If everyone could turn to Matthew 1, I am going to read a section of verses there, beginning with verse 18 until the end. It says in Matthew 1:18-25:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
I would also like to read out of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, beginning in verse 26. This is when the angel visits Mary. It says in Luke 1:26-37:
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
We will stop reading there.
We know that one of the miraculous truths about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is that He was born of a virgin. He was born of Mary and there was no male, no human being who was the father. The Father was the Holy Spirit.
This is the information that the Bible gives us very clearly, as it explains to us that Christ was born of a virgin, a girl who had known no man and yet God miraculously formed the Christ-child in the virgin’s womb and she gave birth to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I would like to spend some time looking at the passage in Matthew 1, just looking at some of these verses here, beginning in verse 18. It says again in Matthew 1:18:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise…
Or “thusly”; it was “in this manner,” we could understand that to mean.
…When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
So they were married, in one sense, but it had not been consummated. It had not been completed, but there was a betrothal. Our version of this is “engagement”; but in that day, there was a binding nature to being espoused to a wife or to a husband. It was as though you were married, and so that is why Joseph is thinking of putting her away, of divorcing her, and God did make allowance in the Old Testament law for a man to put away his wife, under certain conditions. We know that God did this so that He could divorce national Israel; but then once Christ came and the veil of the temple was rent and God was finished with Israel, then He rescinded that law and never again could a man divorce a woman or a woman divorce a man.
There is no more divorce permissible by the Bible today. That is why when a man marries a woman, it is until death. There is nothing that can separate it except death. Legally, Biblically, by the Law of God, there is no other way for a marriage to divide. The Bible tells us, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
Joseph was a just man. He was righteous. He was a child of God, and so he was thinking Biblically. There was a law—it was permissible—of putting away his espoused wife, Mary, because she was found with child.
You know, I am sure that Mary told him that she had a visitation from an angel, that she told Joseph everything the angel had said. But, come on, in the history of the world, there had never been a woman who was having a child without relations with a man. This was a first in the history of mankind that a virgin, a girl who had never known a man, was actually pregnant with child and the Father was the Holy Ghost.
So that is pretty difficult for Joseph to accept. How can he believe this? Of course, he knew Mary and he knew her character very well, that she was a child of God, and it does seem unusual that she would make up a story like this. So I am sure that is why he was thinking about these things, as it says here in verse 20, Matthew 1:20:
But while he thought on these things…
He was trying to consider all of the facts of the case, even though he apparently was leaning towards putting her away without making her a public example.
The word “public example” is found only one other place in the New Testament. It is in Hebrews 6:6, where it speaks of crucifying Christ again and putting Him to an open shame. The word “open shame” is the same Greek work that is translated here as “public example.”
I think we have a very good Biblical account of what that means in the Gospel of John, when the woman was caught in the act of adultery and those Jews brought her before Jesus, out in the public, right out in the open. They were trying to tempt Christ into making a wrong decision. If He had said that she should be stoned, as the law of Moses indicated, then Christ could get in trouble with the Roman authorities. If He had said, “No, she is not to be stoned,” then they could have gone back to the Jewish people and said, “Well, you see, here is a woman caught in the act of adultery; Moses says to stone her and Jesus says to not stone her.” By that, they would surely begin to make their claims that Jesus was against the law of Moses and they would speak evil of Him.
So that was the trap that they were trying to lay, and it was a very good trap. I am sure that an ordinary man would have fallen into the trap, one way or another. But Christ, of course, is not an ordinary man. He is eternal God.
So we read in that account of the Gospel of John that Jesus kneeled down onto the ground and wrote. He was writing on the ground, and then He rose up and He said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Then He kneeled down again and began writing in the ground, and we can be sure that since He was using His finger to write in the ground, He was undoubtedly writing the Word of God, the Law of God, probably the Ten Commandments, because the Ten Commandments are said to have been written by the finger of God. As He is writing, whatever He wrote, of course, was the Word of God, because that is who He was. He was the Word and any communication from Christ would have been the Word.
So He was writing the Word on the ground and those men who were told, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” began to leave, one by one, beginning with the oldest, until the youngest was left there and then even he was convicted and went away.
Then Jesus said to the woman, “Where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?,” and she said, “No man, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”
So that is a case of a woman caught in adultery, being made a public example. It was a shameful thing to be dragged into the street, into the temple where Christ was, and for those accusations to be laid on that woman, and that is what Joseph is thinking of. Of course, nothing like parading Mary through the streets. But, still, if he says, “I want to divorce her because she committed adultery,” well, it would be made known. People would know about it and there would be open shame; because anytime we sin, there is shame. Sin brings shame, and so, here, Joseph was thinking about these things. Being a just man and a good man and a man who loved Mary, he was going to put her away privily, or secretly. He did not want it to be known, and yet he was thinking on these things, we are told in verse 20, Matthew 1:20:
But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
So God Himself confirms it with Joseph through a dream that what Mary was saying was true, that this is what really happened and that these were the facts.
People today deny these facts and they say that it is not possible. Of course, it is not possible with man. It is impossible for these things that we read about in the Bible to happen. It is impossible for a woman who is a virgin to give birth to a child. It is likewise impossible for the blind to see and the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak and the lame to walk and the dead to rise. The whole Gospel is impossible. Everything that the Bible lays out about God’s salvation plan is utterly impossible with man but possible with God, because God is a Spirit and He is all-powerful and He can do all things. As Philippians tells us regarding the believers in Christ, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
So the believer brings the Gospel and miracles can happen today, miracles of salvation. There are not going to be physical miracles, as there were in the days of Jesus and in the days of the apostles. Those miracles were being performed in order to validate that these men were from God, that they were bringing the truth that God had ordained for them to bring to the world. Yet once the Bible was completed, all of those supernatural acts and works were completed; they were finished. Only the supernatural act of God in saving a sinner continues up until this day and will continue until the end.
Then in Matthew 1:21, it goes on to say:
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS…
What does the name JESUS mean? It is the most well-known name in all the world. I do not think that there is any other name that you could go into any country in the world and say where there is not a good probability that most people are going to know what that name means or who is being referred to by the name of JESUS.
How could He have gained such popularity for the short time on earth that He spent, for the short duration of His ministry of only 1335 days? How could Jesus continue to be of supreme importance to all the world, nearly 2000 years after He went to the Cross? It is because, of course, of who He was and is and continues to be.
The name JESUS actually tells us. JESUS is from the Old Testament name of JOSHUA or JEHOSHUA, and there is another version of that. There are actually three names in the Old Testament that are the same name, but sometimes they are spelled a little differently in the English.
The name JESUS means, from JOSHUA in the Hebrew, “Jehovah Savior.” That is what the name JESUS means, and that is exactly what Christ came to do. He came to save His elect people.
If we go back to Isaiah 43, it says in Isaiah 43:11:
I, even I, am JEHOVAH; and beside me there is no saviour.
Jehovah Savior; Jehovah only; it is exclusive. He alone is Savior. There can be no other Savior.
Look at Hosea 13. Hosea comes after Daniel. Hosea 13:4:
Yet I am JEHOVAH thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.
Really, you have to be God to be Savior. The only One who can be the Savior is God, is Jehovah, “I, even I, am Jehovah; and beside Me there is no Savior,” none other but Jehovah Himself, eternal God.
Now, what is shocking to some people, what really ought to amaze all people, is what we read in the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 2, regarding the birth of the Christ-child. It says in Luke 2:10-11:
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
A Savior is born. How can that be? Well, who can that be? Who can that be? It can only be Jehovah. There is none other. There is no additional person. Anyone who attempts to say that Jesus Christ is not God, that He is not Jehovah Himself, has to answer that question. Why is it that the Bible says that this day is born a Savior and it is Jesus Christ? The New Testament is absolutely clear that Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is the Savior. How many times does the New Testament tell us that?
If we go to Titus, I think that this is a good place to see this. In Titus 1:3, it says:
But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour;
And then in verse 4, Titus 1:4:
To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Look at Titus 2:10:
Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.
Titus 2:13:
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
Titus 3:4 says:
But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
And then look at verse 6, Titus 3:6:
Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
Three times in each one of the chapters, it says that God is Savior, and almost immediately following, it says that Jesus Christ is Savior, so there is no difficulty. As far as the Bible is concerned, Jesus Christ is Jehovah. He is God. He is the only Savior, “for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Only, exclusively, through Jesus Christ can there be salvation, can there be the gift of everlasting life. It comes only through Jesus, and Jesus is Jehovah Savior. That is what His name means. He is Jehovah Savior.
So anyone who tries to say that Christ is something other than who He actually is, if anyone tries to say, “Well, He is the Son and He is different than the Father; there is One God, God the Father, and He is the Son, but He is not God,” or, “He is the highest form of angel,” or “He was a good man, a prophet,” anyone who tries to say any of those things is in disagreement with the Bible, with God Himself, because the Bible declares absolutely that Jesus Christ is eternal God, the Savior.
Well, let us go back to Matthew 1:21, where it says:
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
This is what Christ came to do. He came to be the Savior, the Savior of His people.
If we go to John 3:16-17:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
There is no need to send Jesus to condemn the world because the world is already condemned. The Word of God has already condemned every man who comes into the world. We are under God’s wrath and our condemnation is death, “for the wages of sin is death.” We are going to perish if there is no change in our condition. If the Lord allows us to continue on, then that will be our final end. We will die and cease to exist, and yet the people of God will live on in Heaven for all eternity into the future.
So Christ did not come to condemn the world. He came to make manifest and to put on display what had already been accomplished from before the foundation of the world, that He was the Lamb who was slain, bearing the sins of His people, dying for His people’s sins, that they could be pardoned and experience God’s grace.
Let us go to Matthew 18. Jesus always had this idea, this mindset, as He went about His Father’s business, which was that He came to save. It says in Matthew 18:11:
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.
That is why He came. What is the reason for the season? Jesus. Jehovah Savior. The reason is to save a people for Himself, to purchase a bride for Himself, the redeem sinners to Himself. The Son of Man is come to save those who were lost.
Or turn to 1 Timothy 1:15, and it says:
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
This was the sole purpose. Of course, God accomplished many things with Christ coming into the world, but the great purpose, we can say, of the Lord Jesus Christ was to save, to rescue, to deliver, to seek the lost and to bring His people to salvation. That is what He came to do and that is what the Gospel continues to do. As the Word of God goes out, it accomplishes its purpose. The Word goes forth and the purpose is that God’s people do become saved.
Let us also go to Matthew 21, beginning in verse 5, Matthew 21:5-11:
Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strowed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.
Hosanna means…anybody know? “O save! O save! Jesus, Jehovah Savior,” and they are crying out, “Hosanna! O save!”
This ought to be the cry of every person because of our sin. We should go to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Savior, the only Savior. Because we have sinned and He came to save His people from their sins, we should go to Him and cry out, “God have mercy, Thou Son of David! Hosanna! O save!”
I was reading in the Gospels. I have been going through and reading one Gospel and then reading another Gospel. The more I am reading, the more incredible and amazing it is how Christ was healing so many people. All sorts of people were coming to Him. People came to Him in different ways and He would heal in different ways. Some people came just thinking, “If I can touch but the hem of His garment, I shall be made whole,” like the woman who had an issue of blood, and she was. Or some came like the man whose son was lunatic. He was broken in heart and he cried out, “I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Sometimes Jesus would hesitate or even continue on as an individual was beseeching Him for His miracle-working power to give them sight, like the woman who wanted her child to be healed but she was not of the Jews and so Jesus went on as though He heard her not.
You see, sometimes God hesitates or He delays, it seems, in order to try to test the person to see if they will persist, and God tells us to persist in prayer. He tells us not to faint, and then He gives us the account of the woman who went to the unjust judge continually. He is encouraging us sinners to continue to go to Him and admit that we are sinful and that we need a Savior.
I was kind of struck a couple of times as I read the account of the Roman centurion who had a servant who was very ill. Apparently, in one Gospel account, it says that the centurion sent messengers to Jesus. In another account, it seems to indicate that he himself was there, but that is beside the point because he says to Jesus, whether directly or through some of his own servants, “For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh.” He is basically telling Christ, “Say the Word and my servant will be healed.”
So from afar, from a distance, it really was not necessary. It was not historically, even, necessary for Jesus to go and physically touch a person. He could heal, of course, from anywhere, because He is God and possesses all power, and so He indicated that this manservant would be made whole and he was, from a distance.
That is very important, I think, for us, because we do not have Christ physically present on the earth. We do not have Him, as the people in Israel of this day, where we could actually go to Him and cry out to Him and He could literally heal us right on the spot. But we do have Jesus on the Throne of Grace in Heaven, and He is available at any time. Actually, He is more available than if He were in person somewhere in some city. We would have to travel to get there and there would be big crowds and we would have to wait our turn in order to approach Him, to give Him our request.
Well, God actually has made Himself much more available through prayer for anyone to go to. We can go to Him and we can say, “O Lord, O Lord, I see on the pages of the Bible that whenever anyone would come to You, the blind, You gave them sight; the lame, You gave them legs. To the leper who cried out, ‘Have compassion!,’ You said, ‘I will have compassion.’ The dead who could not even make a cry, You raised. O Lord, I am coming to You because You are the Savior. You are Jesus. You are Jehovah Savior. You are the only One. There is no one else. You have laid out on the pages of the Bible an extremely merciful God who never seemed to turn someone down. Now, I know that I cannot demand of You, and I am not trying to say that because I come to You in any way that You must save me, but I know that this is Your character. You are very merciful and gracious and kind. O Lord, Hosanna! Hosanna, O save me, O God! Have mercy upon me, O God!”
You see, they are not just empty words, because the One we are addressing is a Person who came to do that. He came to be the Savior. He came to save His people from their sins, and that is something else that I thought we could look at.
In Matthew 1, it says, and I will read verse 21 again, Matthew 1:21:
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
He shall save everyone from their sins? It does not say that. He shall save His people from their sins. I am afraid that anyone who thinks that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, meaning every individual, is wrong, and that is a very dangerous thing to think.
Jesus died for certain ones, tens of millions of people, His elect. He died specifically for the sins of specific individuals. He took those sins upon Himself and paid the penalty for them, and each and every one of them will experience salvation. There is not going to be one who is left. There is not going to be a case where an individual was predestinated, or whose name was written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, who will fail to experience the salvation of God. Every single one of His people will become saved, and that is the guarantee of God.
The idea that Christ died for everyone but individuals have to activate that grace somehow by accepting Jesus, by taking His gift to themselves, that is not found in the Bible. God came for His people.
If we go to Psalm 87:6, it says:
JEHOVAH shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there. Selah.
And that is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus who entered into the human race. Jehovah is going to factor that in when He names each one whom He intends to save, “when He writeth up the people” and He places their names in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that the Lord Jesus is their Savior, that Christ died for those people.
Let us also go in the Psalms to 110, Psalm 110:3, which says:
Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power…
“Thy people,” God’s people, His people only will be willing because man, of himself, is not willing. Our wills are dead in sin. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “Ye will not come to me,” not on God’s terms as He lays them out in the Bible. Man is not willing and could never exercise his will to the point of salvation, and yet God’s people will be willing. They are going to be willing because He is going to take out the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh to enable them to walk in His commandments, to keep His statutes, to do His will.
God Himself will move in them to will and to do of His good pleasure, and that is how individuals are willing and that is why when we share the Gospel with people, we are never concerned with their resistance, their obstinance, their hard heart. We are not concerned with how they relate to the Gospel, because some people are just more open about their hostility and their lack of willingness towards doing it God’s way.
Every soul who is dead in sin is unwilling to serve God or to do the will of God, and it does not matter who they are. On the day that God saves them, in the time that God has determined, if they are one of His elect, they will be willing, just like the Apostle Paul who used to be Saul, a very stubborn and zealous individual who was persecuting the church when God came to him and changed him and converted him. Almost immediately, he was turned around and he wanted to do the will of God and not the way that he was going any longer.
Let us just go back to Exodus 5 where we read a historical account of the time when God used Moses and Aaron to approach Pharaoh in order to deliver His people, the Jews, who were in Egypt. It says in Exodus 5:1:
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith JEHOVAH God of Israel, Let my people go…
“My people”; now, within Egypt, you had Egyptians and you had other individuals who maybe were of other nations, and you had the Jews. Also, a mixed multitude did leave Egypt with the Jews; they would have been Gentiles. For some reason or another, they were probably servants to Egypt also. But God says to Pharaoh—and we know that in this historical parable, Pharaoh is representative of Satan; Egypt is representative of Satan’s hold over mankind who are in their sin—and God says, “Let My people go. My people, certain ones, the Egyptians remain,” and that is what Matthew 1:21 is saying, that Jesus came to save His people from their sins, and not everyone, not every individual.
If we go back to Matthew, we will just finish reading a couple of the verses there and then we will close. It says in Matthew 1:21-23:
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
“God with us”; you see, Christ was also given the name of Emmanuel, which comes from the book of Isaiah. In Isaiah 7:14, it prophesies that a virgin shall be with child, “and thou shall call His name Emmanuel.” And God does not leave it to chance or to our abilities here. He interprets what that means for us, “God with us.” Jehovah Savior, eternal God, has now made Himself in the form of a man and entered into the human race and He is going to redeem a people for Himself. This is only the beginning of what we read in the Bible about God being with us, because that continues forever and ever.
In Revelation 21, and this will be the last couple of verses that I read, it says in Revelation 21:2-3:
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
You see, that is finally what Christ came to do, which is to find out His people, wherever they might be in the world, throughout the generations. We have come down to the last generation of man, to the very last days, where God is going to save a great multitude of sinners from around the world, tens of millions of people during these last days of the Great Tribulation when the latter rain is falling, and they will be His people and God will be with His people forever into eternity future.
Okay, let us stop here and close with a word of prayer. Dear Father, we do thank You for Your plan of salvation, for Your grace and Your mercy and for Your goodness and kindness, that You bestow Your gifts on undeserving people, people who have done nothing to earn it, who could do nothing ever to obtain it. And, Father, we do thank You that it is completely in Your hands, that salvation is of the Lord and that it is out of our hands, and we thank You that You will finish what You have started in the lives of Your people. We pray that You would be with us for the rest of this day. In all that we do, may it be pleasing in Your sight. In Christ’s Name we pray. Amen.