Sermon Tone Analysis

It continues to be a great honor and pleasure to have this time to present the Word of God to the church.

The study of God’s Word has been so refreshing to me lately.

In a world bent on muddying the words and relative truth, I am so thankful that there is a biblical truth.

I am thankful that there is one source of wisdom and guidance that is life-giving rather than all the other life-sucking voices and media that wish to influence our lives.

The Word of God is good for us!

As we discussed last week, all of it is breathed-out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness that we may be complete equipped for every good work.

We all need to know and grasp on the most basic level, that we all have a problem.

We can look around the world and understand that things aren’t exactly right.

We feel discontentment in our circumstances.

We see friends and loved ones struggling with ailments and disease.

We aren’t satisfied in our jobs, or our home, or our technology.

Even those who have just about everything you could possibly imagine want more.

Don’t believe me?

Turn on any of these reality TV shows that follow around the famous people.

Actually, I can’t in good conscience recommend you watch any of those shows about the Kardashians, but the point remains.

In those shows you will find people who have it all yet are never satisfied.

That is truly the reality of human nature.

We are never satisfied.

CS Lewis said, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.

A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.

A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.

… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.

Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

The human desire for contentment and soulful satisfaction is real.

It is a desire that all of us experience.

We try to satiate that desire with a lot of things.

I believe that is why the commercialization of Christmas has become so popular.

People want to experience hope, peace, joy, and love and so they fabricate the experiences with holiday traditions, gift giving, fairytales, and even charitable works.

None of those things are bad things, they just do not fully satiate the humans desire for contentment and soulful satisfaction.

That is probably one of the reasons why we go from December, the month in which John’s Hopkins Hospital reports that “We see the fewest reported attempts and fewest new psychiatric appointments in December,” to January, which is known as the Most depressing month of year.

Of course other factors are at play in this, but this shows me that the world’s use of holidays to lift the spirits of people may have some temporary value, but it is not lasting.

It’s like trying to open a can of spaghetti-o’s with a spoon instead of a can opener.

It’s not the right tool for the job.

The desire for spiritual contentment is real.

It says in Ecclesiastes that God has put eternity into the heart of man.

We want to be eternally fulfilled.

But the world only offers us temporary, fleeting solutions to desire.

Like drug addicts we go back to that source of temporary satisfaction time and time again, but each time the effect is less and in the back of our minds we know that the cultural, worldly solutions aren’t enough.

Implicitly, we all know, even the most self confident among us, know that we can’t satisfy the desire for eternity that is etched upon each of our souls.

So thanks be to God that Jesus said

Christ provides the solution to our eternal problem.

Christ came to satiate our heart’s desire for eternity.

While the devil, the ruler of this world, will only steal, kill, and destroy, Christ came to give life and give life abundantly!

That’s why God’s Word has been so refreshing to me as I mentioned in the beginning!

God’s Word reminds us and points us to the factual Jesus who is the actual Savior!

Over 4000 years of Human history were pointing to the coming of the promised Savior!

For 2000 years we have been looking back at His first coming while simultaneously looking forward to His Second Coming.

We celebrate Christmas because in Jesus, God stepped down from heaven to be our glorious hope.

Of course salvation comes through the substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross for all those who believe in Him, but that act of grace and saving action had to start somewhere and it started with Jesus being born to a virgin in the city of David, being wrapped and swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger.

In our text today we are going to look at the details we are given in God’s Holy Word about the birth of Jesus Christ.

We’re going to see what this passage tells us about God and what this passage tells us about us through Joseph’s reaction to everything going on.

So if you haven’t already, open up to Matthew 1. Today we are going to begin in verse 18.

Last week we saw many expressions of God’s grace seen in the lineage of Jesus and the main point we saw was that Jesus is the legitimate heir.

His lineage is traced back to David whom was promised to be given a king that would reign forever.

Jesus’ link to David proves that He is able to claim such a position.

God was true to His promise in giving Jesus to be King of kings and Lord of lords.

Now just as an interesting side fact I want to note that because of the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 there are no genealogies left in existence that can trace the ancestry of any Jew now living.

Why is this a big deal?

One Commentary states, “For those Jews who still look for the Messiah, his lineage to David could never be established.

Jesus Christ is the last verifiable claimant to the throne of David, and therefore to the messianic line.”

So the lineage we looked at last week established the royal, human connection to God’s promise.

Today, we will see the miraculous, divine root of Jesus.

He is both the Son of David and the Son of God and that is why He is the Promised Savior, the only hope in our world of Darkness.

Let’s look now at the divine nature of Lord Jesus.

Read with me Matthew 1:18

In this verse, we discover a great deal about God.

Let’s break this down phrase by phrase:

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.”

I don’t want to belabor the point because we talked about this quite a bit last week.

But it is a big deal that Jesus is called the Christ.

That word means Messiah, Anointed One.

In a six letter word as simple as Christ, there is profound meaning and audacious claims.

In referring to Jesus as the Christ, Matthew is pointed out to all of the readers of this Gospel that Jesus is the Promised Savior.

All the Jews would have been looking for the Savior to come and here he is.

I am imploring you to think about the meaning of the connection between Jesus and Christ.

It is not a last name.

It is a title.

A title for which Jesus is the only one worthy!

In Revelation we are told of a scroll upon which is written the judgments of God.

It is sealed seven times.

An angel proclaims in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open to scroll?”

And so they look all over heaven and earth and no one is found worthy.

Look at how John, the writer of Revelation responds to fact that no one is worthy:

He’s weeping because no one is able.

No one is worthy to open this scroll.

This is similar to the Israelites, they were looking for the true king, the messiah, the Christ, but no one was worthy.

But look at the next verse in Revelation

The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, IS the Messiah, that IS Jesus Christ.

He is the Worthy King of kings and Lord of lords.

He is the Promised Savior who would come from the line of David!

When we realize who Jesus really is, when we realize that He is more than a fairytale, when we realize that he is more than a man, when we realize that He truly is the Worthy Christ we are consoled in a way similar to that of John.

We can WEEP NO MORE as the angel said.

We don’t have the hopelessness of not knowing who the Savior is.

We don’t have to rely on ourselves to carry every burden anymore!

We realize that we are unworthy, but the Christ who lived, died, and rose again on our behalf is worthy when we are not!

He is Worthy!

But let’s return back to Matthew

So first in this verse we see that Jesus is the worthy Christ.

Next we see the divine nature of His conception.