Christmas Thoughts from Matthew 1:21

The Incarnation of Jesus and the Historical Setting of Matthew 1:21

But as I was considering Matthew 121, there is so much here that can serve as a springboard for our consideration of really the entirety of the work of the gospel itself. Let's start right at the beginning.

Jesus existed in time and space. He truly was a man. We know the timeframe in which he was born. Remember, they did not keep calendars in the same way we do today. In fact, one of the difficulties in the ancient world was that each culture had its own calendar.

And so you might travel to one land and they would be in the third month of their calendar. You might travel to another land and they might be in the sixth month of theirs. Some were solar-based, others were lunar-based.

One of the difficulties that you have in studying Islam is that to this day, Islam uses a lunar-based calendar rather than a solar-based calendar. And so their years are of a different length than the rest of ours.

And so you can't just, if you look at their years, you've got to get out a computer, basically, to figure out what year is what year because people had different calendars. Frequently, those calendars would be based upon a ruler's, the certain year of a ruler's reign.

And if you didn't know when he started to reign, well, there just weren't any calendars up on the wall published by Hallmark or anybody else that would help you out. But we are told that Jesus's birth took place while this person was ruling here and this person was ruling there.

And his birth is placed in history. And this is not merely someone beaming into humanity. This one was born. The prophecy from Isaiah chapter nine was a child will be born to you. And it uses all the standard words.

A child, not just a phantom, not a ghost, not a deity parading as if a human being. A child will be born. And it's the very term for the natural process of childbirth. There was a period of time when Mary is pregnant.

She bears this child. And so a child, a son will be born. That is the statement of the angel. Jesus truly entered into human flesh. That's why John 1 14 says the word became flesh, not the word appeared to have flesh or the word dressed up in flesh or anything else like that.

The word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us, dwelt amongst us and we beheld him. What our hands have touched and felt, John will say in 1 John chapter one. And so right from the beginning, all of those later beliefs that turned Jesus into a mere phantom, the earliest heresy the church fights about the person of Jesus Christ is those who tried to turn Jesus into a phantom, into something other than one who was truly man.

And you have warnings of this in John. You have warnings of this in Paul's epistle to the Colossians. This is one of the earliest falsehoods. And yet it became very widely popular, primarily amongst the intelligentsia who just simply couldn't fathom the idea that the creator God who created all things could enter into his own creation.

Hence you have what's called Gnosticism which has had quite the rebirth, not so much in followers, but in academia in our day. And you shall call his name Jesus. Now these are placed in the future tense, but that is also a means by which a command can be given in the Greek language.

And so the angel is not commanding her to have a son initially. He simply is saying what is going to happen, but now you have, you shall call his name Jesus. This isn't just a prophecy of what's gonna happen.

This is indication of why his name will be called Jesus. You shall call his name Jesus. Why? Well, because the word Jesus, Yeshua, in the original language, in Greek it's Yesun, but in the language of the people of the day, Aramaic, Hebrew, this was simply Joshua or Yeshua.

And as you're probably aware, Yeshua is a compound word that means Jehovah saves. When you hear Jah or Je or Yeh in Old Testament names, this normally is some sort of contraction of an attachment of the name of Yahweh or Jehovah.

And so Joshua was simply a name that commemorated the reality of the fact that if salvation is to take place, then Jehovah is the one who must save. Jehovah is the source of salvation. And so the angel says, you will call his name Jesus.

You will give to him a name that has a particular meaning that not only commemorates the fact that Jehovah has been to the people of Israel, the source of salvation. But one thing that becomes very, very clear, that's how the Jews would have heard this.

That's how a Jewish person would have at that time understood this particular name and what it meant. And I realized in our culture, our names generally don't mean a whole lot. Most of the time, names are picked today on the basis of what mom and dad think is really cool.

I understand that next year, there is gonna be an explosion of babies named Barak. There's gonna be all sorts of Barak babies born. Well, that's wonderful. How many of them know what that means, I wonder?

How many of us know what that means? It means a blessing, by the way. But, you know, names come and go. It's interesting to look at the names of my parents' generation, and not many of those names are overly popular on the name lists in hospitals today.

But things change, and it's all a matter of trends and popularity, and rarely does the word actually mean anything. And sadly, most of the time when you go, especially to a Christian bookstore, and buy those books that allegedly tell you what names mean, half the time, they are making it up.

In fact, I recall very clearly, one of the editors I had at Bethany House, they were doing such a book. And for the fun of it, just an in-house joke, one of the young editors put in some name, like Zazaman, or something like that, and put in something along the lines of, I don't know, ruler of some distant planet, or something.

He just put it in there just to tweak the proofreaders. They didn't catch it. It ended up in the first edition. And they fixed it later, and there were a few embarrassed faces, and thankfully, someone did not lose their job.

But most of the time, those books are completely fictional themselves. But that wasn't the case back then. Names had more of a meaning. They frequently were connected to the past. They frequently were meant to remind the current generation of great things that God had done for the people in the past.

And that just isn't how we think today. But when we look at names, especially in the Old and New Testaments, we probably should consider those things, and consider what those words meant. And so to say that this one should be called Jesus, yes, that would first of all bring to mind the idea of the work that God had done in being the Redeemer of Israel.

But there is gonna be much more to the meaning of this name. The fact that Joshua was not just gonna be a name hearkening back to a great military leader of the past, but that this name was being given on the basis of what he would do is explicitly stated in the rest of the verse.

The Meaning of Jesus: Jehovah Saves

You will call his name Jesus. That's something that the parents had the right to do. The parents had the right and responsibility of naming that child. And so since a child would be born, he would be called Jesus.

Why would he be called Jesus? For he will save his people from their sins. He will save his people from their sins. It's warmer up here right now than it normally is during summer, so. Let's look at each one of these words because I think they're important.

It could easily be said in the original language, the word he could simply be assumed, but it's not. It is actually stated, it is emphasized. It's the very first word of the phrase. He, that's why when I translated, I said he himself.

There is an emphasis here. He will save his people from their sins. This is why he is called Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus, because he has an ability. He is the one by which Jehovah brings about the fulfillment of all of his promises.

His promises have always been, even going back to Genesis three, there's gonna be one who is going to bruise the serpent's head. There is going to be one who is going to be the blessing of the serpent's head.

To all the people, Genesis chapter 12. Who is this one? Well, this is the one who is going to be born. He will be called Jehovah saves for he himself will save his people. He has the capacity and ability in and of himself to do something.

This does not say that he will make salvation available. That's not what the text says. It does not say that he will make salvation available. It says he will do something. It does not say that he will cooperate with many other people in accomplishing something.

His name has meaning because he possesses the capacity and ability in and of himself to accomplish something. He himself will save, not he with others, not he as one of a whole group of others. Now, I know I emphasize this repeatedly, but we have visitors with us.

Sometimes people aren't here on a Sunday. And so I want to emphasize it again because I truly believe that it is one of the key areas that when you get up in the morning should be a part of your thought.

Let's say you have a job. I normally use the military application here, but let's use an employment situation. If you have a job where you know that there's one particular person at your work who always has it out for you, who's always gonna be watching to see if you're gonna mess up in this one area.

When you go in, you're gonna make sure not to mess up in that area. And every day, you're gonna have to think about that. You'd like to be able to take a vacation from worrying about things like that, but you can't.

You have to be thinking about that each and every day. Well, there are certain things that we as Christians need to think about every morning. And if we have to write them down on a list, we should. We can't just roll out of bed and stumble into the battle.

That's a certain way of getting yourself wounded, if not killed. And one thing to remember is that the world around us, and this is increasing with frightening rapidity in our culture, all you have to do is listen to what's being said.

Listen to what's going on. In our culture, the world around us wants us to compromise the essentials of the Christian faith. They want us to deny what is being said in this verse and in so many other verses throughout the scriptures.

The idea that God has chosen to save in Jesus Christ and in him alone is considered by many to be hate speech, is considered by a large portion of our society to be hateful, to be exclusivistic. And sadly, there are many people who call themselves Christians, who likewise scoff at the idea that God has in Christ provided the only way of salvation.

Now, when you even think about what God has done in Christ, when you think about who Christ was, when you think about the eternal second person of the Trinity taking on human flesh to provide the means of salvation, the idea that the creature would be so insane in his rebellion as to stand up and say, I think it's unkind of you to be so narrow in your provision of salvation.

When you step back and realize that we're talking about rebel sinners, creatures standing back and saying, I think you're not being nice enough, the insanity of it should strike us. But that's the society we live in.

And in subtle ways, and in more and more ways, very open and obvious ways, the society around us says to you, be embarrassed at the message of Jesus. Be embarrassed. We don't care if you believe in a Jesus who's one savior amongst many.

Go ahead, fine, do your religious thing because we don't have any concern about you. But how dare you tell me that if I am going to have the favor of God, that that favor will come in and through Jesus Christ?

How dare you? And if you haven't thought through why that is, and why that is absolutely just, and absolutely righteous, and absolutely gracious, and altogether lovely, then you're not really gonna be in a position to respond.

And you're not really gonna be in a position to even recognize the subtle ways in which you are put in a position to feel embarrassed by the gospel itself. It really seems to me, as I monitor, especially the discussions of the society that touch upon biblical themes, the biblical definition of life, the biblical definition of sexuality, the biblical definition of marriage, that there is a rapid increase, acceleration in the detestation of our society for Christian truth.

And so we need to realize he will save, not he in company with others, not he is one of many ways. He will save his people from their sins. Next, he will save. If you're ever feeling down and out, you're ever feeling depressed, I know that I've had people have come to me and said, man, I just cannot escape a cycle of depression, a cycle of constant introspection and feeling of failure.

And I don't claim to have, I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist, but I know when it's a Christian, the most, the best advice I can come up with is someone like that. And what I've always said to people, well, you need to look away from yourself, you need to look to Christ.

Have you taken time to ponder and to consider and to reflect upon what Jesus Christ has accomplished in your behalf? Have you gone to the book of Hebrews and taken time to consider when it says in Hebrews chapter seven, that he is able to save to the uttermost completely those who draw near unto God by him, seeing he always lives to make intercession for them.

Have you considered that? Have you considered the perfection of his power, the perfection of his sacrifice, the perfection of the righteousness that is imputed to you by faith in him, the fact that he ever lives to make intercession, that you have a surety standing in the presence of God 24 hours a day, representing before the throne of God, the finished work of Christ, that cornerstone upon which your relationship with God exists.

It's not based upon who you are or what you've done. The reason you have peace with God is totally outside of yourself. It's in the work of another. Have you considered these things is what I say to that person.

For I don't know of any other way. I think, and I don't know how many of us have done this. He's not the easiest person to read, but when you read Jonathan Edwards, sometimes you just, this tremendous intellect, and yet he'll be riding through the woods on his horse, and he will be considering the Trinity, and he will have to stop and get off of his horse to weep at the beauty of the condescension of God, this triune majesty who has condescended to have dealings with himself and be merciful to himself.

Seems to be a fairly effective means of taking consolation and rejoicing in God. And oftentimes, Edwards talks about just the glory of the recognition of the perfection of Christ as Savior. I don't understand people who want to intrude themselves into the perfection of Christ as Savior.

Just so they can say they had 1%. I'll give him 99, but I need my one. Don't get it, never will. Never will. But there are so many who want to do it. He will save. Is that not the message of John chapter six?

When Jesus says that the Father gives to him a particular people, well, there's a particular people here too, isn't there? Yes, there is. The Father will give to him a particular people and it's the Father's will that of all that are given to him, he lose none, nothing.

Of that whole body of people entrusted to his care, the son loses nothing. What does that tell us about the son's capacity? What does that tell us about the son's ability? What does that tell us about the son's will and the son's power?

What does that tell us about the work of the gospel itself? It is solely a divine work to the glory of the triune God. To separate that out and give part of the glory to man is truly a blasphemy. To say he will try to save his people or to say he has made salvation available for his people is to present sub-biblical Christianity.

He will save. He will bring them to glory. That's why you can read the golden chain of redemption in Romans chapter eight. For whom he foreknew, not look down the corridors of time, saw what they were gonna do.

That's a divine action. It's a verb. It's an active verb. It's something God does. He chooses an eternity to enter into loving relationship with a particular people and it's based solely on the counsel of his own will.

Those whom he foreknew, he predestines, he calls, he justifies, he glorifies. Nowhere in that chain is there any, well, he tries. All of them are past tense. All of them are past tense. Not someday he will.

This is so certain that God can put it in the language of accomplishment because he has that power. He will save. He will bring into glory every single one that the father has entrusted to his care. That is why he is to be gloried for all eternity.

That is why he's to be worshiped for all of eternity. I remember more than once as we used to stand out in Mesa, pass out tracks, I talked to some young Mormon men and I'll never forget this one young man.

Obviously, we could only hope that in God's mercy, he's opened this young man's heart and mind, but with an arrogance born of a false religion and the idea that he himself would someday become a God, this young man in mocking tone said, well, what do you think we're gonna be doing in heaven anyways?

Just sitting around and plucking our harps and praising Jesus? Just think about what that man just revealed about his own heart, his own religion. Just think about it. And then you might pray for him because I wouldn't wanna have to stand before Jesus someday if those were my last thoughts on the matter to answer for them.

That is why he will be worthy of our service, of our worship. You see the pictures in heaven, the book of Revelation of what's going on there even now and the living creatures and the angels who bow down in worship.

Do we think somehow we're above that or do we just not understand what it means to truly worship God for what he has accomplished? He will save. Who will he save? He will save his people. And I know mankind, man has such an incredible capacity and ability.

Man can come up with the most amazing ways to make this phrase impersonal. His people is sort of like the membership of a certain club. He will save the golf club. And of course, the golf club is just whoever wants to become a part of the golf club.

And so it's just this amorphous impersonal mass and it's all up to us who's in and who's out, you see. And for a lot of them, you can be in, then you're out, then you're in, then you're out. The idea that there's this little word his there just doesn't seem to click with a lot of folks.

His people. Well, who do you think chooses his people? Well, we do. And he's just so lucky to have us. Haven't you seen the biblical picture of Jesus? The meek and lowly Jesus standing outside my heart's door where there's not a knob and he's knocking away.

Can I come in, please? Supposed to be from Revelation chapter three. Isn't that the same revelation that begins with that powerful person, sword coming out of his mouth, king of kings, Lord of, well, well, but he's very, no, you just need to understand.

He doesn't get to choose his people. His people get to choose him. Yeah, that's how it works with shepherd and their sheep, right? Shepherds stand there, they all get in a row and they let the sheep out and the shepherds go here, sheepy, sheepy, sheepy.

And the sheep walk along going, oh, this one, I don't like his robe. And that one's breath is bad. Oh, there's a good one. He's got some treats in his pocket and they all go. Is that how it works? No.

Shepherds choose their sheep and the sheep follow them because they know the shepherd's voice. He has a people and he will save his people. He has that power. He has that capacity. And just as people want to limit his ability to save to simply making salvation possible, if I enable him to in the same way they want to insert here and say, well, yes, he can save his people from his sins, but it's his people who get to determine who they are in the first place.

The mind of man and its ability to find ways around the clarity of even the clear statements of scripture. But notice something about his people. They need to be saved. They're in a bad spot. And is it not just here that again, we find so much unbelief today?

Is it not just here that we see the face of men become hard? We see individuals become angry when we dare to mention the unmentionable word. I know that there are those who would like to remove this word from the Bible.

They would like to redefine it as mistakes, failures, just something that we all do. It's just a human condition. God loves us anyways. And then there's something about sin that requires salvation. And evidently, it's something we can't save ourselves from.

He will save them from their sins, not his sins. He doesn't have any. He has to do something they cannot do for themselves. It has been well-observed over and over again, but again, because of the world we live in and its constant drag upon us, its constant trying to conform us to its image.

We are always being tempted, encouraged to lower the standard of God's holiness and thereby raise our own standard of righteousness. We compare ourselves with ourselves. I'm not as bad as that person.

Or we accept this vision of God as the great grandfather in the sky who just winks at sin. I think every Christian, every few months, should reread Isaiah chapter 6. And if you've never read R .C. Sproul's book, The Holiness of God, may I highly recommend it to you.

And if it's been a while, read it again. I think one of the reasons a lot of modern-day evangelicals feel a disconnection with the Christians of the past is because so often they had a much more biblical view of sin than we do.

We have been psychologized. We've been psychologized. It comes out in all of our speech. How many times do you hear about some murderer, some individual who does a horrific act, murders a child, murders many people?

And what do we say in our society? Oh, he's sick. No, he's not. He's evil. He's not sick. He's evil. Oh, no, no. I'm sure he had a bad relationship with his papa. We excuse these things. And we look for anything beyond saying, that's evil.

That deserves the wrath of God. Sin. Without it, there is no possible way to understand why God has done what he has done in this world. None. That is why the modern psychologized culture that has been convinced that there is no such thing as God, there is no such thing as God's law, even if you think there might be some God bopping around out there, God cannot reveal himself.

He cannot do even what basic human beings can do in communication. He certainly has no law, because he's not the creator. Even if he touched off the Big Bang, everything else has been natural from that point on.

So the idea of him having law and telling us what's right and wrong is ridiculous, you see. And so since there is no law, there is no sin, there is no right and wrong. I would also argue there is no good, there is no beauty, there is no any of those things either.

That's why our society is in the state that it is. But the very idea that you can talk about sin, mockery, laughter, therefore, the whole concept of what the gospel is all about. For those compromised churches and denominations that buy into the societal norms, what do you have to do the gospel to still try to be quote, unquote, relevant?

Well, you've got to take everything out of it that talks about wrath, judgment, atonement, holiness. I'm not really sure what you've got left. All I can tell you is that every time you turn on the television and see one of these churches doing something that you just go, what?

Some lesbian high archbishop blessing a same-sex marriage or something while talking about her 14 abortions or something. And we sit there and go, why do you bother calling yourself a Christian? Well, now you know why.

Whatever the result of gutting the gospel from the church is, the result's really ugly. It makes no sense. There's a term in the Old Testament, Ichabod. The glory has departed. The glory's gone out. And that's what happens when you have a church without a gospel.

The result's ugly. It's a stench in God's nostrils. It should be a stench in ours. He will save his people from their sins. He does something that somehow saves his people from the very penalty of sin.

Now, this text does not go into the means. We know what the means is. There is what I might call the blessed preposition, huper, in our place, used over and over again in the scriptures of Christ taking our place, dying in our place, bearing in himself the penalty due to our sin.

And this is what gives him the power to save, is that you see the entire wrath, the just wrath of God that justly could come against any one of our sins has been spent in all of its fury in a way that I don't know we will ever be able to fully understand.

For while we must affirm and emphasize the substitutionary aspect of the atonement, can we ever truly plumb the depths of that? I mean, when you think about what you're going to be doing for eternity, I think it might take a long, long time to even begin to plumb the depths of what it means that somehow we were in Christ.

That phrase, in him. You'll notice just down below in verse 23, Emmanuel, God with us. Think of John 14. Think of John 17. You and me and I and you, this union that we have with Christ so that his death becomes ours, his resurrection, our resurrection, that he somehow is able to bear in himself the penalty due to our sin.

No one has ever begun to plumb that depth. We certainly can't in this life. And I don't think eternity will be too long to be considering such things. But he, in himself, is able to save his people from their sins because he bears in himself.

He, and in that incredible mysterious language, as Paul says, became sin for us. How? I can't begin to explain. I can tell you what the Bible says. Union with Christ, substitute, it's right there, but how?

But may I emphasize one other thing, as time is running short? Substitution is personal. Substitution is personal. One of the things that must be sacrificed when you turn the people into that amorphous, faceless mass, it's all up to us who gets in and who gets out, is you really lose the foundation for substitution.

And you also lose the glory of it. What I mean by that is that Christ, when he dies, for many people in their theology, he doesn't know who's going to be saved. Open theists don't believe he knew who would be saved.

In fact, they don't really believe that the atonement is substitution anyway, so it's sort of irrelevant to them. But if the number of his people, or as the rest of the Testament refers to them, the elect, is a humanly-determined number rather than divinely-determined, then how does substitution work?

Yeah, I know this raises the issue of, well, it certainly doesn't make much sense to say Jesus Christ died for every person in hell, because that means Jesus intended to save them, tried to save them, failed to save them.

The God's wrath fell upon him in completeness, and now somehow it wasn't all spent. There's enough to send a person to hell for it, eternity. Hmm, that doesn't work very well, does it? But it's not just that that's important.

I think we do need to understand that, obviously. But there is the positive side of this, and that is the believer can say with Paul in Galatians 2, I have been crucified with Christ. I have been crucified with Christ.

My name was on his lips. He knew that what he was doing would bring about my redemption. You can't say that with this peanut butter atonement concept. Well, it is foreknowledge, and well, we're not going to use foreknowledge the way the Bible, ah, whatever.

Nah, leave that off to the side. Jesus died to bring about the salvation of his people personally. Have you considered that? When you're griping about, well, so many of the little things we gripe about that have absolutely no eternal ramifications whatsoever, have we thought about the fact that God doesn't have to prove his love to us?

He already has. If you're a believer, you say with Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. God personally united me. The father united me to his son to provide absolute perfect salvation for me before I ever took my first breath, knowing I'd be born as the fallen son of Adam, that I would be a God-hater, and yet he united me with Christ, and he set the time, the date, and the place when his spirit would come and would raise me to spiritual life.

Reveal to me the glory of his son. Grant to me the gifts of faith and repentance. Certainly makes most of the things that we complain about seem really minor. You shall bear a son. You will call his name Jesus, for he himself will save his people from their sins.

That's the Christmas message that you almost can't even say anymore. Happy holidays doesn't do it. Doesn't come close, but that is the message that was announced by the angel. And here we are almost 2 ,000 years later.

Why do we believe? Because that one who was born also built his church, and he's continued to do so to this very day. Let's pray together.