The Righteous Man's Dilemma: Matthew 1:18-25

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

Pledged. In Jewish custom, betrothal was legally binding—as serious as marriage itself, though the couple had not yet lived together. And now Mary was pregnant.

The whispers must have started immediately. The counting of months. The sidelong glances. The assumptions.

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.

Joseph was righteous—the law demanded consequences for adultery. But he was also kind—he could not bear to see Mary dragged before the village, shamed, possibly stoned. So he chose the quiet path: divorce papers, minimal scandal, both of them free to move on.

He had made up his mind. The decision was settled.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

A dream. In the darkness of Joseph's troubled sleep, light broke through. An angel—messenger of the Most High—entered the carpenter's unconscious mind.

"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."

Son of David. The angel addressed Joseph by his royal lineage. This carpenter from Nazareth carried king's blood in his veins—and would raise a king's son.

Do not be afraid. The pregnancy was not scandal but miracle. Not shame but glory. Not betrayal but the Holy Spirit's overshadowing.

"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."

Jesus—Yeshua—"the LORD saves." The name was not decorative but prophetic. This child would do what his name declared: save his people. Not from Rome, as they hoped. From their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" (which means "God with us").

Isaiah's ancient words, spoken seven centuries earlier, now coming true in a Galilean village. The virgin conceiving. The child bearing God's presence. Immanuel—not God watching from heaven, but God with us, among us, one of us.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

He woke up and obeyed. No recorded questions. No bargaining. No delay. Joseph the righteous man chose the harder path—the whispers would now include him, the shame would attach to his name, the questions would follow their family for years.

But he did not have union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Joseph protected Mary's virginity until the birth. He gave the child the name the angel had commanded. He became, in every way that mattered, the father of the Messiah—though the child was not his own.

The righteous man had faced an impossible choice: his reputation or God's plan. He chose the plan.

And so the son of David raised the Son of God in a carpenter's shop in Nazareth, teaching him to shape wood, to honor the Sabbath, to be a man.

God with us—and it started with a righteous man saying yes in the dark.