Christmas Day Sermon: He Will Save His People
Consider these questions as we look at Matthew 1:18-25:
1. How does Pastor Mark emphasize the messy and imperfect aspects of the Christmas story, and what significance does this have in understanding the true meaning of Christmas?
2. In what ways does Joseph's response to the angel's message demonstrate his faith and obedience in the face of a difficult situation?
3. Why is it important to remember and celebrate the fact that Jesus, the Savior of the world, entered the world in humble and challenging circumstances, and what does this reveal about God's love for humanity?
Transcript:
We’ve probably heard all heard the Andy Williams song it’s the most wonderful time of the year a dozen times just in the past few days. You can hardly walk into a store without the catchy little tune making its way into your ears. I’m not going to dispute the claim that it is the most wonderful time of the year at all. Who doesn’t like to hear kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It is always good to have loved ones nearby. I’m a little confused by the lyrics about being excited about parties for hosting, that seems like a lot of work. I’m also really confused about the line “marshmallows for toasting”. I think they just needed a line that rhymed with hosting because I’ve never toasted a marshmallow around Christmas, but hey, what do I really know about any of this.
Whether you love the Christmas season or you find all the stuff surrounding it a bit of a chore, there is no disputing that it is a great season. There is just something about the anticipation of Christmas and looking forward to all the festivities. And ultimately we love that it points to one of the most important truths of the Christian faith. That God the Son, took on human flesh, and came to earth to save us. I think that we often take the glitz and fun of the season and make the Christmas story all clean and wonderful and clean and polished but actually the Christmas story is a messy one. Maybe just as messy as some of the family gatherings you have had over the years.
Think about our celebrations of Christmas. We have all the stuff I mentioned from the song and the way other traditional songs talk about this time of the year. They are great. We love them but they aren’t as clean as the songs make them seem, are they. A week ago, my wife and I went and saw a production of White Christmas in Sioux Falls. It was entertaining but I had never really thought too much about the song before and as we were leaving the theater there were some very mild flurries. I thought to myself a white Christmas sounds pretty and it is nice to wake up and see pretty, untouched snow at times but at the same time how often does snow look like a postcard. It usually impedes our travel and our events. Rarely is it clean and pretty for more than about 2 hours. It gets dirty and slushy. We can slip or fall.
Even the romanticized family moments of meals and presents has to be messy, right? You have to prepare the food and you have to clean up the dishes. A whole lot of work for a 30 minute, at best, feast. Everyone is happy with presents but then you have to clean up the mess and find out that something doesn’t fit or that you didn’t buy batteries. You get the idea. We understand that all the moments of life require work and sometimes end up with difficulties. Really, nothing is clean and easy, is it? And of course, the same is true as we recall the reason that we have gathered today. The Christmas story is full of difficulties and hardships and of course, it should be. It is a real story that happened in real, time, space history, and is ultimately about the salvation of our souls. Our sin is messy. We shouldn’t think that there is a clean answer. We see that all throughout scripture and it is on display for us here in the passage from Matthew that we have read today.
As we take a look at this text today we find that this isn’t the traditional Christmas story with Bethlehem and no room in the inn and shepherds watching their flocks by night. What we find in Matthew is only one of the two gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus and while it doesn’t have many details it gives us a little insight what this experience must have been like in the lives of Mary and Joseph.
While this is a story that I think we know pretty well I still want to break it down into three points in hope that we can come away with a better understanding of the story and see the significance it has for us as believers in the Lord Jesus.
The first thing that we are going to see is that the coming of Jesus was a blessed announcement, but it was a difficult one. You can understand why Joseph acts the way that he does when he discovers that Mary is pregnant. This whole thing is a bit of a scandal but yet, it is the means that God is using to bring about his purposes.
Secondly, we see that God confirms the circumstances surrounding the conception of the child that Mary is carrying. This is not due to the influence of man it is due to the ordained plan of almighty God. It is a part of his greater purposes and to fulfill the promise of the one who will bring salvation to the people of God.
Finally, we hear that Joseph is faithful and he responds in obedience to what God has called him to do and the Christ child is born.
Now, as we start off, we see immediately that this is not the story we expect. If you didn’t know what was contained in this account in Matthew’s gospel that first line would likely have your mind going to Away in a Manger and Hark the Herald angels sing. We don’t find any of that part of the birth narrative here, at all. There is a different story being told here and it is being told quickly.
We find that Mary is betrothed to a man named Joseph. Several weeks back when we were working our way through the first parts of the gospel of Luke I mentioned that betrothal was pretty serious business. I mentioned that we see a betrothal as being as being similar to an engagement but it is so much more than that. Once you are betrothed the marriage is essential official. The couple has not consummated the marriage and they do not live together but if you want out of it you don’t just give back the engagement ring. You have to have a legal divorce.
And this piece of information helps us to understand what we are reading here. Put yourself in the shoes of Joseph for a minute. Imagine that you find out that the woman you are betrothed to is pregnant. You know it isn’t you and so there you have the first reason for concern. That’s just what you are experiencing at the personal level. You have to deal with the issue of whether or not the young woman you are going to be married to is faithful. Obviously the most important issue but what is going to happen in your community. In other word, what are the people going to be saying after you walk by in the marketplace? As a carpenter what will the people you are doing work for going to say about you after you leave? They are going to assume one of two things, most likely. That you jumped the gun in the relationship with the woman you are betrothed to or that the woman that you are betrothed to is unfaithful. Now, I’m sure if we talked it through we might be able to figure out some other ways this might be viewed but these are the two most likely scenarios.
And so, like most of us would probably do, Joseph seeks to get out of this situation. And notice what the text tells us here. Joseph is a just man. He is looking to get out of this but he is trying to do it quietly. Essentially he doesn’t want to bring public shame to Mary and so he wants to do this on the down low.
In these 7 verses we are looking at today we don’t have many details but you have to wonder what conversations occurred. Joseph finds out she is pregnant and confronts her and she gives him the story that we read in the book of Luke. How would you respond to that one? It would take a whole lot of trust in someone and a whole lot of faith to believe that a virgin would conceive. It defies not only basic biology but it defies logic.
And I think that this shows a lot of integrity on the part of Joseph to be willing to divorce her quietly instead of publicly showing that you have been wronged. As I mentioned as we started out with this passage this is not an easy path. it would have been a whole lot easier if things would have happened in a different way, but the life of Jesus is starting out with the man who will be his earthly father having to make a difficult choice.
But as we know, the story continues with God sending an angel to confirm the story that he has likely heard from Mary.
We know from the account of the birth of Jesus in Luke’s gospel that an angel visited Mary and now an angel comes to Joseph in a dream as he is in the middle of figuring out what it is that he is going to do about all this.
As I was considering this story this week I really started to empathize with Joseph at a new level as I considered all the different angles of this story. The roller coaster he must have been on. To think that your future wife is unfaithful and then to be visited by an angel and then coming to grips with the fact that your wife is carrying the most anticipated child in history and then realizing that you have the great responsibility of helping to raise that child.
But what confidence in the providence of God must have come from the angel of the Lord visiting him in a dream. You think your life is falling apart and how are you going to handle this situation, but God comes to you and lets you know that it is by his hand that this has come to pass and that it is for a purpose.
Notice what the angel tells Joseph the name of the child will be. Jesus. That name literally means The Lord Saves. The purpose of this child is clear from the get-go. In their culture the meaning of names really meant something. He would have understood the significance of this name. You and I hear a name that is just a name. He would have heard his name will be the Lord saves, for he will save his people from their sins.
We know who this child is we have been waiting and watching for him throughout all of scripture. He is the head crusher promised at the fall. He is the seed of the women that is tracked throughout the promises of the old testament. He is being born with a purpose. This pregnancy that is messing up the plans Joseph had for his life is not a random haphazard event. It is for a purpose. This is not just some child. This is THE child. This is the one that is needed to rescue God’s people. He needs to come in our flesh because we are dead in sin in our flesh. We need a rescuer who is one of us.
In 1988, Anissa Ayala was sixteen years-old and diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia. The doctors said that if she did not receive a bone marrow transplant after chemotherapy and radiation treatment she would die.
Neither her parents nor her brother was a match, and they could not find a donor elsewhere. Her parents, both in their forties, conceived another child and hoped that its bone marrow would be compatible with Anissa’s.
To their great delight it was determined that this new baby was a compatible donor, and when Marissa Ayala was fourteen months-old they took some of her marrow and gave it Anissa. Anissa made a full recovery from the Leukemia and both sisters lead healthy lives today.
In a very real sense Marissa saved her sister’s life. She says, “Without me being a perfect match for my sister, she would not be here.”
Jesus came in human flesh because it was a perfect match. The perfect match needed to keep the law on our behalf and bear the wrath of God for our sin. This is why we are hear today because of that perfect match. Many children were born the day that Jesus was born but none of them was God incarnate who came with a purpose to save us and that is the message the angel brought to Joseph in a dream that this child would be.
And look at the Old Testament passage that the angel quotes. Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. The whole point of this story is that God has come near to us. God is not distant. He has come near to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And as the passage closes up we find that Joseph does not take the easy path but instead, in obedience, he continues on the course that God has put before him.
When he wakes up he didn’t think about. He did it. He kept Mary as his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. Doing what the Lord commands is not always easy. You and I struggle to keep the word of the Lord every day but here we see Joseph keep the command of God. And notice that he didn’t know her until she had given birth to a son. He wanted to leave no doubt that the child in her womb was not of man but was of God. Joseph is faithful and Jesus is born and he and Mary were both faithful to name him just as the angel had directed them.
As I have been drawing out, the Christmas story is filled with hardship. In addition, to the dynamics of the pregnancy itself, God ordained that when Mary was very pregnant she had to travel to Bethlehem. That wouldn’t have been so bad but when they arrived there wasn’t room for them. She had to give birth among the animals and she had to lay the messiah in a feeding trough. While often Christmas songs try to clean up the whole story by saying no crying he makes the truth of the matter is that this child came into the world through pain like every child has. Mary likely struggled to give birth to her firstborn. He cried when he took his first breath. He needed to have his pants change. And the truth of the raw nature of this story is actually way more awesome than the way we imagine it in our mind.
Your savior left the glory of heaven for the dirty surroundings of a stable. The one who the New Testament tells us that through him all things were made came and emptied himself and needed to be fed and changed and cared for by someone who was in rebellion to his holiness. That is why we gather today because God came near and suffered, not just at the end of his life, but through it all to bring us salvation.
And ultimately why is this actually the most wonderful time of the year? Because we are reminded of the extent of what was done to save us. Our sin was great and so we needed a great salvation. It could not be an easy thing. Our sin could not simply be pushed aside, because it was an affront to a holy God. But in his mercy, God himself took the difficult path to redeem us and make us a people for his own possession.
And this is where our application resides in this passage. May we be drawn to the beauty of the hard things as we celebrate this Christmas. May the story of the savior remind us of the faithfulness of Joseph to the commands of God even when things were really hard.
I believe I’ve mentioned at past Christmas day services what working at Toys R Us did for my feelings about celebrating Christmas. It’s been 25 years since that Tickle Me Elmo Christmas and I’m still not over it.
But seriously, when I consider the over commercialization of Christmas it is the line from the Christmas carol why he lies in mean estate that snaps me to the reality of the true beauty of Christmas for glory of Christmas is not in the tinsel or the presents or even the charity we show to others. The glory of Christmas is in the fact that our God came near to us in and he didn’t show up in the fanciest palace or the perfectly sanitized hospital. He didn’t show up with fanfare and refuse to be near us even though in our rebellion we are unclean. Instead he came as one of us for that was the cure we needed and he provided. Why does he lie in such mean estate? Because he loves you, that’s why. What unbelievably good news.
And so may we relish the truth of our God made flesh as we rejoice in his coming this year.
