13 Dec 12/15/24 Matt. 1:18-25 “The Greatest Love Story Ever!”
12/15/24 Matt. 1:18-25 “The Greatest Love Story Ever!”
As I sat down to write this, I found that it is hard to believe that Christmas is this close at hand. Where has the time gone? You know what I mean? I guess it seems like this because we just get too busy at this time of year or maybe Thanksgiving was late. Anyway, don’t panic as there is still plenty of time to get ready or do what needs to be done. Christmas, like Thanksgiving, is a time when we usually try to honor traditions that have been passed down in our families, our churches and our society. In our reading today, we find the basis for many traditional Christmas programs, many wonderful musical pieces and I’m sure that the tradition of lefse must be in there someplace. Sometimes the Norwegian just comes out of me and I can’t seem to stop it. Anyway, today we are going to look at a very traditional reading for Christmas. Let’s see if there might be more here than meets the eye.
Throughout the centuries, we have had love stories. There was Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, John and Sharon, just to name a few. She told me to say that once and I don’t think she thought that I ever would. Anyway, most of these love stories have some sort of high drama. There are major conflicts. Royalty falls in love with a peasant. Members of feuding families fall in love. I remember when I was probably a teenager and I went with a girl to see a movie called ‘Love Story.’ Even though this was considered to be a great movie at the time, it might have ruined me forever from watching love stories. Remember, I was a teenage boy. Anyway, there have always been various types of love stories. Sometimes these stories actually reflect real life but mostly they are the exception rather than the rule for love. Many a young person has been led down a faulty trail by thinking fictional love is actually like real love and real life. There is a huge difference. Today, I would like to tell you the greatest love story ever told. It is real and it can be applied to any life.
First of all, our reading is part of the love story of Joseph for Mary. Joseph and Mary had been betrothed. Now this is a lot more than an engagement like we have in our society. They would have had to go before the rabbi or priest to become betrothed. It was a legal and binding ceremony that would culminate in marriage at the end of a year’s time.
So far we just have a normal betrothal, which by the way, would have probably been arranged by the families. This is once again a very foreign concept for us in this country, for the most part. So, we have things just buzzing along in a normal ancient fashion. You know, Joseph would have taken Mary out to dinners and movies. On Saturday night they probably went to a dance. There would have been no physical contact during this time of betrothal so the dance would have been a modern dance where there is no physical contact.
Now some time along this period of betrothal, they find out that Mary is pregnant. Luke gives us a little fuller account of this. The Holy Spirit came upon her and she became pregnant. I think we all know this story very well.
The problem was that Joseph didn’t know this story at all and therein lays a very serious rub. So, let’s be realistic here. This would be an open and shut case of infidelity for Joseph and any other man from any other period of time including today. No one is going to believe Mary because this is not how things work. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. It has always been like this and it always will be like this.
Joseph is not dumb and he knows this like everyone else. So he decides that he would not marry Mary. He figured that he wouldn’t marry Mary and he would be merry after this. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help that. It must the Norwegian kicking thing up in me again.
Hopefully, we all remember that according to the Law, Mary could be stoned to death for this but fortunately this law wasn’t enforced very often at this time. So Joseph decides to quietly divorce Mary. He could have been an insanely jealous man and made all of this public. He had every right to do this but he decides to keep it quiet. My spin on this is that they had been betrothed for a while and Joseph had fallen in love with Mary. He was in love and he didn’t want to see any more pain for Mary than could be helped. I think that makes sense.
Now everything gets turned upside down when an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. He said that this baby is from the Lord and he is to name him Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. The angel also said that this was to fulfill the prophecy that a virgin would give birth to a son and they would call him ‘Immanuel,’ which means God with us. We know all this. God has promised to be with us at all times and in all places. This is just the way He is going to accomplish this from now on.
The reason that I think that this is one of the greatest love stories ever told is this. This isn’t all part of the reading today but we know the story. Joseph has this dream. He wakes up and does exactly like God told him. It is sort of like the story of Samuel’s dream where he runs to wake Eli. This dream called for immediate action.
Now follow me on this one. A lesser man than Joseph would have dismissed this dream or at least hesitated and probably have divorced Mary anyway. I think that Joseph was so smitten with Mary that he just needed a little confirmation that she was telling the truth. He knew that she was an honest person. They were betrothed. They were getting to know each other quite well. This would have been later in their betrothal year. He was in love with Mary and this angel just confirmed what Mary had told him. Don’t get me wrong here because Joseph and Mary also loved God and this is obvious.
If you want a little further evidence of this earthly love, just look at all the things Joseph did for Mary and the baby Jesus. Joseph was a man who was publically disgraced. This wasn’t a big community. Everyone knew what the scoop was. Joseph took care of Mary. He cared for her when they traveled to Bethlehem. He found a place where Jesus could be born. He took Mary and the baby to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. If we look past the obvious of the story, we find a man deeply in love with his new wife. This is a great love story. But you know what? It isn’t the greatest love story ever told, it’s great but not the greatest.
I think that Joseph gets a lot of ink this time of year because we really don’t hear about him again. But it takes two to tango. I just want to take a quick look at Mary. Once again we really don’t know a lot about her but we do hear from her later in the story. This has led scholars to think that maybe Joseph died sometime before Jesus turned 30 but we don’t know.
Back to Mary; she is a faithful woman who loves God. God chose her to bear His Son and she accepted it knowing full well what the societal implications would be. She knew there would be trouble. She didn’t hide this from Joseph. She went to him and stayed after he decided against the divorce. She rode with him to Bethlehem when she was 9 months pregnant. They fled together to Egypt to save the life of their son. We hear about her at the Temple when Jesus turned 12. All this time she was with Joseph and they raised a family in addition to Jesus. I don’t want to short change Mary because she was faithful to Joseph and loved him. The two of them survived some extraordinary circumstances. They survived with a love for each other and faith in God. This is a great love story from either point of view, Joseph’s or Mary’s. But it still isn’t the greatest love story ever told.
I hope you know where I’m heading with all of this. Joseph and Mary’s love story couldn’t happen without God. If you remember, we read from 1 John 4 that “God is love.” Therefore, Mary and Joseph couldn’t love each other without God because He is love. You cannot have love if you don’t have God. You can have infatuation, you can have lust, you can have physical yearning without God but you cannot have love. And there are so many people who wonder why we even need God and here we have Him supplying us with a very basic need: love. Anyway that is a sermon in itself.
God has loved us so much that He created us. We are His creation no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary. God also created this world first so that we would have a place to live. The whole creation story is a love story of God’s love for us. We don’t know how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. The narrative is short so we assume that it wasn’t that long a period of time. However, it could have been centuries. We don’t know. We do know that Adam and Eve sinned when they ate the forbidden fruit. Then they were cast out of this perfect place as sin and death entered the world through them.
At this point God could have abandoned us or destroyed us and started over, but He didn’t. Even though we had displayed our sin nature, He still loved us and has promised to be with us at all times. Ever since the Garden of Eden, God has been trying to redeem His people. He doesn’t do this so that we can come back to the Garden of Eden but rather to go forward to a better place than Eden, the New Jerusalem perhaps. He has done all this so that we can be with Him in this new place in the future. This is the love that God has for us.
I want you to think about this for a minute. We generally have a fair amount of snow every winter. God created this for us. If we didn’t have winter here, then we probably wouldn’t be able to farm like we do. There has to be this delicate balance in order for us to grow food. As a matter of fact, if the angle of the earth and the sun were off by as little as 1 degree, all life would cease on earth. If the air we breathe was just a little off from the combination of oxygen and other gases, we wouldn’t be able to breathe. All of this and more have been orchestrated by our God; our God who loves us.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the things God supplies us whereby we couldn’t survive without them. Just think about how our bodies work. The chemistry has to be just right. Cells have to cooperate with each other at every level or we wouldn’t have life. The genetic code has to be just so or else there is no life. I would say that the almost infinite combinations of all these things have to be perfect in order for there to be life. God created us in this perfect harmony because of the love that He has for us, for you. This is the love I talk about all the time but it still isn’t the greatest love story ever. It is great, but not the greatest.
The greatest love story ever is the love that God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, has for you. Everything about you is from God. Look at yourself. I know that our society tells you differently but God made you perfect. You are God’s creature and as such God has promised to be with you no matter what happens. Do you think He likes it when someone dies and you are saddened? No! Do you think He likes it when a relationship doesn’t work? No! Do you think He enjoys it when you leave Him and strike out on your own, sealing your fate of being a failure? No! Every time you disobey, every time something goes wrong in your life, God is saddened because He loves you so much. God made you to love Him. He made you to worship and adore Him. This is why things go so wrong for you when you stray from God. You were not made to stray. You were made perfectly, absolutely perfectly to praise God and follow Him through all the good things in life and all the bad.
You see, God is the perfect love. I cannot think of one reason why God should love me. Many of you might think the same of yourselves. I am not worthy of this perfect love. However, God still loves me. He still loves you. He sent Jesus Christ to you to save you and protect you. He knew that there would be tremendous pain involved in making Jesus human. He knew that the death of Jesus would be excruciatingly painful. It makes no sense to us as to why He did this other than this love He has for you.
You should be so grateful for this love. It will never change because God will never change. He is the same now as ever and into the future. Generations after us will also have this love because God does not change. This is Christmas and we are celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you want a rundown on all the greatest love stories ever told, the love story that Jesus has for you has to be the greatest of them all. It has the most obstacles, most intrigue, most drama, most happiness, most gentleness, and most love that can be ever found. And it is for you, not me nor the person sitting next to you but you and you alone.
Remember this in this season of Christmas. I dare you to think of the most extravagant way that God can show His love for you. When you get that firmly in your mind, then multiply that by 100 or 1000 or one million times and you will finally get close to God’s perfect love for you. All you have to do is accept it. Thank you, Jesus, for these ministries of believers and their neighbors. And thank you Jesus for this perfect love. Let’s pray.
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