Message

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Well , Northgate friends and family. It's good to be with you. It's always good to be with you. I love when I get to come up here. Cause I feel like I've been up here enough times that like several of us, like we've become friends and we're familiar with each other and it's such a treat to be here. So I keep telling Larry, like, you need to leave more often so I can come see my friends at Northgate . And it's always fun to be here with you, but I'm especially excited to be a part of this series. We're going to spend the next several months just walking through Matthew. And what's going to be fun is over the months to see the themes that developed to see the way that Matthew who is one of the, what we call gospel writers. There are four gospel accounts. They are the accounts of the story of Jesus in his life for different people, right? Those Matthew mark, Luke and John Matthew writes the one that's first in the new Testament. And so the way that Matthew presents Jesus, we're going to start to see these themes that are going to emerge over the months as we get into that together. And as we do that, one of the things that's going to happen is it's going to do something in us and it's going to be fun to watch that happen. But the texts, the texts that we're looking at today, I think for some of us, we're going to experience it a little bit out of context. It's going to feel a little bit off to some of us because what we're looking at today, it's normally a part of the Christmas story

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Or we're looking at today. We would normally read it around December

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And all of the sentimentality. That's a part of Christmas. We would associate that with the texts that we're looking at today, but because we're looking at a context of , but it's going to do something different to us. I think it's a little bit like, do you remember, you remember when you were in like elementary school and that you had this picture of who your teacher was, that your teacher like lived in this box, this box, it was your classroom. And they would like show up and they would teach you. And like that was their life. And then you have that moment where you sell your elementary school teacher outside of class and you saw them at like the grocery store and they had kids and you're like,

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What ? You can't have kids like, I'm your kid like that doesn't make

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Sense. And you saw them at like a baseball game and you're like,

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You don't have fun. You don't have

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Hobbies. You teach, that's what you do. But then you saw them out of context and it sort of like messed with you a bit in a way where you had to go back to the context that you had them in. And they had a new dimension in your classroom to you . You saw them in new ways and new lights. And my hope is that that's what the texts that we're going to look at together today will do to us. So we're used to experiencing it in the context of Christmas and the sentimentality of Christmas. But when we break it out of that a little bit, it gives us some new dimension. It gives us some new depth to, it helps us to sit in new and different ways to hit us in new and different ways. So we're going to look together at Matthew chapter one, we're going to start in verse 18 here. So Matthew chapter one, verse 18, here's how it starts. It says, this is how the birth of Jesus. The Messiah came about. His mother. Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, by the way, that's a way of saying that they were engaged. And in that time, and in that place, there were two sort of legal steps to the marriage process. And the first was an engagement and it was legally binding contract together that you were going to move towards the second stage of marriage. And so they're engaged to each other in a way that's legally binding, they're engaged to each other, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the holy spirit because Joseph, her husband was faithful to the law. I want you to pay attention that phrase. He was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace. He had in mind to divorce her quietly. The reason that he would have to divorce her is because of that contract because they are legally bound to one another in an engagement that time and place. But Matthew tells us this interesting thing about Joseph says that he is faithful to the law. Some of your translations might translate it this way. They say that he is a righteous man. And in the Hebrew of the day, the way that people would have seen him, the reputation that he would have had is had to said, oh, Joseph is a Siddique TSA , D IQ Siddique . Joseph is a Siddique. And what that meant is that that was the term that was given to anyone who spent their time studying and learning and observing the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy. It would lay out the 619 different laws that those were going to be faithful to the law would follow. And so a Siddique as somebody who said, I'm going to commit myself to do the best that I can to live in the way that God calls me to live as best

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As I understand it. And so what that would mean in that

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Time, in that culture for somebody like Joseph to be a Siddique is, or things like this, that he would pray daily, who prayed the Shema . Prayer comes out of Deuteronomy six, hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one who prayed that prayer daily. It means that he would observe all the food laws that were found in the Torah. It means that he would support his synagogue. It means that he would travel on the high holy days to Jerusalem and he'd make a pilgrimage and do whatever it took to make a pilgrimage, to be in Jerusalem for the high holy days, he's following the practices and the ways of God, as best as he understood it at that time and at that place. And so at some point, though, at some point, Mary has to go to Joseph, her fiance and tell him that she's pregnant. And in that moment, when that happens, he has to decide how he's going to respond. And what's fascinating to me is the way that Matthew describes it. When Matthew says that Joseph is faithful to the law, he is a Siddique and then Matthew writes and yet he's faithful to the law. And

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Yet he did not want to publicly disgrace her

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Because there's only two conclusions that Joseph would come to with this news that Mary is pregnant. And he knows that he is not the one who has done it either in this time and place, they would have said that she was seduced by somebody and she's given into that seduction. So either that has happened. And if that is what's happened, then according to the law that what's supposed to happen is that Mary and her seducer are both to be stoned to death. And we're not talking about what happens over on the other side of the bridge and Haight, Ashbury, stoned to death, different kind of experience there, funny in the first service either. But I kept trying, like I thought maybe, maybe my friends here will get it.

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So Mary

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And her seducer would have to be stoned to death. That's the first option section second option is that she was raped. And in that cultural time, if she was raped, there would be public disgrace on her for being raped today, we would look at that and we would see all kinds of issues with that. But then that time in that place, there would be public shame on the woman. And so she would have public shame with that. And then her perpetrator would have to be publicly stoned to death. But the third option, and this to me seems like the most likely one in this scenario is if married does not admit to being seduced. And if there is no accusation of rape. And so it's like, well, we don't know how this happened. Then what the Torah would say to do is that she is to drink the waters of bitterness. And if she dies after drinking the waters of bitterness, well, then she was obviously guilty. And if she doesn't die within cheese innocent, and like, we don't know, we don't actually know what the waters of bitterness are, but we can make some good assumptions that it is not plain water. In fact, most scholars say that it is likely some sort of poison that you're going to die from unless your body in some sort of way is actually able to fight against it. Or some like miracle well happens. So Joseph as who is faithful to the law, finds out that his fiance is pregnant. And according to the law, he has three options. He can have married publicly shamed and have her stoned to death. He can have married publicly shamed and her perpetrator stone to death. Or he can have Mary publicly shamed as she's forced to drink poison. Those are the options for Joseph. If he's going to follow the letter of the law, if he's going to do what his tells him to do, but Matthew writes

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And yet he did not want to publicly disgrace her. See ,

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It seems that for Joseph to be faithful to the law is not to treat the Bible. Like, it's this sort of like owner's manual for life. Maybe , maybe done this before. Maybe, you know , somebody who's done this who treats the Bible, like it's this owner's manual where you have a problem and you sort of like, look up like, what's the problem? How do I solve it? I find that verse and it tells me what I need to do. And I do that thing. And that the Bible becomes this kind of like owner's manual that shows me like what I'm supposed to do. But the problem is that's actually not how the scriptures work and we can have some disastrous results. We do, like for instance, I did my graduate work at a school called Bethel. That's where I went to seminary. And so, so my friends and I, who went to Bethel that if we were like messing around at times, we would say like, well, what are we supposed to do? What does the Bible tells us? If we go to Bethel, does the Bible tell me as an owner's manual? What I'm supposed to do in Bethel? And you know what it does, we could turn to Amos for four and we'd say, owner's manual. Tell me what I do. When I go to Bethel and Amos for forward , say this, go to Bethel and sin. I'm just doing what the Bible tells me to do. I'm going to Bethel in sending the Bible, told me to do that. Or maybe for you, you've got some people that are agitating you a bit in life. They're getting on your nerves a bit. Maybe they show up on your social media. And they like to, they like to leave comments that just get under your skin. Maybe they're at family gatherings. And they're the ones who will always stir the pot and they'll bring things up and they're just agitating you. And you're like, what do I do with an agitator? Oh, the Bible is an owner's manual for life. It will tell me what to do. Let me look up. Oh, it does tell me what to do with agitators. In fact, here is what Paul would write to do with agitators in Galatians chapter five, he would write this as for those agitators. I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. I will let you do your own Bible study to figure out exactly what he is asking them to do. Or maybe here's one more, maybe last

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Night you ate way too much pizza.

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And then after the pizza, there was some ice cream and you decided like I got, I got to have ice cream. If there's ice cream, you have to have ice cream and say like , I got to have ice cream. And you do. And you woke up this morning and your stomach was just upset. Like it was a number on you. And you're like, I wonder if the Bible is an owner's manual for life tells me what to do when I have an upset stomach and you can do that. You can look it up and like, what do I do with an upset stomach? And it will tell you what to do. Here's what first Timothy chapter five would tell you to do stop drinking only water and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. There there's some sounds medical advice when you live close to Napa valley here, apparently now, obviously I'm being a little ridiculous here, right? And, but we do this and we do this kind of inconsistently. We sometimes will say, well, that's just what I need to do this. This is what the Bible tells me to do, and I need to do it. And it doesn't make sense, but I'm doing that thing because that's what the Bible tells me to do. And then there's sometimes where like,

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Ah , I don't fully like, that doesn't seem

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Right. And it was probably cultural and we sort of dismiss it and we sort of inconsistently treat the Bible in this sort of way. But what is interesting to me is that Joseph is someone who's described as faithful

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To the law. And yet he doesn't do the instructions that the law tells him to. And so perhaps,

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Perhaps one of them , the things that we are learning in the story of Jesus, that Matthew is telling us as he begins, this birth narrative, is that being faithful to the scriptures means something more than treating it as an owner's manual. That I just look up the instructions of what to do.

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And I just do that thing.

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In fact, I actually want to suggest that for Joseph as a Siddique , he is so immersed in the scriptures. He is so shaped and formed by them. He's so immersed in the story of God and the ways of God that he would begin to recognize these larger things within it. Like for instance, he would recognize that God is a God of mercy and that God desires mercy more than just going through the motions of obedience. And that that would begin shaping and forming the way that he would enter into situations like this. In fact, there's a guy named Stanley Hauerwas, who has been recognized as one of the greatest living theologians still alive today. And he wrote a commentary on Matthew. And when he is reflecting on this experience here, where Joseph who is described as faithful to the law chooses to actually break the law in, not follow it in the way he encounters Mary here's, how Stanley Hauerwas talks about it. He writes this, he says, 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 towards known sinners. What he says is that some of what Matthew is doing here is almost even foreshadowing the way that Jesus himself would act towards the law and towards these moments where there'd be conflict towards like treating people as full human beings with dignity and honor, and what they're supposed to do according to the law. And then he says like, he's giving us this picture of Joseph acting in the same way that Jesus would later act this understanding that there's this larger principle that the scriptures call him to that supersedes this specific command, which is what Matthew later on. So like when we get further on into Matthew through this, we're going to find Jesus doing this all the time, because Matthew shows this happening all the time. In fact, if we look just really quick at Matthew nine, which I feel free to sort of turn to and look at because of the pace that we're going through, Matthew, by the time we get to Matthew nine, it's going to be like 20, 23 and we'll have forgotten all of what we talked about at this point. But here's, here's this instance in Matthew chapter nine, verse 10, it says that while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, the guy who's this, he could say like my house, but he doesn't. Well, Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house. Many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him.

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He is breaking the purity codes . They came in, they ate with him and his disciples.

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When the Pharisees saw this, when the religious leaders saw this, who know that Jesus is breaking the purity codes, he is not doing what he's supposed to be doing. They asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners and hearing this? Jesus said, it's not that you need the doctor, but

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The sick, there's a larger principle. That's at work here.

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And then he says this, but go and learn what this means. I desire mercy

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And not sacrifice. One of the hallmarks of Jesus's ministry would be

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The working out of that phrase. I desire mercy and not sacrifice at Jesus would be saying that there's this blind unthinking obedience to the law. And he would be like, well, that's not what I'm looking for this way of living out your faith and your faith convictions, that would actually keep, it would actually like cause harm to people. In fact, in that time, in that cultural moment, what that might look like was you were not allowed to do work on the Sabbath, according to the law. And so if somebody was hungry on the Sabbath, then, and they came to you and he said, I'm hungry. Could you make me some food? You would refuse them. He's like, well, for me

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To make you food would be working.

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And I can't work on the Sabbath. I can't be disobedient to that law. And so you're going to have to be hungry. You should have planned better and taking care of yourself. Or for instance, to heal, somebody who's hurt on the Sabbath would be breaking the lights , work to heal on the Sabbath. And so if somebody, if somebody is hurt on the seventh year , we're going to have to wait an extra day. In fact, in some places that this is still true for those who are Orthodox and are following those commands. I have a friend who is in Israel and was traveling there and was on the Sabbath day that she fell and she, she broke her leg and she broke it so significantly that it would require surgery. And she's brought to a hospital and she's told, I'm sorry, we can't operate on you today because it's the Sabbath. So she had to be brought to another hospital, run by a different religious community that could help her out

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On that day.

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That there's this sort of like way of living where your religious maturity is being shown by your devotion to a strict adherence to following the law. But what Matthew would write here is Matthew would say, and

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Yet, and yet

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When he's describing Joseph's faithfulness to the law, he describes him taking Mary and her situation into account and what his faithfulness to the law would actually do to her. And so we see Jesus acting in this way later with known sinners and with tax bookers . We see Joseph doing this here in this encounter early on, and what we see Jesus and Joseph before in both displaying is this posture, this response. It says people matter

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More people matter more.

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In fact, there's this new Testament scholar, one of the great new Testament scholars alive today named NT Wright . And here's how he would reflect on this. In what I think is a really explosive observation. He would write this. He says that if the law strictly applied was getting in the way of that, love the love that God wants to display and pursuing and caring for people. If the law was getting in the way of that, as it flowed out to reach people and heal people in desperate need, then it was the law that was wrong.

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People matter more than things, even when the things are part of the biblical law, do you feel how explosive that is? How radical

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That is? Here's one , one of the greatest new Testament scholars alive today, reflecting on the work of Jesus as being shown in Matthew. And he says, one of the things that Jesus is showing is that people matter more than things, even when the things are part of the biblical law, which by the way, as this like little brief aside, do you get one of the reasons why Jesus was so controversial to the religious community? We have to ask questions about like, why would they want him murdered? Why would they be in league with the state to get rid of Jesus? Why would they want that? You get one of the reasons why Jesus was so controversial to the religious community is because when somebody now reflecting back on it, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand that what is going on in this cultural context, they would describe it as saying that people matter more than things, even when those things are part of the biblical law, how radical and explosive is that people matter more. It's a constantly , if you were to say throughout Jesus' ministry, if you were to ask, like , what were some of the core values that drove his ministry? The way that he operated the things that he did, what he chose to do, what he didn't choose to do, one of those core principles would be this, that people matter

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More when, when Matthew

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Is telling us that Joseph, who is a Sadiq , who is faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose Mary to public disgrace. What he's telling us is that Joseph has decided here

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At people matter more,

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But that's actually not the last decision that Joseph is going to have to make. In this instance, he has something else show up. He has made up his mind about how he's going to handle what he's required to do by the law, and yet how he's actually going to handle this situation. He's made this difficult decision and then he's visited in a dream by an angel. And one of the things that Matthew is doing here is I think he's actually giving us this picture of what it looks like for us to move towards some more places of maturity in our faith. And so it gives us this picture of the way that Joseph wrestles through what it means for him to be faithful to the law in that instance. And then he gives us a picture of what happens then out of that

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Verse 20, it says that after he had considered this, an angel

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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. She'll give birth to a son and you're to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son. And they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did with the angel of the Lord, had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name.

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Jesus.

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I mean, I would imagine for Joseph that there had been all of this wrestling, all of the, like trying to figure out, like, how do I handle this? How do I do this? Wait ,

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How do I, how do I, like I have this

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Specific, for instance, that has shown up, like, what do I do here? And he comes to a conclusion that was probably difficult for him to come to. And then all of that is changed as suddenly changed overnight because of a dream. Then this decision, this decision that he would make when he, what the angel commanded him to do, this decision that he would make would change the entire trajectory of his life. It would give him this up close and intimate encounter with the work of God and up close and intimate encounter that nobody else except for Mary would get to have as they got to be a part of raising Emmanuel

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God with us,

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This thing, this thing that he would have missed had he not been responsive to the angel in that dream. But the thing, the thing that messes with me a bit is that he made this huge life altering decision that changes the whole trajectory of his life because of a dream he wakes up the next day. And he does that thing because of a dream, like how does he know that that's the right decision? I mean, how does he know that he can trust that dream? And again, I think it comes back to Matthew's description of Joseph that he says he is faithful

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To the law. He is a Siddique that he is so immersed in living

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The ways of God that it becomes ingrained in him in a way that the right kinds of decisions become intuitive. Because when you're immersed in a thing, that thing then starts to become intuitive in your life. My guess is that you've experienced this in different ways. I know I have, like for instance, when I was in high school, I played baseball. And by the way, when we're talking about baseball, can your giants just like, cool it a little bit to let my Dodgers kind of catch up some, can we, can we like let that happen, man, you guys are on a streak right now. Like , well done. It is really hard for me as a Dodgers fan to like recognize that the giants are doing well, so good for you. I will go home and pray for my enemies. Now I played baseball though in high school and my senior year, I was developing a little bit of a slump when I was hitting, I would hit the ball and just get these little piddly hits that would go on the ground. So we hire a coach and I go to the batting coach and says, I want to watch your head, get in the batting cages and hit. And so I do some swings in the batting cages and he pulls me out and he says, the problem is you should be pulling with your left hand. And what you're doing is you're pushing with your right hand. And as a result, your bat's going flat. And when you hit the ball, it just kind of like, it's not getting the power of the bat. And it's just kinda like going off of it and doing these little piddly grumbles. And he said, so go out there and like try and pull the bat. And so I would go there and I'd try and pull the bat, but I was so trained in muscle memory to push it that I couldn't do it. So he pulls me out again. He says, well, here's what we're going to do. And he pulls it contraption out of his bag and it was like these straps and Velcro. And he ties my right hand behind my back. And he says, I want you to go in there. And I want you to swing for the next like five minutes with just your left hand. And so going there and swing with the left hand and swing at the left-hand . And what I'm doing is I'm beginning to develop muscle memory that my left hand knows what to do. And then he takes a strap off and he goes, no , I want you to go hit. And as I began to hit, I began to swing, right, because it was happening as I was training myself. So that when I was in that moment, I would swing rate every week. I would show up to training with him. And every week, the first thing they do is tie my right hand behind my back and have me go and swing with my left hand before I could do anything else. He told me before every practice that I would go to with my baseball team, I had to swing with just my left hand, told me before every game that I would play, that the practice, my swings with just my left hand. So that when I got in that moment, when I would stand in the batter's box, when I would have the pitch in that moment, when I couldn't can, I couldn't like discern and I couldn't have the time to figure out, like, what should I do here? Or whatever. It would be so ingrained in me that it would just become natural and normal, that I would swing in the right kinds of ways. And this is what happens. Doesn't it with the things that we immerse ourselves in our lives is that they become so ingrained in us that they just become intuitive. When we're immersed in a thing, it becomes intuitive for us. That for some of you, you have been doing the same line of work for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, some of you, and what has happened is that work has become so ingrained in you, that you just get it. It's natural and normal for you. And so when somebody else is new in it, the thing that you just get, it takes some hours to figure it out, right? Like somebody could present a deal to you and you just know that this is a bad deal and somebody else has got their spreadsheets out and they're spending hours trying to figure out, is this a good deal? And you're like, why are you spending? Like, I know it's a , it's a bad deal.

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How do you know? I just know

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I've been at this work long enough. I've been doing it long enough. I've seen enough things. I have been through enough, good deals and bad deals. I have watched these things happen.

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It's been him . I've been immersed in it so much that it's become intuitive for me.

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This is what's true for Joseph. And this is what is also true for us in our journeys of faith. When you do the work of immersing yourself over hi , I'm in the life of God. In the ways of God, what begins to happen is over time, it becomes embedded in you. And it becomes something that you just intuitively respond to.

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You can read the situation, you can trust

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What the spirit is doing inside of you. You're able to just almost intuitively discern all of that. Joseph was this Siddique . He was faithful

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To the law. He had been

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Living it. He had been immersed in it. But when he's faced with this moment where he has to discern and to use wisdom, to figure out how do I respond?

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How does he do that?

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It's because he's been so immersed in living in interesting , in the way of God, which has been building in him and training him so that he can then figure out in that moment when it arises, what is the good and right thing for me

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Do here now,

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Now years later there , years after this, the apostle Paul

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Is one of the early church leaders who would , who would go

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To write these letters that contain about half of our new Testament are Paul's letters that he would write to these churches. And Paul would be making observations about the way that we interact with the law, what the purpose and goal of the law was. And he writes in this, this letter that we call Galatians, he writes in this letters , he bans wrestling through like, how do we make sense of the law and what its purpose is? And he makes this really interesting observation. There's particularly about the way that Israel and the law interacted. But I actually think actually I think it has implications for us and our own journeys of faith. Here's where he would write in Galatians four verse 24. He says the law was like those Greek tutors with which you are familiar, who has scorched children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children were really get to the place that they set out for. He says the law, the law was like a tutor or some translations will translate it this way. I'll say the law was a guardian, or I love one translation translated, say the law was a babysitter. And the purpose of the law was to train you up. The purpose of the law was meant to grow you up. It's meant to mature. You say , you can move into this other kind of more mature relationship, more direct relationship. It's kind of like, think about like those of you that are parents, your kids, when they're younger, the kinds of laws that you give them, the kinds of rules that you give them, like crossing the street. You might tell your kid who's four years old. The law might be for them. You are never allowed to cross the street because you know, it's dangerous for them. It might be when they get a little bit older that the law changes a bit, doesn't it. And you say, you're only allowed to cross the street when mom or dad or they're watching you. And then maybe they get a little bit older and a lot changes. Abandoned becomes you're allowed to cross the street only during these times of day, because that's when it's not as busy. And we know that we can trust that you'll be safest during those times. And then it hits a point where there isn't a law for them that you are imposing on them and crossing the street. Why are you able to do that? Because you can trust that the way that you were doing that early on was actually building a framework for them that would help to mature them so that they could move to this point where they could be able to grow up into maturity, using wisdom and discernment about the way that they approach the and the same thing. The same thing is true in the way that we mature in our faith. I mean, for Joseph, the point was never that he was just faithful to the law and that, that was the end game. And that was the goal. The goal was never that he's just doing the right thing. He's just following the rules. No , those things were there to train him, to build him up, to grow him

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Into maturity so that he

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Can get to the point where he can read the moment and he can respond appropriately because he's been grown up. He's been trained up, he's moved towards maturity and had he not done that, had he not moved towards maturity, he may have missed this moment. And the thing is that for many of us, for many of us that like,

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We want to be used by God.

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For many of us, you know, we want to respond to God's leading in our lives. We want to recognize the promptings of the spirit.

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We don't want to miss the

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Work that God is doing around us all of the time. Like we want to be responsive to those things, but we have to be doing the intentional work, the intentional work that trains us for that, that builds us up for that. That moves us to that point. You don't just jump straight to adulthood and you don't just move straight into maturity. You have to be trained up for that by immersing yourself in the life. And the ways of God, you, my friends, you are becoming the kind of person who responds to God's

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Spirit. You're becoming the

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Kind of person whose initial response is to respond

Speaker 4 31:56

In a way where people matter more, you're becoming

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The kind of person that can respond to what the spirit is doing in a situation. You're becoming those things. When like Joseph, you are regularly

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Immersing yourself in the ways

Closing

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of God being faithful to what you do understand in order to train yourself up, to move more, to more maturity for these other more unexpected moments here . Here's

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What I want to ask you to, don't ask if you'd just take a moment and close your eyes.

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And I just want to ask you to take a moment here with God in whatever way feels most comfortable to you in silence and maybe prayer that you would open yourself up with a posture of saying, God, I want to build my life. I want to build my life by being immersed in your ways. I want to build my life by being immersed in the person, in the work of Jesus. I want to be trained up to move towards maturity. I want to invite you to just simply open yourself up to that. As the worship team leads us in a song that's a declaration of those very things.