God ~ Picking a Babysitter

Joseph's birth announcement

Joseph kind of fascinates me. We know so little about him ... but in that little bit I can see so much.
What do we know?
Well, we know that he was from Nazareth. (Luke 1:26-27)
We know that Joseph was in the family line of David the king. (Luke 1:6-16)
We know that he was a carpenter, because Jesus was called a carpenter and sons learned their trades from their fathers. (Mark 6:1-3)

and ...
            really ...
                            not much more.
 OH ~ wait!

We know he was betrothed to Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she became pregnant with Jesus, and that, at the time, Mary was a virgin ~ hence, Joseph was NOT the biological father of Jesus.
We know that when Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he was going to divorce her quietly. Betrothal was serious business! If you were publicly betrothed, you did not just decide "well, let's not get married"... it was legally binding and to end the relationship you had to get a divorce.
And we know that he did not go through with the divorce because he got a birth announcement 

. . . in a dream

          . . . where angels talked to him

                  . . . and he believed them!

I have not heard many sermons about Joesph. Have you? We see him standing behind Mary in all the Nativity scenes. We quickly read the verses about him in Matthew and in Luke when we are reading the Christmas story in the Bible. I got to thinking about this man. He intrigues me. I plan to look him up when I get to heaven...perhaps I'll have some hummus and pita bread with him and chat when we are at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb . . .

OK, this is what intrigues me:

So here is this guy, Joesph, a carpenter from Nazareth. What did God see in him? Why pick HIM to be Jesus' dad here on earth? The person God chose ... well, really ~ I mean ~ God was picking someone to 'babysit' for. . .what ~ 30 years? Who do you pick? Why pick Joseph? Well, he must have been strong I would imagine...you would have to be, to be a carpenter...and  .... ummm ... what else do we know? Really, other than the fact that Joseph was from the family line of David the King, nothing directly. We are not told what God saw in this man. Crazy, huh! I mean I understand . . . the men who wrote the gospel didn't know him; no one was taking notes on him when Jesus was a little boy. Mary, obviously knew about him...yet it seems they didn't ask her for any information, later when they were writing gospels ~ I wonder why. Didn't she talk to John (to whom Jesus gave the care of his mother when he was hanging on the cross ~ John 19:26-27)? If so, he didn't leave us any information. There are some little things -- well not really little in the scheme of things -- that suggest that this man was pretty amazing.

When Joseph found out Mary was pregnant, he was going to put her away quietly.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph , but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. Matt 1:18-19

Wow! First we are told he was a righteous man, and second we are told that he did not want to expose her to public disgrace...in fact, we are told that BECAUSE he was a righteous man and BECAUSE he did not want to expose her to public disgrace ... he had in mind to divorce her quietly. He must have been shocked, confused, certainly betrayed ~ angry maybe? Yet he did not act in a vengeful way. In that day and age during the betrothal, the groom built the house for his bride and when it was done he went and got his bride and they got married. The house wasn't done till the groom's father said it was good enough. OK, Joseph was a carpenter, and therefore, probably, so was his dad...so, thick solid doors hung smoothly, hardwood floors, every wall plumb, good solid furniture...lots of work, lots of time.  I can imagine him, standing in the dark that night in the nearly completed home, running his hand across the smooth, solid table with tears running down his cheeks soaking his beard, just quietly saying, "Oh Mary....". Standing there deciding that in the morning he would go to the rabbi. But ~ 

But that night Joseph had a dream.

So now I have a question: Why didn't God tell Joseph early? Why wait? Why even make him contemplate a divorce? Why allow him the agony he must have felt when it became clear that Mary was pregnant? Did Mary try to tell him? We don't know...we do know that as soon as Gabriel came to her and told her she would be the virgin mother of the Messiah, Jesus, that she went to Jerusalem and spent 3 months with Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother. Did she come home, beginning to show? She was only 3 months pregnant at the time. Did she simply come home in the glow of joy from her time with Elizabeth and tell Joseph she was pregnant? It wasn't like it would have been any easier then to believe a pregnant young girl say she had "spoken to an angel" and that, though pregnant, she was still a virgin. I mean Joseph might not have lived in the computer age, but he did understand PREGNANT, and Mary was PREGNANT! AND...Nazareth was a trade town in the north of Israel. I have heard it compared to ... well not exactly Hollywood, but ...

NAZARETH

          The origin of the disrepute in which Nazareth stood (John 1:47) is lot 

      certainly known. All the inhabitants of Galilee were looked upon with 

      contempt by the people of Judaea because they spoke a ruder dialect, were 

      less cultivated, and were more exposed by their position to contact with the 

      heathen. But Nazareth labored under a special opprobrium, for it was a 

      Galilean and not a southern Jew who asked the reproachful question, 

      whether "any good thing" could come from that source. The term "good"

      (a)gaqo/n  having more commonly an ethical sense, it has been suggested

       that the inhabitants of Nazareth may have had a bad name among their 

      neighbors for irreligion or some laxity of morals.
(from McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia, Electronic Database. Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

So, girls from Nazareth who showed up pregnant might not exactly have been believed if they said, 'an angel named Gabriel said . . ..' So God knew what all this would mean to Joseph, yet He waited until Joseph contemplated divorce to send the angel in the dream. He sent Gabriel early to Zachariah, and to Mary. Why not to Joesph?

But, when Joseph did have the dream, he believed God and he quickly married Mary.

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 be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"-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 had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. Matt 1:20-25

"When Joseph woke up..." It sounds as though Joseph did go to the rabbi the next morning, but he went with Mary to finalize the marriage. I love that.

However, it was a dream...ever had a dream? a strange dream? It is not often easy to believe what happens in a dream once you are awake. There are a few stories in the Bible about God speaking to people in dreams ... in Genesis the Philistine king Abimelech (Genesis 20:3), Jacob called Israel by God (Genesis 31:10-13), Solomon the son of David (1 Kings 3:1-15). They all really believed it was God. And now there is Joseph ~ Joseph standing in the middle of these crazy strange events, living through what must have been a tempest of emotions, has a dream where an angel delivers a birth announcement, and Joesph chooses to believe what the angel tells him and chooses to marry Mary, and leave her untouched until after Jesus was born.

 And it mattered, later, it mattered very much that Joseph could hear the messages from angels sent by God in dreams and believe what he was told. Later when Herod decided, at the time of the visit of the Magi, to kill all the baby boys 2 years old and younger, Joseph again had a dream where angels spoke to him and again he believed the angel in the dream. He again obeyed instantly and saved Jesus' life. 

So what do we know about Joseph?
What made him the right man for the job of parenting Jesus?

 ~  He was a carpenter from Nazareth.
 ~  He was Jesus' 'foster' father.

AND, to me most important:

 He believed God!