For He Will Save His People—Matthew 1:18-25

Matthew 1:18-25 is a passage packed with core truths of Christianity. Jesus' divinity. His humanity. His incarnation and the virgin birth. Many of these truths are just introduced in this passage, not really fleshed out. If you were a 1st-century Jew reading about these things for the first time, you might not grasp the full implications of, for example, the statement that Mary was "with child from the Holy Spirit." This is a hint of a truth that will be more fully revealed as the book of Matthew goes on.

But one truth sings out loud and clear in this passage, like a hammer hitting a bell. "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." The angel's announcement is dramatic and clear. At last, the One has come who will save his people from their deepest trouble, their sin.

Maybe that's not what you want for yourself, salvation from sin. A lot of people are looking to be saved from something, but sin might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Right now, people are at Walgreens looking for salvation from a headache. People are at movie theaters looking for salvation from boredom. They're at their jobs looking for salvation from poverty or insignificance. Tonight, people will be at the bar looking for salvation from loneliness. When elections role around, people will go to the voting booth hoping for salvation from the current administration, or the alternative.

You may have to sink pretty low to go to the soup kitchen for salvation from hunger. But you have to sink lower still to come to Christ and say, "I need salvation from my sins." And that's what I invite you to do. Come to Jesus, because Jesus saves his people from their sins.

Matthew tells us five things about Jesus that make him able to save us from sin. (1) He is Mary's son, (2) he is God's Son, (3) he is God, (4) he is God with us, and (5) he is David's son.

Mary's Son

First, he is Mary's son. Now, for Joseph, at the beginning of this passage, this is not a glorious doctrine. It's a painful shock. Mary and Joseph were betrothed, meaning they were legally bound but not yet wed. This is more than a modern engagement. If you can imagine a couple going down to the courthouse to get legally married, then waiting a year before they have some more ceremonies and move in together, that would be betrothal. So Joseph is deeply hurt. He doesn't want to put Mary to shame, but he thinks she has betrayed him, and he is ready to divorce her. The fact that Mary has a son comes as bad news to Joseph.

But it's good news for us. It means that Jesus is really one of us. He's a man, and before he became a man he was a baby, vulnerable, weak, subject to all of the same sufferings and sorrows that we face. He almost grew up in a single-parent home, and even his adoptive father was not well off. He's truly a human being, Mary's son.

God's Son

But he's also God's Son. The angel reassures Joseph, "Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." Mary had not committed adultery. The Holy Spirit of God had brought about the conception of this baby in the womb of this virgin. I doubt Joseph fully understood what this meant. He knew it meant Mary had not betrayed him, but he probably did not fully appreciate what Matthew is going to show us more and more as the book goes on. This boy is God's Son.

And that's good news for us. This boy is not an heir to the sinfulness of Adam or even Adam's capacity to sin. He is the heir to God's perfect holiness. He is not going to repeat the errors of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, or Solomon, which ruined God's people again and again. He is going to imitate his Father in heaven, and save God's people.

God

The boy is God's Son, but he is also God. Listen carefully to what the angel tells Joseph: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." "Jesus" is another version of the name "Joshua." It means "Yahweh saves," "the Lord saves." The name of the Joshua of the Old Testament was a constant reminder that, as the Bible says more than once, "Salvation belongs to the Lord."

But the angel doesn't tell Joseph, "You shall call his name Jesus, because the Lord will save his people from their sins." He doesn't even say, "You shall call his name Jesus, because the Lord will use him to save his people from their sins." He says, "You shall call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." Salvation belongs to the Lord, and he himself has come, in this little, unborn baby boy.

God With Us

Jesus is God, and, as Matthew goes on to show, he is God with us. "All this," says Matthew, "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 Immanuel.'" Matthew quotes from the prophet Isaiah, who tells us that when Syria and Israel were attacking Judah, God told Ahaz king of Judah to ask for a sign, and the king presumptuously refused. And Isaiah said that God would give a sign anyway. The sign would be the birth of a boy, and before this boy was old enough to "refuse the evil and choose the good," the nations that Ahaz feared would be deserted.

Isaiah tells us about what you might call a partial fulfillment of this prophecy. A prophetess, presumably Isaiah's wife, conceived and bore a son, to whom Isaiah gave, not the name Immanuel, but the charming alternative Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And before this boy was old enough to say "Daddy" and "Mommy," Israel and Syria were defeated. This boy was a sign to Israel that God was with them in the middle of their troubles and would bring them out. He was not "God With Us," but he was to Israel a sign that God was with them.

If Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz was a sign, Jesus is the reality. He is the true Immanuel, not "God is with us" but "God With Us." In his quotation of Isaiah, Matthew begins his signature task of showing how not only Israel's prophecy but Israel's history foreshadows the coming of the Messiah: how what was partly fulfilled in others, is fully fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Isaiah's son was a sign that Israel would be delivered from her earthly enemies. Jesus would himself deliver Israel from her sin.

David's Son

After all that, it might sound like an anticlimax to stress that Jesus is also David's son. But that is what Matthew does. The angel who appeared to Joseph called him "Joseph, son of David." However humble his condition as a carpenter, Joseph was heir to David and to the promises God made to David. And at the end of this passage, Joseph takes Mary as his wife and gives Jesus his name, meaning that Joseph accepted, we might say adopted, the virgin-born child as his own. If you haven't read the Bible much, this might not mean much to you yet. But what it means is that Jesus is the rightful heir to all the long list of people that Matthew gave us in the first part of this chapter, and to all the promises God made to them. According to the Scriptures, the Savior had to be a son of David. And Jesus is.

For He Will Save His People

So, the Son of Mary, the Son of God, God himself, God with us, David's son, came to save his people. David saved his people from their enemies. But Jesus, the angel says, will save his people from their sins. It does not say "from the Romans," although they would have liked that. It does not say "from their diseases," although he healed many. It does not say "from hunger" or "from poverty," although he promises to take away all of our suffering when he comes a second time. It says, "from their sins." Do you need a Savior from your sins?

This is why he had to go to the cross. "You will call his name Jesus," it says, "because one day he will hang on a cross and his enemies 

will laugh at him and say, "He saved others: he cannot save himself."

What his enemies did not understand is that it is to the one who lays down his life that God gives the victory. On the third day, God raised him from the dead. And now, everyone who trusts in him becomes his, part of the people whom he saves from their sins. "Make disciples of all nations," Jesus said after his resurrection, "baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." He would save his people, not just the Jews but an international people of faith, everyone who calls on his name.

And now, reigning from heaven, he is still Immanuel, God with us, because he has sent the Holy Spirit to live within us. "And behold," he says, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Pastor Nate Jeffries