Joseph's Dream

A tired man finally falls asleep, his mind made up. And in the quiet of the night, a voice tells him: don't be afraid.

In Nazareth, Joseph has a heavy heart. Mary, the young woman he is promised to marry, is expecting a baby, and Joseph knows the child is not his. He is a good man. He wants to keep God's law, and he wants to protect Mary from shame. So he has decided to end the betrothal quietly, without any public fuss. Matthew says that while Joseph was thinking about these things, turning them over and over, something happened. He fell asleep, and the Lord spoke.

An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. And the angel calls him by a grand name. “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Son of David. Joseph the village builder is reminded who he really is: part of the royal family line God promised to bless. And the thing he feared most is explained in a single sentence. Mary has not betrayed him. This child comes from God himself.

The angel goes on. Mary will have a son, and you, Joseph, will give him his name. Call him Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. In Hebrew, the name Jesus is Yeshua, a form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves. The name is the mission. Then Matthew steps in to explain. All this happened, he says, to fulfil what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, centuries before. A virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. Matthew tells us what that means: God with us.

Then morning comes. Joseph wakes up. And Matthew's description of what he does next is wonderfully simple. Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. No arguing. No asking for a sign. No delay. He takes Mary home as his wife. He knows people may talk. He knows some will never believe the story. He does it anyway. Matthew adds that Joseph did not sleep with Mary until she had given birth to her son. And when the baby came, Joseph named him, just as he had been told. He called his name Jesus.

Matthew's readers would have noticed an echo. Long before, in Genesis, another Joseph, a son of Jacob, was famous for his dreams. And Matthew's family list at the start of his gospel names this Joseph's father as Jacob too. In Matthew's first two chapters, God guides people through dreams five times: four times to Joseph, and once to the wise men.

Joseph's dream is in Matthew chapter one, verses twenty to twenty-five. A quiet man who said very little, and whose faith we see in what he did the moment he woke up. Christians have long read Isaiah's words, God with us, as the heart of Christmas. So here is a question to carry with you. When you know what God is asking, how quickly do you do it?