The Long-Expected Savior
Matthew 1:18-25
“In a very real sense, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time. It can well be called the ‘Time Between,’ because the people of God live in the time between the first coming of Christ, incognito in the stable in Bethlehem, and his second coming, in glory, to judge the living and the dead… Advent contains within itself the crucial balance of the now and the not-yet that our faith requires… The disappointment, brokenness, and pain that characterizes life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.” ~ Fleming Rutledge
Main Idea: The incarnation of Jesus is a disruptive reality to save us from sin and free us from fear.
I. Christmas is the Fulfillment of God’s Plan (1:18, 22-23)
Christmas is more about a coming than just a birth. The birth of Jesus was the incarnation of God himself, fulfilling God’s plan and promise. Matthew identifies Isaiah’s interaction with King Ahaz and the promise of Immanuel (Isa. 7:14) as being fulfilled in the greatest sense in the birth of Jesus.
“[Matthew] saw in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Immanuel sign-child a picture of our ultimate salvation. We face a coalition of hostile powers far worse than Syria and Ephraim of old. We face the alliance of sin and death, they never go away, and we are no match for them. But at this ultimate level the baby Jesus fulfills the truest meaning of Immanuel, “God with us.” Political crises come and go, but God goes with us into battle against the enemies that can oppress us forever. ~ Ray Ortlund
“The incarnation is the universe-sundering, history-altering, life-transforming, paradigm-shattering event of history.” ~ Tim Keller
II. Christmas is the Assurance of God’s Presence (1:19-20, 24-25)
The story of Christmas is not a sentimental, clean, or tidy account of a birth of the Savior. Christmas was disruptive in every sense for Joseph & Mary, and it is still meant to be disruptive in our lives today. This disruption is God’s grace to awaken us to the gospel.
Three implications of “Immanuel” for our lives:
We do not have to fear (1:20)
We can embrace the cost of following Jesus (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23; John 8:41).
We can relinquish control (cf. Matt. 28:16-20)
III. Christmas is the Promise of God’s Pardon (1:21)
The name ‘Jesus’ is the Hellenized version of the Hebrew “Joshua” which means ‘the Lord saves.’ Jesus came for a greater mission than no one else could take on: he came to save a lost humanity from our greatest enemy & tireless foe: our own sin.
“The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary… the Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.” ~ J.I. Packer.
