Amen. And please be seated. Now, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 1. We've actually been studying the Gospel of Matthew at great length, interspersed with other books, and we return to the early chapter for an obvious reason.
The Son of God became the Son of Man to make the sons and daughters of man become the sons and daughters of God. It's a glorious thing, the appearing of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus. And of course, we wait in hope for His second appearing. And so we hear at Christmas the hope that we have.
And let me invite you to consider our Lord Jesus this morning for Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 through 25 and the hope that He gives us. This is God's holy and inspired Word. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But 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 that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, he took his wife. But he knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus. Amen.
This is God's Word of good news, of great joy for all the people. Let's look to him in prayer. Father, give us eyes to see your own beloved son, the Lord Jesus, and grant that he would even this day, even this hour, save us from our sins through faith in him. In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen. Amen. I want you to see three things about Jesus this morning. First, his ordinary family.
Second, his extraordinary conception. And thirdly, his genuine humanity. First his ordinary family. Now you may say, that seems like there's not a whole lot that's very ordinary about what is going on here.
Angels appearing to Joseph in a dream, a virgin conceives. We'll get there. We'll get to the extraordinary. But I do want you to see something wonderful about the very ordinariness of his family life.
That is, he grew up in a regular, what the Bible would call it, godly, believing human family. Notice this language verse 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ took place this way when his mother had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together. She was found to be a child by the Holy Spirit. Mary was a young Jewish girl, pledged to be married to Joseph.
How old she was or how old he was with any great certainty, though they were probably pretty young as would have been typical. He was likely a few years older than her, which also would have been typical. But they are betrothed. And that means something more than engagement in our culture and our day.
In our day, you get engaged to be married and you set a date for the wedding and engagements are sometimes broken off and sometimes for very good reasons. But the word here for betrothed is stronger than our engagement. They had formed, covenantally and publicly, a kind of marriage, one that had not even consummated. There was going to be a period of time before it was.
But breaking that would have been actually considered an actual divorce, which is different than our day. And so here they are, their husband and wife, they've pledged that in front of witnesses, but she did not yet live in his house. And the couple didn't enjoy all the privileges and all the responsibilities of married life. They hadn't engaged in sexual relations, which is clear from the passage, until later when they lived together.
And so it explicitly says Joseph himself had not been with her. So then he finds out and probably either she told him or it just became obvious, as pregnancy will, that she's expecting a child. And Joseph knows that he hasn't been intimate with her and he naturally assumes that she has been unfaithful to him. That's the normal thing a man would think.
He slept with somebody else and gotten pregnant. And we really can't imagine how that would have broken his heart, although some of you know something of that kind of sorrow when what ought to be a covenantally faithful relation is actually broken. And so here you have Jesus growing up a family where the parents have been for a season anyway, certainly Joseph for a season with a broken heart. And so Christmas begins with an almost divorce, as another put it.
And Joseph is pondering, well what should he do? What should he do with Mary now that she's obviously with child? And his response puts on display his character. And I want you to see that.
So often it is the case that our character is revealed in hard, difficult, puzzling circumstances. And he's in one of those. And what comes to the fore is his own character. It says in verse 19 that he was a righteous man and that he was a kind man.
Her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly. And as my old pastor noted, this is just a wonderful picture of a man who trusts in God. A man who saved by grace through faith in the promised Messiah. Because he is a righteous man, he determines to divorce her, right?
He cares about God's intentions for marriage. He thinks she's unfaithful and he doesn't want to continue in a relationship where she'll continue to be in his mind, perhaps unfaithful. He knows that marriage is set apart by God for covenantal faithfulness. And though he loves Mary, he also loves God and he doesn't want to be part of an adulterous marriage, understandably.
But at the same time it says he's a kind man. He does not do what he could have done. In the Old Testament, for instance, a woman who was found in adultery, who was betrothed to a man, could have been stoned to death. Capital punishment for the moral sin and crime of adultery.
It was a thing in the Old Testament, not that it was often practiced. And by the days of the New Testament, we know that it was rarely practiced. And yet it was possible. And he could have, even not going so far, certainly he could have put her to open public disgrace and shame simply by denying the child is his and divorcing her and casting her off.
But he doesn't want to put her to open in public shame. So he resolves it says to divorce her quietly. He intends to divorce her, but he doesn't want to do her further harm. And he further harm that he believes she has already done to the prospect of married life together.
And so he wants to do the right thing, but he wants to do the kind and merciful thing. And as Ligendunken put it, my old pastor, there are many who are righteous, but who are not kind. And there are many who are kind, but they are not righteous. And isn't it wonderful that the Lord got picked for his son, a man who was so like himself, both righteous and merciful.
I don't know how that hits you. But oh, may the Lord make us kinder and more merciful. And as we love what's right and think what's right and say what's right and do what's right, and none of us does that perfectly well. And so here in verses 20 and 21, we see that God himself comes to her rescue, so to speak, that as Joseph has decided to put her away quietly and the angel of the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream and says, Joseph, don't do that.
What you're thinking about Mary is wrong. She hasn't done anything wrong. She is, as Luke says, a highly favored one, a graced one is that language. It's not that she deserved to have the eternal Son of God conceived in her womb.
No, she's graced. She's favored. But it's an extraordinary gift and generosity from the Lord that she of all women would be singled out for this. And so the angel says to her, your wife is innocent of the thing you think she's done.
That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And so the angel then says, don't put her away. But would you notice that even as he does so, he reminds Joseph as he's about to face this great call to obedience and obedience in the face of what could be a potentially very difficult, very, very publicly scandalous thing. He reminds him, Joseph, remember who you are.
I mean, because you understand that Joseph wanted to put her away because he didn't want to be in an adulterous marriage, but he also wouldn't have wanted his own reputation to suffer a blow. If he stays with her, I'm sure he's thinking, well, everybody's going to figure out that while we are betrothed and we weren't supposed to, we did. And they're going to cast dispersions on my character, right? And I'm never going to escape that reputation in this small town and community in which we live.
And so he's facing a great challenge of obedience and he's facing the potential score, certainly the misunderstanding of others. Later they'll say, of Jesus is not this, the carpenter's son. Of course, they don't understand yet. Jesus is God the father's son.
And so what does God do? The angel says to him, now, Joseph, I want you to remember who you are as you face this difficulty. Joseph, son of David, he says, do not fear to take her. He reminds him and he lifts him up and he encourages him, even as he calls him to great humility.
And he says, I know who you are. I know that you're a righteous man. I know that you're a kind man. And don't forget that you're also of the Kingly line of David, the line of the Messiah, something extraordinary is happening here.
And she's pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Oh, son of David, don't you know that the final son of David, so to speak, the culminating son of David is going to come even through your family. And so God instructs him, take her as your wife, name the boy Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. And so he woke up verse 25 and he did as the Lord commanded.
He believed the Lord, he trusted the Lord, he obeyed the Lord, and he took Mary into his home. And so what that means, I mean, I'm talking about angels and God speaking and you say, again, that's extraordinary and it is. This is not the common everyday thing. But what is so ordinary about this is that God placed his son then into a wonderful human family.
God placed him into a home where not only he had a mother, but he had a father, a father who adopted him, so to speak, not his natural father, but a father who embraced him as his own to raise him in the faith. And it's a reminder to us of what a wonderful thing it is, what a glorious thing it is. What an ordinary thing it is to have a mother and a father and be raised by a mother and a father. God could have done this differently.
God could have worked it out so that it worked out fine doing it differently. We know that in a broken world, it does work out differently for some of us, where we weren't raised by a mother and a father who were committed to one another and faithful to one another and loved one another. We know there's a world of pain and sorrow associated with that, certainly. But the ideal is to be a child who has a loving mother and a loving father and a father and mother who loved one another.
And Jesus got to be raised in that setting. And that doesn't mean they were sinless, that doesn't mean they were perfect, that doesn't mean they did it all right. Of course not. In fact, what's happening is Jesus is going to learn.
He's going to be trained from the earliest age in a place where he can be loved and see firsthand what marriage actually is, what family life is really like. He can see close up what it takes for a man to live with and love his wife. What it takes for a wife to live with and love her husband. And he can learn firsthand what it feels like to be the child of imperfect parents who don't love the way that they ought to love, who don't love each other, the way that they ought to love because they are sinners and don't even love their son the way that he ought to be loved because they ought to love him perfectly.
And yet he's going to grow up in this situation where, well, like all of us grow up where, well, we ought to hear our parents say, I'm sorry and I was wrong and please forgive me. I haven't been what I should be for you. Mary and Joseph weren't for him. All that they ought to have been.
No parent, no fallen parent is. And so Jesus can in being raised in this ordinary family, by the way, a family with half brothers and sisters and will come to that, he can sympathize then with us in the challenges of family life. He's lived the experience. He can sympathize with the difficulty of imperfect people living together day after day after day.
He can sympathize with adopted children. He can sympathize with those who are in a blended family because his siblings don't have the same father that he does, not earthly father. And so he was raised in this ordinary family by a mom and a dad. But we see not only the ordinary family of our Lord Jesus, but we see the extraordinary conception of our Lord Jesus.
He was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, verses 22 and 23. All this took place to fulfill with the Lord had spoken by the prophet, that's a prophet, Isaiah, behold, 700 years before the coming of Jesus, the prophet said, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. The incarnation, which is what we're celebrating in this season, means the inflesement of God, God to human flesh, the Son of God added to himself a human nature without ceasing to be divine. And he did it by the Holy Spirit, supernaturally and mysteriously, causing there to be in the Virgin Mary's womb a living, growing, fertilized egg with all the normal characteristics of a human, yet without the contribution of an earthly father.
Mary contributed of her body, that is, as we know, an egg, 23 chromosomes, X chromosomes. But in an ordinary situation, the other 23 chromosomes, the Y chromosomes are provided by a human father and yet there's not a human father and yet there's a son. And so in some mysterious and supernatural way, by the workings of the Holy Spirit, God contributed in such a way that you have a true human being, a male human being, one in which deity is united to humanity in the one person, the Lord Jesus. He is Immanuel, God with us.
And Mary was a virgin when all this came about. Matthew tells you that. Luke tells you that with apologies to my Sunday school class from last week as we looked at this portion of the creed. Let me reiterate it for you just a bit this morning.
Matthew and Luke both tell us that she was a virgin. That of course does not mean that married sexual relations are somehow bad or wrong. There has been a tradition in the church that has taught that married sexual relations are a necessary evil, but evil they are. That is not the point that this passage is making.
It's certainly not commending abstinence in marriage. But she was a virgin and it's also not affirming that she remained a virgin for the rest of her natural life. Although there are branches of the church which have taught that historically. The meaning of verse 25, Joseph knew her not until she had given birth to a son.
Well, the natural sense of that until is that Joseph and Mary had a normal married life after Jesus was born. Contrary to the view of her perpetual virginity, she didn't perpetually remain a virgin. The natural sense of Luke calling Jesus her first born son indicates also that she had other children. In Matthew 12, 46, and in the Gospel of Mark we learned that there were other children, brothers and sisters, even four brothers, at least two sisters, who are half brothers and half sisters to our Lord Jesus.
Now of course as you talk about the virgin birth, some people it makes their head explode. And they get all up in arms and say, well this cannot be. It's impossible. So Matthew must have made it up.
Or it's based on a misinterpretation. You're just reading the Bible wrong. This is not what it says. How would we respond to that?
Well, we would say this. Why do Christians believe in a virgin birth? Well, because we believe in miracles. We believe in God who spoke the universe and who exists.
We believe in a God who raises the dead and gives them everlasting life. We believe there's nothing impossible for God. He can do all that he wants to do. He can do all his holy will.
And there is, as others have told the story, a story of C.S. Lewis, and some of you remember this, he was in his office in the English department when a friend who was a skeptical non-Christian wandered in. And there were carolers below in the courtyard outside the window singing Christmas carols. And the two were speaking Lewis and his friend.
They could hear them singing a Christmas carol that contained the words about Jesus virgin birth. And his non-Christian friend said to C.S. Lewis, isn't it good that we know better than they did? And Lewis said, what do you mean?
And he said, well, isn't it good that we know more than they did? And Lewis said, I'm afraid that you're going to have to explain. He said, well, isn't it good that we now know that virgins don't have babies to which Lewis responded. Don't you think they knew that?
Of course they knew the whole world knows that. They've always known that. The whole point of it is that it's a miracle. And Christians believe this, knowing it's a miracle.
Now, some critics of Matthew here in Luke and Matthew in chapter one and two, Luke and chapters one and two, some critics will note that the virgin birth is explicitly mentioned here, but nowhere else in the New Testament. Not with this kind of explicit language. And they'll say, so this is a doctrine that's not really that important. This is a truth that the Apostle Paul doesn't teach or Peter doesn't preach, John doesn't teach and so on.
And so you know what? Actually, probably Matthew and Luke kind of made this up as the backstory for the hero they wanted to elevate in the eyes of people, but it didn't really happen. But of course, if you say that, if you say that because it's only in Matthew and Luke and only in the earliest chapters, then just recognize if that's your position and maybe that's not your position, but as you hear these kinds of things, just recognize the other things that you would have to throw out about Jesus if you throw out the virgin birth because it's only mentioned in two gospels in just a couple spots. If you throw out Matthew one and two and Luke one and two, you also aren't going to believe that Jesus was born, that Jesus was laid in a manger, that Jesus had wise men come to visit him, that shepherds came to visit him because it's only in Matthew and Luke where those things are mentioned as well.
If you start throwing one thing out, you've got to throw out a whole bunch of things. And I don't think we want to go down that road. Now, the other objection to the virgin birth and the last one I'll mention here before we move on to our final point is that some people have looked at the whole doctrine of the virgin birth and say it's based on a misinterpretation. It's based on a misinterpretation of Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 which is picked up and quoted in the New Testament, behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they'll say something like this.
In the Old Testament, in Hebrew, in Isaiah 7, that word virgin just means young maiden. The word alma means young maiden and it's just been a misinterpretation ever since. No, it's just a young maiden who is going to have a child. That's what they'll say.
What we say in response to that. Well, one thing to say is this, that in Hebrew culture, a young maiden unmarried was presumed to be a virgin. This is where you get the idea that she was a virgin actually because it was assumed that she would not have been intimate until she was actually married. But further, and this is a really big point, in the New Testament, the writers clearly use the word virgin.
Even when they quote Isaiah 7 verse 14, they quote the Greek version of the Old Testament written 250 years before the coming of Jesus. And those authors translated to the Hebrew into Greek, they used the word for virgin and then when Matthew and Luke came along, they quoted that language under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and applied the word virgin to Mary. And the virgin birth, we should say then, is important. It's vital to Christianity.
It's basic Christianity. This is how the Christ came into the world in Him through the miraculous overseeing of the Holy Spirit. Deity and humanity unite in one person, even from the very beginning of his earthly beginning, from his conception. Deity and humanity unite.
So you see his ordinary family, you see his extraordinary conception, and one final thing you see then his genuine humanity. He was indeed fully human and yet like us and without sin. And this is so important that we understand this. Jesus didn't simply seem to be human.
He actually was human. He is ex-Maria. He is out of Mary, out of the womb of Mary, out of the very stuff of Mary. And so Deity and humanity unite in one person and that means he's really human and he had a human body.
Jesus had a real, that is, true human body. He was an infant and he grew up to be a child and then an adolescence and then a grown man with all the same physiology and biochemistry and with a central nervous system and its ability to feel pain just like any human being. And so one of the wonderful things about that is that Jesus knows what it is. God knows what it is to, well, in adding finite humanity to himself, he knows what it is to live finite.
That is to say with all the limitations of being human, being located in one place at one time. Only having 24 hours in a day. Being a human who grows tired and weak and sleepy and needs to sleep. Hours and hours every day.
I mean some of us I think wish that we had a third arm. I think mothers with little ones, maybe even a fourth arm, arm and hand. Oh, I could do so much more if I wasn't limited by humanity, by my humanity. Well Jesus understands what it is like to be limited, to have only so many hours in a day, to never travel outside the, well, Israel and Samaria, the little journey he made.
He knows what it is like to be in one place at one time and to only have one mouth to speak to one person at one time. He knows all of that. All of that. And he shares and can sympathize them with you and all your human weakness.
All your hunger and thirst as well. But not only did he have a human body, he had a human mind. Jesus had a human mind and his human mind was limited and finite. He had to gather and store and organize information.
He was not at the level of his humanity, infinite or omniscient. In accordance with his divinity, he knew all things. But in accordance with his humanity, he actually learned and grew, as Luke tells us, he increased in wisdom and in stature. He accumulated ever increasing knowledge and common sense.
His finiteness, no misunderstanding, doesn't mean he was fallible. He wasn't ignorant of anything he ought to have known. He never believed anything that wasn't true. But there were things in his capacity as the mediator, the God-man, in accordance with his human nature that he did not know and he freely confessed it.
Chapter 13, regarding the second coming, concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the son but only the father. Jesus confesses. That is, in accordance with his human mind, he was limited. And yet Jesus had extraordinary knowledge and we might even say he had miraculous knowledge of things and events which otherwise he had no way of knowing.
And this is because divinity was united to humanity. And the divine mind could give to his human mind all that was necessary for him to know. And so he knew for us his Lazarus was dead before he ever got to Bethany. And he knew that inside that fish's mouth there was a coin so that he could pay the temple tax if you remember that.
He knew that at the time of the Passover the disciples would go into town and find a man carrying a jar of water. And they would follow that man to the place where he would celebrate the Passover. But that doesn't mean because he had extraordinary knowledge or access to it as given. It doesn't mean that his human mind had infinite knowledge.
He still studied and read the scriptures and learned the scriptures. Well, he had a human body, he had a human mind. He also had a human emotions. John Calvin says of Jesus that he put on our feelings along with our flesh.
That is, for instance, he knew sorrow. And at the grave of Lazarus he wept and it was genuine and sincere tears. He wasn't faking it. Which reminds us of the emotions of the Lord Jesus.
And we need not be ashamed of our emotions in principle. And we need not be ashamed to weep ourselves, our Savior wept. He also knew the emotion of joy. He also knew the need for human friendship and human affection.
You remember that among the disciples, well, among the humanity he had called twelve disciples to himself to be his closest companions. But even within the twelve he had three, Peter, James and John, who got to share insights and experience with Jesus that others didn't. And he needed those human friends even as he walked as a man upon the earth. It's unsurprising then that you have a need to express your emotions and your affections and the need for human relations.
Our Savior did. It also means Jesus, his humanity means he had a human will. He has the faculty of human choice. That's part of what it means to be human.
He could choose things. So he had a divine will because God is a will. And he added to himself humanity in body and soul with a human will so that Jesus could say in the Garden of Yosemite, not as I will, but as you will in accordance with his humanity. He feared terribly the cross and drinking the cup of God's wrath.
And yet Jesus expressed his humanity and his will without sin. Jesus did it sinlessly. That doesn't mean he was something more than human. I mean he was divine, of course.
But the fact that he was sinless doesn't mean he was something more than human. Adam and Eve were originally created sinless. It's actually sinfulness is actually something less than what humanity was made for. Ideally, as originally designed, we ourselves are fallen, twisted, marred humanity.
Jesus wasn't fallen or twisted or marred. And this is so important as we close that our Savior was divine, but also genuinely human and yet also sinless. The virgin birth is important so that Jesus can save us. As the angel told Joseph in verse 21, give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.
And the virgin birth explains that you can have a divine and human and sinless Savior all at the same time. We need a human Savior because we need somebody to stand in our place and represent us and take the punishment we deserve for our sins. We needed a last Adam, a second Adam, one who was covenantally faithful when the first Adam had been covenantally unfaithful. We need one who was perfectly obedient to the law of God and who could stand in our place and suffer the condemnation of a broken law.
He needed to be human to do that in our place on our behalf. And he also needed, of course, to be sinless because he couldn't enter into and take our place if he himself was sinful and had to die for his own sins. He couldn't be a substitute for you who are sinful. He had to be sinless.
He would have been in the same boat we're in if he was sinful. He would have been in the same problem we're in. We needed somebody outside of our problem to come and rescue us. We also needed not only a human Savior and a sinless Savior, but we needed our Savior to be divine.
For there are billions of humanity. And if billions of people are to be saved, then the substitute has to be able to bear the weight of not just one other person's sins, but the sins of all who trust in him and die for all who look to him. And so we need him to bear up under the weight of the wrath of God upon the cross and not in that moment as a human crumple. And under the wrath, the just judgment of God upon the cross, we needed him to not turn in unrighteous bitterness and anger against God.
But we needed him to be covenantally faithful right to the very end which he was and he could do because he was divine and in divine nature sustained the human nature in the one person, Jesus Christ. He came, friends, why? To save his people from their sins. You are his people, all who look to him to be their Savior.
Oh, put your trust in him and he will take it all away now and forever. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gift of your beloved son. Thank you that you loved us and sent him, Jesus that you loved us and gave yourself for us.
And we praise you and we marvel that you can sympathize with us in all our weakness and frailty and do so and still be a help to us. So we ask that you would be our Savior, be our good shepherd, be our sympathizing, great high priest. Show us mercy and kindness in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Amen. Let's say it together and sing.