Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Melbourne Heights, and welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode's sermon. So over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about a problem that we have all experienced at Christmas.
At one point or another, we have all felt the same way that Charlie Brown felt in the opening scene of the classic Christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, when he looked over at his best friend, Linus, and admitted that he always ends up feeling depressed this time of year. So even though we all know that Christmas is supposed to be this happy and joyful time, we've all felt depressed at Christmas. We've all felt disappointed at Christmas. We've all felt let down at Christmas.
Yeah, we have all felt let down at Christmas. But none of us want to feel this way. None of us want to feel depressed at Christmas. None of us want to feel disappointed at Christmas.
None of us want to feel let down at Christmas. And that includes Charlie Brown. So throughout the rest of that special, Charlie Brown tries a bunch of different things to avoid feeling let down at Christmas. And this Christmas season at Melbourne Heights, we're taking a closer look at some of the things that Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang did during the movie to see what they can teach us to help us avoid feeling let down this Christmas, too.
And we get a pretty good glimpse of one of the reasons why it is that Charlie Brown always ends up feeling depressed at Christmas pretty early on in the movie. Not too long after Charlie Brown finishes talking with Linus, he heads back to his house so that he can check his mailbox. And when he opens up the mailbox, he looks inside and he says, Hello in there! Crats, nobody sent me a Christmas card today.
I almost wish there wasn't a holiday season. I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it? So part of the reason why Charlie Brown feels depressed at Christmas is because, in his own words, Charlie Brown says he knows that nobody likes him.
So Charlie Brown feels let down at Christmas because he feels alone at Christmas. And there's probably been a time in your life where you have kind of felt that way, too. You may have felt alone at Christmas at some point when you went to one of your family gatherings. Even though you were surrounded by cousins and all kinds of aunts and uncles and other relatives, you may have felt completely alone because you feel like you just don't fit in with your family.
Or you may have felt alone at Christmas after you had a year where you had experienced a breakup with someone that you loved or you lost a significant person in your life and just felt lonely when they weren't there when Christmas rolled around. Or maybe you felt alone at Christmas when you had to move to a new city or a new town and you weren't going to be able to travel back home to be with your family or friends during the holiday season. But we've had those moments where we have just felt on our own at Christmas. And those feelings are bad enough whenever they crop up, but there's just something about the Christmas season that if you feel alone at Christmas, it just makes it feel so much worse.
So in your mind, you can convince yourself that you were the only one who had ever gone through anything as horrible as this, these feelings of loneliness and isolation leading up to Christmas. But you're not the only one who has been there. As a matter of fact, in the story of the first Christmas, we find someone who can probably relate to those feelings of loneliness and isolation leading up to that first Christmas day. And that's Joseph.
And I've got to tell you, out of all the people in the Christmas story, Joseph is probably my favorite person in the story because he's the person I feel like I can actually kind of relate to. See, most of the other characters, I just don't feel like I have that much in common with them. Like, I can't really relate with Mary leading up to the first Christmas because I've never been pregnant. I can't really relate to King Herod leading up to the first Christmas because I've never been king.
I can't really relate to the shepherds who were out of the fields keeping watch over their flocks at night at Christmas because the only animals I've ever had to take care of at night are my dogs when they have a little too much water to drink before they go to bed. But Joseph, I can put myself in his proverbial shoes. And let me explain to you why. Let me show you why.
If you've got a Bible close by or Bible app on your phone, I encourage you to go ahead and open it to Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. And as you're finding it, let me just quickly remind you, the book of Matthew is basically a biography of Jesus. So in the book of Matthew, you can read one account of Jesus' time here on this earth.
But in Matthew chapter 1, we're not going to directly get a story about Jesus. Instead, we're going to hear about Joseph. So let's take a look at what Matthew has to tell us about Joseph. We're going to start reading in Matthew chapter 1, verse 18, where Matthew tells us, This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place.
When Mary, his mother, was engaged to Joseph before they were married. And we're going to stop right there in the story because right here, we've already learned something about Joseph. So what's the first thing that Matthew tells us about Joseph? He tells us that Joseph is engaged.
Now, even though I've now been married for 17 and a half years exactly as of today, I still remember what it was like to be engaged. I still remember what that time was like in my life. And even though some of you have heard this story before, it's a story that's worth repeating, so just bear with me today. So there's a point in life when it was time for me to get engaged.
When I decided that I wanted to propose, Ashley and I were both living in central Kentucky at that point. Ashley was living in Lexington, and I was living in Georgetown. And I don't know how much y'all know about Georgetown, Kentucky, but it's not exactly known for its thriving jewelry market. All right?
So when I decided that I wanted to propose, I knew that I was going to have to go down to Lexington to find a jewelry store where I could buy an engagement ring. And I still remember making that drive, going to the jewelry store, and walking through the doors of that store. And as soon as I walked through the doors of that jewelry store, I was like a deer in headlights. I just froze.
I didn't know where to look. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know how to ask for help. So I just stood there, frozen, in the doorway.
Well, fortunately, the sales associates of these jewelry stores apparently know how to deal with us deer in the headlights kind of people, but we walk through the doors, it just immediately frees up. Because no sooner had I stopped, basically, in the doorway of the store, and one of their sales associates walks over to me, and she has a bottle of water in her hand and offers it to me. Because I guess they know that us deer in the headlights kind of people also have a problem where our mouths feel as dry as the desert when we walk into these jewelry stores. But after she gave me the bottle of water, she asked me what I was there for, and I somehow managed to get the word engagement ring out of my mouth, and then the sales associates took it from there.
She led me to a little room that they had toward the back of the store where they showed me a video about the four seas of diamonds. That's carrot cut clarity and color, in case you haven't had the opportunity to watch this video yet. And after they showed me the video, she took me back out onto the sales store, and she led me to this nice tall stool that they had set up by one of their jewelry display counters. She then went to the other side of the counter and pulled out one of those long black pieces of velvet and weighed it over the top, and then she started showing me different styles and settings of engagement rings until I found the perfect one.
And it was the perfect one. I didn't even have to have the ring resized. It was like it was meant for my future wife. Well, after I picked out the perfect ring, the sales associate then looked at me and said, how are you going to be paying for this?
And I'm pretty sure I got that deer in the head. I look all over again. But we worked all of that out, and I left that store that day with a little bag in my hand, and inside of that little bag was a little box, and inside of that little box was a ring that cost more than the car that I was about to climb into and drive away. But when I got into my car and I closed the door, I let out a sigh of relief, because in that moment I felt like the hard part of getting engaged was over with.
I had the ring. What else did I have to do? What could be harder than that? Oh yeah, I said I'd propose.
And everybody wants to have a meaningful proposal. Nobody wants to just kind of wing it and throw it out there. You want it to mean something. So I started thinking back over my relationship with Ashley and trying to think of the perfect proposal.
So the first thing I thought of was what we did on our first date. You know what I did with my wife on our first date? I took her to watch a war movie. I did.
Seriously. So after that, I figured I was lucky to get a second date, so I didn't want to try to recreate that when it came to our proposal. A lot of fun she might have told me no. So I thought about it for a while longer.
And ultimately I decided that we were going to go and we were going to have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, and then we were going to go for a walk in our favorite park and that I would propose when we were in the park. And I had the whole thing planned out. After we had dinner, we got in the car, we drove over to our favorite park when I got in the parking lot. As Ashley was climbing out of the car, I reached into the sitter console where I'd sash the ring and I pulled it out of the little jewelry box and slid it into my pocket.
And then I reached into the back seat of the car and I grabbed this giant fortune cookie that I had bought for us to have for dessert. And we might and we walked around for a little while, and after we walked around for a while, we found a place to sit down. And when we sat down, I opened up the fortune cookie box for her, handed it to her, she broke the cookie open, and she pulled out the fortune inside. And the fortune inside read, Now, to be completely fair here, Ashley did tell me yes before she left the continent, and she didn't actually leave the country for like two more weeks.
But I got to tell you that when you propose marriage to someone, and within a few days, they are not just leaving the country, but they're leaving the hemisphere, yeah, it can make you a little bit self-conscious. But all kidding aside, I still remember how exciting that period was in my life and how exciting it was for Ashley as well. I remember the time that we spent together, not just imagining and planning out what our wedding ceremony was going to be like, but also dreaming about what our future together was going to be like for years to come. So when I start reading the story, Joseph's story, and Matthew chapter 1, and Matthew tells us that Joseph was engaged to Mary, it's not hard for me to put myself in Joseph's position, because I imagine that Joseph probably felt about the same way 2,000 years ago that I felt over 17 years ago when I was engaged.
I imagine that Joseph and Mary spent plenty of time together during this period of their lives, not just imagining and planning out what their wedding ceremony was going to be like, but also dreaming about what life was going to be like for years to come. But here's the thing about Joseph. All of the happiness, all of the excitement, all of the joy that Joseph was feeling was about to go flying out the window. So let's turn back to Matthew chapter 1, and let's take a look at what happens next.
Here's what Matthew tells us, picking back up at the beginning of verse 18 again. Matthew writes, Can you imagine what Joseph must have felt like at that moment? Because I guarantee you, Joseph felt a whole lot worse than Charlie Brown did when Charlie Brown opened up that mailbox and saw that nobody had given him a Christmas card that day. Joseph must have felt confused.
He must have felt betrayed. He must have felt heartbroken. But about everything else, Joseph must have felt alone. All those dreams, all those plans, everything that he had imagined about his life with Mary came crashing down with just three little words.
She became pregnant. She became pregnant. Mary was pregnant. Joseph's fiance was pregnant.
But it wasn't his baby. I can't imagine how heartbreaking that must have felt. Joseph must have felt like he went running face first into a brick wall. So yes, he was confused.
And yes, he was betrayed. And yes, he was angry. And yes, he was heartbroken. And he was absolutely feeling all alone.
So what does Joseph do? He decides that he's going to quietly call off their engagement. And who can blame him for making that decision, right? I mean, that's what all of us would do if we were in his shoes, most likely, because our natural instinct whenever we are hurt is we want to protect ourselves.
So we will build up walls. We'll isolate ourselves from other people. We'll do whatever it is that we can to avoid being in those situations that caused us to get hurt in the first place. So Joseph's decision isn't exactly surprising here.
When he heard that Mary was pregnant, it had to have devastated him. So he didn't want to have to see Mary again. But what I want you to understand today is that this decision, Joseph's decision to quietly end his engagement was no small decision for Joseph to make. And that's because engagements back in the first century in Israel were different than engagements are today.
In first century Israel, when someone was engaged under the law of Moses, they were basically considered to be married already. So Joseph still had legal commitments to Mary and to her family, even if he was going to call off their engagement altogether. And mainly what this meant is that Joseph was still going to be held responsible for paying the bridal price that he had agreed to Mary's father to marry his daughter, even though Joseph was no longer going to marry Mary. And Joseph, he wasn't a wealthy guy.
I mean, most of us have heard that Joseph was a carpenter, although a better understanding may be that he was more of a handyman. So he didn't exactly have a ton of money. And by the time that he paid Mary's father the bridal price that he had agreed to pay, he wouldn't have had any money left to be able to pay another bridal price. So when Joseph decides that he is going to quietly call off the engagement, this wasn't his only option.
Joseph could have had Mary basically arrested and put on trial to prove that he had no guilt in this matter whatsoever. And Mary could have ended up executed as a result of this because she got pregnant out of wedlock back in those days. But when Joseph decides that he is going to quietly engage in this engagement, he essentially agrees to allow all of his dreams for the future to come to an end. By not putting Mary on trial, by ending the engagement quietly, Joseph claims some responsibility in this matter.
By doing that, it means that Joseph wouldn't have enough money to pay another bridal price, so his hopes of getting married, finding love, starting a family, all have come crashing down. So at this point in the story, I think it's pretty safe for us to say that Joseph was feeling let down when that first Christmas started rolling around. That's not hard to see why. Joseph had all of these dreams for his future, and he thought that he had found everything that all of us want to find.
He thought that he had found the love, the acceptance, the sins, the belonging that all of us want to have. But all of that came crashing down when he found out that Mary was pregnant. But we've all seen the two things, right? We know that Joseph ends up by Mary's side when Jesus comes into this world.
So what happens? What happens that allows Joseph to overcome all of the letdowns that he had experienced leading up to that first Christmas and be by Mary's side when Jesus is born? Let's take a look at the rest of the story in the book of Matthew. We're going to pick back up in Matthew chapter 1, verse 20, where Matthew tells us this.
Matthew writes, as he was thinking about this, An angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled. Look, a virgin will become...
pregnant to give birth to his son and they will call him Emmanuel Emmanuel means God with us when Joseph woke up he did just as an angel from God commanded and he took Mary as his wife so the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and everything changes I mean Matthew flat out tells us in verse 24 when Joseph woke up he did just as an angel from God commanded and he took Mary as his wife now I'll be the first to admit I have never had an angel appear to me but I imagine if you ever have an angel appear to you it is probably a pretty life-changing moment and experience for you but I'm still not sure that it's enough to completely explain Joseph's change of heart in the story so what really happens that turns things around how is it that Joseph goes from being on the verge of going to divorce court with Mary to agreeing to take her as his wife well I think Adam Hamilton does a great job of answering this question for us in his book The Journey Walking Toward Bethlehem and he writes this he writes at that very moment when Joseph felt his lowest God was at work in Mary's womb doing the greatest thing that God had done since the creation of the human race God was orchestrating the birth of a savior now over the last few weeks we spent our time together talking about some of the reasons why we end up feeling let down at Christmas and we talk about one of the reasons why we feel let down at Christmas is because we fill our lives with so many so much busy so much stuff during the Christmas season from the shopping that we do to the baking that we do to the traveling that we do to be with our family and friends we fill our lives with so many other things that we don't leave any room in our lives for Jesus and we talk about that part of the reason why we sometimes feel let down at Christmas is because we want to make Christmas all about us we want to make Christmas about getting the gifts that we want to receive we want to make Christmas about attending and throwing the kind of holiday celebrations that we want to be involved in we want to make Christmas about having our decorations look picture perfect but when we make Christmas all about us we forget that Christmas isn't about us but it's about Jesus but this isn't what happens to Joseph in the story this isn't why Joseph would have felt those feelings of let down it's not why Joseph was able to overcome them Joseph ended up not feeling let down that first Christmas in spite of everything that he had gone through in spite of the fact that he felt alone betrayed heartbroken all of those things Joseph was able to overcome all of those feelings of let down because he realized what was actually happening he realized that God was about to enter into our world and ultimately that is what Christmas is about God has entered our world and we've heard that so many times it almost sounds cliche to us but don't rush past that fact because there is so much magnitude and significance to that line God has entered our world very God of very God the God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them has entered into our world and he did it because of you now Christmas day is about a week and a half away at this point the next week and a half you're probably gonna have a million different little things that you need to do and take care of you may have more presents that you need to buy and more gifts that you need to wrap there may be toys that you have put together before Christmas morning and there may be cookies that you have to bake before your Christmas celebrations you may have to fight bumper-to-bumper traffic to be with your family or friends this holiday season and you may have to deal with family or friends that you sometimes wish you could grow into traffic during this holiday season but none of those things are the point of Christmas none of those things are what Christmas is about Christmas is about Jesus Christmas is about Jesus and if we get too focused on everything else then we will always feel let down this time here because we're trying to make other things the things that give us fulfillment instead of letting the season be about Jesus so here's my challenge for you this week this week I want you to spend some time actually reflecting on what it means that God has entered into our world and that God did it for you because the truth is there are times in every single one of us feels the way that Charlie Brown felt at the beginning of a Charlie Brown Christmas when he opened up that mailbox and saw no one had sent him a Christmas card we've all felt the way that Joseph must have felt when he thought all of his hopes and dreams for the future had come crashing down we've all felt every bit as alone as Charlie Brown and Joseph felt we can feel like there's no one in this world who loves us who cares about us Charlie Brown put we can feel like nobody likes us but that's just not true because Christmas tells us that God loves us so much that he came into this world for you not because you've earned it not because you deserve it not because you have a perfect life God did it because he loves you so know this this Christmas season God knows you God loves you God is always with you so even during those holiday seasons when you struggle to feel like you are accepted and loved know that you're not alone because God is always with you let's pray together guys we come to you in this word of prayer we are thankful for Joseph's story because God every one of us has been in a place like Joseph was in we've had those moments in our lives where everything that we hoped and dreamed for the future came crashing down we've had those moments where we thought that we had found love and acceptance and belonging only to realize we were wrong we've had those moments where we have felt abandoned and alone but God you showed Joseph that he was not alone you showed him that you were at work as Jesus was preparing to enter into this world God Jesus's birth shows us that you love us so much that you came into this world because of us to help us to realize just how great a love you have for each of us and let us sink in that we are never alone we pray this in Jesus name amen hey it's adam again i just want to thank you for tuning into this episode of our sermon podcast and i hope you've been blessed during our time together and if that's happened once again i want to invite you to come and worship with us live on sunday mornings at 10 30 a.m eastern time you can do that by joining us on our website at mhbclouisville.com slash live or if you're in the louisville kentucky area you can also worship with us in person and that's going to do it for this episode of our sermon podcast but i want to invite you to come back and join us again when our next episode drops next week but until then i'll be praying for you i hope you have a great week and we'll see you back here soon for another sermon podcast