Matthew 1:18-21 – Messiah Mission #1: Operation Salvation
I found a funny story this week, written by a woman who wanted a change. She said:
In dire need of a beauty makeover, I went to my salon with a fashion magazine photo of a gorgeous, young, lustrous-haired model. I showed the stylist the trendy new cut I wanted and settled into the chair as he began humming a catchy tune and got to work on my thin, graying hair.
I was delighted by his cheerful attitude until I recognized the melody. It was the theme from "Mission: Impossible."
Today we are beginning an Advent series. I’ve called it “The Messiah Mission”. That title, I must confess, isn’t original to me. Last week, Michelle and I were watching an old movie called Deep Impact, about a gigantic meteor hurtling toward Earth. The solution was to send a space shuttle, called The Messiah, armed with nuclear weapons towards the meteor and detonate it. It seemed like a hopeless mission, and it didn’t really work out as it was supposed to. The first blast divided the meteor into 2 meteors, one smaller and one larger, both aiming for earth.
But the captain of the ship came up with a Plan B. He sent the ship itself, still armed with several nuclear weapons, into the larger meteor. Of course, the ship was annihilated, but so was the meteor, and even though millions died by the smaller meteor, Earth was spared.
There’s something beautiful about that. The Messiah was sent on a perilous mission, and the only way to save the world was to die. It is this mission, willingly accepted by Jesus Christ the Messiah, that I want to spend some time looking at. I want to look at the reasons given within the Christmas story, as to why Jesus came to earth. Let’s read Matthew 1:18-21.
An interesting question with no real solid answer is, “When did Jesus know who He was?” We assume He wasn’t born with that knowledge; no baby understands anything, and remember: Jesus was fully human. By the time He was 12, He understood a special connection He had with God the Father. As to whether or not He knew His ultimate mission at age 12, no one can know that.
Of course, when He began His public ministry at age 30, He knew what was happening. He knew why he was on earth. He knew His mission. In His first public sermon, recorded in Luke 4, Jesus quotes Isaiah 61, and says that it refers to Him. He said, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me…” The Greek word for Anointed One is Christ; the Hebrew word is Messiah. Jesus announced Himself as Messiah at the beginning of His ministry. He knew His mission.
He often told people why He came. In John 10:10 He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. Matthew 5:17 says, “I have not come to abolish [the Law or the prophets] but to fulfill them.” Mark 1:38 says that Jesus came to minister to people. When asked in Mark 2 why He spent so much time being with sinners, He said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Over the next 3 weeks, we will be looking at the various reasons that Jesus stepped out of heaven and accepted a mission to travel deep into the enemy territory. Part 1 of the Messiah Mission is this: Operation Salvation. Today’s Scripture passage says these words of the angel to Joseph: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
The word itself comes from a process of translating one language into another. The original Hebrew is Yehoshua, or Joshua. That translated into the Greek to be Iesous, and from there into the Latin Iesus. All these mean “Yahweh delivers” or “Yahweh rescues”. What they mean is that the personal God of the universe saves. Jesus means that God saves.
Jesus’ mission, at least the part we’ll look at this week, was to save people from their sins. As I was researching this message, I had to ask the question: what does salvation mean? What does it mean to be saved? And I found myself thinking back to the very basics of the faith. Of my faith. What did it mean when I gave my heart to the Lord? What did it mean for me to be saved? What does that still mean for me today? I’d like us today to remember what it means for each of us, what Jesus did. What did He do when He saved us?
I want for us to think of being saved in 3 parts: past, present, and future. What He did, what He’s still doing, and what He will do. Clearly, according to the Scriptures, salvation is a past-present-and-future event.
First, what did He do to save us? Eph.2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.” Titus 3:5 says, “When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” So what was this salvation? To start off with, He forgave us. Col.2:15 says, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins…” That means He stopped holding our sins against us. He made it as if we had never sinned in the 1st place.
He also made us new. We are not the same people we were before salvation. 2 Cor.5:17 tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” We are different. Changed. Transformed. The old is gone.
We were also brought into a new family. Galatians 4:7 says, “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” We’ve been adopted into God’s family. He is our Father by creation, but now also by adoption and by choice. He took us in and welcomed us home, as children and as rebels no more.
There’s so much more, but now we’ll turn our attention to the present. 1 Cor.1:18 – “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Being saved, as in, still going on. Present. What is He still doing to save us?
Well, the good news is, He still forgives us. 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Confess, present tense. He still forgives us, because we know, we still mess up sometimes. We still need forgiveness, and He still gives us to us.
And not just forgiveness when we sin, but ways to avoid sinning. 1 Cor.10:13 – “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
Salvation means so much in so many ways. Phil.4:13 says, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” 1 Peter 5:5 says, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” He also hears our prayers, as Heb.4:16 says, “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Revelation 1:5 describes Him as the One “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” In Romans 15:13, Paul prayed that his readers would “overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Continued forgiveness, strength, grace, answered prayers, mercy, love, hope…These are the sorts of things that even if this life were all there is, Jesus would still be worth it. But the even better news is, there is more. Lots more. Even greater things yet to come. Salvation yet to come. We have been saved, we are still being saved, and someday we will be saved. 1 Cor.2:9 tells us this: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”
As saved people, we have a future in heaven, and not eternal torment. We have a hope that outlasts the pain of death. The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised, and we will be changed. And the saying will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. The grave is not the end. Death will not have the final say or the last laugh. Death will die, and we will live forever in a home with no crying nor dying nor pain nor tears. We will be saved from loneliness and heartache and grief and hurt. We will no longer be frustrated that we aren’t the people we would like to be. We will be perfect and complete, and that’s something worth waiting and working for.
Part of the Messiah Mission, the reasons that Jesus came to earth, is Operation: Salvation. Jesus came to save His people from their – our – sins. Jesus came to save us. As we enter this Christmas season, we need to remember this. It’s not about giving or getting. It’s not the lights or parades. Christmas is really a time we need to remember who Jesus is and what He did.
