TITLE - Jesus: God With Us And For Us
SERIES - Matthew’s Portrait of Jesus As The Fulfillment of God’s Promises (Sermon #2)
TEXT - Matthew 1:18–23
DATE PREACHED - February 2, 2009
COPYRIGHT © JOE LA RUE, 2009
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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INTRODUCTION
A. Hook: A favorite literary device of authors, playwrights, and screen writers is that of the hero who shows up just in the nick of time. You’ve read books or seen movies like this. Just when everything seems lost and all hope is gone and disaster is imminent, the hero arrives to save the day.
1. ILL: As thrilling as this is in fiction, it’s even more thrilling when it happens for real. Just ask Mike Robinson. He is a maintenance worker for United Airlines at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He had just left work and was on his way home, very early in the morning of January 13, when a tire on his car blew out. He lost control of the car, jumped a median, and slammed into a ditch, where the car immediately burst into flames. Robinson remembers trying to get his door open, but it was jammed. Then, as flames began to rise around him, he lost consciousness.
Del Wolfgramm is another airport worker who was working in a hanger near where the accident occurred. He just happened to be stepping outside at the very moment the car jumped the median. Seeing the accident, he ran to the car. As the flames engulfed it, Wolfgramm pried the jammed door open and pulled Mike Robinson from certain death.
When he was later interviewed, Robinson called Wolfgramm his hero and said, “He saved my life.” And, indeed he did.
(Scott Gordon, Rescued Man: “I Thank Him With My Life”, NBCDFW News (January 14, 2009), available at http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Rescued-ManI-Thank-Him-With-My-Life.html (last visited January 27, 2009)).
2. When Mike Robinson was in that car, trying desperately to escape the flames that were encircling him, everything must have seemed lost. All hope must have been gone and death must have seemed imminent. And then, out of nowhere, a hero arrived to save the day.
B. Today we are going to talk about another hero who arrived just in the nick of time. Only, this one didn’t just happen to be in the right place at the right time, as was the case with the airport worker. No, this one was deliberately sent, by God, in order to fulfill His promise. And of course, the hero I’m speaking about is Jesus.
1. We are continuing this week with a study we began last Sunday, in which we are looking at the Gospel of Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises. As I explained last week, eleven different times Matthew tells us about something Jesus did or something Jesus said, and they explains how that action or those words fulfilled something God had promised long ago. And Matthew does this to underscore for us that Jesus really is the hero that God promised to send into our world to save us. He really is the one.
2. This morning we are considering the first of those promises. If you have your Bibles, open up to Matthew 1:18–23. In this passage, Matthew explains that Jesus’s birth, and the circumstances which led to it, are the fulfillment of a promise that God made some 700 years earlier to send a Savior to deliver us from danger. Read it with me. Matthew 1:18–23. The Bible says,
"18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, ‘God with us.’" (Matt 1:18–23, New International Version).
And, of course, you know ‘the rest of the story.’ Joseph married Mary, as the angel told him to, and she gave birth to a baby boy. And they named that baby boy Jesus, which in their language meant, “Savior.” And it all took place this way, Matthew tells us, so that God could keep the promise that he made long ago through one of His prophets, in this case, Isaiah.
C. Trans: So this morning let’s look at that promise that God made, back in Isaiah, and let’s see what Matthew meant when he said that Jesus’s birth fulfilled it. If you want to follow along in your Bibles I will be reading in a few moments from Isaiah, in the Old Testament, chapter 7. But first, allow me to set the scene and explain what was going on in Isaiah’s day, when God made one of His most remarkable promises. We can sum it up like this: God’s people were in terrible danger, and needed God’s help.
I. THE SITUATION IN ISAIAH’S TIME: GOD’S PEOPLE WERE IN TERRIBLE DANGER AND NEEDED GOD’S HELP.
A. Overview of the History of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: God’s Continual Faithfulness And Their Continual Rebellion.
1. You may remember how God used Moses to lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and how God had parted the Red Sea and Moses had led the people through on dry ground. And you may recall that the people sinned against God, over and over, and so God punished them for their disobedience by making them wander in the wilderness for forty years.
2. And if you’re familiar with this story, you will remember that when Moses died, God appointed Joshua to lead the people. It was he who led them into the land that God had promised to give them. And God delivered all of that land into their hand, and God promised to be with them and protect them, if they would only obey His commands.
3. The people of Israel, however, consistently failed to obey God. The Bible says that they would worship Him and follow His law for awhile, and then they would get sidetracked. They would start worshiping the various idols of the nations which lived around them, and they would do the things that God commanded them not to do. (Judges 2:10–19).
a. So, God would send foreign nations against them, allowing them to be threatened. Then the people would remember that they had a God who had promised to protect them, if only they would trust in Him. So, the people would repent and ask God for help, and God would send heros to rescue them and lead them. The Bible calls these heros Judges. You’ve probably heard of some of them. Sampson—the guy who got his hair cut by Delilah and lost his super-human strength—was a Judge.
b. So, the Judges would come and rescue the people, and they would be faithful to God for awhile, and then they would get sidetracked again, and the pattern would repeat itself.
4. Well, the people decided that they would be better off if they had a king, like all the other nations did. So they came to the last of the Judges, Samuel, and demanded that he appoint a king for them. And God told him to go ahead, and so he chose a king named Saul. Saul, however, didn’t follow God, and he was soon replaced by David.
a. Now, David was the guy that the Bible calls “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam 13:14). He was completely devoted to God and faithful to Him. Now, this isn’t to say that David didn’t ever mess up and do wrong. He did horrible wrong. He’s the one who committed adultery with Bathsheba, and had her husband killed so that he wouldn’t be in the way (2 Sam 11). But he’s also the one who always repented for his wrong-doing and tried to do better next time, which is what God asks of us.
b. And God made an amazing promise to David. In 2 Sam 7:12–14, God said,
"12When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will . . . . 13[] establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be his father, and he will be my son." (2 Sam 7:12–14, New International Version).
Now after David died, his kingdom passed to his son, Solomon. And God was obviously with Solomon, and his kingdom became very wealthy and powerful, and the people naturally thought that Solomon was the fulfillment of this promise that had been made to David.
(1) And he was, to an extent. You see, sometimes when God makes promises in the Bible, He has two separate fulfillments in mind. One fulfillment relates to the situation at hand—in this case, the one who would succeed David as king. The other fulfillment, though, relates to what God will do through the Savior that, since Adam and Eve first sinned, he had been promising to send into the world.
(2) And so here, David’s son Solomon was the immediate fulfillment. The people thought that he was the complete fulfillment of this promise. But, in hindsight we know that wasn’t the case.
(a) Solomon didn’t see his “throne established forever,” as the promise said. Solomon died, and his throne passed to his son.
(b) And not only that, Solomon wasn’t God’s son, and God wasn’t his father, as the promise said.
(c) The people assumed that God had just used these words figuratively. They thought, ‘God didn’t really mean that a descendant of David’s would reign forever, or that he would actually be God’s son.’ But in hindsight, we know that was exactly what God meant.
i) God was here promising that, one day, He would send a king from the line of David who would reign forever, and his kingdom would never end.
ii) Not only that, but this king would be the very Son of God.
iii) The people couldn’t understand this, because it didn’t seem possible. But God is not bound by what we think is possible, and Jesus would ultimately fulfill this promise.
5. But hold that thought! We’re getting ahead of ourselves! We’ll talk more about this on when we conclude this series on Easter Sunday, but for now, let’s get back to Solomon. He assumed the throne when David died, and after Solomon died his son, Rehoboam became king. And while he was king, the northern part of the country rebelled against his leadership. They appointed Jeroboam to be their king and fought a civil war, winning the right to be an independent kingdom.
a. And so, from that point on, one of David’s descendants was king over the southern kingdom, which called itself Judah. Someone else, meanwhile, was king over the northern kingdom, which called itself Israel or Ephraim. Sometimes the two countries were allies. Often, however, they were antagonists.
b. The northern kingdom, Israel, or Ephraim, never had a king who was faithful to God. All of their kings were wicked men. Judah, on the other hand, continued to repeat the pattern that had been played out by their ancestors. A king would come along who was faithful to God, and the people would straighten up their act and be faithful, too, for awhile. Then they would get sidetracked, and turn against God, and God would send foreign nations against them as punishment, trying to get them to turn back to following Him.
B. Ahaz: The King Who Refused to Obey God.
1. Fast forward with me now down to the time of Isaiah, 700 or so years before Jesus was born. A very wicked king named Ahaz ruled over the southern kingdom of Judah. In fact, the Bible says that, “He did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord his God, as his ancestor David had done” (2 Kings 16:2, New Living Translation). Instead, he did horrible things. He even killed his own son and burnt his body as an offering to one of the false gods that were worshiped in those days (2 Kings 16:3). He was a horrible man. And, the people of the kingdom of Judah lived out-of-control, disobedient lives too.
2. So, God brought other nations’ armies against Judah. The king of Israel and the king of Syria made an alliance and gave off indications that they intended to lead their armies against Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. And this is where our story picks up in Isaiah, chapter 7. The Bible says that when the people heard that Israel and Syria had made an alliance, they were terrified (Isaiah 7:2).
3. King Ahaz immediately sought to make an alliance with another power in the region, the nation of Assyria (2 Kings 16:7–9). God, though, wanted him to trust God to deliver him. So He sent the prophet Isaiah to Ahaz to tell him to trust in God, and God would deliver Judah. In fact, Isaiah delivered to Ahaz a choice from God. He could either trust the king of Assyria to help him, or he could trust God, but he could not do both. In verse 9 of chapter 7, Isaiah said to Ahaz,
“If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9, New International Version).
Isaiah then told king Ahaz that God wanted to give him a sign that God really would deliver Judah, so that his faith could be strong. God knew that Ahaz was a wicked man who didn’t believe in Him, so God wanted to make things easy for Ahaz. God told him through Isaiah to ask for whatever sign he wanted (Isaiah 7:10).
4. Ahaz, however, refused to obey. He already had his mind made up that he was going to seek an alliance with Assyria. And so, in a self-serving effort to sound pious, he quoted a verse from the Bible that says not to test God (Isaiah 7:12).
a. In his commentary on Isaiah, J. Alec Moyter explains that ‘testing God’ refers to “refusing to trust him and his past faithfulnesses unless he prove himself trustworthy all over again.” (J. Alec Moyter, Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary at 76 (Downers Grove: 1999)). Doing that is a sin.
b. But it’s not a sin if God tells us to do it, as God did here. No, when God told Ahaz to ask for a sign, and Ahaz refused, his refusal was sinful disobedience. He had hardened his heart against God because he was committed to seeking an alliance with Assyria. And it was at that moment that God uttered this amazing, wonderful promise that Matthew tells us Jesus fulfilled. Look at it with me. Isaiah 7:13–16. The Bible says,
"13Then Isaiah said . . . “Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also? 14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. 15He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. 16But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. 17The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.” (Isaiah 7:13–17, New International Version).
C. The Sign and the Promise.
1. God allows Isaiah to look ahead in time some 700 years, and see a miraculous event: a virgin will become pregnant and give birth.
a. A virgin. A virgin! That means that no man will be this baby’s father. No, just as God had promised to David 300 years earlier, God would be the Father of this descendant of David. He would have a human mother, who would come from the lineage of David, but His Father would be none other than God Himself. And Isaiah underlines that fact when he tells king Ahaz that the virgin will call the baby, Immanuel, which was a word that in their language meant, “God with us.”
a. And Isaiah said that before the boy knew right from wrong, the land of the kings that Ahaz dreaded would be laid waste, and Judah itself would be conquered by Assyria, the very power that Ahaz was seeking to form an alliance with.
2. Do you see what God did here? Don’t miss this. God offered to Ahaz a chance to be victorious over his enemies, if only he would trust God for the deliverance, instead of trusting in Assyria. And God told Ahaz to ask for a sign, so that he would have something to strengthen his faith. Ahaz, however, was determined to secure earthly help from Assyria, rather than relying fully on God. So, God turned the offer of a sign on its head. Instead of a sign, He proclaimed a promise, and then gave a sign that the promise will come true. It was as if He said to Ahaz,
“Okay, buddy! You refuse to ask for a sign? Fine! I’ll give you a sign. But first I’m going to give you a promise. I am going to send my only begotten Son into the world, and He will be the true King who will reign forever, just like I promised David! Since I’m His Father, He’ll be born of a virgin. And when He comes people will know that I am with them and on their side! And, here’s a sign for you, that I am going to do this. Test me in this, and see if this doesn’t come true: Before the boy reaches the age where He would know right from wrong, the nations of Israel and Syria that you are so afraid of will be destroyed, and your nation will be dominated by Assyria, the very people you trust to save you instead of trusting Me.
a. And the sign that God gave came to pass, word for word. Three years after God spoke this through Isaiah, Syria was conquered by Assyria. Ten years after that, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria.
b. When God gave this sign, no one would have thought that both Israel and Syria would fall. They were two of the superpowers of that day. But a mere 13 years later, their kingdoms were gone.
c. And having conquered Syria and Israel, Assyria set its sights on Judah and made it a vassal state. No one would have thought all this could happen! But God said it would, and it did. And God said, “I am going to keep my promise that a virgin will give birth, no matter how impossible it sounds. And these political happenings, that no one would have believed could happen, are a sign for you, so you will believe I am going to do what you think is impossible, and send God the Son into the world!”
II. THE PROMISE FULFILLED: GOD WITH US AND FOR US!
A. The Fulfilment of the Promise.
1. And so it was that, 700 years later, an angel of God appeared to a young Jewish girl who was a descendant of King David. The angel told her that she was going to have a baby, even though she was a virgin. Sure enough, she became pregnant. Look at Matthew’s account of this miracle again. Matthew 1:18–20. The Bible says,
"18This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, ‘God with us.’" (Matt 1:18–23, New International Version).
2. Jesus—the child born without the sexual help of an earthly father, fulfilled the ancient promise that God had given through Isaiah. He was not only the son of the virgin, and therefore the son of God, but He was actually God come in human flesh, to save us. He was Immanuel, ‘God with us.’
B. The Application of the Promise.
1. And He came just in the nick of time, for you and for me. We would be lost without Jesus. We would have no hope of knowing God. As I shared last week, we are all sinners, and God cannot be in the presence of sin. This means that God cannot be close to us, because our sin pushes Him away.
a. But Jesus came to be the sacrifice for our sins, so that we can be forgiven and made right with God. And so Jesus died on the cross for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve. And because He did, God blots out all the sin that we have ever done or ever will do. That’s what the Bible says.
b. Now think about this! God the Son came to die, for you and for me. He truly is God with us! His death proves that! He is with us, and for us! He is on our side! He is committed to us! He will not leave us or forsake us! He will hold us and care for us! He loves us! In Jesus, He has proven Himself: He is God with us and for us.
2. Do you need God on your side today?
a. Maybe you are like Ahaz, facing physical problems that are greater and more powerful than you are. Maybe it’s your family situation, or job situation, or financial situation, or health situation. But whatever your situation is, you feel like your life is like one of the movies that we talked about earlier: everything seems lost and all hope is gone and disaster is imminent. The problems seem too great, and your strength seems too small. It seems that you cannot escape or make things better. You need a hero, someone who is on your side and will come to your rescue and will meet your needs. And what you really want to know is, Can I count on God to be on my side? Can I trust Him to help me with these problems that are too big for me to handle alone?
b. Or, maybe you are going through some type of spiritual crisis. Maybe you feel distant from God today. Maybe you have done something terrible, and the guilt consumes you, and you wonder if God can ever forgive you. You feel bad about what you’ve done. You know it was wrong. And you wish you could take it back and undo it, but you can’t. And what you really want to know is, Is God still on my side? Is God still for me?
c. Or, maybe you just have plain uncertainty and doubts about God. Maybe you aren’t even sure if He’s real. You have come to church this morning hoping to feel better about what’s going on in your life. Or maybe you’ve come hoping to figure out whether God is real and this thing that we call Christianity is true. And you’ve heard me preaching about a God who is on peoples’ side, and you wish that God would be on your side. And what you really want to know is, Could this be real, for me? Could God really be on my side?
d. And regardless of whether you are going through physical difficulty or spiritual uncertainty, whatever your situation may be, God’s answer to you is a resounding, “Yes!” “Yes, I am on your side!” “Yes, I am for you!” “Yes, I can help you through whatever you are going through!” And, “Yes, I am real for you.”
e. God sent Jesus, so that we could believe that He really is on our side. In Jesus, God is with us and for us. Because of Jesus, we need not doubt that. Through Jesus, we can receive the promise for ourselves and feel God’s presence in our lives.
(1) Remember the Bible verse that we talked about last week: “All of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding ‘Yes!’” (2 Cor 2:20, New Living Translation).
(2) Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to be with us and for us. Jesus is also the proof. His death for us shows us the great lengths that God will go to for us.
3. The promise given to Isaiah, that a virgin would be with child and give birth to a Son called “God with us” has been fulfilled. The only question that remains is whether we’ll accept it.
a. You see, some of us are like king Ahaz. We aren’t sure that we can completely trust God to help us through our situation and give us the victory that He wants to give us. And so we keep trying to do things our way, instead of relying on Him.
b. But just like God said to Ahaz, so He says to us: “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9, New International Version). What that means is that we either trust God, or we don’t. And each of us has to decide: Do we trust God? He sent Jesus so we could know that He is on our side. Now, do we trust Him? Will we let Him be on our side, and let Him save us?
CONCLUSION
A. ILL: On the day President Obama was inaugurated, Eliot Swainson happened to be in Washington, D.C. The city authorities had expected record numbers of people to attend the inauguration, so they asked for assistance from other cities to help with crowd control. Metro Officer Swainson from Houston, Texas was one of those who answered the call. He was deputized and assigned to help at the D.C. metro station near the National Mall.
And that’s where he was on the morning of January 20th when he heard shouts from the crowd that someone was on the subway track. Swainson looked and saw a woman, who had obviously fallen onto the track and was trying desperately to get back up on the platform. One of the subway trains was rapidly approaching. Swainson sprang into action. Running to the woman, he first tried to pull her up onto the platform, but the train was coming too quickly. So, he pushed her to the ground and tucked her into a space under the platform just as the train arrived and passed harmlessly beside her.
This lady needed a savior. When everything seemed lost and all hope was gone and disaster was imminent, she needed someone to be on her side. And that’s what Eliot Swainson was. He became her hero—the one who was on her side and did what needed to be done to meet her need, just as Del Wolfgramm had been Mike Robinson’s hero and did what needed to be done to meet his need. That’s what heros do. (Larry Lazo and Kelly Marshall, Houston transit cop saved woman from train on Inauguration Day, CNN.com (January 22, 2009), available at http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/21/dc.subway.rescue/index.html?section=cnn_latest (last visited January 27, 2009)).
B. Well, as great of heroes as Swainson and Wolfgramm are, there’s a hero who is greater, and His name is Jesus. He came to fulfill God’s promise to be on our side. And because He came and died for us, we can know that promise is true: God really is on our side. As we come now to a time of decision, I invite you to make your decision for God.
1. If you are already a Christian who recognizes that God is on your side, say a quick prayer of thanks as we sing. God sent Jesus so that we could know that He really is on our side. Thank Him for being with you and for you.
2. If, however, you have problems that you are facing, or a spiritual crisis you are suffering, or doubts you are enduring, I invite you to come forward as we sing. Let me pray with you. And, if you need to accept Jesus as your Savior, or be baptized into Him as the Bible commands, let me talk with you about that. God is truly on your side today, and He wants you to know that and be able to trust it. If you have had doubt about that, or want to feel it in a stronger way, come forward as we sing.
