Fear Not, God Uses Costly Obedience, Part 1

The Christmas message can be summed up as God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. God really does love you and He really has a wonderful plan for your life.

Bill Bright, 1952, he wrote a little pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws, and that’s law number one. And then law number two is about all mankind has separated from God because of our sin. And law number three with Christ paid the penalty for our sin. And law number four is you must receive Christ personally. And then in that booklet there was a little prayer.

God does love us and He does have a wonderful plan, but over time, some people, maybe to try to make the gospel a little bit more appealing, they have sort of shifted what that word “wonderful” means. And as a result, we have I think a lot of people who think that if you just follow Jesus, you have a marriage problem, it’ll go away. You have a problem child, that’ll go away. You have financial problems, they’ll go away. If you don’t believe it, just turn on the TV. You send them money, they tell you God will, you know, send you money.

I mean, there’s this crazy, crazy thought that this wonderful life means painless, easy, free, everything gets solved. But what I want you to know, God really does offer a wonderful life but it’s a bit different.

In fact, our Christmas story, Exhibit A, Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elderly, barren couple receive miracle baby who becomes first prophet in four hundred years: John the Baptist. Is that wonderful or not? It’s miraculous. Exhibit B: Mary. Humble peasant girl from wrong side of town becomes earthly mother of Jesus through virgin birth. Is that wonderful? It’s amazing! Exhibit C: Joseph. Blue-collar worker, marries unwed mother and becomes the earthly father of the Savior of the world, Jesus.

Those sound like headlines, don’t they? See, we spiritualize all this and romanticize it, but that’s, those are the wonderful things that happened. Do you know what the word wonderful actually means? Look at your notes. This is the definition in the dictionary of “wonderful.” Marvelous thing, miraculous, inspiring delight, an object of astonishment.

Literally, it comes from full of awe or wonder, extremely good. It’s seeing something that is just so magnificent. In fact, the Hebrew word pala is a phenomena outside of the realm of human explanation, that which is separate from the normal course of events. “Wonderful” doesn’t mean easy, nice, everything works okay. In fact, just lean back. You don’t need to turn there.

Let me give you a biblical example of the word “wonderful.” Psalm 139, filled with the Holy Spirit, David writes, “Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I lie down and when I rise up. You understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my ways and my path and my lying down. You are acquainted with all my ways. Before there’s a word on my tongue, behold Lord, You know it all.” Think of that. Before you say a word, God knows what you will say. Every private thought, every part about you.

He goes on to say, “Even before there’s a word on my tongue, behold Lord, You know it all. You have encircled me behind and in front and You have placed Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, I cannot comprehend it.”

Here’s what I want you to get, God has a wonderful plan as in astonishing, supernatural, miraculous, not to be confused with easy, painless, fulfilling, everything is going to be great.

As you open your notes, I have a question that I would kind of like to ask and answer, because if you’re a thinking person: if God really does have this wonderful life, astonishing, miraculous thing He wants to do in us, why are there many people, I mean, many people disappointed and disillusioned with God?

“I thought Jesus offered a wonderful life. I thought He was going to make things better.”

The answer to this question literally flows right out of the Christmas story and the answer can be found in a study of Joseph’s life.

Joseph teaches us the high cost of receiving God’s wonderful plans. Please, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. God wants to do something in you, in me, and through you that will astonish people, that you would look back and marvel, that you would go, I’m just a regular person. How could God have ever done this? But it doesn’t happen right away, there’s a process you go through, there’s much perseverance, there’s great difficulty, and pain, tribulation, and suffering, and those are a part of a fallen world, even for those that love Jesus with all their heart.

In fact, let’s check out Joseph’s life. The context here, Matthew opens it up. So, Matthew – right? Remember? Tax collector, not a follower of Judaism let alone Jesus, comes to Jesus, is transformed. And what he realizes is the Jewish community he is going to write [to], believes that the Messiah is going to come, He is going to crush Rome, they are better than everybody else, life is going to be great, and the Messiah is going to solve everything.

But he gives us a genealogy. And the genealogy challenges and upends his audience’s worldview and their expectations about Messiah.

So, don’t miss this. Matthew starts with Abraham, because that’s the father of the Jewish race. And the first promise to Abraham was about, “Through you all the world, all peoples,” not just Jews, “all people will be blessed.”

Matthew puts four women, three of which – are you ready? are Gentiles. One is a prostitute, one sleeps with her father-in-law because he betrayed her and didn’t keep his commitments. And then you have one that the way the world worked, you know, David made some really big mistakes, but Bathsheba wasn’t innocent. Women in the Middle East were very conscious about being very modest. She decides she goes up on the roof to bathe. That was a, that was a duo.

All I want you to get is he is poking holes at these expectations. He’s going to say it started with a concern for Gentiles, it ends with a list of a group of people that no one hardly even knows, and there’s embedded four women, who don’t have a lot of status, three of which are fairly immoral at some season of their life. And Matthew says: You want to know the context of God’s wonderful plans? It’s for people who you would never think even deserve it.

And then he goes on and introduces Joseph. This is the man who will be the earthly father of Jesus. And I would like to say the situation is not so wonderful. And we pick up the story in verse 18 of Matthew 1. Now, this is the birth of Jesus the Messiah and how it came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.”

Now, you know, again, the romantic side of the story is, oh, he found it was from the Holy Spirit. Everything is going to be great. I’d like to suggest that Joseph’s response is a very painful dilemma.

First, as far as he knows he has been betrayed. Anybody been dating someone and find out they cheated on you? You don’t have to raise your hands. Anybody been married to someone and found out they cheated on you? So, your response is, “Oh, it’s okay because I’m a Christian and everything is wonderful,” right? Or are you livid? Angry? Mad? Betrayed? That’s where Joseph is.

Here’s the dilemma, according to the law, the consequences for this behavior is Mary should be stoned. But because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law or another translation will say because he was a just man. It means he was a righteous man. Joseph believed, he trusted, he lived out his faith, “Because he was a righteous man he did not want to expose her to public disgrace, but he had mind to divorce her quietly.”

He has been betrayed, but the Old Testament talks about a compassionate justice…Isaiah 42, the first five verses are speaking of the coming of the Messiah. And he talks about the compassion and the tenderness in which this Messiah, the God who has every right to judge all the sin and all the idolatry, it says, “He will bring about justice.”

And so, the dilemma here is: I have been betrayed, I’m hurting deeply, yes, I could have my way and expose her, maybe feel better about myself but I love her. So, his righteous compromise is: I’m just going to put her away quietly. I want to follow the spirit of the law. I want to give her what she doesn’t really deserve.

In the next section where it talks about the angel’s intervention, it says, “But after he had considered this,” would you just circle that and then we’ll come back to this section?

That word considered is a very, it’s a word in the New Testament that has two meanings. One, it can mean to consider or to ponder. But it’s used throughout the New Testament as much more as it means to be angry, to be deeply disturbed, to be mad.

In Luke 4:28, remember Jesus reads the text, it says, “I am the Messiah,” and they take Him out on a hill and they are going to throw Him off. This word is used. It says, “And the wrath of the people from the synagogue,” same word.

It’s a picture of someone who emotionally feels so angry. Any of you felt really angry when someone did something terrible to you and you want to say something or do something but Joseph takes time and he ponders and he goes: Okay, there’s a righteous compromise here. I’m not denying there’s a wound, I’m not denying that I haven’t been really angry and really, really hurt. But I want, I want to be righteous, I want to treat her in a way that she doesn’t deserve.

And notice, because that’s what he does, the response. The response is, “And 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. Take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit and she will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sin.’”

The angel intervenes and basically says – what? “Fear not.” What I want you to get, this story, Joseph is going to have this incredibly wonderful, miraculous life with unmentionable privilege of being the earthly father of the Savior of the world who will come and live a perfect life, die for the sins of all mankind, and offer forgiveness to whosoever would believe.

That’s the great reward, but the process is he was a righteous man.

You know, can you imagine the guys down at the Jerusalem coffee shop? “Did you hear about that guy in, guy in Nazareth?” “Yeah, yeah, everybody thought he was a really righteous guy and, you know, he’s got his, got his girlfriend pregnant and they slipped out of town.” “You know, I was going to have him do our carpentry work, but he lost his reputation. His family name is disgraced.” I mean, his world is falling apart. How many people do you think would believe this, oh, this-baby-is-from-the-Holy-Spirit one? Oh, oh, yeah, Joseph. Yeah, I mean, you know, that happens all the time. You know?

See, we, again, we’ve got this picture of the nativity scene and the lights and all the notions and all the little movies and Bible stories. Here’s a man whose life, whose work, whose family, whose reputation is absolutely disgraced and he chooses not to be afraid regardless of the cost and the consequences because he hears a word from God through an angel.

I’m going to swim upstream. It’s hard to believe and the price is really high, but this child is of the Holy Spirit. And I want you to do two things. Number one, Mary is going through a big struggle. I want you to marry her right away, I want you to take her home. This legal contract that you had, right? It’s a betrothal. The only way you can get out of a betrothal, is a writ of divorce. No, I don’t want you to divorce her. I want you to find her and I want you to bring her into your home, I don’t want you to have sex with her – it says it a little bit nicer in the New Testament here.

And then I want you to name – you name Him Jesus because as you know, that word Joshua: Savior of His people. Joseph, here’s your assignment. It’s hard, it’s difficult, it’s painful, it’s not fair, and people are going to think all kind of stuff of you. But you are my man. And what I want you to do is I want you to embrace it, I don’t want you to be afraid, because life is more than just now. You are a part of this wonderful, astonishing, miraculous plan that I have put in place, but there is a big high price to it.

And that’s what he does. “All this took place ‘to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet,” Isaiah 7:14, “[the] virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel,’ (which means ‘God with us’).”

Your expectations about what was going to happen have been painful, difficult, costly. From the outside, this is what people think and they are judging you. You were actually chosen because you are a righteous man because you would trust His word.

So, all the world now thinks this of you and God is saying: I have this wonderful, miraculous, astonishing – I mean, in awe. And you are going to be the one who raises this little baby to become a young man. And I will use Him in ways like no one who has ever been born because He will be fully man and fully God. He will live a perfect life, He will die for the sins of the world, He will rise from the dead, and that is your role in your life. And the price is very, very high.

That’s not exactly Joseph and Mary on the little donkey with the violins in the background. It was hard. It was painful. How many of you have been deeply disappointed with God? How many of you really wondered, If God really cares and loves me? Why this? Why now? This is so challenging.

And here’s the thing, as though something is strange or wrong or unbiblical, when the fact of the matter is, Joseph tells us there’s a very high cost to obedience.

The wonder that He wants to do in you, the miraculous that we talked about doesn’t happen casually. It happens to people that hear His Word, are willing to swim upstream, and to trust God when all the things around you just feel like, Oh God.

So, what does Joseph do? What’s his response?

It’s immediate, radical, and costly. “When Joseph woke up,” notice the immediacy, “when Joseph woke up, he did,” underline that. How many times has God given you a little prompting: Call so-and-so. Go ahead and share your faith. I want you to help them out and pay their rent. I want you to go volunteer for that. I want you to ask the person at work that you can tell is really struggling, “You know, is everything okay?”

Here’s God’s will: Obey immediately. Just respond. Radically obey to what He shows you. God’s plan is to give us these little tiny windows of light and you obey, then He gives you more. Then you obey, He gives you more. But if you don’t obey what He says, you don’t get more light. That’s the teaching of Jesus.

And so, he awoke and immediately, he did what the angel of the Lord said – what? “He took Mary into his home as his wife, he didn’t consummate the marriage until she gave birth to a son. And then he gave Him the name Jesus,” the One who would save the world from our sin.