Matthew 1:18-25. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 24, 2017.
We apologize that there is no audio for this sermon.
Today we are going to look at a passage in Matthew regarding the birth of Jesus. His name tells us something about him through its meaning- the salvation of God. Christians look to Jesus as God’s answer to their problems and those of the world. No matter what is ailing you today, or bothering you about the world, God’s word tells us that Jesus has an answer for it.
Yet, as we will see today, He is also called Immanuel, which means God with us. Thus, no matter how alone we may feel today, whether Christian or not, God is as close as the mention of His name. When we read the Scriptures about Jesus, we are being introduced to the one who is God’s presence with us, both personally and as a world. I encourage you to not see just a story of peace and good times. We must also recognize that it is a story of an answer from God that involves His presence with us in the midst of our difficulties and even our own failures. Jesus is God with us, even when we don’t recognize him, or even when we think he is absent, or even when we may think that we have failed him completely. Today we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World, who is still with us, even though we may feel abandoned.
Jesus was born at a particular point in time. His life was so monumental that much of the world has used his birth in their system of dating time. Thus B.C. came to mean “before Christ” and A.D. is from a Latin phrase that is short for “in the year of our Lord.” Lately it has become vogue and even proper within the sciences to use B.C.E. for “Before the Common Era” and C.E. for the “Common Era.” Of course they still switch at a date that is roughly the birth of Jesus. [Note: There has been much study on exactly what year Jesus was born and many believing that Jesus may have been several years old at 1 A.D. Regardless, for our purposes it is still pertinent to the point.] Think of it, it is a blatant fact that the Jewish man named Jesus from the first century C.E./A.D. has impossibly affected this world.
So our story picks up with a crisis that has to do with two people who have been betrothed to each other, but not yet married. Mary has become pregnant and her only explanation to Joseph is that an angel appeared to her and told her that she would become pregnant with a child by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Now it is easy to scoff at such a story. Joseph did not immediately believe her, and neither did the society around her. The Gospels record some harsh digs made towards Jesus by the Pharisees. They saw him as an illegitimate child. So this is not a problem that those backwards ancient people were easily duped because they didn’t understand science. Everyone knew that if a girl is pregnant then there has been sperm inserted in her by a man. Now if Jesus had grown up to be just a normal Jewish man then nothing more would have been said. However, Jesus did not grow up to be a normal man. Instead he became such an amazing figure that the whole world is marked by his life today. So we can’t just toss this aside as mythology or propaganda.
Chastity has been a big issue in most cultures throughout history. It appears that Mary has been unfaithful and Joseph is struggling over how to break off the marriage without doing too much harm to Mary. Now our culture has gone from being one that prized chastity before marriage and fidelity during it, to tossing both into the garbage bin. This culture encourages our sons and daughters to be promiscuous and faithful only to themselves and their own desire for pleasure. If Mary were in our day, our society would tell her to go to the nearest Planned Parenthood Clinic and get an abortion. This child will ruin your life if you have it. But Mary is not a modern woman who is pregnant because of some guy she met in the market. She was a virgin who had abstained from sex and was saving herself for her husband to be, Joseph. Her pregnancy creates a problem for her, people will see her as unfaithful, but it also creates a problem for Joseph. If he doesn’t break off the marriage people will see it as an admission of guilt, i.e. Mary and he had been sexually active before the wedding. In such a situation you can imagine Mary telling God that it wasn’t fair. However, previously Mary had stated to the angel, “Behold, the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be unto me as you have said.” No difficulty is too great if it is done for the Lord’s purposes. As I said, in our culture this used to be a big thing. However, it is probably hard for us to understand just how difficult a crisis this was. Joseph doesn’t want to publicly humiliate Mary, but for his own honor, he must break off the marriage.
Just as God had a job for Mary, so God has a job for Joseph. An Angel appears to him in a dream, verifies Mary’s story, tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife, and to name the baby, Jesus. The term angel is used in the bible in several ways. It basically means messenger, whether human or heavenly. So the context will determine which is intended. It is easy to read the Bible and to think that angels were showing up all the time. However, the truth is that they were few and far between. But, at special times their activity would increase. This was one of those special times.
Sometimes people make a big deal out of how the name Jesus should be printed and said. Some say it must be the original version in Aramaic or a Hebrew equivalent, such as Yeshua. Some will even claim that to use any name but some ancient form of Yeshua is the same as calling on a false God. However, this just doesn’t make sense. It is common throughout history and even today to recognize that names change from language to language. Sometimes names are simply transliterated. This is where you go sound by sound and choose which target-language letter mimics it closest. However, this sometimes creates a name that is weird or strange sounding in the new language. So it can also be translated. The meaning in the first language is brought over into the new language and a new name is created. The name Jesus in English has been transliterated from the Hebrew to Greek and then into English. It is basically a transliteration with a modified ending to make it more Greek (and then eventually English). Even the Hebrews in the Scriptures would use Hebraicized forms of the names from other countries. It seems an overly dogmatic point to try and state that if you pray in the name of Jesus, that God will reject you. He knows all along that who you are praying to and who you mean when you use that name. Jesus is the one who is God’s salvation/solution for the world. As Mary was a righteous girl asked to do something that would cause tongues to wag all over town, so too, Joseph is a righteous man who is asked to come alongside of her in this endeavor. This is all because God needed to send a savior into the world.
In verses 22-25 we drop out of the story and Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus, explains the critical importance of all of this. The birth of Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy and it becomes an important teaching or doctrine of all of his followers. The prophets of the Old Testament had often pointed forward to a coming savior or Messiah, who would be God’s solution to the crisis of mankind’s rebellion against Him. Our outline today speaks of Mary and Joseph’s crisis and God’s solution. But it is parallel to a greater crisis of mankind’s rebellion and God’s solution. We were created in perfect relationship with God until the crisis of sin in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). God initially tells them that He has a plan to solve this crisis, and slowly over the course of many years He reveals more and more what that solution will be. Some have counted as many as 353 different prophecies regarding the first coming of Jesus. Of course it comes down to how you count a prophecy. Here is a link to a website that breaks it up by each individual new fact that is prophesied in the Old Testament and then gives the fulfillment in the New Testament. Now the statistical chances of one person fulfilling 353 different prophecies are so close to zero that we can say it is nigh impossible. Yet, Jesus did. But here Matthew only points to one prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. This prophecy says that a virgin would give birth to a son as a sign that God was going to help those who would trust Him. In that prophecy, however, the baby is to be called Emmanuel. Now the Old Testament spells it Immanuel. This is the difference in the Hebrew spelling versus the Greek spelling. So it refers to the same name. The meaning of Emmanuel is “God is with us.”
Such a name brings to attention the ancient problem of the nearness of God. In the technical sense God is omnipresent and thus always near even the worst of sinners. He is everywhere at once because He is not a part of this material creation. But don’t think that means He can’t interact with the universe. Yet, when mankind rebelled against God, it created a relational separation. The fractured relationship is what causes us to feel that He is so far away that He might as well not exist. The name Emmanuel is intended to give the hope that God is fixing this separation in our relationship through Jesus. On one hand Jesus is divine and thus “God with us.” He came down from heaven and entered a human body that was especially made for Him to inhabit. I won’t get into the complexities of what that could have looked like. So in Jesus, God has come down to Earth in order to help us. Now, most religions, whether false religions or Christian cults, are man’s attempt to be good enough. Somehow they teach men how to climb up Mt. Olympus and take their place among the gods. Like some kind of spiritual Hercules we hope to make it. However, true Christianity recognizes that no one is good enough to climb into the heavens. God’s solution is not to save the greatest of mankind, who can climb into His presence. His plan is to come down to us, into the muck and the mire of the trenches in which we live. He comes down into the ugliness of sin and lifts us up out of it one day at a time. This emphasizes the other hand. Yes, Jesus is divine, but He has come down to our level, “God with us.” God wants to dwell with mankind, but in our rebellious condition He can’t. So isn’t it ironic that Jesus, who is called Emmanuel, has ascended into heaven and we wait for Him again? You have to see God as an artist to appreciate this touch. Yes, Jesus is no longer physically near us. But, He is near us through the Holy Spirit. Just as the prophecy of His first coming was fulfilled, so the prophecies of His second coming will be fulfilled. However, now we have the reality of Emmanuel and the countless thousands who saw his life and death. Then we also see the reality of over 500 witnesses to His resurrection. The testimony that has been given to us is that, regardless of how much it feels that God has abandoned us, or is far, far away, God is with us! The birth of Jesus forever vanquishes the horrible thought that we might have been abandoned, and replaces it with the awe inspiring Truth that God will see us through. This is the amazing gift of Jesus to mankind. He is proof that God is with us and He is the One who has taken away the sins that have separated us from God. Amen!