As [Joseph] considered this an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream Matthew 1:20a
One of the amazing characteristics of the Bible is the way things fit together. Parts of it that are centuries apart in very different historical settings and very different types of literature fit together in amazing ways.
So it is here. Think about this: about 1800 B.C. in southern Canaan a family group is about to face a life-threatening situation. They don’t know it, but a famine with the capacity to destroy them is about to fall on them. One of them, named – wait for it – Joseph, has a dream, a dream that was to nurture him through some 20 years of adversity, but one that would eventually lead to the deliverance of his family.
Now, 1800 years later another Joseph has not one dream, but four of them, dreams that will result in the saving of the life of the Savior of the world. Is the congruence of those two stories just an accident? Hardly! Those whose pre-judgments do not permit them to believe in inspiration will say that Matthew did this intentionally, but that involves a lot more ingenuity (and theological intention) on Matthew’s part than is at all likely. Much more likely is the point that the Bible maintains from start to finish: that the Bible is all one great cosmic story from Genesis to Revelation. It is a story involving the destruction of a beautiful plan and the marvelous intervention of the Creator to make the plan even better in the end. Along the way things go from bad to worse, but the Creator is not frustrated. He becomes the Savior and triumphs gloriously in the end. Through it all, he lovingly involves his broken and fallible creatures in the redemption process.
So, Joseph had a dream – and Joseph had a dream. Accident? Coincidence? Authorial manipulation? No, no, and no! It is one more lovely whisper to us – Christmas is part of the grand story, a story that has been unfolding since before the dawn of time. Merry Christmas!
Called To Be Transformed 