"Christmas According to Joseph"

are a number of perspectives from which we can view the Christmas story. Obviously you can look at it from Mary's perspective. You can look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the shepherds or the wise men, the angels, more minor characters like Simeon and Anna that we'll look at tonight in the evening service. You can look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the innkeeper or the perspective of Herod. You can see the Christmas story from God, the Father's perspective. Obviously you can view and tell the story from the perspective of the Savior and what it meant for him to come into the world as a human being. But this morning we're going to look at the Christmas story according to Joseph. Christmas according to Joseph. I think the perspective that Joseph gives us about Christmas is very unique and also very convicting for those of us who follow the Lord as our Savior. I want us to look at Matthew, chapter 1 this morning where we find Joseph's story as it relates to the birth of Christ. Follow along with me there if you have your place in Matthew 1 as I read beginning in verse 18. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 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. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The Virgin shall be with child and will give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife, but he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus. This morning we want to look at what the birth of Christ meant to Joseph. We view the birth of Christ through Joseph's eyes. I will readily share with you this morning that I am indebted to a sermon I heard several years ago by John Ortberg who was at that time the teaching pastor at Willough Creek Community Church outside Chicago is now the senior pastor at Menlo Park, a president during church in Menlo Park, California, but a very intriguing and interesting preacher and I heard a sermon by him on Joseph that really fueled my thinking and began to cause me to dig into this text from a different perspective. As we look at what Christ meant from the perspective of Joseph, his story really unfolds in four chapters. Chapter one is his reputation. You cannot understand this story or what it meant to Joseph without first of all understanding his reputation. Look at it in verse 19. The Bible says they're in verse 19 because Joseph or husband was a righteous man. Okay, that's his reputation. He is a righteous man, but that word communicates that concept is much deeper than what we typically think of. When we think of a righteous man, we may think of okay, there's someone who's saved or there's someone who treats his neighbor right as a righteous man, but this phrase has a lot of old testament baggage that comes along with it. It has a lot of history in Old Testament thinking. A righteous man, according to the Old Testament, was a person who had an uncompromising obedience to the law of Moses. The Hebrew term would be Sadiq, which was a man who was unwaveringly committed to the law of Moses. So Joseph was the kind of man that would never eat unclean foods that were ruled out in Leviticus 13 and 14. He would not mix with the wrong kind of people, would not entertain any kind of alliance with Gentiles, according to Deuteronomy chapter 7. He did not keep his shop open on the Sabbath to make a few extra dramas. That was not Joseph because he knew he was not to work on the Sabbath. You would not invite Joseph over to eat dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes and serve him a ham sandwich. You just would not do that to a Sadiq, to a righteous man. He was a man really deeply committed to the law of Moses. He was what every serious mind the Jewish male wanted to be. And so he was respected and admired as a righteous man with that Old Testament background, hoping to understand how serious that was. But he was not only a righteous man, he was a righteous man with a problem. The girl he has promised to in marriage. By the way, that kind of engagement or betrothal arrangement in Jewish culture was just as binding as the marriage itself. And so the woman that he is going to marry is going to have a baby. And he knows he is not the father. So you have to put that in perspective of where they are. They are in a little village named Nazareth. Nazareth is a small town and word gets around fast. So we have a righteous man with a pregnant fiance. He knows he is not the father. They live in a small town where everybody knows everybody else's business. We have a righteous man with a huge problem. A huge dilemma and decision. Now I know it's easy at this point to jump forward in the story and to say, oh wait a second John Angel Combs explains it to him everything turns out fine. It's easy to do that. If you do that too quickly you will miss walking in his sandals for what may have been weeks or months. And you'll miss the real impact of what happened in his life and what it meant for him to make the decisions that he made. So he was a righteous man with an unwavering commitment to obedience to the mosaic law. But I think the second chapter in his story and his perspective on Christmas has to do with his agony. And this is the part I don't want to skip over too quickly because I want us to walk with him in his sandals through some of the agonizing choices he faced and the agonizing decisions that he made, his agony. His agony comes about because of this. Number one, the law is clear. It's clear what the law says should be done in this case. Verse 19 says, because Joseph or his husband and did not want to expose her to public disgrace. What does that public disgrace look like? The law is pretty clear about that. In Deuteronomy chapter 22 and verse 21 we'll have the verse on the screen for you. In dealing with this kind of a situation where a woman becomes pregnant outside of marriage while she's still in her father's household, this is what the law says. She shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in history by becoming promiscuous while still in her father's house you must purge the evil from among you. That's pretty clear. It's pretty sharp but that's what the law of Moses taught. And remember Joseph is a righteous man, his whole reputation and identity is wrapped up in a commitment to what the law of Moses says. If Moses says you do it. No questions asked. No hesitation. You obey the law. Joseph's reputation is he is a righteous man. He is absolutely committed to what the law of Moses says. So he knows that this sin at least what they think is a sin and everybody's eyes in Nazareth must be exposed and she must bear the full punishment of the law. But Joseph can't bring himself to do it. He's pondering. He's thinking. He's grappling with this decision. He's agonizing over this decision. And it's clear he's trying to balance his commitment to the mosaic law as a righteous man in the Old Testament sense of that word with his love for Mary and his desire to show grace and compassion not to make her public disgrace, not to send her to her death. He doesn't want that. So he's agonizing over this decision. He can't bring himself to do what he knows the mosaic law says to do. That leads me to believe that Joseph is confused. So the law is clear but Joseph is confused about what to do. And there is good reason for him being confused. Look at the end of verse 19. Because Joseph or husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her public disgrace, he had in mind the divorce requiredly. You notice how the verse starts out because Joseph or husband was a righteous man. That expression was a righteous man is a particular expression. It's actually a participle which is like it's a verbal adjective. If we were to say well there's a crying baby. The word crying is a verbal adjective. It's a participle that describes what the baby's like. The baby is crying. Well there's a growing child growing describes the child. In the same sense literally this means being a righteous man it describes what kind of man he was but it sets up the dilemma. There are several ways that this could actually be translated. The NIV has chosen to translate it because Joseph or husband was a righteous man and that's one way it can be translated but there are nine different ways this could possibly be translated. One of those is this. By means of being a righteous man someone would do something or in order to become a righteous man someone might do something. Neither of those fit here but there's another way to translate this that many feel is the best way that really makes sense to me with the Old Testament background of what a righteous man is and it's this. Although Joseph was a righteous man he did not want to expose her to public disgrace. Now that very legitimate translation of this word and the ways put together I think fits with exactly what the Bible means by him being a righteous man with what the Old Testament concept is because this is his dilemma. He knows what the law says. He is committed to the law but although he is committed to the Old Testament law although he is a righteous man he does not want to do that to Mary. He loves her. He has heard her out. He's agonizing over what he has heard and although he knows what the law says he can't bring himself to do it. He knows that she must be exposed sinners must be dealt with sinners must be excluded from the community that is how the Old Testament law was understood. The standards have to be maintained. Writes are separated from both sin and sinners. That's what the Old Testament was understood to teach. So a righteous man like Joseph would not hesitate to do what the law said but Joseph hesitates. Joseph is caught in a confusing decision. I believe he agonized over this and the reason he agonized over it is because Mary has come to him to explain what has happened. I can just see it. Mary comes to him and says Joseph we need to talk. I've got good news and bad news and Joseph like most of us guys was okay bad news first. So she says I'm pregnant. That has to hit him like a ton of bricks especially in that culture in that day knowing the punishment. What's the good news? The good news is there's no one else Joseph. Now wait a second you mean to tell me you're expecting a baby but you've not been with any other man? That doesn't make sense. That doesn't work. She says hold on Joseph there's more to the story. An angel came to me and explained that the baby I'm going to have is the son of the most high. He is the son of God and God is sending him to this earth as our Messiah and I for whatever reason I don't understand have been chosen as the vessel to deliver his son into the world. Now Joseph is really confused. Can that really be true? That's never happened before in human history. Is she just trying to make some excuse for something that I don't know about? For someone else that I won't know about? There are no doubt many things running through his mind. And although he is a righteous man and knows what the law says he loves Mary. He's trying to believe her. The story seems so bizarre and far out to him but he loves her and she seems so sincere so he doesn't know what to do. His agony is deep. It's intense as he tries to figure out what to do. So he finally reaches this conclusion. I am not going to publicly expose her actions but I will try to remain whatever can be pulled together of my righteous reputation. So I'm going to take another kind of exception clause in the Old Testament law, Deuteronomy 24. If you find the end cleanness in your wife you can put her away. You can divorce her. And since a betrothal is as binding as a marriage, Joseph comes to the conclusion. I love her. I do not want to carry out the full brunt of the mosaic law and this issue. I'll take that exception. I'll divorce her. We'll end this whole relationship and maybe I can pick up some of the tattered remains of my reputation as a righteous man and Mary can go on with her life. That's the decision he's reached after an agonizing time of grappling with the decision and its consequences and it is only then that God communicates to him. This is very intriguing to me. Verse 20 says, but after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 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. The words that intrigued me the most are the very first ones in the verse after he had considered this. And I find myself asking, why wait until Joseph's gone all through this agony to try to grapple with this situation? I mean, Lord, didn't you send an angel to Mary before she ever got pregnant to explain it to her? Why didn't you send one to me at the same time? That would have saved me a lot of agony. It would have saved me a lot of grappling with what am I going to do? How am I going to live with this? What decision do I make? And I find myself wondering why doesn't God just remove all of that heartache and trouble an agony for Joseph by communicating to him at the same time he did Mary? Maybe it is because God's number one goal is not to make things easy for us. Never is. God's number one goal for Joseph was to develop his character. And in order to do that, he had to grapple with some hard options and try to reach a godly conclusion. And it is not always God's will for us, for life to be easy and for decisions to be clear cut and for the consequences to all be smooth and everything just work out really perfectly. That is not always how God works. You see, for Joseph's world to be turned upside down, for him to struggle between what everybody says a righteous man should do and what his heart is telling him to do, what he wants to do to show compassion and grace to struggle with some understanding of what righteousness really is. And is there any room for grace? God is preparing his heart for the very kind of gospel and grace that Jesus will bring to this world. So there is a struggle and disorientation and confusion, but God often uses that to bring us to growth and to bring us to a place where we understand his purpose and his plan better than before. And where we may understand that maybe we've misunderstood some things about the letter of the law and we need to leave some room for grace and mercy. The very message that Jesus will bring Joseph's heart is being prepared for. So the agony has its purpose. Just as the agony in your life, the difficulty of life's hardships, tragedies and trials and problems and relational difficulties and things that you hear that shatter your world and you've got to try to figure out how to make sense of it. God uses all of that. Isn't that where you are this morning? You've come to a Christmas season, supposed to be a time of great joy and peace and fun and family and your heart is broken? You're in utter agony over things that are going on in your life and you say, God, why? Why? Why couldn't you have headed this off at the past and taken care of this before it happened? Maybe you're in Joseph's sandals this morning. Maybe you're going to find out that God has purposes even through the agony and the struggle and the hard decisions and grappling with what I should do and doesn't seem to be a good option. God has a purpose in all that stretching is of growing us and maybe just to see more of his character than we've ever seen before. Joseph's agony. But chapter three is even deeper than that because the agony leads to chapter three which is his sacrifice. And this is the part of Joseph's story that I think we don't give enough consideration to. I don't think we really understand the kind of sacrifice that Joseph made with his decision. After the angel appears to him, he makes a decision of great sacrifice. Now there are three components for that sacrifice, the first of which is his fear. His fear. Did you see it in verse 20? After he had considered this and angel of Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 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. Now the angel confirms Mary's story to Joseph about what the angel had told her. But Joseph obviously is afraid because the angel begins by saying, don't be afraid. So he is afraid and there is much to fear. In grappling with this decision, Joseph is first of all fearful of violating the law. He doesn't want to do that. He wants to make sure that the exception he's considering is legitimate because he fears offending God. He has a fear of God. And that's a good, healthy fear. That is a respect, a deep respect that is born out of faith for who God is. That's part of his fear. But I think Joseph is also fearful that what everybody thinks a righteous man is is about to go out the window with him. Even if he does make the decision to go through it with a divorce, people are still going to believe he's the father. No one else is going to show up as the father. No one else is going to take Mary. They will always think it was Joseph. His reputation as a righteous man is over. It is gone. And there's got to be a part of that that he's fearful of. He's spent a lifetime developing that commitment to being a righteous man. But there's no way people will believe her story. If he does end up marrying her, they probably won't be invited over to friends homes anymore. Probably less people will bring business to his woodworking shop, his carpenter shop. Never again will he be respected and admired in the community as a righteous man. And that's that's fearful. To commit himself to marry and to this baby means an enormous sacrifice and a fear that he has to overcome that he's worked a lifetime to develop a reputation as a righteous man that is about to be trashed. And that can create fear. But the second component of his sacrifice, he has to overcome that fear, but the second component is the obedience. And I marvel at this. I deeply respect Joseph for this when the angel does explain things to him. Knowing that he will still be outcast in the community, he makes a decision to obey verse 24. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. To go ahead and take her into his home as his wife means a little bit more than it would to us today. That was actually a legal declaration in Joseph's day, a public declaration, a legal step publicly claiming her as his wife. There is no question about that now. There will be no divorce. And then look at verse 25, he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus. To name the son was also a legal action. In that day, it would be if you were not the biological father, this naming of the son would be a legal action of adoption. It would show that you were adopting this child and you would now become the legal guardian, the father in a physical human sense, raising of a child's sense. That's a legal action that he takes. And so legally, where it cannot now be contested, you can't back out of this, Joseph. He legally declares, Mary is my wife and I adopt Jesus as my son. I tie my future to the lives of two people who will forever be stained in their reputation and I put my reputation on the line with them. What a sacrifice that was. And I don't think we come to grips with this enough of what Joseph did. And so I want us to think a little more deeply about the cost to him. Yes, there was the fear that he had overcome. The obedience that he went ahead with. But what did that cost him? The more I understand his decision, the more I stand in awe of this man, his days of having a reputation as a righteous man fully committed to the law of Moses because he does not take the first option of stoning. He does not take the exception option of divorce. He goes ahead and marries her. And so now everybody's going to assume, yes, he's the father of the baby. His days of reputation as a righteous man are over. They are gone. His peers will never see him the same way. He has chosen obedience to God over what everyone else considered to be the righteous course of action. But he knows that in order to obey God, he's got to fly in the face of what everybody else thinks is right. But he chooses obedience to God over the acceptance of his peers, over the friendships that he knows now are going to slowly drift away. I want to take you to another passage that occurs 30 years after this. But it still shows us the cost that Joseph paid to make this decision. It's in Mark 6 and verse 3. You know what, the turn there. It's on the screen. This is at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. As he initiates his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth and the people who are listening to him ask these questions. Isn't this the carpenter? Which by the way, since he's now known as the carpenter, leads us to believe that Joseph was probably dead by this time. So they're looking at Jesus. Isn't he the carpenter in this carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Are his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. Now that verse tells us a lot about the family. First of all, it tells us that there were other children born after Jesus' birth. Joseph and Mary had other children, at least four boys and at least two girls. Sisters are plural there. Interestingly enough, the boys are named. The girls are not. We'll just call them Amber and Stacey for good sake. But the boys are named. The interesting thing is, look at their names. Those names are the Greek equivalents of the Hebrew names for the Old Testament patriarchs. James is the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament Jacob. Joseph, if you have a King James Version with it, says, Joseph. That's the Greek equivalent of the Old Testament Joseph. And then Judas is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Judah. You see a pattern here? Then Simeon, that's one of the patriarchs, one of the names of the tribes of Israel. I'm not sure what Joseph was thinking. I wonder if he was thinking I am going to raise the King of Israel. Maybe God will give me 12 sons and I'll name him after the tribes of Israel. We'll start the kingdom right here in our home. Maybe that's what I just think. I don't know. But he has enough faith to believe this is something special for the nation of Israel. But there's another question in that verse that really shows me that the taint of scandal has never left this family. The question, isn't this Mary's son? He said, well, wait a second. If Joseph was dead, then wouldn't that know? No, it was not customary to refer to a child by the mother's name. Even if the father was dead, it was always son of the father. You can see that in all the genealogies of the New Testament, any Old Testament. Ben, the word son, Ben of, Ben Joseph, Ben, Ami, Ben, whatever, son of son of son of son of, you're always known, regardless of whether or not your father's still alive, you're always known as the son of the father. And since everyone in the nation assumes Joseph as the father, that's how he should be referred to, to call him to raise the question, isn't this the son of Mary? That was a crude way of referring to someone. It was a harsh expression. It actually was the closest thing you could come to our modern cursing terminology of someone in referring to their lineage, which indicates to me their reputation has never, never changed. 30 years after the birth of Jesus, their reputation has not recovered. Mary and Jesus are still seen as people to take offense at. And they're offended at Jesus because they know too much about his background, they think. Now that puts into a better frame what Joseph did. Joseph sacrificed everything. To take a stand with Mary and Jesus in obedience to the command of God, he sacrificed everything. And since then, since the coming of Jesus, there have been millions who have sacrificed for the sake of Jesus. Joseph and Mary are the first to sacrifice for his sake. There have been millions since then. There have been those who have sacrificed their status. Among their peers, their reputation, there have been some who have sacrificed their possessions for the sake of Jesus, some have given up their vocations for the sake of Jesus, some have sacrificed their convenience, others have sacrificed their freedom, some have sacrificed even their lives for the sake of following Jesus. And I have to look myself in the face as I think about Joseph and I have to say, what have I sacrificed for you Lord? What have I ever given up? What have I really sacrificed for the sake of following you? My convenience, my way of doing things, my traditions that I'm used to, what have I ever sacrificed for you? What have I ever given up so that your will might be done, that I might be obedient to you? When I'm faced with the same choice, am I going to maintain face with my peers or am I going to follow God? What decision do I make? Do I consider how I'm going to look to my coworkers, my neighbors, other people that will think me some kind of crazy nut because I'm following Jesus? Do I consider their opinion higher than I consider what God thinks of me? That's what Joseph faced. That's the sacrifice he made. And I am so weak when I put myself up against him. How much am I willing to give? I think when Jesus looked into the eyes of people in Nazareth, all he saw was disappointment and rejection. But then he would look into the eyes of that little boy growing up in his home. The eyes of Jesus and he would know instantly he did the right thing. He made the right decision, sacrifice of his reputation and career and whatever else he sacrificed was for Jesus. And we have to ask ourselves, are we willing to sacrifice anything for him? Are my plans too big for Jesus to take over? Are they too big in my eyes? This sacrifice is an important part of the story. But I don't think we can end the story without at least talking about his example because I'm convinced this carries on through the life of Jesus, the example of Joseph. Now in order for you to understand what I'm going to talk about next, you have to understand that Jesus is both God and man. He is fully God and he never gives that up. But Jesus also entered the human race as fully man. First of all as a little baby, then as a little child, then as a growing child, then an adolescent, and finally into adulthood. And as a man, he learned and he grew. Now this is going to be hard for us to wrap our minds around one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. But Luke 252 says it this way, summarizing the childhood of Jesus. We don't have much in the Gospels about his childhood. Here's a summary that tells us what it was like. In Jesus grew. That means he developed normally as a human being. He developed grew and four ways it says here in wisdom. That means he grew intellectually. Did you know Jesus learned things? When Jesus went to school, he didn't sit there with his arms folded and challenge the teacher because I already know all that. I'm God. No, that's not the way it was. He learned. He learned new things in school. He learned things from his parents. He grew. In wisdom, I know it's hard to wrap our minds around, but he did as man, he grew. In wisdom, he also grew in stature. That's an easy one. We know he started out as a baby. He grew physically. He became a child on it through the years. He grew physically too. Yeah, sure. But notice the next two. He grew in favor with God. That means he grew spiritually. Now, doesn't mean he was a sinner because Jesus never did any sin. Never had never was tainted with a sin nature. Although they had a fully human nature, the Virgin birth protected him from it being tainted by sin, by being a new person coming into existence. But he had a full human nature. And so I believe he grew in his understanding of the Old Testament scriptures. He grew in his understanding of who God was, who his relationship to his heavenly Father. I think he grew in his understanding at a perfect rate given his childhood years and his normal development. As his mind developed, he grew spiritually. And he grew in favor with man. That means socially. He learned good manners. He learned how to relate to other people. He learned that perfectly, but he learned it. There's something about Jesus growing up that is mysterious to us. There are lots of ways to say it possibly. Let me say it this way. In a way that we cannot fully understand, Jesus limited the expression of his deity. He never gave up any of his deity. He remained fully God at all times, but he limited the expression of his deity. What would be exercised from that part of his nature, from that divine nature? He limited the expression of his deity so that he would experience a normal human development. And he grew in all those areas, which means, and here's my point, he learned things from Mary, and he learned things from Joseph. What did Jesus learn from Joseph? Everything I'm going to suggest to you also has a root in his divine nature, his deity, but we can never put one above the other. He was fully God, fully man. So everything I'm going to mention to you, he also learned as he grew up. Jesus would be called the friend of sinners. He knew what that felt like. He was raised in a family that knew first hand what it was like to be regarded as outcasts in his community. You know, sometimes I think we slide over the verses in Hebrews that talk about Jesus had to become man in order that Hebrews 2.17, he might become a faithful and merciful high priest. One who represents us who understands what we go through, and thus is merciful to us. And Hebrews 4.15, that he was, he is sympathetic, a great high priest who is sympathetic with our weaknesses, having been tempted as we are, yet without sin. I think Jesus knew what it was like to be raised in a family where everybody in town considered you outcasts. And it shaped the way he thought about people. Jesus had a heart for unrespectable people like tax collectors and sinners. Because he was raised, it calls at least in part, because he was raised by a man who had sacrificed his own respectability for him. He'd learned that from Joseph. Jesus great compassion for women who had attainted past, who were looked down on by everybody, who had the scent of scant will following them everywhere, men like women like Mary Magdalene, the woman called into the altar in John 8, the woman of the well in John 4. Jesus has such compassion and is willing to go even beyond the normal social norms of the day to reach out to help them. Why? He saw Joseph. Stick by his mother. When she was single and pregnant, he knew the story. When everybody else in town said you need to get rid of her, you need to carry out the punishment for her. That's what he learned from Joseph. You see, God put him in a family that would model the kind of righteousness and grace that Jesus came to bring. And God has teaching it to Joseph before Jesus has even grown up. It's an amazing part of his story. He has had to learn through his own agonizing choices, what it means to balance righteous standards with grace and mercy and compassion. And that isn't always easy. But Joseph learned that. He understood that. And there's a sense in which God is already teaching him the grace and compassion that Jesus would introduce through his death on the cross because Jesus came to bring a righteousness that is from the heart, a righteousness that comes first of all from faith in Christ as our Savior and then lives out a changed heart. Yes, righteous standards, godly standards of life, but also a heartbeat of compassion and grace and tenderness toward those who have failed and who have fallen because we're all there. Jesus saw that modeled in Joseph. What a model to see. What a model for us is fathers to live before our children. Christ came to bring us a righteousness from God, not morality, not law keeping, but he came to give us a righteousness that would be a gift from heaven, a righteous standing before God that would change forever our hearts, put us on a path to following Jesus because he is now our Savior and to follow him means that we too must live out that righteousness in the context of grace, tenderness, compassion and mercy to others. Joseph modeled that. And I stand back in awe of that man. We don't know much else about him, but this one glimpse of him at Christmas time is enough to make him one of my biblical heroes.