Matthew 1:18-25

Hey, welcome to the Haven City Church podcast.

We're in the Book of Matthew, but before we jump into the sermon, I've been recording some street interviews with friends of ours that we serve in our food distribution line out of the Relief Center.

And these are things that they've had to say about the Book of Matthew.

So I guess at the point every time it is so on this earth to save us from our sins.

Why is so much evil continue on this earth to make us suffer for our sins?

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

I'm going to have Albert read to us, starting in verse 18.

It will also be up on the screen.

I'm going to give you a second to find it.

Settle yourselves.

Matthew 18.

Do we have any more Bibles, Marvin?

Are we cleared out?

Oh, we cleared them out.

Good for y'all.

Good for you guys.

We'll bring some more next week.

Everybody have Matthew 18?

Or some way to follow along, or you can see the screen.

All right.

This is Albert, Albert Miller, and he'd be happy to pray for you, but he's also happy to read us the Bible this morning and minister to us with his voice.

The birth of Christ came about this way.

After his mother Murray had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered that they came together, that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.

So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.

But after he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, don't be afraid to take Murray as your wife.

Because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus.

Because he will save his people from their sins.

Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.

See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel, which is translated, God is with us.

When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord's angel has commanded him to do.

He married her.

He did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son.

And his name was Jesus.

Amen.

Father, we ask now that you would speak a word, a fresh word to us in our lives.

Lord, I pray that you would just intersect our life with wisdom, with truth, where we need to be corrected, where we need to be comforted.

Lord, we we want to hear from you.

Lord, let them be tender and ready to receive all that you have for us this morning.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now we've been saying that Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience.

He's writing to a Jewish audience, and he is trying to help you and I connect the dots between how the Old Testament story unfolded and with Jesus.

So you have this whole unfolding of God's plan from Genesis all the way up through Malachi of God continually interrupting history with these little messiahs, people that are correcting, whether it's the judges or it's Moses or Joshua or David or a prophet.

You have God just interrupting the world and the course that it's on, this being really off course, and God brings in these different humans to bring about correction and healing and God's word.

And yet there is no final remedy.

We get to the end of the Hebrew Bible, and we're still waiting to see where's the Messiah.

We go back to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

You know the story about how Adam and Eve were told, do not eat from the tree of good and bad.

And that's because God wanted to be their source of good and bad, and yet they didn't follow God's instructions.

They took from the tree and God's word was fulfilled.

In the day you eat of it, you will surely what?

Die.

And this wasn't just a physical death.

They were on the clock now.

Their life, their physical body was going to expire, but immediately they experienced relational separation from God.

There was a sense of shame that they had.

They were running away from God because they felt ashamed.

They were also at uh there was some animosity between Adam and Eve.

They're blaming each other for the problem.

They're covering up their nakedness.

There's a separation in their relationship with the garden.

They're put out of the garden.

So death just in a comprehensive way comes into the world, and it has been that way from the beginning.

But in Genesis chapter 3, God said that He promised, He made a promise that He would deal with this curse that came by the serpent.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

He was gonna send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent.

And so all of Israel is waiting.

Who's gonna do it?

And by the time we get to Malachi, we still don't have that salvation.

And so Matthew, who was one of Jesus' disciples, is telling the story of Jesus.

And he is helping his readers understand this Jesus is that promised Messiah from Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

He's the one that we've been waiting for.

And so we have this story of the birth of Jesus, the conception and the birth of Jesus.

Now, do you notice, and many of you have grown up around the church and you've heard the Christmas story, but it's easy to kind of blend together the Christmas story from Luke along with Matthew, but do you see that this story is particularly told from the perspective of Joseph?

In fact, the genealogy is a genealogy of Joseph, and the narrative here is very focused on what happens with Joseph.

Let me give you just a little bit of a timeline of where we're at in this story.

If you take Luke chapter 1 and you kind of mix it together with this, we see in both accounts that Mary and Joseph are engaged.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

Then in Luke, we see in Luke chapter 1, verse 26, that Gabriel comes to Mary before she is pregnant and tells her, This is what is about to happen to you.

Luke 1:26

You are going to conceive and you're going to have a baby and you're going to name him Jesus.

Then you go a little bit further in Luke chapter 1, and Mary goes to stay with her relative Elizabeth.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

Elizabeth is six months ahead in her pregnancy, and it says in Luke 1:39 and 56 that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months.

Luke 1:39

So Mary's first trimester was spent with her relative Elizabeth.

And it tells us that it became evident, it was discovered that Mary was with child.

So let's go through the text together.

Verses 18 and 19, I'm calling this Joseph's dilemma.

I'll put it up on the screen here.

It says that the birth of Jesus Christ came about this way.

Now, those of you that were with us last week, you remember that the book of Matthew starts by saying that this is the beginning of the story of Jesus.

But really it's the account of the Genesis.

It's literally the same word that we use for Genesis is found in verse 1, Matthew 1, 1.

This word here is the same word, the Genesis of Jesus.

It can be properly translated to be the birth of Jesus, the birth, but it's that same word.

So we have this mirroring from verse 1, and then we have a new section starting in verse 18.

And it's going to say, this is the origin story of Jesus.

Now, if any of you have done therapy, you know that early on in therapy, what do you focus on?

The origin story.

Right?

What's your origin story?

Because part of our understanding who we are is understanding what it where did we come from?

How were we shaped?

Because that factors into a bit of who we are and how we process life, how we receive love, how we respond to others.

And so Matthew here is giving us Jesus' origin story.

And it says that it came about in this way.

After his mother, Mary, had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered, before they came together, before they had sex, it was discovered that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.

Let me just give you a quote.

We'll come back to the text, but this is from one commentary.

It says, in Jewish law, betrothal, which lasted one year, about one year, it was much more than our concept of engagement.

It was a binding contract, terminable only by death, which left the betrothed as a widow, or by divorce as for as if it were a full marriage.

The man was already the husband, but the woman remained in her father's house.

The marriage was completed when the husband took the betrothed to his home in a public ceremony.

So the wedding and the engagement process culturally was different from ours.

And Matthew says that Joseph and Mary are in this place.

They are betrothed.

Now, interesting, the custom at the time was that usually men are between 18 and 20 would be betrothed to a girl who had just gone through puberty between the ages of 12 and 14.

So it's very likely that Mary was somewhere between 13 and 15 years of age when this happened.

Joseph himself probably late teens, early twenties.

And it says in our text here that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.

So Matthew mentions the Holy Spirit two times in our text.

Now remember, the primary audience that's listening to this is very familiar with the Hebrew Bible.

And in Genesis chapter 1, we have this text.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Right at the beginning of creation, it says the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths.

And what is it?

It's the Spirit of God hovering over the surface of the waters.

The Spirit of God was involved in the creation account.

And it seems very likely that Matthew wants to call to his readers' attention that parallel idea.

That the creation account occurred through the Holy Spirit, and now Mary is pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

And so what we find is that there is a problem.

It says her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, just decided to divorce her secretly.

This is, first of all, this is the problem, and then we get Joseph's solution.

Now there's two solutions in the text.

But the problem is the fact that Mary's pregnant before she is married.

And that is a problem of timing and order.

It's also a problem of origin, right?

So a woman has become pregnant before she's married, and the pregnancy is not a result of a sexual relationship with the one she's engaged to.

So we have two problems that Joseph runs into, and this is his response.

Now, the interesting thing for Joseph is says that he's righteous.

Your version may say that he's just.

What this means is that he's a law-observing Jew.

He cares about the Bible.

He cares about God's instructions about marriage, sexual fidelity, and so that being his moral compass, he uh is in a difficult position.

Deuteronomy chapter 4, I believe it's Deuteronomy 4, but it's in Deuteronomy, gives a provision of what do you do in this instance.

Deuteronomy 4 · chapter mention

And since he didn't participate in impregnating her, he um needs to go through a divorce, basically.

He's kind of put into a position where obviously the trust would be undercut in the relationship.

It would um affect his public relations, his like his social standing.

And so, but he had an option at this time.

He could do a public trial.

He could bring Mary into the town square and put on kind of a show to um say, look, she's pregnant, I wasn't with her, and this is an illicit pregnancy, and it would have caused her this disgrace.

But he didn't want to do that.

His other option was to go and quietly go through a divorce process that would only require one other witness to be present.

It would have saved her face, and it was a gentle way to handle uh the situation.

Now, um, that's not what God's plan was, but that was the solution.

Now, I just I just want to say this as we go through this.

God um has no problem with letting um good people be between a hot rock and a hard place.

All throughout the story of the Old Testament and the New Testament, God allows there to be these types of um felt tension.

You kind of look at this, and it's just like Joseph um he must have felt like, what in the world is happening to me?

What is going on?

I did not sign up for this situation, and it probably gets even more so as the story goes on.

It caused him a moral dilemma.

As a law-abiding man, he um is trying to figure out what do I do?

Now, last week when we looked at the genealogy of who are the characters in Jesus' lineage, one of the things that we saw was the messiness of that genealogy.

Do you remember that?

Some of the women, there was a prostitute that was in that story, there was Tamar who had an illicit relationship with her father-in-law in order to continue on the um the line.

There's scandal after scandal in Jesus' story, and it should give us a sense of like, wow, Jesus came from a messy situation.

And again, in this story we're looking at this morning, it is messy.

It has this appearance of scandal overshadowing Jesus.

And in fact, when Jesus is grown and Jesus is in this contentious relationship with the Pharisees, the Pharisees throw at Jesus, they say, Well, we know who our father is, but you're a bastard.

You are, you have an illegitimate birth.

So what happens, this origin story is known publicly when Jesus is like 30 years from now.

This goes with Jesus.

Why would God do this?

Why does God need to like birth his son into the world in the midst of scandal?

It's like mind-blowing.

Like, why would you give the Son of God his origin story being scandalous?

Like we know it's a virgin birth, but yet the people at his time, it's like, how do you prove it's a virgin birth?

Like you say it's a virgin birth, like everybody's like, no, there's no way.

Like, come on.

No.

Nobody's taking that seriously, right?

And the Pharisees are happily throwing it into Jesus' face.

And yet, this is the plan of God.

I was asking myself this question this week.

Why would God choose to bring Jesus into the world under the shadow of scandal?

This is a God-caused mess.

Now we're good at creating our own messes, right?

Amen.

Anybody ever causing a mess?

Yes, we're good at creating messes.

This is a God-caused mess.

You have Mary, who we hear is like, she's a great lady or young girl.

Joseph, he's a righteous man, and God's like, yeah, I'm gonna mess up your life.

That's crazy.

One of the things, one of the things that I I was thinking about, and I think we have a little bit more answer to that question the further we go on in the text.

But I wonder this.

I don't know if this is the answer, but I wonder if this is a parallel to the Adam story.

Do you remember how Eve comes into the world?

Eve is not a product of a man and woman conceiving a child.

Eve is the result of a man.

Being put to sleep, and God just sovereignly takes half the guy, takes a half, and makes the woman.

And again, you have to wonder is God just putting his methods on repeat?

And you know I'm biased towards that God does put his methods on repeat, right?

You've if you've been around long enough, you know that look, you got to pay attention to how God works in your life because God puts his things on repeat.

And oftentimes, this is the thing the way God works in your life is different from how he works in my life, but it's probable that if he worked in your life one way and you had to exercise faith and you saw God reveal himself in that way, it's very likely that that scenario plays out again and again and again.

Not in my life, but in your life.

And so there is a reason to pay attention to the way in which God works.

And here we have kind of a repeat of the Genesis story with a uh a miraculous birth, a miraculous conception.

Okay, so we've seen the problem, we've seen Joseph's solution.

Let's look at the second solution that's offered to us, the angel's message in verses 20 and 21.

After he, this is Joseph, after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, well, you know what, before we even get there, before we get to what the angel said, I just want you to sit with this for a second.

Look at look at what it says in right there.

It says, but after he had considered these things, this means that Joseph lived with this tension in his life for a little while.

He was uncomfortable.

He was uncomfortable, right?

Joseph was in this place where life was hard and there was this issue that was open-ended.

Have you ever been in that place?

Do you have questions in your life right now where it's just like, I don't know how this is gonna get worked out?

And there's a place where you're considering it and you're mulling it over and you're like, God, I don't know how this is going to get solved.

Listen, don't feel bad if you're in that place.

Because God works in that context.

Do you know how, like, were you I I was in a play when I was probably like in seventh or eighth grade, right?

I was Aslan.

Yes, I drove dressed up in a full like uh lion's outfit.

Yes.

And so here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

I I um participated in setting that stage.

They borrowed, they borrowed my desk from my bedroom.

We set this stage so that because it was like a little homeschool play thing, and we were participating and not just acting, but the props.

And this is what I want to propose to you is that God sets the stage in your life so that He can look good in your life.

Now, you have to be a willing participant in that.

And here in Joseph's life, God is setting the stage.

Joseph's not like Joseph didn't like decide, like, okay, I'm in high school, what do I want to do for college?

I want to sign up to be, you know, the virgin's husband.

You know, I want to get a degree in that.

Like, no, this was not Joseph's plan.

This is like God's, you know, historic redemptive purpose is like bisecting the lives of people who are like completely blindsided by this.

And he's sitting there considering these things, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

So it it I don't know why God does it this way for Joseph, but it's not like a dream is good enough, but it's like, hey, you're gonna have a dream, but in your dream is gonna be an angel, and the angel's gonna give you the message, which is wild, right?

And so here's what the angel says to Joseph Son of David, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

God gives Joseph a dream with an angel telling him, first of all, to not be afraid.

Not be afraid.

You see, when you encounter God in your place of tension, and God is just speaking to you and ministering to you, one of the things that goes away that God wants to take away is your fear.

Because when you're living in this place and you're in that place of tension and you're considering, you're afraid.

You're afraid, how's the future going to work out?

And what God wants you to know is that you don't have to fear.

That's for you this morning.

If you're willing, if you're a willing participant in what God is doing in your life on the stage of your life, you can confidently let go of fear.

You can confidently let go of fear and trust that God has a good plan.

Not only does God tell him to stop being afraid, not to be afraid of the marriage, he says God, God explains to Joseph that this pregnancy is from the Holy Spirit.

So this angel provides Joseph with some more data, which is important because look, if the girl you're engaged to comes and says, Hey, I'm pregnant, it's the Holy Spirit, believe me, it's like, yeah, I don't know.

I really want to dream with an angel.

I think that would be helpful, right?

So that's the second thing is that this angel explains to Joseph the origin of this pregnancy.

And then the third thing, God gives Joseph instructions on what to name the baby boy.

He says, I want you to name him, but God explains to Joseph why he is giving him this name.

I want you to name him Jesus, but then he says, I want you to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

In Matthew, Jesus, Yesus, it reflects the Hebrew uh Yahshua, my my name, Joshua, and it means Yahweh saves.

So Yesus is based off of the Hebrew Yeshua.

Um in English it's Joshua, so basically what we could say is that Jesus' name was Joshua.

But when it gets translated over to Greek, it is Jesus.

Right?

And that's a little confusing.

But anyway, let's keep going with the quote.

In the Jewish world, names were not just marks of identification, but they're symbols containing the hopes and prayers of the parents for their children.

Jesus means that through him, God promises that salvation will come to his people.

The very name that is given to Jesus contains a promise of God that he's going to take away their sins.

This is really important.

If you're considering a relationship with Jesus, fundamental to being a follower of Jesus is that you understand that Jesus is saving us from our sins, not saving us, saving good people from sinners.

I talk to people who are, you know, coming through the Compassion Center, people who, you know, are in the line, and I talk about Christianity.

People who are not yet followers of Jesus.

And I oftentimes get this idea of like, well, I'm a good person, so you know, I'm just gonna keep being a good person, and maybe I'll go to church and God's got to have me.

You know, he's he I've earned, you know, a place in heaven because I'm so good.

But fundamental to the person of Jesus and being a follower of Jesus is that you understand you are in a position where you're drowning in your own guilt and you need to be rescued from your sin.

Jesus comes on the scene where all of us, all of humanity, is condemned for sinning against God.

The word here is uh harmartia, harmatia.

It sin refers to the basic self-centered aversion towards God's laws.

I don't know why the word sin is there.

There should be a period after laws.

Um this is harmatia here, the basic New Testament term, 48 times in Romans alone, means a failure to keep God's standard and contains also the results, the guilt that one has before God.

The Bible teaches a lot about Jesus, but the stage, again, that stage that's set in order to have a relationship with Jesus is a understanding, a fundamental acceptance that you're guilty.

Now, some people don't like to be told they're guilty.

Some people are like, I don't want to have anything to do with Jesus because I don't like to admit that I'm wrong.

I don't want to admit that I've failed God.

And if that's where you're at, you just need to know that the Bible comes along and just says, it's not just you, it's everyone.

We've all sinned.

We've all had that self-centered aversion towards God.

So some people say, well, okay, I'm willing to admit that I've done some things wrong.

I've told some lies, and maybe I lost my temper over here, and I've been selfish and stingy maybe at this point.

But look, all my good, it outweighs the bad.

And if God's way of judging the world was like just this comparison amongst humans, then that logic would work.

But you see, the standard for God is that God is absolutely perfect and has never sinned.

He is what we call holy.

He is, there's no sin in him.

And he says, that's the standard.

You have to be absolutely perfect.

If you want to be in the garden with Adam and Eve before the fall, you have to be absolutely perfect.

And when it's put, and and your good is not going to outweigh your bad.

And when it's put like that, all of a sudden you realize, wow, if that's the standard of justice, then I do fall short.

I am guilty.

I cannot, I can't remove my own guilt.

But the Bible doesn't just come along and say you're guilty.

That's not the point.

And if you ever hear a Christian that's really trying to beat you over the head and tell you you're guilty, you've got to be listening for the other part of the story, which is that God sent his son Jesus into the world to have the name Jesus, which means that he's going to what?

Save us from our sins.

God sent his son, Jesus, to save you and I from our sins.

It's something that we need Jesus to save us from.

It's corrosive, it's destructive to our life.

It's destructive to the life that you want to live.

Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what David told me.

And I don't know, did any of you get a chance to listen to the podcast this week?

If you didn't, go back and listen to the podcast, the sermon podcast on the church website, because what I'm trying to do now is give you a little bit of man on the street interviews in preparation for my sermon.

This week it's going to be David, and he asks a really good question, which I'm going to share with you here in just a second.

But let's look at verses 22 through 23.

Because Matthew steps away from this dream and he says, listen, Joseph got a dream, right?

God told Joseph what to do because of this dream.

Now, all of this took place.

The dream, the naming of Jesus as Jesus, the virgin, you know, having a being found with child.

All of that took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.

And then he's going to quote from Isaiah.

Isaiah, I think it's 7, 14.

Yeah, Isaiah 7.14.

The virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son.

They will name him Emmanuel, which is translated, God is with us.

God is with us.

Now, here's what David asks.

We sat on Friday, and I said, Listen, this is what I'm teaching on Sunday.

What do you think about this name Jesus and the fact that it means God's going to take you away from, God's going to save us from our sins?

He said, You know, I like that, but I really struggle because I'm going through really painful things in my life right now.

I've gone through some really hard stuff.

And if God sent Jesus to save us from our sins, why is there so much evil in the world?

Why is there so much pain and suffering?

Why am I going through the things that I'm going through?

And I think as I reflected on his question, and this is for David, if you're answering this too, I think that the answer comes here in verse 23.

They will name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

In the Old Testament, God revealed himself in a special way to be with the children of Israel.

They called it Shekinah, the Shekinah glory of God.

God's presence came down in the form of like a cloud over the tabernacle.

In the tabernacle, it filled this tent, the meeting place with God.

That was the presence of God.

And then we get to the New Testament and we see that Jesus is the presence of God.

But then after Jesus ascends to heaven, he doesn't leave us alone.

He leaves what's called the Holy Spirit to be the presence of God with us.

But that, even the Holy Spirit is not the end of the story.

We see in Revelation chapter 21 that Jesus is going to come back and be physically present in the new heavens and new earth reigning from Jerusalem.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

And so the reality is that Jesus came to save us from our sins.

So God is present through Christians and the church.

God's present by his spirit through the church, but there's even more to come.

And so the story is not over.

So there is still a reign of death.

Satan is still at work in the world.

And we are still waiting, just like the Hebrews, the saints of the Old Testament, were waiting for the Messiah.

We have something that we're waiting on, which is the physical presence of God in our midst, where he puts all things under his feet, sin and death, and he reigns.

He completely reigns.

So we get to verse 24.

Verse 24 says this: When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord had commanded him.

He married her, but he did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

He did what he was told to do.

He obeys.

This was costly to Joseph.

We don't know much more about Joseph other than the dream he has.

Probably the first at least five or six years, or even we know 12, because we know that Jesus is, you know, stays back in Jerusalem.

So Joseph is on the scene at least through Jesus being 12, right?

But he's not around when Jesus is doing his ministry at the age of 30, although Mary is.

But Joseph obeys what God tells him to do.

And in your life, God is setting the stage, he's at work in your life, he's inviting you to into a relationship with him.

He's wanting to undo and unravel the destructive forces of sin in your life.

And he wants to use you as an instrument, a herald, a light, a piece of salt that's in his world to make him known while we're waiting for the return of Christ.

I just want to show you one final passage from Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

We'll get here eventually, but I love this.

Look at this is the Jesus.

This is Jesus who came to save people from their sins.

Jesus went on from there and he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.

This is the writer of this book.

And he said to Matthew, follow me.

He got up, followed him, and while he was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Jesus and his disciples.

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, Why does your ta your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Now when he heard this, he said, It's not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.

Go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Jesus came for sinners.

He came for you and I.

And if we you and I can accept that reality that we're guilty and self-destructive and in need of a savior, it's the beginning of a good drama that plays out for our good and for God's glory.

Amen.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for the fact that we're not in control.

And I know that some of my uh friends here this morning feel like your divine plan has just cut their life in two.

And you're at work, and it's like, Lord, what are you doing?

And there's sometimes there's consternation.

Lord, would you put on display your redemptive work?

Lord, thank you that you can take an origin story that is messy and bring about your good purposes.

That you can demonstrate your power.

We give you ourselves this week.

We want to be filled and used by you in our context.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.