Incarnation in Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew and the Incarnation of Christ

All right everyone if you would take out your bibles and turn with me to the gospel of Matthew over the next three weeks we are going to be looking at the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ from three of the four gospel narratives.

Tonight we are going to look at the incarnation of Christ as it is presented in the book of Matthew next week we will look at the incarnation of Christ as it is presented in the book of Luke. And then in our last week the Wednesday prior to our Christmas break we do take two weeks off at Christmas of our Wednesday night services.

Prior to that break we will have one final lesson looking at the incarnation as it is presented in the gospel of John. John does not give us a birth narrative but he does provide for us key insights into the the incarnation of Christ.

And so we're going to look at these three books and what they tell us about Jesus. And we're going to do that over the next three weeks. And because this is Christmas time we are going to be talking somewhat about the subject of Christmas.

Everything. Okay. Oh thank you dear it's a loving daughter. No we don't have handouts tonight and i do apologize i didn't provide any handouts because basically we're just going to be reading the text and talking about the text.

So i do have i have a handout sort of a cheat sheet for me to to make sure that when i'm cross-referencing passages i'll be able to jump a little bit more quickly and i'd be happy to make a copy of this for you.

But other than that i don't have any specific handouts to give you. But basically what i wanted to start with tonight the question i wanted to start with tonight was the question of what are the what are the elements and stories that we are accustomed to hearing regarding the subject of Christmas.

What are the things that we all know and are reminded of during the season of Christmas. And this is a open for discussion i'm going to write some things down. Maybe maybe i'm asking it in a weird way.

Let me ask you a little what are some things that every Christmas you see out on people's lawns or maybe on on billboards or something like that. Three wise men. Okay so we have we have three wise men is is a is a fairly a universal staple.

We see that around Christmas time. What. What else do we see around a nativity scene. It's on. Isn't it. It's hard to reconnect. Okay. Well i'm recording on another. If it doesn't i'll just upload it later.

It's fine. Okay so a nativity scene. But when we say a nativity scene what does the nativity scene normally include. Okay. Okay you gotta let other people answer. Ashley. This is a group project. She's like that one kid in the group project that doesn't work for everybody.

Okay so we have a baby who is jesus. We have of course mary and joseph. Who else do we also do we normally see in the we normally see the the shepherds. We see animals. Of course because it is a because he's laid in a manger.

Right. Um so so that is also seen. Is the manger. What else. Star. Right. Starting inside of here. Okay so normally we see the star. What else. Angels. Absolutely. Right. Anything else that we can think of that they're associated now.

Pat said santa claus. Now. Okay papa papa gary said santa claus. Okay now. Now now let me say this about that. Uh one of the stories i love to talk about during the christmas season is the story of saint nicholas of mira.

Saint nicholas of mira was a historical figure. He lived in the fourth century. And uh legend says he was actually at the council of nicaea which was the first ecumenical council of the church. And uh there's even a greater legend that says he slapped arias who was a heretic in the face that he struck him because of his heresy regarding the deity of jesus.

So uh so i love santa claus in that regard. If that's if that in fact is the case i'm not sure if that story is historically accurate. I know it's definitely what we would call a legend if if anything.

But anyway so yes there was a man named saint nicholas of mira. Uh the the modern expression of santa claus. You may know where the modern expression of santa claus comes from coca-cola the red suit white all that stuff was from a coca-cola ad.

And that's where the traditional the the modern looking santa claus is is based on a coca-cola expression of of the of the character. So anyway so getting back to to this we have the three wise men the nativity scene the baby jesus mary and joseph shepherds angels or i'm sorry animals and manger star.

Uh angels. Anything else. I don't have anything. I'm just i'm asking if i will make sure i'm not forgetting anything. Donkey. Okay. Well and we under animals. Right. Yeah. Okay so what i want to do tonight is i want to talk about how all of these elements are not found in any one book of the bible.

But what we have is we have two narratives that we have to harmonize to bring us to this picture. And there's some parts of this picture that are not necessarily biblically accurate. But what we're going to do is we're going to look at the passages in matthew.

We're going to sort of pick out what parts does matthew tell us. What parts do we. Okay these are the parts that are in matthew. And i'm going to make some. I'm going to make some expositional comments on some of the things from matthew.

Because matthew actually begins with a genealogy of jesus which kind of reminds us going back to the old testament. There's a lot of genealogies. Genealogies were very important among the hebrew people for proving lineage for proving people's heritage and specifically for proving connection to certain historical figures.

And what matthew's gospel does for us is matthew's gospel connects us with david and with abraham. In fact one of the things that's very important about matthew's genealogy is that it actually ends with abraham.

It doesn't take us back any further than abraham. In fact if you look at verse one it says this. It says the book of the genealogy of jesus christ the son of david the son of abraham. And then it begins.

Abraham was the father of isaac. Isaac was the father of jacob. Jacob was the father of judah and his brothers. And judah the father of perez and zarah by tamar. And perez the father of hezron. Hezron the father of ram.

Ram the father. And it goes on. We're not going to read all 14 verses of it as it goes down actually through verse 15 and 16. And then uh well let's look at verse uh 16 because this is important it says.

And jacob the father of joseph the husband of mary of whom jesus was born who is called christ. So that takes us through the generations that lead up to jesus. But again why do you think matthew starts with abraham rather than not going any further back.

That's right. And so the point is to is to directly connect jesus with two historical figures abraham to prove that he is abrahamic that he is a hebrew but also to connect him to david to prove that he is in the line of david because he is the one who fulfills the prophecy given to david that his throne would be forever.

Jesus sits upon the davidic throne. So to do that he has to be the son of david. And so we have this genealogy which has a tremendous importance in the life of jesus because it tells us that jesus is both a hebrew and a uh a son of david.

And that takes us to verse 17 which says. 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.

An interesting uh connection there some some would argue that it wasn't that clean that there are some some some parts of the genealogy where it skips a generation and and that's not uncommon in hebrew genealogies where someone would be the grandfather of someone else where it would where if it says something about a son of this person it's actually a grandson of this person and so there is there's there's some argument that the the 14 and 14 and 14 was actually uh was something that was by by the writer himself is showing this connection but that it's not exactly specifically 14 14 14 um i i think that that's uh i think that's something that's debatable.

I don't think it's a big issue ultimately though there is something very important that is debatable about the genealogy. And does anybody know what the major debate about the genealogy is lee i think i thought you yeah you look like you might know.

That's okay. That's okay. The big issue of the the genealogy in matthew is that luke gives us a genealogy too and it's not the same. In fact it's very different luke's genealogy. If you want to very quickly just turn there go to luke chapter three.

Some who tried to disprove the bible will use this as a place where they say here is a contradiction. You can't have two genealogies for one person and so they try to make the argument that jesus is uh the the that that one of these guys or both of these guys being matthew and and luke are are fudging the numbers as it were they were they were changing things around.

So let's look and see what we see here. If you go to luke chapter 3 and you look at verse 23 it says this jesus when he began his ministry was about 30 years of age being the son as was supposed. I love that i love that luke includes that little as was supposed because jesus is not the son of joseph but it was supposed that he was the son of heli the son of math at the son of levi the son of melchi the son of jan i the son of joseph.

And it goes on down but you'll notice immediately it says that joseph was the son of heli and the son of mathat. Now go back to the the matthew passage back to matthew 116 it says jacob was the father of joseph.

Isn't that interesting. Now you go back to luke and it says that heli was the father of joseph. So right here they say well there we have it. We have a direct contradiction in the bible. No need to go any further.

We know we're now dealing with a false book a fake story not true. We can just take the whole thing fold it up put it back on the shelf. It doesn't have any value now obviously you know i don't believe that.

But it is important that we address issues like this. Does anyone know how most conservative scholars have come to harmonize these two accounts. Jackie you look like you want to say something. I don't want to call on you.

If you go ahead you can give it give it a shot. That is what is believed by many. And i think that that is a very likely answer that luke is actually giving us joseph's father-in-law and therefore tracing the genealogy through mary.

Now it doesn't say father-in-law but it doesn't have to uh to still be a proper genealogy. And there are some who would argue that to be a within the hebrew community even today the often it is traced back through the mother's line not so much through the father's line to prove someone's uh fidelity to being a a true hebrew.

So yes i think that that is a very reasonable answer that what we have here is we have the um we have the genealogy through mary. There's also another somewhat of a kind of an odd way of of of justifying these two and that is that the uh the father of joseph um was possibly a uh had died and and his brothers uh had taken his uh his his mother as his wife the 11th marriage.

Remember that from the old testament and that so so it's possible that joseph had two fathers one that was his earthly father and one that was his adopted father. And therefore that would give also two expressions of genealogy.

I i don't. I think that has less less uh uh historical backing but but it is another example of of a way that this could happen. Um but what is interesting about luke's genealogy in regard to what luke is trying to do is luke is showing us jesus all the way back to adam.

If you notice that luke takes it down to verse 37. Luke 3 37 it says the son of methuselah the son of enoch the son of jared the son of mahaliel the son of canaan the son of enosh the son of the seth the son of adam the son of god.

So what is what is luke's point. Jesus is is truly a son of adam. Right. And and i think the argument again from a theological point genealogies are very theological in nature. They're not just meant to give history.

They're meant to make a theological point. Matthew's theological point he's a son of abraham and he's a son of david. I i would have to go back through luke's gospel to see. But in matthew there are several women mentioned.

In fact i if i remember correctly they're all gentile women. Tamar uh ruth and uh uh bathsheba. Well basheba wouldn't be a uh rahab. So there's three three of the four that are mentioned are gentiles.

And basheba is not even named. It's the wife of uriah. Basheba is never called by her name. She's always called by the the fact that she was the wife of uriah. Even in that go back to matthew one i think that's correct.

If you look at it it mentions they was the father of solomon by the wife of uriah. Isn't that rough that. That's that. That's how her name is always is is brought up that because of uh the situation between david and solomon.

Uh or david and uh uh uriah and basheba who in through that gave birth to solomon. Okay so i didn't mean to spend so much time on the genealogies. But my point of all of this is to simply say there's a theological purpose behind both genealogies.

Matthew's point is to show jesus is son of abraham son of david. Luke's point is to show that jesus is truly human. One of the things we're going to see in john's gospel is john focuses on the divinity of christ but luke focuses on the humanity of christ reminding us jesus is both fully human and fully divine.

The Virgin Birth and Joseph’s Righteous Response

All right. So back to matthew. We are now at verse 18 of matthew chapter 1. And this is when the birth narrative begins and it says in in matthew's gospel 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.

All right. Stop there now what is betrothal. It's like engagement. But it's not exactly like engagement in the in the old hebrew tradition a betrothal was a contract of marriage. But it did not. It was not a it was not marriage because what they did was they gave a period of time to to demonstrate fidelity.

Usually it was from 6 to 12 months where the two were contracted to be together but they were not yet married. And what it demonstrated was one if she got pregnant in that time that they had they had been together prior to being married.

So it was a way of demonstrating that someone was unfaithful to the covenant which was to not be sexually immoral right. But also it gave an opportunity for the man to produce what was needed to be produced to take a wife.

You know he he signed this contract and now he's got a he's got to have a home and he's got to sit. He has to be prepared to bring this woman into his home. You know nowadays people meet each other three days later they're falling in love.

A week later they go to the the justice of the peace and then they're married. Ain't got no place to live. Ain't got nowhere to go. But they're lovers and they're married. And you know and they well the the expectation at this time was very high one that the woman would be pure the man and woman would not have been together in a in a sexual relationship and that the man had provided for her.

And at the end of the betrothal period whether it was six months a year or whatever the period then would come the wedding. But if at any time in the betrothal period there was a there was a desire on on the on behalf of the man to stop he had to divorce her.

It wasn't just he couldn't just call it off like right now you you've seen people they give a ring. We call that engagement. Right. What do you got to do to get out of engagement. Just give the ring back.

And sometimes they don't even do that. Right. So sometimes they're rented. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So an engagement is is far less of an obligation than a betrothal. A betrothal was a legal legal obligation that you have.

You're going to marry this person and you've you've got a time period set up and it's going to happen all right. And when it does happen it's a big event. Remember the marriage supper canin. You know.

Or the marriage at canin. It was all this this this long event that took place it was it was a big deal for the marriage to take place. So at this point mary and joseph have a have a legal relationship.

They are betrothed but they have not yet consummated the marriage. Therefore there is should be no children. Thus we come to verse 19. And her husband joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly.

See. That's why it says divorce there because of betrothal you even though you're not yet consummated was still considered a legal contract and therefore the only way to get out of it would be to divorce what we would call divorce.

So even though they hadn't consummated the marriage he would have to divorce her. I think a modern way of explaining that maybe like an annulment. Somebody who gets married and then if they haven't consummated the marriage they can annul the marriage.

I know that's one of the few ways that the roman catholic church will recognize a divorce is through an annulment. And they have to argue that they have not had a sexual relationship yet. Which you know.

How do you prove it. You know. But whatever the point is joseph here is seen in a positive light. And what's interesting about this is matthew's gospel. And that's why i said we're doing matthew this week luke next week.

Matthew's gospel looks at this from joseph's point of view because joseph's perspective is he hadn't he didn't know it. He didn't know about the angel and notice it didn't mention anything about the angel visiting mary yet.

We haven't read that part yet. All it says is that mary had been betrothed to joseph but before they came together she was found to be with child from the holy spirit. And i know what if she told joseph that i know his initial thought had to be that's that's.

That can't be true. You know it sounds like a it sounds like some. It sounds like someone's trying to get out of having done wrong. Right. Well this god did this you know. So joseph being a judge. We don't know much about joseph.

But we know this. He was a just man. How do we know that the bible calls him a just man. And what is a just man from scripture. Man of faith. The bible says habakkuk 2 4 the just shall live by faith. So we know joseph is a man who believes in god.

He's a a true hebrew a true israelite. He is a true man of god. And he does not want to see mary be put in shame. But he doesn't want to marry her because he thinks she's been unfaithful to their betrothal.

So he says i'm going to divorce her quietly not make a spectacle of her. And certainly not you know what could happen to her under the law which she could be stoned to death. So i think there's a sense of protection here.

I do think that there's some nobility on joseph's part even though he's disappointed i think he's he cares for her. And he knows he didn't do it. That's the other thing too. She's pregnant. He knows he didn't do it right.

He knows he he was not the participating party here. Verse 20 it says. But as he considered these things behold an angel of the lord appeared to him in a dream saying joseph son of david. Again matthew focusing on the lineage.

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. And it goes on to say 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. Now very quickly if you uh turn i have to turn page. I don't know if you do it says which means god with us. So uh that doesn't end with the word emmanuel.

So let's for a moment let's talk about that prophetic passage that is a reference to isaiah 7 and verse 14. Isaiah was written about 700 years before jesus birth. So this is a very old prophetic passage which matthew is now looking at in the light of jesus.

And he's saying this is a fulfillment of what was given to the prophet when the prophet was told behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name emmanuel. Now i want to make a point about that passage.

There are some who argue that isaiah does not use the word virgin. If you look at the you don't have to turn there because it's basically the same thing that's in the matthew passage here. If you look at it in your english bible it clearly says behold the virgin will conceive and bear a child and they shall call his name emmanuel.

But if you have a if you have the old rsv which is the revised standard version i think it was written in the early 1900s. That translation is different in isaiah. It says behold the maiden will bear a son doesn't say virgin.

And the argument of the translators of the rsv was that the word for virgin is the hebrew word alma not the hebrew word bethula. And those two hebrew words are important because the word alma means a woman of marriageable age or marriageable quality a maiden.

Bethula is the hebrew word the specific word for virgin. And isaiah doesn't use the specific word for virgin. He uses the more general word for maiden. And some people make the argument well here is proof.

Isaiah never said uh that a virgin would be born. That was simply matthew later on translating his word differently. And this is this is anachronism. Reading something back that wasn't truly there. However uh that's all baloney.

That's all it's not. Well let me say you know i always say there's a greek word for that's baloney. In this sense there is a greek word that does make all the difference. There was a translation of the old testament that was written prior to the birth of jesus about 200 years before the birth of jesus there was a translation called the septuagint.

You ever heard of that translation. The septuagint is a greek translation of the hebrew old testament. When the septuagint translates isaiah 7 14 it translates isaiah 7 14 and it says the virgin will conceive.

Which means the translators prior to jesus. So they had they were not influenced by christianity prior to jesus. Translators translating isaiah's. Isaiah's meaning translated it. The greek word is parthenos which is the word where we get the word virgin.

So matthew is quoting specifically the greek translation which is virgin of the hebrew of what isaiah wrote. So the question is well why didn't isaiah be more specific. Why didn't he write bethula. Well here's the thing that you have to remember.

Alma still means virgin because the word alma means a woman of marriageable age and of marriageable quality. And a woman of marriageable quality was a virgin. And if you consider it in this regard he says behold the virgin will conceive and bear a child.

If all he was saying was behold a young lady will conceive. That happens all the time maidens young women conceive all the time. What was it that made this a prophetic announcement. Because it was something that was unique.

It was something that was different. It was something that you had to behold. And what was being beheld. The virgin was going to conceive and bear a son. And so i don't think there's any reason to question that isaiah meant to write meant us to understand.

The virgin would conceive. But also i would go on to say this because we are new covenant new testament believers. Even if we had a question about what isaiah said matthew gives us the inspired translation here.

And this is the greek word parthenos. This is virgin. There's no doubt. There is no reason to doubt that isaiah was talking about a virgin conceiving and bearing a son. And so that was a long story to simply say it was a virgin.

She was a virgin and and and it was prophesied that she would be a virgin. Now i want to also make another mention. It says they will call his name emmanuel. Emmanuel means god with us. It's not a name as much as it is a title.

Jesus was god with us. And that's what we're going to look at when we go to john 1 and that's what we're going to spend some time with. Jesus is god the son. He is god in the flesh. So some people say well why wasn't jesus called emmanuel.

Well he was. He was called god in the flesh. He was called by that title. But emmanuel was not his name as it says earlier. His name would be jesus which means yahweh saves or jehovah saves. All right.

So moving on to verse 24. Any questions. So far you guys enjoying this this i'm basically just walking through the text. This is you know i'm just just as i as i would study on my own just sort of studying with you guys.

All right. Verse 24 when joseph woke from sleep he did as the angel the lord commanded. He took his wife. Notice it calls her his wife. Even though they're not they haven't consummated anything yet because in a betrothal she is still she would be considered his legal wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name jesus.

All right. So right there verse 25. Very important. He knew her not until she had given birth. This is a this is a quite a debated subject in roman catholicism because there is a doctrine in roman catholic teaching that argues that mary was a perpetual virgin.

It's called the perpetual virginity of mary that basically even after jesus was born mary still was a virgin. In fact there are some who teach and actually i think this is roman catholic dogma is that jesus's birth was not even a truly natural birth because her virginity stayed intact even after the the birth of jesus.

And therefore there's a there's sort of a almost like a transference from the womb to the to the manger not a true physical birth as we would think of because of course that would uh you know as far as maintaining the integrity of any virginity.

Uh the the birth would would would would stop that go ahead. Well the argument from roman catholics that i've heard is that his brothers and sisters were from joseph's second wife that joseph had it but but again that's not biblical.

There's nothing about joseph having an additional wife in the bible. But that's where to justify. Because we know jesus had brothers and sisters. In fact we believe two of them wrote books of the bible.

Right. James and jude were both. We believe to be half brothers of jesus and i call them half brothers because i do believe they were sons of mary but not the son or the sons of joseph and mary. But not but jesus is only the son of mary.

So um so absolutely i don't i don't believe in the perfect. Well the immaculate conception is the belief that mary was born without sin because they believe that she was the sinless bearer of the son of god that she had to be sinless herself to be able to bear god's son.

It's um there's a lot of false teaching in roman catholicism. But in regard to mary it really does expand quite a bit. But ultimately i just like the fact that it says until it says here he knew her. Not until because i think that after jesus was born they had a natural intimate relationship whereby they had other children and jesus was the oldest and jesus was the perfect brother.

Can you imagine growing up with jesus christ as your older brother. I mean i don't know if you guys have siblings but you know there's always that sort of sibling rivalry. Imagine if he was absolutely perfect son of god that'd be tough.

Yeah. Yes at least we know he wasn't mean that's right. We know he was a good older brother all. Right. So all of that what have we learned so far. We've learned about the fact that mary was a virgin.

But very little was said notice very little was said about her. It focused mainly on joseph. When we get to luke's gospel next week we're going to see it's almost all the other way around. It's almost all about mary.

In fact we also see in luke's narrative. It's about his cousin john and his father and mother as well. Zachary and elizabeth are there as well. So so in fact chapter one of luke goes back and forth between the story of mary and the story of elizabeth showing their timeline and how john is is conceived first.

And then jesus and then john is born then jesus. And it sort of walks through the narrative. Very interesting the way luke the historian and and you'll notice luke is actually has a lot more historical information because he is he is the consummate biblical historian.

We talked about that in our new testament class. Remember luke is the historian. He wrote the book of acts. He is the historian. So when we get there we probably won't be able to read the whole chapter because to read luke chapter one chapter two would take all our time.

It's just so long. But let's look at chapter two of matthew as we have about 10 minutes left tonight and we'll see what we can we can draw from this says now after jesus was born in bethlehem of judea in the days of herod the king behold wise men from the east came to jerusalem saying where is he who has been born king of the jews.

For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him all. Right. Stop right there. Okay so we have a few. We have a few of our things that we can sort of check off right away. Uh it mentions that he was born in bethlehem but it doesn't say how he got to bethlehem.

Did you notice that luke's narrative tells us why he was born in bethlehem. Matthew just references that he was. Why does it matter that he was born in bethlehem. Because verse six you're going to see in a moment that that's a fulfillment of prophecy.

Matthew is very concerned that we understand jesus is fulfilling all these old testament prophecies not only from isaiah but also from the other prophets. And one of the prophecies is that the messiah would be born in bethlehem.

And so he doesn't say how he got there. He doesn't talk about the census or any of that stuff. He just says he was born in bethlehem in the days of herod the king. Now behold wise men. Okay now wise men are mentioned.

But what's not mentioned the number there there's there's there's no three wise men mentioned. It only says that there were wise men from the east. It could have been a whole horde of them or it could have been just two.

We don't know how many. It just says there were wise men from the east came to jerusalem saying where is he who has been born king of the jews. For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

Now the term wise men some some translations use the term magi. Um and uh there there's some debate over what these guys were. And ultimately you know some see them as pagan astrologers. You know people who look at the stars and follow the stars.

But god is using these men no matter what they were where they came from or what what their what their particular belief was. God was using these men for a specific purpose. He's using them to confirm what he has done.

He's confirming through these men the miracle of the coming of jesus. And it says. And it says that they came to the king uh saying where where's been born the king of the jews. We saw his star rose and we've come to worship him.

And verse three says when herod the king now herod's the earthly king heard this he was troubled in all jerusalem with him and assembling all chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the christ was to be born to be born.

And they told him. This is important in bethlehem of judea. For so it was written by the prophet. And you bethlehem in the land of judah are by no means least among the rules rulers of judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people israel.

So all they're doing is quoting a scriptural passage. Um and and it's from micah 5 2. By the way if you want to make make a note of that. Uh they're simply quoting from the prophet micah that this is what is to happen now.

It says in verse 7 herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to bethlehem saying go and search diligently for the child when you found him bring me word that i may too go and worship him.

After listening to the king they went on their way and behold the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

And going into the house they saw the child would marry his mother and they fell down and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures they offered him gifts gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned and dreamed not to return to herod they departed to their own country by another way.

All right. Before we get to the next part of the narrative i want to just make a few exegetical comments here. Number one. Um herod is attempting to use the wise men to kill jesus because herod sees jesus as a threat to the throne his throne.