There is only five more shopping days to Christmas. Do you feel the stress? I suspect that a lot of us do. It is generally a stressful time of year. At heart much of the stress is caused by our family relationships. Will the present we have bought or have still got to buy make the person we give it to happy? Who shall we spend Christmas day with? Will we able to make it a happy Christmas in our home?

Yet the events of the first Christmas were stressful in many ways. The person we are thinking about this morning had a lot to cope with. I am talking about Joseph. Our story begins with him having to struggle with the fact that his fiancé is pregnant. He was no doubt shocked to discover this. The customs of the devout Jewish community of his day, and him being a man of honour meant that there was no question of the baby being his.

What is he to do? The outlook was bleak. He felt betrayed; Mary must have been unfaithful to him. He felt bereft of her love. Yet he was a decent compassionate man. He didn’t want to expose Mary to disgrace, so he decided to cancel the wedding arrangements, to quietly end the engagement.

Although we know that in a real way, Joseph’s situation was unique, untold thousands in our world face situations that are just as stressful, just as painful and perplexing. Aren’t the problems that maybe some folk that we know are struggling with, going to make this Christmas for them a time of stress? Yes, our world is a troubled place. For many the outlook is bleak.

But the wonderful truth that we are reminded of this morning is that God steps in to our troubled world. He addresses our problems, and he makes a difference. As Joseph ponders his problems God steps in. An angel appears to Joseph. He tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. A very special baby will be born into his family.

God steps in. This is such an important truth, it is the gospel itself that God steps into our situation and encounters us. All through the story of the bible, runs the theme of God stepping into human affairs. Yes, sometimes it is in judgement when men and women have gone too far, but usually it is in mercy, to bless and to help.

We have been looking in recent weeks at the way that God stepped into the lives of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. But we also saw how in his dealing with those ancient characters God gave an ongoing commitment to the human race. The covenant promise was that through the descendants of Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

This Christmas story that we are looking at is part of that ongoing story. Matthew traces the descendants of Abraham, all the way from Abraham himself, down to Joseph. The bible is all part of the one great epic The Old Testament tells us of God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise for something like one and a half thousand years, of his continual stepping into the affairs of his people.
As you know the bible is made up of old and new testaments. The Gospel of Matthew that we will be looking at over the next few months is in a very special way the book that acts as a bridge between the new and the Old Testament. Matthew is the gospel that more than any other quotes the Old Testament scriptures. Time and again Matthew tells us of events in Jesus life and uses the phrase that you see there in verse 22: ‘all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet’ and then Matthew goes on to quote a passage from the Old Testament that points forward to the coming of Jesus.

As well a quoting the Old Testament more than the other gospels, Matthew was also quoted more than any of the other gospels by the early Christian writers of the second century. Although they valued all four gospels, not only is Matthew the one that is quoted the most, it is also the one that always comes first in order in the lists of valid New Testament scriptures.

Matthew who is attributed with being the author of the gospel was a disciple of Jesus. I know the theological scholars challenge everything, but there is still no better suggestion than the one accepted by the early church, that Matthew, the tax collector who Jesus called to follow him was the source and most likely the author of the gospel. It could well be that Matthew was the most able of the disciples to write down the event that surrounded Jesus life as well as his teachings.

That certainly would account for the way in which the early church valued and quoted this gospel. Another fact about the gospel of Matthew is that it is written by someone from a Jewish background. As you go through it you find that the author is familiar with the Old Testament scriptures, as well as the Jewish religious customs of the day. In fact Matthew is the only gospel to specifically tell us that Jesus earthly ministry was to what Jesus calls the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

But yet Matthew shows how following on from Jesus resurrection he commissions his followers to take the gospel throughout the entire world to all nations. He gives us the story of how the covenant to Abraham becomes the means of blessing to all nations, how God stepping into history through Jesus, has stepped into life for you and me.

God steps in. But when God steps in, it requires a response from us. We are required to act differently; we could be required to change our plans. Joseph had to change his plans. He was going to break off with Mary; leave the problem behind, extricate himself from the situation. But God says to him I want you to stay with Mary and to marry her. I want you to act as a father to her child.

That was not an easy path for Joseph to take. There would be misunderstanding. He would most likely be the victim of gossip. He also had to believe something that was really quite incredible. In all the Old Testament out of all the births of children that came as answers to prayer, there had never once been a virgin birth. But God asked Joseph to have faith.

When we realise that God has stepped in to our situation, then God calls us to have faith too. That will often require that we act differently. We no longer can take the easy way out of a situation; rather we take the path that is right and honourable. God brings hope when he steps in. But sometimes he calls us to do things that looked at rationally certainly do not seem in our best interests. But that is sometimes the way of faith.

The final lesson I want us to think about this morning, is the fact that one of you mentioned to me the other day. It is the fact that in reality Jesus was not a descendant of David. The Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David. As eager as Matthew is to point out the ways in which Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, he is quite clear that while Joseph is a descendant of David, the baby in Mary’s womb is conceived by the Holy Spirit. He is the Son of God. The angel tells Joseph that people will call the child Immanuel – God with us.

Why not the son of David? One thing that we need to understand about prophecy is this; when God reveals things concerning future events, he does not reveal all the details that we would like to know. He is God and that is his prerogative. God was only now revealing to mankind, that his own son was coming into the world. In the birth of his own son, God would be with men and women; Immanuel, God with us.

God in his wisdom knew that no human being could do the task that was needed to redeem a sinful world. There are indications of this in the Old Testament, Isaiah 63 v 5, set in later historical period of the Old Testament after a whole catalogue of failure by God’s chosen people to be faithful to the covenant, following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the exile of the people to Babylon, God says ‘I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm worked salvation for me.’

God looked at the terrible human predicament. He loved the world so much, that there was nothing else for it, but to step onto the world’s stage himself in Jesus. Jesus illustrated the same truth in his parable of the tenants in the vineyard. The owner sent servants, one after the other to collect the rent, all to no avail. In the end he had to send his only son.

The wonderful truth of Christmas is that God has stepped in on our behalf in the person of Jesus. Jesus came to die on the cross so that men and women might be forgiven, that their sins might be blotted out, that their guilt might be removed once and for all. But more than that, Jesus came that in him God might dwell with men and women, God with us. Christ has returned to heaven, but he has imparted the Holy Spirit to be a helper to each and every believer. God is present with us. He is with us in our stresses and problems.

May we each know the reality of that as we share together around the table, may we know the reality of his grace, his peace and his love; God with us.
 

Amen.

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