Unexpected Blessings

My name's René, I'm one of the pastors here at TLC. Wanna welcome everybody joining us live here in the auditorium. Everybody watching via video over in venue in the Munskey Hall area. And also everybody joining us on Facebook Live who was too lazy to get here to church in person. It's great to have you all here. And I want to invite you to grab your message notes as we continue our Christmas series in the Gospel of Matthew.

It is the third week of Advent 2019. And that means as you just heard our Christmas candlelight services start in just six days. Christmas is approaching. In fact, why don't you turn to somebody next to you, look them in the eyes and say, "Here it comes." Go ahead. Here it comes. Here it comes.

Now, to be honest, while a lot of us hear those words, "Here it comes," and we get excited, a lot of people hear those words a little bit stressed and sad about the holidays. In fact, I Googled the phrase, "Christmas makes me feel sad," this week, and I got about 238 million hits. Christmas is tough for a lot of people now. Now, for a lot of people it's for very legitimate reasons. I mean, perhaps they just lost a loved one and that's one of the reasons that we have our remembering services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve Eve here.

But for most of us, psychologists say the reason that we might feel a little bit blue around Christmas time boils down to this. Expectations not equaling reality, right? And we all experience this. We all have all these expectations about how Christmas is going to go and I can guarantee you, no matter how hard you plan, no matter how much of a control freak you are, reality will be different.

In fact, there is a whole website about this where people upload pictures of Christmas expectations versus Christmas reality. For example, we have the expectation of that classic photo with the shopping mall Santa Claus. The kids are laughing and delighted. Reality, the kids all screaming at the same time, right? Or maybe you don't have kids but you have an expectation of a great Christmas card photo with the family dog. That's your expectation. What you get is this reality. The dog kicking you in the face, little dog jujitsu there.

Or the expectation the kids are going to be gleeful and grateful when they open presents. The reality, total Christmas morning meltdown. And I love that they're holding the letters for "Joy." One more expectation, Christmas morning the whole family is engaged with each other. You're smiling, you're laughing, you're chatting. Reality, everybody is going to be buried in their phones and you know it.

And that's one of the reasons we decided to do a series this month called "An Unexpected Christmas" because we want to help you out with that. Not by telling you how to organize away the unexpected. Because it's going to happen no matter how organized you are. And not by kind of guilting you into conjuring some more Christmas cheer. But by helping you see the unexpected blessings right in the middle of those unexpected frustrations.

In fact, would you agree with this? Some of life's biggest blessings come out of some of life's most unexpected twists. How many of you have seen that to be true in your own lives? I was thinking this week of one of the all-time biggest blessings in our lives. My wife Lori and I. Has been our third child, David. David has grown up to be such a loving, God honoring, wonderful, sensitive, caring, talented person. He turned 21 this year. He got married this year to a wonderful woman here in the church. And yet he was an unexpected twist. He was a surprise baby who came along many years after our first two.

I'm just curious, show of hands. How many of you had a surprise baby? Anybody else here? Look at these hands. How many of you are sitting next to children who are surprised you just raised your hand? That's the question I've got. Well, speaking of a surprise baby, let's look at the first family at Christmas. Because nobody experienced more unexpected moments at Christmas than Mary and Joseph.

And of course there's the story that you heard during our Advent reading of the surprise pregnancy, to say the least. By the way, that's what our Christmas musical expectations is all about. I hope you catch it at one of the two remaining performances at 1.30 and 4 this afternoon. The reason that this musical came to be is that when it comes to the Christmas story, you and I have a problem. We're so used to the Christmas story that it's lost something. It's lost most, if not all, of its shock value.

But when it happened, it was shocking. It was unexpected. It was surprising. And unfortunately we've taken this tense real life drama and kind of stiffened it into stained glass. As John Ortberg said, because we live on this side of Christmas, we want to rush to the end of the story where everything turns out okay. And we miss the tension and anxiety in a young unmarried woman's announcement to her fiancé. I'm pregnant and it's not your baby.

And the deep feelings of confusion and betrayal in the mind of the man she is engaged to. And this is written about in the Bible. In fact, I want to zoom in on that young man that she was engaged to today on Joseph. Today we're continuing in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 through 25 today. If your life is taking some unexpected turn, you can gain a ton of confidence and comfort in three truths that emerge from Joseph's story. How he dealt with this unexpected first Christmas.

Now in these verses, Matthew's intent as an author is to explain how Jesus came into the world, right? And as we look at that this morning, we're going to also notice three patterns here, follow me, about how God works. All throughout scripture, these patterns are repeated and they're repeated again here in Joseph's story. How he often accomplishes his plans through us when we had totally other plans. But he changes our plans to bring us unexpected blessings.

I want to help you to see and to prime yourself to anticipate that when your Christmas in the next week or two gets unexpected twists thrown at it, you can anticipate there will also be unexpected blessings. First, I can look for unexpected blessings when my plans get interrupted. My plans get interrupted, your plans get, everybody's plans get interrupted. Joseph's plans got drastically interrupted.

The Bible says this is how the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, 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. You know, I don't know how Matthew could have packed more of a punch into one verse. Basically, he's saying, once upon a time, the bottom dropped out of Joseph's life. Once upon a time, Joseph heard some news that sucked all of the oxygen out of the air.

I mean, imagine how it felt to be Joseph. I want to show you one of my all-time favorite pieces of classic art, and I hope you can see this behind me. This is Rembrandt's painting of the Holy Family in Matthew chapter 1. I love his use of space. I love everything about this, but look at this. He nails kind of how awkward this all was, because there's Mary. She's happy. She's content. She knows what is happening to her, and she has kind of arranged some cloth in sort of the form of a child. This is in her thoughts, in her imagination, the child's already born, and she knows why she's pregnant, and she's accepted this, but on the other side of the angel, in the dark, there's Joseph.

And you can barely see him, because while Mary is delighted, because she has heard from the angel, Joseph, at the moment of this painting, he has not yet heard from the angel. The angel's about to appear to him. He's about to tap him on the shoulder, but in this instant, captured here by Rembrandt, Joseph's literally got his head in his hands. He is literally in the dark. He is confused. He is despairing. He just does not get it. Isn't that good? Maybe you can relate to that picture. You're Joseph, not Mary.

Maybe you, just this week, got a report from the doctor, or a relative got a report from the doctor, and you felt about like that in the dark, wondering what in the world is going on. Or maybe you found out layoffs were coming at work, or relationships falling apart, or there's a surprise pregnancy. Whatever it is, maybe right now you feel off balance, like Joseph in that picture. If you feel like that, you need to trust something. Something we see over and over again in Scripture. Something that, frankly, none of us really likes, but the truth is this. God often interrupts us in order to use us.

Would you agree with that? God often interrupts our best laid plans in order to use us. I can think of so many examples from my own life. Just one, one weekend, I left TLC right after our final church service, to catch a flight to a conference that I was presenting at, and Highway 17 was completely blocked due to an accident. Shut down. Absolutely closed both directions. And so I had to drive all kinds of these Santa Cruz mountain back roads, and a 45-minute trip took me two hours, and I missed my flight.

And then while I was at the San Jose airport, a huge storm blew in, and all kinds of other flights were canceled. And the only seat I could find was on another airline to another airport from which I'd have to rent a car to drive to my destination. And so finally I sat down exhausted on this late night flight, and it turns out the young guy sitting next to me is from Capitola. And he asked me, "So what do you do for a living?" And if you know, I mean, I always wonder how people are going to react when I tell them, "I'm a pastor," because often the reaction I get is kind of like, "Ugh!" You know, they're like, "Oh no, I sat next to somebody who's going to try to convert me for the entire trip."

And so I said, "Well, I'm a pastor." And he goes, "Pastor?" And I thought here it comes. And he said, "I've been trying to find a pastor in town for months, but I didn't know anybody. Can I get your name and number so I can call you? I've got all kinds of spiritual questions. Please, can we trade contacts?" And I said, "Not a chance." No, I gave him my contact info. We had a great connection. God interrupted me in order to use me. And you know that man today as Pastor Mark Spurlock. That's not true. But it's still a good story.

Now, I'm not saying God closed Highway 17 or God brought the storm in order for the two of us to have that conversation. God doesn't have to cause interruptions in your life. Sometimes he does. But I know this, in his sovereignty, he can use every interruption in your life. Here's the truth. Unexpected inconveniences can bring unexpected blessings. In fact, you know what? I can look back at every single long ago, not just interruption, but catastrophe in my life. And I can see now how God worked through those tragedies to build me up, to shape my character, to bring good things into my life.

Now, question. Can I see God's hand in every one of my more recent tough times? No, not yet. But because I can see how God used older catastrophes, I can trust that one day I will see how God used even today's interruptions for his glory. Does that make sense? So back to Joseph, verse 19, and here's where it gets really interesting. Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and didn't want to expose her to public disgrace. He had in mind to divorce her quietly.

Now watch this. When it says he was faithful to the law, that is actually a technical expression. In Hebrew, this is the same expression as a single word, tzadik. Joseph was a tzadik, a righteous one. This word meant he was righteous according to the strictest interpretation of the Jewish religious law, the Torah. This word tzadik was only used to people who were basically paragons of virtue. In other words, whatever Torah said, Joseph did. Let me repeat that. Whatever Torah said, Joseph did.

Joseph never ate unclean food. Joseph never mixed with the wrong kinds of people. Joseph would never keep his carpentry shop open on the Sabbath in order to make a few extra shekels. He was tzadik. That was his identity. And what's more, in those days, in very conservative, orthodox, religiously observant, first century Jewish culture, every man in the village wanted to be known as the village tzadik. Just like in our culture, people might aspire to be a pop star or a CEO or something, a Jewish man in that culture wanted to be known as a tzadik, as a righteous one. This meant you were admired. This meant you were looked up to. This meant you were somebody. And that was Joseph.

But now, he's at tzadik with a big problem. Because guess what the Torah said to do? If a young woman who was engaged to be married to somebody else was found to be pregnant, and the father was not the man she was betrothed to, in other words, exactly this situation, the Torah describes what to do. Deuteronomy 22:21, "She should be brought to the door of her father's house, and there the men of the town shall stone her to death." I mean, the term public disgrace is kind of a polite euphemism that Matthew uses for this, right? And this must have been causing Joseph agony.

Even though his whole life, Joseph has built his reputation on living strictly according to the letter of the law, he finds he just can't bring himself to lead the parade to his father-in-law's house. And so Joseph reluctantly decides on option B, a divorce. By this time, the first century, this had become a legal option. And if you were betrothed to be married, engaged, you needed a divorce just as much as if you were already married, because the betrothal was an absolutely binding agreement.

But you know what? I have always appreciated that in the middle of the Christmas story, it intrudes this very modern-sounding word, divorce. Next time you look at an activity scene, and there's Joseph and there's Mary, look at those two characters in that scene and remind yourself, that Joseph, one day, looked at that Mary and said, "You know, I think I want a divorce." It's fascinating. We don't usually think of that, do we? This is real life. These weren't fairy tale people.

And then what happens next gets us to the second truth that we see here, and that's this, God often brings unexpected blessings when my questions aren't answered. My questions aren't answered. You know what I've discovered? Interruptions rarely come with instructions. Interruptions rarely come with instructions. We don't know how long it took for Joseph to get the rest of the story from the angel. It could have been days, it could have been weeks, but for quite some time he's on his own trying to figure this out in the dark with a ton of questions.

Verse 20, "But after he had considered this," and I want you to know that the word for considered in the original means to ponder, to ruminate, to turn it over in your mind, this meant Joseph had some time to feel the anxiety, to wrestle with this. In other words, the answer did not immediately come from above. "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.'

Now, why would Joseph be afraid to take Mary home as his wife? When you say he was reluctant, the angel says, "I know you're afraid to do this." Why would he be afraid of that? What would he be afraid of? Well, as a tzaddiq, he would be afraid of violating the law and offending God. And Joseph would be very afraid of losing his reputation as a tzaddiq, his hard-earned reputation as a righteous man. And Joseph knows his own doubts. When Mary told him about the angel, he realizes there is not a chance the people in the town are going to ever believe this story.

Taking her in immediately into his house as his wife meant embarrassment, it meant questions, it meant being misunderstood, it meant scandal, it meant rejection, it meant an end to his status as a peerless tzaddiq. So what is he going to do? Well, I think he's still kind of wrestling with this decision when the angel reveals something else. "She will give birth to a son, and you're to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins."

Now watch this. The word "Jesus," do you know what this means? This is kind of the Greek translation of a Hebrew name that we translate in the Old Testament as Joshua. Jesus and Joshua are literally the same exact name in the original language. In Hebrew it's "Yeshua," and it means "Jehovah" or "Yahweh saves." And then the angel adds an unexpected twist. "From their sins." See, the people in those days were expecting, hoping for God to send a Messiah, but they imagined a warrior leader like Joshua who would save his people from the Roman dictatorship.

But the angel goes, "Yeah, he's going to come and save his people like Joshua saved his people from their sins." Because the angel knew the human problem is not just bad government. The human problem is our sinful nature. And so the Messiah came not just to bring regime change, but to bring heart change. Because the worst dictator you will ever face in your life, the cruelest, the most unrelenting, vile dictator you will ever face, is your own ego. Your own selfish nature that often will come up with these self-destructive, self-oriented plans that are harmful to you and harmful to everybody else. And you don't just need circumstances around you to change. You need to be delivered from your sin. And God knows that. And that's why he sent the Messiah.

Now watch this. Then Matthew says, even though the people were expecting the Messiah to be different, there were actually hints of this kind of a savior for hundreds of years in all the scriptures about a Messiah. He says, "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'll call him, they'll refer to him as Immanuel, which means God with us." What? The Messiah will not just be a godly man. He won't just be a tzaddiq warrior. He will be God with us. Mind-boggling, but this was not some new idea.

Matthew is quoting Isaiah 14, which was written in the time of King Hezekiah around 735 B.C. So think of what this means for Joseph. God has been planning this whole virgin birth thing for centuries. He is totally in control of the whole situation, which to Joseph at first was a nightmare, was a scandal. But God already knew centuries before what he was going to do. And what I'm getting at is this. When your questions are not answered, that does not mean God doesn't know what he's doing. God always knows. It's just that at times, he chooses to keep us in the dark.

The question is, why? If God's been planning out all the things that to you seem like unexpected twists and turns, why doesn't he warn you? Why does he keep you in the dark? Why doesn't he tell you what he's going to do through that medical diagnosis, through that death of a loved one, through you not getting a job? Why couldn't God clue you in on all this stuff? In fact, back to this story, why didn't God tell Joseph the same time he told Mary? You ever wondered that? Why didn't he tell them both together? An angel could have done that. Why does he wait some time and let Joseph twist in the wind like this before he reveals what he revealed here in the scripture to Joseph?

Well, as John Orpberg puts it, "Is it possible that anxiety removal is not God's number one goal, for Joseph or for you and me? Is it possible that in getting his world turned upside down, that in having to struggle between what a righteous man ought to do according to the law and his desire to show compassion to this young girl, is it possible that just maybe Joseph is being molded by God? And is it possible that God was actually allowing this darkness, allowing this struggle to take place in Joseph's head, so he will come to a new place of growth? And is it possible that it is happening in your life maybe right now?

If you're confused or disoriented or uncertain about something, maybe it's not because you're doing something wrong, maybe it's not because you're missing God's direction, maybe it's because you're about to grow. Maybe your questions are unanswered because you're about to receive an unexpected blessing. So whenever you're facing a situation and it doesn't make sense, and you know what, it may never make sense, you have got a choice. You can focus on what you think God owes you, or you can look at what God gives you.

You can either think, "God, you owe me an explanation. You owe me answers to all my questions." Or you can think, "God, I want to thank you for what you have given me, and I will choose to trust in you for the rest." So what are you going to do? Here's the principle, God often stretches us before he answers us, right? He often stretches us before he answers us, not to be cruel, but because that's how we grow.

See, I think only through the struggle that Joseph's going through could God have possibly moved him to a new place where Joseph realizes that the ultimate level of righteousness is not found only in law, but in grace. And that brings us to point three. I can look for unexpected blessings when my actions reflect God's grace, when my actions reflect God's grace.

Now look at this, verse 24. "When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took Mary home as his wife. But he didn't consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus." So by taking Mary in as his wife, Joseph is giving up his village status as the tzaddiq won. Because again, people would never have concluded, well, of course she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit after all. I mean, would you? They would have obviously concluded either A, Joseph and Mary had been intimate before marriage, which is truly tzaddiq man would never have done, or B, Joseph is marrying a wanton woman again just not done.

In fact, watch this, later in his ministry, in John 8, some people taught Jesus when he's trying to teach very religious people something. And here's their response to him. They say, "We are not illegitimate children." What's that tell you? This suspicion followed Jesus, and obviously Joseph and Mary, for the rest of their lives. So this is a huge step that Joseph is taking. Joseph is concluding that righteousness goes deeper than just keeping the law. Righteousness, true righteousness, also means reflecting God's grace in his embrace of Mary.

Now, listen, you know what else? I like to think, follow me, that maybe, just maybe, when the grown-up Jesus many years later was, for example, forgiving the woman caught in adultery. This is another painting of that moment. Do you remember what happened? The very religious people came up to Jesus with this woman, and they said, "She's been caught in adultery, so you know what the law says." Back to Deuteronomy 22, she should be stoned. And what does Jesus do? He says, "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone." And everyone walks away.

I like to think that when Jesus was showing grace to the woman caught in adultery, or when Jesus was having a conversation with the Samaritan woman who'd been married five times and was living with the guy she wasn't married to, or when Jesus was healing Mary Magdalene, that Jesus was thinking, "I want to be like Dad." Like his Heavenly Father, to be sure, but also like the man Joseph. Joseph, who ultimately his righteousness surpassed that of the Pharisees, Joseph, who though he had a reputation of being ritually pure, chose to show a scandalous level of grace to Mary. I think he had a good example that he grew up with. And we're called to do the same thing.

And I know this is tough because mercy gets messy. Grace is not always easily explainable, especially to other religious people who ask why you're not adhering to the Code. But over and over in Scripture, here in Joseph's story, in so many stories of Jesus' life, when there's a moment of tension, do I show grace here or do I adhere to a religious rule? And you're not sure what to do. Generally speaking, the best advice is to err on the side of grace, like Joseph did.

Now, this requires a lot of wisdom. And there are times you will feel tension. And obviously when I say err on the side of grace, I don't mean be so lenient with your children that you'd never discipline them, and they don't learn about consequences. And obviously I'm not advocating some sort of codependent leniency if you're in a relationship where there's addiction or other behavioral issues. Generally speaking, I'm saying lean toward grace, like Joseph did, like Jesus did, because unexpected blessings will come to you when you do.

Now, there's one more factor that I think Joseph's story demonstrates about how God works in the unexpected twist of life that I want to look at before we close, and it's this. Joseph's story doesn't end with, "And they all lived happily ever after," does it? So many other things went unexpectedly sideways on him. Even when you're doing the right thing, there's still going to be more unexpected twists and turns.

Right after Jesus is born, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. "Get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you for Herod, it's going to search for the child to kill him, after the magi," rather, "come to visit him." And so Joseph escapes in the night, and he and his wife and the baby become refugees in Egypt. Well, a little while later, the third time an angel appears to Joseph, the Bible says, "After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 'Get up again, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel.' Those who were trying to take the child's life were dead."

I want you to notice something. Every time the angel appears to Joseph, every time God gives Joseph the big picture and the next step. Like the super big picture, "Name him Jesus. He's going to save people from their sins." And the very next step, "Take Mary home as your wife." Or, "Flee to Egypt tonight." Or, "Move back to Israel." Big picture, next step. What God does not do is tell Joseph all the in-between steps. He does not ever say, "Oh, and by the way, you'll have to go to Bethlehem, when she's almost ready to give birth. It's going to be a drag. It's going to be this government red tape thing, but prophecies are going to be fulfilled, and there's going to be no room in the inn. You're going to have to find a stable. He's going to be put in a feeding trap, but Shevret's going to show up. That's going to be weird. Wise men are going to show up with their weird pointed ads. You'll get frankincense. Murray, you'll wonder why."

And, you know, apparently there's a lot of things that Joseph just sort of has to figure out on his own, that the angel never tells him about. And, you know what? That is exactly how God guides you and me. Big picture, next step, very little intermediate information. Big picture, Jesus is Savior from your sins. God is ultimately in control, even when things look unexpected and dark and confusing. Big picture, next step. Well, that's usually obvious right from Scripture, isn't it? Sometimes it's as simple as rest or pray or forgive.

Joseph's life shows me when it comes to the unexpected twists of life, "I may not know everything, but I can do the next thing." "I may not know everything, but I can do the next thing." My guess is, some of you know right now what the next thing is for you. God wants you to call somebody with an encouraging word today. God wants you to go visit somebody. God wants you to invite the neighbors to Christmas candlelight services. Or maybe for you, the next step is place your faith in Jesus Christ. God's given you the big picture. Jesus has come to save you from sin. And now what's left for you is to just take the next step.

It says, "Joseph was not afraid after the angels' message to take Mary home as his wife." Don't be afraid to take Jesus into your heart as your Savior. And if that is the next step for you, I urge you to take that step right now. And you'll find that the most unexpected blessing of Christmas is Jesus himself. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

With your head bowed, here's what we mean when we say, "Receive Jesus." First, place your trust in the big picture. God loves you, and he's given you a means to start with a clean slate through Jesus, the Savior from your sin. And you have a purpose in your life. That's the big picture. The next step is to just pray, "Lord, thank you for that. And I receive you now into my life. I place my trust in the Christ of Christmas and his birth and his death and his resurrection." Lord, wherever we are in our spiritual journeys, help us to choose to take the next step, choose to say that I have decided to follow Jesus. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.