This passage of Scripture is Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus; it is the perfect Christmas Eve passage because it clearly outlines some of the most important things about Jesus’ first advent or his coming to this earth.
MATTHEW 1:18 – 25
18Now 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. 19And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20But 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. 21She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23”Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). 24When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
Notice what Matthew describes here:
- The miracle of the immaculate conception (v. 18).
- The quiet divorce plan that Joseph puts together (v. 19).
- The angelic appearance that alters Joseph’s divorce plan (vv. 20 – 21).
- The fact that Jesus will save his people from their sins (v. 21).
- The miracle of Mary the virgin giving birth to her son who would be called Immanuel (vv. 22 – 23).
- The overwhelming obedience of Joseph as he becomes Jesus’ earthly father (vv. 24 – 25).
When I think about everything that Matthew describes in this text (the immaculate conception, the angelic appearance, the virgin birth of our Savior, the 180 degree turn in Joseph’s plans), when I think about these things, all I can think is that this story is an absolute miracle in every way.
Virgins do not get pregnant without some kind of other human participation.
Angels do not show up and speak to humans very often.
There has never been a god in all of history who retained 100% of his godly DNA while taking on 100% human DNA at the same time.
And while the subtle redirection and upending of Joseph’s divorce plans may seem minor, Joseph’s obedience really is an absolute miracle when you think about how humanly difficult it is to see change happen even at the level of changing one’s diet.
So, this story, really is a miracle in every way possible. Let the miracle of this story sink in a little bit deeper for the next few minutes.
#1: IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (V. 18)
Immaculate means spotless or pure. So, Mary’s spotless, pure, virgin conception (while in no way pointing to her perfection) does point to the fact that she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit without any human intervention; this miracle stands in stark contrast to all the people mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.
Matthew’s genealogy (Matt. 1:1 – 17) teaches us that Jesus’ family tree was full of criminals and vagabonds; the very people that Jesus came to ransom and redeem. But the immaculate conception teaches us that Jesus’ perfection is part of the miracle of salvation.
#2: THE ANGELIC APPEARANCE (VV. 19 – 21)
Can you imagine being Joseph and hearing that your fiancé is pregnant even though you have never been intimate with her? I cannot blame Joseph for wanting to divorce Mary, but I also admire Joseph for desiring to divorce Mary privately and quietly so that no shame would be brought upon her. How many relationships do you know that would have ended very publicly and very abruptly under these kinds of circumstances?
Only a miracle could save Joseph and Mary’s marriage. And this is where the miracle of the angelic appearance changes the course of history as it would have been had God not intervened. The angelic appearance and the explanation of Mary’s pregnancy seems to be the only logical way to explain something as illogical (miraculous) as Mary’s immaculate conception.
It took the miraculous intervention of an angelic appearance to explain the miraculous nature of Mary’s immaculate conception and it took the miracle of an angelic appearance to sway the decision of Joseph who was only a finite man. Can you feel the awe and the weight of this single moment in human history?
#3: THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOR (VV. 21 – 23)
The tail end of the angel’s explanation to Joseph details the fact that Jesus will be our Immanuel who will save his people from their sins. Immanuel means “God with us”. God is not against us. God is for us and he is with us.
In the person of Jesus Christ, we have a Savior God who comes to be with us as he offers himself to us as our Savior so that our sins may be forgiven. In the previously prophesied Immanuel (Isa. 7:14), we have a God who is with us and for us instead of a God who is far away from us and against us.
Jesus came to save us, not from our poverty, not from our mental illnesses, not from our physical sickness, not from our broken relationships, not from any other effect of sin; Jesus came to save us from the presence and the power and the penalty of our sin through his sinless life, his substitutionary death at the cross of calvary and his victorious resurrection from the tomb.
The virgin birth of Jesus, our Immanuel, is the miracle that God came in the person of Christ (100% perfectly God and 100% perfectly human) to be with us and for us. This is the kind of miracle that radically alters the course of human life for all of eternity. And who better, to illustrate this kind of change, than the human, Joseph?
#4: JOSEPH’S 180 DEGREE TURN (VV. 19, 24 – 25)
Joseph was about to put Mary away in a private divorce. He was ready to wash his hands of her. I assume that his mind was full of questions about the integrity and purity of his fiancé as she explained that she was pregnant but had not been unfaithful to him. As I mentioned earlier, I cannot blame him for wanting to get out of this relationship.
But then Joseph has an encounter with the angel who explains the miracle of the immaculate conception and impending virgin birth and he completely changes the course of his plans in favor of an ages old plan from eternity past; a plan that had been quietly worked out since the Garden of Eden in Genesis to bring the Savior into the world to crush the serpent’s head.
I believe that Joseph had one of the most intimate experiences of God as he became the earthly father of our Savior. And out of that intimate experience with God, Joseph changes course and obediently becomes Jesus’ earthly step-father. What we see in Joseph is a picture of wholehearted obedience and devotion to purity as he even refuses to know Mary intimately until after Jesus is born.
The only thing that will motivate this kind of true wholehearted obedience to the commands of God is an actual encounter with the living God. The only way an imperfect person makes a 180 degree life changing turn like this, is to have a life changing encounter with the God who is for us and with us.
CONCLUSION
This is the real miracle of Christmas. The real miracle of Christmas is that we can know the God who came to be with us and for us in the person and work of Jesus. It is through the miracle of the incarnation (God becoming a man while not ceasing to be God) that we can look to a bloody cross, that we can kneel in the doorway of an empty tomb, that we can hold onto the promise of Heaven when all hell breaks loose on this earth.
You and I can encounter God by the power of his Spirit every time we look to the Christmas story where God came to be with us because he is for us. And my prayer today, is that you and I would encounter the living God who came in the flesh in the person of Christ. Amen!
1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).