Only A Virgin Birth Can Deliver Hope

Call to Worship

Sermon

BLANK SLIDE WHILE PASTOR MATT PRAYS AFTER SONG

PRAY

Introduction: The Meaning of ''Advent''

This is great hope!

SERMON TITLE SLIDE

Only A Virgin Birth Can Deliver Hope

SCRIPTURE SLIDES

Matthew 1:18–25 (ESV)

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). 24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Matthew’s primary doctrinal goal of writing in this ways is, of course, christological — that is to highlight the divine nature of Jesus. Conceived of a virgin, Jesus is a messianic king but also embodies the reality of God’s living with his people. Both themes are important for Matthew’s Gospel.

), and the second as an inclusio around Matthew’s entire narrative (cf. Matt. 28:18–20; see Kupp 1996). Soteriology lies close at hand too, with the promise of salvation from sin.

Notice how Matthew highlights the virgin birth:

18 … When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph,

before they came together she was found to be with child

“was found” is passive, meaning that she took no part or action in her becoming pregnant. How? Well her pregnancy was “from the Holy Spirit.”

Now Joseph’s reaction was as we might expect. He’s a righteous man. He’s not self-righteous…he’s righteous in his pursuit of honoring the Lord God, and therefore he is understandably and rightly upset. But he’s also loving, so

(19)...being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But because God is involved, because the Lord initiated this...

(20) … as he considered these things, 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 (now watch this)

“...that which is conceived in her” (a child)

is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

SLIDE

Mary, a genuine virgin, will deliver hope in the person of Jesus.

Why hope? Jesus is the Divine Son who will save his people from their sins. This is a repeated promise throughout the OT. (Just one example from Isaiah’s prophecy.)

SLIDE

Isaiah 53:6 ESV

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

SLIDE

Matthew 1:22–23 ESV

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

In v 23 Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 and brings it to its fulfillment by Christ.

God with us. Toward the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry while physically on earth, Jesus kept and continued this promise by preparing his people to receive the Holy Spirit who would further be God with us except rather than alongside of us, the Holy Spirit would be within us.

SLIDES

John 15:26–27 ESV

26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. 27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

Notice the progression. Mary conceives the Son of God miraculously within Mary (remember, He’s God who works miracles) and she gives birth to Jesus who, because he is fully God and fully man lives a sinless life. This doctrine is known as the

SLIDE

Hypostatic Union — the Divine and human natures in the One Person (‘Hypostasis’) of Jesus Christ.

from this, after the conclusion of His earthly ministry the Father then sends the Holy Spirit who will bear witness to the truthful reality of the divinity of Jesus. And they who walked with Jesus will also bear witness about him (and you see this really come out in 1 John).

(See how people are tracking.)

24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

SLIDE

Joseph obeyed God even though it made no sense according to human wisdom alone.

See the lengths Matthew goes to to communicate that until Jesus was born, Mary was a virgin. “Joseph knew her not (that’s adult speak for “the didn’t have sex”) until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.”

Joseph was the earthly, adoptive, father of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and hope of the world.

Slow Down and Meditate

Now, let’s pause for a moment to let this all sink in. I’ll say this again later, but it bears saying now: when you come face to face with truths of God, particularly God’s nature and attributes, your first application is always awe and worship.

Slow. Down. And. Meditate (fill yourself with truth) On. Him.

Slow. Down. And. Praise. Him.

SLIDE

Our worship-filled response of awe and adoration matters more than our external action, because adoration fuels action.

Who you are as a worshiper determines what you do…every.time.

The Significance

the integrity of the Gospel concerning Jesus rests heavily on the truth of the virgin birth. John MacArthur says, “If Matthew and Luke are undependable in their accounts of Mary’s pregnancy occurring without male human involvement, then their entire histories of Jesus become suspect.”

the virgin birth highlights the preexistence of Jesus’ eternal nature (and the Godhead). Only a pre-existent God can send forth a God-man. Isa. 9:6 uses the word, given (“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”) Jesus already existed and was given to (and for) us.

without a virgin conception of Jesus, there is no guarantee of his sinlessness, which the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement stands upon. Paul’s claim in 2 Cor. 5:21, “For our sake God made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him (Jesus) we might become the righteousness of God.” cannot be true. Furthermore, the reality

Lastly, commentators point out that “the virgin conception/birth of Jesus ought to be part of the Christian’s confession of faith. Jesus’s birth gave him a body of flesh. The spirit of antichrist denies that Jesus came in flesh (1 John 4:1–3; 2 John 7). The believer’s confession states that Jesus took on himself flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14) in order to put away sin (1 John 3:5). That confession appears in the first line of the early Christian hymn cited by Paul in 1 Timothy 3:16: “He was manifested in the flesh.” (John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 263.)

Collin Smith says,

SLIDES

You can hardly miss the importance of the law here, because it is referred to in each of the next three verses: “And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons’” (2:22-24).

God has laws and they matter. But from Adam on, the human race has never produced a single person who has fulfilled the law of God. We produce great athletes...We produce great business leaders...We produce extraordinary minds. But the human race has never produced a single person who has fulfilled the law of God.

Christ came to do on our behalf what we had not done, and what we could not do for ourselves—fulfill the law. This is the great significance of the virgin birth. He did not come from the human race. He came to the human race. He is the gift of God to us. [Collin Smith, Unlocking the Bible; Source: https://unlockingthebible.org/lifekey/the-significance-of-the-virgin-birth/]

How does this fuel our hope and point us forward?

Every time we struggle with sin, rather than justify it, or explain it away,

recall the wondrous reality that Only a Virgin Birth Can (and Did) Deliver Hope — Jesus, who gave his life for our sin. He then ascended to the Father where He now sits and God’s right hand and the Father sent the Spirit to enable righteousness over fear, righteousness over addiction, righteousness over lying, and the list goes on.

Jesus paid the full penalty for your sin and mine, yes, but the Holy Spirit animates your righteous living.

So every time…every time...stop and rehearse this truth:

Because Mary conceived The Child as a virgin, he is holy and lived out my holy response in this decision so I am able, according to the truth and means (helps) laid out in God’s Word (the Bible, with the help of believers, and by disciplining myself) to choose what is right.

And I want to, Galatians encourages us not to grow weary in well doing.

I want to live to please God because I know it brings glory to him as I die to the knowledge meant that I still have sinful desires in me. But I also want to because I believe that because God is good promises, his demands, are always good in for my best interest.

And looking to the future, to Jesus his second ad vent, he will come for me so this struggle, the real, is not eternal and it is not the end of me because I already stand righteous in Jesus.

Over the next few weeks, relish the waiting and saturate your heart in the goodness of God in Christ.

Communion Transition and Prayer