"god With Us: Our Savior"

“God with Us: The Savior”

Matthew 1:20b-21

Excited about Christmas, a little boy was finishing a letter to Santa with a list of the Christmas presents he badly wanted.

And then, just to make sure he had covered all his bases, he decided to send his Christmas wish list to Jesus as well.

The letter to Jesus began, “Dear Jesus, I just want you to know that I’ve been good for 6 months now.”

Then it occurred to him that Jesus knew this wasn’t true.

After thinking about it a moment, he crossed out “6 months” and wrote “3 months.”

He thought some more, then crossed out “months” and replaced it with “weeks.”

“I’ve been good for 3 weeks,” his letter now read.

Realizing Jesus knew better than this, he put down his paper, went over to the Nativity Set sitting on a table in his home, and picked up the figure of Mary.

He then took out a clean piece of paper and began to write another letter: “Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again…”

If we’re honest, I suspect none of us could write a letter to Jesus claiming that we had been perfectly good for 6 months, or even 3 whole weeks--for me it would be 3 whole hours.

There is sin in all of us.

Shortly after learning from Gabriel that she was to become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that she would give birth to the Messiah, Mary shared this news with Joseph.

That night, Joseph undoubtedly tossed and turned in his bed, probably feeling hurt, angry, betrayed, disappointed and heart-broken at what he believed was Mary’s infidelity.

But after falling asleep, he had a dream.

In that dream, an angel of the Lord appeared to him saying, “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.

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.”

This is a passage that is so familiar to us that we often fail to understand just what it is that Matthew is saying to us.

And this is especially true today because names often have little meaning beyond a tag to identify us.

But Matthew’s word play in this verse is significant.

Right off the bat he is identifying just Who Jesus is.

Jesus’ name means “God saves.”

And the announcement from the angel was that Jesus would be that Savior.

“God saves.”

“Jesus saves.”

Matthew is not just proclaiming that Jesus will save us.

He is announcing that Jesus is God.

Jesus is God come to save His people—not from the Romans—but from bondage to sin, death and hell.

In December 1985 a 70-foot-wide sinkhole swallowed one home and a carport and forced the evacuation of four homes in a retirement community in Florida.

The hole was about the size of a pickup truck when it was discovered.

Within 3 hours it had grown to 30 by 40 feet and had swallowed half of a small house.

Two hours later the house was gone.

The owners escaped with only their coats, glad to be alive.

What a vivid picture of sin and the results of sin.

Sin is like a sinkhole; the results are catastrophic.

It swallows up everything in its path.

Because of sin lives are ruined, families are wrecked, children are abused, people are murdered, lies are said and we could go on and on and on.

Now, the good news of Jesus is not that we’re sinners, but that He is our Savior.

But we can’t appreciate His role as Savior if we don’t know we need to be saved!

As humans we all struggle with sin.

Sin is the fundamental problem in the human condition.

And sin has a double meaning: it means both the innate tendency to stray from the right path and also the actual act of straying.

And this problem comes right from the start of Scripture with the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

Eden is the world as it was meant to be, with no suffering, pain or death.

Adam and Eve were given one rule: “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

All other trees were theirs to eat from, just not this one.

The serpent in the garden tempted them to eat the fruit, promising them that if they ate it they would become like God.

They saw the fruit was beautiful and they figured it must be delicious, and they ate.

And with that, paradise was lost.

This story teaches us about ourselves.

We know there is a good and right path, but we have all heard the whisper of Satan encouraging us to turn away from that path.