Jesus’ Birth – Matthew 1v18–25

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

Well, morning folks, good to be here. Somebody said to me at the start, you’ve got a hard act to follow, and they were absolutely right. I do feel a bit like the road sweeper after the Lord Mayor’s parade, but we’re going to turn to God’s words and to these amazing, familiar but amazing chapters at the start of Matthew’s gospel as we continue to think about the coming of Jesus into the world.

So if you do have a Bible there or on your device or pick up one of the church pew Bibles, those red Bibles in the slots in front of you, please turn to Matthew chapter 1 and you’ll find that on page 965 right at the start of that split between the Old and New Testament. We’re going to read verse 18 to 25, the last section of chapter 1. Let’s hear God’s words. 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. Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an 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.

She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son and he gave him the name Jesus. This is the Word of God.

Tom Wright, great theologian, former bishop of Durham, no less, writes in one of his little books on the Gospels by way of an illustration that the frustrating thing about dogs, and you might identify with this if you are a dog owner, the frustrating thing about dogs is that when you’re pointing at something to direct their attention, they just stare at your finger and not the object that you’re trying to point out. You’re seeing your balls over there and they’re just looking at your finger. Let me say, I think there is something of the same danger, something of the same trap that we can fall into when it comes to reading Bible stories, particularly familiar Bible stories.

We can get so captivated by the details, we can miss the point of why they’re there. So a number of weeks ago, we’ve been doing a series on the first book of the Bible, Genesis. We looked at Noah’s Ark and it’d be very easy just to be mesmerised in that story by the thought of all the animals coming to the Ark and going on two by two or getting caught up in lots of thoughts about flood technicalities and dynamics and water levels.

And we actually forget the point of why those details, why those elements are there. What was the point of the story? Which of course in that instance is to show us God’s amazing mercy in a world facing God’s just judgement. Well, if being a bit dog-like is a danger when we read the Bible in general, I think it’s an extra special risk when we read the accounts of Jesus’ birth because we are so familiar with them, aren’t we? We can get so taken up with all the familiar elements of the Christmas story that we can easily forget to think about the greater truths behind them.

So the three wise men, we’re going to look at this next week, so I’m not going to tread into Colin’s sermon too much, I hope. But we saw the young men standing there very resplendent this morning. Those three wise men are in the story about the birth of Jesus, not just to add a splash of colour, not just to kind of bulk out the cast list for the Sunday school nativity play, but they are pointing us to the fact that Jesus is no ordinary baby, but this is someone who draws worshippers from every part of the world.

So having made that point, we need to be careful then not to miss the point of the passage we have just read. The start of Matthew’s account, or might say the continuation of Matthew’s account, verse 18, of how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. The Messiah is that title for Jesus that Matthew clearly wants to emphasise.

In fact, he mentions it four times in chapter 1, in verse 1, in verse 16, in verse 17, in verse 18. He’ll mention it again in chapter 2. The Messiah is that word which is the Hebrew equivalent, the Hebrew translation of the Greek word Christ, which we more commonly use when we think about Jesus. Messiah and Christ are the same words.

And that is the title for the long awaited deliverer, king, saviour that had been promised throughout the Old Testament to the people of Israel. The one who was going to come and restore and establish God’s kingdom and rule over the earth. The one who would finally overcome the sin problem that had blighted humanity since Eden.

The one who would banish evil. The one who would bring in a rain of peace and justice and righteousness, even as the waters cover the sea. The one who had been promised in Genesis, prophesied by Moses, by Isaiah, by Micah, by Zechariah, by so many others.

And Matthew wants to leave us in no doubt, as he opens up his gospel, as in God’s providence, he opens up the New Testament, that Jesus is that one. He is the Christ, the Messiah. Now, that is an extraordinary claim, especially about a baby born to a peasant couple in first century Palestine, a backwater of the Roman Empire.

(7:15 – 10:29)

But Matthew will show us, and indeed his whole gospel is his case for showing us that Jesus is the Messiah. And right at the start, Matthew wants to show us that that claim is backed up by this baby’s extraordinary beginning. A baby who will be born not by natural processes, but by a divine one.

A baby who will not be part of old failing humanity, but the head of a new humanity. And key and essential, and at the heart of pointing us to Jesus’ messianic credentials, right at the start of the gospel is the nature of Jesus’ birth. Indeed, the nature of His conception.

That is, Matthew wants to make it really clear to us that Jesus was conceived and born by a virgin. That is not just that Mary had no marital relations prior to Jesus’ birth, but to be totally clear, in our age of test tube babies, no male had any biological part in His pro-creation. And so the virgin birth of Jesus is not just some incidental detail.

It’s not a kind of throwaway piece of weird trivia just to raise a few awkward questions during the nativity play. But it is central to what Matthew wants us to understand about Jesus. In fact, in our eight verses that we read this morning, this is a key issue.

In five of them, did you notice that? Look at the passage if you have it there. Verse 18, before Mary and Joseph came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit, before they came together. Verse 19, but Joseph finding out that she is pregnant, incorrectly assumes that she must have lost her virginity, that is been unfaithful.

And being a faithful law-keeping man himself, was therefore minded to divorce her, albeit without fuss. Verse 20, an angel comes in a dream to put him right. It’s okay, Joseph, she hasn’t been unfaithful.

This conception is from the Holy Spirit. Verse 22, we then get a reference to that Old Testament prophecy back in Isaiah, a prophecy about a virgin conceiving and giving birth to a son, something that was to be a sign to Israel. And therefore, it had to be attention-grabbing, didn’t it? There’s nothing special to take note of about a young woman having a baby.

That happens all the time. Signs, by definition, have to be out of the ordinary. And then verse 25, for the avoidance of any doubt, Joseph and Mary had no marital relations prior to the birth of Jesus.

(10:31 – 11:44)

In fact, such a big issue is this, that Matthew’s already hinted about it at the end of chapter 1, with his rather kind of strange finish to the genealogy that Colin took us through last week. Remember, we read that genealogy last week. If you were here, this big list of names, you’ll see it there at the start of chapter 1. And we have this just repeated, repetitive formula, the father of, the father of, the father of, as he goes down the generations.

And we get to verse 16, just at the point where we might be kind of nodding off, and we’re expecting to hear Jacob the father of Joseph, Joseph the father of Jesus, but that’s not what he says. He breaks the formula. And then in verse 16, he says, Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.

And Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, who was called the Messiah. It’s as if Matthew has been walking down a long flight of stairs towards us, one step at a time, the father of, the father of, the father of, and he gets to the very last stair, and rather than stepping off, he just takes a step to the side. That’s interesting.

(11:47 – 12:24)

Now, we have to say, of course, that Joseph will be Jesus’ legal father and his guardian. Jesus will be Joseph’s son. He is the rightful heir to David’s royal line.

Indeed, I think we can say that Joseph and Jesus will be a father and son in every way, but one, biologically. Well, no wonder that both Mary and Joseph needed angelic reassurance. Joseph here in his dream, and of course, the angel that appears to Mary that we read about in Luke’s gospel.

(12:25 – 13:10)

But again, those two incidents just highlight again the centrality of the virgin birth in both Matthew and Luke, because as you might know, Matthew and Luke are the two writers who record their gospels about the life of Jesus, who in their gospels record details about his birth, unlike Mark and John, who really just start off with his public ministry. And Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ birth are actually very different in many ways, in that they focus on different characters. Matthew, as we’ll see, focusses on the coming of the three wise men, the kings, whereas Luke doesn’t mention them, but focusses on the shepherds.

(13:10 – 16:13)

And yet, despite the fact their accounts are very different in other ways, they both take great pains to stress this one thing in common, the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus. Well, I think we’ve stared at the finger long enough, so what is the point of it? Let me suggest three things in the kind of brief time that we have, three crucial truths that I think we need to grasp if we were to understand not just the significance of the virgin birth, but of Christmas itself. So, the first thing that the virgin birth points us to, let me suggest, is God’s otherness.

One writer puts it like this, the virgin birth stands on the threshold of the New Testament, blatantly supernatural, defying our rationalism, informing us that all that follows belongs to the same order, and if we find it offensive, we need proceed no further. It’s a reminder that when we approach Jesus, we must be ready to come with a degree of humility, to humble ourselves, to recognise that we are coming with all our human limitations, and we are coming to one who is no less human than us, Bible makes that abundantly clear, but is so much more. It’s an odd thing, isn’t it, that the virgin birth always seems to kind of be singled out for particular cynicism or even mockery.

There’s always a newspaper article about this time of year debunking it, isn’t there? I mean, how weak and foolish must these Christians be to believe that? Don’t they understand science? To which, of course, the reply is, don’t you understand God? You see, the quote reminds us that if our faith staggers at the virgin birth, if we consider that something impossible even for God, then what are we going to make of the rest of Jesus’ life and ministry, the feeding of the five thousand, the stilling of storms, the healing of the blind? To use a biblical expression, if we strain at the gnat of the virgin birth, how on earth will we swallow the camel of the resurrection? Now, don’t misunderstand me. Christianity invites careful enquiry and examination. There are legitimate good questions to ask.

That’s why we do from time to time courses for people to come and investigate Christianity or to do a one-to-one with somebody to read the Bible for themselves and to talk through their questions. And if you’d be interested in that, speak to myself or Colin. We’d love to set something like that up for you.

(16:16 – 16:21)

God has given us minds. He expects us to use them. This is not about gullibility.

(16:21 – 17:30)

But the virgin birth is a work of God, a God who made the world and all the natural processes within it, a God who cannot be contained by human reason or put in a test tube. So, if we can’t countenance the idea that God could conceive a virgin to conceive, if we at the birth of Jesus reject the supernatural power of God, then we’ve fallen at the first fence. Rather, Christians rejoice in a God who can do so much more than they could imagine or expect, that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is a God who can do the humanly impossible, because it is only such a God who offers hope of doing what we cannot do, of dealing with the problems that we cannot solve, which takes us on to our second point, that the virgin birth points us to our human hopelessness.

(17:31 – 19:23)

You see, the virgin birth, in many ways, is a great declaration that humanity needs a Saviour from without itself, someone who will break our endless cycle of failure. Humans love to think that they can fix themselves. Sometimes they’re more confident of that than others.

It was very popular thinking at the end of the 19th century, in the late 1800s, that was a great time of optimism. You can read quotes from people who thought the world was just on an upward, endless path to greater prosperity and wealth, fuelled by the Industrial Revolution. And as they saw it, particularly in the West, arrogantly, the spread of Western civilisation around the globe.

But then the 20th century came, with its world wars and its Holocaust, and punctured that balloon. But then it wasn’t long until the same thoughts came back again. Do you remember the 1990s, after the Cold War? Do you remember the famous book that was written, The End of History? The proposition that after all the kind of struggles of the ages, of all these great kind of powers and empires and philosophies, the last man standing was democratic capitalism.

And the whole world would now embrace democracy and liberal Western values. And then 9-11, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the financial crisis, terror, Ukraine, Gaza, the same old, old story. The virgin birth signals to us that a new humanity is needed.

(19:24 – 20:15)

There is no hope in the old one. It’s been tested to destruction. Leaders come and go, always promising to make things better, to usher in some grand new era.

But even the best of them are quickly overwhelmed by the problems. And time and time again, we see they can’t control themselves. Never mind a nation.

Every generation, every new generation rises up, doesn’t it? The Oxford Union in the 1930s, the hippies in the 60s, and so on and so forth, with a sense of their own virtue. And they scorn the previous generation, don’t they? Leave it to us, we’ll fix it. But every generation finds out it’s just like the one before.

(20:16 – 21:15)

It’s made of clay, just as weak, just as greedy, just as lustful, just as out of depth. All humanity is a dead end. We must look outside ourselves.

And so God breaks the cycle. Jesus will not be less than fully human. In fact, he will be humanity as it was intended to be, sin-free and God-centred.

Read on in Matthew, there was no life like the life of Jesus. And there’s not been one since. His wisdom, his purity, his gentleness, his compassion, his honesty, his selflessness, his love for God.

Jesus, son of Mary, conceived by God, the Holy Spirit, as humanity’s only hope. He has broken the cycle. There is a fresh start.

(21:16 – 24:18)

Because the one person who was not bound up in all our sin and failure would bear the consequences of that sin on the cross. The one who was not born into a failing old humanity would take God’s right and necessary judgement on that old humanity on himself, so that those who believe in him might become part of a new humanity in Christ. He alone, verse 21, can save his people from their sins, which takes us to our final and shortest point.

The virgin birth points us to God’s otherness, the humility we need as we come to the New Testament, to Christ. It points us to humanity’s hopelessness, and it points us to our own need for a supernatural rebirth. Because if you and I are not to perish and just go the way of that old, condemned humanity, the Bible is very clear, we each need a rebirth, a supernatural rebirth.

As John tells us in his gospel, a birth not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or of a husband’s will, but a new start in life, like Jesus’ birth, enabled by the Holy Spirit. We each need to be spiritually reborn, to become sons and daughters of God, to become part of Jesus’ family, to be folded into that new humanity, and with God’s help, to become increasingly like Jesus, part of a forgiven, cleansed, renewed people of God. And that rebirth, that supernatural new birth can begin today, can happen today, by believing in Jesus the Messiah, by coming with that appropriate humility to Him, to the unique, divine, virgin-born Son of God, by recognising your needs, giving up on fixing yourself, but rather asking Jesus to forgive you, to save you from your sins, by asking God to grant you a new birth into His family.

Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. And may God bless these thoughts from His Word.

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