Humility, by contrast, entails an accurate understanding of self. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, true humility is not thinking we are less than others, but rather allows us to recognize both our own talents and others’ strengths. Humility also involves modest self-presentation. When we share and accept credit without seeking attention, we are not (to again paraphrase C. S. Lewis) thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less.

Matthew 1:21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 

• Yeshua, a later form of the more ancient Hebrew, Yehoshua. YHWH is help, and the redeemer of His people.
  • Hauerwas, “Yet Joseph still required a revelation so that he would know the character of Mary’s pregnancy. He is also given the honour to name Jesus as the new Joshua...the old conquered the promised land...this [new] Joshua is sent to save his people from their sins...to live as people of the promise” (36).
• “his people”

6. BIBLICAL MANHOOD also submits to...
Matthew 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,  and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” 

• Greek version of Isaiah 7:14
• Mary is a second Eve, but she is also our Abraham. She obeyed God’s call to leave the familiar and she is the beginning of the church. The first yes to the Holy Spirit!
• She is the firstborn of the new, responding to God’s call to bring a new people into being. Abraham is the father of Israel, Mary is the mother of the church, Israel expanded.

7. BIBLICAL MANHOOD learns the...
Matthew 1:24-25 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son,[b] and he named him Jesus.

8. BIBLICAL MANHOOD...

ARRIVAL AND LANDING
9. “biblical manhood” may mean....