Matthew 1:18-25, Conceive, Confess, Confirm

Matthew’s Genealogy and the Virgin Birth

Please open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 1. But we will read the whole passage. Let's read it at least the whole in which means a whole chapter. So Matthew chapter 1 beginning verse 1 hear the word of the Lord the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham.

Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac the father of Jacob and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar and Perez the father of Hezron and Hezron the father of Ram and Ram the father I mean a tab and I mean a tab the father of ashamed in a shown the father of Salman and Simon the father Boas by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth and Obed the father of Jessie and Jesse the father of David the king and David was the father father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah and Solomon the father of riabowam and riabom the father of abijah and abigah the father of a saaf and asaph the father of joseph at and joshua fat the father of Joren and jomen the father's and Uzziah the father of Jotham and Jotham the father of Ahaz and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh and Manasseh the father of Amos and Amos the father of Josiah and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon and after the deportation to Babylon Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud and Abiud the father of Eliakim and Eliakim the father of Azor and Azor the father of Zadok and the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Mathan, and Mathan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. The Lord had his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

The Battle Over the Meaning of Christmas

Well, there's a battle going on, you probably heard about it, for the identity of Christmas. Some are saying that there's a, quote, war on Christmas, that there are those striving to make it just a holiday season, about being nice and giving or just getting gifts, getting bonuses, days off, going to parties, maybe cupcakes, more family time, Santa Claus, musing the kids with it all, that we can still have a holiday just with no mention of Christ.

And so we have lots of people who will have Christmas celebrations with no serious thought of Jesus. It is to them a holiday, but not a holy day, and the truth is that there is a secular holiday on December 25th, which has really nothing to do, at least in their minds, with Jesus.

It's a cultural celebration about peace on earth and goodwill toward men dropping the part about glory to God in the highest. Some churches have even surrendered to this secular view of Christmas. A couple of years ago, when Christmas fell on Sunday, many churches canceled their services, and figured no one's gonna show up because it's Christmas.

Gathering together as his people, God's family to worship Christ was seen as less important than the natural family, gathering around the tree and worshiping the material things they get, or maybe worshiping the family, which is not really any better.

My advice to those churches that cancel their main worship service on Christmas Day is that they go ahead and permanently cancel their services, all of them. You know, people who forget to gather around Christ to celebrate his death and resurrection, to remember that he saved his people from their sins, even on December 25th, because the culture around us tells us that presents and trees and other gatherings are more important on that one day.

Well, that is a people that shouldn't be calling themselves a church anymore, because the purpose of Christmas is Easter. Now, as a student of the Puritans, I don't really like, I don't prefer either of the terms Christmas or Easter, to be honest with you.

You know, I use them sometimes. I wish I could get away from using them, but because both terms have unbiblical and gospel confusing origins, and they're where they come from in history. But the fact is, words don't really mean what they originally meant when they first came up with them.

You know, Christmas originally was Christ's Mass, but most people, when they say Christmas, they don't think, well, I'm going to have Mass on Christmas, on December 25th, going to the Catholic Church and, you know, take Mass.

Or the originally pagan Easter, which is supposedly from Ishtar, I think, something like that, from a pagan god. That's mean. They really mean how they are currently used. So, Christmas refers to the day that Jesus was born and is celebrated.

Now, also the Santa thing, all that stuff going on. And Easter, of course, the day the resurrection is supposed to be celebrated. Now, if we could have my way, still, I still don't like the terms, we'd change the names.

I don't know what I'd do with Christmas, I don't know. It's called Easter, call it Resurrection Day, something like that. But we change the names, but the fact is, to communicate most easily, I'll go, I'll use the common terms, right?

So, I'm not using some cumbersome phrase that you have to remember. What does that mean? Oh, that's Christmas. What's the purpose of Christmas? That depends, of course, on the purpose of Christ. This passage we just read is all about the purpose of Christ.

Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Confessed by the Holy Angel, Confirmed by the Holy Scriptures

And now, here, three things. Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit, he is confessed by the Holy Angel, and he is confirmed by the Holy Scriptures. He was first conceived by the Holy Spirit. Matthew is very deliberate and precise in his words, so that there can be no confusion here.

First, in the genealogy itself, the uniqueness of the birth of Jesus is made clear. And I have a little quibble here, and normally, I think that the ESV, what I just read, the English Standard Version, is an excellent translation, but here, I don't think they serve this well in the way they translated the genealogy, because over and over again, you know, everything starts beginning.

Abraham was the father of, and Isaac was the father of, over and over again, and it's translating there with nouns, because the father of is a noun, isn't it? It's translating what is originally a verb, and maybe the King James gets it better, I think, you know, Abraham begat, Isaac begat, and it goes on like that.

But the thing is, I don't guess we use begat much anymore, right? It's just, it's an old, archaic word, and so, you know, I don't know if we have an equivalent anymore. So, I kind of understand, but, as we'll just see, I think that obscures something that's important in this passage, because after all these names, 42 generations, one man begetting another, or here, the father of, maybe it should be fathering.

If it was Abraham fathered, that would be a little better. The father of, all active verbs, all of them are active verbs, okay? It's all a verb, what's translated as nouns here, the father of, is actually, in Greek, a verb, and they're all active, all the same verb, okay?

It's the same word used over and over and over, like here in English, the father of, the same verb used over and over again, in the active mood. Abraham actively begat Isaac, who actively begat Jacob, and so on, each the same.

The men fathering one generation after another, as to be expected. But then, after the, you know, that last Jacob, Joseph's father's named Jacob, that last Jacob begets father's Joseph, suddenly, oddly, there's an interruption.

The pattern is disrupted. Now, when there's a pattern, as we're here, it's obviously over and over again, a pattern of 41 times, and that pattern suddenly stops. You know, sometimes you hear a pattern over, it gets monotonous, you kind of tune out.

Now, if it suddenly stops, you got to perk up, like something just happened, and that draws attention here to what makes it stop. It doesn't say that Joseph begets Jesus, as we would expect if this were a normal genealogy.

Joseph doesn't beget. Joseph betrothed Mary, from whom was, in the English data version here, puts it, was born, but actually, it's the same word is used over and over again, like 41 times previously, same exact word.

You translate here, in ESV, translated as the father of, but it's the noun, is translated here as Jesus was born, Jesus, but it merely means Jesus was begotten, but not by Joseph or any other man. Jesus was begotten, who is called Christ.

That's odd, isn't it? If you said, if you repeated active verbs from verses 2 to 16, give way, you know, it's kind of startlingly, and to a passive, Jesus was born, or begotten, or even fathered. The English obscures the Greek.

It's the same word, again, same word, had been used 41 times before, used in the second half, in the end of verse 16, where it's translated here, Jesus was born, Jesus was begotten, and then it's suddenly, with Jesus, it's translated, what is active before, it's passive, the passive voice of the same verb.

Jesus was begotten. Well, then you ask, begotten by who? You know, I said so-and-so is fathered. Fathered by who? That's what you want to know. 41 times, a man is begotten by his father. Now, literally, it is Jesus is begotten.

Who is Jesus begotten of? We're supposed to ask, like in the ESV, if you wanted to say, stick with his father, the father of, you could say, Jesus was fathered. Fathered by who, you would ask? What an odd way to put it.

Well, Jesus was, here translated, but Jesus was born, Jesus begotten, or fathered, is what's called a divine passive, with God being the active one. Now, he is not begotten. Jesus is not begotten by a man.

He is the son of the woman, promised in the garden, who will crush the serpent's head. He was born of the woman, even in genealogy, even here in the genealogy, the unique, the utterly distinguished character of Jesus is impossible to hide.

He is eternally begotten by the Father, but never begotten by an earthly father. And you see here, what, one of the, a point that Matthew is just driving home. I mean, he wants to leave, you know, sometimes you gotta, people will erect their brains to see if the Bible's implying something.

Is this what is meant there? Here, Matthew is basically hitting us over the head, over and over again, or maybe to put it a better way, he's pounding on the pulpit. Jesus is born of a virgin. It's, like, absolutely clear.

He won't even let us for a second be mistaken about it, right? Here, in the genealogy itself, he's begotten. By who? Well, he's just begotten. By God, of course. Second, he says that Mary was found to be pregnant.

Okay, he's gonna stop there, right? Because that, you know, that's far as people, the rumors going around town. Jesus, Mary's been found to be pregnant. That's what they were saying, right? But Matthew, Matthew here won't let us even for a second forget the fact, from the Holy Spirit, right?

Now, people weren't saying that around town, around Nazareth, but that's, Matthew doesn't want to let us forget that. She was betrothed, or engaged, as we might say. But before they were married, literally before they had, he said, notice that he even puts it there, before they had come together, and he means physically, again, he just will not let you forget for a second that this is a virgin birth.

Before they had come together, he just absolutely insists upon that. She was pregnant. So, it was impossible that she was pregnant by Joseph. Then, just in case there's any doubt, whether maybe, well, maybe they say, well, okay, I understand she gave birth six months after they were married, or you know, whatever time it was, we don't know exactly, but maybe he was just premature born.

No, just in case we forget, in verse 25, it says, he knew her not. In other words, he did not have sex with her, even though married. So, even after they're officially married, he didn't have sex with her until after she had given birth.

Matthew wants to be very clear. Okay, just like any kind of loopholes, you might wonder if this can be interpreted another way, if this is just like a tradition, a virgin birth that the church made up over time.

No, Matthew is absolutely clear this is a virgin birth. The virgin birth of Christ is important. First, it tells us that though Jesus is fully human, born like we all are, he did not inherit the sinful nature.

The rest of us do. It's like Psalm 51, or maybe I didn't get the right Psalm, but, in sin did my mother conceive me? Well, that's true for the rest of us. It's not true for him. Okay, he was not conceived in sin.

He's not a son of Adam. He was fully human, but he was the new, the last Adam. By the fact of being born and not just appearing with a, you know, God could have had him just descend from heaven full-grown, right, 30 years old already, and then start his ministry like that.

Who's this guy? Where'd he come from? I don't know, but he teaches well. No, but being born and growing up like any other child, he fully shares with us all the experiences of being human, so that he can sympathize with us.

He's felt our weaknesses. He's gone hungry and been thirsty. He's experienced our needs. He's been tired from having to work and all that, but that he was conceived in a supernatural way by the Holy Spirit means that he did not receive that fallen nature, that twisted, rebellious spirit that we have as sons and daughters of Adam, and so he could become human without becoming sinful.

With no sin of his own, he could then bear our sins on the cross. He could take our rebellion and pride, our actions and attitudes, and the guilt and the punishment that we have earned, because that's what he was born for.

Joseph’s Righteousness and Mercy

Christmas is for Easter. Joseph understandably assumes that his fiancee has committed immorality, right? He just doesn't believe her story. He just assumes what most people would assume. Perhaps Mary had tried to convey, because, you know, an angel appeared to her, also apparently before she was pregnant, but it conveyed to her.

Perhaps she had sent a message to him, hey, you know, I got a visit from an angel, and he told me I was going to bear a son, even though a virgin, and I responded meekly, obediently, you know, behold, I'm your servant, let it be to me according to your word, but the fact is, you know, she's pregnant, and who's gonna believe that story anyway?

Come on, that's not real. Give me a break. Are you trying to fool with that, Mary? He's thinking to himself. He's gonna have to divorce her, and that's why he considered a breaking up, but they took their commitments of engagement very seriously, and so to break it is the same as a divorce.

Now, Joseph certainly didn't take it lightly. It says in verse 20 that he was considering these things, right, not just reacting emotionally. He was spending some time and thinking and contemplating before just wildly rushing into some hasty decision.

Joseph, it says, is a righteous man. What's a righteous man? Well, that means he's right before God. Here he shows that he takes the commands of God seriously. He's not thinking like many do today, well, oh well, girls just want to have fun, you know.

He knew that the law of God couldn't just be blown off if it didn't fit conveniently into whatever plans he had for his life, you know. He's thinking, I was gonna get married to her and do this or that.

Now, while we could imagine that he might be personally hurt, that's not the point here either, is it? He's not making a decision based on feeling personally betrayed. He's making his decision because he's a righteous man.

He's not thinking like, how dare that Mary cheat on me like that? I'm gonna show her. No, he was a righteous man, which means he took God in his ways as most important, that Mary may have, from his point of view, he thinks she has offended the Lord, is more important to him than that she may have offended him.

People today often think someone is good, you know, righteous, if they don't hurt other people. That's the main criteria, you know, or maybe they don't hurt me. I don't care what they've done to other people.

If they're good to me, they're good. That's the way a lot of people think. They're pleasant, they're nice to get along with, but to be good before God, to be righteous, it's really only secondarily about how you treat other people.

Now, it will result in that, but first it's about how you regard God. Joseph was righteous because he regarded obeying God as the most important thing, and yet he was also kind. It says he's not willing to disgrace her publicly, right?

He could have made a show of her, though. He's not taking some fiendish delight in exposing what he thinks is her sin. He believes she has sinned, but he's not reacting out of a hurt ego. He's going to strike back at her, but he deeply believes that the law of God against immorality has to be enforced.

It's not that he wants to do it, it's not as though he's using the Word of God as an excuse, you know, to get revenge on her, to show her, teach her a lesson. As someone he, you know, as he imagines that she's betrayed him.

No, he doesn't want to embarrass her, but he also knows that he cannot, as someone seeking to obey God, ignore what God has said about punishing sin. So he's really a righteous man. He's a great illustration of what Micah chapter 6 verse 8 says.

What does the Lord want? What does the Lord require of you, O man, O Joseph, but to do justice and to love mercy, steadfast love, the word there, and to walk humbly with your God? Amazingly, he's also probably a teenager.

You don't know his age exactly, and Mary is probably in her early teens. Joseph probably is in his late teens. And so here we are, the birth of the most important person in all of history, and it lies at the hands of two teenagers.

Maybe that's because youth, maybe the youth wouldn't be so full of themselves. You know, I know how to deal with this. I know what's what. So self-confident. Maybe youth would be more meek, would be obedient.

The last two verses, the chapter tells us that Joseph followed instructions, and he did what he was told. He took Mary, named the son, just as he was told. This young man showed that he was righteous.

He was right with God. He showed that righteousness by what he did, by doing what he was told. Makes you wonder what God can do through obedient youth. Christ is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the lives of two youth who obeyed.

Then he is confessed by the Holy Angel. Joseph is considering, right, he's contemplating what to do in this situation. Then in a dream, he may have heard about the angel appearing to Mary. Doesn't really believe it.

Who's gonna believe that? But in a dream, an angel appears to him, calling him Joseph, son of David. Do you notice that? Calls him son of David. This is the only time in the book of Matthew that anyone other than Jesus is called the son of David.

Now, Joseph, he's not a king, nor will he ever be, but he is in that line. He passes, he has that heritage that he can pass down. That promise then would be inherited by Joseph's legal son, and he would be the king.

Well, the angel then tells Joseph not to fear to take Mary as his wife. Again, the life in her is not by human will, but by the work of the Holy Spirit. The angel tells him to name the boy Jesus, Yeshua, which literally means the Lord is salvation.

And the angel explains why he is to be called. Why that? Well, why is to be called the Lord is salvation? The angel says, important words, for he will save his people from their sins. Every word of that sentence, every single word, is important.

Verse 21, take it apart. For, or because, that tells us the reason why he is named the Lord is salvation, and it's the reason that he was born. So it is, or at least it should be, the reason for the season, right?

For he, he, Jesus, that's the subject of the sentence. He's the one doing the action here. He's the active one. He's not just a model for us to follow. You know, he's not the one who just shows us how we can save ourselves.

Here, he is the one who actually does it. He doesn't just make it possible for people to save themselves. Someone who, by his good example, melts, you know, he, oh, he, Jesus lives such a perfect life, and we look at his life, and that melts our Grinch-like half-sized hearts, and so they grow to become full-size.

He doesn't just make salvation available and then leaves it up to us to go get it. No, he saves. He, not us, not us and him working together, you know, hand-in-hand. No, he will save. That's why he is named the Lord is salvation.

Jesus saves. He's active, for he will save. He is here, the one who will, future tense, do it. Even though he is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, he had to do it at a certain time and place in history.

When the angel appeared, that time was getting closer, but hadn't come yet, and that time wasn't, wasn't the manger, or all, you know, wasn't the wise man, wasn't any of those stories around Christmas.

It was the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of the resurrection. It was then that he saved. Then it was, as he said himself, finished. Now, only, not only is it he, he will save, about a certain time coming, that, you know, that hour is coming when the Son of Man will be lifted up for the angel and Joseph, and for their time in the future, for us now in the past, is finished.

So, for us, it's, he has been, he has done the work of salvation, has been completed. It also reveals, you know, he will do it. It shows the unbreakable firmness of the promise. It's definiteness. It will happen.

You know, it's not as though, well, his name because Jesus, because he's gonna go try to save people. Boy, we really hope he's gonna manage to succeed, but we're not sure. We're waiting and seeing. It's not like that.

He will do it. He will, it will happen. You can count on it, the angel saying. It doesn't say that he's gonna, you know, try to save people. Whether he actually succeeds, well, that depends on our free will and whether anyone opt-ins into his plan.

It's like going into business with a product you're not sure anyone will buy. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start a shop and I hope it succeeds. Here, it's not like that. He will do it. He will save.

There is a certainty. It doesn't depend, as Paul wrote in Romans 9, on man's desire or effort, but completely on God's grace. Certainly, he will save. He will deliver. He will rescue. Not just help or assist or just show us the way.

There is, there is a captivity that we cannot get ourselves out of, but he will definitely, certainly save us from it. And the angel confessed he will save his. That is belonging specifically to him, his people.

God has a specific people. They are his, they're his flock, he calls them, and it is for them that Jesus came to save. And notice that the angel doesn't say, you know, generically, well, he will save people.

We're not quite sure who, but you know, surely there'll be a few people that decide to opt in. No, he says he will save a definite group of people, and God knows who they are. They will be saved by Jesus.

They have every race and nation. They are different in almost every way, except that they have a common Savior. Those are his people, and they will be saved. You can count on it. Then he will save his people, you know, from, you know, out of.

Notice that they, that we need to be saved. We need to be saved from something. We are not just saved in something, as we're saved in captivity or in danger and kind of are in sin. We're just allowed to stay there forever.

I mean, well, yeah, we're seen as right before God, but we can keep living in sin if we want. That's the way we choose. So-called carnal Christian, that we can keep on sinning, the grace may abound. No, the angel confesses.

He tells us we are saved from, out of. He will save his people from what? Well, the Jews want to be saved from the Romans, and maybe that's what Joseph thought, too, when he heard that. He'll save his people from.

First, of course, then an angel finishes the sentence, doesn't he? But that's what, that's what they were looking for the son of David to do. Save us from the Romans. Save us from these Gentiles, our oppressors.

We, in our day, we might want to be saved from our debts. You know, we bought too much stuff on credit card, or from our dreary jobs, from some toxic relationship, from poor health, or even from death.

People, whether then or now, all want to be saved from the consequences of sin. Often they, but often, they don't like the consequences of sin, but often they'll still cling to the sins, to the rebellion, or the self-indulgence, the self-centeredness, the sins that cause their problems.

They'll keep those, keep the sins, but please take away the debts, or the poor health that came about because I couldn't control myself and had to spend on expensive electronics, or in luxury car, or eat out too often at too expensive places, or drink too much of the wrong things, or do whatever I felt like doing at the moment.

Sin has consequences, and even if we're self-disciplined, self-controlled, and responsible, even religious, we're still guilty of the fundamental sin, that willfulness that insists that we will do what we will do, and so we're sinners, and the consequences of that sin, the wages of sin, is death.

Now, he can and he will eventually save his people from all of that, for even the consequences of our sins, whether they be robins, our debts, our sickness, or even death, but first he will save us from the root cause that all of those consequences came from, our sins.

He will save his people from the penalty, the power, and eventually, even the presence of sin. That is, we were in danger from sin. Its penalty is death, the wrath of God, but Jesus takes us out from that penalty, from what sin costs, like a lifeguard rescuing us out from the riptide, rescues us out from drowning.

It doesn't just leave us to drown. That's what the Savior takes us completely out of the danger from what it costs. We don't have to fear hell anymore, God's wrath anymore. He also saves us from the, that, when he saves us from God, the penalty of a sin, that's justification.

We're made just, are righteous in God's eyes. He also saves us from the power of sin. He was born to die so that we could die to sin and live free of its power, and that is sanctification. It's ongoing work, and eventually, when we are raised with him, we will be completely free of the presence of sin, and that's glorification.

He will save his people from their sin. I'm doing it like Greek because the possessive pronoun comes after what it modifies, right? From their sin. You notice that possessive pronoun, the word their. The sins belong to them, to us.

They aren't someone else's fault, you know, because my parents were too hard on me, they weren't loving enough, or too soft on me, they indulge me, didn't teach me self-control, or because, you know, whatever this or that, my environment, whatever the school I went to.

No, no, they're our sins, they're my sins. To be truly saved, you must confess that your sins are your sins, that they're your fault, and you have no excuse for them, and that they are sins. He'll save his people from their sins.

They're not just slips, not just errors and mistakes, lapses, personality quirks, you know, the chemicals in your brain aren't quite right, but acknowledge that they are, you have to admit that they're your sins.

Acknowledge that they are loathsome violations of God's will, and that when you sin, no matter what it is, whenever you break God's commands, you say, my will is more important than God's. That's what you're saying with every sin, even the desire to sin, if you never even get to follow it through, but that you're saying, you know, what I want is most important.

My glory and my happiness is the most important thing in the universe, and when you can, that's sin, and when you confess your sins and ask Jesus to save you, you say that that attitude, that they used to, really it permeates everything that we do as sinners while we go to church.

Whether other people saw it as moral or not, it is detestable, it's filthy, it's twisted, and that is sin, and that is as natural to us as breathing, because we, in sin, did our mothers conceive us. But whatever sin it is, even if it's some sin that the world around us thinks is normal, we say it's something we all desperately need to be saved from.

We need to confess our sins. That's the meaning of Christmas, that we were lost, and he came not just to be an adorable baby in a manger, but make a great story, a holiday right in the middle of, you know, near the beginning of winter where we really need it, and, you know, near the winter solstice where there's a lot of dark, so we put up lights.

It's more than that, but he came to save his people from their sins for a good Friday and Easter. The Holy Spirit conceived, the Holy Angel confessed, finally, third, the Holy Scriptures confirmed. Matthew writes that all of this was confirmed.

The passage is Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14. Behold, behold, pay attention, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. Matthew tells us that Immanuel means God with us.

Immanuel is not a personal name, but rather a description of the person, of who Jesus is, who he is. He is God with us among his people to save them from their sins. So our Savior is the perfect man, born as any child is, and the perfect God, God with us.

And this too is necessary to accomplish the reason for the season. What's the purpose of Christmas? Easter, the cross, and resurrection. Just as he had to be human to represent us, and sinless to have no sin of his own to suffer for, so too he had to be fully God to reconcile us to God.

The Apostle Paul wrote that God was in Christ, reconciling people to himself. God was in Christ because Christ was God. God with us, in himself, a perfect unity of God and man, perfectly obeying the law on our behalf, you know, bearing our sins in his body on the cross on Good Friday, and being raised to new life on Easter.

Now this is what the Scriptures confirmed. He would be God with us. And for this scripture to be fulfilled, these two teenagers would have to be obedient, self-disciplined, meek. Joseph awakes from his dream.

Whoa, that was something. And he did just as the angel ordered him. As hard as it may have been for him to understand and accept, you know, wow. But he obeyed. The Holy Spirit conceived, the Holy Angel confessed, and the Holy Scriptures confirmed.

God has come to save his people from their sins. Verse 25 tells us simply, plainly. Notice verse 25, because this is the report in Matthew of the birth of Jesus. It just tells us no fanfare, you know, no stories about little drummer boys or, you know, sheep and goats talking to each other or anything like that.

It just says he was born. It's so much different than what we think of as Christmas, isn't it? The Christmas celebrations today, just so built up today, often so much about Christmas and so little about the rest of what Christ did.

You ever thought about the fact only two of the four Gospels report the birth of Christ, and Paul never mentions it in his letters. It's kind of odd, isn't it? You think our priorities are a little off?

But anyway, here what we see, just plainly reported, and actually in the context of talking about that he was born of the Virgin, it's so much different than what we think of as Christmas celebrations today.

Often so many lights and sounds, so much talk of Santa and so little about Christ, or if it is about Christ, it's only him as a little baby, cute and cuddly, no crying he makes. Okay, that's weird. Here it simply says in verse 25, she had given birth to a son, and the focus is, of course, not on the birth itself but on the significance of the child, on what he would do, save his people from their sins.

Christmas is for Easter. Christmas is important because of Easter. That's why we celebrate Easter, not once a year, sometime in March or April this coming year, March 21st, but once a week. No, April 21st, excuse me.

The reason we meet on this day of the week is because on this day of the week, first day of the week, not the seventh, Sunday, the Lord's Day, is because this is the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, in which he finished the purpose for which he came.

It's such an important event. It's not good enough just to celebrate one day a year for it. We need 52 days a year to gather together to celebrate that our sins, which were ours, which were detestable, which held us captive, which we could not save ourselves from, that they were taken away, that we have been saved from them, that Jesus rose from the dead so that we too can be raised from spiritual death.

That's why canceling, you know, the idea of cancel, let's cancel our weekly resurrection celebration because maybe it happens to follow on December 25th, that's absurd. That's worldly. It's to declare, you know, if Christmas falls on a Sunday and we cancel our services, it's to declare that this one time a year, hey, let's ignore why Jesus came to celebrate that he came.