December 24, 2025: Christmas Eve - Matthew 1:23

Probably the least Christmassy Christmas movie is The Sound of

Music. It's not really mentioned.

We associate it with Christmastime.

I personally love it. One of my favorite songs of

course is My Favorite Things. Raindrops and roses, whiskers on

kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown

paper packages tied up with string.

These are a few of my favorite things.

And the song goes on to talk about hard times, right?

You know, biting dogs and stinging bees and feeling sad

and that the antidotes given the song is to think about your

favorite things. You're sad.

Think about some of those favorite things.

It's cheering, and I agree with that.

Far be it for me to criticize one of my favorite songs about

many favorite things. However, though these favorite

things are God's good gifts to us to be received with joy and

gratitude, I think we need more. I think we need more.

And when we're going through very hard times, the joy of the

season can frankly make you feel kind of dislocated.

Everybody's happy except me. And we've talked about this talk

about how Advent invites us into a type of lament so that we can

cry out to God. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Lord Jesus, heal us. Lord Jesus, be the light in our

darkness, Lord Jesus, because you're our only hope.

And so, though I and you will partake in your favorite things,

may they always and ever be a springboard to the most precious

treasure of all. And may that not be merely lip

service, but may it find a deep and abiding resonance in our

hearts, sometimes only understood and experienced for

the first time through deep darkness and suffering.

We're going to talk about darkness and light.

We're going to talk about how the world did everything that

could to snuff out the light of the world.

God kindled a light for our darkness in the Lord Jesus

Christ. And from Herod to Pilate, they

tried to snuff him out. Indeed, they thought they won

when they put him in a stone cold tomb, but that couldn't

hold him, could it? Because the Christmas dawn

rekindles and the Lord Jesus Christ lives again.

And then we have this spreading light tradition, which is the

light of the resurrection, the light of the gospel going

through a dark sanctuary. As we think about those who

shared the gospel with us and think about those that we are

influencing toward a gospel life, and we see how it just

keeps spreading. It's been spreading, friends,

like a grand tree for over 2000 years.

Billions of believers strong. It's an unshakable Kingdom.

And this is what we're all about tonight.

My text is actually in Matthew. I know we typically look at Luke

2, but today I want to talk about Matthew's account, the

birth of our Lord. This time, instead of focusing

on Mary as we did two weeks ago, we're focusing on the Lord

Jesus's wonderful adopted father, Joseph of Nazareth.

I'm in Matthew's Gospel in the 1st chapter, beginning in verse

18. Hear the word of the Lord.

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, and 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 has spoken by the

prophet. Behold, the Virgin shall

conceive and bear a son. They shall call his name

Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the Angel 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. Perhaps Joseph doesn't get as

much attention. Perhaps he's kind of like a prop

in your nativity set just there to make sure Mary gets what she

needs. But the story invites us into a

hero story, which is almost unbelievable.

Mary and Joseph, as you know, are engaged.

She's pregnant and explaining it to people, telling them that

she's still a virgin and that an Angel told her that the baby is

from God, actually conceived not by a man, but by God himself.

What's going on with this girl? Is she an evil liar?

She's seriously disturbed. Whatever way you choose to go,

her story defies belief and it's super scandalous.

The text isn't going to give us a lot of details about Joseph,

but those details are important to the story.

One of the first things that we can notice is his very name,

Joseph. If you know your Old Testament,

you know that he is named after a very important Christ figure

in the Old Testament, one of the sons of Jacob Joseph who rescued

his family from a famine in all places Egypt.

He's also named after very he's he's named after this important

rescuer Joseph. But we also know by reading our

Bibles that he, Joseph of Nazareth, is descended from

another important rescuer from the Old Testament, one named

Boaz. Remember him?

Boaz, who rescued Ruth and Naomi?

This is Joseph's ancestor. We also know that Joseph was a

descendant of King David. We know that Joseph was a

Carpenter by trade from the town not prestigious, the not

prestigious town of Nazareth in Galilee.

This particular text that we just read tells us that he's a

just man. He lived according to the

standards of his Bible. He understood the stories of his

ancestors and lived in them and through them.

And that comes out in the way he responds to this tremendous call

upon his life. He's a believer, and he cared

about living his face and enjoying the reputation that

comes from godliness in his community.

But now this just man is implicated in a serious scandal.

And one of the things that bothers a just man or an upright

woman more than anything, if they seek to live their life by

integrity, is to have their reputation destroyed,

particularly unjustly. It's enough to push you nearly

to madness to have to live in a community where you're upright

and just reputation is destroyed, particularly

unjustly. This is what he's contemplating.

He's trying to find a way out. What is he going to do?

She's claiming that the Angel talked to her and told her the

child is from God, so to protect Mary, he's going to just quietly

break off this engagement. But God intervenes, doesn't he?

God intervenes with a tremendous call upon Joseph's life, and he

receives his his own announcement from an Angel

confirming Mary's claims. This changes everything.

Joseph believes the Angel believes Mary, and from this

faith he is motivated to take heroic action.

Just like Joseph of old and Boaz of old.

This Joseph will participate in God's rescue plan for ruined

sinners. But Joseph's faith journey is

marked not with political honor. No, Joseph's path goes down.

It goes down through humiliation and dishonor.

His whole life now he will live under the shadow of suspected

infidelity, suspected illegitimacy, and deep suspicion

from the community that he's an accomplice to lunacy or lies or

both. This just man is going to have

to live under a shameful reputation in order to live

according to the truth claims of his wife, the Angel, and

eventually his son, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ the

righteous. First, we're going to notice

from this text that authentic faith obeys God's commands.

Authentic faith obeys God's commands.

There are several commands in this text.

Take Mary as your wife, call his name Jesus, and we're told that

he obeys. When when Joseph woke from his

sleep, he did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not till she had given birth to

a son and he called his name Jesus.

Joseph's obedience means the loss of an honorable reputation,

which is probably his most devastating loss.

But we can also note that his righteous obedience also leads

to other sacrifices. He refrains from knowing his

wife until after the baby is born.

He gives up his fatherly privilege of naming the child

using the name that was given to him by the Angel.

And then he commits to adopting to adopting Jesus, to being his

stepfather. He create his courageous faith

overcomes his fear of consequences and he radically

obeys God in order to protect his wife and his son in order to

fulfill his destiny as an even greater Joseph than his most

famous ancestor. Verse 21 says she will bear a

son. You shall call his name Jesus,

for he will save his people from their sins.

This brings us to our second point.

Jesus saves sinners by faith. Jesus saves sinners by faith.

His name means he saves. It's the newer version of the

Old Testament. Joshua comes into the Greek

world as Jesus. We've noticed some things about

the courageous faith of Joseph, but the focus is really on his

adoptive son. Jesus identity and his vocation

as Savior are captured in his name, which means Savior.

What's he going to save his people from?

Everybody thinks he's going to be the savior of the external

political threat of an oppressive, oppressive Roman

government. We learn from the rest of the

story that his main goal is to suffer and to die and to live

again, to save people from spiritual darkness, from the

rebellion, from their sin, the sin in their hearts.

The text is clear. Christ's mission in this first

coming is to save sinners from themselves, from the moral

rebellion that lives in each and every one of our hearts.

Friends, the Bible teaches us clearly that if we believe in

who He is, this God man, and if we believe in what he has done,

living a perfect life, dying and atoning death in our place, and

raising to life on the third day and ascending into heaven from

which he will return. If we believe in who He is and

what he has done, and if we confess this belief and trust

him and follow him, the Bible says we will be saved and then

our faith will take action, as it did for Joseph, righteous

Joseph, who heroically embraced a life of low reputation.

He must have known and believed that he was a Sinner.

He must have known that he needed his son more than his son

needed him. He must have believed that his

son was a true hero. And this saving faith in Joseph

motivated his courageous obedience to flee from Herod, to

take his family down into Egypt, to live as a refugee, to come

back up into the land, to take care of him the rest of his

life, to to cheat teach him the trade as to be the Carpenter, to

teach him how to obey God and to live according to the law.

Jesus our Lord learned these things from his stepfather

Joseph. Not only does Jesus save

sinners, but there's another name given for him in this text.

Did you see it, Emmanuel? Emmanuel gives the faithful

himself. We love our favorite things, but

we need more than our favorite things.

We need God Himself. We're going to give presents

tomorrow. Many of us will.

And you really hope that your kids love you as much as their

toys, or at least more than their toys.

You're happy to give them toys. You'll tell them about the

greatest gift ever given the Lord Jesus Christ.

But you do hope that down in their little hearts of hearts

that their true affection isn't just for the stuff that you

give, but for you, their parents.

It's so often so easy to slip into a type of Christianity that

just wants Jesus for the stuff, Forgetting about the suffering

that comes with this and forgetting about he himself as

the point. This Christ candle is the point.

Emmanuel gives the faithful the gift of Himself.

It's easy to think of salvation merely in terms of rescue.

Isn't it? Be hard to remember that we're

not only saved from negative consequences, but we're saved

for something and someone better?

And it could be tempting to think that that something better

is some vague notion of heaven, a place of beauty where we're

free from suffering and reunited with our loved ones.

This is all good, but it can be easy to forget, can be easy to

forget that there's something better in heaven is is

infinitely better than a pain free existence in a pretty place

surrounded by our relatives. The point, the point is not only

those beautiful things, but the things that they point to, the

giver of all good things, the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

The Bible teaches us that the good news of salvation is not

merely rescue from hell, but in an in an eternity in heaven.

The greatest sadness of Adam and Eve being banished from the

garden wasn't that they lost the pretty orchard.

The biggest tragedy of that story is that they were banished

from the intimacy of being with God in unbroken fellowship.

And so the whole Old Testament is obsessed with this problem

being rectified. How do we get intimacy with God?

How do we get that Paradise regained all of the Old

Testaments pointing to Jesus the Messiah.

Now he's here, Now he's here, and he's literally called God

with us, God with us, Emmanuel. And that's the most thrilling

thing about the entire story. Do you long for him, my friends?

Do you miss Him? Does your heart break for those

who don't know him or don't value him?

Lord, help us increase our love for you so that we can say with

a psalmist, My soul thirsts for you as a deer pants for streams

of water. May He fill us with longing for

His Word and for His people, but most especially for His very

self. Christmas Hymn in the children's

section. Be near me.

Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay close by me forever and love me.

I pray. We want Emmanuel, we want God

with us. Bless all the dear children in

Thy tender care and fit us for heaven to live with thee there.

Precious Emmanuel, we never ever wanted to be parted from You.

Lord Jesus, hold us close and never let us go.

And please come into our darkness again.

Come quickly. We long for thine Advent here

and we pray. How long, O Lord?

How long? So we've seen the authentic

faith in Jesus saves us from our sins, unites us with Emmanuel,

and inspires us to courageously and lovingly obey His commands,

even if it means suffering. Now it's time we're coming up

close to this spreading light as we sing The Silent Night and we

recognize that Jesus is the light of the world.

And though the darkness tried to overcome it, he could not snuff

him out. And so with this great hope, we

will sing together and carry out this tradition and move into

Christmas time and into the New Year with gospel hope, with a

deep and growing faith, with the joy of the Lord and the peace of

Christ ruling in our hearts, giving us a tranquility that the

world doesn't have any categories for.

May it be so. Let us pray.

Father in Heaven, we thank you for this beautiful text.

Thank you for Joseph, heroic stepfather to our Lord.

We pray, Lord, that in his model and His example, we too can be

rekindled and enjoy the courageous faith that comes and

the obedience that comes from from the gospel and the power of

the Spirit working in US. Bless us as we pray and we sing

and we participate this tradition and be with the

children. Bless them as they grow.

In the strong name of Christ our Lord, we pray.

Amen.