Matthew 1:18-23
Fourth Sunday in Advent - 18 December 2016
Rev. John Derme
Is there any portion of Scripture that is more loved or well-known than the Christmas gospel of Luke chapter 2? We'll hear that account of our Savior’s birth this coming Saturday evening, Christmas Eve. This morning, however, we have been blessed to hear that other account of Jesus' birth from Matthew chapter 1. What Luke explains with details about Bethlehem and the shepherds, Matthew covers much more quickly. But Matthew focuses on a person who is often forgotten in the life of Jesus: his stepfather Joseph. As we look at Joseph’s role in the birth of Jesus, we can learn a great deal about how our Lord deals with us. Marvel with Joseph at the virgin birth. Our minds cannot understand it. The Lord gives us confidence to believe it.
Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph. This pledge was more than a modern-day engagement. Joseph and Mary had gone through a legal ceremony after which the two were recognized as husband and wife. Sometime later friends and relatives joined together for a celebration much like wedding receptions of today, and the groom took his bride home to live with him.
We see in our lesson that, even though Joseph had not formally taken Mary into his home, Joseph is called Mary’s husband and Mary is called Joseph’s wife. We also see that it would have taken a legal divorce to dissolve this marriage. If one of the partners would be unfaithful to the other during this time, that person was to be considered an adulterer and was subject to punishment as such.
Some time after Joseph and Mary pledged themselves to each other, the angel Gabriel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, so that she would become the mother of the promised Messiah. After the angel explained this, Mary went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth for almost three months.
Joseph must have learned about Mary’s pregnancy when she returned to Nazareth. Did Mary tell him then? Did he notice by observing her? If Mary did tell Joseph, she surely would have told him about Gabriel’s visit. If that was the case, then it is clear that Joseph did not believe her. Or if Mary hadn’t told him – perhaps afraid that he wouldn’t believe her – Joseph couldn’t have known about the special circumstances surrounding this child. After a great deal of deliberation Joseph decided to divorce Mary. But even though it appeared that she had been unfaithful to him, Joseph loved Mary too much to have her publicly disgraced. When it came time to write the letter of divorce, Joseph wouldn’t include his reason for divorcing Mary.
Can you imagine what Joseph was going through? He hadn’t seen his wife for three months. But when she came back, she was pregnant. How could she do such a thing to him? Mary was the person he trusted most, and he thought that she had betrayed him. If Mary was pregnant before their marriage was complete, how would that reflect on him? He didn’t want people thinking he had done this with Mary. As an upright Jew, Joseph could not be married to an adulteress. He simply had to divorce her.
We don't know whether Mary told Joseph about the angel’s message, but if she had, how unbelievable would it have been? Perhaps, if she did tell him, it sounded like a desperate excuse. And why should Joseph believe that God had chosen Mary, a poor girl from Nazareth, to bear the Messiah? None of it made sense.
If a virgin birth didn’t make sense at Joseph’s time, how much more ridiculous does it sound in our age? Since nobody wants to look uneducated, many Christian churches today are leaving the idea of a virgin birth in the past. I can remember hearing a recording of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” which replaced the line “Born of a virgin to earth he comes” with “Born of a woman to earth he comes.” It would just be silly of them to say “virgin,” since nobody believes that anymore, right?
Have you ever tried explaining the virgin birth to someone who doesn’t believe it? Good luck. We can’t even understand it ourselves. I wonder how many people have been turned off of the Christian faith because the virgin birth doesn’t make any sense to them. I wonder how many people have lost their faith because they couldn’t understand this mystery. The virgin birth caused problems for Joseph, and it is causing problems for us.
Brothers and sisters, we must watch out so that we do not let the world influence our faith. People may have lost their faith over difficult teachings like the virgin birth, but it is not God’s fault since he sent the Savior to be born of a virgin. It is their own fault for allowing the world to make them stumble over this teaching. We must be on our guard so we do not become uncomfortable or embarrassed that we do not understand the virgin birth. If we lose our faith that Christ was born of a virgin, then we lose any confidence that Jesus was true God. If Jesus was not true God, then his death was no different than any other human death; no matter how good of a person he was, a merely human death does us no good. If Jesus’ death was merely a human death, our sins have not been taken away; our guilt has not been removed. If our guilt has not been removed, then we are destined for hell.
But just as God intervened before Joseph divorced Mary, God has intervened on behalf of us by sending his virgin-born Son. Marvel with Joseph at the virgin birth. Our minds cannot understand it. The Lord gives us confidence to believe it.
When Joseph must have been feeling hurt, embarrassed, confused, and at an all-time low, the Lord sent his angel to give Joseph a message from him: "Don’t be afraid to take your wife Mary home. The child growing inside of her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit." If that were all the angel had said, Joseph would have been ecstatic. His wife had been faithful to him! She was still the noble woman that he had thought she was!
But there was more to God’s message than his wife’s fidelity. The angel addressed Joseph as “son of David,” reminding him that he was a direct descendant of King David. Joseph knew that the Savior would come from David’s line. Even though Mary’s son would not be his biological son, it would make sense for him to be Joseph’s legal son and heir to the throne of David. Although God’s plan to send his son to be born of the virgin Mary hadn't made sense to Joseph at first, it made perfect sense in the end. And moved by God’s promise, Joseph believed God’s plan and carried out God’s will as the Messiah’s guardian.
People today may claim that the teaching of Christ’s virgin birth doesn’t make any sense. They think it sounds unscientific. But the fact that God came to rescue the human race in a supernatural way isn't unscientific at all. God can do that if he wants to. Rather, that fact gives us comfort and confidence. The Almighty Lord who lives in heaven and rules over the earth left his throne to grow in the womb of a human woman for nine months so that he could save that sinful woman and every other sinful man and woman.
If the baby who grew in Mary’s womb had been the natural child of a man and a woman, he would have been an ordinary human being and would have inherited a sinful nature, like every other person who has ever been conceived. But Jesus was placed into Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit. Born of a woman, he is truly a human being. But since he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, he is also truly God, just as he had been God from eternity. As a real human being, Jesus lived under God’s law just like we do. He was responsible to obey God’s will expressed in the Ten Commandments just like we are told to obey God’s will. But unlike us, Jesus is truly God. He was not born with the sin that keeps us from obeying God’s will. As true God, he was able to withstand the temptations that Satan brought against him. Since Jesus is truly a human, he was able to die, just like every other human dies. But since he is truly God, Jesus’ death was also unlike any other death. When he sacrificed his perfect life, he was able to pay for the sins of every other human being. Since Jesus is true God, he has paid for every time we doubted his plan or called it unreasonable, every time we distrusted the truth that God’s Son was born of a virgin. Jesus’ virgin birth gives us the confidence that our guilt has been completely erased. We are free from our guilt and sin! Heaven is our destination!
Jesus’ virgin birth is a guarantee that he is our Savior. Matthew writes, "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet." Seven hundred years before Christ was born of a virgin, the Holy Spirit had guided Isaiah to say, "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son." Even if people of those times did not understand the human body quite as well as we do, they knew full well that virgin women could not bear children. But God promised that one virgin would have a son. That son is Immanuel, which means “God with us.” The son who was born of a virgin is true God and true man. That son fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. And God has told us in his Word who that child is: Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Since God fulfilled his prophecy to send this Redeemer, he has given us the confidence that his Word is trustworthy and true. And by faith, the Holy Spirit enables us to believe in his miracles even though we do not understand them.
After Joseph heard the angel’s message, he did what the Lord commanded him: he took Mary to live with him as his wife. And he lived out his days on earth as the guardian and legal father of the Son of God. We too live out our lives in thanks to the virgin-born Son of God. We thank him by cherishing the amazing truth of the virgin birth. We worship him by sharing that truth with others, both here in church and in the world. We praise him for the confidence that he has given through it. We marvel at the virgin birth. By God’s grace, we believe it.