1 Matthew 1:18-25 God with us Feeling so alone Nobody loves me, nobody cares, Nobody picks me peaches and pears. Nobody offers me candy and Cokes, Nobody listens and laughs at me jokes. Nobody helps when I get into a fight, Nobody does all my homework at night. Nobody misses me, Nobody cries, Nobody thinks I'm a wonderful guy. So, if you ask me who's my best friend, in a whiz, I'll stand up and tell you NOBODY is! 1 I wonder if Shel Silversteins poem touches home for anyone. Nobody loves me, nobody cares. I scoured the internet to find out how many people have created sites with just this concern. Why am I so alone? No one will stand up for me. Is there anyone on my side? I found this on a question board with numerous sympathetic responses: I Know This Sounds Selfish But...my whole life seems like it has always been having to fend for myself... no one really stands up for me. whenever i am in a position of being harrassed or even just fighting against the world, its always just me against the universe. maybe its my fault, i dont know. but i just want someone for once to stand up for me. to come to my rescue when i am screaming for help. i feel so alone. its always me against the world. and its so hard to always be fighting a losing battle with a one person team. 1 The rest of the poem is as follows: But yesterday night I got quite a scare I woke up and Nobody just WASN'T there! I called out and reached for Nobody's hand, In the darkness where Nobody usually stands, Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook, But I found SOMEBODY each place that I looked. I seached till I'm tired, and now with the dawn, There's no doubt about it- NOBODY'S GONE!!
2 Does it ever feel like it s you against the world? Like you are fighting a losing battle and you are doing it all by yourself? Always fending for yourself? Perhaps there are no real friends among your coworkers. You do your work, but you know if you were to mess anything up, no one would stand up for you. Perhaps your so called friends aren t friends at all. They are just using you. They seem to be your friend until the more popular group come along and then there they are laughing at you along with those others. Perhaps your spouse is not in your corner; in fact, sometimes he or she seems like the enemy. They are with you, but not really. Roomates, pals, coworkers but not really WITH you. It is here that this word in Matthew 1:23 grabs hold of you, pulls you up and gives you strength. Do you see the word there? Immanuel. Matthew translates it for those of us who don t know Hebrew: God with Us. What will God do to dwell with us? What does this really mean? What does it mean for God to be with us? What must he do to make this a reality? What steps must he undergo to come among us in the midst of our darkest moments, in the midst of our greatest needs, to fill the loneliness, the hurt, the feeling of Me against the world? Matthew 1 is that story. It s Matthew s attempt to tell you exactly how it happened that God came among us. In fact, that is exactly how he starts off verse 18 18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: So how did it come about? Like any good biography, we need to know something about his prelife. That s the beginning of Matthew, what we talked about last week. 14 generations prior to David, 14 more prior to the exile and 14 more before he is born. Of course, these generations aren t meant to be literal as we talked about last week, but it puts Jesus in the line of kings, both great and horrible. It sets up a future king story and now that Matthew has given the prequel, he comes to the actual story of how God came to be with us. Keep this in mind also. God has sporadically dwelt with his people. He has come in the form of pillar of fire and cloud, in the ark, in the temple, in the kings, but he has also left. He has divorced them, he has flown his chariot out of Jerusalem and away from his people. So everyone is wondering how will God come back? And here is the answer that Matthew gives.
3 Two nobodies in the middle of Galilee of no consequence to anyone. 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. Hurdle 1 she isn t married yet This verse is chock full of depth. Don t read it too fast. We have Mary, pledged to be married. Normally this happens during the teenage years so this is a young woman. She is pledged to be married which means she is in the middle of step 2 towards marriage. Step 1 is parents meeting with other parents working out who would be best for their son or daughter and making certain agreements with them. Step 2 is the engagement which is very different than our engagement. The betrothal was every bit a marriage. It was a lifetime commitment that could not be broken without divorce. But it wasn t full marriage yet. Step 3 was the consummation of the marriage which was a huge party and at least some time where the couple would slip away and make everything official. So they are on the second step. Which means, in their culture, no sex. All the commitment, none of the sex. Kind of the opposite of today s culture all the sex, none of the commitment. So having said that, we face the first huge hurdle in this story. She is a virgin. She was pledged to be married, but not yet married. There is no way to have a child. Except for that last part she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. God solves the problem through the Holy Spirit. Hurdle 1 removed Hurdle 2 she is about to be stoned My guess is that you knew this part of the story pretty well. But put yourself in Joseph s shoes for a moment. Action is now required. She is an adulterer and as such liable to be punished according to the law. And the law is clear according to Deuteronomy 22... 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you. (Deu 22:20-21 NIV) So the second major hurdle God has to jump is somehow keeping Mary from being stoned. The person he chose to carry the King is about to die. Do you understand the gravity of the situation? Joseph can do whatever he wants. But God has not only chosen a teenager with great submission and zeal for God, he has also chosen Joseph who, the next verse tells us, is a righteous man.
4 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. He could expose her to the courts, that s what public disgrace means and it might result in a stoning, or he could just back out, albeit a formal divorce would be needed. He wanted to save Marys life, the childs life, and the future of their reputation. He is a good man. But God wants more. He not only wants the child saved, he wants the child to have a father who understands justice, who is wise and doesn t jump to conclusions, who loves people and especially his family. This was an essential part of Jesus growth in wisdom and knowledge and in favor with God and man (as Luke 2 tells us). Jesus needed Joseph. Hurdle 3 How do we keep Joseph around? So hurdle 3 is keeping Joseph around. And God knows just what to do. 20 But after he [Joseph] 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. What is the solution? An angel of the Lord. That is, the representative of God himself appears in a dream. It could have been Gabriel as we see that he is sent to both Zechariah and to Mary in Luke 1, but we don t really know. It doesn t matter. An angel of any name or characteristic would be enough for Joseph. The angel says to take Mary as his wife and to not be concerned about this baby. Mary is pure. The baby belongs to God. He must have been overwhelmed and thrilled and scared and confused and excited and This baby is special. Conceived of 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." What are the three Names of this child? This is the second name we are given for this child. Christ connotes ship Already in verse 18 we find him called the Christ. This name is so much more than a name. It s a title. An eschatological hope. It s the Greek word for the well-known Hebrew term Messiah. It s the name of the king. The one who will rule as a son of David and bring justice and peace. This is the Christ. Jesus means Yahweh is But now we are told what this other name, Jesus, actually means. The name Jesus (or Yah-shuah) means Yahweh is salvation. Now this does not mean that he is Yahweh, it s a name. Lots of
5 people had the name Yahweh or the name El (God) in their name. Dani-EL, Shami-EL, Nathani- EL, Rach-El Micha-EL, ELihu, ALi-Baba or Jeremi-YAH, Isai-YAH, Zechari-YAH. So Jesus, Yah-shuah means, Yahweh saves. Salvation from what? Connect this with the Christ, we have King Yahweh is salvation. And the Messiah, the king, certainly was thought to bring salvation. He would save them from their enemies, he would save them from their misery, he would save them from poverty and famine and flood and wild animals and lots of other things. But Matthew says that this Jesus, the Christ, will save them from their sins. This wasn t exactly an essential part of Messiah s vocation. On the other hand, one of the characteristics of the days of the Messiah was that sin would disappear. Messiah was to judge and destroy sinners and demons and God would pour out his Spirit, which bring holiness (Testament of Judah 24). So they are getting what they hoped, but so much more. Immanuel means And even more, Matthew is clear to say that this is because of prophecy. And it s here that we see the phrase we have been waiting for God with Us. 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." There is nothing quite like that word Immanuel, God with us. Were they actually virgins? The prophet he mentions in verse 23 is none other than Isaiah and this text is found in Isaiah 7:14. Like all prophecies, there is a little bit of weirdness going on. For example, this Isaianic prophecy probably doesn t include some miraculous birth. The word virgin here is, in the Hebrew, Almah, and just means young woman. Unmarried Maiden. Of course, it can probably be assumed that an unmarried maiden is a virgin, but there is another Hebrew word that could have made this point more explicitly. But then along comes the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and it translates that word Almah, young maiden, with the Greek word Parthenos, which means, you guessed it, Virgin. Now you might be thinking, well, obviously with the Parthenos thing, we are now talking about a miraculous conception here, but the weirdness isn t over. See the context of Isaiah is that before this child (born of a virgin) is old enough to say mama or papa, Judah will have a solution to the problem of the Syrio-Ephraimite Coalition that wants to destroy them. And interestingly enough, Isaiah then goes into his wife and they have a child named Maher shallal Hash baz and before he is old enough to say mama or papa, the coalition is destroyed and Judah is safe. The prophecy is very clearly about that time.
6 So the virgin conceiving isn t exactly a virgin. Perhaps she was a virgin but then she conceived showing that she was no longer a virgin. My point is, there is nothing miraculous back here in Isaiah and no one was expecting a Messiah to have a miraculous birth. But then along comes Jesus, Yahweh is salvation, the Messiah, the King and Matthew grabs this OT verse to show a very literal second fulfillment. And while this child may have symbolically told Israel that God is now with us, this new child, Jesus, is doing so much more. He is actually God with us. My point is this, no one could have expected what God was doing, but in order to jump all the hurdles blocking his reconciling plan, he has to have all of history climax in himself in a God who actually returns to Israel, never again to leave his people. The wrap up verses Then the final verses just so we don t miss anything: 24 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 hurdles are all mentioned here 1. Mary s virginity is a hurdle, but it says plain and clear that while Joseph had no union with her, she still gave birth to a son. (by the way, it seems to suggest that Mary and Joseph had no union UNTIL she gave birth to a son. And the Bible does mention kinsman [most natural translation is brothers] so the perpetual virginity of Mary seems a bit difficult to maintain for all my ex-catholic friends) 2. Joseph himself is a hurdle he can kill Mary, but he did what the angel said to do and this also means... 3. Hurdle 3 is jumped and that Joseph will stick around Jesus will have a father to raise him in righteousness and wisdom. All these obstacles dealt with so that God could be with us. Nothing will keep God from dwelling with you I just want to remind you today that there are no obstacles too big to keep God from being with us. From being with you. So you haven t talked with that sibling in 5 years. You have acted inappropriately with that girl or guy You have cheated on a test, or misled people about your ability at work You skipped church and you didn t even have a good reason You checked out the porn again. There is a big secret you are keeping from your spouse.
7 I don t care what the issue is, God has come to dwell with us. Obviously he wants you to be appropriate and to stop cheating and to come to church and to eschew porn, etc, but that is why he comes to dwell with us. To help us to make that change. He isn t somehow thwarted by your sinfulness. And he doesn t show partiality either. He doesn t care if you are super popular at school or super ignored. He doesn t care if you do well on tests or poorly He doesn t care if your parents work 20 hour days and never see you He doesn t care if you sit in your room alone and wish you were someone else He doesn t care if you are an outcast Or perhaps I should say, he cares a lot. He doesn t care in the sense that these things will not keep him from dwelling with you. He does care so much that he insists on dwelling with you. Even you. This is the beauty of the incarnation that God was one of us. Joan Osborn s ridiculous song is at least right about that. What if God was one of us He was. He was just a slob like one of us. Thoroughly human. I have no idea what the rest of the song (or even these first couple lines) means Just a stranger on the bus Trying to make his way home He's trying to make his way home Back up to heaven all alone Nobody calling on the phone Except for the pope maybe in rome I am convinced the author doesn t know what he means either. He wrote the whole song in one stting to impress a girl. But I don t really care other than to remind us that God did indeed dwell among us. John says he tabernacle, dwelt, among us. And when he left he sent something better the Holy Spirit. To dwell among us. So those of you who are lonely this Christmas because mom is gone, or dad, or spouse or friend, I know the holidays will be hard, but God is with us. The incarnation is a mystery, truly impossible to understand. Even the Spirits indwelling power is a mystery, but I can tell you with confidence, that God has not left this world revolving on its
8 own. He is intricately connected with it. He loves it. He is reconciling this world to himself. And he doesn t do that from way out there, he does it in our midst. In Bunhill Fields, London, there is a graveyard that boasts the bodies of Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe fame) and Isaac Watts (Joy to the world) and John Wesley (one of greatest evangelists ever) Across from the graveyard is the chapel of John Wesley and a statue erected to him. Also across that road is John Wesley s house, where on March 2nd 1791 Wesley opened his eyes and exclaimed for the very last time, upon his deathbed, these words: The best of all is this: God is with us. He could have said various things, but he said that the best of all is this: God is with us. I want us to meditate on this truth this morning as we take the supper that he instituted. I want us to remember what Jesus was willing to go through to be with us and what he ultimately went through to deliver us from darkness and give us a future and a hope. Lords Supper