Christmas 2

Matthew 2:13-23 - Christmas Two - January 4, 2015         
Our Father Guards His Children

Joseph was a just man.  Just means righteous.  This is what St. Matthew calls him when he reports how Joseph had the mind to secretly divorce his young betrothed wife.  He of course knew that he was not the father of the Child she was carrying, and supposed that Mary had behaved unchastely.  But he was a just man.  He was concerned about not publicly shaming her.  That’s why he sought to secretly divorce her – that is, until the angel assured him that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit. 

Joseph was a just man:  This has a double meaning.  The first is the more important.  And the second flows from the first.  But the two meanings go together.  The first refers to the righteousness by which he stood before God by faith, given to him as a free gift in Christ.  The second refers to the righteousness of the sanctified life, which he did before men in response to the free gift.  Joseph was righteous by faith.  He was also a just man in word and deed.  Righteous men do righteous things.  Go figure. 

The first is the more important.  Joseph is called righteous because he believed the gospel.  This is the righteousness of faith.  It is not the righteousness of works.  Remember how God promised Abraham that in his Seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.  What does the Scripture say?  “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).  Joseph had the same faith as his father Abraham.  And so the same righteousness was accounted to him.  The Seed of Abraham is Christ.  It is Christ’s righteousness that Abraham received when he believed the gospel; and it is Christ’s righteousness that Joseph received when he believed the gospel.  Joseph was a just man.  This means his sins were forgiven. 

Joseph was just because he was justified.  I think people imagine that justify is a complicated word because it sounds like technical jargon.  But it isn’t.  It is how God speaks in the Bible; and it is how he speaks some of his most comforting promises.  So it is good for us to be accustomed to hearing it.  Just means righteous.  To be justified is to be declared righteous.  It is a verdict.  God declares us righteous when he forgives us our sins for Jesus’ sake.  The Bible says that we are justified by faith, not because faith does something so great, but because faith receives that great thing which is already done. 

And so it is all by grace alone, not by works.  As the Scriptures say: “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5).  The one who stands righteous before God is the one who is a sinner on his own.  God does not justify the just.  He justifies the ungodly.  He does not forgive the sinless.  He forgives the sinner.  And it is God who works the faith in you to receive this truth. 

If you are a sinner who has sinned, the two worst things you can do is either a) to minimize your sin, as though you need no forgiveness, or else b) to magnify your sin as though it were too great for God to forgive. 

God who became man to be your Savior knew how great your debt was.  He by whom all worlds were made so lowered himself to join you.  This was not because your sin was only a little deal.  No way!  It is a huge deal.  God became man for you.  The almighty God united himself to your humanity because it was only by paying your enormous debt as a Man that he could unite you to himself. 

But your debt to God was not greater than God’s love for you.  If his love for you is not made stronger by how holy you are, then his love for you is certainly not made weaker by how sinful you are.  God is love.  His love doesn’t make God dependent on anyone.  It defines who he is.  Jesus is of the Father’s love begotten from eternity.  This means it was pure, divine love with no qualification or contingency that caused God to become man.  And it is in Jesus alone that God’s love is revealed.  Consider what Martin Luther teaches us to sing:

But God beheld my wretched state
Before the world’s foundation,
And, mindful of His mercies great,
He planned my soul’s salvation.
He turned to me a father’s heart,
He did not choose the easy part:
He gave His dearest Treasure. 

As surely as God did not need Joseph to be conceived in Mary’s womb, he does not need any contribution from you to render you fit for his dwelling.  Nothing on earth compelled him to come.  His Father’s command compelled him – the eternal love he and the Father shared for each other.  This compelled him.  He does not need you to get a handle on your sin in order to come to you and free you from guilt and shame.  No, he who from his glory in heaven beholds unholy sinners on earth is mindful of his mercy.  He loves you.  He begets you as his own through the same Holy Spirit who conceived Jesus.  You are his child and heir through the new birth of water and the Spirit.  He is your Father who cares for his children.  And so as a true son cries out, “Abba, Father,” so he hears you in your every need. 

His attentive care for baby Jesus proves this. 

Jesus was in need of serious help.  Herod sought to kill him.  And yet how did his heavenly Father send help?  Did he send plagues on Herod’s house like he did to Pharaoh to rescue his children from slavery?  No, he didn’t.  He sent an angel to Joseph, and told him to flee to Egypt with the Child and his mother.  He told Joseph to be a father to the Boy.  This is how our Father in heaven met the dire need of his eternal Son who was beset by danger on earth.  He told Joseph to be a father.  This is all Jesus needed.  Joseph did what God told him to do. 

God called Joseph to be a father for the sake of Jesus, whom he loved.  This is why God calls anyone to be a father.  He loves the children.  He loves them for Jesus’ sake.  He who knit them together in their mothers’ wombs also cares for them, and provides for them, and guards them from danger.  He does so for the sake of His dear Son, Jesus Christ, who for us men and for our salvation was also knit together in his own mother’s womb.  From eternity the Father was his Father. 

God does not call himself Father because he resembles the relationships between father and children that we see here on earth.  No, it’s the opposite.  He calls us to be fathers because he tells us to do for our children what he is already doing.  But he wants to do it through us just as he worked through Joseph. 

This is humbling.  We call ourselves fathers, but they are his children.  He loves them more than we can.  He gives them more than we can afford.  He knows their needs and well provides.  And yet he places them in the care of earthly fathers.  Our first responsibility is to bring them to, and teach them about their true Father in heaven.  This is why Jesus commands that all nations be baptized.  It is a father’s primary responsibility to care for his children’s spiritual needs. 

This begins at Baptism.  Baptism is not a sentimental church rite that we wait months for after a child is born until we can get all the right family together.  No, because Baptism doesn’t join our children to their uncles and aunts and grandparents.  It joins them to God.  It joins them to the Son of God who became man in order to suffer and die for them and take their sins away.  It is from us that our children inherit their corrupt nature that blossoms into temper tantrums, selfish pride, and other great shame and vice, leading to death and damnation.  But it is from God that they inherit forgiveness for their sins, which brings eternal life and salvation.  And so just as we pray God to make haste and deliver us, we fathers have the duty to make haste and get our kids baptized. 

And then they make haste to grow up, don’t they?  And so even as we give them everything we can because we love them, we even more so make haste to teach them of their heavenly Father’s love in Christ. 

The mark of a good father is not in simply being there and attentive, providing for earthly needs.  It is in teaching them who truly provides it all, and why.  Our highest calling as fathers is to teach our children what they have received when they were baptized.  It is to bear with their weakness as children of Adam, to admonish and correct their sin.  It is to instruct and encourage them to know who they are as co-heirs of Christ their Savior.  We are to hear the word of God ourselves and let our children see it.  We are to teach them the word of God at home and let our children know that it is more important than anything else.  Our heavenly Father takes care of his children through earthly fathers.  And here we see why it is important that we who are righteous by faith also live righteously before men – especially before our children. 

Here more than anywhere we see that Joseph was a just man – he was a good father.  He listened to God.  God took care of baby Jesus by communicating to Joseph what his duties as a father were.  He taught him, and so he teaches us how a righteous father takes care of his children.  He listens to God’s word.  He who knew his own Savior by faith was now being called upon by God to help save the Savior.  He who was righteous by faith was now being called upon to live righteously by heeding God’s commands.  He was called to be a just man.  And so are we – not for our own sake – but for the sake of God’s dear children. 

Not much is said of Joseph’s faith in Scripture.  It isn’t for us to see.  And not much can be said of ours.  We don’t see each other’s faith.  No, God sees faith.  We see works.  Faith justifies us before God.  But works justify us before men.  This is what St. James is talking about when he writes that faith without works is dead.  There is no such thing as faith in God’s mercy that does not spring up to show mercy itself.  There is no such thing as faith in forgiveness for the sake of Christ’s obedience that does not seek to forgive, and to live obediently to God.  There is no such thing as knowing the Father of our Lord Jesus without seeking to be a father to the children God has given us.  This is what faith looks like. 

James says that Abraham was justified by works when he offered Isaac on the altar.  But he is not talking about justification before God, but before men.  He’s talking about the works whereby we show that faith is living.  “You see then,” he writes, “that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone.”  Do we wish that the Holy Spirit did not inspire these words?  Ah, but we simply must know what they mean.  It means that the justified sinner who stands righteous before God by grace alone also shows his faith by living righteously before men.  He who does not is a hypocrite who scandalizes God’s children.  We don’t need our works.  Our neighbor does.  And so we live righteously before our children and before one another first and foremost by teaching our kids the word of God at home, and by bringing them to their Father’s house to be fed and clothed in the blood of Christ. 

The book of Hebrews says that Abraham offered Isaac up by faith when he was tested.  He clarifies for us what James says.  Abraham, like Joseph, and like us, was justified before God by faith alone.  But God tests our faith to see what works it produces.  He doesn’t test us to see if we have what it takes to be justified.  No.  He knows what we have.  He knows how weak we are and insufficient to be worthy fathers to his children.  No, he tests us in order to teach us where our own sufficiency comes from.  We find our worthiness as fathers only by remembering that we ourselves are God’s dear children who need as much as our children do the forgiveness that comes through Christ. 

We don’t sacrifice our children.  But we offer them up to God.  We confess who gave them to us.  We acknowledge who loves them more than we are able.  The world seeks their lives.  The devil seeks their souls.  But even as the world rages, even as Herod murders, God our faithful Father tends to the needs of his children.  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will not fail to meet all our needs. 

And he meets your greatest need, just as he met the greatest needs of all those little boys in Bethlehem.  They suffered violence for Jesus’ sake.  And so do we.  But he who escaped that day by the providence of his Father has made your way of escape and for your children too.  It is found where fathers and mothers and children who have lived as sinners before God, who have failed to justify themselves before men, who suffer from tragedy and heartbreak and see that their own sin has caused it – it is seen where your gracious Father gives to you what Christ your Brother has won.  His righteousness is yours.  His inheritance is yours.  His life is yours. 

Jesus, all Thy children cherish
And keep them that they never perish
Whom Thou hast purchased with Thy blood.
Let new life to us be given
That we may look to Thee in heaven
Whenever fearful is our mood.
Thy spirit on us pour
That we may love Thee more –
Hearts o’erflowing;
And then will we
Be true to Thee
In death and life eternally. Amen.