Swindoll's Living Insights Commentary Matthew 1a - Flipbook - Page 33
Standing in Joseph’s Sandals | Matthew 1:18-25
child who became the great prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 1:19‑20). And Elizabeth, the wife of the priest Zacharias, gave birth to John the Baptizer at
a very old age (Luke 1:36).
However, none of these stories can compare to the birth of Jesus
from the womb of the Virgin Mary. At Christmastime every year, people
around the world rehearse that w
ell-known yet always amazing story
of the Savior’s birth. Though we’re acquainted with virtually all the details, we can often overlook one very important person in the s tory—the
man named Joseph, “the husband of Mary” (Matt. 1:16). Mary had been
visited by an angel who informed her of the miraculous conception (see
Luke 1:26‑38), but Joseph was unprepared for the hard-to-believe news
of Mary’s pregnancy.
All Joseph knew was that the baby was not his, biologically speaking. He hadn’t touched Mary intimately. This could only mean that
somebody else had. That was the only logical, natural explanation,
unless . . . unless something supernatural had happened. (But Joseph
assumed those things only happened in the Bible—what we call the
Old Testament.)
Put yourself in Joseph’s sandals. Which would be easier to believe:
the natural or the supernatural?
— 1:18-19 —
Matthew makes a sharp transition from the genealogy of Jesus in 1:1‑17
with the phrase “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows” (1:18).
This line reaches back to 1:16, where Joseph was described as “the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born.” By the time Matthew wrote his
Gospel in the ad 60s, the doctrine of the virgin conception of Jesus had
been firmly established in Christian churches. It was part of the earliest
creeds and baptismal confessions. At the same time, however, whispered rumors conceived in unbelief and birthed in slander began to
circulate regarding Jesus’ conception through either sexual immorality
or assault.10 Matthew includes a true and detailed account of the miraculous conception of Jesus to lay to rest such malicious gossip.
In his account of the birth of Jesus, Matthew places us squarely
within the point of view of Joseph. Remember, Joseph was the one who
stood in the line of succession for the Davidic kingship according to
the genealogy, so Jews would have been particularly interested in the
story of Jesus’ birth from Joseph’s perspective. But as we, the readers,
are placed in Joseph’s sandals, we immediately sense the uncomfortable situation: Sometime during the approximately one-year period of
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