"THE HOLY SPIRIT TELLS US OF JOSEPH’S ABSTINENCE SO THAT WE MIGHT BE ASSURED OF GOD’S BLESSING ON THE MARRIAGE BED."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Hymn 16:1,2
Hymn 15:3 (after reading of Athanasian Creed).
Psalm 12:4 (after baptism)
Hymn 21:1,3
Psalm 45:4,5
Psalm 128:1,2,3

Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Matthew tells us about "the birth of Jesus Christ". In fact, the first verse of the portion we read from Matthew’s gospel forms the heading of the entire passage: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows." Chapter 1 is certainly what we consider as Christmas material.

Material fitting for Christmas includes, to our minds, aspects of the Saviour’s birth as the setting in the humble cattle shed, the visit of the lowly shepherds or the song of the heavenly angels. But see: the Holy Spirit moved Matthew to tell us about none of these things. Instead, as the Spirit moved Matthew to write about "the birth of Jesus Christ", he relates matters involving courtship, marriage and the marriage bed. To the mind of the Holy Spirit, this too is Christmas material. As we today open the Bible to learn about the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ, we shall do well to what the Spirit says at Christmas about courtship, marriage and the marriage bed.

I preach to you today the gospel of Christmas, using this theme:

1. The circumstances of Joseph’s marriage
2. The restrictions in Joseph’s marriage
3. The gospel for Joseph’s marriage

The Circumstances of Joseph’s Marriage

Jewish custom at the time was that a young couple dated for a goodly while. Once the young couple was convinced that they were meant for each other, they moved on to the next step of their relationship: betrothal. Betrothal should not be equated to the concept of ‘engagement’ known in our culture. Betrothal meant that the young couple pledged life-long faithfulness to each other; though not yet married, the courting couple nevertheless committed themselves to each other with a vow that had the strength of a marriage bond. That is why, in the passage before us this morning, Joseph is already called "her husband" (vs 19) and Mary "his wife" (vs 24; cf vs 20). Meanwhile, each party continued to life in separate houses, possibly in the parental home, while the final year of maturing and courtship ran its course. Once the marriage date itself had come (and that was normally about a year after betrothal), the bridegroom would take his bride to his own house.

During the time of betrothal, dating –of course- continued. But because they were not yet actually married, the young couple was not to engage in sexual activity. For so was God’s law: God grants the gift of sexual activity to husband and wife, not to boy friend and girl friend - even if they are betrothed. That’s what God had said in the beginning already: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). That was God’s divinely arranged order: first leave father and mother, then cleave to each other and become one flesh. Marriage comes before intercourse; sex is for the marriage bond. That means for the courting of today: God would have you leave sexual contact for the future, for marriage, for the day when the Lord gives you that gift. So: refrain from petting or touching, let alone undressing and what follows.

Joseph and Mary were betrothed. As healthy persons ourselves, we can appreciate Joseph’s and Mary’s feelings as they dated. Just as with us, so for them the temptation to discover sex was great. Yet let us state the truth of the Bible: that urge to give themselves physically to each other was in itself not at all wrong. Joseph and Mary could know from the Old Testament that it was the Lord who had created mankind, had created mankind as "male and female" (Gen 1:27) - with all that’s involved in the differences He placed in the two genders. And yes, that includes the urge to discover and enjoy each other. Of this aspect of His creation too God said that "behold, it was very good" (Gen 1:31) - a gift for which to be thankful.

But this young God-fearing couple will have known more from the Old Testament than Gen 1, with its message that sex was a wonderful gift from God. They, like we, could read Gen 2 also, that a man was first to leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife in marriage, and only then could they become one flesh. Despite the urges they had, God’s will for that young couple was plain: they had to abstain until God gave them to each other in marriage. And to their credit it is recorded in vs 18 of our chapter that they remained faithful to the Lord’s command; in their courtship they did not "come together".

But the struggles: surely, they were real – as real for Joseph and Mary as for the courting of our midst. And, brothers and sisters, we need not be embarrassed about the reality, or the intensity, of those struggles. For the Lord our God has added to the Bible He gave His people also a book known as the Song of Solomon. In that inspired Word of the Lord God about the beauties of love and sex, the love-struck maiden expresses her longing:

"Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not."

And:

"0 that his left hand were under my head, and that his
right hand embraced me!" (3:1; 2:6; RSV).

This too is part of God’s Word; the Lord knows very well how strong are the urges He has created in man and woman, in the boy and girl so deeply in love. There’s nothing wrong with those urges;

"Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.
Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine has budded, whether the grape blossoms are open and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love..." (7:l1f).

We may be sure: these were portions from the Word of God that Joseph and Mary –like so many serious young couples today- will certainly have read. They will have read it, talked about it…, and that portion of Scripture will not have left them cold. God’s Word was plain: marriage, and sex also, was a delightful gift of God, and as such something to look forward to; well did Solomon advise the young people of his kingdom to "rejoice with the wife of your youth" (Prov 5:18).

But, in the face of their urges, they knew too that intimacy was not something for the time of their betrothal; there was "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing" (Eccl 3:5b), and now was not the time to embrace in that full sense. First they had to leave father and mother and be joined in holy wedlock…. Like any young couple, how they will have looked forward to the day of their marriage….

But to all their happy dreams together there came an abrupt end. Matthew tells us that Mary "was found with child." And the pregnancy, Matthew adds, was "of the Holy Spirit." Mary knew the pregnancy to be from the Spirit because the angel Gabriel had earlier informed Mary that this would happen (Lu 1).

We can imagine that this discovery of pregnancy was for Mary and her fiance no small thing. They had looked forward to marriage, to receiving a child through their coming together, and so raising a family together. Very correctly, their future was geared around that expectation: you are mine and I am yours. But learning that the word of the Lord through Gabriel actually came to pass meant that this expectation was not to be. It is for us not difficult to imagine that this new twist in their courtship will have given this God-fearing couple much to talk about, and more to be confused about. What does that mean: pregnancy without intercourse, and that through the Holy Spirit? And what did it mean for their continued relationship, their hopes and dreams?

Joseph, being the potential head of their dreamed-for family, and so leader in the time of their courtship, considered that he could not take as wife for himself someone whom the Lord had claimed. For that, it seemed, was the case; Mary was made pregnant through the Holy Spirit, and surely that meant nothing else than that God had laid claim to Mary for His own sovereign purposes. So Joseph determined to take that painful step of severing his relation with Mary, breaking off His betrothal with her; he could not, he was sure, argue with God’s claim to Mary. But –lest people think that Mary had been unfaithful to him in favour of another man- he resolved to cease the relationship quietly. His dreams with her were shattered…; she was obviously God’s special possession….

It was while Joseph was considering how best to break off his betrothal to Mary that the angel came to Joseph. His instruction was clear; Joseph was to proceed with marrying his beloved. The angel also made a point of confirming what Mary had previously told him: she was pregnant through the Holy Spirit. More, the child was to be named "Jesus" "for He will save His people from their sins"; He is in fact "God with us" - Immanuel.

What this message meant for Joseph? Of course, it meant first of all this: he would receive his bride after all! Yet it was still not as he had hoped and dreamed; after all, she was pregnant. And he was not the father.

But the words of the angel, congregation, meant more than that he would receive his bride after all. For the angel made clear that in Mary’s pregnancy no man had been involved; "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." The Child to be born, then, was very much the seed of the woman, and not of a man. We need to recall: right after the fall into sin, God had placed enmity between the serpent and the woman, and announced that her Seed –notice, not the man’s seed!- her Seed would crush the seed of the serpent. Here was a role for the woman, not for the man; the Seed of the woman would "save His people from their sins." Well, here it was happening; the woman was pregnant, without involvement from a man. Here, then, was God at work; through His Holy Spirit He made Mary pregnant in order to bring about the salvation announced so long ago. Meanwhile –O happy news!- Joseph could still have his beloved….

Next morning, Joseph did as instructed. He wasted no time; "being aroused from sleep, [Joseph] did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife." In short order, their marriage became a reality.

The Restrictions in Joseph’s Marriage

But the longing put into such apt words by the bride and groom of Solomon’s Song did not find satisfaction in the first months of this new marriage. Though the Word of God in the Old Testament was very clear on the fact that sex was a wonderful gift of God to husband and wife, Joseph –though he married his beloved according to the command- "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son." In denial of self, he kept his distance from the wife God gave him…; they refrained from intercourse.

Why? Given that sex is not just a drive but a gift from God, a gift over which God had pronounced His evaluation that it was "very good", a gift which God has encouraged husband and wife to enjoy, why did Joseph and Mary, as a just-married couple, purposefully abstain? The reason for that, beloved, is not simply because Joseph wished to be considerate to his pregnant wife. It is rather so that the Lord has said more about sex and married life than what is written in Gen 1, Gen 2 and in the Song of Solomon. For after Gen 1 and 2 comes Gen 3, that chapter about the fall into sin. And that fall into sin –it could not be differently- affected married life and sex as well.

How, we wonder? The fall into sin, congregation, made intercourse futile. Consider. In Gen 1, God had commanded the human race to be fruitful and to multiply; Adam and Eve received the command to bear children. That command implied intercourse. No, that is not to say that conceiving children is the first, or even the only, reason for husband and wife coming together. In fact, it isn’t. The first purpose for that gift is to communicate love to each other, to communicate that ‘I am yours, and you are mine’. That’s also why God has restricted the gift of sex to within marriage alone. But the result, the blessing, on communicating love is pregnancy, children.

Before the fall into sin, no children were born to Adam and Eve. With the fall into sin, Adam and Eve became depraved. This depravity was so far-reaching that it corrupts "the entire nature of man" and is "a hereditary evil which infects even infants in their mother’s womb" – as the church echoes God’s Word on the matter in Art 15 of the Belgic Confession. So, when Adam and Eve after the fall obeyed God’s command to be fruitful, the child conceived through their coming together was as depraved as they themselves. "Adam," I read in Gen 4, "knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain" (vs 1), but Cain –sinner that he was- could not be the seed of the woman who could crush the seed of the serpent. Eve conceived again and bore a second son, and called his name ‘Abel’, a name that means ‘vanity’, ‘empty’; he too could not crush the seed of the serpent. In fact, every child generated by husband and wife coming together is ‘Abel’, is vanity, because each is a sinner. As we confess in the Canons of Dort: corrupt parents bring forth corrupt children (III/IV.2). What David confessed in Ps 51 is a reality for every person born:

"Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin my mother conceived me" (vs 5).

Then the coming together of husband and wife in the intimacy of holy marriage may be so desirable and so beautiful, and the Bible does not hesitate to describe it so. But the fact of the matter is that over the marriage bed there hangs a cloud. Intercourse may result in pregnancy and the birth of a child, but the child is guaranteed to be sinful, for corrupt parents bring forth corrupt children. And that in turn means that there is born upon this earth another sinner upon whom the wrath of God against sin must burn; the new child too cannot pay for sin – be it his own sin or the sins of others.

This too, brothers and sisters, is material that Joseph and Mary certainly knew from the Bible God had given them. After God made His covenant with Israel at Mt Sinai, God gave to His people Lev 15, that chapter which spells out that people need cleansing in matters relating to sex. The chapter is plain; God taught Israel that if a man had a nocturnal emission or a woman had her period, they were unclean. They were consequently to wash; the woman was even instructed to bring a sin offering and a burnt offering to the Lord. Yes, even when man and wife engaged in intercourse –vs 18- both the husband and his wife "shall bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening." That meant in practice that on the night before a couple in Israel went to the tabernacle –and they had to go there regularly- they were not to come together, for no person unclean for whatever reason was permitted in God’s presence. That’s also the reason why we read that before God appeared to Israel on Mt Sinai to make His covenant with this people, He commanded Moses to consecrate the people, to make sure that they washed their garments and instruct them "not to go near a woman" (Ex 19:15).

No, God’s point was not to teach Israel that there was something sinful about sex. It a beautiful gift, "very good". But God declared the person who had intercourse unclean until the following evening so that His people might know the extent of their sinfulness, might know the lostness of their condition; so sinful and so lost were they that they could not bring forth a single holy child. So sex, that beautiful expression of love, was clouded by the presence of sin. Sex is delightful, but sex is vain; we need a righteous man able to satisfy the justice of God but no intercourse can bring forth that righteous man. Sex is vain, for one generation of sinners brings forth nothing else than another generation of ... sinners.

According to the command of the angel, Joseph and Mary became husband and wife. But in their case, the delights of the marriage day were not followed by the delights of the marriage night. The bride of Solomon’s Song longed for the embrace of her bridegroom, but this part of the song Mary could not sing herself; it was instead for Mary to adjure the "daughters of Jerusalem" not to "stir up nor awaken love until" God pleases (Song of Sol 2:7). And God was pleased to prevent the coming together of this young couple because God desired to restore married life, including the marriage bed. The Word must become flesh, and that must be without the means of a man. Once God had given marriage and intercourse as the way to bring children into the world; Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply. But with the fall into sin, that method became futile; each child born from intercourse was as sinful as the parents were, and on this earth there appeared more and more sinners – none of whom could satisfy the wrath of God against sin, all of whom provoked the anger of God by their sinfulness.

Here is now the mercy of God: He did something new. God brought about a pregnancy, a birth, without people being involved, without marriage and sex; the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and the power of the Most High overshadowed her (Lu 1:35). The Word became flesh, born out of the virgin Mary, but not through the active participation of the virgin Mary and her husband. Joseph "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son", and so there is no room for any person to claim that Jesus’ origin was from this earth. Joseph "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son", and so there is no room for any one to think that people generated a Saviour. God led things in such a way that the drive of attraction between Joseph and Mary was not satisfied until His divine purpose for Mary’s womb had run its course and the Word had become flesh; the Son of God was born in Bethlehem.

The Gospel for Joseph’s Marriage

When the child was born, Joseph, in obedience to the angel’s command, called His name ‘Jesus’. He called Him ‘Jesus’, Saviour, because he knew that this child was not corrupt, was not conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity (Ps 51); He was instead righteous because He was born of God – and therefore could save His people from their sins.

The faith Joseph expressed at the time of the birth of Jesus was not disappointed; Jesus did not sin His entire life long. At the end of His life on earth, He went to the cross, there to satisfy the wrath of God and so to redeem men from bondage to decay. In delivering His people from their sins, this Son of God also saved His people from the consequences of sin. Every result of the fall into sin –including the vanity associated in this fallen world with sex- was taken away by that Son of God who entered the world through the virgin womb.

So it was that once the Saviour was born, a perfect man among sinners, that Joseph and Mary could fully enjoy the gift of sex God gave to them. In fact, now the shadows surrounding sex were also guaranteed to be removed; intercourse meant uncleanness and uncleanness meant washing, and washing pointed forward to the death of the Saviour. Well, here was the Saviour now, perfect man on earth, and so the washings would soon become redundant, because on the cross of Calvary the uncleanness God decreed around sex would be taken away. Certainly, when sinners engage in intercourse, they still generate sinful offspring; at the baptism of their little ones parents today still confess that "our children … are conceived and born in sin." But generating children no longer triggers the wrath of the Almighty, for it pleases God to use precisely that gift of sex to give His covenant children to believing parents.

And that’s why Christian parents may bring their depraved child to the baptism font, and there confess that their child, "though conceived and born in sin and therefore subject to all sorts of misery, even to condemnation, is sanctified in Christ." God considers that child holy; "behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward" (Ps 127:3); Christ’s work on the cross has taken the curse, the vanity out of intercourse!

There, brothers and sisters, is the reason why a young couple today may look forward eagerly to marriage and the marriage act, why a married couple may continue to enjoy the marriage bed. The gift of sex, declared by God to be "very good" in Paradise, is in essence restored through Christ to its beauty. So it is that Solomon’s Song may be sung by all God’s people today, be it whether they are still single or courting or already married. For Christ was born without the means of man; Joseph "did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son." Then, then the two could be one flesh; then was the time to embrace, and that embracing was no longer in vain.

Our sexual lives are still marred by so much sin. Time and again our approach to sex is in the line of demanding the other because of hunger rather than of giving oneself in love. The youth may be imprisoned by the burning lusts of the flesh, so that they hardly dare to come to God, or think of girls. A young couple may give in to temptation and take what God wants to reserve for the wedding night. But for all, my brothers and sisters, there is the gospel of our Lord: without intercourse God brought the Saviour into the world, and that Saviour satisfied the wrath of God so that there might be for all of us grace, forgiveness – also for sins of sex. Christmas is reality, and therefore embracing is possible again, even for sinners; sex is sanctified, is made of service for God and His kingdom.

There, congregation, is also the reason why the Lord God would have us to keep our bodies pure and holy. Intercourse: it’s purpose is restored, and therefore are we to use it for the purpose for which it was created and given to us, viz, to communicate love within holy wedlock. If it is used that way, God will bless it, be it with children in marriage or without children in marriage, be it with other blessings if one is not married. But bless it He will.

Where there is that faithfulness, that desire to use this gift of sex as it has been restored at Christmas, there follows also the eternal blessing of God. Adulterers, says Paul, will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. But the faithful, repentant as they are of sins of sex, shall be presented on the last day as bride to the Lamb, unblemished and undefiled. And these faithful shall sing the Song of Solomon in all perfection:

"I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is for me" (7:10).  Amen.