Matthew 1:18-25 | And we shall Name Him Jesus

So what I want to do is look at the coming Messiah from the

perspective of Mary and Joseph. You know, how did this all

happened? How did it all become?

And so we're going to be in Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

We're going to look at verses 18 through 25.

You know, Joseph is one of those characters that in the Bible

doesn't get too much love. You don't hear a lot about

Joseph. You don't hear much said about

Joseph. Joseph doesn't really even say a

lot, but I believe that today as we look at the story of the

Messiah coming, there's something that we could learn

from both Mary and Joseph and that we could apply to our

lives. So we're going to look at

starting on verse 18. And for you guys that are new,

pretty much what we do, we just walk through the text and see

what the Bible says because I'm not that smart.

All right, so here we go. So let's look at verse 18.

And this is what the word the Lord says.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about.

His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before

they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the

Holy Spirit in verse 19. Because Joseph, her husband, was

faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public

disgrace. He made in He made in mind to

divorce her quietly. All right, so this is not your

normal Taylor Swift love song. So like when we think of Mary

and Joseph, we really never talk about how they how the union of

them two came together. When we talk about the Angel

appearing to them, she's going to give birth to the Messiah.

But what I want to look at is let's peel the onion back a

little bit and see where this came from.

So let's look at verse 18. This is how the birth of Jesus

the Messiah came about. So this is how it all happened.

So we got to look at the text, right?

So when we talk about Jesus, when we talk about Christmas,

when we talk about God stepping out of heaven and taking on

human form, this is the story right here.

His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before

they came together she found out to be pregnant.

All right, so Ricky, I don't understand this wording before

they came to. So pretty much when you in the

text when you see came together took her home.

That means consummated the marriage.

That means they got it on for you guys that need a little bit

more help. So we got to look at some

cultural considerations when we talk about Joseph and Mary.

So when we look at the Jewish culture, it's not just like what

we think marriage looks like. So like I fall in love, I pop a

knee down after I tell Rachel to get up.

I'm supposed to do that. I'm joking.

Where's Rachel? And then just rolled her eyes.

All right, so and then, you know, I asked for a hand in

marriage and, and, and then you start working from there.

But in the Jewish culture of this time, there's actually 3

phases to marriage. So go ahead.

I'm going to go and put that on the screen so that way we have a

better understanding, right? So in the Jewish culture, you

have the espousal phase, then you have the betrothal, and then

you have the actual marriage. So the espousal phase is pretty

much when mom and dad come together and they start having

conversations about who their son and daughter shouldn't

marry. And they start analyzing things

and maybe people they've been in their, in their family or their,

their group of friends or in their friends circles.

And they start having these communications of like, you know

what? You know, I think like, let's

say it was my parents, man, I think Ricky would be really good

with her because like, he doesn't like to talk a lot, but

she talks a lot, man. Nothing would be a great

combination. Like, I don't know, like.

So they start having these conversations together about who

should marry each other. Now, in this time also marriages

would happen between the age of 15, literally 15 to 17 years

old. So they got married very young

in those days. And then once both sets of

parents would agree on the union of what should happen, there was

some contractual agreements as well.

So the father of the groom would be giving gifts or whether it's

land or cattle or money, whatever that looked like to the

father of the bride because the father of the bride was in

charge of the wedding and the weddings would last about 7

days. So there was a lot of agreements

that happened. There was some exchanging and

gifts. And then once the families both

agreed that this thing should be going down, then you enter into

a betrothal. Now a betrothal is pretty much

that me and, or Joseph and Mary are going to be married one day,

but they're, they're living apart.

So they, they've, they've all agreed everything is good to go.

You're pretty much my wife. But we're not going to

consummate the marriage until we actually get into the marriage.

So this Petroto stage is about 6 months to a year.

And this gives time for them to really, truly understand what

they're committing to. And it gives the man of the

house or the groom time to set up the life that he's going to

take care of when it comes to his wife.

So he said stuff where they live, work, how's he going to

take care of her? All that stuff happens in this

one year. So they're pretty much in

agreement contractually. It's like the equivalent of you

going to the courthouse and getting married, but yet you're

not living together. That's not yet.

That's the betrothal. And this phase was so serious

that if you enter into the betrothal phase and you decide

that you don't want to do this anymore, you have to, by law,

get a divorce. And what we see in scripture is

because this was a a highly religious time, morally strong

and they followed the law to the T, The only way that you would

divorce is infidelity. So in the Petrothal stage, after

a year, after everything, after all the agreements, everything

was good to go, then comes the marriage and the marriage

celebration would last about 7 days.

See y'all think your quinceaneras are live?

Try doing that for seven days. The marriage piece is so

serious. Remember when Jesus went to

Canaan and he walked into the marriage and they ran out of

wine and it was a big deal. So Jesus turns the water into

wine and they're like man, usually the wine comes out great

at first, but man, you save the best for last.

You see, when a man has a daughter, what we see culturally

is that they would put 1 barrel of wine every single year that

she turned for her birthday and they put it away and it begins

to ferment and begins to grow and it begins to get better and

better. So by the time the wedding

comes, when she's married, they take that barrel of wine out and

they celebrate, they toast to the fathers and they use the

best wine. Marriage was a big deal.

It was very sacred. Also, God honors purity.

It took a very, very serious here.

So what we see here is that Joseph and Mary, they were in

the betrothal stage. They were in that process.

There were agreements made, there were gifts given.

They were going to get married soon.

They were contractually married, but they were in this phase in

the Jewish culture. Then Joseph discover something

devastating. Look at 19 because Joseph, her

husband was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose

her public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

So Angel of the Lord approaches Mary.

This is out of Luke chapter 1 and you could you could read

Luke 1 · chapter mention

about Joseph and Mary in the 1st chapter of Luke.

And also before we move forward, what do we know about Joseph and

Mary? The first time we see Joseph

mentioned is in Luke 126 and 27. It says that he's a descendant

of David. But we also see that the first

time that Mary's mentioned, an Angel of the Lord appears to her

and says, I'm going to, you're going to be given a child.

He's going to be the Messiah of the world.

But I love what verse 38 says because this is a lot about Mary

that I think all of us could learn from.

Mary ends that and she says I am the the Lord's servant.

May your word be fulfilled. So what we know about Joseph and

Mary, they both honored the Lord.

They both loved the Lord. They both were servants of the

Lord. They were both obedient to the

Lord. And let me tell you something,

if I'm God and I'm going to put something on earth, that man, my

son, I'm going to give him to somebody.

I'm going to look for people who are obedient and faithful to me.

And I think this is a great lesson for a lot of us.

But where's your faithfulness? Where's your obedience?

Where's your like? Do you love like, do you pray?

Do you do these spiritual disciplines?

And we see this with Mary and Joseph.

They love the Lord. They, they followed his law and

God chose them to bring in the Messiah.

And because Joseph was faithful to the law, that means that

Joseph honored the law. He loved the law, he studied it.

He knew that with Mary getting pregnant, it was not going to be

good. You see in Deuteronomy chapter

Deuteronomy 22:23

22, verse 23, stoning was legal when somebody committed

adultery. So the the husband of the groom

had every right to pick up a stone and gather everybody

together and stone his wife if she committed adultery.

The law was serious. This was a moral, a high moral

that they were living in. And Joseph knew that if news

came out that Mary was pregnant while they were in their

betrothal, people could take it the wrong way and it could shame

her. It could even like it might even

take her life. But what does Joseph do?

He's like, you know what? I'm, I'm going to, I have it in

my mind to divorce her quietly. And when you cross reference

this and you look at all this, Joseph is going through a

dilemma right now. So he discovers that Mary is

pregnant with child through the Holy Spirit.

Now he has a dilemma. He's like, man, this is what's

going down. How do I manage this?

And it says that man with this moral code that I'm living in

and this this high religious state, how am I going to manage

this in this society? But because Joseph was a

righteous man, he knew to do the right thing.

So he probably stayed up. It probably just boggled his

mind. And I love what verse 20 says

because it says but but after he considered this, that means that

he was thinking about it. Have you guys ever been troubled

so badly or so hard that you had a hard time sleeping where you

lay down in bed And it's like your mind just keeps going in

circles and it's like, you can't, you can't rest like you

can't just like, relax. And what we see here is that

Joseph considered this. That means that he stayed up.

He constantly thought about it, but then it says that he fell

asleep. How do we know he slept?

Because an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

And let me remind us, I think sometimes some of us just need

to go to sleep when things are bothering us.

When things are like when you're restless, put your phone away

and take a nap, go to bed, give it to God, just go to sleep.

I think there's sometimes that's the best thing that some of us

could do. And Joseph was asleep and then

the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your

wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

It's not wild, like everything just seemed off, but it's funny

because even though everything seemed off, the Holy Spirit was

working. So Joseph was confused.

He didn't know what was going on.

An Angel of the Lord came, talked to him in a dream while

he was asleep. So we talk about dreams.

Joseph has four dreams during this whole story of Jesus being

born. There's four times that God

speaks to Joseph in a dream, and it must have been to get really

gathers attention. God says it's all right to take

Mary as your wife. That's dream 1 #2 Joseph, get

out of here. Herod is coming after your life

#3 Herod is gone. It's OK to come back home.

And then dream number 4 was, hey, as you come back home, go a

different route. I want you to go through

Nazarene so that way the prophecy can be fulfilled.

We look at dreams in scriptures, the Bible.

There's actually about 21 dreams that God uses to speak to

people. 11 of them have to do with Joseph.

There's a few in the book of Daniel that are sprinkled there.

Even if you look at culture, you hear a lot of stories of people

that are in Islam having dreams of Jesus appearing to them and

they convert their lives. So in the Scripture, we don't

see a lot of dreams. Like kind of the way that we

think about it, it's a way of God getting our attention and

God speaking to us and we have his word as well.

But this dream is an under score of the supernatural character of

Christ's Advent. Jesus is coming.

There's something supernatural happening here.

God is speaking to Joseph through a dream.

So that way he he's sure of what he's going to do.

And Joseph obeys him. Don't forget that.

And in verse 21, she will give birth to a son, and he will give

him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their

sins. So Joseph has this dilemma.

Then God speaks to him through a dream, and then in the dream God

gives him some instructions and he's like, hey, when this child

is born, Joseph, you're going to name him Jesus.

Why Jesus? Why Joshua?

Or you can even say Joshua. What, what?

Why? Because the word does the name

Jesus means Savior. It means Jehovah saves.

It means the Lord my salvation. He gave the name Jesus because

it it was what he was came to do on this earth to save us.

It wasn't just the roll of the dice.

And no they didn't call him Chewie.

I know y'all thinking that they called him Jesus.

And listen in the book of Matthew they give, they give

about 6 titles to Jesus. They call him they call him the

son of David. They call him the Son of

Abraham, the Christ, Yeshua, Emmanuel, and in Jesus or Jesus

Christ, that's the name that we've come to embrace, to call

him. Why?

Because Acts 412 says for there is no other name under heaven

and earth that anyone will find salvation under Jesus.

So we claim the name of Jesus, we say the name of Jesus, we

worship Jesus because there's salvation in that name.

That's the only name that anything happens under.

And I love how sometimes I think, as I was reading and

praying over this, I felt like the Holy Spirit's like, don't

overthink it. Sometimes we tend to overthink

things and we, we say these names like we, we know what they

mean. And as we pray, we're, we're

busting out like, Oh, Christos, Yahweh, listen, just say Jesus,

don't overthink it. That's the name that we call

him. That's the name that we use.

That's the name that God says, like call him by his name, which

is Jesus. And then verse 22, So he's given

instructions. And then all this took place to

fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

What prophet? Daniel, which we talked about

last week. He says the virgin will conceive

and give birth to a son. That is Daniel Chapter 7 verse

Daniel 7:14

14 and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with

us, Jesus stepping out of heaven, coming to earth to have

a relationship with us as the Lord walking amongst us.

John one for the word became light, John 114 and it dwell

amongst us. That's what this is all about.

It's about having a purse, a close and personal relationship

with Jesus Christ because He wants to have one with us and he

came to save us of our sins, to give us a new life, to restore

the broken, and to give us peace.

So it is God with us. The reason why all this is going

down is because this has been prophesied hundreds of years

before. This is what the whole Bible's

about now. Why does Matthew mention all

this stuff? Because Matthew, the book of

Matthew, was written with a Jewish audience in mind.

So Matthew talks a lot about the Old Testament.

He talks a lot about the prophets.

He talks a lot about like the Greek and, and the names of God,

the Hebrew. Why?

Because he's writing to a Jewish audience and he wants them to

see that every single thing in the Old Testament, everything in

God's Word, everything in the Torah is 1 big fat neon sign

that points to Christ. So Matthew is letting us know

who the audience is. And I think, and I want to look

at verse 23. I thought this was interesting.

In verse 23, I think one of the biggest keywords that we have in

verse 23 is the word the what does he say?

The virgin will conceive the word the is pointing out to a

very specific individual. This means that this was not a

random act of God. God had this set in motion from

the the foundations of the world.

So the beginning of everything that he was going to choose a

virgin and her name was going to be Mary.

He had this in mind. The virgin will conceive Mary

was God's plan. She was to be the mother of

Jesus, not of anyone else. A specific woman known as the

Virgin Mary. God knew, and it's very, very

specific and timely. And listen, this is something

that we have to understand. This was God's plan.

God knew who he chose. And in verse 24, when Joseph

woke up because he was asleep, Angel spoke to him.

With the dream, when Joseph woke up, he did what the Angel of the

Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

So Joseph now had the same attitude as Mary did for the

Lord. Remember, Mary obeyed the Lord.

Mary honored the Lord. That means that Mary was

constantly in His word. But watch this.

That means that Mary surrendered her will to the Lord, that she

served him, that she knew that the Messiah was coming through

her. And it says that Joseph, now him

obeying the Lord, shows the same exact surrender to him.

So it says that the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home

as his wife, but they did not consummate the marriage.

Yet Joseph did what was asked. See, Mary was bringing mankind,

but the Holy Spirit was bringing in heaven and only God can link

those two together. So it had to be 100% man and and

100% God. The Messiah needed to be both of

them. So Joseph took Mary home, but

they did not consummate the marriage until Jesus was born.

Joseph was very faithful and that's what verse 25 says.

She gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus.

You know, when I think about when you look at the story of

Mary, Joseph in Christ, when we see everything, there's a

keyword here that I, I want us to, to understand and know when

we think of Christmas. The keyword here is surrender.

When you think of Christmas, you you don't normally think of

that. Mary surrendered to the will of

God and did everything that he asked her to do.

Joseph surrendered to the will of God and did everything that

God asked him to do. And Jesus surrendered to the

will of God, stepping out of heaven, taking place in a

Manger, living humbly as a servant all the way to the cross

to die for our sins. Even in in the Garden of

Gethsemane as he's cries like Lord, like if there's any other

way to do this, please do it. He goes, but not my will, but

yours. That's surrender.

And listen until you're willing to surrender your will to the

Lord. Unless you're willing to

surrender, you will miss out on what the Lord wants to do

through you. I think we say Merry Christmas.

It's a great way to greet people.

We say a lot of things like Christ and Christmas, don't miss

it. But I think Merry Christmas is

great because the story of the Messiah is a story of surrender

and it's good for us to follow kind of.

I want to close today is looking at Joseph.

You know, what we see in the Scriptures, Joseph, you don't

hear Joseph say anything. You just see him do stuff.

You know, he speaks to Mary. But every time the Lord tells

Joseph, Joseph obeys. And I think there's some things

I want, you know, that we could learn from Joseph as him and

Mary brought the Messiah in. And I think especially just

talking to our our men in this room, there's some things that

we could learn from Joseph. He doesn't say much, but he does

a lot. And I think some of us as we

listen to people, we need to start not just listening with

our ears, but we got to listen with our eyes as well.

You can say all you want, but I got to see something.

And the same thing, Joseph, what we see here is that Joseph

obeyed the Lord. So what can we learn from Joseph

out of the text? And I just hope that this serves

as an encouragement to all of us, especially US men in the

room. So #1 what do we learn about

Joseph? Joseph was faithful to the word.

Joseph was faithful to the law. We saw that earlier in the text.

That's how he is described in this text.

They don't say much about Joseph.

They just say that he's the son of David.

But but Joseph was also faithful to the law of the Lord.

David talks about how David, I delight in the law and there's a

difference between legalism and spiritual disciplines and

listen, being in the word, loving the word of God,

following the word of God is not legalism.

Legalism says I'm going to do these things so that way God

will love me. That's legalism.

But loving God's word, this is not legalism.

It is a spiritual discipline that listen to me like Joseph, I

hope that I am known for like that.

That's my like goal in life is that man, if Ricky were to

disappear from this world, one thing that I wish, I hope he's

known for is that that brother loved his kids and also that he

loved the Lord and he loved his word.

And listen, all of us can be here.

We have to love the law of God. We have to love His Word.

Listen, the law is what's going to sustain the grass Withers and

the flowers fadeth, but the word of the Lord last forever.

And listen, if we want to sustain, we got to be like

Joseph and love the law. Because when you have God's word

inside of you, when you Start learning his word, you're able

to manage and maneuver life. And when difficult things and

things that are confusing come to you because you have the word

of the Lord in your heart and because you're so ingrained and

you're anchored on His word, which is unshakable, you're

going to be able to manage lifeway better, which Jesus said

the second part, what did we learn about Joseph?

Joseph had high character. Joseph was a man of high

character. How do we know this?

Because when Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he

didn't go and run to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the

judge. He, he didn't just throw her

out. He said, you know what, Like if

I'm gonna have to do something, I'm gonna do quietly because I

care about her. High character is what do you do

when nobody's looking at you? What is your life look like when

nobody sees it? How do you see?

How do you plan things? How do you, how do you talk

about people? How do you treat people?

Can't, I can't help but see the love of God's word and his law

is tied to high character. And if you have trouble with

high character, maybe it's because you don't have enough

word in your life. So we've got to have God's word

more, Joseph said. You know what, I'm not going to

expose her in public. I'm not going to do that.

I love Mary. I care about Mary.

And even though I have every right, and even even though I

have every reason to go ahead and walk away from this thing, I

care about her too much. Listen, that's high character

Joseph had that. He could have exposed or he

didn't do it. But also when you have high

character, you are an emotionally stable human being.

And we need some more emotional health in our life because when

things come at us and when things are difficult, if I buy

into my feels and my emotions, which are out of my flesh, I am

going to operate outside of God's law.

I'm not going to think through it, but if I have God's law and

I'm ingrained in it, then I'm going to know how to deal with

things and act a certain way because I understand what His

word says and I trust it and it's ingrained in my soul and in

my spirit. I'm able to handle now more

difficult and confusing and frustrating situations.

Listen for Joseph. Can you imagine telling your

boys this? Hey, dude, I heard Mary got

pregnant. It wasn't me who did it.

The Holy Spirit, man, come on, you going to get adna test?

I mean, like think about like there's so many things like we

read this and it's just like whatever, but think about like

seriously, if I'm I'm scheduled, like I'm going to get married to

my fiance. She's like Ricky, I'm pregnant

by the Holy Spirit. I'm like, guys, there's so much

in this, but the Lord was guiding both, the Lord was

speaking to both, the Lord was leading both.

And if they did not surrender to the will of God, it would be a

whole different story. But the Lord knew because they

were both faithful, Mary and Joseph.

Joseph was a man of high character and high integrity,

and he cared about Mary. He loved Mary and listen, he let

his actions do the talking. He didn't just yap about it.

No, he he showed it. He took good care of her and

listen, that's something that we could learn from Joseph.

Joseph didn't just love God's law as we see in the text, but

Joseph had high character because of how he handled the

situation and how he treated Mary during all of this time.

And there's a land of story we're not even talking about

right now, but Joseph handled it well.

Next thing we learn about Joseph, go ahead and put the

next one up, is that he lived a surrendered life.

He lived a surrendered life. He surrendered to God's calling

and his will and his life to the point that we see in verse 24

when the Angel says, I need you to take Mary as your wife.

And then the next verse it says, and Joseph did so when God told

him what to do, he just did it. God commanded him and he did it.

God commanded him and he did it. And when you live a life that is

surrendered to the Lord, when you see God tell you to do

something, you do it. It's difficult, it's hard, it's

scary. You live in faith and you walk

and you do it because we have the Messiah with us, Emmanuel,

God with us. So you're not doing it alone,

you have Christ. Many of us have to kind of get

over this me centered life, surrender it to the Lord and

follow him and you're going to see Scott do some amazing things

in your life. Joseph, both Joseph and Mary

love the Lord. Both Joseph and Mary surrender

to the Lord and I promise you right now both Joseph and Mary

are standing at the feet of Jesus and eternity worshipping

him. They live the life surrendered.

Then the last thing, and we'll close with this, Joseph

understood the big picture. Joseph understood the big

picture. He understood that this was

beyond himself. He understood that this was

something that that was beyond his comprehension.

It was beyond his means, and I love what it says.

Therefore, the Lord used Him. When you live a life that's

surrendered and you understand the bigger picture in following

Christ, the bigger picture when it comes to ministry, the bigger

picture when it comes to all of this.

Listen, church isn't about you. Church is about the Messiah.

Church is about worshipping Jesus and knowing Him and

serving Him and giving our lives for Him.

And it's hard. Trust me, ministry is hard,

loving people's heart, discipling people's heart, all

these things that we practice and that we do, it's difficult.

But listen, the bigger picture here is the rule and reign of

the Messiah of Jesus Christ. We want to know Him and make Him

known, and there's a lot more people who need to know Him.

He came to fix the broken. He came to redeem us back to

God. He came to bring peace, mercy,

grace, and there's people outside who are living, not

knowing the Messiah, and we have it.

The bigger picture is not us. The bigger picture is not my

comfort. The bigger picture is not the

career I want. The bigger picture is not who

I'm going to marry. The bigger picture is serving

King Jesus and He's why we do what we do.

So I want to invite you today, if you not, if you have not

decided to follow Jesus, if you have not decided to surrender

your life and your heart to Christ the Messiah, today's a

great day for you. We're going to have some

brothers and sisters up here in the front.

I'll be up here in the front too.

Love to pray for you. If you want to make a decision

for Christ, come. We would love to talk with you.

We would love to just chat with you and lead you to that.

What are you missing out on? Think about your life.

What what are you missing out on that God has for you?

But because you haven't surrendered your life, you

haven't been able to experience it.

And the truth is that he tells you what to do when you

surrender life, He's going to tell you what to do.

But when he tells you what to do is not just a good thing, it's

the best thing. And when you walk with him and

you follow him, there's nothing like it.

And some of us today need to say, Lord, I'm all in.

And listen, when you say Lord, I'm all in.

You never know how God is going to use you.

You never know he's going to rock your world.

You never know what he has in store for you.

So Merry Christmas, surrender to Jesus.