The Messiah is born!

Matthew 1:18-25

When you use an object again and again in one way and only it that way, you seldom tax yourself wondering about other possibilities.  For example, it would probably not occur to us to:

• Use a steering wheel as a lampshade,
• An electric mixer as a toilet paper dispenser,
• Or a bent nail as a Christmas ornament.

    
Here’s our challenge: to read about Jesus’ birth and not think about Christmas.  Matthew wrote his gospel sometime before 70 AD.  At that time no one had even heard of decorating Christmas trees or singing carols or wrapping gifts.     Matthew didn’t have visions of sugarplums dancing in his head.  What was up there? 
He was writing to Christian – some Jews some Gentiles – who were trying to come to grips with what it meant for converted Jews and Pagan Gentiles to be united as brothers and sisters in Christ. There must have been a lot of confusion:
1. Confusing for the Jews because Jesus was not the Messiah they had expected.
2. For the Gentiles because they had very little background, if any, in the Old Testament. 

Matthew 1:18-25. 

Before we read, wipe Christmas from your mind. Don’t think about the children’s pageant.  Matthew wants to set the record straight about the Messiah.

18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,  “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23  “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” — which means, “God with us.”

4 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

 The genealogy that Matthew opened with showed that Jesus was a descendent of David and Abraham.  He was a Jew and he was an heir to David’s throne.  Jesus’ family tree had good and bad people and Gentiles.  That probably surprised everyone.  Fact: Jesus was the Messiah but the story of his ancestry wasn’t a fairy tale with no rough edges.
Neither was his birth.  He father wasn’t a king and his mother was as ordinary as they come.  Except for two things, he would have been just another Jewish baby. And those are the two things Matthew highlights. He knew about the angel talking to Mary but he didn’t report it. He knew about the shepherds and the stable but he didn’t report them.  He knew about the angels that sang to the shepherds but he doesn’t even mention them.
He told us about two things: Jesus conception and his naming.
Joseph and Mary were engaged but before they consummated the relationship, Mary became pregnant through the Holy Spirit.  It was the fulfillment of one of those ancient predictions about the Messiah. The Jews would have read Matthew, nodded their heads and said, “Right! Isaiah.” And the Gentiles would have said, “You’re kidding! Somebody predicted the virgin birth way back then?”
No other baby has ever had a conception like that.  Only Jesus the Christ, the Messiah!
Naming: Of all the tips and advice God could have given Joseph through the angel, he only instructed him on naming Jesus. 
First, he told him: Mary will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (21).”  The Jewish Christians would have said, “That’s us!” And the Gentile Christians would have said, “Yeah, but what about us!”  (Shrug!)
Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name Joshua.  It contains the name that God gave himself, Yahweh – I Am. Or I Am Who I Am.  Also referred to as The Great I Am.  So Jesus means Yahweh is salvation or Yahweh saves.   Think about naming a baby Bill Gates because he will change the world with personal computers.  Joseph followed through and named their baby, our savior, Jesus.
Matthew goes even further with the name. “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” — which means, “God with us (23).” Which they will call him that?  Not Joseph and Mary.  The Jewish and Gentile Christians and us – who take great strength and comfort from knowing the one rightly named Jesus. Matthew makes it clear: Jesus is God with us.
Nothing in Matthew about Christmas carols.  Nothing about no room at the inn!  Nothing about celebrating!  Nothing to suggest dressing up a little boy like Joseph in his dad’s bathrobe.  Just the facts: Jesus’ conception and naming.
But there is one more thing if we look between the lines.  The Jews had been waiting for the Messiah to arrive for centuries.  The ones living at that time had pinned their hopes on the Messiah coming in time to conquer Rome and set them free.
There wasn’t total agreement on what the Messiah would be like or what he would do exactly but he was going to be Moses and Joshua and David all rolled into one.  However, he did it they were sure life was going to be better.  He would see to that.  War? Forget it!  Poverty? No way!  Hardship of any kind?  Hardly!  Our prayers? To the front of the line!  But if that were the case, Jesus got off to a rocky start.
Look what happened.  He nearly broke up an marriage.  Joseph was heartbroken. Mary was tormented by shame and gossip.  Joseph was in a quandary and almost divorced her. Their families were in turmoil.  The whole community took a hit.  And the Messiah, God with us, was still in diapers.
The Jews would have said, “Wow, I guess we do need to rethink our expectations.  And the Gentiles would have said, “So what can we expect from Jesus?”
Sometimes I think that Christians are critical of the Jews for not getting it sooner.  How could Jesus come and they didn’t realize he was the Messiah?  What were they waiting for?  A lighting bolt from heaven spelling it out in the skies!
I used to wonder that myself.  But then sometimes I don’t think we’re not any better.  Don’t we get a little disgruntled with God when things are hard?  Doesn’t a long lonely struggle test our faith?  We may not say, “Jesus isn’t the Messiah.”  But for all practical purposes that’s how we act sometimes.
Just like the Jews, we want Jesus to come into our lives and fill all the potholes and make us healthy, wealthy and wise.  We want him to conquer our problems, take away our stress and free us up to enjoy the possessions we’ve accumulated.
But Matthew’s story of Jesus birth hints at a different agenda.  Jesus tends to stir things up.  He challenges assumptions.  He finds out what our comfort zones are and he either turns the heat up or down.  Why because he came to save us from our sins.  Funny, we don’t even like to think about them or talk about them.  Merry Christmas. 
Yes, Matthew informs us that Jesus doesn’t change our address to 100 Easy Street, but he does promise to be with us wherever we are.

    When Jesus was born, angels appeared several times.  Does anyone remember anything they said?
    One of the angels told Joseph to give his son the name Jesus because he would save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21).
    That’s why Jesus came and that’s why he died on the cross.  He rose from the dead after three days and if we put our faith and trust in him, God forgives us and gives us eternal life.
    That means that when we die we go to be with Jesus forever in heaven.  But part of the miracle of Jesus is that he wants to save us from sins here on earth also.  Maybe it will help us understand this better if we think about this potato.  Let’s pretend God created us to be beautiful potatoes, unique and made in the image of God.
    But sin ruins us and makes us like these mashed potatoes, all beat up and with no identity.  How did it happen? When Adam sinned, we all lost something as important as this potatoes skin. That protects is from disease and harm.  We all became weak like this boiled potato.
    This beater is temptation.  It doesn’t seem very dangerous? Look, I put it down by the potatoes and nothing happens.  That’s the problem with sin it’s very deceiving.  We think it won’t get us.  We think it won’t hurt us. So we get as close as we can.  We kind of do what our parents ask, but not exactly.  We share but not our favorite toys.  We don’t hit our brothers or sisters but we make faces at them.  We don’t stuff ourselves before dinner but we might snitch one cracker.  We save our money for the Sunday School offering but we keep twenty cents.  We get to thinking we’re pretty good.  We can get by with a lot without getting caught.  We stop caring about sin.  We forget about really honoring our parents and then look what happens.
    Bam.  It’s too late. And we get mashed.  The same thing happens to adults. It can happen to us anytime in our lives.
    But if we keep trusting God; if we keep asking him to forgive us; if we keep coming back to God; he’ll keep loving us. And when we go to heaven, we’ll get our skin back, we’ll be firm again and we’ll be beautiful potatoes.  We’ll be just like Jesus.  And that’s the mashed miracle.  Jesus was mashed for us so that we can have eternal life.