Joseph
“...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. 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.”
-Matthew 1:20b-21
We all learn from how our parents raised us and the personality traits that we experienced in their lives. Isn’t it interesting how as we grow older we notice things that we do and we make the comment, “Oh, my gosh, that is exactly what one of my parents would do. I’m becoming my parents.” For some of us that could be a scary proposition.
However, for most of us we learned and received far more positive influence than we did negative influence from our parents. Today, we are looking at the life of Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph. I want to look at Joseph’s life from the perspective of what he was able to pass on to Jesus and how Joseph’s influence helped make Jesus the earthly person that he became. Yes, Jesus was the Son of God, but when he took on human flesh he left all the privileges of being the Son of God and he needed to be taught and develop into the kind of person who could respond to the mission of giving his life for the salvation of the world that Jesus’ heavenly Father would ask him to fulfill.
God didn’t pick just anybody to be Jesus’ parents. God picked two very special people. This week we will look at the life of Joseph and how his life affected the life of Jesus. We will also attempt to see what significance the relationship between Joseph and Jesus has for each of our lives.
