Matthew 1:18-25 part C...

Joel Gilbert

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In this passage Christians have traditionally labeled this account as “the virgin birth,” but the important point, theologically, is not that Mary was a virgin at the time Jesus was born but that she was a virgin at the time Jesus was conceived.

This account isn’t about what a good person Joseph was by not disgracing Mary publically.

This focus isn’t a visitation from an angel. Those are very rare in Scripture.

Carson, D. A. (2015). The Gospels and Acts. In D. A. Carson (Ed.), NIV Zondervan Study Bible: Built on the Truth of Scripture and Centered on the Gospel Message (p. 1927). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

The focus is upon Christ and His mission.

Let’s look first this morning to Christ.

The precise words are instructive: — Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

That is, the prophet, Isaiah in this case, spoke as God moved him ().

These are God’s very words, spoken by a prophet, to prepare the way for God’s salvation.

The birth of Jesus shows that God is with us.

— See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”

In important ways, God is always with us.

We can never flee from his presence.

He is in the heavens and the depths, on land and at sea ().

We can ignore God, we can deny God, we can curse God.

But he never disappears.

His reign extends over all creation, even, in a way, over hell itself.

God is omnipresent.

Nevertheless, Matthew says that with Jesus’ birth, God entered human history in a new way.

He is with us, in power, for blessing.

Three times in the Gospel of Matthew we hear that Jesus is God with us:

in the beginning,

at its midpoint, and

at the end.

It is a crucial moment each time.

In the beginning, we hear that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, to save His people from their sins (1:21).

In the middle, we hear that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, to purify his church. Jesus promises,

— For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”

We often use this verse to find assurance that God hears when we gather for prayer, and rightly so.

But in its original context, Jesus had a specific prayer in mind.

In the agony of church discipline,

when a Christian persists in sin and will not repent,

when the leaders deal with such rebellion,

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, to preserve the purity of the church.

At the end of Matthew, Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, to expand the church.

Just before He ascended into heaven, Jesus directed His disciples to ‘go and make disciples of all the nations’.

It is a vast task, therefore Jesus declares, “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, to empower the church to make disciples.

What a comfort to know that Jesus is God with us.

Our passage is the account of the virgin conception or virgin birth of our Lord Jesus.

The virgin birth is a sign of God’s judgment on human nature.

The race needs a redeemer, but cannot itself produce one:

not by its own decision or desire,

not by the processes of education and civilization.

The redeemer must come from outside.

Here, as elsewhere, ‘all things are of God’.

He provides the lamb ().

Human nature possesses no capacity for becoming the human nature of Jesus Christ.

He is not a development from anything that has gone before.

Jesus is a divine intrusion:

the last, great,

culminating eruption of the power of God

into the plight of man:

Man is involved only in the form of

non-willing,

non-achieving,

non-creative,

non-sovereign man,

only in the form of man who can

merely receive,

merely be ready,

merely let something be done to and

with himself.

This is why v23 is so important. God is with us.

He’s with us Redeemer Church. Do you know and believe that?

Let’s close by taking apart this little phrase: “God is with us.”

Take the first word GOD.

The simple meaning of Christmas is the Creator King of the universe has become a human being.

That’s the message & meaning of Christmas.

This is the first place where Jesus is introduced, the beginning of Matthew.

Right away we’re told He’s God.

All the way through the text, all the way through the New Testament and many places in the Old Testament,

it’s told to us in every possible way … Jesus is God.

They’re always going around in the Gospels saying, “Who is this? Who is this? Who is this?”

Do you know what the final answer must’ve been in their hearts?

They must’ve said, “What’s the only answer that can possibly account for the data?

This guy cannot be a great Man only because he claims to be God, and therefore, He is who he says He is.

They believed.

The people who were the last people in the world to believe, the people who lived with Him,

were the people who were willing to die, and they did die

for their conviction that He is who He said He is.

How do you deal with that?

Have you wrestled with it the way they did?

Are you willing to put your life on the line for it the way they did?

One thing is for sure; this explains the irritating exclusivity of Christianity.

The second phrase “is with”. Jesus is God with us.

This is beautiful.

This great God, with all of His majesty, infinitely greater than the universe, has put Himself into a form of “with-ness.”

He has come alongside.

He has entered into an intimate personal relationship with us. He is God with us.

Think in the OT, every time God’s presence would come near, it was absolutely terrifying!

In the Old Testament, when He appears to Job, what does He appear as?

A whirlwind, a tornado, a hurricane. Many of us have seen a tornado.

There is nothing more terrifying than that.

When He appeared to Abraham, He appeared as a smoking furnace moving through the air.

We’re not really sure what in the world that means, but there was an incredible heat.

There was an incredible blaze.

When Abraham met God, he saw something that looked like a smoking furnace passing between the pieces of the dead animals he had cut up.

When He appeared to Moses and to the children of Israel, He was a pillar of fire.

When He entered the temple, He was the shekinah glory cloud, so powerful and so majestic and so great

that when it came down

nobody could even go into the temple.

Every time God had ever shown up, He was terrifying.

Now here’s the point: It’s one thing to experience God (and a lot of you have); it’s another thing to be with Him.

It’s another thing to meet Him personally. There’s a big difference.

Up until the time Jesus showed up, to get into the presence of God was totally terrifying.

A smoking furnace, a pillar of fire, a tornado or a whirlwind!

When Moses asked to see the presence of God, to see the face of God, to actually meet God personally

when he was on the mountain,

do you remember what God said?

He says, “No, but I’ll show you my hind parts.

I’ll put you in the cleft of the rock. You can’t see my face. It would kill you,

but I’ll show you my hind parts.”

We’re told even because Moses just saw God’s hind parts (whatever that means), his face was so bright

when he came down the mountain,

he had to put a veil over his face for several hours or days until the glory went away.

The people of God could not look at Moses just from the radiance of the face that had just looked on

the hind parts,

the outskirts,

the heels of God.

Now can you imagine if Job, Abraham, or Moses was here and he suddenly began to hear the message of Christmas?

: “And the Word was made flesh, and [tabernacled] among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) …”

“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

It’s in the NT, we can behold God’s glory in absolute awe and adoration without being destroyed or terrified!!

Or if they heard the message of Christmas in and 4, where Paul says, “Moses had to put a veil over his face, but Christ has removed the veil because ‘… God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ ”

They would be jumping up and he’d be saying to every one of you,

“Do you realize what this means?

This is the very thing we were denied!

This means that through Jesus Christ you can meet God.

You can know him personally without terror.

He can come into your life.

All of that majestic glory can come and embrace you and you can embrace all of that majestic glory.

Do you realize what’s going on?

Where’s your joy?

Where’s your amazement?

Why isn’t Jesus the driving force of your life?”

He indwells all that are born of His Spirit.

Those marked by repentance and faith.

God is with us.

This is Christ. He’s God with us.

Then, we see His mission...

So let’s focus our hearts upon v21

— She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Jesus saves. Jesus is the Savior.

— Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

— And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”

— God exalted this man to his right hand as ruler and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

— but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s Jesus and there is no other Savior.

What’s Jesus save us from? Our sins!

I want to connect this thought in your minds and hearts of “sin” and being “saved”.

The word “sin” in v21 means missing the true end and scope of our lives, which is God.

Biblically, our sin is, in relation to God, with the emphasis on being guilty before God because of sin.

Sin is a deviation from the truth and going into error.

Sin is deviation from the law of God.

God’s rule or straight edge.

Let me briefly expound the doctrine of sin for a moment.

Ever since the fall man rests under

the curse of sin,

that he is governed by wrong principles,

that he is governed by wrong principles, and that

and that he is totally and completely unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation.

he is totally and completely unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation.

Let’s see this in Scripture. Please turn with me to .

Paul starts with a summary statement in v10. “There is no one righteous”.

Righteousness is a legal term which expresses our legal standing with God.

Paul’s earlier teaching in Romans makes it clear that righteousness before God comes through the law.

states, “For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.”

If these are the terms, then we must begin our understanding of salvation by recognizing that everybody needs it.

People have all kinds of needs:

companionship,

employment, and even

training in life skills.

But a far more profound need stands behind all these, and

it is for this need,

that the gospel is preached

—our need to gain righteousness before God.

Unless we are justified before God, the wrath of God abides on us.

If perfect obedience to the law of God is the divine standard of righteousness—and it is

—then there is not a single person

who does not need to be justified before God.

And if a single sin is sufficient to condemn us to eternal punishment,

as the Bible says it is (see ),

then everyone who has committed sin needs to be justified above all else.

And if Solomon was right when he said that “there is no one who does not sin” ()

—and our universal experience confirms that he was right

—then God sent His Son into this world and to the cross

to provide the solution to the greatest need of every person.

Jesus shall save His people by providing a righteousness,

not of their own (because we have none),

but of Christ alone.

Same with the mind.

Sin has corrupted man’s thinking in such a way that people lack the ability to understand the truth about

themselves,

God, and

the world.

This is why Jesus told Nicodemus, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” ().

Until we are saved out of our depraved state, we are blind to the reality of God’s glory and righteousness.

Reflecting on Paul’s teaching (in v11) that “no one understands,”.

Paul says to the Corinthians: — But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

— But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

The key statement here is not merely that man, in sin, does not accept the truth of God,

but that man in sin is not able to receive the things of God.

Jesus taught this no less forcefully than Paul.

Explaining the Pharisees’ persistent unbelief, He said: — Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot listen to my word.

— Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot listen to my word.

This makes an important distinction, because Jesus explained that

man’s unbelief is not a result of the Bible’s obscurity.

The reason “no one understands” does not reside in a lack of clarity of God’s revealed Word.

Jesus explained that His teaching was misunderstood because His message was intolerable to sinful hearts.

At the heart of sinful mankind’s total depravity is his moral and spiritual inability to accept the gospel.

Being rooted in spiritual ignorance, man’s total depravity manifests itself in idolatry.

Paul’s catalog of depravity continues, “No one seeks for God” ().

In his quest for

meaning,

truth, and

salvation,

fallen mankind will turn everywhere except to God.

This is why such manifestly foolish ideas as the theory of evolution gain so much traction in our world,

propping up fallen man’s desperate quest to find a replacement for God.

Do we realize all of this?

Our problem IS NOT simply that we have made some bad decisions.

Our problem IS NOT just that we’ve messed up.

Our problem is that we are—at the very core of our being—

sinfully lost,

cut off from God,

condemned by God, and

consequently destined for hell.

The teaching of the depravity of man is what helps us, as a church,

to appreciate the work of Christ.

It helps us to appreciate v21 the phrase: “you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.”

How does preaching on the total depravity of man help us to appreciate our salvation?

The only way to see the greatness of the gospel is

to see how bad is our plight.

Or to put it differently, unless we know what we are being saved from,

we really don’t grasp the glory of our salvation.

Indeed, it is when we best see our lost condition

that we most treasure the gospel.

This is what the doctrine of total depravity tells us—that the only way someone like this,

someone like you and me,

is going to be made right with God is by radical grace.

And when we combine an accurate appraisal of man’s total depravity with

a biblical vision of the absolute holiness of God,

we see the gospel in all its glory.

It is when we set God’s high and right demands next to our

low and base performance, and

when we compare His glorious being with our

utter corruption,

our utter corruption,

that we see the true problem of life.

This is the great gulf between us and God,

is indeed an infinite one,

as high as the heavens are above the earth.

It is a problem that

could be solved, a

chasm that could be spanned,

only on a hill far away, on an old rugged cross,

“where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.”

Understanding the connection of our sin not only helps us to APPRECIATE THE GOSPEL more and produces a deep seated thanksgiving,

It helps all true spirituality. At least, this is what tells us: — For the High and Exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is holy, says this: “I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed.

— For the High and Exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is holy, says this: “I live in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the oppressed.

Do you want the high and holy God to dwell in your heart?

Then humble yourself before Him with the truth about yourself, and

look in total reliance to His grace for your salvation.

This is what marked the difference between the religious Pharisee and the tax collector of whom Jesus spoke in .

The two men went into the temple to pray.

The one thanked God for how good he had become, though admittedly with some help from the Lord.

The other refused even to look upward, but beat his breast and cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” ().

Jesus commented, — I tell you, this one went down to his house justified rather than the other; because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

— I tell you, this one went down to his house justified rather than the other; because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Some religious people pride themselves in their long standing church membership and all that they used to do for God!

Pride is evil and blinding.

Humble yourself and you have Jesus’s promise, you will “be exalted.”

Likewise, it was when the prodigal son realized what a swine he had become that he finally turned his heart to his father.

His return to spiritual life was marked with the words, “I am no longer worthy” (, 21).

This is true spirituality, because it leads us home to God.

So understanding our sin and salvation from sin helps us to

1. deeply appreciate the gospel more and

2. it promote true spirituality instead of prideful religion.

Thirdly, understanding sin and our salvation from sin through Jesus exalts Christ and His sacrifice upon the cross.

Without a quickened awareness of our depravity, we are Pharisees at best, though most of us are far worse.

The best we can approach is a religious performance that brings glory to us and

leaves us looking down on everybody else,

just the way many (so called) Christians today look down on the rest of society,

the Pharisee gazing down on the abortion doctor and the pervert.

Jesus knew Pharisees well, and He didn’t like them.

Far better to Him was the sinful woman who

burst in at the home of a Pharisee named Simon and

threw herself at Jesus’ feet.

Jesus said to him: “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.… Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (,47).

Forgiven people are marked by their love.

Not much love in religious churchmen.

Awe and gratitude drive the true Christian life and

draw us joyfully to God’s grace in Christ.

It is from the pit of our lost condition that

we gaze up towards our God

so high and perfect in His holiness.

But from that vantage point we come to see fully

at least one of those dimensions of the cross that Paul would long to have us know:

its height.

The cross of Christ then rises up to span

the full and vast distance

that marks how far short we are of the glory of God,

and that cross becomes exceedingly precious in our eyes.

— On that day you will say: “I will give thanks to you, Lord, although you were angry with me. Your anger has turned away, and you have comforted me. Indeed, God is my salvation; I will trust him and not be afraid, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation.” You will joyfully draw water from the springs of salvation, and on that day you will say: “Give thanks to the Lord; proclaim his name! Make his works known among the peoples. Declare that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things. Let this be known throughout the earth.

Matthew has begun his Gospel with a clear declaration that the Jesus of whom He is writing is the Messiah/Christ, the son of David.

Also, He IS the Savior of sinners.

He has already fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and will continue to do so until sin and Satan are finally destroyed.

This is the kind of reign that Christ has come to inaugurate.

And those who gain the benefits of His kingdom are those who trust Him as their Lord & Savior from sin.

Right from the beginning, Matthew is clear that belonging to the kingdom is

not a matter of trying to earn acceptance by obeying God’s laws,

but trusting and serving the Savior-King.

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