Joseph, the husband of Mary and surrogate father to the Lord Jesus Christ, is the person I spoke of in the last post that inspires this one.1 He is often treated as only a background prop in the Christmas narrative generally and to Mary in particular as the only essential character besides Christ. But nothing could be more corrupting of the narrative than to disrespect and treat Joseph’s roles as non-essential as do feminists with men in our times. God so makes Joseph in character and deeds a vital part of the birth circumstances as well as early life of His Son that he greatly merits the recognition this post gives him as an example of family headship God designed and has not changed!
To be clear, the virgin, Mary of Nazareth, is the undisputed central figure of the Christmas narrative behind the Son she was told by the angel she would by God’s grace miraculously conceive (Luke 1:26-35). Her centrality, of course, is due to this foretold miracle of being the virgin who conceives “Immanuel,” (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-23, NKJV). She is and ought to be “blessed” by all for being of such humility and faith in character God chose Mary to bear His Son (Luke 1:36-48, NKJV). With total devotion, character is the prominent feature that causes God to graciously elect all of the godly personages that appear in the birth narrative of His Son; Joseph being no exception.
Of the royal line of David through Solomon, we are introduced to Joseph as the “husband of Mary” who was “betrothed” to him when he discovers she is “with child of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 1:6-18, NKJV). As I write in the post dealing with this, because he was a righteous man, he struggled with what to rightly do about the situation.2 From the text, Joseph was also merciful since he did not want to see Mary harmed in any way (Matthew 1:19). That he could be reached in a dream shows he was a man of faith and discernment too, who may have had previous heavenly visits due to his calm reaction. Moreover, Joseph was obedient as seen in his responses (Matthew 1:20-21).3
His initial obedient response to the directives of an angel was to take “to him his wife” without any further struggle in the matter recorded in Scripture. He also continued to honor his and Mary’s betrothal pledge to abstain from sex until after “she had brought forth her firstborn Son.” Finally, in obedience to the angel and agreement with Mary, he took his right of family headship and naming her Son, “he called His name JESUS,” (Matthew 1:24-25, NKJV). This right of headship a man has to name anything much more his children is expressly of God from creation (Genesis 2:19-20a, 3:20). God had already named His Son, but gave Joseph the respect of headship as His stand in.
That God would give Joseph any respect at all is a tribute to His character and perpetually firm commitment to His design of the human family. His design involves the roles and responsibilities He assigned to male and female in marriage that is the starting point of a family and its order. As educated and sophisticated as moderns are to interpret the pictographs on cave walls of ancient people’s long vanished, it is amazing that many including professed Christians cannot rightly interpret the picture of Adam being created first as God’s assignment of male headship in the family (Genesis 2:7-8)! This is because they willfully refuse in rebellion to do so and invent many false justifications.
One of the wickedly false justifications some Bible teachers and their devotees make is that male headship did not begin until after the fall of man and is a punishment from God. Are you kidding me? This demonically inspired line of reasoning corrupts even the supreme Headship of God since His is the original pattern for human male headship and from which Christ’s is assigned (Genesis 1:26; 1 Corinthians 11:3, 15:27-28; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:15-18)! This false justification arises from a corruptly subjective reading into Genesis 3:16b which the proper objectively read instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles easily refutes (Matthew 19:1-10; 1 Corinthians 11:4-12, 14:34-40; Ephesians 5:22-6:4; Colossians 3:18-21; 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 1 Peter 3:1-7).4, 5
Not only was Joseph given the right of headship to name Jesus, he led out as family leader under God fulfilling this and his other responsibilities (Luke 2:1-5, 21). He provided; securing lodging, food and the required sacrifice for Christ’s dedication to God at the Temple (Luke 2:6-7, 22-38). He protected (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23) and taught his family out of the customary male head of household duties in God’s Word (Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 16:16-17; Luke 2:39-52). Joseph would have also taught his sons his “carpenter” trade as part of their preparation for manhood (Matthew 13:53-56; Mark 6:3, NKJV).6 Woe to the professed Christian pastors and leaders who have nullified God’s teaching on male headship in the home and churches by replacing it with your own (Mark 7:1-13)!7
1 See the January 15, 2023 post, Rachel’s Children Live!, under the category, Instruction.
2 Read the December 4, 2022 post, Christ Persecuted Before Birth, under the category, Instruction.
3 See the December 11, 2022 Post, Christ Persecuted To His Birth and the one following on December 18th titled, Christ Persecuted As A Child, both under the category, Instruction, to track how Joseph was obedient to God in all of the directives he was given.
4 Another related and equally ludicrous false justification some professed Christians make for rebelling against God’s ordained headship of men in the family and churches is it undermines the Gospel message and Christian witness because the world no longer honors it. In actuality, professed Christians making this false justifi- cation are undermining the Gospel and witness of the faith by their rank disobedience to the Word of the God they want the unsaved to believe in contrary to even com- mon sense (Titus 2:1-10)! They do this seeking to please people rather than God building their churches.
5 Learn how to objectively interpret and apply God’s Word for yourself through our layman’s Fruitful Bible Study Self-Paced Video Course the Lord led me to develop to help. Get an overview of the course in the First Session at https://youtu.be/uufAkc3aYSc on our Strong Man Virtual Institute YouTube Channel.
6 In the mission to restore men, I write about God’s design of the family, its order, roles and responsibilities beginning with male headship in many posts (type “headship” into the Blog search engine) and my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics available at your favorite internet bookseller or brick and mortar bookstore and the Strong Man Store.
7 Pastors, elders and any other ecclesiastical leaders having the authority to put women in authority over men in the local church is yet another false justification for side- stepping what God’s Word objectively interpreted and applied says about male headship in the home and churches. Leaders are nowhere given permission or authori- ty in Scripture to usurp Christ or disobey God’s Word. Or is the New Covenant a license to commit transgression, sin and iniquity? The guilty are doing so consistent with the lying tongue of their true head, Satan (John 8:44), and what Scripture foretells about them (Acts 20:29-31; 2 Peter 2:1-3)! Without repentance, their suffering and deaths in these times of trouble and persecution are not praiseworthy or rewarded, but punishment as was also the case for the lying prophets and elders of Judah as well as priests of Israel (Proverbs 15:10; Jeremiah 14:10-15; Ezekiel 8-9; Hosea 6:4-7:3; Matthew 5:17-20)! And just as He judges the corrupt teachers of His Word, God will also hold their followers accountable for greater loyalty to men and their doctrines than to Him and His unchanging Word (Jeremiah 14:16; Jude 5-11)!
I will soon wrap up the series of posts the Lord Jesus Christ has led me to make since November 27, 2022 examining His foreknowledge then, literal experience of persecution to the death in God’s will as an instructional example to us Christians. Before this though, I want to revisit an event and a person in those posts that impact critical issues in our times. Today, on this Sanctity Of Life Sunday dedicated to urging every citizen in our nation to treat human life beginning at conception as from God and sacred (Psalm 139:13-16; Isaiah 44:24; Luke 1:30-35), I bring the Lord’s Word and a warning to those who continue to wickedly clamor for the right to murder the unborn.
The event that inspires this post is Herod’s massacre of the male children two years old and under in Bethlehem and its surrounding districts in his attempt to destroy the Lord Jesus Christ as a young Child he feared as a rival to his throne.1 Make no mistake about it; the dark and evil heart that could murder babies and toddlers out of the motives of fear and narcissism is the same one in those that would take out the unborn in their mother’s wombs. I know this from the forgiven guilt and shame of having been a teen father that gave consent as well as relieved endorsement to the abortion of my children before and during the days of Roe v. Wade as I wrote in previous posts and my book.2
The apostle Matthew is led by the Holy Spirit in his Gospel to comment on Herod’s massacre of the children that it “fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah; lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more,’” (Matthew 2:17-18, NKJV). At first glance, it seems that the Lord simply foretells this event over 600 years in advance rightly acknowledging the grief of the Bethlehem mothers figuratively represented by a woman named Rachel, but quite unfeelingly offering no explanation of why or comfort. However, deeper Bible study bears great fruit showing otherwise!3
Led by the Holy Spirit, a deeper Bible study involves examining the background of Rachel and God’s prophecy as it originally appears in context. Indeed, Rachel is the second of two wives of Jewish patriarch, Jacob, that were sisters when he was sent to get one by his father, Isaac, from his mother’s people (Genesis 28:1-5). He meets and falls in love with Rachel and works seven years per agreement with her father, Laban, to marry her. But Laban deceitfully sent in his older daughter, Leah, when it was time to consummate the marriage and gave Rachel to Jacob only if he served him another seven years--he did (Genesis 29:1-30). The women competed to bear him children.
Leah and her maid gave Jacob eight sons and one daughter, while the maid of barren Rachel bore him two sons. By God’s grace Rachel was finally able to conceive and bore Joseph to Jacob (Genesis 29:31-30:24). She also bore him the last of his twelve sons, Benjamin; dying in the process with great sorrow and was buried as the family made their way from Bethel to “Ephrath” “(that is, Bethlehem),” (Genesis 35:16-20, NKJV). Though she had borne him fewer children than Leah, Rachel is considered the mother of all Israel because Jacob loved her. Her burial location would prove significant in what are actually two future events involving Rachel’s children.
In Jeremiah’s day hundreds of years later, Babylon’s invasions of Judah as God’s judgment yielded captives that were marched in chains on the well traveled road northward from Bethlehem and other cities to various staging locations that included Ramah (Jeremiah 40:1-6). The Lord used Rachel as the mother of Israel to figuratively represent all the affected mothers weeping at their children being taken away. But this Word was given in the larger context of Jeremiah 30-33 as God spoke of a future day when He brings a remnant back to the land complete with Messiah their King and “a new covenant,” (Jeremiah 31:31-34, NKJV). So, He tells Rachel to ‘“Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears for your work will be rewarded…,’” (Jeremiah 31:16-17, NKJV).
There was hope for the future because God would bring Rachel’s children that were taken back as a remnant to Israel’s border (Isaiah 49:8-26)! But they are not all of them. As this prophecy is true in the natural, so too, in the spiritual and applies to the male children Herod killed instead of Christ. They live as does every unborn child ever aborted (Ecclesiastes 12:7)! The innocents killed by Herod died in Christ’s place so He could live and die for them and all mankind on the cross!4 As a result, the innocents will be raised at Christ’s command among all who have ever lived and with the saints, enjoy immortal glory (Psalm 90:3-4; Isaiah 26:19; Luke 20:37-38; John 5:24-30, 11:23-27). Woe to all the unrepentant murderers of the unborn (Genesis 9:5-6; Revelation 20:11-15)!5
1 Read the December 18, 2022 post, Christ Persecuted As A Child, under the category, Instruction.
2 Concerning previous posts see for example, the one on January 21, 2018, Protecting Our Children, under the category, Biblical Worldview. You can pick up a Soft or Hard Cover copy of my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics at your favorite internet bookseller or brick and mortar bookstore and the Strong Man Store.
3 If you want to learn how to get the most out of your Bible study, I invite you to take the layman’s Fruitful Bible Study Self-Paced Video Course the Lord led me to develop to help. Get an overview of the course in the introductory first session at https://youtu.be/uufAkc3aYSc on our Strong Man Virtual Institute YouTube Channel.
4 The unborn and young children are not without the nature and taint of sin from Adam (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12). So, it must be atoned for as Christ accomplished on Cal- vary. They are however, innocent of willful sin because of not having yet reached the age of accountability before God which is generally when they have the ability to un- derstand biblical right from wrong (Proverbs 20:11; James 4:17).
5 While I and to be sure, every other born again, biblically conservative Christian advocate for the unborn in America continue to rejoice in the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, the spirit of murder behind legalized abortion remains intact and influential throughout the land (John 8:44). This is evident in the protest marches and persecution of Christians to include attacks on associated properties such as churches, businesses and pregnancy resource centers that have erupted. It is also seen in the efforts State by State to retain legal sanction for murdering the unborn and once again grant it nationally, this time through congressional legislation. Let all deceived and led by the spirit of murder to kill the unborn recognize if you will that the Lord is being gracious to allow you the opportunity to give heed to His warning and repent now, since no such opportunity will be offered on judgment day (2 Corinthians 5:9-11)!
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