A Birth Like None Other
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Christmas Series
Matthew 1:18-25
For the past couple of weeks, since it’s the Christmas season, we’ve been considering the importance of the Virgin Birth. We began with Isaiah 7:14. From there, we went to Isaiah 9:6 on Christmas Eve. And today we turn to the NT passage in Matthew.
I want to consider with you the concept of the Virgin Birth as interpreted by Jewish culture living among Greek society. Some skeptics have alleged that the Virgin Birth was just an early Christian myth, taking their influence from the Greek preoccupation with mythology and fantastic tales of heroes with superhuman powers. But we’re going to learn that there was zero tolerance for such thinking in the Jewish culture where these prophecies originated.
First, let’s go to the Word of God. Matthew 1:18-25. In honor of God and His Word, let’s stand for the reading of these verses.
18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” —which means, “God with us.”
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. [NIV]
[Prayer] The Virgin Birth has always come under attack because it transcends the laws of nature. The natural mind demands a natural explanation. But apart from faith in God, there can be no explanation for any of the miracles in the Bible. In the 1920s, Modernist preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick spoke openly against the Virgin Birth from his pulpit at Riverside Church in New York City. He said he simply could not believe it.
Even widely read and respected commentator, William Barclay, rejected the historicity of the Virgin Birth. But the Virgin Birth is not an option for those who call themselves Christians. Apart from the Virgin Birth (which is really the virgin conception of Jesus) we have no divine Savior. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, then nothing He claimed for Himself is true. He would not be the sinless God-Man, as Scripture uniformly relates. So the Virgin Birth is not trivial. There are no superfluous or incidental aspects regarding the person and nature of Jesus Christ. Every aspect of His life merits careful study and attention.
Matthew records that “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” This fulfills what was spoken beforehand by the prophet Isaiah: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” —which means, “God with us.” Notice how Matthew emphasizes the virgin conception of the Savior; it’s the conception by the Holy Spirit that makes His birth like none other. After the conception, the natural process of gestation looked a normal, average birth. There was no visible aura around Mary that signaled the miracle in her womb.
This gave rise to the rumors that circled around her in Nazareth. Many assumed she had been unfaithful to Joseph during their betrothal period. In fact, that was Joseph’s first thought. Others have held to the belief that Jesus was just the natural son of Joseph and Mary. Still others have claimed that she was raped by a Roman soldier and on and on. The text makes it clear that Mary had never been unfaithful to Joseph and had never had relations with any man prior to the birth of Jesus. Apart from God, there was no natural explanation for the birth of Jesus and no one knew that better than Mary herself.
In Luke 1:26, the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that God was going cause her to conceive and have a child. When she heard and understood what Gabriel was saying, she became the first skeptic of the virgin birth! She was incredulous when she asked, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” So she understood what it meant to become pregnant and made it clear that she had never done that! Luke says she was greatly troubled at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this might be. This sounds like the normal response to such news.
From Heaven’s perspective, Mary was in a highly favored position; but from earth’s perspective, she was in a very precarious position socially. Everything about her situation looked wrong. Although she was pure and righteous, the work of God in her life had the appearance of scandal. The greatest honor to a woman carried with it a sense of outward shame and embarrassment as far as the public was concerned.
Sometimes the work of God in your life will not make sense to those around you—or even to you. This miracle certainly didn’t make sense to Mary or Joseph. God doesn’t have to explain Himself, but for Mary’s sake, He did. He knows what He’s about. None of us will ever experience what Mary did, but there are smaller works of God that will touch on your life and mine. These works may cause great misunderstanding to those around us, and like Mary, we may find the truth too difficult to explain even to those who know us best. Fortunately, Joseph received a message as well. He needed to know that Mary was right in the center of God’s will.
Mary and Joseph didn’t believe in mythology, but they did understand enough biology to know that virgin’s don’t have babies. This was a never-to-be-repeated sign leading up to a birth like none other. In this Jewish culture, there was no tolerance for mythical accounts mixed with God’s plan for redemption. But the Greek culture was full of such legends.
In Greek literature Virgil wrote about the plight of humanity and the need for a new type of person to help man out of his predicament. Such a person, he said, would need to be a virgin-born person who was half god and half man. Pagan mythology had stories of relations between a god and a woman or a goddess and a man; the offspring would be a “hero” of legend. The New Testament passage is not the story of any such half god and half man but is rather the expression of Incarnation. This affirmation of faith is that God came to us in Jesus of Nazareth so that we might know authentically what God is like. Jesus was not half God and half man; He was fully God and fully man. Jesus had to be born of a virgin because there was no other way for Him to be the sinless God-man… made in the likeness of sinful man.
Since the Jewish culture had no tolerance for the mythology that Greek society embellished, when Isaiah wrote that a virgin would conceive and bear a son, it was taken as a miraculous statement of fact. It was a sign. A sign always points to something. A young woman having a baby isn’t much of a sign; young women have babies all the time. But if a virgin has a baby, that’s different—that’s a sign. This is the reason why the seventy translators of the OT Septuagint translated the Hebrew word alma with the Greek word parthenos; not just a young woman, but a young virgin woman. This is the way historic Judaism interpreted Isaiah’s words and this is the way the NT writers interpreted these prophecies.
It points to the fact that God took on human form in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived a sinless life and died a substitutionary death. Three days later, God raised Him from the dead and He was seen by many witnesses. He ascended bodily into heaven and now sits at the right hand of God making intercession for His people. If you’re a Christian, Jesus is praying for you from His throne right now. From that exalted position, He will once again return just as He left and He will establish His perfect kingdom, just as He said. The Word of God is reliable, it’s dependable. Even though the natural mind cannot accept these truths, just like the Virgin Birth, all of this will likewise come to pass.
Since the NT came out of the Jewish tradition that rejected mythology, the assertion that the early Christians invented the Virgin Birth to dramatize the birth of Jesus is at odds with the character in which the NT was written. What is amazing is the simple understatement of the humble birth of Jesus to poor parents who had to spend the night in a feeding stall because there was no room for them in the inn. A hero legend would have placed Him in a palace. The NT is an unembellished statement of facts.
Then there is the biological hurdle. If the biological objection is what stops a person from accepting the Virgin Birth, how can that person accept the first sentence in the Bible, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” That means God created everything there is from nothing. Compared to creation, the Virgin Birth seems like a minor miracle. But even greater than the biological miracle that a virgin would conceive is the moral miracle of the sinless life that Jesus lived. The life that Jesus lived is the greatest—and most overlooked—miracle of all. His sinless life validated everything the Bible predicted about Him. His perfect life made the Virgin Birth not only plausible, it made it necessary. Without it, there was no suitable explanation for the birth of the sinless God-Man who took on human form. Without the Virgin Birth, we have no explanation for the sinless life that Jesus lived.
It was a birth like none other. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh; He was born of a virgin; He lived a sinless life; He died a substitutionary death; He rose physically from the dead; He ascended bodily into heaven; and He is coming back again to establish His kingdom on earth.
When He returns the next time, it won’t be as a little baby. It will be as a conquering King on a white horse. He is coming as the Sovereign Judge to establish perfect righteousness. Are you ready? The Bible tells us that the time to get ready is right now. Don’t wait. Live in a state of readiness, like Paul, who wrote in 2 Timothy 4:8—“there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award me on that day; and not only to me, but to all who have loved His appearing.”
Let’s pray.
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
2004