“Everyone was required to return to his ancestral home for this registration. And because Joseph was a member of the royal line, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, King David’s ancient home-journeying there from the Galilean village of Nazareth. He took wit him marry, his fiancée’, who was obviously pregnant by this time.” Luke 2:3-5 (TLB)
Not only did Jesus have to be filtered through an increasingly narrow and specific window of prophecies, God had to order events so that words the prophets spoke as far back as Abraham would come true, requiring very specific qualifications for Messiah’s earthly father as well he had to be of the line of David. Luke explains that Joseph met this very specific requirement. For God had promised David that his royal line would one day raise up an eternal King, whose reign would have no end.
We are told that Joseph was a man of stern principles. Although this referred to his planned divorce from Mary, it also meant he was god-fearing, always uncompromisingly honest, and a hard working businessman, whose character and reputation in his hometown would have been unassailable. According to some sources, Joseph had the reputation for being the best carpenter in town, someone whose services were sought after as much for the reputation of the builder, as for the quality of the construction.
He would have taught Jesus, in the longstanding oral tradition the Jews had since Abraham, about God, the Story of Pharaoh and the deadly ten plagues, the parting of the red sea, signs and wonders, God’s wrath, and the promised Messiah. Jesus probably would have first begun to understand the purpose of his life as he and his brothers gathered around a fire on a cool Nazareth evening and listened to Joseph tell the history of the Hebrew people. Clearly, Joseph would had to have been a man of exceptional character and sterling reputation, for no one else would have been given the awesome responsibility for the early spiritual training of the only begotten son of god. For Joseph and sons were not just building houses, they were building the kingdom of god.
Copyright 2007 Timothy E. Davis