Dec. 10, 2000

Luke 1:26-45; Matthew 1:18-25

Mary and Joseph:

How God Uses Willing Hearts

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – Macrina Wiederkehr, in A Tree Full of Angels, writes: We stand in the midst of nourishment and we starve. We dwell in the land of plenty, yet we persist in going hungry. Not only do we dwell in the land of plenty; we have the capacity to be filled with the utter fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19). In the light of such possibility, what happens? Why do we drag our hearts? Lock up our souls? Why do we limp? Why do we straddle the issues? Why do we live so feebly, so dimly? Why aren’t we saints? Each of us could come up with individual answers to all these questions, but I want to suggest here a common cause. The reason we live life so dimly and with such divided hearts is that we have never really learned how to be present with quality to God, to self, to others, to experiences and events, to all created things. We have never learned to gather up the crumbs of whatever appears in our path at every moment. We meet all of these lovely gifts only half there. Presence is what we are starving for. Real presence! We are too busy to be present, too blind to see the nourishment and salvation in the crumbs of life, the experiences of each moment. Yet the secret of daily life is this: "There are no leftovers!" There is nothing – no thing, no person, no experience, no thought, no joy or pain – that cannot be harvested and used for nourishment on our journey to God.
2. Context – A very profound truth, and one that the Israelites didn’t get either! God tried to get them into right relationship with Him using the Law and the Prophets as guidelines. But that didn’t work! The Israelites didn’t take their difficulties and their exiles as an opportunity to experience God in His fullness. They only saw the need for legalistic ritualism. So God needed to do something different, to send His presence to dwell with man.

1. Scripture Passages

1. Let’s read together a familiar story from a couple of different angles. First, let’s look at Luke 1:26-45 - ²⁶ In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." ²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." ³⁴ "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" ³⁵ The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For nothing is impossible with God." ³⁸ "I am the Lord’s servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her. ³⁹ At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰ where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴² In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"
2. The second passage we are taking a look at this morning is Matthew 1:18-25 - ¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But 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 to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, "God with us." ²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
3. Two ordinary people involved in one extraordinary plan, that of Messiah coming to earth. Today we’re going to look at how God can use willing hearts.

1. The Plan

1. God had a great plan for His people. Since September, we have been looking at some remarkable people in the Bible and how God has worked through, and sometimes in spite of them. But we’ve also seen how God has used each of these people and their circumstances to point to the coming Christ. He is the sacrifice that meets the righteous requirements of the Law. The sacrifice that does away with the need for all other blood sacrifices. The once and for all sacrifice for our sins.
2. The angel gave Mary and Joseph two sides of the same plan. What was that plan?

• In Luke 1:31-35, the angel tells Mary that she will be made pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit and will give birth to Jesus, the Son of the Most High. The piece of the puzzle that Mary is given tells her that God in the Flesh is coming to earth, and that she will be His mother. More on that later.
• In Matthew 1:20-23, the angel gives Joseph the basics but also adds a little more information. The piece of the puzzle that Joseph is given tells him that, not only is Mary pregnant by the Holy Spirit, but that her Son Jesus will save the people from their sins and will fulfill the prophecy found in Isaiah 7:14.

1. The most awesome event in human history was becoming a reality. The most anticipated event in Judaism was at hand. Messiah was coming to save the people from their sins!
2. Illustration – Calvin Miller writes, In Jesus we know who God is and what he is like. Indeed, if we want to know the nature of God, we have only to look at Jesus, for he is the very picture of God. Jesus is not the God of thunderbolts, but the Son of God the loving Father, Abba. Humanity is simply God’s children, and therefore brothers and sisters of Jesus. Jesus is God’s Son, like us, but so obedient and pleasing to God that God proclaimed in a loud voice that thundered about the Jordan River at Jesus’ baptism, "You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Jesus, God’s Son, the Messiah, the One pleasing to God. He is our Savior.

1. Willing Hearts

1. Suppose you’ve already made a commitment to and entered into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. What does this passage have to say to you? How does it apply to you?
2. As far as what it says, the story of the angel’s visitations to Mary and Joseph gives us great opportunity to offer worship and praise and glory and honor to our God Who cares so much for us that He sent His Son to save us from our sins! What an awesome God we have!
3. But, you know what? If we just leave this story at that, we’re missing a big part of the point of the passage. That point is that God uses people who have willing hearts. So what makes a heart a willing heart?

• First, we see that Mary and Joseph had respect for God’s laws. According to Jewish custom, after the formal betrothal ceremony there was a period of a year before the marriage for a virgin during which time she lived with her friends. All communication between the bride-to-be and her future husband was carried on through a friend commissioned for the purpose, called the "friend of the groom." Mary and Joseph did not try to bypass the system, but lived in respect for it, and did not "rush the wedding night" like so many couples today do. They respected God’s laws and the customs of their people. That kind of respect is part of a heart that is willing to do whatever God desires of it.
• The second clue is found in Luke 1:38, in Mary’s answer to the angel, "I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said." Mary had to know enough about Jewish custom and law to know that Joseph could have her stoned for turning up pregnant. She could very possibly lose him as husband. At the very least, she would become an object of derision and ridicule by her community. Her family’s name would be tarnished. But, in spite of the remarkable and life-changing revelations of the angel, she still answered, "I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said." Joseph faced difficult issues as well. He had three options: having her stoned for adultery; putting her away quietly, divorcing her; or taking her into his home as his wife. If he had her stoned, not only would she be dead, her family would be disgraced. If he divorced her, her family would still be disgraced, and she would face the probability of being a single mother for the rest of her life, branded and scorned as an adulteress. But if he married her, the whole village would assume that he was the father, they had been caught in sin, and together they would become a laughingstock of the village. And he could have just written off the angel’s dream visit as indigestion. But Matthew 1:24 tells us that Joseph got up from his sleep and did exactly as the angel told him to, taking Mary into his home as his wife. Not only that, but he kept her a virgin so that the prophecy would be fulfilled. Hearts that God can use are willing to do whatever He calls them to do, no matter what the cost. That is what Mary and Joseph were willing to do. That is what we must be willing to do.
• In these passages, we get a glimpse into the lives of Mary and Joseph, and how God used them to make His Son flesh so that He could live among us, relate to us, and ultimately save us from our sins. Mary and Joseph had willing hearts, hearts that showed respect for God and His laws, and hearts that would do whatever He commanded, no matter what the cost. In order to be used of God for His glory, we must have willing hearts.

1. Illustration – Catherine Doherty, in Soul of My Soul, wrote, Where there is love, there is pain. But whatever our walk in life, this kind of pain is God’s way of teaching us how to pray. Everything that happens to us spiritually, everything that causes us to grow, will bring us closer to God if we say yes. This is what spiritual growth means. It doesn’t come from what we do, necessarily, from all our actions and good works. Sometimes it comes from simply sitting and seeing the shambles of what we tried to accomplish, from watching what was seemingly God’s work go to pot. You can’t do anything about it, but watch. This happened to me. I knew dimly then what I see more clearly today, that this was the moment when God really picked me up and said, "Now I am offering you the union you seek. The other side of my cross is empty. Come, be nailed upon it. This is our marriage bed." All we can answer in response to that invitation is, "Help me, God! I don’t have the courage to climb on this cross."

1. Conclusion

1. As John Alvin liked to ask in his Sunday School class, what’s God been saying to you this morning? What does He want you to do about these passages and the truths they reveal? We’re going to take a few moments of quiet to listen to what He would have each one of us do about what we’ve learned.
2. With every head bowed and every eye closed, if there is an area in your life that we’ve learned about this morning where you are not measuring up, and God is telling you that now is the time He wants to deal with it, please come forward and pray. Or if God has spoken to you in another area and you want to take action on what He is saying to you, come forward and pray as well.
3. Let’s pray.