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Immanuel, God with Us, Has Come God with Us: Christmas According to Matthew Advent 2019 Kenwood Baptist Church Sermon Series Pastor David Palmer December 8, 2019

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Immanuel, God with Us, Has Come God with Us: Christmas According to Matthew Advent 2019 Kenwood Baptist Church Sermon Series Pastor David Palmer December 8, 2019 Immanuel, God with Us, Has Come God with Us: Christmas according to Matthew Advent 2019 Kenwood Baptist Church Sermon Series Pastor David Palmer December 8, 2019 TEXT: Matthew 1:18-25 Let’s open our Bibles to Matthew 1 as we look at this wonderful paragraph of God's inspired Word to us. Matthew tells us about the birth of Christ and how His birth brings peace to the world, the return of God's own presence to us. Let’s look closely at God's Word this morning. Matthew 1:18 begins our passage as Matthew narrates for us how the birth of Christ took place: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together [in physical union] she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Matthew does not tell us exactly how Mary made this known to Joseph, but it must have been an awkward conversation for her to reveal to Joseph during their engagement that she was pregnant. The news of her pregnancy brought conversations that we are not privileged to have, but Joseph and Mary talked and discussed, and Joseph, Matthew tells us, was a righteous man. He was a just man, and upon receiving this news, hundreds of thoughts came through his mind, an awkward associated with this with this pregnancy, uncertainty about his own reputation, and fear of conversation of painful, apparent loss of innocence, the social embarrassment for himself and for his engaged, bride-to-be Mary, or Miriam. In the midst of these questions and uncertainties, Matthew tells us that Joseph's righteousness in this case was to act discreetly, that he resolved to act with discretion, and his intention was simply to divorce her quietly, not Page 1 of 9 in a large public way, but to end this engagement. It was his decision, his resolution, and really the resolution of his fear. He thought surely there'd been sin in some way, and yet his righteousness in this case was to act with discretion, and that was his decision. In the midst of this place, this resolve, Matthew tells us that as he considered these things, that is that course of action, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Theological dreams are precious treasures. God often comes to His people in a dream and chooses to do so. There are many examples in Scripture of people having theological dreams where God comes to them in a dream. I've had just a couple of theological dreams in my life, and each one of those was very special and at times of God's leading or confirming His will in a significant way. They were unsolicited, but they were just gracious gifts. So, God comes to Joseph in a dream. I’ve met many people in the world today that have met Jesus Christ in a dream. Many former Muslims have met Christ in a dream and believed upon Him. An angel of the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream and begins with direct address in Matthew 1:28: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” We discover from this direct address that Joseph, like Mary, is of the line of David. A direct address is followed by direct comfort: “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife.” This direct comfort is grounded with a direct explanation. When God comes to us in a dream, the speech, the communication, is often very clear. “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife.” Why? The direct explanation to Joseph in the dream is to explain that “the Child that is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” What a stunning reversal from everything that Joseph had thought or expected, everything that he had assumed. The angel explains in a direct and clear voice that what's happening in this moment is from God. Sometimes we mistake God's Word and God's work because it's not according to our design or expectation. God's work in the world is often surprising, and the angel speaks with direct clarity: “This is God at work. The child in Mary's womb is from the Holy Spirit.” The angel of the Lord continues in Matthew 1:21 and explains to Joseph: “She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." Finally, Joseph is given some direct instructions: “You, Joseph, shall call His name Jesus. You shall call the Child Jesus because He will save His people from their sins.” The name Jesus means Yahweh saves, and this child will be the very Agent of God Himself to save the world. This line is so significant that we are going to have an entire sermon next Sunday on the name Jesus. Look at Matthew 1:22. The direct address of the angel of the Lord is broken, or ended, with another voice. We read: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:” Page 2 of 9 All of a sudden, we have moved from the angel’s direct speech to Joseph in a dream to Matthew's voice. Do you see the change? We move from an inspired event, the Holy Spirit's conception of the Child Jesus in Mary's womb, the inspired description or interpretation that's given to us by the angel in this inspired text, and now we have the voice, as it were, of the of the narrator—of the evangelist himself. Our series this Advent is Christmas according to Matthew: God with us. In Matthew 1:22, we read Matthew's voice, Matthew’s inspired interpretation to the reader, to the hearer, of what's going on. God's Word contains a record, not only of inspired events; God's Word is given to us as an inspired text, and within that text, there is an inspired interpretation or explanation of the events we are reading about. The events of Scripture, or the events of our lives, are not self- interpreting, and this is critical for us as readers of the Bible and as Christians today. The events of Christmas are not self-interpreting. The events of Jesus' birth and the gathering of the nations to bring Him gifts, the music of Christmas, these are not events that interpret themselves. They're not events that are subject to your own individual and private interpretation, either. New Christmas songs come out every year, and some of them are good; some of them are less than good. Some of them won’t be sung in five years or ten years. Some of them won’t be sung next year. As we grapple with the meaning of Christmas, I want to point out to us this morning, and to dive in a little deeper, here to the reality that in the Scripture, we have an inspired interpretation of the event. It's Matthew who tells us that all of these events, all of these things, happened to fulfill the Word that the Lord had spoken by the prophet. The graphics for this Advent series are inspired in part by a very famous painting. It's a painting called The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. It was done in 1602 by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It was commissioned by a French Cardinal Matteo Contarelli, and this painting hangs inside of the chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, Italy. This church was built in 1589, and it's the national French church in Italy. There are famous figures from French history all around the outside of the church—Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, and others, but people don't linger long on the outside of this church. Everyone who visits this church, visits it in order to come inside the church and turn to the left and see this chapel. It's the Chapel of Contarelli, inside the left side of the church. Inside this chapel, there are three giant paintings by Caravaggio. Page 3 of 9 On the left side is a painting about the calling of Matthew. It's a fantastic painting that works with light to show light shining into Matthew’s face the moment that he was called to follow Jesus. On the right side of this triptych of paintings is Matthew's death, his martyrdom. Matthew was killed giving testimony to Christ in AD 74. The central painting is the one that concerns us the most this series, and it's the painting that captures people's attention when they come into the Contarelli Chapel. It’s this beautiful painting of Matthew and an angel hovering above him. In this painting, we see an angel wrapped in a white cloth and Matthew was at his desk. Of course, Caravaggio painted this according to the artistic conventions and imagination of how people wrote in the Middle Ages, so we have to give the painter some poetic license. The scholar says: “This isn’t exactly how people sat and wrote in the first century,” but I can live with that. Art is given to us by God to help us see the world in new ways, and in this painting, Caravaggio draws our attention to this dynamic of inspiration. It is as though the angel is prompting Matthew.
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