An Intrusion of Faith

 December 18 2022

Matthew 1:18-25

         Just up the road from where Jennifer and I live there is a large mega-church. By large I mean a church which numbers in the thousands of participants. They began as a church in Sugarcreek which had several hundred people and now they not only have a church in Dover but also have five other such campuses up and down the I-77 corridor. So, its easy to conclude that they touch thousands of lives with the gospel message which is a wonderful blessing. The only issue that I have with them is that there are times when their message sounds like some Christian version of self-help. Its as if they are saying that if you place your faith in Jesus then you can expect that your finances will improve, your marriage will be shored up and your children will at last be the blessing that they are supposed to be. I mean, it all sounds wonderful until you open your Bible and see just what did happen when people met Jesus. When the rich, young, ruler encountered Jesus he was told to sell all that he had and come tag along with Jesus and his friends. I’m not really sure that did much to improve his finances. Those friends of Jesus who left their fishing nets to become fishers of men sounds great until you imagine just what their wives had to say when they found out that their husbands had abruptly up and quit their jobs. There are any number of stories from the New Testament that we can tell that calls into question this idea that placing our faith in Jesus is going to make our life better according to our standards today.

         Nowhere does life seem to be made worse by the coming of Jesus than right here at the beginning, right here in the lives of Mary and Joseph. It is easy to read the story of how Mary found herself with child, as they say, without fully considering just what reaction Joseph must have had when he found out that his blushing-bride-to be is pregnant and there is no way that he is the father. I’m not sure that having God intrude upon his life made Joseph’s marriage to Mary in any sense of the word, better. You see, this is just how it is when God’s plan to make the world better interrupts our plans for a better life.Sometimes the best we can hope for is to anticipate that better world that is to come.

         It is this better world that has already broken into our world and therefore a better world that most certainly will arrive, this must be our anchor that holds us steady when our life doesn’t seem to be getting better because of our knowing Jesus. This is the beauty of the resurrection of Jesus, that this rising from the dead is the event that ultimately will make our life better when Jesus returns and all those who have placed their faith in Jesus will be resurrected and know Jesus as our resurrection and our life.Now, it seems odd perhaps to be thinking about the resurrection of Jesus this close to Christmas however to make sense of the birth of Jesus it is imperative that we understand that the truth we know about the resurrection aligns itself with every part of Jesus’ life especially his birth. One of the most important statements of the early church concerning the resurrection is found in the first chapter of the book of Romans . There in the first four verses we hear Paul write, “I, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…” You see, what Paul is telling us here is that only when Jesus was raised from the dead, only then did the world at last comprehend that Jesus is the one God had promised would come as foretold by the prophets in the holy Scriptures. These are the many prophecies that we find throughout prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and many others. Yet not only did the resurrection of Jesus affirm the many prophecies about his coming found throughout the Scriptures but the resurrection of Jesus also proved that  he was the one descended from David according to the flesh. This is the promise that we have previously studied as found in Second Samuel, the seventh chapter, the twelfth through the fourteenth verses, where we find the prophet Nathan informs King David that God promises that he is going to establish the throne of David’s offspring and his kingdom is going to be an everlasting kingdom. In this promise, God has tied his very reputation to the fulfillment of this promise and when the people of Israel were sent into exile and the kings in the lineage of David appeared to be cut off, this promise that God had made to David was called into question. That was until Jesus arose from the dead and the promise that God had made to his servant David had at last been found to be fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Jesus had defeated death so his was surely a kingdom that would remain forever.

         Yet the resurrection not only confirmed that Jesus had descended from David according to the flesh, as Paul teaches us, his resurrection also proved that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. This is the fulfillment of what is written in such places like the second Psalm where in the seventh verse we hear God say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” And in the One-Hundred and Tenth Psalm, where King David wrote, “The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” These and many other scriptures spoke of the coming of the very Son of God who would come and rule in power over all the earth.

         Now it is very important that we remember that Jesus did not in any way become the Son of God because of the resurrection. No, what the resurrection did was to reveal the truth of who Jesus is and always has been. This is what has to be held on to if we are to have faith that who Jesus was, is and always will be is God. You see, we must first start with our confession of faith, that Jesus is the one promised by the prophets in the holy Scriptures; that Jesus is the one who has descended from David according to the flesh; and that Jesus is the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead and if this is the truth to which we confess then it is the truth which has always been even before the earthly birth of Jesus. When we come to the story of the birth of Jesus as found in the gospel of Matthew, this timeless truth that we find in this confession of faith in the resurrection of Jesus that Paul writes of in this first chapter of Romans, this is exactly what we find in the Christmas story found in the gospel of Matthew.

         So let’s see how this confession in the resurrection forms the basis for the Christmas story that Matthew has written. After Matthew has written an earthly lineage for Jesus, he writes simply that the birth of Jesus took place in this way. So, the way that Jesus came to be born is that when Mary became betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Here we must pause to place ourselves in the culture of first-century Judaism. The marriages of this time were arranged by the respective father’s of the bride and groom and when all of the details had been hammered out, then the bride and groom were considered to be engaged or, as our text puts it, betrothed. This means that the bride and groom were pledged to one another even though the formal wedding service had not yet taken place. This time between when the bride and groom were pledged to be married and when the marriage actually took place was a time when the groom could prepare a proper place to make a home with his bride. So once we understand this then it makes sense that a husband and wife could be betrothed and still have no intimate contact with one another. It was into this culturally accepted time when a bride would keep herself pure for the groom that had pledged himself to her, that we are told that Mary, far from being without child, instead, we are told is with child through an action of the Holy Spirit. Now we have to wonder, just why does Matthew begin his story in this way? The answer is found in the statement of faith that has come about through the resurrection of Jesus. What does this statement of faith say about the Holy Spirit? Our statement of faith states that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. So it was there, at his resurrection, that this truth about Jesus, that he was the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, was declared to us. And then we must ask, how long has the power of the Spirit of holiness been present in the life of Jesus? The answer that we learn in the gospel of Matthew is that the power of the Spirit of holiness has been present in the earthly life of Jesus right from the moment of his conception. It is in the life of Mary that the truth that Jesus is the Son of God through the power of the Spirit of holiness is first declared to us. So, it is Mary who becomes the person whose life speaks to us about the first part of our confession of faith that we believe about Jesus.

         Well, it makes perfect sense that when Joseph finds out that Mary is with child that he would be quite upset. Into his perfect little life where he and Mary would be blessed by a large family came the workings of God which shattered all hopes Joseph might have had of a normal life. We are told that Joseph was a just man, other translations say that he was an upright and righteous man. This means, among other things, that he knew the law, that he knew in the book of Deuteronomy, in the twenty-second chapter, it spells out how he could have demanded that Mary be stoned to death for her supposed immorality. Yet, he not only knew the law he also knew compassion and mercy were also more important than justice so Joseph we are told was unwilling to put Mary to shame. No, Joseph decided to just divorce her quietly, and begin again with someone else. We are told that while Joseph thought about what his next move was in his dealings with Mary that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. This angel was a messenger of God by whose presence Joseph would have no doubt that it was God Almighty who was talking to him. Listen carefully as to how God addresses Joseph, calling him, “Son of David”. Isn’t that an interesting title to give to Joseph? It’s important that we hold on to this statement of Joseph’s lineage as we continue in the story. Well, God goes on to tell Joseph that he is to have no fear in taking Mary for his wife for the child that is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. God tells Joseph that Mary is going to bear a son and that Joseph is to name this child Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Here again, we have to pause and consider what God has instructed Joseph to do. He is to take Mary into his home and raise the child she is bearing just as if it was his own. Joseph is also to name this child, Jesus. These two actions are important because in the Jewish culture there were two ways that a child could be considered part of his father’s family. The first, of course, is that the child be naturally the son of his father. The second way is that the child could be legally thought of as being the child of his father. To be legally a father’s child, the child would need to be welcomed into the house of the father and thus provided and cared for by him. Secondly, the father would have to give the child a name for in giving the child a name the father was claiming that this child was his own. Matthew takes care to make sure that we realize that Joseph has done what was necessary for the child carried by Mary to legally be considered his own child. And since Matthew has also made us aware that Joseph is a son of David then this son named Jesus is also to be considered legally a son of David as well. Once again we stop our story to consider the faith statement that arises out of the resurrection of Jesus and we remember that Jesus is the Son descended from David according to the flesh. So here in the life of Joseph we find the truth that Jesus is the son of David according to the flesh, the very one God had promised David would rule over an everlasting kingdom.

         When we consider that it is the life of Mary which points us to the faith statement that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness and it is the life of Joseph which makes certain the claim that Jesus is the Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh then it should come as no surprise that Matthew in his account of the birth of Jesus gives us an account of the gospel that was promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy Scriptures. Matthew writes, “All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken through his prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanu-El (which means,God with us).”This quote comes from the seventh chapter of Isaiah and Matthew places this prophecy here to give support to this idea that the power of God is able to work mightily in the life of a young, single, unmarried, woman so that faith might spring forth in the hearts and lives of his people. This faith is founded on the gospel, the good news that God is most assuredly with us. Now, what is important for us to remember is that the reason why we have this assurance that God is with us is is that the name of the son whom the Virgin Mary is carrying is Jesus, which means “God is our salvation”. This is the essence of the gospel message found spoken on the lips of the prophets in the holy Scriptures. God is with us precisely because God has saved us from our sins. Only as we know with certainty that the sins that stood between us and God have been taken care of by God can we have any hope at all that God is most certainly with us. There are times when people speak of this good news that God is with us without also stating the good news that had to come before, which is that the very reason God can be with us is that he has come to us through the power of the Holy Spirit and as one in the line of David as the one we know as being Jesus, the one who bore our sins, saving us to the utmost all so God can forever be with us.

         This account of the birth of Jesus Christ that Matthew has so wondrously written down for us then is not just some simple story but what Matthew has done is to show how the birth of Jesus is a statement of our resurrection faith. In Mary, we see the truth revealed to us when Jesus arose from the dead, that Jesus most assuredly is declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness. It is through the Spirit that Jesus, the Son of God was conceived in the womb of Mary. It is by the Spirit Jesus was anointed as God’s Messiah at his baptism in the Jordan river. And it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus was raised to life in the new creation.

         As Mary’s life points us to Jesus being the Son of God according to the Spirit, the life of Joseph points us to the fact that Jesus descended from the line of David according to the flesh. Matthew reminds us that Joseph is from the house of David and that Joseph brought Mary and her child into his house and named her child, Jesus. Thus Jesus was legally recognized as being the son of Joseph and therefore Jesus was and is the Son of David in the flesh, the one God promised David would rule eternally because he is the one who has defeated death forever!

         Matthew in his account has also made certain that we understand this coming of Jesus is the very gospel of God that we were promised through his prophets as found in the holy Scriptures. This good news is that because of Jesus, because Jesus is the Son of God in power through the Holy Spirit and because Jesus is descended from David according to the flesh, Jesus is the one who is able to take our sins upon himself and through his death on the cross was able at last to redeem us from our sins, saving us from the power of sin, so that the good news, God is with us, might at last be forever our eternal hope. This is the faith that came and intruded into the lives of Mary and Joseph that first Christmas, the faith that every Christmas intrudes into our life and calls us once again, to respond! Amen!