It was mid-way through December and I was telling a minister friend how I had preached on Joseph, the father of Jesus, the Sunday before. The message was all about obedience and carrying out the will of the Lord, even when it didn’t jive with what you’d always been taught and believed.

Joseph gives us a powerful lesson, and he deserves more than the short shrift he is usually given.

My friend said, “Let me tell you a little story I sometimes use when I’m preaching on Joseph.”

As you know, scholars believe Joseph died before Jesus began His earthly ministry because he is never mentioned again after the incident when Jesus was 12. (That would be Luke chapter 2.)

Anyway, I was thinking about what God said to Joseph when he died and arrived in Heaven.

Back when I was in college, I worked one summer on the wheat harvest.  Do you know what that is?

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They were not “kings” from the east and there wasn’t three of them. And when they arrived in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus were not still in the stable, but in a house, contrary to half the Christmas cards that will be arriving at your house.

And there’s no indication there were cattle in that stable or anywhere nearby. In fact, the only thing that leads us to believe Jesus was born in a stable is that Luke 2:7 tells us Mary laid the Baby in a manger, a feeding trough.

But you knew all this.

And you knew that all of this was predicted through the centuries by God’s prophets. We particularly treasure the promises of Isaiah 7:17 (“Behold a virgin shall conceive….”) and 9:6-7 (“For unto us a child is born….”), as well as Micah 5:2 (“Bethlehem…out of you shall come forth One to be Ruler over Israel…”).

And you knew that, contrary to the Christmas hymn “The First Noel,” the shepherds in Bethlehem’s fields did not “looked up and saw a star shining in the East beyond them far.” (Modern hymnals have revised that line to read “For all to see there was a star….”)

But, allow me to point out some aspects of this wonderful story it’s possible you might have missed. There is no particular order intended.

1. Joseph has no speaking lines.

This man who was to become the earthly father of our Lord Jesus was a man of action. He heard and he obeyed.

A mother called the school to inform the teacher that her son had a bad cold and would be unable to play Joseph in the Nativity play later that morning. It was too late to replace him, so they did the play without Joseph.

No one noticed.

2. Mary is a deep thinker.

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“Now there were in the same country shepherds abiding in their fields by night….” (Luke 2)

(Herewith we present a report from the youngest shepherd of that fateful night in the field outside Bethlehem, with the editor’s occasional remarks in italics.)

I was not supposed to work that night, it being a school night. My friend Elihu asked me to fill in for him.  Now, my father is not real thrilled with me hanging out with some of these characters who work night shifts with the sheep.  Shepherding is the ultimate unskilled labor and only those who can’t do anything else–or hesitate to show their faces in public in the day–need apply.

But Father knows I’m a good student and agreed that we could use the money.

Anyway, that’s how it happened that I had the most amazing experience of my young life.

Did I say I’m only 15? So, it’s not like I have seen everything, but this is surely the high point of my life so far. I can’t imagine it getting any better.

Shepherding anytime is no fun, but at night it is the most boring work imaginable. The sheep are not grazing and not even wandering around. They’re asleep. Even dumb animals know night-time is when you shut down and get some rest.  But, I’m not complaining. It’s a job, and there aren’t many of those around for people my age.

Mostly, we were there to protect the flocks from the wild animals. Several small flocks were intermingled across the meadow. It’s too much trouble to herd the sheep back and forth from their farms each evening and morning, and labor being cheap, there we were.

There were four of us on duty there that night. What were we talking about? I ‘ve almost forgotten. Something about Elihu’s real reason for missing work, I think. Yitzhak seems to think he has a girl somewhere and she sneaks out to meet him when her father isn’t looking. Since Yitzhak has done that a time or two, we teased him about being such an expert on the subject.

Scholars say shepherds in First Century Judea were notoriously dishonest and often disreputable.  It says something interesting about the Heavenly Father that they were chosen as the very first welcoming committee for the Lord Jesus. In a similar fashion, in our Lord’s parable about guests in the royal wedding banquet of Matthew 22, those who accepted the invitation were “both evil and good” (v.10). Clearly, the Heavenly Father is no Pharisee!

The night was dark. I mean, black dark. Then all of a sudden, it was like the noonday sun decided to pay a surprise visit. The world lit up. And this fellow–an angel we realized later, but it wasn’t obvious at first–was standing there in midair about 10 feet above our heads. I mean, just standing there, suspended in space.

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“That is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed.” –C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

Nothing about the Christian faith is as we might have expected. Think of it: Jesus Christ led a sinless life, died a vicarious death, and was raised physically to be seen by hundreds of people.  All of this happens to a Jew in First Century Roman-dominated Judea, and you are straining at credulity!

Consider just the unexpectedness of the Christmas event itself, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1) Surprises from Matthew 1

–The lineage of Jesus contains an interesting lineup of characters, including several women of questionable character: Tamar who seduced her father-in-law, Rahab the prostitute of Jericho, Ruth who was the subject of gossip in Bethlehem, Bathsheba who was the “other woman” of David’s fall from grace, and of course, Mary herself, the target of malicious gossips throughout Nazareth.  Consider…

–The bride-to-be of Joseph is found to be “with child by the Holy Spirit.”  (You can just hear the gossips: “Oh yeah! Likely story!”)

–Joseph is told by an angel that this is a God-thing, that his wife will bear a Son, the Son was to be called Jesus, and that He would “save his people from their sins.”  (God has to deal with Joseph’s natural conservatism caused by his high standards!)

–This was all in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.  (No one had the slightest notion that the prophecy would be fulfilled 700 years later!  To us, that’s like the 1400’s.)

Was any of this to be expected? Would you have guessed any of it?  No one did.

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On Christmas Day, 1939, Britain’s King George VI, the father of Elizabeth II, decided to do something he detested.  He would speak publicly on the radio.

King George had a speech defect known as a stammer, but determined he would revive a custom his late father had started and deliver an annual message to the British people. This being the first Christmas of the war with Germany, he rightly thought they could use the encouragement.

While the king and his staff were working on his broadcast message, someone sent a clipping from the Times of London to Buckingham Palace. The little article contained a prayer of sorts that had been found on a postcard in the desk of a deceased Bristol doctor. That man’s daughter had used it on greeting cards, one of which was received by a Mrs. J. C. M. Allen of Clifton, who had kept it. Realizing the words were appropriate for her country at the outbreak of the war, she passed the postcard on to the newspaper.

Just after 3 pm on Christmas Day, King George began with these words to his people–

A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted. In the meantime I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you.

Then, he delivered the lines which had come their circuitous route, from the doctor’s office to his daughter, to Mrs. Allen who sent it to the Times, and thence to the palace. Now, those words were shared with the world, spoken by no less than the King of England.

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