Why Joseph?

“Joseph her husband was a righteous man.” Matthew 1:19a (NIV)

Joseph had a problem. The girl he was to marry was pregnant and he knew that it was not his child. They had never had sexual relations. His only conclusion was that she had been with another man and in the eyes of the Jewish law she was an adulterer and the law says that she should be stoned.

As he thought about what to do he came to only one conclusion. To be fair to Mary and to be obedient to the law he would do the honourable thing and “put her away quietly”. To be betrothed was more than what we called being engaged. It was as binding as the marriage itself.

Joseph is described as a righteous man. He obeyed the law but he had a compassionate heart. He was righteous but he was not a mystic. He was a hard working carpenter who often went to bed tired and slept very soundly. He wasn’t given to dreams and he never put much stock in people who claimed that God had spoken to them either audibly or by a dream. God had revealed Himself through His Word and that was sufficient for him.

That night he had a dream. It was no usual dream. In his dream an angel stood before him and gave him assurance that Mary’s pregnancy was not due to immorality but because God Himself had placed the seed within her. Joseph accepted this dream as coming from God Himself, he may have had fears but the angel had told him not to be afraid. The angel told him that the baby would be a son and His name would be Jesus because He would be the Saviour of the world. When Joseph woke up he did everything that the angel had told him in the dream. What he didn’t know was that in the next few months the Lord would often speak to him in dreams.

Why did God choose Joseph to be the guardian of His Son? I believe it was because Joseph was a righteous man who would obey the law meticulously but he was also a compassionate man. He did not want to bring shame upon the law of God but he also wanted to treat Mary with kindness and compassion. His heart for God and his heart for others made him the man that would be able to teach the child Jesus. I often wonder what he thought as he looked upon the child and knew that this child that was learning from him was actually the One that had created the universe. He was the one that Joseph worshipped yet here He was learning obedience from Joseph, a simple carpenter.

Why did God choose Joseph? It was because God could trust Joseph with the most precious gift of all, His One and Only Son.