"Advent: The Virgin Born" Matthew 1:22-25 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning we're going to look at Matthew 1, verses 23 through 25.

Matthew 1:23–25

Really 22 through 25.

Let me read these few verses for us.

Our Lord says this through Matthew's pen.

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, of course, God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

This is the word of our Lord, and I pray that he would seal it on your hearts this Christmas time.

This would be more than just a narrative passage, but would impact the way you view life and your relationship with the Lord.

I want you to think of this passage through the lens of comparison.

Compare what we just read here to the most magnificent cathedrals and the most incredibly articulate temples in the world.

The world's largest temple is the Angor Wat Temple in Cambodia.

It sits on 400 acres.

It's surrounded by a moat.

You can only cross it through this tiny little land bridge that goes across the moat to a massive staircase that goes up, which ascends to a 30-foot wall above you.

And the 30-foot wall is not, you know, the largest wall in the world, but when you're crossing a moat and going up these old, you know, centuries-old stairs to this giant gate that's surrounded by that wall, it seems insurmountable.

You walk through the archway and the door there into this massive temple compound to see innumerable little smaller temples and shrines all over the place, built in the 1200s, many of them abandoned, all of them intricate with spires that go up into the heavens.

The whole thing is designed to intimidate.

That one, also built starting in the 1200s, took 250 years to build it, completed in 1470.

It has more stained glass windows than any other building in the world.

Many of its windows are 50 feet tall.

They have towers that, well, tower into the sky, for lack of a better word.

The cathedral itself, as almost all Christian and Catholic cathedrals are, is shaped like a cross, where it's got a long hallway with a smaller area that cuts crosswise.

The idea is that it's imprinted on earth what the spiritual reality in heaven is like.

You're worshiping in a building shaped like a cross.

The acoustics are incredible.

The songs echo back and forth.

There's little prayer chapels off of every nook and cranny.

All of these temples, from the basilica in Rome to the Angor Wat Temple in Cambodia, to the York Minster Cathedral, to the Anglican Temple in Washington, D.C.

Or not temple, but you know what I mean.

What is that thing called?

Cathedral.

We know what all those have in common.

They're all designed to imprint on your minds the great gulf between what is spiritual and you.

Jerusalem, of course, sits in a bull, and so you would go up the mountains to get to Jerusalem, but then cross through the mountains or through an opening of canyon, and you would enter the bull where Jerusalem sits, and so Jerusalem's down.

Even though you went up the mountains, it's down in the little gully there, and the brooks, you know, meet there, and in the middle of the brooks is a little mount area called the Temple Mount.

And this is what David saw when he first ascended into Jerusalem, and he purchased it to keep that land separate so that God could build his temple there, which David's son Solomon did.

Solomon built the walls around it.

He built this massive courtyard.

God designed it.

This courtyard is you know, in the middle of it is this big white temple with gold trim.

Outside of the temple is twelve oxen, the gold oxen that back into each other with a big bowl in between them that is supposed to be the sea.

And you think, how would you even see the bull when it's up on top of the mount?

Well, because to get in Jerusalem, you cross the mountains, and so you can see over the wall.

You can see as you're going down what's in the temple courts.

And as you see it, you see the sea there, and surrounded by the sea is a sea of people, which represent all the people in the world milling about the throne room of God.

And in front of that is the temple.

The courtyard, of course, there was a Gentile courtyard and the women courtyard where they could go, and the the closer to the temple were the men who were uh not impure where they could go, they had their own tunnel underground to bypass the other courtyards to get there, kind of the Jewish easy pass to get right to the temple.

The whole thing was to demonstrate what it took to get into the presence of God.

And at the door of the temple was the curtain that went down that showed you the great gulf that was fixed between God and man.

And the high priest could only go in there and he but once a year to sprinkle blood on the ark of the tabernacle.

I mean, again, the whole system is designed to show you that you cannot just waltz up to God.

And all of these temples fail for the same basic reason.

They all fail from Solomon's Temple to the Angor Watt Temple to the York Minster Cathedral, they all fail because they are powerless to actually sanctify your heart.

They have no power to bring you into God's presence.

They can't actually do it.

What they can all do is impress upon you your sinfulness.

They can all just give you, overwhelm you with the sense of your own immediacy.

You are temporal.

And God is eternal.

It is a severe thing to approach the living God.

But all of them are equally ineffectual.

It is, of course, our greatest desire to approach God.

We all know that God is real and eternity is real, and here we are, and our life is short, it is numbered, we are sinful and we will die and stand before God for judgment.

There's this great burden in all of our hearts about how do you approach a holy God?

How do you deal with the reality of eternity?

How do you deal with this fact that God's gonna judge us and you can't approach him?

Go to whatever temple you want and offer whatever incense you want.

It doesn't help you approach God.

Now compare that description of all of the temples with what you read in Matthew 1.

That Jesus comes to us.

He's born on earth, he bridges the gap between God and man.

He is God coming to man.

He makes God approachable.

He brings us to God.

It's fascinating that when Jesus is born and he begins his ministry, John chapter 2, Jesus declares that he is the true temple.

John 2 · chapter mention

That he, his body, is the real temple of God.

In other words, if you want to draw near to God, you must draw near through him.

Matthew chapter 12, kind of one of the focal points of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is surrounded by the Pharisees.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

They're upset about what his disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, and it's a complicated story.

But at the end of the story, Jesus tells the Pharisees, Don't you know, speaking of himself, that something greater than the temple is here?

In the Pharisees' world, the temple was the height, the literal pinnacle of their religion, the focal point of their worship.

And Jesus declares that he is the true temple, and he is greater than their temple.

What a contrast.

The humility of his birth, born not in a temple, born in a manger, born in a cave, most likely, that was not designed by the world's most foreknown religious architects, but hewn out of rock by shepherds.

And that's where he would be born.

What a contrast with the intricate way we try to approach God and the humble way he comes to us.

It's clear that Matthew's gospel begins with this kind of supernatural entrance of the Savior to prove to you that Jesus is the real Savior, that he is the only Savior, the true Savior that the world offers.

You see this when you're confronted with the virgin birth and all the intricacy of his birth.

Really, the Gospel of Matthew has two pillars in it: the way, supernatural way Jesus enters the world at the beginning, and the supernatural way he exits the world at the end.

His humble yet supernatural temple-like birth starts the gospel, and he ascends to the true temple of God in heaven at the end of the gospel.

There was never a birth like this, of course.

As soon as he was born, he was older than his mother, and of course the same age as his eternal father.

There's never been anything like this.

And it's designed to prove to you that he is the true Savior.

That's what is going on here.

Matthew is making an argument for you to believe that he is the only Savior.

And he gives you two reasons here in the very beginning of Matthew's gospel, two reasons to believe that Jesus is the true Savior.

The first that we're going to look at is that he fulfills prophecy.

Verse 22, this all took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken of by the prophet.

That phrase the Lord had spoken of by the prophet is repeated thirteen times in Matthew's gospel.

Thirteen times Matthew is arguing with you, trying to convince you that Jesus is the true Savior because only He can fulfill prophecy.

Now we can.

And so it can bleed together, and so the effect of fulfilled prophecy can be overlooked so easily by Americans.

But you need to appreciate that in my Bible, there's a blank page next to Matthew 1.

That blank page represents 400 plus years of silence from God, where there is no new revelation.

They're not books being written and added to the Old Testament in those 400 years, four centuries plus.

And that's just, you know, many of the books of the Old Testament were older than that, of course.

Thousand years old.

There's huge, incredible amounts of time between what is written in the Bible about the soon-to-come Savior and when Jesus comes.

I mean, our country isn't that old.

We're talking prophecies written about the Savior that are older than our country is when Jesus is born.

I'm telling you that just so you can kind of get your mind around this basic fact that when Jesus is born, he comes into the world to fulfill prophecies that were written centuries and centuries and centuries before he was born.

There's no manipulation here.

It's not like there's prophecies about Jesus written around the same time he was born, and he kind of does them, and the prophecies morph to match what he actually did.

You understand the Jews wrote the Old Testament, transmitted the Old Testament.

The scribes that were keeping track of the Old Testament in these white pages in the 400 years of silence, they would keep transmitting the Old Testament in the most meticulous ways.

They'd go into caves, they would purify themselves, they would write one word of the Old Testament, and then they would go take a bath, they would go wash in the mikveh, which required completely undressing, submerging themselves in water, drying off, re-robing, and going and writing the next word, and then going and doing that again.

That's how they transmitted the Old Testament.

Centuries before the birth of Christ.

So the prophecies that are in the Old Testament about the coming Savior are not manipulated or manipulatable.

I said there's 13 of these.

Let me give them to you real quick, one at a time, just so you the weight of all of Jesus' fulfillment of these prophecies hits you.

I'll give them to you in the order that Matthew gives them to you.

Hosea 11, verse 1 says that the Savior will be called out of Egypt.

Hosea 11:1

And what I want you to notice as we quickly go through this list is that many of these prophecies, what Matthew calls prophecies, weren't even understood by the Jews as prophetic about the Savior.

Hosea 11.1, the Jews did not understand Hosea 11.1 pointing forward to the Savior actually being called out of Egypt.

They took it as something descriptive of Hosea's life.

And yet Matthew sees in there, and if you study Hosea 11 closely, you'll see that this is certainly what was meant by Hosea.

It is a prophecy pointing forward to the Son of God coming to rescue his people, and he will be called out of Egypt.

And you think, how can he be born in Bethlehem, live in Nazareth, and yet be called out of Egypt?

I mean, everything seems so contradictory until you meet Christ.

And remember, he had to flee.

The angel told Joseph, flee with your son to Egypt in a dream.

He does, lives a decade there, and then is summoned back.

This happened, Matthew says in Matthew 2, verse 15, so that you would understand that prophecy is being fulfilled.

Matthew 2:15

The Old Testament says that the Savior will be the cause of weeping in Ramah.

Rachel will be weeping for her children, and that's described in Jeremiah 31, verse 15.

Jeremiah 31:15

Again, another prophecy the Jews didn't take as being about the Savior.

They took it as being this kind of thread that is just left hanging, left unfulfilled in the Old Testament.

Then you meet Christ, and of course, Herod, the butcher of Babylon, goes to slaughter all of the children when Jesus was born.

And Matthew says he did this to fulfill the prophecy from Jeremiah 31, 15.

The Savior's birth would cause Rachel to weep for her children.

The Savior will be from Nazareth, Isaiah says.

He'll be called a Nazarene.

That's a pun in Isaiah.

Isaiah 11, verse 1 says he'll be the root of Jesse, the stump of David.

Isaiah 11:1

That root for root or stump, it's a pun.

It's the branches that wind together as they come out of the ground.

And it's the word for Nazareth.

It's named after the twisted way that town is, the twisted way the olive branch grows from the ground.

A Jew wouldn't have read Isaiah 11 1 and thought, oh, this is a prophecy about Jesus living in Nazareth.

And yet Matthew says the angel directs Jesus back to Nazareth to fulfill this one thread that's just left hanging in the Old Testament, that Jesus will indeed be a Nazarene.

The Old Testament says that he will live in Zebulun and Napptal, the two of the northern tribes that were taken in exile by the Assyrians, forgotten about for hundreds of years.

But Jesus in his ministry leaves Nazareth, moves down to the Sea of Galilee to fulfill Matthew 4, verse 14, says this prophecy, so that he would live in Zebulin and Napptal.

Matthew 4:14

It's Isaiah 53, 4 through 5.

Matthew in chapter 8, verse 17, says he is healing all the illnesses in Palestine to drive out illness from there.

He heals Peter's mother-in-law, is the immediate context of this.

To prove that he's fulfilling these prophecies.

Matthew chapter 12, verse 17 says he fulfills that by going to Lebanon, Sidon, Tyre, preaching the gospel to fulfill these prophecies.

Matthew 12:17

Which doesn't sound that outrageous until you understand Isaiah 6, 9 through 10 says that he will also preach to Gentile, I mean to Jews.

And specifically when he preaches to Jews, they won't understand what he's saying.

Well, that's fulfilled in Matthew 13, 14, when Jesus is giving them what we would describe as pretty straightforward parables about the sower and the seeds, and the Jews say, I don't understand what you're talking about.

And Jesus says, Nor should you, but it's to fulfill the prophecy that is written here.

Notice that in this particular prophecy, it's not even Jesus that fulfills it so much as the Jews' inability to understand the parables he's speaking in.

Which makes sense again because Psalm 78, verse 2 says that the Savior will come preaching in parables.

Psalms 78:2

Matthew 13, verse 35 says he fulfills that.

Matthew 13:35

Matthew 26, verse 54, and verse 56 is another use of this.

Matthew 26:54

There, Peter defends Jesus when he's being arrested in the garden by taking out a sword and going to battle to defend physically Jesus.

And Jesus tells Peter, put away your sword, because if you fight for me, how will the prophecies be fulfilled?

And so then they arrest Jesus and take him away.

And Matthew says, This happened so that the prophecies would be fulfilled.

He'll also come mounted on a donkey, the scripture says, and that's exactly what Jesus does.

Zechariah 9, verse 9 says he'll come mounted on a donkey, and he does enter Jerusalem just that way, again to fulfill the prophecies.

Zechariah 9:9

He tells Peter, put away your sword so that he will be crucified, according to how the scripture describes his death.

The scripture describes the Savior dying with his hands and his feet pierced.

Zechariah says that you'll look upon him whose you pierced.

Speaking clearly of the crucifixion.

There's so many details that we don't have time for this morning surrounding the death of Christ.

Crucifixion is the only means of death that could possibly accomplish those prophecies.

And it's outrageous, really, when you think about it, that so many of them were written before the world knew what crucifixion was.

How could he be hanged on a tree with his hands and feet pierced?

Even in our own American context, you hear somebody being put to death by hung on a tree.

That's not the way you would it wouldn't involve piercing the hands and the feet.

He would be killed under heaven.

In other words, outdoors.

The bones on his body would not be broken.

I mean, there's all of these details about how he would die.

None of them can happen except through crucifixion.

It's one after another of these prophecies.

He'd be sold for thirty pieces of silver, Zechariah says.

Jesus did not negotiate his own death.

Do you understand this?

This is a prophecy that was not fulfilled by Jesus' direct action.

Judas left Jesus and negotiated for his betrayal and had him delivered over for 30 pieces of silver.

So that Matthew says, Matthew 27, verse 9, prophecy would be fulfilled.

Matthew 27:9

And just two more.

His clothing would be divided by lots.

That prophecy is from Psalm 22, verse 18.

Psalms 22:18

Again, Jesus did not make this prophecy come true.

He was nailed to a cross, naked, dying in front of the world when soldiers started gambling for his clothes.

And Matthew says that happened to fulfill the prophecy.

I want the weight of these to hit you.

I want you to appreciate that 400 to 800 years is the span of passages we just talked about.

400 to 800 years before Jesus was born.

The Old Testament described specific prophecies that cannot be randomly fulfilled.

I mean, I suppose maybe you could fulfill one of these in your life if you wanted to.

You could apply for a visa to move to Israel and try to settle in Nazareth, which is a predominantly Arab city today, but is under the control of the Israeli government.

They might actually let you live there.

There's some Christians that live there.

There, you've got one of them.

Nobody could.

Just have these happen to them by coincidence.

But the most clear example of these of all is the one that is back in Matthew 1.

That Jesus would be born to a virgin.

There's lots of things in your life you're not in control of.

Amen.

There's one thing, if you're gonna choose just one thing you're not in control of, let me give it to you.

Your own birth.

Nobody asked you, nobody consulted you, it just happened to you.

And so it's fitting that the whole introduction of Jesus to the world would be through this lens.

That he is born to a virgin so that the prophecy would be fulfilled from Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, is where it's from.

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore, it's the story with Isaiah and King Ahaz.

The Ahaz was scared of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and he's banking on the Egyptians defending him, and he's not praying to God.

And Isaiah goes and confronts King Ahaz and says, Why don't you trust God instead of Egyptians?

And Ahaz blows him off.

And Isaiah says, Let God give you a sign.

What do you want?

Tell God a sign, he'll give it to you to prove to you he'll defend you.

And Ahaz says, Oh, I'm too godly to ask God for a sign, which is really funny when you know about King Ahaz.

And Isaiah says, Fine, let me tell you what the sign will be.

A virgin will have a child.

Now Isaiah goes on to say, before the child grows up and knows the difference between right and wrong, you're going to get conquered, Ahaz.

So look out.

And the Jews just kind of left that there.

Yes, it's weird that Isaiah says the baby will be born to a virgin, but maybe it's talking about Ahaz's young wife or Isaiah's young wife or somebody's young wife could have a child.

And so the Jews just kind of moved on from it.

But it's not really move on a bull.

It just hangs there in the background of the Old Testament that a virgin is going to have a baby that should stand out in your mind until you get centuries later to Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

And there are those that argue against the virgin birth saying, well, the word virgin is used in verse 23.

It's the Greek translation of a Hebrew word that just means young maiden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Understand that starting back in Matthew 1, verse 18, it establishes the virginity of Mary.

Matthew 1:18

She was engaged, verse 18 says to Joseph, they had not been intimate, they had not come together.

So the virginity of Mary is established six verses before the word virgin is even used.

It's not about what word is used in the Hebrew here.

The whole point of Matthew 1 is that she was engaged to Joseph, they were sexually pure, and she conceived because of the action of the Holy Spirit.

This happens to fulfill prophecy.

In fact, the prophecy is given exactly identically here in verse 23 as Isaiah 7, verse 14.

Isaiah 7:14

It's every word is the same except for one.

The only word Matthew changes is they shall call his name Emmanuel.

Isaiah 7 says, she, the mother, will call the baby Emmanuel.

Matthew changes it.

They, who is the they?

Well, Joseph and Mary.

And you know that because you jog your eyes onto verse 25.

Joseph did not sleep with Mary until she'd given birth.

And notice even that word until that puts to aside the Catholic teaching of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

It says Joseph did not have relations with her until she'd given birth.

After that, the implication of that sentence is that they did.

They were married, they had other children, of course they did.

But I want to draw your attention not to that, but to the last phrase there.

And he called his name Jesus.

Who?

Joseph called his name Jesus.

What's the significance of that?

You only get to name your own children.

I'm speaking specifically to grandparents here.

Okay?

You only get to name your own children.

You do not get to name other people's children.

Your neighbor, they're expecting their first kid, that's exciting.

Don't go over there with suggestions.

Certainly don't show up at the hospital and tell the nurse, oh, they're gonna name their child Jesse.

It's an incredibly beautiful name.

Works for men and women, it's great.

Jesse.

No, you're not allowed to name other people's children.

If you try it, you will, I don't know, get arrested or something.

Joseph names Jesus.

This is letting you know that Joseph was obedient.

He believed the angel, he took Jesus as his own.

And it's more than just talking about the integrity of Joseph.

Do you understand that the whole genealogy Matthew begins with, verses 1 all the way through verse 17, is Joseph's genealogy.

By bringing Jesus into his own home, by saying, He is mine, I will name him, he belongs to me.

That whole genealogy becomes Jesus's.

What's the significance of that?

It fulfills what Scripture said.

The Savior would be from Abraham, would be from Judah, would be from David, He would be Joseph's, He would be Israel's.

Nobody else fulfills these prophecies, nor can they.

The throne of David will be his by right.

Jesus is the only Savior that fulfills what Scripture says about him.

That's the first way Matthew brings you into Jesus' role as the Savior.

But the second way, not only is Jesus the one who fulfills Scripture, but secondly, he is man's mediator.

He's man's mediator.

That's what's wrapped up in these names that he's that the boy is named.

The boy will be named Jesus.

It says that twice.

He will be called Emmanuel.

That's verse 23 from Isaiah 7.

He will be the mediator between God and man.

This is another one of those gaping holes in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament did not give us a mediator.

That's what people need more than anything else, is they need a mediator.

They need somebody who can go between God and man.

A mediator is somebody who bridges the divide between two parties.

When the divide is insurmountable, you have a mediator.

You think of an NFL player who, let's say, takes off his helmet and hits somebody else in the head with it.

Okay, suspended for the rest of his life or whatever.

He can appeal it.

And there has to be a mediator.

Now, who would who could be a mediator for that?

Well, they have a panel of guys that are mediators, and those guys are former players, so they know what it's like to have a helmet, and they know what it's like to be hit with one.

And they're also executives now.

They work in the league office, and so all of the owners trust those guys to make a decision that's best for the league.

He's there's a mediator that is acceptable to both parties, and so whatever he rules is final.

That's the idea.

The mediator has to be the bridge between both parties.

He has to be acceptable to both parties.

This is what we lack in the Old Testament is there is no mediator between God and man.

There's nobody that's acceptable to God that we would trust to make our case for us.

This is Job, who the scripture says was exceptionally righteous, greatly righteous, and he was greatly vexed, greatly afflicted through trials.

And he cries out and says, God, why isn't there a mediator for me?

I need somebody to be my advocate before God.

Job turns to his friends in Job 9 and says, Even if I could get others to come listen to me, if I could get God to come and actually hear my case, who would be my advocate?

Job knows that he can't just stand before God and argue his case.

He needs an attorney.

He needs an advocate, an arbiter.

Job 33, verse 23 says, This is one of our greatest needs, and an angel can't do it.

Job 33:23

An angel is not acceptable to both parties.

Think of those in the Old Testament who did see God.

Moses and Elijah, think of all that went into that.

They had to be hidden in the cleft in the rock.

They had to be tucked aside, blindfolded, as it were, and God passed by.

They could get a glimpse of his backside.

They could not look at him face to face.

Think of what happened afterwards.

Moses had to cover his face when he talked to other people.

Elijah quit after that.

Elijah quit.

I'm done.

Elisha, take over, because I'm got a chariot to catch.

I mean, this is not the recipe for a long-standing relationship with God because you need a mediator, and there was not one in the Old Testament.

The Israelites couldn't even approach the mountain of God's law without a mediator.

Remember, they gather at the base of Mount Sinai to hear from the Lord.

The Lord begins speaking, and the Israelites freaked out and they began pleading.

They're saying, God, we can't endure what you're saying.

So terrible was the sight that Moses trembled with terror, is what Hebrews 12 says.

Think of the piling up of those phrases.

So it was so terrible that Moses trembled with terror.

They needed somebody to go forward to be the mediator between the Israelites and God, and they chose Moses.

And Moses needed his own mediator.

That pomp and circumstance went into the delivery of the law before the law was broken, by the way, too.

That's before anyone had broken it.

It hadn't even been given yet.

And they needed a mediator.

The fact that this baby's name is Jesus should testify to you that you need a mediator.

You need a savior.

The baby's name is Jesus because he is the savior.

If you didn't need a savior, his name wouldn't be Jesus.

And the savior has to be a mediator.

He has to be the go-between.

And there's got to be a great gulf fixed because of our sin between us and God.

Again, if it was negotiable, if it was small, like you just try harder and God will lower his standards a trifle, you wouldn't need a mediator.

You wouldn't get if your credit card overcharges you by$2 and they refuse to budge.

You probably wouldn't appeal for a mediator.

I hope not.

You would probably just pay the two dollars, right?

Pay the two dollars and move on with life.

Don't be that proud.

The fact that you need a mediator between God and man is demonstrating to you that it's not$2 here.

It is a great golf fix and you can't pay it.

Forget your credit card, Bill.

Do you know what our national debt is right now?

$23 trillion.

At least it was at$7.50 this morning.

Who knows what it is now?

$23 trillion.

Do you want to pay that?

What if I told you you'd get a 2% discount if you paid in cash instead of with your credit card?

It doesn't matter at that point, 2%.

You can't pay it.

This is the nature of your sin towards God.

It's not a bridgeable gap.

You cannot pay for your sin.

You can't pay for your sin.

You can't agree to do better, and God can't agree to lower his standards slightly any more than 2% off your national debt payment would be helpful.

Your sin is great, and that's why you need a mediator.

The mediator has to be acceptable to both God and man.

He has to be from both parties, and that's what is wrapped up in the name Emmanuel, that he will be God with us.

And I hope you know what the name Emmanuel means, because our church is named after it.

Emmanuel means God with us.

Nu is the Hebrew word us.

Bring them together.

With us.

El is the Hebrew word for God.

The abbreviation for God.

Emmanuel, God with us.

God in corporal self-manifestation.

God taking on a body, manifesting himself to the world.

How can that be?

How can God come to the world?

Well, he has to be, of course, here's the virgin birth.

He has to have the nature of God and the nature of man.

He has to have both natures in one person.

Hence the virgin birth.

He will be the savior of the world.

Verse 21 says he will save his people from their sins.

Verse 23 says he'll do it by being God with us.

Verse 25 says his name will be Jesus, which means Savior.

He will save his people.

And his humanity is named Jesus.

He is the savior of all of his people.

He's the savior even of Mary here.

Mary is the daughter of grace, not the mother of grace.

She receives the grace from the Savior, just like all of us.

Jesus is the only one who is ever sinless.

And his name, Emmanuel, his name, Jesus, reminds you that he is the only savior, and you are not your own savior.

You don't have righteousness effective enough to save you.

If you think that you have righteousness of your own, imagine in your mind you think you're righteous enough, you don't need a savior.

Pile up your righteousness.

Put it in a pile.

How righteous are you?

Build it the pile as high as you want.

As much righteousness as you have in your pile, that's as much dirt as you're putting on top of Christ.

That's as deep as you're trying to bury him, saying, I don't need him because I have my own righteousness.

Your perceived righteousness is only an attack to the name Jesus.

It's only an attack on the name Emmanuel.

He alone is the Savior.

You are not the Savior.

But whoever believes in Him will have his sins forgiven.

Whoever believes in Him will have access to God through the mediator.

Not access to God through a temple, not access to God through a priest with a hat and incense, not access to God through through songs or through somber circumstances.

Access to God through one means.

Jesus.

He is the mediator.

He is the temple.

If you want an encounter with the living God, you go to Christ.

You don't go visit a temple somewhere.

You want an encounter with the living God, you go to the Savior.

You cannot approach God.

Job is correct.

You cannot approach God on your own.

Because your sin separates you from him.

He won't hear your case.

And appealing to Mary won't help him hear your case.

You can only appeal to him through Jesus Christ.

He has to be man because he has to lead a sinless life to be our substitute.

He has to be God because Isaiah in the passage that Dan read earlier says that God will not share his glory with another.

The Savior, of course, is going to be God.

God is not going to share the act of saving with somebody else.

He's not going to let somebody else be the savior.

He's not going to bring some other angel and give him the seat of prominence.

God himself will have the seat of prominence.

He himself will demonstrate he loves mankind enough to be our Savior.

It makes my heart skip a beat this morning to think of the idea that there would be people here this morning that don't believe that Christ is their Savior.

And I ask you, if that's you, I mean, where else are you looking?

Is it just that you hear this and you think, well, I don't believe in God, period?

Well, that's that's intellectually dishonest.

I mean, God reveals Himself in this book.

And you say, Oh, I don't believe in the book then.

Well, how do you explain that Jesus fulfilled these prophecies centuries after they were written?

Well, maybe he did fulfill the prophecies, but maybe I need the savior from somewhere else.

It doesn't have to be him.

Who is there another Savior that I know not of?

Is there another Savior that is God in human flesh?

Or are you banking on a savior who's neither God nor man?

Are you banking on yourself?

Do you think that you don't need a savior because you're good enough?

How dare you?

Jesus alone is the savior, not you.

And there is no other savior.

There is no other way to be in a relationship with God except through faith in Christ.

And he can be the savior because he is both God and man.

He can be the savior because he takes your sin upon himself, which he can do because he's sinless.

God does not share his glory with another, but he shares it with Christ, who is not another, but his very self.

And if you have access to God through Christ, then you are wrapped up with Christ.

And so God's glory becomes yours through Christ.

There is no other highway to heaven.

There is no other pathway to forgiveness.

There is no other means for you to have your sins forgiven except through faith in Christ.

If there was another mediator, there would be no virgin birth.

If there was no virgin birth, there would be no God becoming man.

And if there's God that never becomes man, then there is no hope for us.

Separated from God by our own sin.

But praise be to God that He did send His Son, that His Son is named Emmanuel.

The famous hymn ends Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.

You cannot see the glory of God, and so God veils it in flesh so that we can main make it out.

Hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with men to dwell.

Jesus is our.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel vocally.