Emmanuel
Matthew 1
It was December 1944. Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself celebrating his last Christmas on the earth. He was only 39. He had been a German pastor. Now, he was a Nazi war criminal.
It was Christmas time. And he was pensive, with pen in hand, over his little diary. And the thought came to him, "How like being in a prison cell is the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. We putter around inside our stone walls and iron bars, and we long to be free. But the doors is locked, and it can only be opened from the outside."
The psychology of confinement … Psychologists play a fascinating little game with this business of confinement, on the line between panic and despair. You see you can set up a lab condition, in which you introduce people into a situation were there is limited time and limited escape, and they go into pandemonium. And they begin to scream, and claw at each other, and fight in desperation to escape.
Or you can create a condition were there is unlimited time but no escape, and the experimental subjects turn to stoic resignation , to death, hopeless depression.
Now the Jews had held fast to their promises for centuries, waiting for their liberator. As Paul had said to Agrippa, making this clear, he said, "I am happy to witness to the hope of the promise of God and to our father for which our twelve tribes incessantly serving God night and day have longed."
And Alfred Edersheim, the converted Jew adds to Paul’s statement, "Yes, they have longed to an extent that they have read it in almost every event and promise. With such earnestness that it was ever the burden of their prayers. With such intensity that many long centuries have not quenched it. It’s light comparatively dim in the days of sunshine and calm, seem to burn brightest in the dark and lonely nights of suffering, as if each gust over Israel rekindled it to fresh flame."
Matthew 1 is a pivot point from the Old Testament springing us into the New. And 400 years of prophetic silence is shattered.
I can understand if your heart was not stirred by our New Testament scripture reading. I know that genealogical tables are not usually electric with homiletical gems. But I like a challenge. I found myself set afire by chapter one.
In these 25 verses, most of which do read something like a phone directory, we have the theological stage set for all of the rest of Matthew’s gospel. And not only is the shape set forth for the rest of the gospel, the shape and form of the entire New Testament is in that one chapter. It is all right here in Matthew 1.
1) This is more than a recitation of genealogies, of lineages. In the first 17 verses the gospel writer is setting forth Jesus as truly man. He wanted his audience to know that he was a man, fully man.
He was a child of history. He was a son of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. He was a son of Jesse. He was a son of David. He was a son of Joseph. He was a child of history, rooted in history.
The lesson of humility, my friends, is the lesson of his humanity.
Listen to Matthew (Matthew, the hated tax-collector), now, as he punctuates this point. Most of our New Testaments do not have the form so that you have these genealogies drawn in parallel. They are in sequences of fourteen; so that they go from Abraham to David; from David to the Babylonian exile; from the Babylonian exile to the birth of Christ. So there is a nice, little, tidy, compacted grouping.
But inserted in these are four women. It is kind of like Matthew pulls those four women, and sticks them in. And it is kind of like they do not fit the form of the passage. They disrupt the flow. But he is saying something.
He is punctuating what he is saying in general, so that in case you missed the point. He says, "Here is Tamar. And here is Rahab. And here is Bathsheba and Ruth."
Now Tamar was guilty of incest, sexual intercourse with her father-in-law. Rahab was a notorious prostitute. Bathsheba was an infamous adulterous. Now everyone one of these women were cunning, clever.
One was a Hittite. One was a Moabite. All four of them were Gentiles. What are you doing with Gentiles in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Is there any comfort here for foreigners? Who is a foreigner?
Any comfort for a tax-collector? Oh, yes, we should say there is. There may be more hope for us in this genealogical table than thre are for some of us in our own religious and social groups.
How could he want me? That has always been the haunting question of my life. How could the God of quasars and the uncharted reaches of space be concerned about this little speck of dust we call the earth? How could he care? What do we matter? Do we matter at all?
A tremendous lesson, I think in simplicity, in his humility.
(Illustration on the problem of relating to people who are different)
What is the mark of an educated man? You hear today, "I can’t relate to folk like that." Can’t relate to what kind of folk? Who are you? What kind of folk are you? Who has related himself to you?
I mean we are not talking about Athens, or Rome, or Alexandria. I mean we are talking about Bethlehem.
Have you ever seen Bethlehem? I’ve seen slides of Bethlehem. It is barely there. It is so small. It is so insignificant. It was notorious for its littleness and its insignificance.
Forget about a sterile nursery. We are talking about a cattle shed, a little leaky roofed barn. Simplicity, the lesson of humility is the lesson of that genealogical table.
2) He is man, but, yes, he is God. And Matthew summons the next five verses to drive home the point, he is every bit God. A son of Abraham, yes. A son of Jesse and David and Jacob, but he is a Son of the Holy Spirit. He is a Son of prophetic prediction. He is the son of miraculous revelation. He is the Son of God Almighty,
Witness his miracle again in prophecy and conception.
The angel said, "She will bear a son." Well how did the angel know it would be a son? Well, they have 50-50 odds of guessing, you know.
Science rips us off doesn’t it. It somehow removes the awe, the blessing, the wonder of miracle. And we get caught up in biology and reproduction.
Now we can take sonograms. We can take radio pictures, sound pictures.
We can inject a needle into the fetus, and we can extract a single human cell. And we can put the cell under a high powered microscope. And we can count the chromozones across the face of that cell.
We can use a stethoscope, and we can listen with impeccable precision to its heartbeat and rate.
It is hard to believe in an age of science. Biological surprises are rare. They come along now and then, but they are so rare. And we lose the shock and the awe of the miracle.
There are a few biological surprises even in our day. But the issue of Matthew 1 is not reproduction. It is a theological issue. The issue is a miraculous issue. It is God in human form. It is not an issue of partheno-genesis, as we can find among the bees. We are talking about the God of the covenant resting all of his hopes on the feeble throb or an infant heartbeat.
Others would speak of virgin births: The Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks. But only the Hebrews spoke of the King of life itself cradled in the slender arms of a young peasant girl.
And he summons one verse of prophecy. The verse he summons is Isaiah 7:14.
(Review)
In other words, he is saying, "Look over there is a woman. She is going to have a baby. And before that baby is about three years old (you have been afraid of Pekah and Rezin, let me tell you something) a nation that will dwarf them is going to wreak havoc across this land. Look out across the wind swept field. There is going to be desolation there because you have not honored God, and have put your trust in man. This shall be the sign. You shall see these things coming upon you swiftly, suddenly and soon. And then you shall hear that woman call, ’Emmanuel!", and you shall know that when you hear his name this is God’s call of judgment and destruction upon you."
And Matthew takes that prophecy, that same prophecy that says this child would be born, and even though a nation would be laid waste, a child was to be born. And God would cradle that child through his arms through the Babylonian captivity. And He would keep that covenant relationship with His people, even though it looked like all had been lost.
And Matthew takes that as a sign, that little Hebrew, ambiguous word alma, which can mean young woman. But 4 out of 7 times, if we include this one, it means only virgin.
And Matthew takes that little, ambiguous word that was a dramatic sign to Ahaz. And it does not require two virgin births, but Matthew can take that precious, divinely chosen word of the prophet and use it for all of the rest of the ages. It shall be a miraculous sign that God has not yet broken his covenant relationship with you his people. He is binding it up in His only begotten, in His Son.
And Matthew says, "I have walked with him. I have talked with him through the lanes of Galilee. I have seen life’s chains chained, and chains broken. It is Christmas. God has come right into the midst of our tumult and shouting. And His name now is Emmanual.
God is with us. It is a miracle. It is an incarnation. It is divine empathy. It is my hurt in the heart of God. It is God coming down and pitching His tent with me, by my side, so I can feel and know His presence. In the darkest hours of my pilgrimage I can be sustained in hope.
Paul makes this unmistakably clear as to the meaning. He says, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God" became Emmanuel.
Vicarious identification.
Conclusion
Emmanuel. It structures the book of Matthew because we walk and talk with God among us. And them we close with the farewell address of the King, when he says, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel everywhere you go, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe all things that I have left with you, and commanded. And, lo, …"
"Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel."
"And, lo, [Emmanuel] I will be with you always." At your side, as your are spent, as you bow in quiet loneliness, as you feel forgotten and forsaken, "I am with you." When your home is coming apart, when someone whom you love has a terminal disease or sickness, "I am with you." I am always with you.
"Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel," homeless Israel.
