The Trials of Jesus & His Family

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Tonight, I decided to do something that really has been on my mind since we've been studying Zacharias and Elizabeth. You remember I told you last week and this that the people around them embraced what was called retribution theology. They may not have called it that, but that is in fact what it is. It's the idea that there is an immediate interaction between God's favor and His disfavor and your circumstances in this life. So, if your circumstances are good then that means God is pleased with you, you're enjoying His favor. On the other hand, if your circumstances are bad, you're encountering various difficulties and trials and problems then it must mean that God is displeased with you and that in fact He is rewarding you for your sins.

I wish I could say that idea died with the first century, but it didn't. It's still very much alive and well. It's especially alive and well in what we call the prosperity gospel movement. Those health, wealth, and prosperity preachers who say that really the gospel is not so much a promise of eternal life but your best life now. Kenneth Copeland writes this, "Tradition has taught that God uses sicknesses, trials, and tribulation to teach us. This idea however is not based on the Bible. God has never used sickness to discipline His children and keep them in line." (He must not have read First Corinthians) "Sickness is of Satan and God doesn't need Satan to straighten us out. Kenneth, I see Christians that are sick all the time, why does God allow it? God allows it because we do. Why? Because He's given us the right to make our own choices along with authority over the kingdom of darkness. It's up to us to make the decision. You have the power to live after God's ways and resist sickness or not to. You have the choice to let Satan run over you or use the authority you've been given. Good gifts come from God. No matter what tradition has taught, sickness and disease simply don't fall into the category of good gifts, ever." He goes on to say that all of the issues and trials of life, all of the difficulties that come are not from God and are not in fact intended for our good. Instead, God wants us to be wealthy and healthy and that is God's purpose and plan.

Most of us will never buy into the doctrine of Kenneth Copeland. Most of us will never be influenced to that level by retribution theology. But all of us can be tempted, can't we? To tie what happens to us in this life directly to our performance as Christians. When trials come, what are the first two responses that we tend to have? Think about some difficulty you've faced even this year, in your own life, in your health, in your family, perhaps your career. What are the questions? The first question is why is this happening to me? And the second response is to assume that it must be for something that I have done and that I deserve this in some way.

When trials and difficulties come, we should start by asking is there any sin in my life for which I am unrepentant? If so, it is possible that trial is part of God's chastening on your life. If there is no sin in your life for which you are unrepentant, if you in fact are living with confessed sin and you are endeavoring to obey God, then you should realize that trial is not an expression of God's disfavor, but it's simply part of life in a fallen world that God intends to use for good. Job 5:7 describes us this way, "Man is born for trouble, as the sparks fly upward." God will use every trial for our spiritual good and for His own glory.

Perhaps nowhere is the Biblical theology of trials and their inevitability clearer than in the life of Jesus' earthly family. When God sent His own beloved Son into the world, He did not protect Him from trials. In fact, Jesus' earthly family experienced, I think, a stream of hard difficult times. I think when we read the Biblical record about Jesus, His birth, His upbringing; I think we're tempted to sanitize it. To read it through rose colored glasses, to remove the reality from the hard things that were a part of His life, to imagine that His life must in fact have been nothing like ours.

Tonight, for just a few moments, that's probably not a wise thing for me to say. Tonight, let me change that. Tonight, I want you to consider with me the trials of Jesus and His human family. I think by the time we're done you'll find great encouragement that He understands that He encountered exactly the same kinds of things. There're many possible examples of trials that His family faced but let me point you to the most obvious ones. The ones that stand out. The first trial that confronts Jesus' family happens before Mary and Joseph are even married. And it's this. The suspicion of sexual sin taints their marriage and reputation from the very beginning.

Look at Matthew's gospel, Matthew 1. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows:" Verse 18 says, Matthew 1:18, "when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit." You know I think when we read the Christmas story it seems so warm and cozy to us because it's been associated through our lives with wonderful fond memories of family times, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Let me just remind you briefly of the events that occur in this part of Jesus' life. The order of events in Matthew 1 and Luke 2. The first thing that happens as we've been studying together, is Gabriel appears to Zacharias in the temple and announces that John the forerunner is going to be born. Six months later Gabriel shows up and appears to Mary in her home in Nazareth and announces that Christ would be born. Then Mary leaves in a hurry after she's told this, we read it this morning, and she goes to visit Elizabeth in the hill country, and she stays there for three months apparently until John is born. Remember Elizabeth is six months pregnant when the angel comes to Mary, she goes immediately to visit Elizabeth and stays with her for three months and so the obvious conclusion is she stayed there until John was born. It's unlikely because she left in a hurry that she had a chance to speak to Joseph before she leaves. The text makes a point of the fact that she left in a rush. So, then Mary returns home to Nazareth three months later, pregnant.

Now if you've never read this story, if you didn't know that this was something God had done, what would be the obvious conclusions? She's gone for three months, either Joseph is concluding, either she was unfaithful to him in Nazareth and left because of the pregnancy or while she was away doing who knows what with whom, she became pregnant. So, when she returns Joseph learns from Mary of her pregnancy. And he decides to divorce her. Then an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, tells him to take Mary as his wife and he does just that keeping her a virgin until Jesus is born. That's the order of the story.

Now, come back to Matthew 1:18, they were as is worded here, 'betrothed'. A first century Jewish marriage consisted of two parts. There was the betrothal period, it was called the kiddushin, much more serious than our engagement period. It can only be ended by divorce. The couple didn't live together, and they were to remain sexually pure. In fact, any type of sexual sin was considered adultery and the guilty party was to be stoned according to the Old Testament law. The second part of a Jewish marriage was called the chuppah. The man went to the home of his wife with a great deal of fanfare, all of his friends, band and you know all of the streamers and things that went along with it. And he brought his betrothed back to his home to live. This was accompanied when they arrived back at his house by often many days of feasting depending on the wealth of the family and the consummation of the marriage. This was a first century Jewish wedding.

The word Matthew uses here in verse 18, tells us it was during this first part, the kiddushin. And Matthew adds it was before they came together. That's a Jewish euphemism for the fact that they had not had sexual relations. So, at some point during the kiddushin, something remarkable happened, she was found to be with child by or out of the Holy Spirit.

Look at Verse 19,

And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

Again, it is hard for us to imagine the shock when Joseph heard the news that Mary was pregnant when she returned after those three months for John's birth. He obviously knew the child wasn't his. And her explanation must have seemed incredible, unbelievable to him. And I'm sure once the shock left him, he began first of all sorting through the emotions that he must have felt. This can't be happening; I've been looking forward to my wedding day for so long. Mary seemed like such a wonderful person and now my wife to be tells me she's pregnant.

And then as anyone would he began, he began to sort through his options. He only had three options. One of them is to marry her. Now this simply wasn't done. In fact, Roman law actually treated the husband who failed to divorce an unfaithful wife as a panderer, exploiting his wife as a prostitute. Even the Jewish Mishnah did not allow a man in this situation to marry the woman. And besides if he married her, what would it be? A tacit admission the child was his. So, this wasn't an option. The second option was to disgrace her. Notice Verse 19 says, "he didn't want to disgrace her." This refers to Joseph making a public accusation against her in a court of law. It would have been a public proceeding that would have publically shamed him and his family.

But notice Matthew tells us in verse 19, Joseph wasn't thinking about himself when he decided not to take Mary to court. He didn't want to make a public spectacle of her. What a wonderful man. In Moses day if it had been proven that a betrothed wife had been unfaithful, she would have been put to death. But in the first century a Jewish court would have allowed Joseph to impound Mary's dowry, that is the assets she brought to the marriage, and perhaps they would have even permitted Joseph to recoup the bride price if he had paid one at the beginning of the betrothal. So that was an option but not one that he wanted to do because he didn't want to publically disgrace her.

The third option was to send her away secretly. This was his only other choice. The Greek word translated 'send away' is the same word translated divorce both in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 where Christ discusses the issue of divorce. Joseph is considering privately divorcing Mary. That Matthew tells us is the very course Joseph is on. At this point Mary can't defend herself, I mean what could she say that could convince Joseph of the truth of what she is saying? So, the Lord then defends her, He sends His angel and speaks to Joseph in a dream. Verse 20 and this is what He said, "'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife'", that to take Mary as your wife, that describes the second part of the Jewish ceremony, the chuppah where he would go to her house, bring her back to his to live, she would become his legal wife. Joseph did that exactly as the angel commanded him. He took the next step; he formally takes Mary from her home to his own.

Now again you have to use as my father-in-law who's now with the Lord taught theology for fifty years, used to say. When you read the Bible, you have to use a bit of sanctified imagination. Remember where they are, this couple is in a small village in Galilee. Fewer than 500 people live there. Joseph didn't buy Mary's story until the angel came and you can bet that no one else was buying their story either. So, from the beginning, here are these two righteous young people and they're tainted. In the minds of the people around them there're only two options. Either Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph and Joseph had done the disgraceful thing and married her anyway, or the two of them had been sexually immoral together.

This is a serious trial and not one we think a lot about. But imagine living in a small village with that hanging over your head when you know you are in fact innocent. In this trial their reputations were assaulted, their integrity questioned, their spirituality became an absolute joke even though they were in fact righteous. That's a pretty serious trial. How many times have you faced a situation not unlike that where you have been falsely accused, where your integrity has been questioned when there was no ground to question it? Jesus' family encountered the same sort of trial.

There's a second one I want you to see. Not only the suspicion of sexual sin that taints them from the beginning. But number two, here's another trial, a huge trial. Rome orders a census requiring Joseph and Mary to travel several days away from home when Mary is nine months pregnant. Again, we tend to think about this story in warm and cozy tones but that's not the picture of reality. Look at Luke 2. Lord willing we'll read this on Thursday night but just look at the first few verses. "Now in those days", Luke 2:1, "in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth."

It appears this census was ordered in 8 BC by Caesar Augustus. But for several possible reasons it appears that it was not carried out in Palestine until about 5 BC. Typically, a census was to determine military service and taxation, but the Jews were exempt from military service, so this census was all about taxes. Taxes for Rome, and since both Mary and Joseph were descendants of David, they had to go to David's hometown, they had to go to Bethlehem. Mary had to go because women 12 years of age and older still had to pay a poll tax. So, they both had to go and register. Bethlehem was six miles south of Jerusalem. The entire journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was about 90 miles through the Trans Jordan.

Verse 3 says,

Everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child.

Just to give you some idea of what this involved, there's Nazareth where the first arrow points. There's Bethlehem. They would have gone down the Jordan rift or perhaps they would have taken the ridge route that went down as well. But most likely they would have gone down the Jordan rift, as you see that red line there. Just to give you some idea of what that looked like. This is at the near the Sea of Galilee where they would have come down out of the hills of Nazareth to the Jordan River where the Jordan River meets the Sea of Galilee and these would have been the plains and farmlands, and this was the Jordan River as it begins to work its way down to the south. They would have traveled a road that ran along this river all the way down to the south. It would have taken three days, the 90 miles under the best of circumstances but imagine traveling three days with a woman who is nine months pregnant, and this is the primary means of transportation.

I don't know about you, if you've ever taken a car trip with a woman who's nine months pregnant, but in a very comfortable car seat it can be an issue. This was something of a totally different magnitude. But there was also another problem that complicated the journey and that was the weather. If it was December as all the evidence suggests, the weather in Israel can be both cold and wet. The rainy season peaks in December and January. In fact, the average temperature in Jerusalem is about the same as our own. 50s during the day, 30s at night and the average rainfall in Jerusalem in the months of December and January is about 5 inches. That means the Jordan River; the journey would not have been pleasant spring stroll. It was filled with difficulty.

Not to mention all the perils that came with first century travel. How much easier it would have been on both Joseph and Mary to be in their own home surrounded by family. I mean think about it even today, when a woman's pregnant and nearing delivery she doesn't want to travel very far from home, she wants to stay close to her doctor, close to her family and friends, close to her home. This was a serious trial in the lives of this young couple. It affects their comfort certainly, their ease, their convenience but more than that, their peace of mind about the birth of the child and even puts at risk their personal safety. It can't be physically good for a woman nine months pregnant to travel ninety miles and in those circumstances on the back of an animal like that. A trial. A serious trial. Again, ours are not the same trials, but which of us has not encountered trials that affect our comfort, our ease, our convenience, our peace of mind and even our personal safety?

There's a third trial I want you to see and it's this, when they arrive in Bethlehem, when they arrived there, there's no place for them to stay. You also see this in Luke 2, look at Verse 6, "While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."

In that day, Bethlehem was a village of fewer than a thousand people, a bit larger than Nazareth, maybe twice the size of Nazareth but less than a thousand people. Luke does not say, nor does he imply in Verse 6 that Mary went in to labor the night they arrived in Bethlehem. We don't know how long they were there before she gave birth, maybe a day a two or two, maybe three or four, maybe an entire week. We just don't know. But we do know that however long they were there, there was no customary place to stay. Because if this is where they were when Jesus the child was born, then that must have been where they stayed the entire time. No one turns the woman who's in labor out from better environment, better situation when she's delivering. And so, this is where they had to stay their entire time that they were there, and this is where she delivered.

The English text in this passage says that there was no room for them in the inn. I'm not sure that's the best translation because when Luke wants to speak of a paid establishment, that is an inn, he uses a different Greek word. It's the word he uses you remember when the Good Samaritan pays to have the man that he rescued looked after and he puts him up in an inn where there's an innkeeper and there's food and there's lodging. That's a different word than the word used here. Here he uses the word kataluma; it simply means a guest chamber.

There're two possibilities, one of them is that this was a public guest chamber that was provided by the community. In many communities there would be what amounted to an unmanned hostel, basically a building built by the community in which caravans and travelers could stop in for the night, stay there, and then move on. A two-story simple structure usually with primitive rooms on the second floor, nothing like our hotels, primitive rooms accessed by an external staircase or perhaps an internal staircase off the inner courtyard. There was an inner court on the ground floor where the animals were kept along with any cargo, that's also where the servants would have slept. And if this is what Luke has in mind, then we shouldn't be too hard on the innkeeper, you know all of those Christmas pageants where the innkeeper really gets a bad rap. Well, in fact, if it was this word, kataluma, it's likely there was no innkeeper, there was nobody to manage it. It's simply that when they got there all of the available space had already been taken, possibly by fellow travelers there for the census. More likely the space was taken by the Romans and the Roman officials who were there to take the census. This is how it always works.

When my mother died back a couple of years ago and we needed to travel to Mobile for the funeral and we arrived there of course you really can't make reservations ahead of time for that sort of thing and when we called around after we learned of my mother's death, we couldn't find a hotel. We thought okay, we'll find one when we get there. When we arrived, we discovered that almost every hotel in Mobile was completely booked, in fact everyone was, because all of the government workers were in the hotels and were shuttling down to the catastrophe of Katrina from Mobile. It's just a couple of hours drive. So, they were staying in Mobile where there was electricity and still the conveniences and so every room was filled with government officials. And we had to stay in a place that is literally the worse place I've ever stayed in my life, including Calcutta, in Mobile, Alabama, the Econolodge. As my girls like to say the Oooconolodge. It was something, I have to tell you. But that may be very much what happened, they arrived, all the community rooms in this unmanned hostel as it were are taken or caravansary are taken because all of the officials have moved in and there's no room for them.

A second possibility is that by this word guest chamber is that Luke means a private guest quarters in a private home. This is an interesting perspective. Todd Bolin who's with the Master's College and is a professor at Ibex over in Israel, he's currently here in the states working on his doctorate, but he writes this, "The view that Mary and Joseph simply arrived late to Bethlehem and accommodations at the local hotel were full is incorrect. The word translated inn is the word kataluma which is used elsewhere by Luke and translated as guest chamber or upper room. It is the word used as for the upper room where the disciples celebrated the Lord's Supper, and it was initiated. When he means to speak of a paid establishment, an inn, he uses a different Greek word as in the story of the Good Samaritan. The result of this mistranslation," Bolin writes, "leads to a different understanding of the story. It's not that Joseph and Mary were late to town but it's that they were rejected by their family. Clearly, they had had family members in town as that was the reason they returned to Bethlehem for the census, that there was no room in the guest chamber for a pregnant woman indicates that they chose not to make room for this unwedded mother. The birth of Jesus in a room where animals lived suggest shame and rejection." That is very much a possibility.

We can't be sure between these two but regardless of where they couldn't stay, they apparently stayed in a nearby natural cave. Justin Martyr wrote in the second century that Jesus was born in a cave. In the Protoevangelium of James in the second century, it refers to the cave in which Jesus was born. Origins said that in his day there was a well-known cave that was pointed out where Jesus was born. If you go to Bethlehem today there's still many houses built in front of caves, natural occurring or dug out caves in the soft rock that's there. The original Church of the Nativity was built over a cave that historically is held to be and very well may be one of those genuine sites in Israel. The traditional cave of Jesus' birth is 39 feet by 10 feet in size. That is apparently where Mary gave birth.

You really can't make out much of that cave today, it's been so distorted by the church that's been built there but next to that cave is another adjacent cave in the Church of the Nativity. This is more like the cave where Jesus apparently was born would have looked in His time with that naturally occurring rock surface on the top and on the sides. This by the way was where Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate because it was still known in his time as the cave adjacent to the cave where Christ was born.

So, in a cave she gave birth to her first-born Son, she wrapped Him in cloths and laid Him in a manger. In Israel typically newborns had their navels cut. They were washed with water and then they were salted as an antiseptic. Then as Luke says, Mary wrapped Jesus in cloths. This wrapping of the arms and legs with strips of cloth was a very common practice, you can read about in Ezekiel 16:4. But what comes next was not common. There was only one newborn in Bethlehem that night who was lying in a manger, because a manger is simply an animal feed trough. Jesus was most likely laid in a stone manger because stone was more common than wood. You can see that even in these pictures. There's another picture of that cave. And according to Jerome the manger was still visible in his time and consisted of a rock groove with plain clay walls inside a side cave that was about 10 feet by 10 feet. Here's what a stone manger looks like, this is not from the area around Bethlehem, but this is a different part of Israel, and you can see kind of what that would have been like. This was a serious trial. Don't misunderstand this. It's very possible that this trial was a very personal rejection by their relatives in Bethlehem with whom they had hoped to stay. But they had learned that Mary had become pregnant before the wedding, and they shunned her. And she gives birth to the Son of God in a cave used for stabling animals. And she lays the eternal Son of God in an animal feed trough.

There's another trial that they faced, hurrying through these. And that is the most powerful man in the country tries to kill their Son. That is a trial. After 40 days, Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth. Luke 2:39 says, "When they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth."

So apparently after the 40 days, after they had done everything, they needed to do at the temple, they returned to Nazareth. If that's right as it appears to be, then their purpose was simply to go to Nazareth, collect their things and move back to Bethlehem, because the next time we find them, they are living in a house in Bethlehem and that's when the Magi come. The visit of the Magi unfortunately is quickly followed by another severe trial. Look over at Matthew 2. Of course, the first 12 verses record the coming of the Magi. Verse 13. And again, try to put yourself in the place of this young righteous couple, now holding in their hands the Child they know to be God Himself.

Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you.

Get up' implies it's the middle of night, I want you not to pause, not to hesitate, get up now.

Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him. So, Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night and left for Egypt.

In a village the size of Bethlehem what comes next is a terrible tragedy in any village of any size. But when Herod saw that he had been tricked, Verse 16 says, "He became very enraged, sent, and slew all the male children in Bethlehem and all its vicinity from two years old and under, according to the time in which he had determined from the magi."

In a village the size of Bethlehem it's likely that was up to 20 little infants put to death by this vicious man. It's rightly called the Massacre of the Innocents. Joseph and Mary leave in the middle of the night, probably, almost certainly leaving their belongings behind in Bethlehem and they flee the country. So, their oldest Child is less than two years old, Mary is possibly pregnant with James, the next child that will be born that will be born to Mary and Joseph and they have to travel some 265 miles to Egypt. Egypt was an easy place to get lost. The port city of Alexandria was the second largest city in the Empire. It had a large community of Jews there; it's possible that's where they settled. We don't know what Joseph did while he was there, if he did his trade or if they sold the gifts the Magi had brought and used those to live off the proceeds, but they lived there until about 18 months later. Herod dies, they return from Egypt and build a new home in Nazareth.

This was a severe trial in a variety of ways. Think about it for a moment. They had to leave their new home; they had been established less than two years. They had to flee their country. Go to a place where a different language was spoken, they had to escape quickly and quietly in the middle of the night which meant they were allowing the other children there to be killed. At that point those other families would have been their friends. They knew these boys and their families. They escaped but they weren't able to warn their friends. But of course, the greatest trial was the threat of death to their Child, the possibility of losing someone close. Which of us hasn't experienced a severe trial where we faced the possibility of losing someone or we actually lose someone who is the dearest to us?

There's a fifth trial they face, and that's Joseph dies while most of the children are young. We see this in Mark 6:3. There's several implications, if you look at Mark 6:3, there're several implications of this verse. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because we talked about this before. But there when Jesus speaks, they say "'Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at Him."

Joseph isn't mentioned anywhere, he had apparently died. He was still living when Jesus was 12 and the incident at the temple. But there's no mention of Joseph after that. He's not mentioned here during Jesus' ministry. He's not mentioned any time after Jesus was 12. And so most believe, and I think it's true that Joseph had died at some point between Jesus' 12th birthday and His reaching 30 and His ministry. If that's true, then that means Jesus had at least six younger siblings that He was responsible to lead and support. He clearly had taken over the family business; notice He's called here 'the carpenter.' That means that he worked six days a week to support the family. But here you have a family devastated by the loss of Joseph while all the children, at least seven of them, there are, there's Jesus, four brothers and sisters plural, so at least seven children. Jesus is the oldest of course. And they're devastated by the loss of their father. So, Jesus faced the severe trial of losing someone that He loved, to death.

A sixth trial and the final one I want you to see is Jesus grew up in a family that was filled with personal conflict. Not from Him certainly, He lived a perfect life. But it was filled with personal conflict. I won't belabor this because we've just really looked at it in our study of Mark's gospel, but whenever Jesus' siblings first became aware that their older brother claimed to be more than the human son of Mary and Joseph, they all without exception refused to believe Him. In fact, as we saw in Mark's gospel, they thought He was crazy. In Mark 3, they thought He was out of His mind. Mark 3:21, and so they go, as the end of Mark 3 tells us, they go to take Him by force back to Nazareth. That'll make for a little conflict over the Christmas meal, wouldn't you think? John 7 says, (Six months before His death, John 7:5) "For not even His brothers were believing on Him." In fact, if you read John 7, there's a there's some ridicule and sarcasm in their comments to their brother. So, Jesus grew up in a home where there was a great deal of tension. None of it was His own cause but it was there, nonetheless. How sad it must have been for Jesus to have His own family reject His claims.

I think I've told you this before, but it's very possible that all of this is why at the cross, Jesus gives His mother to John to look after and to care for. It's possible because remember Jesus limited the independent exercise of His attributes, it's possible that He didn't know as He was on the cross dying that His brothers would come to really believe in Him. And so, as He's dying, He realizes He can no longer care for Mary, He entrusts her to John the Apostle. He may have died thinking that those He had loved and cared for and taught and provided for would always reject Him.

We've had people reject us like that haven't we? We've experienced that to some degree. Those were all, when you look at those six trials, those were all very difficult trials and that's just a brief list, there could be many, many more. And Jesus certainly regarded these and other circumstances that He faced in His earthly life as trials. Listen to what He said in Luke 22:28, speaking to His disciples, "You are those who have stood by Me in My trials;"

The question is why? Why did the Father allow and direct for the Son to face so many hard things? For His Son and His Son's earthly family to face so many trials, so many hard things? Certainly, it wasn't because of retribution theology. It wasn't because God was angry with Joseph and Mary and Jesus, cause their lives were filled with sin. It wasn't a sign of His disfavor so why did He allow all those trials in their lives? All of these were necessary for God's plan to be fulfilled. Have you ever thought about that? In retrospect we can see it, but they very well may not have seen it at the time. We can see the plan God had for Jesus.

Take just one of those trials I gave you, of their having to travel with Mary 9 months pregnant to Bethlehem. That would have seemed like a severe trial at the time, and it was, but Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem, because it was prophesied in Micah 5:2 that the Messiah would come out of Bethlehem, and it proved through the Roman government to everyone that Jesus was through both of His parents of royal descent in the line of David and qualified to be Israel's Messiah. So how do you get a young woman, 9 months pregnant to travel 90 miles on a donkey? The Roman Emperor orders her to. But behind it was the plan of God. God had a plan, and He was working it out. What appeared at the time to be only a trial was God's providence working out His plan. What I want you to see folks, is God is doing the same thing in our lives. God has a plan. And we can't at the time we're in the midst of the trial see how it could possibly benefit us, how anything good could come from it. But God always has a plan, and He's working out that plan, and here's the wonderful thing about God's plan. Romans 8:28 is a verse we quote often, but understand little, "God is causing all things to work together for good" not for our immediate happiness, not for our immediate comfort but for our spiritual good, "to those who love God and to those who are the called according to His purpose." You see it in the life of Christ, we read it there and it seems simple. It's a little harder, isn't it when we're facing the trial, when we're in the difficulty? God has a plan and He's working it out.

But there's another reason God permitted all of this in the life of Christ and His family. It's not all just pain and trouble for pain and troubles sake. It's because of what He needed to learn. Turn to Hebrews as we close our time together tonight. Turn to Hebrews and I want you to see an amazing passage. Hebrews 5:7, "In the days of His flesh, (speaking of Jesus) He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears (this is in the Garden of Gethsemane) "to the One who is able to save Him from death, (not to keep Him from dying but to bring Him through death into resurrection) and He was heard because of His piety." Look at Verse 8, "Although He was a Son, (the very Son of God) "He learned obedience from the things which He suffered."

That's an amazing statement. This doesn't mean Jesus was ever disobedient. He was without sin. Chapter 4:15, just a few verses before says that. Instead, it means that He learned by acquired knowledge and firsthand experience what it is to continue to obey God even in the face of suffering and trials. The result was that His moral and spiritual strength as a human being grew stronger. That's exactly what happens to us in trials, isn't it? James says, my brethren consider it all joy when you fall into various trials because the trial of your faith produces, what? Ultimately it produces endurance. It builds your spiritual strength, your staying power to live life obeying God even in the midst of trouble and difficulty. That's exactly what Jesus learned. That's part of the reason He faced this trial and these series of trials.

Listen as we close out this year every one of us in this room has encountered various troubles and trials and difficulties through this year. I'm sure if I were to ask you every person in this room would have a list. For those who are in Christ and who aren't living in a pattern of unrepentant sin, those trials are not an expression of divine disfavor, any more than they were an expression of divine disfavor to Jesus and to Mary and Joseph. Instead, God intends to do through them what He did in Jesus' life, to work out His plan and to help us learn the enduring power of obedience even through trials.

There's one more thing I want you to see, look back at Hebrews 5. There was something else Jesus was doing through all the things He suffered. "And (Verse 9) having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation."

Here's a third purpose for Jesus' suffering. He lived a life of perfect obedience and every imaginable kind of human circumstance that you and I face so that He could go through those trials, through that suffering and do it with perfect obedience unlike us so that then His perfect righteousness could become ours. What a Savior! Let's pray together.

Father, help us to learn even from our brief study tonight, our reflection on these passages that deserve so much more. But Father help us to learn that the trials You bring into our lives You intend for good just as You did in the life of Christ. Lord don't let us run from them, but instead help us to consider it all joy knowing that the trying and testing of our faith ultimately produces endurance and has its perfect work so that we learn how to stay obedient even through difficulty and trial after difficulty and trial. But Father we look forward to the day that in Your presence there'll be no more trials, there'll be nothing but unending, unmitigated joy. Help us to be faithful until that time in this life even as our Lord was, and Father thank You, that His perfect obedience through all the suffering and all of the trials is ours by Your grace imputed to us as a precious gift. We thank You in Jesus' name, Amen.