A King is Born

Happy Christmas. 18 Thisis how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.[1]

That’s Matthew 1:18 and our starting place for today.

Matthew has just laid out a bunch of names in a family tree leading from Abraham to Jesus. Those names include people from the powerful to the pitiful, a sign of the people Jesus came to gather together: Everyone.

In this verse, he starts by laying out the premise he intends to spend his whole book proving: Jesus is the Messiah.

Messiah = highest of all kings / King of Kings

Figure long promised to God’s people – many scriptures point to this promised figure. Matthew is telling us his story with an intentional focus on demonstrating that Jesus is this long-awaited King of Kings, the Messiah people had been hoping would appear for centuries.

And so he starts the story at the beginning – with the birth of Jesus, who he says is the Messiah.

We begin with the parents, who he says were pledged to be married. Or. more specifically, who he called “betrothed.”

Let me give you a 60 second overview of marriage practices back in the day.

Marriages were usually arranged between families, often while the happy couple was still too young to really know about it. Other times, a man of marriageable age might spot an interesting young woman of near marriageable age and get his family to approach her family.

This informal agreement was called an engagement and it was a non-binding agreement between the families that when the time came to move to the next step, they’d consider this match as having first claim, so long as nothing had come up to make one of the participants less desirable.

The next step came when both of the participants were old enough to be considered marriageable. For young women, this was between the ages of twelve and fourteen. By that point she would have learned the basics of running a house, which could be anything from baking bread to making textiles to managing a business to some combination of those and other things. She brought skills to the pairing, which is what helped set the dowry payment the groom would make.

The groom was generally between 18 and 20, sometimes younger. He would have to be established in his trade, able to earn a living for a family, provide a home for his wife-to-be within a year or so, and pay the bride price to her family.

When both families agreed the bride and groom were ready to be officially paired, a betrothal ceremony would be held.

This was legally binding and usually involved payment of some or all of the expected payment. The couple was officially considered married, EXCEPT they each remained with their own families and they still were not permitted to see one another without chaperones. This was especially true in Galilee, the region we are told Joseph and Mary were from. Sex and the other benefits and responsibilities of marriage were not available to them until the final stage of marriage, which involved – usually – a big party which could last up to a week and included a fairly public consummation and acknowledgement that the bride had been delivered – umm, how to put this delicately? – intact, prior to the groom breaking the seal, as it were.

The betrothal stage before the married stage was considered sacred, and any violation broke both religious and civil laws. It was kind of a big deal. Usually lasted a year while the groom prepared a place to bring his bride back to, be that acquiring or building a house or building their own room onto his parents home.

Did I get all that in in 60 seconds?

Mary and Joseph got betrothed, he went to work on making a place for her, and she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, which you can read about in Luke’s gospel, and when she came back after several months, she was pregnant.

I know that the scripture says it was by the Holy Spirit. And let me be clear that I believe this to be the truth, for a few reasons. But if your fiancé showed up for your wedding pregnant and you knew you hadn’t been involved in whatever brought that up, would your thought be, “Wow, I bet this is the first time in history that God has just reached down from heaven and used asexual reproduction to create a human baby”?

Or would you think you had been betrayed?

19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. [2]

Maybe you don’t understand why he wouldn’t give her a chance – or a second chance, as it were.

It wasn’t an option! Not in their community. Not in their culture. Not in their world.

Let me explain.

Jewish law demanded that he divorce her at once! In fact, if a bride is found not to be a virgin, there was an expectation that she would be publicly charged. It wouldn’t be much of a trial, would it?

“Your honor, Mary isn’t a virgin.”

“Your proof?”

“Look at her. She’s at least six months pregnant.”

“Guilty!”

That’s their community. In the larger culture, this kind of thing was viewed as corruption on her part, and it brought shame to her father and their whole family. Especially if she was betrothed, because that broke all the vows that had been made as well as the moral and legal implications. Any groom was expected to loudly and vehemently repudiate a woman with that kind of shame attached to her. To allow his feeling for her to sway him towards any other course would have brought that same shame on him and he would have been viewed as weak and dishonorable.

Adultery was seen as the stealing of another man’s prized possession: the undivided affections of his wife. It was the ultimate theft, and one that demanded a response.

Legally, the situation wasn’t any better. Roman law said he needed to divorce her immediately. Failure to do so legally made him her pimp and he could be prosecuted as a panderer who exploited his wife as a prostitute.

So even if he wanted to – and there isn’t really any reason to think that he DID want to – staying married to Mary wasn’t a choice Joseph could make without some serious repercussions. The best they could hope for was that people would assume he had somehow gotten her alone, away from their chaperones, and that their youthful libido had gotten he better of them and they had dishonored themselves and their families and their God and had been punished with a child to bring their sin to light.

Remember, there hadn’t been a virgin conception before. Mary wasn’t claiming she had been raped. Joseph knew he hadn’t slept with her. He could only assume that she had dallied with another man.

He had no choice. He had to divorce her. It is a mark of his Godly character that he decided to do it quietly rather than in a showy way that would make it clear none of the shame should be attached to him.

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.”[3]

Joseph got something many of us have wished for from time to time: Divine reassurance that a difficult path is the right one. Notice what he’s promised: Mary hasn’t been unfaithful and Jesus is coming to save his people from their sins.

Sins = harmartia= missing the mark or missing the point of life, which is life together with God. Hold onto that idea for a moment.

God telling Joseph that Mary hasn’t been unfaithful removes any legitimate reason for him to divorce her. All of the previous challenges and dangers to their honor and positions in society remain. But following through on making Mary his wife is the God-honoring thing to do, and we have been reassured that Joseph is a man who honors God.

The name Jesus comes from a Greek word meaning “God with him”. In Hebrew it is “Yeshua” (Or Joshua, if you want to Americanize it), which means “the LORD delivers”. Any way you look at it, it is related to this traditional idea of God coming to save his people.

Matthew, remember, is using his opportunity to write a biography of Jesus to show that Jesus was and is the promised Messiah. He sees this dream and the name of Jesus as an opportunity to reinforce an important connection. But, be careful when you listen to this. The connection may not be entirely what you think it is. Verses 22 and 23:

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” w (which means “God with us”).[4]

Okay. Why is this important? [Pause – are there answers?]

NOT the virgin birth. Again, I think that is an important part of the story and I believe it to be true, but it isn’t really the connection Matthew is trying to emphasize. Here, let’s go to the passage he’s quoting from. Isaiah 7:14!

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin h will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.[5]

And Immanuel, as Matthew was so kind as to translate for his Greek-speaking readers, is Hebrew for “God with us.”

Without running down an hour-long rabbit trail of prophecy about this child in the book of Isaiah, let me just point out one more of the things said about him. This is a page or two to the right in Isaiah 9:6:

6 For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.[6]

Wait, what?

We’re going to call this kid GOD? As in, the CREATOR? The Most High?

But he’s being born to us?

To be WITH us?

Wow, that sounds like something we want to be VERY careful about. The LORD isn’t big on us worshiping others, even accidentally.

We’re going to have to be sure that the kid who grows up to be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, andPrince of Peace is the right one. How can we know?

Oh, wait, Isaiah told us there would be a sign. Something that would help us know who this is.

What was that again?

Ah, yes. The virgin will conceive.

By the way, there is no virgin birth in scripture. We are promised a virgin conception and that’s what happens in Mary’s case. The idea that she somehow remained a virgin AFTER that is both a rejection of the idea that Jesus was fully human and fully God and counter to what we can know from what Matthew tells us at the end of chapter 1.

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 did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.[7]

The marriage wasn’t consummated until AFTER Jesus was born, but it was certainly consummated. They wouldn’t have been considered married without having crossed that line.

There wouldn’t have been the party. There wouldn’t have been the public encouragement. There wouldn’t have been the proof of the blood-stained sheet usually claimed by the bride’s father to demonstrate her purity at the time of marriage. The birth of a child would have – what did I call it earlier? – broken the seal, as it were.

But to live together as husband and wife, a Godly couple living out the requirements of their faith and culture would have shared in the three things a husband is required to provide: Shelter, food, and sex so they keep up their end of God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.

That’s already much more graphic than I’d intended to get during a Christmas message.

And, again, neither the virginal conception nor the details of how that worked or didn’t work are the point of this story. We’ve focused on it as part of our Christmas tradition for centuries, and I’ve spent WAY too much time on it today, because it isn’t the point. It’s a signpost, showing us the way to the point.

The point is that somehow, in the birth of this child, God came to live alongside his people at last.

Immanuel. God with us.

In the Fourth gospel, chapter 14, we see this exchange:

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”[8]

9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.[9]

If you want to see God, just look at Jesus.

Jesus who was and is the Messiah.

King of kings and Lord of lords.

Wonderful Counsellor.

Mighty God.

6 Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.[10]

Immanuel. God with us.

How cool is that?

Best Christmas present ever.

As you head into the coming year, remember the examples of Mary and Joseph, willing to do what God asks even when it took them somewhere neither of them ever expected or would have asked to go.

And go and do likewise.

Close in prayer

[1] The New International Version (Mt 1:18). (2011). Zondervan. [2] The New International Version (Mt 1:19). (2011). Zondervan. [3] The New International Version (Mt 1:20–21). (2011). Zondervan. [4] The New International Version (Mt 1:22–23). (2011). Zondervan. [5] The New International Version (Is 7:14). (2011). Zondervan. [6] The New International Version (Is 9:6). (2011). Zondervan. [7] The New International Version (Mt 1:24–25). (2011). Zondervan. [8] The New International Version (Jn 14:8). (2011). Zondervan. [9] The New International Version (Jn 14:9–10). (2011). Zondervan. [10] The New International Version (Php 2:6–7). (2011). Zondervan.

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