End of the year, or end of the road?

Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly (Matthew 1:19)


There is something quite special about this man, Joseph, who the Lord selected to father His Son. This is a righteous man, well, as righteous as a man who lives by the law is ever going to be. He has compassion and mercy, a true picture of what an Israelite is supposed to be. Can you imagine the scene? A thirteen year old girl going to her fiancee and telling him, I’m pregnant, but I’m still a virgin. It sounds like an episode of Hollyoaks. Those kind of things don’t happen, except in fairy tales and the bible. We all know where babies come from, so how does a righteous man like Joseph, a good and merciful man, deal with this situation? Surely these kind of things don’t happen to righteous men, who keep the law and honour God by their deeds? What are his options? The law gives him two choices; one, he could expose the sin of his wife to be before the elders, at which point she would be dragged into the street and stoned to death by the entire village. Two, he could quietly have a decree of divorce pronounced and have the young woman sent away. What to do?

So here is Joseph, a contender for the Jeremy Kyle show, humiliated, embarrassed and with a very difficult truth to face, because whatever he decides, he will still be in need of a greater deliverance than his own faithful adherence to the law can provide. He, like all Israel, is looking forward to the one Who is to come. No matter how much good he can do, it will never be enough. The law can never take away sin, never heal the wounds of Israel, never save the people from their sins.

Now, Joseph knew the scriptures, he knew the prophet Isaiah had written, ‘Behold the virgin shall bring forth a child and you shall call Him Emmanuel’, but it is unlikely that he ever imagined the woman, to whom he was betrothed, was pregnant with the Messiah, so being the righteous man that he is, Joseph decides to do the just and merciful thing. He decides to send her away in secret, thus saving her from an agonising death. Perhaps this is why the father chose him, because he understands what the purpose of the law is, as Paul writes in his epistle to the Galatians, the law was the babysitter, it was the law’s job to look after the people of Israel until Daddy came home. Until the true glory of the Lord arrives, the righteousness of the law will shine as a substitute, a lesser light, until the arrival of the Saviour. For no matter how righteous a man or woman you were in the eyes of the law, it was only a way for God to keep you safe until the revelation of the God man, Jesus Christ, the One who will save His people from their sins.

As we move into 2011, perhaps, looking back over the last year, we can see that our righteous deeds have not been met with blessing, but instead with tragedy and injustice. Maybe, instead of the prosperity we desired, financial insecurity and suffering has been the reward for our 'faithful' adherence to the should’s and should nots of churchianity? Can we now see the futility of our endless effort, knowing that it's time that we return to the One we have neglected, the Architect of our salvation. The beauty of grace is that He waits for us to come, in our weariness and our brokenness, He stands with His arms open, longing to gather us unto Him, like a mother gathering her young. It is not time to start again,  it’s time for the struggle to end. The simple truth is that we don’t struggle to overcome, because in Christ, we have overcome the struggle.

May 2011 bring about a fresh revelation of the truth that we live in the year of the Lord’s favour, in the dispensation of his grace. We have been set free for freedom, as living epistles of God’s grace and mercy. Let us find hope, strength, life and righteousness in Christ alone, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.