Today we are continuing on in our study of Matthew’s Gospel. Last week we went through the first 17 verses of chapter 1. Those first 17 verses aren’t the easiest verses to read through. There are some really difficult to pronounce names and I stumbled through reading quite of a few of those. And I think at first glance it’s easy to just gloss over a passage like that, because on the surface, it is for the most part, just a bunch of names. But as we talked about last week, there was a real purpose to why Matthew started the book this way. In practical application for us last week, we looked at how God took regular people with regular problems across the span of 2000 years of these promises and redeemed lives, created purpose, and gave us hope that despite what lies behind us, God is still able and wanting to involve us in His purposes. And we also just spoke of His power, of the Almighty God who made these promises and carried His will forward through these 2000 years of family lines to fulfill those promises. The passage that we are going into in a minute is these promises being fulfilled. All of this time, all of this waiting, across all of these generations, and Matthew is about to introduce us to the Promised One. But see, Matthew understood the Jewish audience who would be reading this book first and God led him to first thing connect Jesus Christ back to the promises that God made to both Abraham and to David. Because if Jesus wasn’t connected to those promises, then those readers wouldn’t really have any reason to read any further. They would have no reason to care about this Jesus, if there was no way that He was the Messiah.
So, Matthew makes that very important connection in those first 17 verses and then in light of that verse 18 shifts to “now let me tell you His story” and that’s where we pick up today. Let’s read this.
Read Matthew 1:18-25
So, I guess it’s kind of Christmas in May today, but it’s kind of interesting to look at this passage outside of the Christmas season. I think sometimes we can get into like, the bible as a storybook mode, and miss the real history, the real events, and the real people that exist on the pages of scripture. We find ourselves in the wake of Matthew providing evidence for Jesus being the promised Messiah and in the wake of that we find, a young pregnant girl named Mary who is actually, at that moment, carrying inside of her, the very Son of God, Jesus Christ. And have you ever stopped to consider what that must have been like? I mean as a man I definitely can’t relate as much as some of you in here can. Obviously, I have never carried a child inside of me, but it was still amazing as a dad to feel my children move and even with the technology of today to have the chance to see a glimpse of their face before they were even born. These were really amazing things. But I guess though that it’s fitting that on Mother’s day we are sitting here considering what it was like for a young mother to be carrying Jesus inside of her. We’re never told in the Bible what her age was at this point. Many historians have gone back and forth for the last 2000 years over questions like this and for this specific question most have settled on her likely being around 15 or 16 years old at this point. But again, God didn’t choose to tell us this detail, so that is purely speculation on their part, but we know simply that she had to be young. And I really want us to get a little more of Mary’s story which Matthew doesn’t go into in his gospel so let’s jump over to the Gospel of Luke.
Read Luke 1:26-56
Both of these accounts agree that Mary and Joseph were engaged, but not married at this point. Both of these accounts agree on the fact that Mary was still a virgin at this point. Both of these accounts agree on the fact that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. Both of these accounts point out the family line of David that Jesus was coming through. But once again, look at this young girl here. The Archangel Gabriel just showed up in the house with her and he says “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” And in what should be a completely understandable response, she is troubled, or confused, and it says she is wondering to herself like “what kind of greeting is this?”. Not to mention who in the world, or I guess not of this world, is this standing in front of me? There’s a whole lot going on here for this teenage girl to take in. But he says, “Don’t be afraid” and he shares with her that she is about to be carrying a Son and that she is to call His name Jesus.
And I’m sure she’s still trying to process all of this, but her immediate response isn’t like “Oh ok great.”. It’s basically: how is this going to work? I’m still a virgin. And Gabriel tells her exactly how that’s going to work through the Holy Spirit, and he also shares with her that her relative Elizabeth is pregnant as well who had not been able to have a child, and this child will be part of our study in the coming weeks as well, but after he mentions that, Gabriel ends with the definitive statement “For with God nothing will be impossible.”
This young girl had faith, and we could be like well of course I mean an angel showed up to tell her these things. But still just consider the weight of what she is to believe at this moment. That He who is the turning point of all of human history, the One who has come to save, literally God come down to men, was to be carried inside of her and born from her body. I don’t know about you, but that is a lot to take in. But faced with this incredible reality, she says I’m the Lord’s servant and let it be according to your word. I think she was in shock for a moment and was like that’s not possible, for obvious practical reasons I can’t be having a baby, I haven’t been with a man. But then it was like, you know the angel Gabriel saying, well God’s putting a baby inside of you, and then she was basically like, alright then, let it be, I’m the Lord’s servant.
And if there was any doubt in regard to her faith and even her understanding of these things, the song that she wrote that is recorded in verses 46 through 56 should clear that right up. She knew exactly what was going on now and she understood her place in it, as God’s servant, to carry within her the very Savior of the world. And so, she sat at Elizabeth’s house for three months with I’m sure plenty of time to think about all of this and to write that song before she headed back home. And that’s probably about where Matthew 1:18 picks up the story. Because back in Matthew 1:18 it says that she was now found with child of the Holy Spirit. She was told about it, she stayed at Elizabeth’s place for a while, and now obviously it must be clear that the pregnancy is really happening. Maybe it was in those 3 months that she spent at Elizabeth’s place that the pregnancy really started to show.
And that being the case back here in Matthew 1 has created for Joseph what we would call “A Situation”. Check out verses 18 and 19 again of Matthew 1.
Read Matthew 1:18-19
These two are engaged, not married, she’s pregnant, and now Joseph is trying to deal with “The situation” by trying to figure out the best course of action for this relationship. On our side of things, reading this now, we’re never told whether or not Mary told Joseph everything that had happened to her. I mean, maybe she did, but how do you even go about sharing that story anyways. She could have been like: Well…an angel appeared to me, and informed me, that God the Holy Spirit conceived a child inside of me, and He is going to save us. I don’t think we ever really stop and consider Joseph’s side of all of this. Can you imagine that? Like I said, we don’t know if Mary shared these things with Joseph and if she did, we don’t have any record of his response either, but could you blame the guy if this was shared and he didn’t believe it? I mean I could probably imagine us being like, couldn’t you come up with something a little more grounded in reality than that? Again, because maybe we are sometimes so familiar with these events, from our place in time and having the bible, that we don’t consider the people living in the moment. This had to be crazy for Joseph. Either Mary told him, and he must not have believed what she had said, or maybe he had significant doubts, or maybe she didn’t tell him and he must have thought she had been unfaithful to him.
But in either case, Joseph was moving forward to try and dissolve their engagement. And this was a bigger deal then what we might think, because of maybe some differences in words and customs for us. In Jewish culture at that time there was actually an engagement, then betrothal, then marriage. The betrothal stage was already an official and binding union between two people that could only be broken by divorce. But it wasn’t a marriage yet, and all that marriage entails. Betrothal usually lasted at least a year and then a wedding would take place and then the marriage would be finalized. But Joseph and Mary were already in the betrothal stage, already in an officially binding relationship when Mary is found to be with child and Joseph obviously knows that the child is not his.
And as we talked about, we don’t know what discussion has been had between them, and it’s probably unlikely that Joseph believed it anyways at this point, either way, because he is seeking to divorce Mary. But this passage paints Joseph in a pretty fair light still, it shows that he was probably a pretty upstanding guy. It says that he didn’t want to make some big spectacle of Mary, he didn’t want to publicly shame her, he just wanted to end the relationship quietly. If social media has taught us anything, it’s that plenty of people would be more than happy to make a massive spectacle out of others for even the smallest of things. But verse 19 says Joseph was a just man, he didn’t want that for Mary, and just wanted to end things secretly. But maybe he wasn’t set on his decision yet, or maybe he was just trying to figure out what would be the best way to go about this. Because verse 20 says that he was still actively thinking about these things and while he was thinking, he must have fallen asleep. Continuing in verse 20 we see that during his sleep an angel appeared to him in a dream and what does the angel say? Let’s read verses 20 and 21 again.
Read Matthew 1:20-21
Again, this news changes everything, this news affects the entire world and every person living in it. The angel tells Joseph that this baby inside of Mary was literally conceived within her by God, by the Holy Spirit. This wasn’t the result of any sort of unfaithfulness on Mary’s part. And you know some people actually tried at some point to start spreading rumors that Mary had been unfaithful to try to discredit Jesus. You can see a little bit of that in John chapter 8, but here, once again, we get the real story. This was the Son of God, being carried inside of a young woman named Mary and God was telling her fiancé go ahead and still marry her and she is going to have this Son. And you are going to name this Son, Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.
And you know it’s interesting because I feel like without really thinking about it that I have always kind of just figured that Jesus must have been the first person named Jesus, that this name was unique to Him at the time, but that’s actually not believed to be the case. There was a really big historian at the time, a guy named Josephus, he wasn’t a writer in the Bible, but this historian mentions quite a few other men around the same time named Jesus. But it was from this moment when God declares the name of His Son, that the name Jesus would be forever immortalized beyond just being a common name during that time. And it’s so fitting, because the name Jesus literally means “Yahweh saves” or “God saves” and that is exactly what He had come to do and it’s exactly what the angel told Joseph that He had come to do. And this is why passages like Philippians 2 says:
- 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And its why Peter speaking about Jesus in Acts 4 says:
- 12 Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
And it was right after this, after Peter addressed the religious leaders there in Acts 4 that the religious leaders actually commanded them to no longer speak of or teach in the name of Jesus because they fully realized that there was power in His name and in the message that came along with it. And of course, the Apostles immediately disregarded this command in what would be a very good example of civil disobedience, because the command went directly against their responsibility in God’s mission. There was nothing that was going to stop these men from sharing the name and truth of Jesus, because they knew it was what people needed to hear.
And it’s what so many had been waiting for. All the way back to the first glimpse of Gospel truth in Genesis 3 when God Himself told Satan that someone was coming for Him, though the seed of a woman, and then on to the promises as we talked about to Abraham and to David and through generations of written word and word of mouth and the word of the prophets such as Isaiah which Matthew quotes here. Through all of these things, this understanding of the One Who was coming to save was shared and spread, probably shared from parents to children around the dinner table and at bedtime. Spoken of in the temple, and in schools, and in households, and amongst the peoples. They would have known and understood this prophecy in Isaiah which Matthew quotes in verses 22 and 23:
Read Matthew 1:22-23
That one day there would be One coming and He would be born miraculously of a virgin woman. And you know as much as we look forward to Jesus’ second coming, can you imagine living in this world before Jesus had come the first time? Have you ever thought about that? This prophecy in Isaiah was written about 700 years before Jesus came and even the last book of the Old Testament scripture, Malachi, was written 400 plus years before Jesus’ coming that we are learning about in Matthew 1. This is hundreds of years of waiting, dozens of generations of hoping to one day see all of this come true. And this young girl named Mary and this guy named Joseph are the first in this world to know that all of that hope, that all of that waiting, was not in vain. That this child inside of Mary was the very Son of God come to save them. How crazy would it have been to be confronted with news of this importance, but here they were. This passage calls this child both Jesus and also Immanuel from the passage in Isaiah. And in just those two names we see exactly Who He is, where He has come, and what He has come for. He is God, He has come down to us, and He has come to save. Immanuel – God with us, Jesus – God Saves.
And with that, Joseph wakes from his dream. Let’s read these last two verses again.
Read Matthew 1:24-25
Actually, he didn’t just wake up. It sounds more so like he was woken up. It says there that he was aroused from sleep. Joseph might not have had the whole story earlier; we don’t know on that one. If he did in fact get the whole story earlier, then maybe he was just dealing with his doubts about it. I mean just think about your fiancé being pregnant and telling you that God has conceived a child inside of me, so don’t worry, everything’s good. As real and as awesome as that is, this is still just a man and that’s a lot to take in as well on his side. But whatever the case may have been, an angel just filled in all of the blanks in his dream. Joseph had the full story now from a messenger that came straight from the source. He may have fallen asleep trying to figure out every angle of the situation and trying to figure out what the best way through it was going to be, but now he had been told what he must do and obviously he believed it now. Verse 24 says that Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary to be his wife, but Matthew is still very quick to clarify there that Mary remained a virgin until after Jesus was born. The prophecies were made that the miraculous would happen, that by the very power of God a virgin woman would be with child and that day has come here in Matthew 1. But as we close, I want to go to one more passage of scripture. Let’s go to Isaiah 9.
Read Isaiah 9:6-7
The end of Matthew 1 said that Mary brought forth her firstborn Son and they called His name Jesus. That baby that they were holding in their arms that day was this child that Isaiah spoke of about 700 years before He was born. And Isaiah says that all authority or governing will rest on His shoulders. There are actually parts of that truth and that prophecy that we are still looking forward to right now, as we wait for Him to return again. But Isaiah continues and calls Him, Wonderful, Counselor, MIGHTY GOD, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and speaks of His Kingdom and His rule forever. Can you imagine being this young mother or His adoptive father in Joseph and holding this child in your arms. The entire course of this world changed at the moment this Child was born and these two, Mary and Joseph, got a front row seat and the opportunity to be a part of it. God had come to save and we’re going to hear His story and His teaching through the rest of this book.