Call His Name Jesus | Sermon 12/22/2024

The Genealogy and Real History of Matthew’s Gospel

Matthew.

The Gospel according to Matthew. Wrapping up our Advent series for the year. I hope it's blessed you as much as it's blessed me. We're going to be in Matthew 1. The name of the sermon today, church, is Call His Name Jesus.

Call His Name Jesus. So as you know, we've been out of the first letter to the Corinthians for several weeks now. And we have been looking back on the prophecies of the first Advent of Christ. We saw that the coming light would shine on the people of the dark land.

We saw that the light is going to rule. The government will rest upon His shoulders. He has supernatural wisdom and His words are divine. He's called the Wonderful Counselor. He is the mighty God with all power, El Gabor.

He is Eternal Father before all things with no beginning and no end. We saw that He's the Prince of Peace. The One who will bring total shalom to not only individuals, but to the entire world. There will be no end to the increase of this peace and of His rule.

It has no bounds. It has no limits. And finally, we moved on to the prophecy of Micah. And Micah is in agreement with his contemporary Isaiah. A child will be born. A son will be given. He will come from the weak and tiny village of Bethlehem of the royal line of David.

His goings forth are from eternity. And He will bring the faithful remnant back to Himself. He'll take dead people and make them alive. He'll rise up as the ruler in the strength and majesty of Yahweh the Lord.

He will be great to the ends of the earth. The coastlands wait for His Word. The people of the faraway places long to look at the child that is coming. And that's what happened. If you remember, we ended on the fact last week that Daniel the prophet had taught these people from faraway lands.

He taught the Magi's ancestors of the coming Messiah.

And then they came.

And so as we approach Christmas this Wednesday, let's finally look at when this child came to earth. All these prophecies, everything is culminating to this moment.

Alright?

I preached before on Advent in Luke chapter 2. And you can see those. You can go online if you want to see how Luke chapter 2 is exposited. You can watch that on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, whatever you think.

But today, I really wanted to see this incredible moment in history from Matthew's vantage point. How did Matthew see this? So let's look at one of the most glorious narratives in all of the Bible. And let's vow to be even more amazed than the first time we ever heard it.

The Virgin Birth and the Hypostatic Union

Again, please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel according to Matthew 1. Verses 18 -25. Hear now the words of the Lord. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. Now all of this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son and he called His name Jesus. Thus ends the reading of God's Holy and Magnificent Word.

Let's praise the church as we exposit the text this morning. Lord, we come before You today seeking to understand this incarnation, seeking to understand what happened here, Lord. Have this wonderful truth come into our hearts and in our minds and our lives, and yet, Lord, we don't want it to stop there.

We want this wonder of the advent, the first advent to carry on through the rest of the year and into the new one. We want to remember what Jesus did and what He went through every single day, that we might continue to worship Him, that we might continue to have the same joy and glee that we have now, Lord.

And so, God, please help us to understand the text of Scripture this morning. Enlighten them by the Holy Spirit, the One who dwells in us. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. So, as Matthew begins his Gospel, if you look above the chosen text, if you have your Bible out, you can see he starts with a genealogy, right?

A bunch of names.

And what this demonstrates, this genealogy, is that this was a real time. These were real people. These were real places. This is real history. We don't read once upon a time. This is no fable. This is no fairy tale.

The real world is going to encounter the divine activity of the unbound God within the bounds of time and space. It's incredible. And what Matthew has aimed to do in his first 17 verses is to show that the Messiah has truly come.

He's finally here, and the Messiah is to be recognized in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But he's not just a descendant of the northern tribes. That's where Nazareth is. He's not from Zebulun or Naphtali.

He's not from Dan. He just resides in that region for most of his life. And so Matthew wants to demonstrate that this Jesus of Nazareth is actually born from Bethlehem, and that He's of the line of David.

Two components that are crucial to identifying the Christ. Now, if the President of the United States was coming to your town, you would first probably see local authorities beefing up their presence.

You'd see police about. You'd possibly see federal agents checking out places. They'd go up upon high buildings. They would look where there could possibly be vantage points for threats and things like that.

And eventually, you would see a procession of cars and safety officers. They would be following the President as He is in a bulletproof car of some sort. American flags would be waving. The people would come out to see the spectacle.

Either they hate or love Him, or I guess somewhere in between. And it would probably be a pretty big event. There would even be news coverage and TV stations around. But for the Messiah, for the Christ, there would be none of that.

There would be none of that. If one knew the Word of God, they'd know without a single doubt. But no one figures this is how He'd come. No one thinks that the Son of God, that the Messiah is going to come in this way as a baby, as a child.

It's not what people expected. And so Matthew's words even act as an apologetic in addition to historical record. Because even today, ethnic Jewish people say they're waiting for the Mashiach. They're waiting for the Messiah.

And they're waiting for a warrior. They're waiting for a deliverer. And so Matthew's saying, it's not like what you thought. This is truly who the Messiah is. Now in verse one, it says the record of the Genesis of Christ, and Matthew lists off all those names, right?

We're not going to read through those today. But verse 18, our first verse that we're going into, has the same word as verse one. The Christ's Genesis was as follows. Verse 17 mentions the Christ as well.

Multiple times, Matthew mentions this is the Christ. This is how the Christ came. This is who the Christ is. This is the Christ. Matthew is saying this is Him. This is Him. This is the Christ. All prophecies lead to this One who I'm about to talk about.

This is it. And so verse one begins, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

So this is a young woman, a young lady named Mary, and she was betrothed to a man named Joseph. Now, betrothal in this time was a formal stage of Jewish marriage. It's not like our culture today. Our culture has these engagements.

And engagements can be easily broken off as quickly as removing a ring. You're engaged to someone, and if you want to end it, you can just remove the ring, give it back. I guess some don't give it back, right?

You should probably give it back if you end it. But it ends that easily. The engagement's over. But this was an actual legal process. Betrothal entailed a legal binding contract entered into before witnesses that could only be terminated by several things.

And you see this especially if you look in v. 19, our very next verse. He's already called her husband. He's already given the title of husband. Because they are husband and wife, and yet they're in the husband and wife betrothal period.

The only way that this can be terminated, this official, legally binding arrangement, is by death. Death, leaving the woman a widow, or by official divorce. As considering it like a full marriage, right?

And that can come in the cases of sexual infidelity. Mary and Joseph are husband and wife, but they're not living together, nor sleeping together, nor have they had their wedding night. They're in the legal, official process of betrothal.

They're husband and wife. They're bound together by law and before God. And there's only a few ways that you could get out of this. In fact, Matthew makes it a point to say right here that they had not come together yet.

Right?

She's a virgin. Mary's a virgin. But something has happened. Before they were joined together, she was found to be with child. It literally means pregnant. But by the Holy Spirit. Luke 1 .35 gives us more detail.

It says, the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. This is the process. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, Mary, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the holy child shall be called the Son of God.

So the power of the Most High.

Will overshadow you.

This is the same exact word that was used when describing the Mount of Transfiguration. The moment that Jesus took Peter and John and James up on that mountain and He transformed with His unveiled glory.

And that word is used when a bright cloud overshadows them and from that cloud is the holy voice of God the Father saying, this is My beloved Son with whom I am well, please listen to Him. The author of Hebrews uses this word as well.

This word overshadow. He says when the cherubim angels are over the throne, their glory is overshadowing the mercy seat. Okay? Overshadow. And so what we can understand about that word is that then the power and proximate glory of God is involved in this situation.

How is she pregnant? Well, the power of God and the glory of God are coming near to her.

There.

That's what it seems to be. There's no natural function here. This is supernatural. Nothing of what we know of how babies are conceived is used here. No words that are similar of normal, natural conception are used here.

This is supernatural. When you think about it, the Holy Spirit is seen all throughout Scripture as the One in whom the miracles come. Right? The third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit works miracles.

It's by His power. In fact, the Gospels make it clear supernatural things only happen by God and by this Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit exerts God's power and God's energy in creation. He sustains everything.

He is the arm of God's omnipotence. He is all power. And so the overshadowing of power can be understood as God willing the impossible into possibility. Only God can do this. Only the Being with all power can will to be what is impossible as possible.

In fact, the angel tells Mary in Luke 1 .37, he says nothing will be impossible with God. Nothing is impossible because she says, how is this going to happen? He says, you're going to become pregnant.

The Holy Spirit's going to overshadow you with the power from the Most High. She says, how is this possible? Nothing natural is happening here. And he says, all things are possible with God. Never before, nor after in history, has a virgin woman ever been found with child in this way.

Power from God made what could not happen happen in Mary. It was at this exact moment that somehow the Son's full deity didn't become mixed with His humanity. Something so powerful has happened here that the Son retained total and complete deity or divinity without interruption, without mixture, while simultaneously possessing total and complete humanity.

All at once.

All at the same time. In other words, the doctrine of the hypostatic union of Christ. A very fancy theological term. This is indicating something that we've never seen ever before in all existence. One Person.

One Person. The Son of God, who now, first time ever in history and the only time we've ever seen it, has two complete natures.

Two.

And He's not one half God and one half man making 100%. He's totally and fully God and totally and fully man all at the same time. All at the same time. Much like how the Trinity demonstrates that there's one God and three Persons, Jesus is one Person, two natures, miraculous.

You say, Pastor Wade, how can I wrap my mind around that? How can I go to my atheist friends and properly articulate that in words they can understand? I don't know. I don't know. It's just what it says.

And so we believe it. We understand it to be true. This is who Jesus is. This is the Son of God. This is the kind of power that was necessary to make this happen. Incredible, infinite power made this happen.

It's a miracle. No angel, no prophet, no apostle could perform something like this. This is the omnipotence of God Almighty. Totally God, totally man in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah. And this is in complete contrast to the deities of their day.

You have Roman and Greek deities. You have stories of these gods. A lot of these stories involve these Greek or Roman gods who would come down, and these gods would take the form as a man, a human man, or they would often take the form of a male animal.

This is what they believed. That God would come down and take the form of a man, a human man, or He would take the form of a male animal and have intercourse with a human woman, and there comes the demigods.

There comes the half-gods, half-human sort of hybrids. And so the account of Christ is in no way like that. This is completely unique. This is not natural. There were no natural things that took place in Mary in that sense of how she conceived by the Holy Spirit.

This is supernaturally unique. Never before seen. Now, it was only a matter of time that Joseph would see his wife Mary return from her visit with her cousin Elizabeth. And when she returned, he recognized that she was pregnant.

Joseph’s Righteous Response and the Dream of the Angel

Go to v. 19. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. Joseph, her betrothed husband, was a righteous man. He was a law-abiding, upright in character, moral man.

And so he'll do the right thing. What's the right thing if you find your betrothed wife as pregnant? You send her away. You send her away. Because he has a high moral character. He wants to do the right thing.

And so that means to formally cut the betrothal period off, cut the wedding off, cut everything off, it's over. And that's what a righteous man would do. But he's truly loved Mary. And even now, Joseph doesn't want to disgrace her.

Joseph doesn't want to bring her pain. And what that means in the Greek is he doesn't want to make a public spectacle of her. He doesn't want to bring her open shame. For the entire village to discover that she's pregnant and that he's ending their engagement or betrothal, would bring open shame to this young woman.

The Greek word literally means to show her in front of everybody and that everyone would see what she's done.

Okay?

And in that process, there would be the legal proceedings of divorce for an unfaithful wife. Brings her before the village. The proper authorities come together. It's time to sever this agreement, this arrangement for an unfaithful wife.

But instead of that, instead of public divorce, Joseph knows the Mishnah very well. And the Mishnah allows for the divorce of a suspected adulteress to take place before just two witnesses. You can make it quiet.

The Mishnah says if necessary, if you don't want to bring this woman before everyone, you can get together with the legal authority necessary. You can bring two witnesses. Maybe he'll call her mother or something like that.

Someone who's close by. Look, she's pregnant. Suspected adultery. And so it would have been done quietly. He would have ended it. Maybe at that point, Mary would have taken her belongings. She would have left Nazareth.

Maybe she would have lived with her cousin Elizabeth and the priest Zacharias and lived out her life as a single mother.

We don't know.

We don't know if that's what he had in his mind.

Okay?

Now you might be thinking about the laws that required capital punishment if this took place. Deuteronomy 22 shows how seriously God takes sexual sin. It says here in Deuteronomy 22, 23 through 24, if there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death.

The girl because she did not cry out in the city and the man because he has violated his neighbor's wife. This is a betrothed or engaged young woman and she has lied with another man. Says thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

You see a virgin woman is to cry out for help in the middle of the act. A man is coming to violate her and multiple times in the law it says if she's righteous, if she's just, she is to cry out and yell to say what he's doing to her and hopefully someone will hear and help rescue her.

Now if that doesn't happen and no one hears her and her voice is stifled, then what she's supposed to do is to open her mouth and keep crying out until someone actually hears. So if the man is done violating her, I'm sorry for the graphic nature of it, what's supposed to happen is she is supposed to run from there and go throughout the city and yell and cry out.

This is what he's done. This man has done this to me.

I need help.

She cries out in the act. Hopefully she gets help. Stops it. But if she doesn't stop it, she's to keep crying out. And that will preserve her witness. That will preserve her righteousness. Her justice.

She's crying out. The woman is to cry out. If she doesn't cry it out, then it's possible that she was a willing person who engaged in this. She could be an adulteress. Or she doesn't cry out for other reasons.

That's something else to talk about.

But of course,.

Mary is not an adulteress. Mary is not a seductress. She's upright. And even now, as a pregnant woman, this is a miracle, even as a pregnant woman, she's still a virgin. She is a virgin. She is miraculously pregnant by a supernatural act of the power of the Holy Spirit.

No sexual or even reproductive acts have taken place whatsoever. And Joseph doesn't know this yet. He doesn't know. He just sees what he sees. But also at this time in Judea's history, you might be wondering why capital punishment isn't mentioned at all in this text because at this time, the Roman government outlawed all forms of Jewish execution.

Stonings for adulteresses were no longer legal. And that would make this one, if it were to even take place, if they even tried, it would make it illegal. It would make the John 8 situation of the woman caught in adultery, if that did happen, that would make that illegal.

All due process and executions were performed by the state. In this case, their Roman occupiers. In other words, both Joseph and Mary sought to do the righteous thing. They were both upright in their situations.

And what's amazing is providentially, they're at a time when even if someone saw her get off her mule or her donkey and saw her pregnant, no one could start stoning her. So providential at the time that they're at.

But what's going on in his mind? Like any man. Proverbs 16 .9 is correct. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Joseph was starting to plan his way. He's thinking in his mind what to do from here.

Look at v. 20. But when he had considered this,.

What's the this?

Sending her away in divorce.

Legal divorce.

But when he had considered this, at this moment, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

So what do you see here? God is acting. God is moving. God is sending instruction by way of one of His messengers. The Lord will cause all things to work after the counsel of His will. Joseph can make plans all he wants, but God and His will will be what prevails.

God's directing what takes place next. And so the angel comes to him. Notice what the angel calls him. He says, Joseph, son of David. Son of David. And so in that, the angel is reminding Joseph of the messianic lineage that he's a part of.

He's trying to get him to recall what's happening here. Something that has been long foretold for thousands of years is finally happening. That the one of the line of David will rise as the ruler of Israel.

Think, Joseph, you're of the son of David. And a son of David is coming. And so despite what Joseph is planning, he will not leave Mary. He cannot leave Mary. The angel says, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.

Notice it's not, don't be offended to take her as your wife. Notice it's, don't be angry to take her as your wife. It's do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Don't fear anything. How many times does God say don't fear in the Bible?

Hundreds of times. People try to count it perfectly. Don't fear. Do not be afraid. And you know, when you see those words in the Bible, when you see God say, do not be afraid or fear not, it almost always happens when He's trying to remind His people of His sovereignty.

That He's in charge of this. Whether because He told Joshua, do not fear, to take command of the people and bring them into the promised land, or when they were to go to war. Or when the Lord told the people of Israel through Isaiah not to fear.

That He's sending a Savior to them. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not be afraid. Do not fear is a call to remember that God is in control of what seems to be uncontrollable. This moment right now seems to be uncontrollable.

This man is in the process, typically the one-year process of betrothal. He's getting ready. He's excited. His wife has gone off to visit her cousin. She's been gone for several months. He's excited to see her.

The wedding plans are underway. And then he sees that. It seems uncontrollable. And yet, God says, don't be afraid to take her as your wife. Don't be afraid. I'm in charge. That's what He's saying in, don't be afraid.

I'm in charge. I've got this. I'm sovereign over this. Do not be afraid. God has a plan. And it starts with you taking Mary as your wife, Joseph. And by taking Mary as his wife, Joseph then legally adopts the child as his own.

Legally speaking, the child will be Joseph's son, and therefore, by law, a son of David. A son of David. Joseph cannot leave Mary at this point. Jesus must be a son of David.

He must be.

And so the angel tells him, the child in her is begotten of the Holy Spirit. This child is from God. This child is completely different. This child is not like what you think. This child is not a product of adultery.

And so the angel tells him, the child in her is from God. And he says that in Luke 1, verses 32 -33. The angel says, He will be great. You remember that? He will be great. And will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end. I don't think I even need to tell you how much that touches the prophecies that we've gone over this December.

Right?

He will be great. He will be the Son of the Most High. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will have no end. We went over that so many times. The increase of His peace and of His government, of His rule.

There will be no end to it. His kingdom will keep going. His dominion will be forever. That's what the angel tells Mary. And so the angel is telling Joseph, and he's already told Mary this, that this child is not exactly normal.

Nor is He ultimately yours, Joseph. He's the Son of God. He's the Son of God. Mary gets to be a vessel. She's been chosen. You, you get to be a vessel as well, Joseph. You were chosen. The child will get to bear your name, Son of David.

But He is the Son of God. This is what will happen. Verse 21, She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. A child will be born, a son will be given, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He Himself will save His people from their sins.

His name is a direct transliteration from the Hebrew Joshua. I've told you that before. Joshua or Yeshua means Yahweh is salvation, or Yahweh is deliverance. That's what Jesus means. In the Old Testament, God is always seen as the One who saves His people.

He's the Deliverer. He's the One who comes through for them. And it's not different this time either.

Okay?

This child will be the salvation of Yahweh. He is the Yahweh that saves. That's what His name means. Yahweh is salvation. And that's His name. He's the Divine Deliverer. He's the Yeshua. He's the Joshua.

Think about what the Old Testament Joshua did. He battled against the enemies of Israel and won. After Moses died, it was by Joshua that the people were led out of the wilderness of sin and brought into the Promised Land.

It was Joshua who called the people to repentance and faith. He said at the end of Joshua, he says, choose this day. Are you going to choose Yahweh? Are you going to choose the Lord? Are you going to choose the idols of the land?

Again, choose this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That's what Joshua says. The better Joshua has come. The true Joshua, the true Yeshua has come. The Lord saves.

God will do it. This is no exception. God will come down to humanity and save. He will save His people. That's what it says here. Who are His people? Well, of course, as the son of David, He will save the people of Israel.

That's a given, right? However, Israel is not just ethnic Israel. If you look at Matthew 1, it says the record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. That's Matthew 1, 1.

Who is this Christ? He's the son of David, and He's the son of Abraham. Write that down. He's the son of David, and He's the son of Abraham. Those who make up His people as the son of David are those of ethnic Israel.

But those who make up His people as the son of Abraham are those of ethnic Israel and all types of other people. The true Israel. Do you remember when God made a covenant with Abraham?

Let's look at it.

Grab your Bibles or grab your printout. Look at Genesis 17. Genesis 17. Verses 1 -7. This is the covenant that God made with Abraham. It says, Now when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty.

Walk before Me and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly. Abram fell on his face and God talked with him saying, As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations.

No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. I have made you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you.

I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you. In Genesis 2, God affirms this again.

Genesis 22 says, In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. This Yeshua, this Jesus, is going to bring about the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. You go, when did this happen? When is this happening?

Who is this seed of Genesis 17 and Genesis 22? It's right here. Who are His people? He's the Son of David and a Son of Abraham. Matthew specifically gave Him that title Son of Abraham so we would remember that covenant.

Jesus is the One who's going to bring about descendants, a multitude of descendants, as numerous as the stars, as numerous as the sand on the seashore. And He's going to do it through all nations. Not just Israel.

It's going to be the true Israel. Made up of all people, the elect of God.

Okay?

He's the Son of Abraham and He's the Son of David.

Thank you.

And now, what enemy will this One called Yahweh His salvation save us from? Will He save us from foreign nations? Will He save us from wicked rulers? Will He save us from the devil? From natural disasters?

Here it says, from the chief of all calamities. From the brute of all that is bad. From the villain that is most vile. It is our sin.

Our sin.

He will save His people from their sin. From the thing that doesn't just bring us physical death, but also brings spiritual death. That brings us separation from God. The thing that takes us away from God.

The thing that brings us to hell.

Our sin.

This was the only way to defeat it. This is the only way that we could conquer it. God had to take on flesh. God had to come down in the person of Jesus Christ. This overshadowing of Mary by the power of God.