Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

So a couple of weeks ago we were in Clearfield for their Christmas parade—Selah was marching with her Kidnetix Baton club.

After the parade we hit a couple stores to do some quick Christmas shopping, and decided to stop by Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way home.

And it was there that tragedy struck—we had ordered at the counter and had gone to get our drinks at the fountain.

Selah was carrying hers back to our seats at the big round table in the middle of the room, and—whether the lid wasn’t on tight or she tripped, we don’t know—but the cup slipped out of her hands and completely doused two of the chairs and a wide stretch of the floor right in the middle of the restaurant.

(I asked her earlier, and she said it was okay to tell this story…)

Poor Selah was absolutely mortified—we couldn’t sit down because the chairs were soaked, and there was a large puddle of SoBe Life Water all over the floor that an attendant (who was not having her best day ever!) came out and mopped up, while everyone else in the busy restaurant watched.

We all did our best to comfort Selah and tell her not to feel bad, that it was an accident and could have happened to anyone—but there’s really nothing you can say at that moment to lessen the shame of a tenderhearted 8-year-old who dumped her drink all over the floor at the KFC.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, spilling your drink in public is well down on the low end of the scale of disgrace, isn’t it?

How many of you wish that that was the biggest thing you have to be ashamed of in your life?

Some of you carry a load of shame over the things that you have done—you look back on your past and feel almost a sense of panic over the thought that someone might find out about some of the things you did.

Even though it may have been years ago, your face still burns with shame and regret over what you’ve done.

Or for some of you, the shame comes not from what you did, but from what has been done to you.

You didn’t ask for it, you didn’t deserve it, but still it haunts you.

You bear the disgrace of being the victim of someone else’s shameful behavior.

Whether through things that we have done or things that we have been through, all of us at one time or another have borne a load of shame in our lives.

Some people deal with their shame by trying to hide it from others: No one can ever know what they have done or what they have been in the past, and if anyone ever finds out the consequences would be terrible.

We try to hide it, but it is always there, always hanging over our heads that someone, someday will see what we really are.

Some people deal with their shame by trying to justify it: It wasn’t really their fault, that they couldn’t help it, that they had no choice—but no matter how hard we try to justify our shame, we can’t ever really make it go away.

Some people even try to deal with their shame by going so far as to flaunt it—to celebrate it, to insist that it isn’t shameful at all, and the only people who should be ashamed of themselves are the people who refuse to join them in celebrating their shame.

But whether we hide it, justify it or even flaunt it, the fact is that

We are helpless to free ourselves from our shame.

Because even if you successfully hide your shame from everyone throughout your whole life, even if you succeed in convincing yourself that you have nothing to be ashamed of, even if you get the whole world to join in with you as you insist that your shame is something to be celebrated—you will never be able to hide the shame of your sin from God.

As the writer of Hebrews puts it:

That day is coming when you will give an account before God for every shameful act you have ever committed, every disgraceful thing you have ever tried to justify.

And so we need to go to God’s Word today to ask, “Can we be freed from our shame?

And if so, how?”

And so what I aim to show you this morning from these verses is that

Jesus Christ was born in shame in order to deliver us from our shame before God.

We are so far removed from the time and culture of this story that we can easily miss how shocking and embarrassing these verses are.

Look at verses 18-19:

When we tell the Christmas story we have a tendency to highlight the beautiful and miraculous and glorious parts of the story.

But we need to hear this part of the story as well, because we can never let ourselves forget that

I. Jesus Was Born Into Shame (Matt.

1:18-19; cp.

Deut.

22:13-17)

When we read that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph, we really don’t get the sense of how binding that arrangement was.

We have the practice of “engagements” here in our culture, but a betrothal was a far more serious bond.

In many ways a betrothal was considered the first year of a couple’s marriage—they were considered married in every sense of the word except they did not live together, nor did they physically consummate their marriage.

And so when we read that “Mary was found to be with child” during their betrothal, this would have been like a man in our day standing at the altar on his wedding, watching his bride walk down the aisle in front of him--and noticing at that moment that she was pregnant!

This was a deeply shameful condition for Mary to be found in, and

Mary couldn’t avoid her shame

—it was obvious to everyone who looked at her and knew that she and Joseph hadn’t come together yet.

And not only was this shame unavoidable for her, but her parents as well—Mary’s mother and father (especially her father) were supposed to be the guardians of her purity, after all.

And it was obvious to everyone that saw her that they had failed.

Joseph, as well, would have been shamed by Mary’s condition—imagine the shame of that man I described a moment ago, realizing with horror as his bride walked down the aisle on their wedding day that she was pregnant.

Everyone in the church would be seeing it as well—and everyone would be drawing one of two shameful conclusions: Either he was responsible, or someone else was!

This whole situation described here was an unavoidable, shameful mess for everyone involved—Mary, her parents, Joseph himself.

Even though they didn’t deserve it—Mary’s parents had been faithful to guard her purity, she never had been with any man, she and Joseph had been perfectly chaste in their betrothal—even so, they still could not avoid the shame that they suffered in Mary’s pregnancy.

And as we look at this mess, we recognize ourselves in it, don’t we?

We know what it’s like to be so sunk in shame that there’s plenty to go around—shame on ourselves, on our families, on our loved ones.

Sometimes we bear the shame for our actions, sometimes we bear shame because of the actions of others, and sometimes we bear shame unjustly, even though we’ve never done anything to deserve it.

But even if we don’t deserve it, we still cannot avoid it—and we cannot rescue ourselves out of it.

Mary didn’t deserve her shame, but she still could not avoid it.

In verse 19 we see how Joseph reacted to their plight.

Even though he tried,

Joseph couldn’t remove their shame

Verse 19 tells us that Joseph was a “just” man—(the word there is the word used in the Scriptures to refer to a man who was faithful to the Covenant Law of God revealed in the Old Testament).

We are told that he was “unwilling to put her to shame”.

The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy gives instructions on what to do when a man suspects that his wife is not a virgin:

Joseph would have been well within his rights to have Mary brought to a public trial (“in the gates of the city”) where her father would have been responsible for presenting physical proof of her virginity.

I don’t have to go into specific detail for you to understand what a humiliating, horrifying experience that would have been for the poor girl.

And Deuteronomy 22 goes on to state that if the woman is found not to be a virgin (as would have been the obvious case with Mary), she was to be taken to the front door of her father’s house and stoned to death on the spot (Deut.

22:21).

It’s hard to imagine how devastating this would have been for Joseph—to find out that he had been living a lie, that Mary did not really love him, that she was not the girl that he thought she was, that she could so humiliate him and ruin both of their lives.

A lesser man may very well have thrown the book at her just out of his pain and spite, but not Joseph—he was a just man.

He was unwilling to put her to such shame, even though it would mean that he would always be known as the guy whose betrothed wife cheated on him and he just let her get away with it!

Joseph was a good man—he was willing to live with the stigma of a failed marriage, to let people believe he had been cheated on, to give up all of his dreams for their life together just to spare Mary the shame of a trial!

He could have exonerated himself by throwing the book at her, but he was too honorable for that!

(Parents—you want your daughters to marry a man like that!

You want your sons to grow up to be like that!)

But no matter how honorable he was, no matter how willing he was to bear the shame of Mary’s infidelity, no matter how quietly he wanted to release her from their betrothal with a certificate of divorce, Joseph could not remove the shame that they both lived under.

When we read the story of Mary and Joseph, we cannot forget that when Jesus was born, He was born into that shame.

But when He was born into that shame, He didn’t just become another victim of it, did He?

In fact, what we see in verses 20-23 is that He was not buried under the shame He was born into:

II.

Jesus Carried Our Shame (Matt.

1:20-23)

Have you ever been in a situation like Joseph’s, where there is just no good solution to the fix you’re in?

That all you seem to have is a choice between a terrible decision and a painful decision?

That's where Joseph was when he went to bed that night—there was no way for him to rescue himself or Mary out of the shameful mess they were in.

So he crawls into bed dreading what he had to do the next day—write Mary a certificate of divorce and go their separate ways.

But as he fell into an exhausted and fitful sleep, God spoke to him!

An angel of the LORD comes to him and gives him something he never thought he would have—a way out of their shame!

That Mary’s pregnancy was absolutely not a result of infidelity—it was an act of God Himself!

That Joseph wasn’t going to lose the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with—she would be his wife!

In one sentence, God through His messenger gave Joseph back everything he thought he had lost!

And more than all of this, God gave Joseph the promise that this baby would save His people from their sins!

The name “Jesus” in the original Hebrew is “Yehoshuha”, meaning, “Yahweh Saves”.

That baby in Mary’s womb was going to save His people—not just from their shame before others, but save them from their sin and shame before God!

But Jesus was not going to save Joseph and Mary from their shame from above—He was going to be born into it!

Because

Jesus’ birth was a disgraceful birth (cp.

John 8:41)

His whole life, Jesus would be dogged by the accusation that He was an illegitimate child—a bastard.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus is in the middle of one of His many clashes with the religious leaders of His day.

In John 8, the Jews are arguing with Jesus that they are righteous before God because they were descended from Abraham:

Do you hear it?

“Well, Jesus, you’re sure one to question someone’s family tree!

You were born because your mom slept around!”

(In verse 48 of John 8, the Jews double down on their accusations, insinuating that His mother was sleeping with a Samaritan!)

None of it was true, but that didn’t matter to His enemies—all they wanted to do was shame Jesus as deeply as possible.