Word of Salvation – Vol. 35 No. 42 – November 1990

 

What Then Must We Do With Him?

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Matthew 1:20, 21A.

Reading: 2Samuel 7:4-16

Singing:  331, 148, 335, 38, 111.

 

It was quite evident, was it not, that the world into which the Son of God entered, was no ‘brave new world’ but one pock-marked by sin.  Look at Joseph now; for him the coming of his Messiah meant an unbearable crisis: who would have thought such a thing of his darling Mary?

She had been so strange already, for months on end.  So quiet, so turned in on herself, as if carrying a secret.  When he asked: ‘What’s the matter, Mary?’, there had been no direct answers.  Maybe something like: O, nothing, nothing, don’t worry about it.’  Or: ‘I will tell you later.”  But what could she tell and hope Joseph would believe it?  At last the thing became evident: she was in the family way’.  She was expecting a baby and it was not his!

It became clearer and clearer until you couldn’t miss it.  But how could he talk about it?  Oh, he had loved her so much.  Night after night he lay awake wondering what to do; how to handle this terrible thing.  Oh that heart torn up with disillusionment and grief!  No court case, that was sure.  Drag her before the judges?  Lord God, it is in your law but don’t ask that from me.  I still love her, Lord.  Just tell her it’s off between us, and let her go away that’d be best.  Love lay in Joseph’s cold heart like a dead stone.  The joy and song had forever gone out of his life.  Who would have thought it of her of all people?  So you really could trust nobody.  Not even Mary.  Let alone elders or preachers of the church or anybody.

And then there is that angel voice in that dream.  It startles him already by the way of its address: ‘Joseph, you son of David!!’  David, man after God’s heart.  Writer of the songs of Israel’s praise.  And yet what a life full of pressure, what a life full of testing, full of blood too, and sin.  To walk with God is not to have all of life’s riddles solved for you or to be kept from all arrows of the evil one.  Think of Absalom, the rebel Sheba, that other son: Adonijah.  Think of the bloodstained hands of Joab, the slaughter of Abner, Ishbosheth and Amasa.  How full of fear has David’s life been, how full of tears.  And yet also how full of the closeness of the Lord God.  The grace that kept coming each morning even when the child of God turned adulterer and cold-blooded murderer.

Joseph, son of David, had you forgotten how God was in the life of your great forefather?  You had not thought God Almighty would be a tame lion, had you?  Now the Son of God is coming into our world and you had thought that would be a sugary affair?  The Spirit of the Lord, the Life-Giver, has created and begotten life in the body of your girl, Joseph.  So do not be afraid that love has gone.  Do not be afraid to take her to you as your wife.

She has remained faithful to you.  But no, she is not the same as she was before.  How can you be, after you say to the Lord Almighty: ‘Do to me as you will, O Lord.’  Something tremendous has happened to her and how could she ever have told you this?  Inside Mary, God’s own Son is growing as the Son of Man.  God Himself is taking human shape in her.  But do not be afraid, Joseph.  Do not be afraid to take her under your roof, and into your shelter.  Do not be afraid?

How is it possible?  Had not that other fore-father, Jacob, cried out after that other dream, near Beth-El?  ‘How awesome is this place, the Lord Himself has been here.  How much more awesome the womb of this girl where God still is growing into human form.  God is doing terrible things there, things never done here before, terrible and yet how simple and how common, how close.  Close and simple as the sign of a piece of bread, close and simple like a sip of Australian grown wine.

God comes to the son of David as the Son of David.  God comes to the son of him who wrote, ‘Have mercy Oh God and give me back the joy of thy salvation, I have sinned against thee, only against thee’.

He comes not in the thunder of His well-deserved judgement but as an embryo.  He comes as the Son of him whose sin resulted in a baby born to Bathsheba.  And that baby had to die because God is just.  But He who became a baby in Mary, the servant of God, He had to die too, to wipe out David’s sin and Bathsheba’s sin; Joseph’s and Mary’s too.

Your sin and that of the brother who will sit next to you at the table, whose sin has hurt you perhaps.  Oh the wonder of the coming of the Son of God.  Look at it, little one.  Look at it, you who think that love has died within you.  Can he who came alive under Mary’s heart not make you alive with new tenderness?  Look at Him, you who think your life has lost its lustre.  He made all things new for Joseph and can He not do so for you?  You who think you cannot trust anybody, don’t you think that He who died the lonely death on the cross, surrounded by enemies, can by His Spirit tie your heart to that of brothers you thought you had lost when you see how you both need grace, and grace alone?  The Lord God comes into small, human life and says: Now fear not, small one… fear not!

Be still and know that I am God.

And we may be still and see Him at work.  Here where His Son became our brother.

AMEN