The True Story of Christmas: Mary and Joseph

Welcome to our ancient future story, navigating Scripture through the Eyes of Family, where I share with you biblical stories like a family member would share a story around a dinner table. As children of God, we are a part of God's family and His family story has a lot of history. Each week we will take one story and talk about it the cultural, historical, geographical and sociological impacts. We will be looking at these stories through the perspective of our ancestors, through the lens of ancient times, in hopes of learning more about our family. This is our ancient future story. Welcome back to our ancient future story. I'm Vic and I am so excited to share with you part two of the Christmas story. This time we talked about Elizabeth and Zachariah and their son John the Baptist. Today we will be discussing Mary and Joseph. They had a very unique relationship. On the surface they looked like any ordinary couple, but they would become the parents of the promised Messiah. And all this started with an angel coming to Mary with the good news. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee or something to drink and let's get ready to hear part two of the true story of Christmas. Our story today takes place during Elizabeth's six month of pregnancy and opens. In the town of Nazareth, where a young virgin girl, mary, lived, she was pledged to be married to a carpenter named Joseph, who was a descendant of David. So, fun fact, the lineage of David is very important to our family story because it's the fulfillment of many prophecies in the Old Testament. Remember that God established a covenant with David that he would always have a king on the throne. So the fact that Joseph comes from the line of David is vital to the cultural legitimacy of Jesus's earthly kingship. But more on this in a minute. The angel went to Mary and said greetings, you are the favored one. Mary, shocked to see an angel. She wondered to herself what message he might be bringing her. The angel said to her do not be afraid, mary, for you have found favor with God. You will conceive and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus. He will be called the son of the Most High. The Lord will give him the throne of his father, david, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end. Great a proclamation. But Mary, unable to process what the angel is saying, rightfully asked how can this be? I am a virgin and Joseph and I are not yet married. How can I conceive and bear a child? The angel answered her the Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so that the Holy One will be born, will be called the Son of God. Okay, pause, let me just take a minute and talk about the insanity of this conversation. This is just hitting me right now, but the Holy Spirit, at this point in history, was residing in the Ark of the Covenant which was being held in the temple, not to mention that the last person who had the Spirit of God on them was a prophet, over 400 years prior to this moment. So when the angel tells her that the Spirit of Yahweh is going to come down on her, like he had with Moses, with Joshua, with David, with Solomon and the prophets, yeah, of course she was stunned with amazement. Let's get back to our story. But then the angel tells her the convincing thing that her cousin Elizabeth is in her sixth month of pregnancy, for no word from God will ever fail. Mary responds with the only thing she can say I am the Lord's servant. May it be done just as you have said. Then the angel leaves her. Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit, just as the angel promised. But, as you can imagine, this did not go over well with Joseph. He wanted a divorce because clearly Mary had been unfaithful, but because Joseph knew the law, he didn't want to expose her to the public because he knew they would stone her. So he decided he would divorce her quietly. But after he decided this, he took a nap and an angel appeared to him in his dream. Historical Fun Fact Dreams were often seen as a way for the divine to communicate with humanity, so seeing and talking to an angel in his dream was not as weird as it sounds. The angel said to him Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child that has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you shall name him Jesus, because he will save the people from their sins. Historical Fun Fact Jesus is the Greek name for the Hebrew name Yeshua or Joshua, which means the Lord saves. I could talk more about Yahweh taking the name of Yeshua and how that impacts and illuminates history, but we will have to save that for another episode. But all of this happened to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah, who said the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel. God with us. When Joseph woke up from his nap, he immediately took Mary to be his wife, but he did not consummate the marriage until she gave birth to a son. And that is where our story pauses. For now, mary and Joseph newly wed without a honeymoon, both possessing this incredible buy-in that the child Mary is carrying is indeed the Messiah and that Yahweh is going to do something supernatural through them. If you grew up in church, you have probably heard this story many, many times, and even if you didn't grow up in church, you have probably heard this story over and over again, at least around Christmastime. But there are a few main things that I think are interesting and will help shape the context of this story for us. First location Our story takes place in Nazareth, a town in Galilee in northern Israel. This was a very insignificant town until Jesus put it on the map. John 1 even says can anything good come from Nazareth? Mary was from this town and Jesus grew up here. He lived here his whole life and started his ministry from here before moving to Capernaum. Today, nazareth is the largest Arab city in the country. They have many large and beautiful churches that bring many tourists each year, including the Church of the Annunciation, where it is believed to be the place that Gabriel spoke to Mary. After standing in this place on my trip to Israel, my first thought was huh, nazareth was a cave town. Yep, a cave town. Nazareth at the time of Jesus was about 300 people in size and they lived and connected caves. So let's picture Mary, likely a 10 to 12 year old preteen, standing in a cave when the angel Gabriel comes to her and says she has found favor with Yahweh, so much favor that she is going to bear the Messiah. It's absolutely mind-blowing. The second thing that I feel like we need to talk about is the genealogy of Jesus. Now, I know that most people skip through the genealogy any time it is listed in the Bible, because who wants to sit through a bunch of names that no one can pronounce? But it's important for us to take a closer look at the genealogy of Jesus. We get two lines of Jesus in the Bible one in Matthew, chapter one, and the other in Luke 3. Though these family lines may look the same at first glance, they are actually quite different. Their differences is important here At this time. Children, but especially boys, were always labeled under the Father's line So-and-so, the son of So-and-so, or, in this case, jesus the son of God or Jesus the son of the carpenter. But the fact that Luke uses Mary's family tree is different and we should pay attention to it. It's important to note that women were not included in the lineage of boys. They were typically left out of the family tree. But here Luke not only puts Mary in the family tree, but he uses her family line. Both in the lines of Matthew, chapter 1 and Luke 3 are the same, from Adam to King David, but they split between Solomon in Matthew 1 and Nathan in Luke 3. Luke takes the approach of Jesus' legitimacy through the line of Mary, because she is the only earthly bloodline, because he is the Son of God. But why do we care if Jesus is the legitimate descendant of David or not? Well, remember that at this time King Herod was on the throne and the Jewish people did not believe he was the legitimate king of Israel because he was a descendant of Esau. Luke and Matthew both show the lineage of Jesus to prove that he is the rightful king of Israel. The next thing that is important for us to note about this story is the engagement of Mary and Joseph. In ancient Jewish culture, men and women were typically arranged and married by their parents. They were often introduced and engaged pretty early in life. Women were usually engaged by their 12th birthday, where men were typically engaged in their late teens or early 20s. This was so women would be able to have children as soon as they hit puberty and men had time to be established in the community before they took a wife and started a family. Men had a good job and could prove that they could provide for their new bride. Couples were typically engaged for about a year prior to the wedding, during which time the groom would build onto his father's house the bet off to prepare for his new wife and future family. This is likely what Joseph was doing when Mary was greeted by the angel, which leads us to the next main point, which is the law of unfaithfulness in marriage. To understand this, we have to realize a couple things about the culture at this time. According to Leviticus 20, if a woman and a man were caught in adultery, the priests could have the right to stone them, but at this time, men held all the power in marriage. They were the only ones who could divorce their spouse and they could do so for basically any reason. So when Mary, a preteen, likely between 10 and 12 years old, became pregnant by the Holy Spirit with the Messiah, she runs for her life. She flees from Nazareth in the north and goes to see her cousin Elizabeth in the south. She flees because, even though Joseph may not stone her, the community had every right to Remember. This is an honor shame culture. A woman who committed adultery would have brought great shame on herself and the entire community. In this culture there is this thing called honor killings, where they were allowed to kill someone, usually a woman, in order to restore honor in the community. This community that Mary lived in would have been well within their rights to stone her for being pregnant outside of wedlock. So she flees to her cousin's house. Lastly, I want us to talk about the patience of Joseph. After Joseph decided to stay engaged with Mary, they never had a wedding night, and I'm thinking they also never had a wedding because a wedding feast included the consummation of the marriage, but they abstained from sex until after Mary gave birth to Jesus. There is some debate on this. Some scholars have argued that Joseph never consummated the marriage and Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life. But we know, and others have argued, that Jesus had brothers and sisters, so it's more likely that Joseph just waited until after Jesus was born to consummate the marriage to Mary. So how does our story today point us to Jesus? As we have discussed in previous episodes, jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament through covenants, prophecies and the law. So each time we meet together we'll discuss how our story points to him. I find it so fascinating that during the 400 years that leads up to this moment in history, the Greeks and the Romans spread their belief that humanity was like gods. All of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses at this time are starting to show up in human forms. Up until this point, gods were depicted as monsters or abstract beings, but the Greeks and the Romans loved the human body so much that they decided to depict the gods like themselves. And I just love so much that it was at this time when humanity decided they would become gods. Yahweh decided to become a man. In our story today, we talked about Jesus' earthly parents and the conception of Jesus in human form. This is the beginning of God's fulfillment of the promise he made to Abraham. Yahweh wrote himself into the story so that he could fulfill the broken covenant. This is the entrance of Jesus into our story. He didn't come as a tough warrior king, like everyone expected, but as an innocent, defenseless baby to save the world. Before we go, I want to close our time together by reading the scriptures from which our story comes from today In Luke, chapter 1, and Matthew, chapter 1. I hope that as we listen to this chapter being read, that we will embrace all that we have learned and that this passage will be illuminated for you. Let's read In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, god sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said Greetings, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at the words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her Do not be afraid, mary, for you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, david, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end. How can this be, mary, asked the angel, since I am a virgin. The angel answered the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she, who was said to be unable to conceive, is in her sixth month. For no word of God will ever fail. I am the Lord's servant, mary answered. May your word to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her. At that time, mary got ready and hurried out of town to the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zachariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. 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. Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law, because he did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But 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. She will give birth to a son and you are 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 what 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 Jesus. Thank you for listening to today's episode of our HM Future Story. I hope that you really enjoyed it. This episode was written and produced by me. Vic Harmon Music is embarking on an adventure by Evan MacDonald. Please support the show by subscribing and rating us, and if you want more info or want to dive deeper, check out our website at our ancientfuturestorycom. See you next time. Bye.