Quote from Forum Archives on December 19, 2003, 9:46 am

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THE AMAZING EMMANUEL #3/5
A HERO SIZE JOB
December 14, 2003

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

During this year’s Advent season, I have been talking a lot about heroes,
both real-life and fiction. As we go through our life, we tend to develop
heroes. Our heroes may be fiction, like Superman, or a real person we may
never meet, like Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rico born baseball player
who died in a plane crash while transporting food and emergency supplies
to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Our heroes may even change through the years. I remember my brother
coming home from visiting a friend once and talking about seeing a comic
about a new superhero, Spiderman. I could not imagine what a Spiderman
might look like, but it sounded intriguing. We couldn’t wait to scrape up
enough money to buy an issue ourselves. When I finally “met” Spiderman, I
was in awe. When we played, I wanted to be Spiderman, which sometimes led
to arguments since there were others who wanted to play his character,
too. I even scrounged up an old stocking cap to wear over my head and
face, which got to be tricky since there were no eye-holes cut in it.
Over time, though, my fascination with Spiderman subsided. I’m not really
the acrobatic type like he is.

No matter who our favorite heroes have been, though, I notice that there
is often a common bond between most of them. They show up in the nick of
time to protect the weak, rescue the helpless, and save people in
distress. Our most well-known heroes are the ones who do something to
protect the weak.

Of course, no one does that better than our real super hero, Jesus, the
only hero worthy of worship. That stands to reason since God had
protected the weak all along. It just stands to reason that this would be
highlighted even in the birth of the Son. See if we don’t learn some
valuable lessons on this third Sunday in Advent from Matthew 1:18–25.
“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. 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.”

In this passage, Matthew gives us the account of the birth of Jesus from
Joseph’s perspective. And from his perspective, we see that all is not
well. As was the Jewish custom of those times, when a man and woman were
pledged to be married, two stages were involved. First, the kiddushin
(“betrothal”), and then the huppah (“marriage ceremony”). The marriage
was almost always arranged by the families of the bride and groom, often
without consulting them. As a part of the arrangement, a contract was
drawn up and sealed by payment of the mohar, the dowry or bride price,
which was paid by the groom or his family to the bride’s father. The
contract was considered binding as soon as it was made, and the man and
woman were considered legally married, even though the marriage ceremony
often did not take place until as much as a year later. This tradition
was a more binding relationship than our modern engagement process, for
it could be broken only by divorce. That’s how deep the concept of Jewish
betrothal ran.

But the proverbial fly had fallen into the ointment. Young Mary was
pregnant. Matthew reports, this was “before they came together.” The
logical conclusion for Joseph was that someone else had been with Mary.
And because she was already considered his wife, it was apparent that
adultery had been committed. As a result, Joseph’s recourse under the
Jewish law was clear. According to Deuteronomy 22:23–24, he had every
right to have her taken to the gate of the town and stoned to death. For
the text says, “You shall purge the evil from among you.” And no one
would have blamed Joseph one bit if he chose to do that very thing. It
was the Law.

We find something else already at work, though, than just the Law.
Matthew goes on to tell us that because Joseph “was a righteous man and
did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce
her quietly.” In using the term righteous, Matthew is revealing one of
the few things we know about Joseph. To the Jew, righteousness meant
being zealous in keeping the Law. But if Joseph was such a man, it would
also seem pretty cut and dry as to what his course of action should be.
As an ardent follower of the Law, Joseph would certainly have Mary
stoned.

This is not what he did. For, as the entirety of God’s word makes clear,
the real heart of the law is mercy. Joseph was a righteous man in the
truest sense of the word. He did the things that were written on God’s
heart, and understood - as Jesus would later explain - that the Law was
made for the man, not the man for the Law. The true intent of the Law was
loving God with all your heart and showing love to your neighbors by
treating them as you would treat yourself. That meant Joseph chose to do
the honorable thing. Instead of seeking revenge out of anger, he would
quietly seek to divorce Mary, thus allowing her to secretly be taken away
where she could have the baby without the public disgrace that certainly
would follow in their own hometown.

Even before an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in the next verse, we
see in this man the reason why God chose him to be His own Son’s earthly
role model. Joseph was a “righteous dude!” The angel’s subsequent coming
only allowed Joseph to know the truth that Mary’s conception was from the
Holy Spirit. With heroic measure, Joseph obeyed what God had commanded
and without hesitation took young Mary as his bride. He could have told
the angel to “get lost” and protected his reputation instead, because in
the months ahead, I’m sure a few tongues wagged as some in the town
watched Mary’s womb grow and did the math in their heads. Nonetheless,
Joseph did not bend under the pressure. He did a hero size job and
defended the weak in heroic fashion.

This practice of doing a hero size job and defending the weak is
consistent throughout the Bible. Included in the first chapter of Matthew
is a genealogy of Jesus. Notice in verse 5 the twelfth name of the 42
names: Boaz, father of Obed. In the book of Ruth, Ruth and her
mother-in-law, Naomi, left the land of Moab after both of their husbands
died. They made their way back to Naomi’s kinfolk in Bethlehem. Even
though Ruth was a foreigner from a despised people, the Moabites, and had
no one to provide for her, a certain man by the name of Boaz showed her
mercy in her helpless condition and became her “kinsman-redeemer” and
even her husband.

According to Old Testament Law, a “kinsman-redeemer” was responsible for
protecting the interests of needy members of the extended family. Boaz
ensured that Ruth and her mother-in-law were provided for. He went
through the appropriate procedure of his time to ensure that the first
legal kinsman-redeemer in line declined to redeem the land that was being
sold by Naomi and, thus inherit Ruth as wife. Since he declined, Boaz
became the kinsman-redeemer by both buying the land and marrying Ruth.
The account is in the book of Ruth. The point is that defending the weak
was in Jesus’ lineage. Boaz, like others consistently modeled protecting
the weak. God chose His Son’s earthly family, and He made sure to include
those kinds of examples who would guide His son toward one day becoming
our Kinsman-Redeemer, dying upon a Roman cross to pay the price for our
redemption that we ourselves could not.

Jesus’ brother James caught the lessons from his brother, father, and
family history. Look at James 1:27 for a word about what he tells real
faith looks like as it is lived out in a the world. James writes, “True
religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: To
look after orphans and widows in their distress.” Orphans and widows
were, of course, among the weakest members of society then as they had no
one to fall back on for support.

The lesson is clear. It is certainly not just a Christmas lesson, either;
it is a Christian lesson. Our duty to God, born out of His love for us
and our humble love to God in return, is to defend the weak. It is a hero
size job because, all too often, the culture and society around us will
condemn the weak, not defend them. Overall, we can be thankful that
America has a heritage of defending the weak, but we are not perfect as a
nation. I caught part of a Little House on the Prairie rerun last week. A
woman and her son had returned to live with her father because her
husband, a Sioux Indian, had been killed. Her father rejected his
grandson because he was failing to learn “white man’s ways.” It took a
crisis before he realized that he should defend the weak and love his
grandson.

The simple truth of the Gospels is the fact that the God of all the
universe loved us weak, defenseless creatures enough to put on flesh and
draw near to us, beginning with His birth which we celebrate at
Christmas. Jesus shows us, in the flesh, the way God desires for us to
live. And as if that wasn’t enough, he became our Kinsman-Redeemer by
paying an eternal debt that we ourselves could not. Jesus’ hero size job
protected us, the weak, in superhero fashion.

I am glad that the churches in which I have served, and First Baptist
Church is no exception, have always responded to the needs of the weak.
Even though needs are highlighted more at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we
support many service ministries the year round. Assistance through our
own Matthew 25 fund is evidence of that. Since its inception, we have
spent about $ in assistance to families needing assistance in our
communities. We do this in thankfulness God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ.
In honor of Jesus’ heroic example, we owe Him nothing less than to seek
to live such a life ourselves. Like Jesus, you and I come from a
spiritual lineage which includes a long line of heroic kinsmen. It is up
to us as willing servants of God to continue the line. When we first
discover our true hero, Jesus, then we have found a hero whose footsteps
are truly worth following. Who is your hero this morning? There is
nothing wrong with having some earthly heroes, but if Jesus is not your
first hero, then you are making an eternal mistake. And if Jesus is your
first hero, then always remember to live like it by doing the hero size
job of defending the weak.

(Adapted from The Amazing Emmanuel: Following the True Hero for All Time,
Pastor’s Manual, Wheaton, IL: Mainstay Church Resources, 2003, pp.
B76-B83)

Rev. Charles A. Layne, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bunker Hill, IN

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