Transcript for:
Understanding the Birth of Jesus

so Matthew chap 1: 18- 25 let's hear God's word together now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betro to Joseph before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly but as he considered these things behold behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying Joseph son of David do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel which means god with us when Joseph woke from sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him he took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to his son and he called his name Jesus this is the word of the Lord thanks be to God let me pray for us father would you please help us now would you help me give me Clarity and focus as I preach I pray that we would all uh hear what we need to hear today that you would help us to understand your word and how it applies uh to our lives father we ask uh for you to be gracious to us now send your Holy Spirit and be at work and we pray these things in Jesus name amen a couple weeks ago uh Paul and Karen Austin introduced me to a podcast a love podcast and they introduced me to another one uh called compelled and I got to tell you it's one of the best ones I've listened to uh the host interviews guests who essentially take over the microphone and tell their own story uh either how they came to know Jesus or how they're learning to follow him more closely just ordinary people with extraordinary extraordinary stories uh one of the episodes I listened to just this week was with a guy named Mike now Mike had a background full of as as he described it gang activity during the day and computer hacking at night and uh that was his whole life and he was a certifiably bad dude uh who just spread misery every where he went uh eventually he came to Faith and his entire life was transformed and it's an amazing story but but he as he tells the story of his life from being a little kid and then eventually getting into the gang activity and then getting into the hacker side uh of life it's incredible so you you hear him discuss what's going on and you know during his his first prison stent because he did eventually get caught for a lot of things uh and then during his second prison St and then at the hospital following a gang attack that backfired throughout all of this there was one figure one guy who kept emerging this man named Tyrone who had a long string of criminal convictions himself for theft while Tyrone was in prison he had come to faith in Christ and eventually met Mike and no matter how bad things got for Mike through one bad choice at another after another and it is it's so hard to listen to this podcast this dude's got all the talent in the world and just would look for ways squander it uh throughout all of these things Tyrone was there he just this ubiquitous presence in Mike's life showing love to Mike encouraging him pointing him back to the good news of what God had done for him in Jesus well Mike later reflected he said quote if it wasn't for Tyrone I wouldn't be a Christian uh it was Tyrone's practical there at the point of need love for Mike Love In the Flesh so not theoretical but there that made an eternal difference well today's the fourth Sunday of Advent the season that we think long and hard about the Incarnation so a word that in Latin uh means to become meat or to become flesh so the Eternal Son of God the second person of the Trinity becoming a human being Jesus Jesus Christ Jesus is the very definition of Love In the Flesh see he's the one who's here with us and for us no matter what we've done no matter where we find ourselves right now that's what the Advent season the Christmas season is all about so this morning we're going to look for a few minutes at the same passage that we read last Sunday so if you want to get kind of part A the two sermons are distinct but if you want part A of looking at the text go back to the YouTube channel you can see that but today we're really going to be looking at verses 22- 25 of Matthew chap 1 see what God's showing us about Love In the Flesh so let's jump in together uh last week we discussed what it means to have joy and sorrow and we considered how Joseph's life at least how he saw it playing out in the future was completely demolished on the day that he discovered what he thought was Mary's infidelity and even when the angel lets him know that Mary hadn't and Unfaithful he is still left with a radically different trajectory for his life a life that would be centered around raising the Son of God and long promised Messiah and we said that despite the dawning task ahead of him Joseph embraced this task by taking Mary as his wife now we're going to look at that a bit more detail in just a few minutes but first we need to take a look at an editorial comment that Matthew makes for us in verse 22 so as we've just read uh Matthew's been recounting for us what the angel tells Joseph in his dream in verses 18- 21 and then he steps back Matthew steps back as a writer and he tells his readers this look at verse 22 all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel which means god with us okay so Matthew's primary audience in his writing is Jewish so he's at pains to demonstrate throughout his writing how Jesus in his life and death and Resurrection fulfills God's promises to his people throughout the Jewish scriptures throughout the Old Testament as the Apostle Paul says over in 2 Corinthians 1 he says this for all the promises of God find their yes in him find their yes in Jesus so Matthew will record an event from Jesus's life and then he'll add an explanatory note for his audience much like what we see here this was to fulfill dot dot dot and then he'll he'll cite something from the Old Testament that he uses that word fulfill in a number of different ways throughout his writing but that's what he's trying to point people back to well here he cites a verse from the book of Isaiah so chapter 7:14 specifically so let's set the original context of this verse so we can understand what Isaiah was saying and what it meant for the birth of Jesus so let's back up the calendar 8th Century BC Syria and Ephraim so Ephraim is a part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and so if you haven't been with us before or if you slept since then let me give you kind of a geographic reminder so Israel shortly after the reign of David and his son Solomon the kingdom gets split in two so you have the northern kingdom which was just called Israel so that was 10 of the tribes so there were 12 tribes in Israel 10 of them gathered together in the northern kingdom and they were just called Israel okay that's what people call them the Southern kingdom was only two tribes it was Judah which was the biggest tribe and Benjamin and they were in the South with their their focal point in Jerusalem and so that was just called Judah so you have Israel and Judah all right one of the biggest slices of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was called Ephraim that was the name of one of the one of the heads of the tribes okay so you have Ephraim it's huge so the nation of Syria and Ephraim this big part of the northern kingdom are putting pressure on King ahaz who is the king of the Southern Kingdom of Judah so we see what's going on so we got these two Northern powers are putting pressure on ahaz down here in Jerusalem to try to get him to go into a military alliance with them against Assyria okay so Assyria was the big kid on the Block in the world at that point at that point they were the largest Empire on Earth all right and they are threatening this entire area right near the Mediterranean and so Ephraim and Syria says Hey jump into this military alliance against Assyria with us and we can all we can all protect ourselves that way you know strength in numbers this would be you know a problem though because if you allly yourself against a Syria you're putting yourself in the crosshairs of a mega power and so ahaz says no I'm not doing that and so ahaz actually goes to Assyria and says hey we'll join in with you let us form an alliance with you so this would be kind of like in the early 20th century everybody seen the mob movies The Untouchables Godfather all those things this would be early 20th century New York a business owner forming an alliance with the big mobster to protect him against little Mobsters okay that's what's going on here in this picture through Isaiah God let King ahaz know that he does not need to take that course of action that he doesn't need to make an alliance with Assyria either rather he wants ahaz to trust him and his power to deliver trust me God said and I will deal with these threats for you I'll deal with Syria and I'll deal with Ephraim you don't need to go sell yourself to the Assyrians that's what God tells ahaz God is so kind in fact that he tells ahaz to Simply ask for a sign to corroborate his promise and he would give it ahaz refuses he won't ask for the sign So to that end Isaiah responds beginning in verse 13 of chapter 7 and going through 16 so ahaz says I'm not going to ask you for a sign God just takes matters into his own hands so Isaiah 713- 16 says this and he said here then oh House of David so he's talking to ahaz is it to little for you to weary men that you we my God also therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and he shall call his name Emanuel he shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose good for before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted all right welcome to the most hotly debated piece of real estate in the entire Old Testament uh some Scholars will look at this passage and say uh Matthew was wrong to press these verses into the service of Jesus's birth this is clearly about something that only happened in Isaiah's day on the other hand uh you have technical arguments that place these events all of these events in the distant future from Isaiah's day I recently listened to a recent proposal from two Jewish Christian Scholars who live and work in Jerusalem in fact that argues along those lines and it is compelling to say uh the least these men are experts both in the language and the culture and the history of Israel and and make a pretty compelling case uh however I think along with a lot of Bible scholars that something else is going on here in what Isaiah writes and in how Matthew uses es it in his gospel let me explain so first it's important to understand how biblical prophecy typically functions uh sometimes a prophecy will speak about immediate events so the the author the prophet will say something it's about something that's going to be happening within a few months few years so I really really close up it's pretty straightforward uh sometimes a prophecy is about events in the distant distant future okay so think for instance for Isa 53 uh where he talks about the suffering servant who would come one day and that's fulfilled 800 years later conceptually that's pretty easy to understand as well so the idea of of a distant uh fulfillment but sometimes a prophecy has what you would call a double fulfillment in other words uh it's fulfilled in a partial form kind of a peacemeal form in the moment but it realizes a fuller significance a fuller fulfillment in the distant future as well and you see this happen a number of times I believe that's what's going on here U through Isaiah God gives ahaz a sign uh he says quote a a young woman so that's a technically correct definition of the Hebrew word uh used here where you see virgin in English uh a young woman would bear a son uh whose birth would be a sign that God was going to deliver Judah from their enemies uh most likely that would be a child belonging to Isaiah and his wife the young woman so it's it's fairly straightforward however the Jewish people very quickly realize that there's something more going on to this prophecy okay a greater fulfillment that was to come a sign of God's ultimate Deliverance in fact if you look back there at the text if you're in Isaiah uh if you look back at the text it says that that word sign that is typically used the Hebrew word behind that is typically used uh in scripture to refer uh not just to to an ordinary event not just an ordinary event but to something miraculous more than just what a standard issue pregnancy and birth would be people read this verse and they saw it as pointing to another Prophecy from Isaiah another birth prophecy Hebrews I mean sorry Isaiah 9 1-6 which we looked at three weeks ago uh so if you want to flip a page over to that you can a quick perusal of that passage makes it clear that Isaiah is writing about a child that was going to be much more than an ordinary human listen again to these verses for to us a child is born to us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name Shall be Called wonderful counselor Mighty God Everlasting father Prince of Peace of the increase of his government and of Peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with Justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forever more does that sound like an ordinary person to you scripture doesn't speak about anybody else in those kinds of terms so because these two these two births seem so connected they're so close in isa's writing they're e either describing the same child or they're describing the first child in verse in chapter 7 as pointing to the child in chapter n Isaiah 7:14 seems uh pardon the pun but but pregnant with greater significance I I believe it's telling that when Jewish scholars in the 3rd Century BC they translate the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek okay so it's a translation called the septu agent so when they translate the Old Testament Hebrew into Greek when they come to Isaiah 7:14 they actually take the Hebrew word Alma okay so a l m a is how we spell English English that's an unusual word in Hebrew it's used very rarely in the Hebrew Bible it's rare and it seems to have generally just denoted a young woman they take that word and when they get when they put it into Greek they translate it into a Greek word paranos which by the time the septent was written you know what that word meant virtually exclusively virgin okay this is three centuries before Jesus comes on the scene so they are seeing these translators probably would not have done this had they not been trying to reinforce the same point I just mentioned that that verse Isaiah 7:14 has a fuller significance than anything that happened in Isaiah's lifetime something that was to be fulfilled in the future so it makes perfect sense that Matthew writing several decades after Jesus's resurrection reflected on scripture and what previous generation seen in this passage on one hand and the circumstances surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus on the other hand and conclude that what had happened with Jesus here was indeed a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 which is why he quotes it here now I know all that's somewhat technical it's somewhat deep weeds I understand that I appreciate you indulging me on that but because this is such a well-known uh and controversial in some circles Christmas passage I do want you to understand understand it what's going on here but beyond the technicalities uh there's something even more foundational that I don't want you to miss okay and it's this and this is really I think Matthew's burden in this passage look again back in Matthew 1 at the end of verse 23 and they shall call his name Emmanuel which means god with us so that name Emmanuel now we don't have anywhere in the biblical record Old Testament or new where someone was actually called Emmanuel so it wasn't anybody's given name day in day out it's not what Isaiah was getting at nor is it the point that Matthew's getting at here the point was that the one that Isaiah was pointing or was prophesying about would be a physical emblem a physical manifestation of God's presence with his people now that's incredible if you think about it when Isaiah was ministering Judah had by and large rejected God okay they had forgotten about him the monarchy had walked away from God and they had you know drugged the people down with them into the abyss but God wasn't going to abandon them though he certainly would bring judgment if they persisted in their sin they did and he did by the way nothing that they could do was going to undo his love for them see his heart was set toward him and in the fa face of their sin he promises his presence that's what Matthew is stressing here that's what Matthew wants us to see in fact his translation notes that little part that you see in parentheses look back down at your Bible you see those parentheses there that little translation note that Matthew makes actually shows us that this is what he's stressing most of his audience most of Matthew's readers would have spoken Aramaic so Aramaic was a cousin language of Hebrew real similar in a lot of ways uh they would have known what the word construction of Emmanuel meant okay even though Hebrew and aramic are not identical this was not a hard like if you know any any basics of Hebrew it's pretty easy to put together what Emanuel means they would have known what that meant but just to make things as explicit as possible Matthew offers an overt translation it's like he's saying whatever you do don't miss this that Jesus is God With Us Matthew's telling his readers that Jesus is the L literal full expression of Emmanuel because of his love for his people God really has come to live with them he's Love In the Flesh this is the fundamental fact that the church Christians throughout history have never been able to get over in the best possible sense so in Philippians chapter 2 uh the Apostle Paul quotes what many scholars believe is the earliest Hymn of the church or one of its earliest hymns and it says this of Jesus though he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men over in John's gospel written several years later uh he writes this in chapter 1 and the word Jesus became flesh and dwelt Among Us in the Nan Creed the church's first doctrinal statement from the Council of NAA 325 ad which we just read a few minutes ago says this who for us men so us people men generically us people who for us men and for our Salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Virgin Mary and was made man a few years later athanasius one of the most important leaders in the history of Christianity wrote his magnumopus a book that is so important that even secular Scholars say that this is an important contribution to all of Western civilization and culture it's a book called on the Incarnation and he writes this quote he has been manifested in a human body for this reason only out of the love and goodness of his father for the Salvation of us men it is we who were the cause of his taking human form and for our Salvation that in his great love he was both born and manifested in a human body is it any wonder that we make such a big deal out of the Advent season out of Christmas and of course most Christians enjoy all the giftgiving and feasting and celebrating man I sure do uh and lots of us have fun with Santa Claus and by the way St Nicholas the real life St n was at the Council of NAA and helped form the Nan Creed uh but the church celebrates Trinity celebrates because Jesus came flesh you see the gospel is only the gospel because of Christmas you get that right the gospel is only the gospel because of Christmas the gospel message tells us that God is Holy and just and good and that we are none of those things but instead of meeting out the justice that we deserve God in his unspeakable love sent Jesus he lived in the place of Sinners as our substitute succeeding everywhere that we failed so that we we could have his perfect record so to speak he died in our place taking the Judgment that we deserve he rose from the grave to show that he had beaten it sin and death for all who will trust in and if you believe this Christmas message that Jesus is God In the Flesh and that what he did he did for you you will be saved you will be saved forgiven of your sins embraced loved as a beloved child but see without Jesus coming without him becoming a real in the- flesh human being who can really live for us and who could really die for us and then really get back up out of the Grave for us without Christmas Easter doesn't happen you see that but because Christmas did happen because Jesus is loving the flesh we celebrate and when we Embrace that message of God With Us of Love In the Flesh personally it compels us to love him and to serve him it did that very thing for Joseph look at the text verses 24 and 25 when Joseph woke from sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded handed him he took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to his son and he called his name Jesus now look don't let these verses be just kind of a tag on or a throwaway at the end of this chapter for you particularly if you're familiar with this passage don't don't hit the eject button on these okay uh Joseph has heard Earth shattering life altering news news that none of us can imagine the scope of and he responds in faith he's a model of faith in fact says he took his wife meaning he welcomed her into his home officially to begin their marriage uh just he' been commanded to do even though in so doing he was self-consciously embarking in a path that he would never have chosen for himself says he knew her not until she had given birth to a son in other words he refrained from normal marital relations with Mary during this time which smirk all you want would have been a sacrifice for both of them would have been a sacrifice for both of them but Joseph did that so there would be no question of where this baby came from and who he was and finally quote he called his name Jesus precisely as he' been told to do uh in naming this baby he's formally declaring because naming a baby now look you just write it on the birth certificate right first century you name a baby that's that's a ceremonial official thing and when he does that he is formally saying I will raise this child as my own and care for him as best I can uh just last week while keen and I were talking about this passage so last Sunday afternoon we were talking about it after we had started looking at it Sunday morning and uh and he said something I thought was pretty profound uh he said you know aside from Jesus Joseph might be the most important person in the Bible he said think about it he was responsible for raising Jesus and teaching him it's a big any of y'all want that job now I see y'all right like wake up it's a big deal it's a big deal right try to conceive of the commitment that Joseph was making there and yet he did it and think about what Joseph named him Jesus the name we talked about last week that means literally God Saves this child born of Mary this boy that Joseph raised as his own is IM Manuel the full realization of God's presence in spite of our sin and is Jesus the full realization of God's salvation from our sin y'all this is why we celebrate this is why we celebrate trust in Jesus today hope in him and join in this celebration Merry Christmas let's pray