What the Angel Said, A Christmas Message

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today's talk is a Christmas reflection on Matthew chapter 1, verse 21. If you'd like to follow along with the lecture notes, you'll find them on the link below this podcast, or you can go directly to them by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash why-jesus-came. I'm so glad you joined us today. Well, this Christmas season, I'd like to reflect on one verse in Matthew, which is chapter one, verse twenty one. But I'm gonna read starting in verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 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 to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And that last verse is the one I want to think about. You're probably familiar with the basics of the Christmas story. Joseph and Mary are engaged. When Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant, assuming that she's been unfaithful to him, Joseph resolves to quietly break the betrothal, but then an angel appears to Joseph in a dream. The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife because Mary is about to have a son through the power of the Holy Spirit. And the angel also tells Joseph something else about this son. And that's what I want to talk about today. Who does the angel say this child is? Let me read Matthew 121 again. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Well, the first thing the angel tells Joseph is that he should name the child Jesus. But Jesus is not really called Jesus. His name in Hebrew is Yeshua, which we think of as Joshua. When this name gets translated into Greek, it becomes Jesus, which then comes into English as Jesus. The Old Testament Joshua is the same name. Well, somewhere way back in church history, translators decided for whatever reason not to translate the Hebrew Yeshua and just went with a transliteration of the Greek version Jesus or Jesus. Well, that's just an interesting bit of Bible trivia for you to know and share. More importantly, the name Joshua or Jesus means God saves or God rescues. That meaning is significant because the angel tells Joseph, you will call this child God saves, for this child will be the savior of his people. God has sent this child to be their rescuer and their deliverer. A rescuer implies there is a problem. If you're in need of being rescued, you must be in some kind of situation that you need to be rescued from and that you cannot solve yourself. So what is this child rescuing his people from? Well, the angel tells us he will rescue his people from their sins. Now, in many churches and many places today, talking about sin is not cool. For the most part, we'd much rather talk about how much God loves us than we don't want to talk about the fact that God is holy and we are not. The world around us does not enjoy hearing a message about sin. They see it as intolerant to call someone a sinner. And those of us who talk about sin are often ridiculed as some kind of old-fashioned fire and brimstone teachers who don't have an ounce of compassion in their bodies. But I think it's important to recognize that on Christmas Day, we celebrate the birth of the child who will rescue us from sin. If sin is not a problem, then Christmas is not a big deal. Because Christmas is about the birth of the one who will save us from sin. The Bible is very clear that the biggest, deepest, most urgent problem everyone in the world has is sin. Let me just take a quick tour through various passages that make this point. The point that what we need most is forgiveness from sin. The Bible begins with a creation of Adam and Eve and their rebellion against God in the garden. As a result of their transgression, mankind lives under God's wrath. In the midst of this situation where we see humanity pursuing a course of desperate immorality, God chooses the descendants of Abraham to be his people. Yet even the children of Abraham sin. God makes great promises to them, but they don't believe him. He leads them to the promised land, and they want to go back to Egypt and kill the prophet who freed them. This theme emerges that sin is a huge problem for everyone. Mankind has a desperate moral problem and we need a solution. And the Bible speaks to that solution. This is from the prophet Jeremiah, chapter thirty one, verses thirty one through thirty four. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Even God's chosen people rejected him, and here, through Jeremiah, God says, I'm going to do two things for you. I'm going to forgive your iniquities, which is just another word for sin. In spite of the fact that you rebelled against me, I'm going to forgive you. And second, I'm going to write the law on your hearts. No longer will you be the sort of people who rebel against me and hate my law. Instead, you will be the sort of people that love me and love my law. That's what God's people need, and that's what He promises to give them. When we come to the New Testament, the Father of John the Baptist speaks about John, the child that's about to be born. This is Luke chapter 1, verses 76 and 77. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins. So here we see John the Baptist had a very important job. He announced that the Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to his people, has come, and that salvation is the forgiveness of their sins. During the earthly ministry of Jesus, we find Jesus forgiving sins, just as John predicted. While Jesus is teaching one day, some men bring a paralytic to him, and we read this in Matthew 9 2. And behold, some people brought him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. Jesus does not say to the man, Take courage, you're going to walk again. He says to the man, Take courage, your sins are forgiven, because that's the man's real problem. At the Last Supper, when Jesus and his disciples are celebrating the Passover on the night before Jesus is arrested, Jesus says and does this. This is Matthew 26, verses 27 and 28. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. So here we see Jesus himself saying that he understands that he is offering himself on the cross to secure the forgiveness of sins for his people. Then after the resurrection, as Jesus is preparing to return to the Father, he says in Luke twenty-four, forty six and forty-seven, and he said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. So here we have Jesus after the resurrection, telling his apostles they're to continue his mission. They are to go out and proclaim his message to the world. And what is that message? They are to call people to repent and receive the forgiveness of their sins. In Acts, the Apostle Peter preaches a famous sermon on the day of Pentecost. Peter was one of twelve men that Jesus discipled and commissioned to proclaim his message, and he says this in Acts 238. And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Later in Acts, Peter is speaking before the Jewish ruling council, and he says in five thirty and thirty one, The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Again, what did Jesus come to do? Secure the forgiveness of our sins. Eventually Peter goes to the home of a Gentile named Cornelius, and Peter says to him, as recorded in Acts 1043, to him, that is Jesus, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. After the resurrection and the ascension, Jesus called a man named Paul and commissioned Paul to carry his message to the Gentiles. The Apostle Paul is preaching in Acts, and he says this in thirteen thirty-eight. At one point Paul is describing the message that Jesus taught him, and he summarizes what Jesus said in this way. This is Acts 26, 16 through 18. But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. So what do Jesus tells Paul he wants him to do? He wants Paul to go to the Gentiles, so that they can turn from darkness to light and receive forgiveness of sins. And then in Romans 3, 23 and 24, Paul writes one of the classic statements of the gospel, and he says this, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. In 1 Corinthians, Paul's writing to people who do not believe there is a physical resurrection of the body, and he challenges them. He says, Have you forgotten the gospel I taught you? And then he explains what it was that he taught them. This is 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. So here Paul says this first importance, the central message of the gospel is that Christ died for your sins. Paul opens his letter to the Galatians this way Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. In his first letter, the apostle Peter writes this in 224. He himself, speaking of Jesus, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. And then in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, we find this in chapter one verses five and six, to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Now we could go on and on looking at many more verses. From beginning to end, the Bible tells us we have a desperate problem. We are sinners and one day we will stand before a holy God. Right now, sin is this corrosive, destructive force that ruins our lives and relationships. Sin is the thing that makes life hard and bitter and tragic. But God promises that one day He will forgive those who trust in Jesus Christ and fully free them from sin. And on Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the one who brings redemption and rescue to this evil world. The angel tells Joseph, Mary's son is the one who will rescue you and all of God's people from their sins. And we need to be rescued. We are guilty and we are corrupt. And we can't change that fact no matter how hard we try. We need someone to solve this problem. We could probably talk for weeks about the nature of sin and the nature of redemption and how important that is, but let me just make a couple of observations. First, the most important thing each of us can do in this life is not something like cure cancer or achieve racial reconciliation or something like that. The most important thing we can do in this life is embrace the solution to our biggest problem. When we write history, we record big grand events. We write about the rise and fall of nations, about conquest and discovery, about which societies are prospering and which are impoverished, about what economic system works best, who is famous and talented or inventing something new. From our perspective, history is about human accomplishments, the triumphs and the pitfalls. And we think our own personal story is about the triumphs and the accomplishments of rising above adversity and pursuing our dreams. But the Bible tells us our stories are different. The fundamental story of our lives is different. The most important plot line is whether or not we understand our sin and where to find forgiveness. Jesus tells us the two greatest commandments are love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The story of history, the story of the human race is how we have failed to keep those commandments. For the most part, mankind rejects God and hates our neighbors. Just watch the news on any given day. It screams out that all of humanity mocks God and preys upon our neighbors. The world is filled with millions of individuals, each one of whom thinks that he or she is the center of the universe, and that's a recipe for disaster. And the daily news reveals all the tragedies that happen when that kind of selfishness runs rampant. But on Christmas, we celebrate the fact that God reached into his creation to rescue, to forgive, and to redeem. Each of our personal stories is a story of redemption. All of us need rescuing from so many things. All of us should realize at some level we're not the people we should be. We hurt those we love, we trample over others to get what we want, we speak thoughtless and cruel words in the name of sarcasm, we tear down relationships when we mean to build them up. And that's not even mentioning the truly terrible things we can do like murder and war and so forth. At some fundamental level, we need to realize that our biggest need is to be freed from death, corruption, futility, and tragedy. If we're honest with ourselves, our biggest problem is our hard-hearted lack of love for God and our neighbors. And that has two very terrible consequences. First, we're trapped in sin. Sin is this destructive force that causes many problems in our daily lives. I can trace most of the big tragedies and mishaps in my life right back to my own selfishness and thoughtlessness. If I'm honest, I am my worst problem. If I could just change this selfish attitude, a lot of my problems would disappear. And we all have that same problem. It means we're constantly hurting and destroying each other. That's not a minor inconvenience. That's a huge problem. Sin, loss, futility, and corruption characterize our lives and we can't escape it. But the second consequence is even worse. We're guilty. Sin is not just this force that makes life unpleasant. There really is a holy God who is coming to judge us, and none of us can stand before Him when He comes. One of the key messages of the Bible is that God will judge. In the end, God's going to have the last word, and by His standard, which is the only one that matters, all of us are going to be found guilty unless we seek the mercy offered by Jesus Christ. That means the biggest problem we all have in this life is answering the question, how am I going to face my creator? That is the great drama of this life, the fundamental plot of most importance. And it's a question each one of us has to come to terms with. We need rescuing. Will we embrace our rescuer or will we reject him? Second, Christmas, when understood correctly, is not a sentimental holiday. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with sentiment. I watch my share of silly Christmas movies, and I'm not knocking toasting marshmallows by the fire and singing carols in the snow and giving great presents. I like all that stuff as much as the next person. But this holiday celebrates the birth of our rescuer. On Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the only one who can solve our biggest problem. You may remember the movie Independence Day. It's the story of how Earth is invaded by aliens and how we defeat them. Imagine we had a holiday that celebrated our rescue from something like an alien. Alien invasion of Earth. To commemorate that event, we'd have pictures of the battlefield, of the destruction of war. And we'd see old photos of people who are bloody and dirty but yell in triumph when the hero finally turns the tide of the battle that wins the war. That would be a tremendously joyful celebration of victory. But remember, the joy of the victory is in the thing that we were saved from. Without the bloody battle, it's not much of a rescue. Likewise, celebrating Christmas without understanding what we're saved from is not much of a celebration. Christmas can become shallow and sentimental when we lose sight of what we're being rescued from. Now, in many places today, especially in America, we're working hard to take Christ out of Christmas. We never hear the carols that talk about long lay the world in sin and error pining or save us all from Satan's wiles when we had gone astray. All that talk of the Savior is being scrubbed from Christmas. The songs we listen to now talk about what presents lie beneath the tree and getting home before it snows. It may not be possible to rescue Christmas from our culture, but when we gather as believers to celebrate Christmas, we can remember. Christmas points us to the fundamental issue in this earthly life. What is God doing? How am I going to face him? What is my real problem? And where is the solution? Christmas reminds us of the answer to those questions. Christmas is about the birth of the Savior who will rescue us from sin. That's why Jesus came. Instead of requiring us to pay for our guilt, he delivers us from it. Instead of continuing to hurt ourselves and others, he brings us into his kingdom where we will be freed once and for all from sin. The story of Christmas is the beginning of that process. And as we get into the busyness of the season, it's easy to lose sight that that's the real story. On Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the Savior who came to save us from sin. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. If you haven't visited my website, please stop by. Rather than being covered with advertisement, my website contains a wealth of Bible study materials designed to help you improve your skills and understanding of Scripture. Plus, over 300 podcasts. It's all free. I don't take any advertising and I don't take donations. If you want to thank me, please join the mailing list. Leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. That really does matter. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta. Merry Christmas, and I'll see you soon at Wednesday in the Word.