In this Christmas sermon, Shawna Boren explores the story of how Joseph encountered God four times through a dream. Joseph responded with great faith in ways that contrasted with conventional thinking. In doing so, this common man followed God as he was given the charge to care for the savior of the world.
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Follow His Lead
• Shawna Boren
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In first-century Jewish culture, betrothal was the legal process that led to marriage. After Joseph and Mary announced their betrothal, they were legally espoused to each other, even though the second part of the marriage vows would not be finalized until about a year later. During this period, Joseph learned that Mary had conceived a child. This was a serious matter, one that gave him the right to divorce her and expose her to shame. Joseph decided to take a merciful approach to the situation instead of a legalistic approach.
Then Joseph had a dream. His response demonstrated an incredible degree of faith. While Mary knew the truth that she had never done anything that would have conceived a child, Joseph had no evidence of such things. God broke in and called Joseph into a completely new reality. This would have exposed him to ridicule and shame as he would forever be married to one whom people saw as unfaithful and be the father of a child conceived out of this unfaithfulness. What’s more, he was being told that this child would be God’s Messiah.
Then Joseph had a second dream, one of warning, after the visit by the Magi. He had to lead his unorthodox little family to Egypt to escape the killing spree of Herod. This was a huge leap into the midst of uncertainty and unpredictability. While we have the advantage of hindsight that gives us the ability to see what God did through Jesus, Joseph was walking in simple faith down a path that would not have made much sense to conventional thinking. He had to follow God’s leading moment by moment, which meant altering his own plans. He embraced the art of the pivot, adjusting to the situation as God led him down unexpected paths.
We are told that Joseph had two more dreams, one that prompted him to leave Egypt and one that led him to settle in Galilee. This simple carpenter—not a grand leader, insightful thinker, or cultural influencer—was given the charge to create a home for Jesus and keep Jesus safe. He did this by listening and responding to God’s voice. As God was with Joseph leading him in unexpected ways to deal with uncertain times, so too God is speaking to us in the midst of our uncertainties. The God of love does not aim to leave us in the dark, floundering on our own as we try to navigate through life. God seeks to communicate direction, guide our steps and relate with us.
We can prepare ourselves to receive this communication in three basics ways. First, stay spiritually tuned in to God and follow his leading. To tune into God, we must tune out of a ton of stuff that distracts us in life. One way to do this is practice the pause, to pull back and sit with God as we look at what’s going on in life. Thus we make space for hearing God’s direction.
Secondly, cultivate trust in God and follow his leading. We can only trust God when see him as trustworthy. Many have an image of God that does not deserve trust because it is not based in God as revealed in Jesus. When we see God as looking like Jesus, we can know that he is for us and not against us, and thus his direction for us will prove itself over time.
Third, exercise your faith in each moment and follow his leading. Like Joseph, we can only take each step moment by moment. We cannot live in the regrets of the past or the expectations of the future. We only have now. But the good thing is that this is exactly where God meets us. We won’t always know why we are being led in the ways that we are, and we probably will not see the effects of our faith. However, we have faith in the present and trust God with the results.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Christmas, Faith, God's Will
Sermon Series: Seeking Christmas
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The MuseCast: December 31
Focus Scripture:
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Matthew 1:18-24 CEB
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled: Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,And they will call him, Emmanuel. (Emmanuel means “God with us.”) When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife.
