Dennis Tuuri

# Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband being a just man and not willing to make her a public example was minded to put her away privy. While he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost, and she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted, is God with us.

And then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wondrous work of the Holy Spirit that we have just read of. And we pray that as we meditate and contemplate the work of the spirit, he might indeed do his work in us today by taking these scriptures and driving them into the deepest part of our being.

We pray Lord God that he would illuminate the text to our understanding that we would understand the spiritual truths that are contained in this to the end that we might glory and worship you, Father, in spirit and in truth and that we might indeed be transformed and go from glory to glory through the act of work of your Holy Spirit. We thank you, Father, for that work. We thank you for his presence and we thank you for the work of our savior that made this presence possible.

In our savior’s blessed name, we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

—

Of course, is “Joy of the World,” which we’ll be singing probably a couple of times in the next few weeks. One of those verses, Isaac Watts in 1719 wrote this:

*No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.*

Beautiful words picturing the work of our savior and recalling mankind and reversing the effects of the curse as far as they are found.

R.J. Rushdoony, speaking of Christmas songs in his *Institutes of Biblical Law*, also quotes from “Comfort Ye My People,” written by Johannes in 1671. And here are a couple of stanzas from that song:

*For the herald’s voice is crying in the desert far and near, bidding all men to repentance since the kingdom now is here. Oh that warning cry obey now prepare for God away. Let the valleys rise to meet him and the hills bow down to greet him.*

Of course based on the book of Isaiah:

*Make ye straight what long was crooked. Make the rougher places plain. Let your hearts be true and humble as befits his holy reign. For the glory of the Lord now over earth is shed abroad. And all flesh shall see the token that his word is never broken.*

Again, from Edmund Sears’s song written in 1850, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Sears was not orthodox in the way we would think of it. And yet he wrote these words in the concluding verse of that hymn:

*For lo, the days are hastening on by prophet bards foretold. When with the ever circling years comes round the age of gold, when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing.*

These Christmas songs are a reflection of the glory of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ and of his incarnation. And we’ll be addressing that again today. We’ll be continuing to go through Matthew for the next few weeks in this advent season.

Remember that Advent, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is the great definitive coming 2,000 years ago in history. But it also helps us prepare for his advent every Lord’s day at our Lord’s Supper, particularly in the context of the worship service, but particularly thought upon and centered upon the entrance of our savior into the Lord’s Supper, the advent of him.

Remember we said last week, kids, who is it that we meet with at that Lord’s Supper? And we spoke from Matthew 1, the first half of the chapter about that. We also look forward to the great final advent of our savior. And in addition to those three advents—his historical advent 2,000 years ago, his advent to the church and then to culture every Lord’s day as he comes here first to deal with his people and then the spirit moves that work around the world—and then finally the definitive coming at the end, there are also various comings, particular manifestations where Christ, after a period of waiting many times many years in an overt sense, then comes and deals definitively with a culture that has rejected him and judges it.

I don’t know if the year 2000 will bring such an advent in that sense or not, but what we do know is that a proper understanding of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago should prepare us for whatever we face in the future and should prepare us to sing forth songs of great joy and thanksgiving at this particular year as we meditate on these things.

—

Last week we spoke about pedigree and commission, looking at the bookends as it were of Matthew’s gospel—the pedigree of Christ listed in the first half of chapter 1 and the commission of that great king who was to come who met that pedigreed line perfectly. The commission, the great commission that he gives to his people as the sovereign over all things created to go and indeed disciple the nations and bring all the world into submission to that great king of kings whose pedigree is listed at the first of the book.

We spoke about those things and we spoke about the need to understand the continuity of the scriptures, that in the opening stages of what we call the New Testament the Gospels, we have this great connection and continuity with the Old Testament. And we’re supposed to be people of the book that understand these things.

Children 12 and up, let me ask you something. Who are the two great members of that pedigreed line of our savior that Matthew 1 spoke of and that I talked about last week? Do you remember who those two guys were? That Jesus Christ came from this guy and he came from this guy. And then there’s long line of genealogies given, but those two guys are prominent. Who are they? You know, they’re Abraham and David.

And if you don’t know, you’re not listening good enough or I’m not speaking good enough or your parents aren’t instructing you good enough during the week. I guess Bible quizzes are being talked about amongst the teen group now for some reason. I’m not sure what, but it is a good thing to know your scriptures, and it’s a good thing to attend to the preaching of the word on the Lord’s day to get a better understanding of what those scriptures mean.

Let me ask you another question. Do you remember why Abram’s name, or what’s the specific context when Abram’s name was changed by God to Abraham? Do you remember what kind of newness was added to the promise of land and seed and an effect on the nations?

Kingship, right? Kings are going to come forth from you. And then Abram is told, “Don’t call your wife Sarai anymore. Call her Sarah because kings are going to come forth from her.” So both with Abraham and with David the king, we have the emphasis in the opening chapter, the opening section of Matthew 1 on the coming great king, the Messiah. And he’s arrived now.

For thousands of years, for millennia, beginning with the promise to Eve in the garden, the world has waited for him. And so we wait patiently. I thought of that this morning in a very simple way. I was pouring my coffee this morning. And typically, I spill the coffee. Now, how can you spill coffee from the pitcher? Well, you spill it because you’re impatient. At least I do. My pitcher’s not defective. I am. I want the coffee fast. So I try to pour it too fast and it ends up on the dryer where my cup is sitting. And then I’ve got to go get a thing and I’ve wasted time because I wasn’t patient.

Now, it sounds ridiculous to compare the pouring of coffee with the four millennia of waiting that the genealogical line of our savior indicates. But you see, that’s how practical the patience that’s demonstrated to us on the part of the people of God in that genealogical line is. That’s how practical it is. Children, you’re impatient. And I am ashamed to say at age 48, I’m still impatient in those ways because adults are supposed to have learned patience. And I have in many ways, but I have a lot more to learn.

Well, see that picture, that long genealogy, the three sets of 14, gives us patience, but only if we know it. Only if we understand it. Only if we understand how long they waited and then the implications that it is the great king who comes at our communion table who is of the line of Abraham changed of names because of kingship and of David. Remember how David in that genealogy it says “David the king” twice to remind us that this is Jesus, this is Messiah Jesus, who comes from David the king.

Bible knowledge. I have decided—a little aside here—I’ve decided next Lord’s day. I finished up with a 13-week course on how to be a good churchman using material we got from a church in San Diego, very much like ours. Let me just mention by the way that the last couple of sections of that I put on the handout table today. It talks about our responsibility as both elders but also the congregation in terms of guarding the Lord’s table. And then the last page is a disciplinary flowchart that reminds us of how we’re supposed to deal with people when they’re sinning in the context of our knowledge. A good thing for you to read.

But anyway, next Lord’s day, that class is now over. And next Lord’s day, I’m going to begin Bible class. I’m going to stop calling it Sunday school. I’m going to call it Bible class because I think it’s real important to try to build up all of our understanding of that Bible. That was an application from last week’s sermon. So let’s do that. We’re going to start next week by talking about the Psalms.

I’m going to regurgitate for the most part some stuff from the conference that Elder Mayhar went to on the Psalms, a conference back in Florida where James B. Jordan spoke and Jeff Meyers and Burkshade and some others, and Pastor Dillard was there as well. Well, we need to understand the Psalms better than we understand them. And if you think you need to understand them better, maybe it’d be a good use of your time next Lord’s day to get up the way you normally get up and get here an hour earlier than you have to sharpen up your understanding of the scriptures.

Now, if you don’t want to come, that’s okay. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. But what I am trying to say is I feel so moved or so energized about this idea that we need to know our Bibles better and our children need to know our Bibles better that I want to take that hour and whether one of you come or 50 of you come I’m going to be there every week until May or June when family camp comes, teaching something from the Bible about Bible content directly. I’m going to be there and if I’m the only one, that’s okay, and my children will be there. Okay, so we need to know Bibles and we need to know what this story in the context of the second half of Matthew is about as well.

I want to talk about incarnation and then at the end of the talk I’ll talk a little bit about resurrection because, again, if you look at Matthew it’s got bookends of pedigree and commission and you move in from those bookends and it’s got this picture of the incarnation and then just before the great commission we have the picture of the resurrection of our savior. Okay. So there are more bookends at play here and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

But we want to spend most of our time talking about the incarnation. And I just want to make some observations on this story. You know, we read this story, it’s so easy just to sort of read it as a Christmas play or something and not to really stop along the way and understand what’s being said specifically. And you probably know most of what I’m going to tell you, but it’s what we need to hear and what’s supposed to be trumpeted forth from the churches of God to reassure, to comfort, be my people, and to empower us for the work that God has called us to do in terms of the rest of the week.

So we’re going to spend some time talking about this.

—

Okay. So what do we read? We read in verse one, now the birth or genesis. Remember we said that these are the generations of Jesus Christ. “The book of the generations” is how Matthew started. That brings us back to think about this in relationship to the first book of the Old Testament where the creation is talked about—the genesis of the physical world. And now we have the birth or genesis of Jesus.

Remember we said that Jesus is “Yahweh saves” and Jesus Christ. Christ is the anointed one, the great king is the way to think of that. And this birth was on this wise. So you could say this is sort of like, okay, we have this genealogical pedigree, but now Matthew says, I’m going to tell you how it actually happened, giving you the pedigree, but the actual genesis of Christ, the birth of Christ was in this way. This is how it all worked its way out.

When as his mother Mary was espoused. Now espoused means she was legally married but not quite. That’s not quite true. She was almost legally married. Betrothal meant you were had a marriage covenant or contract written. You know, Mike and Lana had a marriage contract. That contract really is supposed to be formalized at betrothal according to the biblical model. And then this period of waiting happens until they’re actually married—the marriage is consummated and the marriage service and celebration happens.

So it’s not like being engaged in our way of thinking in our culture. Engaged is way too light of a word. This is a very serious sort of engagement going on here. They were espoused but not consummated. They were betrothed but not yet married. Okay.

His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph. When as his mother Mary is espoused to Joseph, before they came together—before they had sex is what that means. Okay. She was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Now, how did that happen? Well, she was discovered to be with child. In other words, Joseph knew. He figured out that she was pregnant. Now, it may well be, we don’t know, but remember, she went to live after the Annunciation and the in the actual beginning of the conception of our savior. She goes and lives with her relative Elizabeth for 3 months. Remember that? So then she goes back and it could well be that she comes back from this 3 months. So now she’s 3 months pregnant. Okay? And not everybody would notice, but Joseph probably would. We don’t know. That’s how he found out. Maybe she told him, but he finds out somehow. She is found out with child of the Holy Ghost.

We’re going to come back to that in a minute. It’s very significant that she is with child of the Holy Ghost. She’s with child not of Joseph, not of any man, but of the Holy Ghost. Okay.

And then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, he was righteous. Justice is defined by conformity to the standard of God’s law. So Joseph here is theonomic. He’s a theocratic theonomist, whatever term you want to put on it. He is just and righteous. Very important to see that.

Not willing to make her a public example. He loves her. He’s trying to believe the best about her. We talked about Matthew 18 in Sunday school today. And you know, you’re supposed to go if you see a brother sinning and talk to him. Well, the evidence was she was sinning. And Joseph is trying to figure out what to do because he knows this gal. He knows her commitment to Yahweh. He knows her commitment to her creator and redeemer and he trusts her in that. But yet we have this evidence to the contrary and he is seeking to put her away. He decides to put her away.

What it means is betrothal had to be terminated legally just as it was entered into with the marriage contract. So he’s going to divorce her, is basically what’s going on here. But he’s not going to do it publicly. He’s going to do it in a private way to kind of make sure that she’s not put to public shame in the context of this. So he was minded to put her away privately.

But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream. Okay? So we have this problem for Joseph and Mary. Real problem. And Joseph is constrained, doesn’t know what to do. And so he is thinking on these things and meditating on his plan of action. And the angel of God appears unto him in a dream. And he says, Joseph, thou son of David, calls him the son of David. Reminds him of his lineage, reminds him of that pedigree that we read about in the first half of Matthew chapter 1, right?

He reminds Joseph of that because what he’s going to tell him here has extreme significance to that.

Fear not to take unto thee, Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. Second mention that this son is conceived, she’s with child of the Holy Ghost. Repeated for emphasis in the literary structure of the last half of Matthew 1. It’s something we’re supposed to pay a lot of attention to. Okay.

And I know we know all that, but let’s step back a bit from just our common knowledge and think about this. What does it mean that she was conceived by the Holy Ghost? Not in terms of how it happened. Matthew Henry said the incarnation is a fact to be adored, not pried into. But what are the implications for this incarnation being a work of the Holy Spirit? We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

She shall bring forth a son. Thou shalt call his name Jesus. He will save his people from their sins. So we have the name of Jesus here, the specific meaning of it. All this was done that it might be fulfilled. Matthew 12 times, I think, mentions that “it might be fulfilled,” connecting the coming of Christ to the old covenant books that was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying:

*Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us.*

We’ll talk about Isaiah 7 in a couple of minutes. In Isaiah 7, Isaiah goes to a wicked king and tells him, “You’re going to be okay here. God will take care of these two bad kings that you’re worried about.” And the wicked king doesn’t really pay attention to that, mocks piety, but gives them a bad answer. And then Isaiah says, “Well, I’m going to give a sign to you and to the people that God is well able essentially to deliver you.” And the sign is this young maid’s going to be with child, and the child will be named Emanuel, God with us.

And sure enough, that prophecy came true. And those two kings that the bad king was worried about were dead by the time that child was weaned, able to eat solid food, at the end of 3 years. So we’ll talk a little bit about that too. Emmanuel means God with us. All the theological implications are important, but it’s important too to see what this quote refers us back to. So we’ll look at that as a comment in a couple of minutes.

—

Joseph was then raised from sleep. He did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him. Obedient man, right? And took unto him his wife and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son and he called his name Jesus.

If you’re wondering, just as an aside, that verse cannot be used to say that they had relations after Jesus was born. The particular Greek phrase there does not mean that after she had Jesus, they then had sexual relations. That question cannot be resolved from this text. So I’m not getting into it. But just understand that the way it’s translated might lead you to believe that then after Jesus was born, they had normal conjugal relationships. That’s not what it says. Now, we can infer that from the duties of husbands to wives in the Old Testament, but that’s not what this text says. Okay.

—

So the basic story—you know, and let’s make some observations on this story. And the first thing I want to do based upon this text is to talk a little bit about Joseph.

Joseph is portrayed for us, I think, in this text as a positive role model for us. Now, we normally think, as I mentioned last week, when we think of the incarnation in the Christmas story, we think of Mary as the example and she can be seen that way in Luke’s Gospel. She’s portrayed that way. She’s the handmaiden of the Lord doing to me, you know, as you’ve said, she submits willingly to the proclaimer of the will of God. And she’s seen as a role model in that way.

And I suppose that here in this text, we don’t want to completely ignore her. She’s in a difficult spot. Yes. She’s in the context of a people who take extramarital relationships or premarital sexual relationships very seriously. Now probably not as seriously as they should have according to the law, but still there’s a public stigma attached to this.

Later on in another account some of the opponents of our savior say to him that they weren’t born of fornication. They were, you know, sons of Abraham. They weren’t born of fornication. The implicit statement there is that Jesus was. So you think of this story, you’ve got to think about the dilemma that it put a righteous woman like Mary in. It’s a dilemma that maybe not in that magnified way, but in a smaller way is common to all of us, is it not?

When God calls us to do things or blesses us in a particular way, he frequently brings us a thorn in the flesh to humble us and to cause us to depend upon him. And in this context, the thorn of the flesh can be the appearance to other people that you’ve done something wrong and yet you know your conscience is clear. You know you haven’t done anything wrong. Mary is an encouragement to us if we think of her state—when our reputation is attacked for things that we have not done wrong—to calmly and quietly rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ to defend that reputation, to be our positive force for defending our reputation to others.

She doesn’t in any of these accounts somehow go right at work trying to explain to everybody what’s going on. It’s not the idea. She has a clear conscience before God. And if we have clear consciences, then we’re in a better position to wait it out when problems happen, knowing that in time God will reveal the hearts of men. He’ll show who’s doing right and who’s doing wrong. Again, the patience of Abraham is portrayed in this daughter, as it were, of Sarah as well. A patience in letting God establish her relationship.

But Matthew primarily focuses here not upon Mary but upon Joseph. Now it does that because the whole point of Matthew—again one of the main emphases—is to portray Christ as Messiah, the great king to come. And they trace the lineage down through his legal father, his adopted father Joseph. And so Joseph is seen here as a model for us as well. And let me suggest that there are at least three things we can see of Joseph very quickly that we could emulate in the context of our lives.

One, Joseph was careful and charitable in his judgments. As I said, he could have rushed to judgment in this situation, assumed he knew what was going on, but he doesn’t do that. He slows down. And frequently when we see people that we think are doing things wrong, we need to slow down and to be careful and moderate in our judgment. He attempts to do whatever he can. Now, he’s a righteous man. He’s not putting aside the law of God. He’s just. But in the context of obedience to God’s law, he tries to frame his proper response to the situation in terms of God’s law in such a way as to do whatever he can to protect the reputation of the other person.

And I would ask you husbands, you know, again, that’s a big huge example, but in small ways, do you try to cover possible problems that your wife might have or perceptions of problems of your wife? What do you do to guard your wife’s reputation? Yeah, you know, you’ve got to guard her physically and all that stuff. And you’ve heard me often enough you’ve got to guard her from sin. It’s part of your job and hers of you. But do you guard her reputation?

You see, Joseph is a model for trying to help guard his wife’s reputation. And he’s a model in terms of moderation and judgment, being careful. Matthew Henry commenting on this says, “It behooves us or becomes us in many cases to be gentle toward those that come under suspicion of having offended, to hope the best concerning them and make the best of that which at first appears bad in hopes that it may prove better.”

Joseph was a model for us in being careful in his judgments.

Secondly, he was a model in terms of his contemplation of the situation. He’s a thinking man. He doesn’t rashly react to the situation. He thinks on these things. And it’s as he’s thinking on these things that God comes to him with direction from the scriptures, right? and from the angel of God who will bring to mind this prophecy and Emmanuel and the Joshua of the Old Testament.

God comes to us when we’re quiet and contemplative and meditative about the difficulties we run into. It is wrong to rashly react in terms of censorious judgment against others. And it is right to positively slow ourselves down with a meditation on what we should do. Joseph wasn’t putting it off. He wasn’t giving the blind eye to the thing, but he was being careful and meditative in the context of his relationship here to this very difficult problem.

Matthew Henry says, “Those who would have direction from God must think on things themselves and consult with themselves. It is the thoughtful, not the unthinking, whom God will guide.” So it was with Joseph, and so it is with us. May we be men of patience, of mildness and moderation and judgment, righteous men, affirming the law of God, and yet being careful for the reputation of others that we don’t make rash charges. And may we be thoughtful, meditative men as it comes to the affairs of our life. Again, to quote Matthew Henry, it’s better to take time to consider before rather than to find time to repent afterwards.

Again, in Acts 10:19, Peter thought on the vision that God had with him. Meditation and contemplation is a mark for us.

And then third, Joseph is a mark for us as well in his obedience. Once God brings the message, he gets up from the dream, gets up and boom, does what God says to do. He goes and makes arrangements for marrying his betrothed wife. He’s obedient, and so we should be. So Joseph’s a model.

—

But there are far bigger things obviously going on in this text than Joseph being a role model for us. I mean, compared to this, the other truths that were articulated on this outline and others as well, really, that’s kind of a small thing, but it is a thing there and I wanted to bring it up.

But let’s turn now to the Spirit’s work in the incarnation as seen, it can be seen rather, as a new creation.

It is easy to think about the birth of Jesus Christ as the focus of the season. I’m going to say something here that’ll make Hobby real happy. Hobby for years, Hobby Brooks has talked about Michaelmas and this I don’t really know much about it, but I think it was a feast around this time of year in the early church calendar and it was a feast talking about the rejoicing in the conception of our savior, not his birth.

And there’s a lot of debate about when he was born. I don’t want to get into that, but I do want to say that it is a good thing to remember. Michaelmas, the rejoicing and celebration in the conception of our savior. I mean, when he’s born, that’s not miraculous. Okay? I mean, she’s got a baby inside of her. And yes, you know, he’s of the divine nature. He’s fully God. He’s God of God and light of light. Very God of very God. But the actual birth is just a natural process.

The amazing, miraculous part of this story is the conception. You know, we could preach on abortion here a lot, and these kind of things should be brought into our discussion of abortion and the horrific nature of abortion because what the scriptures stress really in this story of Christ our savior and his coming to us as Jesus and Emmanuel is his conception. And his conception is specifically, as I said, from the text twice, tied directly to the work not of the father—which you might normally sort of think of, father-son—no, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

And I think that it doesn’t take too much reflection, being given this story of the genesis of the Lord Jesus Christ, his generation, his genealogy, his birth, his begotteness, and this new genesis as it were at the beginning of the new covenant books as we had the genesis of the old covenant books and the creating of the world. It’s not too hard to see the correlations. Am I right?

The spirit of God moves over the chaos in Genesis 1:2 and brings forth order. And here we have a new creation. And it is the Holy Spirit’s work who is emphasized time and time again in these accounts. The spirit of God in terms of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. The spirit of God who comes to Mary. Mary’s going to be overpowered by the spirit of God. That’s what the angel tells her, that this which is to be born in you is from God.

And in Luke 1:34-35, Mary says to the angel, “How can this be since I do not know a man? How can I have a child? I don’t know a man. I’ve not been sexually involved.” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that holy one who is to be born will be called the Son of God.”

The spirit of God as he hovered over the new creation and brought it forth is now seen as the active member of the Trinity who is at work creating a new creation in the work of the incarnation of our savior. Later in Galatians 4, Paul says this. He says, “When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son born of a woman, not born of a human father, born of a woman, and the father [is] the active agent in terms of his incarnation and conception is the Holy—is the Holy Ghost, not a biological father.

We see here tremendous—a tremendous message that is easy to overlook—that in the incarnation of the savior we have nothing less than the new creation at work through the coming of the new humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second Adam.

R.J. Rushdoony, speaking in his systematic theology on the spirit and incarnation, quotes a commentator named Henry Berkley who wrote a book called *The Holy Spirit of the New Testament*. And let me just read this quotation from Suite. In this act—that is the incarnation—this spirit is seen presiding over the beginnings of a new creation as in the beginning of cosmic life, as in the first quickening of the higher life in man. In other words, the coming of our savior.

So at the outset of the new order which the incarnation inaugurated, it belonged to the divine spirit to set in motion the great process which was to follow. In the new world, in the new man, as in the old, life begins with the breath of God. The birth of our Lord is not represented by the canonical Gospels as in itself miraculous. Rather, it is the conception of our savior that is miraculous.

It was however preceded and followed by another outburst of prophecy—again the work of the Holy Spirit. So the spirit is at work in bringing about the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the conception of Mary, and the spirit then is seen as nothing less than the beginning [of] a new creation in the new humanity of our savior.

—

Now specifically this work of the spirit is tied in the text to the coming of the one who would be named Jesus and who would be Emmanuel. So let’s look at outline points number three and four, talking about this new creation being tied to the advent of Jesus, the greater Joshua, saving us from our sins, not hell.

Now he says in the account when Joseph receives the direction of the angel of God, the angel of the Lord who comes to him. He says that which, do not be afraid to take unto thee, Mary thy wife, that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost, this new creation. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

Jesus. Now, as he said last week, this word Jesus is Joshua essentially from the Old Testament. It’s the Greek form of the same word. And Joshua means essentially “Yahweh saves,” salvation, and salvation specifically tied to Yahweh. And so the people of God knew in the Old Testament that when Messiah came, he would be Yahweh and he would save his people.

And we normally think of Joshua in terms of the conquest of the promised land. And that’s okay. But I say here in the outline that he is the greater Joshua—plural—because there’s another Joshua that’s germane to this statement about being saved from our sins found in the scriptures in Zechariah 3.

Zechariah 3:1-4. Why don’t you turn there and we’ll read this together. And this Joshua was the high priest in the context of the restoration covenant. And we read in Zechariah 3:1-4.

Now there’s another Bible question. How many of you teens can find Zechariah like that? Do you know the order of the books of the Bible? If not, practice them. We’ll work on them. Okay. Zechariah 3:1-4.

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the angel. Then he answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”

Jesus Christ is the greater Joshua, the captain of the armies of the Lord. But he’s also the greater Joshua, of which this Joshua is a type, of the high priest. Jesus comes as the great high priest. So in the context of the setting of the messianic fulfillment being spoken of in Matthew, he ties in here very directly in addition to Christ being king—Christ being high priest—and specifically we have this picture of Joshua in the Old Testament who has dirty garments that need cleansing. He’s got besetting sins in the context of himself.

The message of the new creation affected by the spirit’s work in the incarnation really doesn’t hit home with us until we read this portion of the account that this coming one will affect this recreation through the forgiveness of our sins. We’re saved from our sins, not the effect of our sins, hell and damnation. Now, we’re saved from those two. But in terms of what the angel stresses here and what the text stresses to us as we come to find out more about the great king, what’s stressed is that this greater Joshua will save us from our sins.

Save us from our sins. Some people don’t want that. Some people just want being saved from the effects of our sins. But no, Jesus comes to affect full redemption for us by saving us from our sins.

The book of Jeremiah spoke of this work of the savior. Oh boy. In Jeremiah 31:31-34, we read of this new covenant that’s being affected by our savior being predicted from the Old Testament.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah.

This is Jeremiah 31, if you’d like to turn there.

not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Now we know that part of it because you know it’s one of the proof texts that many of us have used to show the abiding validity of God’s law in exhaustive detail, etc., and that’s important to see that this is a central text for understanding the new covenant. This is a central text to explode, I believe, dispensationalism, that wrongly asserts two new covenants to come. And there’s one new covenant and in that new covenant he’ll write his law upon our hearts.

But he goes on to say, “I shall be their God, and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

The essence of the coming of the Savior as Messiah to us is that he comes as Jesus as well. That he comes as the one who will save us from our sins by of course taking upon himself the sins of his elect people.

So Jesus comes and this work of this new creation affected by the incarnation and the conception of our savior by the act of agency of the Holy Spirit. The end of that is to be salvation of people from their sins. We will be saved by the one who is our Joshua, both the captain of our salvation and the high priest of our profession.

Those whom Jesus saves, he saves from their sins. Now, he does save us from the guilt of sin by the merit of his death, from the dominion of sin by the spirit of his grace. But he also saves us from our sins so that we might not walk in them anymore. That we might not be dominated by those sins in the context of our lives. We are not saved in our sins, them abiding upon us still, but rather from our sins. He has brought us to—he has given us liberty from our sins.

Titus 2:14 says that he might redeem us from all iniquity. So we are to be separated from those whose lives are characterized by sin. He saves his people from their sins.

Let me quote from Charles Spurgeon here on one of his morning and evening devotionals on this text. He says, “The lion of the tribe of Judah shall prevail and the dragon shall be cast out. Profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—is sins subdued in you? If your life is unholy, your heart is unchanged. And if your heart is unchanged, you are an unsaved person. If the Savior has not sanctified you, renewed you, given you a hatred of sin and a love of holiness, he has done nothing in you of a saving character. The grace which does not make a man better than others is a worthless counterfeit. Christ saves his people not in their sins, but from them. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. If not saved from sin, how shall we hope to be counted among his people? Lord, save me now from all evil and enable me to honor my savior.”

The great joyous message of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is we are saved from our sins.

Now I can read a devotional talk like that from Spurgeon and I can talk to you about the need for personal holiness and the effect on that—I believe with every one here, the effect will be to make you feel guilty. And when you feel guilty, you think I’m doing a good job because you know your own state and you know your sins and there’s just something in us that wants somebody to remind us of our sins in the context of the worship service. You want to hear that? But that’s not really the point of what I’m trying to say here.

I am not so much trying to give you an exhortation to holiness. I am trying to give you the assurance of the Gospel of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the greater Joshua, who tells you sitting there in your guilt for the sins you daily commit that those sins are forgiven, that the new creation has been affected by the work of the Holy Spirit. You are part of that new creation and your sins are forgiven.

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to take that, if nothing else, into your Christmas celebrations this year. Remember that your sins are forgiven. Because if you don’t know that, all the guilt in the world will not be able to energize you to serve him that you feel so badly that you don’t serve the way you probably should. Guilt can’t do it. But the good news that your sins have been totally delivered, been totally paid the price for, remitted for the sake of our savior—that is news that energizes and empowers his people to walk in the context of that new life.

I believe that’s what I’m supposed to do here every week is to proclaim to you the forgiveness of our savior. It’s so important when Elder May reads the absolution to you and assures you that your sins are forgiven. We know the importance of confession. We know the importance of coming together to do command performance worship before the great king. We don’t want to lose that imagery. We want to come here reverent of the great king. We want to meet with the king at the table reverently.

But understand that there’s an old term that’s used, the divine service, that’s used of the liturgy. And the point of that is to remind us that the service that happens primarily here today is the service from the God of heaven who has elected you before all the foundations of the world were created, saw you, loved you, determined to save you, and he has now affected that salvation. And he assures you that you are forgiven through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ, you have come to believe in Jesus who has saved you from your sins. And the proclamation of that every week is the divine service—not of us to him, but of him to us. He calls you together today to express his love and to express his forgiveness of all your sins through the work of the savior.

—

Now Jesus comes as Jesus—Joshua the savior from our sins. He also comes as Emmanuel. And of course, that’s required in order to have salvation from our sins. The Westminster Larger Catechism in question 40 says, and I’m moving on to point four now: “Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God and man in one person? It was requisite that the mediator who was to reconcile God and man should himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us and relied on by us as the works of the whole person.”

Okay. So Jesus comes as Emmanuel. The way he affects the saving work for his people is he is God with us. He takes on human nature that he, in his divine nature and human nature together, without confusion, that in that incarnation he might then live a life in perfect obedience to the law as the representative of humankind, as the second Adam. And he might suffer in his body the full misery and pain and suffering due to us for our sins on the cross. He suffers hell that we might gain heaven.

And he can only do that—he can only pay the price for all of us in that way and for any of us—by being both God and man, by being Emmanuel in its fullest sense, God with us, in terms of taking upon himself human nature.

So the new creation is further seen in the advent of Emmanuel, God with us, bringing full salvation. And now I want to go back a little bit the other way. We’ve talked about Joshua. We’ve talked about this central meaning of the work of the king today is that you are forgiven in your sins, but it is a full orb salvation. It has effect on all of your life.

And you know this, but the context of this statement that Jesus comes as Emmanuel says it might be fulfilled what was spoken of through the prophet in Isaiah. The prophecy given by Isaiah to a wicked king and the prophecy of Emmanuel, God with us, has its immediate context in that book of Isaiah: deliverance from contemporary enemies. Deliverance from contemporary enemies.

So the effect on us is we move now from saying we are saved from our sins, but we’re also saved from the effects of those sins, the work of evil men as they come against the people of God. So Jesus is Emmanuel. He comes to save us from our sins, but he comes to affect a full orb salvation in that it has implications for the created order as well. Jesus Christ comes in our own nature, but he also comes in our own interest to bring salvation from sins and also to bring deliverance from all of his enemies.

Jesus comes as Emmanuel. And then fifthly, the implications of these works of the spirit are seen in our recalling and recreation. And points 6, 7, and 8 will go quite quickly, but I do want to spend just a couple of minutes on point five here.

We read in John 1:12-13 that as many as received them, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but [of] God now.