Matthew 1:18-25 - Doug O'Donnell

[0:00] Good morning.

[0:30] He said it should be light and heat. I'm going to pray. Any more heat than light. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, I bow now in your presence.

[0:46] I ask that your word be my rule, your spirit my teacher, and your greatest glory, my spirit, and your spirit my master. I ask Jesus Christ, our Lord. Thank you.

[0:58] Last week in Dave's introduction of me, as I guess we started to see Dave today, he may remember fabricated a few details about my basketball career.

[1:11] Since he didn't find anything online about my time at Wheaton, he suggested that my stats were as good as he found MVP goal yogur.

[1:22] The truth is, my high school stats were close to the yogur's. But the reason he couldn't find anything about me in my time at Wheaton is that it was very short-lived.

[1:35] I transferred in as a junior. I played two games. And then I had a gender twice throughout the rest of the season. And I decided it was God's way of telling me to focus full-time on ministry and on training for ministry, which I did.

[1:50] And as your speaker, you might be glad that I did. Now that said, I think it is only fitting that I begin today with a story from my glorious high school day.

[2:03] When I was 16, I attended the prestigious five-star basketball camp. Each morning, a well-known coach would teach us to do the drill.

[2:14] The first day of camp, Coach Dave Odom, who was then the assistant coach for University of Virginia, he asked a camper named Bobby to demonstrate the drill. Now when Bobby walked on the court, I was surprised by the coach's selection.

[2:30] Unlike many athletes around me who were tall and strong, Bobby was short and scrawny and pale. He also had runner shorts.

[2:42] Those runner shorts. Those high, kind of show all your thighs. And we all wore high shorts back then, but those children were too much. Anyway, little Bobby with his little shorts did a fine job.

[2:56] In fact, he did a very fine job. He had about 80% of the shots. I remember thinking of myself, how bad? For a short, scrawny, pale. Well, that afternoon, when I turned to the front page, I remember newspapers, I turned to the front page of the sports section.

[3:12] It listed high school first-team All-Americans, including five pictures. And guess who was the best point guard in the nation? Bobby.

[3:24] Bobby Hurley. Of course, if you don't know anything about basketball, you know Bobby Hurley lived up to the hype. Four-year starter at Duke, three Final Four appearances, two national championships, the NCAA's all-time assist leader.

[3:41] He, not me, had a great college career. Now, I start this way, hopefully to get your attention, at least at Josh. But also because I want to talk about surprises.

[3:55] I was surprised that Bobby Hurley, when I saw him in the flesh, that Bobby Hurley, the six-foot white guy, who didn't seem to have the skills of the rest of the people around him, was a first-team All-American.

[4:10] I was surprised that he even exceeded the experts' expectations when he got to college. And when it comes to reading the Bible, I often find myself surprised as well. So today, as we tackle this text, it's very familiar, it's two familiar texts, I want to point out to you seven surprises.

[4:29] We got six points during the last week, it's seven today, so imagine how many points. It'll be in two weeks. I want to point out seven surprises, not really to make observations, but also to offer some applications.

[4:42] I want to aim for your head, some light, but also for your heart and your hands, a little bit of heat. So here's what surprised me, and I don't like surprising you as well.

[4:54] First, it's surprising that Matthew assumes that his readers know who Mary is. He assumes that his readers know who Mary is, because he doesn't say anything about her to introduce her to the readers.

[5:07] Now, I take that to be that his readers know about her through perhaps the Gospel of Luke that was written before Matthew, or certainly the Gospel of Luke as it was spoken orally as people were spreading the message of the Gospels before the Gospels were written.

[5:22] And either way, it makes sense that in the 30-plus years before the first Gospel was penned, probably more first, the word of the Gospel was spreading throughout the world by the word of mouth.

[5:34] People were preaching about Jesus, and that would include Mary. As I thought of an application for us today on this first principle, two thoughts came to mind.

[5:45] The first was to use the phrase faithful response instead of application. Faithful response. And asking the question, how might we respond faithfully to what our living God is saying to us through a living and active word?

[6:00] This is a term that we, Professor Andy, ever and having to suggest in this great book, the Savior and Scripture. What should our faithful response be? The second thought was this.

[6:10] Like the early church, let us be faithful in distributing the Bible. We have so much more than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John. We have the whole canonical Scriptures. Let us be faithful in getting the Bible out to people who don't have it.

[6:22] Let us be faithful in proclaiming to others, those who have never heard of Jesus, those who will never have received the Bible in their life, the good Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us tell the world about Jesus.

[6:34] Let us also, in telling the world about Jesus, tell about Mary, his mother, her faithful response to the Annunciation, her journey to Bethlehem, her delivery of the Savior, her care for her son, her sorrow at the cross, her commitment to the church after the resurrection in Pentecost.

[6:51] First, it's surprising that Matthew just assumes that his readers know who Mary is. Second, it's surprising that our great God chose humble Mary to be the mother, his mother for the 18th.

[7:08] Listen to the language. She will conceive and bear a son. She will bear a son. Our great God chose humble Mary to be the mother of Jesus, who is the Christ, chapter 1, the King.

[7:21] He's the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. He's the son of Abraham. He's the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. He is the son of David. He is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. They shall call his name Emmanuel.

[7:34] God, our great God, chose humble Mary to be Jesus. Again, reading the gospel of Luke back into our text, but based on the first surprise, it's not surprise, nor warranted that we should do so.

[7:48] So we know from Luke that Mary is from Nazareth. Nazareth. Think. You think Nazareth, think. Lost Springs, Wyoming. Where?

[8:00] Exactly. She came from a secure village. It wasn't population four, as Lost Springs is, but it had a population of around 400, and it didn't have the noblest of reputations.

[8:18] As Daniel says to Philip after Philip, preaches, we have found him of Moses and the law, and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth. Do you remember the response to Daniel said, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

[8:32] I like how Eugene Peterson captures the attitude. Nazareth, you've got to be kidding. Mary was from this small, this reputable town in Nazareth, and she herself was a small account by the world.

[8:47] Sandra, she was young, poor, unknown, likely illiterate. She wasn't in the prime of her life. She wasn't wealthy. She wasn't famous. She wasn't well-educated.

[8:58] She had no followers on TikTok. My soul magnifies the Lord, she says. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

[9:11] She was humble in every sense of the word. Now, what's our response to the second response? The surprise. Listen to emulate our great God by humbling ourselves.

[9:24] I think of Augustine's answer to one of the greatest Christian virtues. He said humility, humility, humility. We should humble ourselves like our great God humbled himself. Philippians, too. And I also think we should see potential, or try to see potential, in the humbler where the world sees us.

[9:41] So don't overlook the unknown. The poor, the uneducated, the young, even the unwed teenage mothers. Our great God chose Mary to be the mother of the son of David and the son of God.

[9:55] Third, it's surprising that while Mary's role is so significant, quiet Joseph is the protagonist. That is, he's the character moving the action along in Matthew's retelling of the story of Jesus.

[10:10] First, Joseph is the protagonist. Now, some of you may know I worked on a new sing hymnal, and so I've had in the last five years my head around hymnody.

[10:22] And if you carefully curated a list of 200 classic Christian-Christian carols, enduring widely loved Advent and Christmas hymns, that appear throughout English-language hymnals, there would be fewer than five songs that even mention Joseph.

[10:42] And of the songs about Joseph, there's only one, Joseph dearest, Joseph mine, and medieval German lullaby, which Mary is addressing Joseph directly as his protector, character, and comforter.

[10:55] Of all the songs about Joseph, just one, and the others that only feature one line about him, these songs are so far down on the top 200 list that I've never heard of any of them.

[11:09] Until I did research this week. Well, I want to show you why musicians and songwriters today, maybe some of you, need to create some new hymns that emulate the evangelist's perspective, Matthew's perspective, on Christmas.

[11:25] It's interesting seeing low, low, yeah, yeah, singing that song with just so much about Stump of Jesse, all these things about, there'd be a great line to put something here about Joseph, as we'll see.

[11:38] And Matthew starts quite plainly and profoundly straightforwardly, sorry. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. But notice he does not immediately describe the birth.

[11:50] In fact, there's no nativity. There's no mention of Mary's labor and delivery. Moreover, unlike Luke's gospel, where the reader sees the unfolding events through Mary's eyes, here in Matthew they're all seen through Joseph's eyes.

[12:05] Verse 18 introduces the situation. The rest of the passage focuses on Joseph and his conception, if you will, of the conception of Christ and his actions related to the birth of Christ.

[12:18] And here are all those actions. Joseph is the protagonist. He's moving everything along. Joseph discovers his betrothed bride is pregnant. So it's a decision to make. He resolves to divorce her, that is to break off the legal engagement.

[12:32] That's how we're back to that. His mind is changed, however, through a dream and an angelic explanation. He receives shocking information and then experienced glorious elimination. That's how a singular purpose in my spirit.

[12:44] I pray like that. Thus Joseph takes the angel's word as God's word and he marries Mary. And next we're told that he doesn't have intercourse with her until after the baby is born.

[12:54] And finally, he, not she, not they, he names their son Jesus. In church tradition, Joseph is earned the nickname, Quiet Joseph.

[13:07] That's because the gospel is recorded no words for men. But here, while Joseph may indeed be quiet, so to speak, pun intended, we see how his actions, his prompt, simple and unspectacular, inalbeitant actions, they speak louder than words.

[13:25] And through his actions, he models for every Christian at all times, trust. He, like Mary, believes that nothing is impossible for God.

[13:36] And compassion, and obedience, and sacrifice, and patience, and self-control. But the purpose of Matthew's focusing his camera on Joseph, and the activity of Jesus, is not merely to offer to us a saint, to emulate.

[13:51] It is also to tie the genealogy, the genealogy, the first 17 verses, to the holy family, the next few verses. Remember last week, we talked about the importance of the Davidic covenant.

[14:03] God promised that someone from David's royal bloodline would become this king of a forever kingdom. Well, how does Jesus enter into that family?

[14:14] Is it through Mary, his mother, perhaps? We're not told that. We're not told she comes from the life of David. Is it through Joseph? His surrogate father. Quite clearly. Quite clearly it is.

[14:26] Look at me to take four verses and listen. First, we have one line. Jesus called the son of David. Second, we have verse 6. We're introduced to David, the king. Third, we have verse 16.

[14:37] We're going to read Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born and was called Christ, the king. Then fourth, verse 20. Look at how the angel addresses Mary's husband, name, Joseph, son of David.

[14:52] Joseph, son of David. So what does Joseph have to do with Jesus? Why is Joseph the main character in Matthew's Christmas story? Besides serving as a competent and reliable witness to Mary's virginity, he, among all people, can attest to that.

[15:09] And as a husband who's going to help Mary raise Jesus and later other children, he surely can do that. Joseph is the genealogical link to King David.

[15:22] You see, by accepting Mary as his wife, these phrases are really important, he took her as his wife. By naming her child, he, Joseph, called his name Jesus.

[15:33] He is officially, he is legally, bestowing on Jesus the status, the descendant of David. Through Joseph, Jesus becomes the descendant of David.

[15:45] That's why he's the protagonist, which is quite surprising and something we all convince. Fourth, it's surprising that God puts two pious people into an apparently unpious and certainly precarious predicament, and that both of them in the wrong way handle it perfectly.

[16:04] We use Matthew's language, they handle it as just and righteous people to handle such a situation. In Luke, we receive Mary's reaction to the surprising news of her pregnancy.

[16:17] She responds, How will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel explains, and Mary then submits to God's will to her life. Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.

[16:28] Let it be in me according to your word. What a beautiful, beautiful response. In Matthew, we receive Joseph's reaction to the surprising news of Mary's pregnancy.

[16:39] When Jesus' mother, Mary, had been referred to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with a child on the way to St. Jesus' pregnancy. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

[16:58] I want you to just walk with me a few cases in Joseph's shoes, Sandra's case. You learn that the girl you're engaged to get married to is pregnant.

[17:12] And you know it's not you as above. How would you feel if you were put in a scandalous situation? Would you be humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed, angry, jealous, all of the above?

[17:29] Matthew doesn't tell us how Joseph felt. He just tells us what he does. After Joseph thought seriously, patiently, about the matter, he resolved to do what would honor God, but also care for Mary.

[17:48] And Joseph, being a just man, unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. I envision the decision this way. On one shoulder, we have Joseph hearing the righteous requirements of the law.

[18:01] Whispering in his ear, Deuteronomy 20, he can't marry a church, he's sexually immoral. On the other shoulder, we have the compassion and mercy that are expressed throughout God's law, his Old Testament law.

[18:13] And here, it's not a devil or an angel, it's two angels he's wrestling with. Two angels wrestling within his heart. And compassion counts into Joseph. A private divorce, not a legal, public divorce, a private divorce is the way to receive this misquietly and this way, he will show both the justice of God and the love of God.

[18:36] Now, based on what Joseph has decided to do, I just offer a brief word application for us, I mean, faithful response before we carry on to our next surprise. Let me give you, give us a brief, motivating meditation on this phrase, Joseph being a just man.

[18:54] Joseph being a just man. What does it mean to be a just or a righteous person? Same word, agree with you. When Paul's usage, it typically means to be right before the sight of God.

[19:08] That is to be perfectly pure, absolutely forgiven and then perfectly pure in God's sight. Matthew, however, doesn't connect the concept with God's saving grace and salvation.

[19:20] Not that he wouldn't believe that, he just doesn't do that in his gospel. He connects it with those who are already part of his kingdom, those who are already saved and how they who are saved, who are already right with God, live a certain way, they live righteously.

[19:36] They live righteously. They live out to, quote, in Jesus, chapter 23, verse 23, especially the weightier matters of the law, those things that really matter to God like justice and mercy and faithfulness.

[19:52] Now, doesn't that describe Joseph spotting? He is so faithful to evang God's law that he knows he's got to do something with his relationship. He needs to sever this relationship.

[20:03] He's so upright in character that he just can't overlook an offense like this and breach God's holy law. Yet, he's also determined not to act against Mary, which the man in the situation would want to do vindictive or self-righteous.

[20:18] He also doesn't act rashly. He probably prayed for wisdom, master heaven's help, but once he knew that his hands were tied, he decided to do what? Act in mercy.

[20:30] He settled the matter privately and quietly. I love how Dale Werner puts it. By giving Mary a letter of divorce quietly, innocent Joseph as prepared to take social shame upon himself as a divorce on himself and without complaints.

[20:50] He embodies this thought came to my mind. You two song, Grace, where Bono sings, he takes the blame, he covers the shame, or he tries to cover her shame by the secret divorce.

[21:02] And in so doing, I think he models how we need to respond when we are put in tough, God-ordained trials with justice and righteousness.

[21:15] We should ask ourselves, are we, like he, sensitive to the commands of God? I think as a parent who's raised teenagers, five teenagers, you know, you come to these situations, someone similar to Joseph's, perhaps, or other things going on in them?

[21:32] And are we in that moment when your child has disobeyed God's law for your friend or your spouse? Are we, like Joseph, sensitive to the commands of God, the vertical dimension of righteousness?

[21:45] We care about God's holy law, as well as, are we sensitive to people, the horizontal expression of righteousness? righteousness. And if not, let's be so.

[21:56] Let's try to be so. Let's pray for God's help to be so as Christians and especially as Christian parents. Fifth, it's surprising that the Holy Spirit's role in his work in the birth of the Divine Son, in part, is fleshly.

[22:15] Not fleshly in the sense of human desire, but fleshly in the sense of human body. The Spirit's work is fleshly. A child is conceived, a little biology lesson for you here, a modest one.

[22:28] When a man and a woman physically come together, that's the language used here in verse 18, Mary and Joseph, before they came together. Another way of saying that is what's said in verse 25, and Joseph knew or not, he did not have carnal knowledge of her until she had given birth to his son.

[22:48] Note that both the words before and until indicate that they did have sexual relations later, after they're married, after they've been born. Also noted, especially, the point of the fifth surprise, that twice we're told in verse 18, verse 25, that Jesus, that which is conceived in her, is from the Holy Spirit.

[23:09] From the Holy Spirit. We just said the Nicene Creed stands out, praise and free. I want to ask you if you've ever thought about the role of the conception, rather than the Spirit in the conception of Christ. I have not talked too much about the work of the Spirit until Matthew made me think about the work of the Spirit.

[23:25] Now I'm making you think about the work of the Spirit. Now here, rest assured, I'm not going to delve into the mystery of it all. I'm not going to attend the first time in the world history to tell you the process by which the Spirit worked in the Virgin's womb.

[23:38] I'm simply going to point out what Matthew teaches here, namely, that the Holy Spirit made in Mary, with Mary's DNA, the preexistent second person of the Trinity into an actual human being.

[23:53] The Spirit genesis Jesus. I say it that way because that's actually how the Greek in our text says it. Now the genesis of Jesus. Now not the genesis of course in the sense of the birth of God's preexisting Son, that's heresy, but rather the genesis of the Spirit's work in taking the preexistent Son and forming His inward parts, knitting Him together in His mother's womb to make Him fearfully and wonderfully human.

[24:24] Just as the Spirit hovered over the water at the time of creation, so here now for our salvation the Spirit overshadows the word that Luke uses Mary, making God's Son into one of us with bones and brains and blood and lungs and lips and lymph nodes with the head and the heart and hands.

[24:47] You see, one of the problems today is that the work in the church is that the work of the Spirit is so often over-spiritualized. What I mean is this, where the Spirit is present in the world, this is what the Bible teaches, where He is present in the world, we see the humanity of Jesus to believe.

[25:08] Conversely, where other spirits, false demonic spirits are, where we find in Jesus, you might know people like this, they believe in Jesus but without flesh. They don't care about the incarnation, they don't care about the writing of the grave, bodily, they have a Jesus without flesh.

[25:23] It's super-spiritualized as Jesus, that Jesus only in my heart and I'm a cosmic Christ. It's one of the main controversies you might remember in 1 John that the Apostle John was addressing.

[25:36] He was up against these false teachers who forgot Christmas. Forgot Christmas. They so emphasized Jesus' divinity that they neglected His humanity. They thought that humanity was so shameful.

[25:49] And what did John say to that? What was his apostolic acid test that were worthy of orthodoxy? He summarized it this way, 1 John 4.2. By this you know the Spirit of God, that every spirit who confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

[26:05] There it is. Spirit, flesh, is from God. So how do you know of a church if this church is a Spirit-filled church? Well, one way you can know is if Jesus and all of His heavenly divinity, which we'll talk about in a minute, and Jesus' all of His earthly humanity is the focus Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

[26:30] The role of the Holy Spirit in the conception of Christ is a wonderful, so surprising truth to think about this ad is more ago. Sixth, it's surprising that a holy God, when you think of God's holiness as holy, holy, holy God, so loved unholy, unholy, unholy people that He devised a plan to rescue from their sins.

[27:04] Joseph told in verse 21, and Mary will bear a son, and He shall call His name Jesus, for He, He Himself, and that He alone will save His people from their sins.

[27:16] Jesus' name is His mission. Joshua, Yahshua, means Yahweh is salvation, the Lord saves. But notice what He saves from.

[27:28] Who He saves, and I'll add how He saves. First, from what does Jesus save? Well, here, it's not external enemies, it's not the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Roman Empire, the Russians.

[27:41] No, He does not save people from these external enemies, but He saves people from their sins. You see, the greatest danger that humans face, as Craig Evans puts it, is not oppressive humans, but enslaving sin.

[27:57] Sin that estranges humans from God. Do you believe that? Do you also believe, the noun here is plural, sins, we're not only saved from humanity's great past sin, Adam's sin, which is in us, which culminates eventually, we do nothing about it, in our condemnation, but we're saved also by the indwelling power of God from our future sins.

[28:23] Sins such as anger, lust, lying, violence, ungodly anxiety, love of money, to name a few of the things that, you know, the sins that Jesus addresses in the sermon on the mouth.

[28:34] We might say that by trusting in Jesus, he saves us from our deepest sins, singular, and from our everyday, daily sins, and we praise God today, and everyday for such great salvation.

[28:48] We're saved from our sins, we're saved from our sins. Second, who does Jesus save? His people. He saves his people from his sins.

[29:00] Who's his people? Israel, the Jews, God's elect. Not just them, not according to Matthew, not according to the rest of the New Testament. His people becomes, in Jesus' own work, my church, and my disciples.

[29:13] So people like Peter, the fisherman, the deviant, the tax collective, Jewish men who believe in and living, we have the Roman century, Gentile, enemy of God's people, the Canaanite woman, Old Testament enemy, comes up in the New Testament.

[29:30] And so these are the type of people who become part of his church, his disciples. He saves Jesus' people, he might save. Each and everyone, Jew, Gentile, slave, free man, woman, child, who comes to him and vows before him and follows him.

[29:46] Jesus saves, who is people? From what are sins? But how? But how? The rest of the Gospel of Matthew answers that question.

[29:58] The incarnation, the totality of the life of Christ, not just his birth, but the totality of his life, and especially the cross. The cross, his death, his life, and his death.

[30:12] You see, the cross casts a shadow, even here in the first chapter, for maybe a big, bright, beautiful light over the great world. Jesus is going to save his people from our sins through his whole life.

[30:26] that's why it's important to tell the whole life story of Jesus, the Gospel writers do. And he's going to save us through his death, through his life and his death, the incarnation, and the cross.

[30:38] Look how J.C. Rouse sums up dissolved perfectly. Jesus saves us from the guilt of sin by washing us from his own atoning blood. He saves us from the dominion of sin by putting in our hearts the sanctifying spirit.

[30:52] He saves us from the presence of sin when he takes us out of this world to rest with him in heaven eventually. And he will save us one day from all consequences of sin when he gives us a new glorious body on the last day.

[31:07] Mary will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus. Why? Because he's going to save us from all of that. He's going to save us from our sins.

[31:19] So, it's surprising who calls Jesus Emmanuel. It's surprising who calls Jesus Emmanuel. Let me read verses 21 through 23 again.

[31:30] I'll point out a few things and I'll showcase the surprise. She will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus. for he will save his people from their sins. All took place to the Lord.

[31:41] The Lord is spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. So, she will be a virgin. Notice her both when she gets seized. And she'll also be a virgin when she gets birthed.

[31:52] So, Mary is both of this. And they shall call his name. They shall! call his name Emmanuel. Which means God will. Now, speaking of his nature, it is from Mary that he becomes fully human.

[32:22] And it is from the Father through the Spirit that he is fully God. Now, why does this all matter? Well, as fully God, Jesus was able to pay the penalty for our sins, for which finite humanity cannot atone, is fully human, he could be our adequate representative, our substitutionary sacrifice.

[32:44] And this unique combination you see, this puts the merry in Christmas. This puts the happy in Christmas. If Jesus was just fully human, but not fully God, we're not safe from our sins.

[32:58] If he's just fully God, but not fully human, we're not safe from our sins as well. But because he could bear the full weight, the eternal guilt, something that we mortals could never shoulder.

[33:12] And because he's truly human, he could stand in our place as our representative, offering himself as a perfect substitution for sinners like us. Now let's get to the surprise.

[33:24] The old bird shall conceive a bear son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. This is a quotation that you'd like to know from Isaiah the house of David.

[33:42] Now while there is a child actually born in chapter 8, this child is a fulfillment of that prophecy but not a full fulfillment. As we read on in Isaiah 9 and 11 as we just did this morning, we learn a unique child that is still to come.

[33:58] There's going to be what scholars sometimes call a super fulfillment of the prophecy. And we read 11 and I'll read this part of 9. So a child is born at 8, but then 9 gets to this saying there's something more to come.

[34:12] Run to us a child born and sons given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name will be called Wonderful Counseling Mighty God Everlasting Father Prince of Peace Of the increase of his government of peace there will be no end the throne of David forth forever more in the original context of Matthew 7 14 King Ahaz is to call this coming child Emmanuel and the command in the Hebrew there is a singular he Ahaz calls this child Emmanuel well why then does Matthew say they they shall call him Emmanuel it's not in my view to signify Mary and Joseph because in Matthew's account only Joseph is the one who bestows the name upon child the name is Jesus in other words when the baby was born Joseph doesn't say welcome to the world

[35:12] Jesus Emmanuel or he doesn't write on the birth certificate his first name is Jesus and his name is Emmanuel known that they are back to the people where Jesus saves I think that they are his church his disciples Matthew is saying here there's a greater fulfillment of this not only to Jesus that comes but who's going to name this child Emmanuel his people the church we're going to hear and understand the full gospel that Matthew is writing about in chapter 1 to 28 like the magi in chapter 2 these people who say that he is Emmanuel they will recognize Jesus as king like the apostles in chapter 28 they will bow before him and recognize him as God with us God with us they shall call as we call as every Christian around the world today calls during this Advent we shall call his name Emmanuel the seven surprises!

[36:12] first in Matthew just assuming he is the mother of Mary is second that our great God chose humble Mary to be the mother of Jesus third that God puts two pious people in various predicaments that both of them handle it in the right way justice!

[36:35] Righteousness! The Holy Spirit is surprising his worth his role in the birth of Christ is fleshly spirit Jesus says that a holy God so loves unholy people that he will rescue us from all our sins the seven that they we believe in Jesus call him Emmanuel we call him God with us then and now and greatly heavenly father we thank you for the richness of your word you know how familiar this passage is to us this time of year especially for those who is Christians for many years we thank you just for opening our eyes to understand some truth about some new light from your revelation we thank you that your word is inexhaustible if there are more things we'll worry about this passage and other passages we'll please praise the

[37:37] God we thank you most of all the Lord that you so loved us that you sent Jesus that you saved us and you so loved us that you sent your only beloved son Emmanuel to be with us always now even until the end of the age we praise you for him and for you the spirit Amen as