His Name Is…

Matthew 1:18-2:6

Open your Bibles. If you don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand, and we’re going to put a Bible in your hand, and then I want you to open that Bible to Matthew, chapter 1. This is an absolutely profound, dense, so powerful passage. What I want to do is I just want to read through the entire whole narrative, and then I’m going to try…I’m not going to make a promise…I’m going to try to limit my comments. Underscore I’m going to try. Then I want to come back and look at some big points here.

I do have a graphic here though. Somebody brought it in for me. They said since we’ve been talking about angels, they actually thought this would be appropriate. I don’t know if you can see that. Can you see that? Put it on the chair. Oh I broke it. You break an angel, you’re in trouble. I don’t think you can break an angel. It won’t stay up there. It’ll fall. But anyway, angels are not sweet, little, feathery, floating huggables. Angels are extraterrestrial, cosmic warriors. Yes! Keep that in mind. Okay, limit your comments, Buddy.

Matthew, chapter 1: Now if you’re looking at the beginning of chapter 1, you have that whole genealogy thing. It’s really important, but I’m not going into it.

Verse 18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.” Now I’m actually reading out of the ESV. You probably have a New Living. It’s going to be really close. “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

I have to just comment on this. If you’re reading the New Living, it says something about fiancés, engaged, and it is a real valiant effort to produce a dynamic equivalency so we understand what was going on, but that’s not exactly what happened. They lived in a completely different culture. To be betrothed, they lived in a world where marriages were arranged, and so when that betrothal took place, it literally was the marriage. It was the year before the marriage was consummated, and it was a year in which they lived apart, but it demonstrated purity and faithfulness, and the husband prepared a place for that new wife to go and stay. So literally to break this at this point wouldn’t be like, “Here, you can have your ring back.” Literally, it required some kind of jurisdiction, a legal procedure.

“And her husband Joseph…” now look at this, “…being a just man…” Now again, if you’re looking at the New Living, it says he was “a good man,” which is much more of the phraseology we would use, “he was a good man,” but this word that is used here that Joseph was “a just man” actually has a lot of Old Testament rootedness in it. Actually through the whole passage, if this passage was a tree, there are just tap roots going deep down into Old Testament truth and prophecies.

This “just man” literally just means he really took seriously the law. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to do it the right way. He wasn’t somebody who cut corners. He was somebody you would look at and go, “He really is a decent kind of guy.”

“…unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.” It’s really interesting this is his approach because there are two different things he could do here. Literally, when she was found to be with child, all he had to do was take her out to the gates of the city and tell the elders of the city she was pregnant, and they would kill her. It was a capital offense, but he’s contemplating this thing. He says he does not want to disgrace her. He doesn’t want to disgrace her.

Verse 20: “But as he considered these things…” The word considered is more than “Let’s just add up all the numbers and see what works out.” The root word there is to boil over, just boiling. This is just smoking his brain. He really doesn’t know what to do. He’s delighted in her. He is so excited about marriage to her.

I don’t know how you feel, but I know when Jody told me she would marry me, I thought I’d hit the lottery. I’m still surprised she married me because I have so much trust in her judgment, and then I think about, She married me though. I think, Sometimes, God, You must really love me that You let me marry her. Then I think, Do You not like Jody?

Now Joseph was excited about this. He was delighted in this. He was thrilled by this, and now he is hurt. He feels betrayed. I would just really encourage all of us when we get into those hurt places that we do what Joseph did here, and we go, “God, what do You want me to know about this? What do You want me to do about this?”

He goes to bed. He sleeps, but there is this boiling up. Joseph’s perspective and our perspective is so interesting. This culture we have that we find we live in today is that we as a culture actually delight in exposing someone else’s weakness. Think about the TV programs and the news programs. If you are standing around with a camera somewhere, and you catch somebody doing something at a weak moment of their life…maybe somebody who is supposed to be nice yelling at someone or somebody who is supposed to be one way being another way…we actually as a culture delight in disgracing people and watching those who are thought of as big brought down. It’s almost a cannibalistic consumption so we can break the story on someone. Joseph is looking at the situation, and he’s going, “I’m not going to disgrace her. I’m not going to Facebook her.”

“But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear…'” you’re always going to find that in there because those terminators show up; you think it’s over, “‘…to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.'” Boy, this is so important. This is the process. This is how this happened. What happens is that God, the Word of God, breathes into Mary and actually creates this perfect human body. This is what has happened here inside of her. It is not a physical thing in the sense of a sexual connotation, but it is a physical thing in that there’s a physical body that takes place here.

“‘She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus…'” Now this handout I have, that’s the title of this, His Name Is, and that’s the first name here that His name is Jesus. It explains this name in the next phrase, “‘…for He will save His people from their sins.'” Now if you’re familiar with that name Jesus, we kind of use that word in our English form as a word apart, but it was an incredibly common name in that day. It’s the same Old Testament word that’s translated Joshua, Yeshua, and it’s the idea of a champion. He says, “You’re going to call Him Yeshua, and here is what He is going to do. He is going to save His people from their sins.”

“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…'” and if you’re taking notes, there’s the second one, “‘…Immanuel…'” and literally, you see it in the passage, “‘…(which means, God with us).'”

Now if you’re taking notes, His name is Jesus, and let me just throw this blank under one at you. God is for us. God is for us. That’s important. You don’t want God against you. Here, Jesus, the champion, the Savior, is for us. Number two, He is Immanuel, and it means literally God is with us. God is with us.

Verse 24: “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife…” Now that actually in and of itself was completely contrary to the custom of the day. It wasn’t time for him to do it. It wasn’t emotionally what people would think, but he is very committed to protect the reputation, not only the purity, but the reputation of his wife. So he just brings her right into his own home.

“…but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called His name Jesus.” Now that’s relatively important because we think of names as something that is just not particularly…It’s significant in what we call the name, but in the Bible when someone gave someone a name, it signified ownership. When it says here that Joseph called His name Jesus, it’s not only signifying he is obeying the Lord, this is a legal adoption.

Now physically Jesus is of the line of Mary, but now legally Jesus is of the line of Joseph. So He inherits all the promises of David because Joseph was of the family of David. That’s why they go to Bethlehem. We don’t see it in the phraseology, but literally this is what is happening here. There is a legal adoption taking place.

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea…” and I love the fact that this is Bethlehem. Literally, Bethlehem…Beth is house, and it means just the house of bread. It’s the granary. Jesus calls Himself the Bread of Life.

“…in the days of Herod the king…” I wish I had time to do a whole series on the Herods. If you go back in, somewhere I did a sermon on the Herods. This one is called Herod the Great, not because he was a great guy. He was absolutely one of the most wicked, miserable men who has ever lived. It is said about Herod, “It’s safer to be his dog than his son.” He literally choked to death with his bare hands two of his own sons. He had one particular wife he got mad at one time, and he had her pickled in honey. Can you imagine that, getting like a big earthen pot and smothering your wife, drowning her in honey and leaving her there preserved in honey? What kind of sick individual does that? Certainly gives you pause for thought if he said, “Hey, Honey.”

“…behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem…” Now again, these wise men, all kinds of traditions are built around them, but not a lot do we really know. We don’t really know how many. It doesn’t say there were three. We always say there are three because there were three gifts. It doesn’t give specifics about where they’re from. The word literally in the Greek is magi, which would indicate probably Babylonian or Persian in nature, and they don’t really say a lot. They only have one line in the play. “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” That’s the question. That’s what they asked. “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?”

That’s the third big point here is that He is King. The word that is used there, born King, is not born to become the King. No, He is born King of the Jews. It is a question followed by a statement of intent. “For we saw His star when it rose and have come to worship Him.” Lots of stuff could be said here. This is really a bizarre sort of story, and it’s really interesting the bizarre ways people come to know Jesus.

Have you ever noticed some of the strange stories? I talked to a guy awhile back. He was driving down the road, wasn’t a believer at all, looked over at a church sign. You know how church signs have all those little phrases on them? I hate that. We used to have a sign at the other campus years ago, and you had to put the little phrase on it, and every staff meeting it was, “Okay, what are we going to put on the sign this week?” It was like every cliché imaginable.

The one I hate most is the one that says, “The church…” and there’s the UR missing in it. “What’s missing in our church?” and they leave the letters UR, and it says, “U R missing in our church.” It’s like, Oh come on, can’t you do better than this? I saw one one time that said, “Guests are welcome. Members are expected.” Man, I’m not going there! Expected.

Actually you can go on a website and find crazy church signs, and it’s just insane. I’ve seen signs I actually wanted to back over. I just wanted to pull my truck up in the parking lot, back over the sign, and go, “Oops!”

But this is a kind of strange story these magi coming out of Babylon. How did they get there? They see this star. You do know in the Old Testament this is actually forbidden? This is not the way you’re supposed to do it, but God does some things people don’t like. I talked to this guy one time who came to faith…this is a really a weird story.

I was working out in this gym, and this guy started coming to church, and we got to talking about how he came to faith. You know how he came to faith? He was dating a witch. Now I don’t mean like a witch like she-just-wasn’t-nice witch. I mean, she-had-a-wand-and-said-incantation witch. She was a witch, and he liked her a lot. He was a motorcycle guy, and he liked her, but he was a little afraid of her, and she gave him an incantation book, and he started to read it, and in this incantation book, there were a number of Bible verses in the incantation book. As he was reading the incantation book, he said, “I noticed when I came to the spots where the Bible was quoted, something warm happened in my heart.”

So he went out and got a Bible! Then he went to the woman and said, “You’re a witch!” He came to Grace and got saved! Now then, how weird is that? But you know what? That’s just God. God doesn’t play by our rules.

You have these magi coming over, looking at the stars. “‘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.’ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him…” What’s he troubled about? He’s troubled because he thinks of himself as the king.

“…and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet…'” Now that is so bizarre. If you know the Messiah is supposed to be born in Bethlehem, why haven’t you set up a welcome center? Why haven’t you gone over there and set up something and say, “Whenever Messiah. When You get here, we’re You’re welcome team”? No, they don’t even go over there.

In verse 6, “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd My people Israel.'” Now if you’re taking notes, His name is Jesus. God is for us. He is our Deliverer. That is so important. He is our Deliverer. Number two, He is Immanuel. God is with us. He is the Revealer of God Himself. Number three, He is King, and I’m going to tell you something. This is where the rubber meets the road, and this is where people fall off on one side or the other.

There are lots of people who are happy to have Jesus as Deliverer from their sins. That’s really, “Oh, I can be free from my sins! That’s exciting! That’s amazing because I have some baggage I need to get rid of.” He is Immanuel, God with us. He is the Revealer of God, and I put a number of passages there. This is the incarnation.

Now I don’t know if you are familiar. If you didn’t grow up in church, you probably think of incarnation as sweet milk. If you grew up in church, you’ve heard the word the incarnation, and you’ve thought, Okay, that’s like when Jesus came to the earth. It’s true. That’s exactly what it is, but it is an important doctrinal phrase. Incarnate. It’s a Latin term, and we’ve kind of inherited it from just the church history.

I am a carnivore. Anybody a carnivore? I like meat. Yeah, I mean, if you can’t eat meat, die. I just don’t get the whole vegan thing. God bless you. I do like vegetables with meat. I’m happy with the vegetables. They go on the side. They’re not center stage. Big chunks of meat. I like big chunks of meat. I will eat fish if it doesn’t taste like fish, which is a sad thing to say about something that the best thing you can say about it is it’s not like itself. “Oh, this is great fish. It’s not fishy.” Now you don’t say that about meat. You don’t say, “Boy, this a great steak. It doesn’t taste meaty.” No.

Carnivore. The word literally just means meat. It’s what it means. Meat…meat. In meat. Incarnation. God meaty. Meaty God. Now if that doesn’t kind of mess your brain up, you’re just not thinking deeply, if you’re not going, God became meat? Yes He did. Meat, bones, brains, baby. Baby, little chubby cheeked, needing changed, hungry baby. Incarnation. God came not near; God came here. Right here. This is strange, strange doctrine. God came.

The early church really was extremely about this doctrine of the incarnation, particularly after the resurrection. Some of the early church drifted off into a direction of what they called Gnosticism, which said that Jesus only appeared to be man, just He seemed to be man, but He wasn’t. The Bible is so very clear. In the book of 2 John, this is how clear it is. He says, “If anyone says that Jesus did not come in the flesh…” these are the words, “…let him be accursed.” Jesus was a real, real person, not pretend, not presumptuous.

The passages in the Scripture that blow my mind the most is that Jesus was hungry. Jesus was thirsty. Jesus was exhausted. Sometimes it describes Jesus as astonished. Jesus had friends. Jesus had people He liked. Jesus walked on the ground. Isaiah, chapter 53, says about Jesus in the passage we quote so much that upon Him all the sins…all we like sheep have gone astray…and upon Him the sins of mankind has been laid. We quote that a lot about the substitutionary death of Jesus’ existence, but it says that there was no majesty or beauty or form that we should desire.

Do you understand that? You break open those words, “There was no form or beauty that we should desire,” this is what it says, “Jesus wasn’t even cute.” There was no halo. There was no aura around Him. He would walk down the street, and people didn’t go, “Wow! That’s one really attractive Man. Wow! What about that Jesus?” That’s not what attracted people to Jesus. It wasn’t that He was big and strong and handsome. No, He was Immanuel. He was the Revealer of God. I put a number of references down there…Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, Isaiah 53, 2 John 1, Hebrews 10, 1 Timothy 2:5-6. There are just lots of passages. Literally, here’s what it describes. He is the exact representation, the exact image. “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” He’s talking about the character. He is the Revealer of God.

But the one that makes people so uncomfortable if they’re honest is He didn’t just come to be the Deliverer and He didn’t just come to be the Revealer, which we like that. “Oh, God is nice. God is kind. God is sacrificial. God is love.” All that stuff. But here’s what the wise men said, “We’ve come to seek Him who is born King.” King. “We have come to worship Him.”

This is what really makes all the difference because in this One God is in and through us restoring the world. He is restoring the world. He is not just giving us this elevator to a condo in a cloud. This is not escapism. This is not, “Hey, I know things are really bad down there. I’m going to get you out of there, and I’m going to come in on a strategic raid and extradite you. This is a strategic raid, and I’m going to come in, and I’m going to come in and I’m going to take you out of that mess.” No, He came into this mess, and He is going to redeem the whole thing.

For years, I have read a lot about war. For years, the whole idea of war kind of entertained me, and I liked war movies and war stories and the strategies of war. There was even seemingly a romance about war. But if you’ve ever like been in a war zone, it doesn’t take you very long at all to realize there’s nothing romantic about it. It’s just really not pretty.

But down through the years, there have been historic, huge invasions. There is one in the Bible with Assyria. This guy named Sargon II mobilized this incredible army and invaded the Middle East, and attacked Egypt. There’s one where this guy in about 722…it would have happened during the time of Isaiah…this guy named Xerxes mobilized over a million soldiers over a period of three years. He went in to take the Greek city-states. There was a movie about it awhile back, and 300 men went down into a pass and fought them off to the death, and Xerxes had to go back home. He couldn’t take the city-states.

Awhile later out of those Greek city-states emerged a guy named Alexander the Great. In his twenties, he mobilized entire armies and took over what was called and thought of as all of the known civilization, and he sat down in what we would call Iraq today and wept. They asked him why he was weeping, and he said, “Because I know of no more worlds to conquer.”

Nazi Germany mobilized more than four million people and invaded the Soviet Union and 27 million casualties came out of that. Huge mess. In 1944, with Western Civilization hanging in the balances, in a house on the coast of Britain, a guy named Dwight David Eisenhower sat with a group of men and planned what they called D-Day. They had looked at the tides. They had looked at the weather. Everybody in the German army said, “They’re going to come across the British Straits. There’s no other way to do it.” Eisenhower made a call, and he says, “We’re going in at Normandy.” They mobilized 27 thousand ships, thousands of paratroopers, and they stormed the beaches.

Those were massive invasions with lots at stake, but when you look at Bethlehem, and you look at a baby in a barn in a manger, there was an invasion that took place. The angels of heaven could have taken care of it. One of them could have said, “Let’s just wipe all of the people out. Everyone of them. Let’s just wipe them out and start over.” God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit said, “I have another plan.” “What are You going to do?” “I’m going in Myself. I’m going to be a baby, helpless. I’m going to walk among them and tell them how we feel about them. We love them and we don’t want them to die.”

“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” His name is Jesus. His name is Immanuel. His name, King of kings, Lord of Lords.

Let’s pray: Father, thank You for You. Lord, there may be some here this morning who have never trusted You as their Deliverer. They’re carrying these bags and weight of sin on their shoulders, and they need freedom. They need forgiveness. There are some here that they said this prayer at some time and they did this thing of “I got saved,” but they don’t You as Immanuel, with us, and Lord, we want You and we want to honor You as King of kings, Lord of lords because the injustice of this world breaks our heart. We anxiously call You to come back and come in us and work through us to reveal Yourself to this world. In Your powerful, sweet, loving name, King Jesus we pray, amen.