Matthew 1:19

0:00 Evening, church. I'm going to begin by... Reading verse 1 of a song we sang this morning, Be Still My Soul. Thank you. Be still, my soul. The Lord is on your side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to your God. to order and provide in every change He faithful will remain. Be still, my soul. your best.

0:31 your heavenly friend. Through thorny ways... leads to a joyful... End. We'll be in Matthew 1 tonight, our verse in Matthew 1, 19. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open it there as we'll look at a couple other places in Matthew 1. I've shared before about mine and my wife's time early in our marriage, of us moving to San Francisco, where I joined a small staff of a not-even-year-old. one-year-old church plant in the heart of the city.

1:03 And we were five months into our marriage there. We were wide-eyed and gung-ho for ministry. In my pride, I thought I was on the ascent to success in ministry. and boy was I wrong. Three months in, our executive pastor had accused our senior pastor of spiritual bullying and manipulation, and he emailed anyone that had ever attended our church a blog post that he wrote where he detailed stories. how he thought that was so. So three months into this church plant for my wife and I, Our executive pastor quit.

1:41 Our senior pastor was on administrative leave. Half the church had left, including a number of our brand new friends... Our small 80-something member church was now around 40 or 50. I went from just leading the music and preparing for the gatherings to leading small groups, preaching some, overseeing an entire building renovation and a budget. at 25 years old It went from three full-time staff down to one.

2:11 me Oh, and we were unexpectedly pregnant. And my wife was sick. And if you want some church planning horror stories, I've got plenty of them to share. Thank you. I remember one night specifically, I can picture it, We're in our one-bedroom apartment at the corner of Baker and Golden Gate. We're sitting on this navy couch that a friend of ours had gifted to us, and we were just crying crying. Because it wasn't supposed to be this way. We were supposed to be stepping into finally a healthy church. We were supposed to have plenty of time to grow up in life and ministry. We were supposed to have a support team around us. Everyone knew that we'd left friends and family behind 3,000 miles away and moved across the country forever.

2:56 for this. And our ministry was supposed to thrive, right? We were planting with seasoned church planters. Our plant was really well-funded, right? We were supposed to have years together as a married couple in this awesome city before starting a family. one night three months in, sitting on this Navy couch just crying with Maddie. I literally was looking for plane tickets. And we were having a conversation of how quickly can we leave. But God keeps his promises.

3:29 Through circumstances... that from the human perspective... look like the promise is falling apart. That's the main idea for tonight. God keeps his promises through circumstances that from the human perspective look like the promise is falling apart. In that season... God's promises for us weren't for flourishing things. for us and our ministry, at least the way that we had drafted it. in our minds. Now, 12 years later, we look back on that time, maybe more than ever in our marriage, and see the evidence of God's promises to be with us, to keep us, to care for us.

4:07 to provide for us. to lead us beside streams of still waters. And now we see, looking back, how God did use our ministry. And he did allow for flourishing. in our marriage and in our ministry. It just wasn't the way that we expected it. But God keeps his promises through circumstances that from the human perspective look like the promise is falling apart. And we see that tonight in our text, Matthew 1.19. It says, And her husband, Joseph...

4:38 Being just a man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. This morning we looked at the faithfulness of God to keep his promises. We saw in Genesis 24, God made promises to Abraham, promises that depended on things that Abraham could not ultimately control. God had promised Abraham offspring... Earlier in the book, He promised him a land. God had promised him that through his offspring, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And as we move through Genesis, this question hangs over the entire story. How is God going to do it?

5:14 And now Abraham's old. Sarah is barren. And then Isaac is born, but then God commands Abraham to sacrifice him, and God spares Isaac. And then Sarah dies, and now Isaac needs a wife. And again and again and again, there's these moments where we might wonder, how could the promise possibly be? Continue from here. We've seen that as Greg has preached through the book. And yet God keeps his promises. Then we turn hundreds of pages forward and our Bible and Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy. It starts with Abraham, the father of Isaac, and Isaac, the father of Jacob. Name after name after name.

5:50 And our pastors here have been faithful to teach us that genealogies are not worth skipping over. They're not wasted ink. The authors are showing us something. And Matthew is showing us Through this genealogy, God keeps his promises. The promise survived Abraham. And then Isaac. Survives Jacob. The promise survived famine, slavery, wilderness, and rebellion. It survived bad kings and divided kingdoms. It survived exile... You can read all about that in Alex Duke's wonderful and helpful book, From Eden to Egypt.

6:25 Just a plug from a friend. The sequel to that on Exodus is available for pre-order now. From Silence to Sinai, you're welcome, Alex. Generation after generation, God was doing exactly what he said he would do. And eventually, the genealogy, Matthew gets to verse 16... Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. And there he is. Two weeks ago, Greg pointed out That the promise God made to Abraham was to the offspring.

6:58 singular meaning Jesus, the one toward whom the entire story has been moving all along. And then something remarkable happens in our verse tonight, because the promise, especially if you're reading this for the first time, the promise looks like a disaster for a moment. Matthew Tells us that Mary is betrothed to Joseph. But before they come together, she's found to be pregnant. And then in verse 19... And her husband Joseph, being just a man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

7:30 And I think it's easy for us to skip over that verse too quickly because we know the rest of the story. But Joseph doesn't. At least in this moment, put yourself in his shoes. He believes the woman he's going to marry has been unfaithful to him. Right here in this moment in verse 19. He doesn't know yet about the angel. He doesn't know that Isaiah 7.14 is being fulfilled. which is referenced there later in chapter 1, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. He doesn't know that the child Mary is carrying is the savior of the world. Joseph just knows that something has happened that makes absolutely no sense to him.

8:12 His plans are collapsing. His marriage appears to be collapsing. The life he expected to live, suddenly not going to happen. And here's what's so remarkable. Thank you. The very circumstance Joseph probably sees as evidence that something has gone terribly wrong is actually evidence that God is keeping his promise perfectly. Let me say that again. The very circumstances that Joseph would say is evidence that something has gone wrong is actually evidence of God keeping his promise alive.

8:46 Perfectly. In church, we talk all the time about how God redeems the broken and restores the lost. Of course, that's true. But that's not what's happening here. No, God is just doing exactly what he said he would do and wants to do, and it's happening in a way that makes completely no sense to Joseph. Joseph thinks something's broken, but God is fulfilling his promise. Joseph thinks his plans have been interrupted, but God's plan is right on schedule. And I think there's something deeply comforting for us in that.

9:20 That God doesn't need us to understand his plan... In order to accomplish it. Amen. The truth is that it might even be harder for my generation and younger. to understand... to understand that truth. Because we have so much access to information at our fingertips, we grew up with this access. It is seemingly so stinking easy to organize your life between AI and calendar integrations and communication tools and apps, and we have conveniences galore here, Savings plans, access to capital, we can be dangerously good at planning in ways that are completely oblivious to God's plan.

10:04 All the while, while we're doing that. The sovereign Lord of all is executing his plan to make himself known to the world. And one day to come to judge the living and the dead. And our career plans are good and our aspirations are good when they are made in view of God's plans. But our plans don't stand a chance whatsoever. When they are held up against the plans of our God. God does not need us to understand his plan in order to accomplish it.

10:37 Think again about Abraham. God says, I will make of you a great nation. And Abraham could reasonably ask, how? I don't even have a son. And then Isaac comes. God says, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and offer him as a sacrifice. Again, how? And how can God keep his promise if Isaac dies? And now in Genesis 24, Sarah's dead, Abraham's old, Isaac's son married, and the promise must continue through him. How? How? And every time the answer isn't ultimately that Abraham figures it out, Ultimately, the answer is God will provide.

11:13 God knows how he's going to keep his promises even when we cannot possibly see it. how he's going to keep his promises. Thank you. So in what ways in your life right now are you asking how? You might be asking, How can you be a good God when I want children so badly and yet the doctors say it's not possible? How can you be meeting our needs when there's no money left and rent is due? How can you possibly be a faithful God when my parents are suffering in such poor health?

11:50 How could you possibly be a God who gives good gifts when my marriage is so hard? The comfort the Christian has isn't ultimately that you will know how... The comfort the Christian has is that God will provide. Just like we sing in the song, Be Still My Soul. And now here's Joseph. He's standing in the middle of these circumstances that he can't possibly understand. And while God is accomplishing something far greater than Joseph could possibly imagine, And I wonder how often that's true.

12:28 of us We usually don't struggle, hopefully we don't struggle to look back and see how God has been faithful. Maddie and I often look back on our time in San Francisco. It's marked all over. by God's faithfulness. And it reminds us often, and it humbles us as we remember and recall how God has been so faithful to us. But we often struggle, if we're willing to admit, we all often struggle to admit that God's being faithful to us right now. Just because we don't like the circumstances that we're in.

12:58 We can read Genesis 24 and say, of course God provided a wife for Isaac. We can read Matthew 1 and say, of course Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, but that's because we know the end of the story. Joseph here in verse 19, he's living in verse 19. And the temptation in those moments... is to believe that because we cannot see how God is being faithful, then maybe he's not being faithful at all. Matthew 1 reminds us that those things are not the same. And don't miss this either, this hugely important promise that God is keeping in this moment.

13:33 This theological bedrock of a promise. Because what happens right here is even greater. The angel tells Joseph, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as her wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Amen. And we begin to see this strange circumstance. What Joseph would maybe say was brokenness was necessary. This is how Jesus enters into humanity. He isn't pretending to be human. He isn't God merely appearing to be man. He's born. He has a mother...

14:05 The Son of God truly took on human flesh. Truly God and truly man. And that matters because this is how God fulfills the promise that has been unfolding since Genesis. God told Abraham, in your offspring, so all the nations of the earth be blessed. And later Paul tells us in Galatians, that promise points to Christ. So think about the sweep of the story, even as Greg has preached through Genesis. God makes a promise to Abraham. Generations pass, kingdoms rise and fall. God's people sin and rebelled. They're conquered. They're carried into exile. They return.

14:39 More generations pass, and now one day, in an obscure town, a carpenter discovers that the woman he loves is pregnant again. not by him. And to Joseph it looks like... Everything is gone. wrong. But heaven's perspective on the moment is completely different. God is keeping his promise to Abraham. The offspring has come. The Savior has come. Emmanuel. God with us. And when Maddie and I's whole world is falling apart in San Francisco while we're crying on that Navy couch...

15:15 Heaven's perspective on what was happening was totally different. Different than ours. God was doing a work in us. He was preparing us for future work. He was sanctifying us. He was stretching us to better understand and know our need for him. And when you are dealing with brokenness... Sorrow, depression, loss, sickness, pain. Heaven's perspective on your suffering is totally different. different. So what do we do with Matthew 19? What do we do with this? Knowing that heaven's perspective...

15:50 on our suffering is totally different. Maybe the application tonight is very simple. We read Psalm 33 this morning. For the word of the Lord is upright. And all his work is done in faithfulness. And then... Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help. and our shield. And that's what faithfulness calls us to do. Just to wait. To trust and to hope. Not because we will understand everything that God is doing, but because we know the God who's doing it.

16:24 And he keeps his word. Some of us may be in a place tonight where we can see exactly what God has done for us. We can look back. We can trace his faithfulness. And we are thankful for that. But some of us might be living in a verse 19 scenario tonight. Something in your life doesn't make sense. Something we've prayed for and asked for hasn't happened. Something we expect God to do seems to be going in the opposite direction today. And we don't get to assume that we know what God is doing. Matthew 1 doesn't promise us that every confusing circumstance will turn out the way that we want.

17:04 It promises us something. EVEN BETTER. The God who kept his promise to Abraham. Who kept his promise through Isaac... who kept his promise through generation after generation, and who ultimately kept his promise by sending his son to come to earth and die on a cross in our place and save us from the penalty of our sin, he can be trusted. That's what it teaches us. Joseph went to sleep in verse 19 without understanding what God was doing. But God was faithful before Joseph understood it. And he's faithful before we.

17:35 understand our circumstances as well. So when we cannot see what God is doing... We can still say with the psalmist, our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us. even as we hope in You. We know how the story of Matthew 1 ends... But Joseph didn't yet. But we do know how the great story of redemption ends too. Christ has come.

18:07 Christ has died. Christ is risen. And Christ will come again. God has kept his promises and he always... Will. As we sang this morning. Be still, my soul. Your God will undertake. To guide the future as he has the past. Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake. All now mysterious shall be bright. All now mysterious shall be bright.

18:40 At last. Be still, my soul. The waves and winds still know... His voice... who ruled them. While he dwelt below. Let's pray. Thank you. Thank you. God, what a... gift that we can dwell in the comfort... Knowing you always keep your word. that you promise to be with us and you are and will always be.

19:15 That you are good. That the circumstances we find ourselves in, though they might be hard and deep and dark and confusing and hurtful sometimes, God, we trust that they are not absent of your goodness. And Lord, we are so thankful that you love us. Even though we don't deserve your love, you love us and you are with us. providing for us daily prayer, but providing for us ultimately through your son, Jesus.

19:48 through His sacrifice that we too did not deserve. God, you are so kind. To us. To draw near. and to walk with us. Father, we pray that our eyes would be open to see that every day. And in every moment that we find ourselves in, that is hard. Would you help us to do that, Lord? as individual Christians and as a church. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.