What a Nativity Scene Doesn’t Tell You

Each year, when Christmas rolls around, it can be enjoyable to drive around in your car, in the early evening, and see how people have decorated their house and yard for the holiday. It’s not uncommon for people to have lights lining the edges of the house, or strung up in the trees along their driveway. Some people have inflatable characters – like Frosty the Snowman, or the Grinch. For people who have the Grinch in their yard, I’m not sure what that communicates about how much they like Christmas, but in any case, they decorated their yard, so there must be something there. And then, I’m sure you’ve seen this, too – some people have some sort of sleigh with reindeer, possibly some sort of Santa figure in their yard, as well. But then there are a select number of people who make a point of decorating with a nativity scene.

Nativity scenes are intended to display the circumstances of that night when Jesus was born, in a very general way. Now, I’m sure that we could raise valid questions about the historical accuracy of some of these scenes. Were the wisemen really there at the same time as the shepherds? Did Jesus’s parents have white skin? Was the stable a wooden structure, or was it made from mud brick or rock? Frankly, that’s not the point. I think for most people, nativity scenes are simply intended to communicate that Christmas is about Jesus, and that Jesus was really, historically born in Bethlehem. These are important realities that we need to hold on to.

But there’s something important, about the circumstances of Jesus’s birth, that a nativity scene doesn’t show us. For Christians and non-Christians alike, as we look at a nativity scene, it’s easy to think of that scene in terms of “Father-Mother-Baby.” Because that’s how ordinary families work – that’s the formula for how babies are naturally born: Father-mother-baby.

But, this morning, as we continue our Advent Series in the Gospel of Matthew, we’re reminded that Jesus defies the natural pattern. His parentage isn’t normal. He is no ordinary baby – and Matthew, one of Jesus’s closest disciples, being prompted along by the Holy Spirit in his writing here – he wants to help us understand why this is significant. So if you haven’t already, please turn with me to Matthew, Chapter 1 – at the beginning of the New Testament. And I’ll be reading verses 18 through 25. (Matthew 1:18-25). But before I read our text, please pray with me:

[Pray and Read Text]

God Has Sent the Christ to Be with Us

Last week we saw that Matthew starts off his account of Jesus’s life and ministry by telling us about Jesus’s genealogy. And you remember, he did this in order to make a certain argument – to show that this Jesus, born of Mary, is the Chosen One, the Christ – the One who will bring all of God’s promises to fulfillment in human history. And in our text this morning, Matthew continues to develop this argument, by describing the extraordinary circumstances of Jesus’s birth.

Specifically, we’ll give attention to three things that Matthew explains about Jesus. First, that Jesus’s conception and birth were miraculous – that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Second, that Jesus had a unique God-given task – that he was commissioned to save his people from their sins. And third, that Jesus was called by the name “God with us” – or Immanuel in Hebrew.

So these three descriptions of Jesus will be my three points as we work through the text. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, Commissioned to Save His People, and Called by the Name “God with us.”

Conceived by the Holy Spirit

So first, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. After Matthew announces his topic – that he’ll be telling us about the birth of Christ – the first thing he says about it, in verse 18, concerns Jesus’s mother Mary: “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they had come together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

Now, Matthew wants to make it clear here that Joseph and Mary weren’t living together before they were married. They would have understood that that’s a way of cheapening and dishonoring the holy institution of marriage – that would be immoral in the eyes of God. And so this young, god-fearing, engaged couple – they weren’t married yet. They weren’t living together. They hadn’t physically come together in an intimate way. Joseph knew it. And Mary knew she hadn’t come together with Joseph, or any other man. And yet, Mary was found to be with child. She could no longer hide her baby bump.

Scandalous

So the first thing we should understand about Jesus’ conception – about Mary’s pregnancy – is that it would have seemed scandalous. Young men – married men – just imagine for a minute, that you were engaged to be married to the girl of your dreams. And up until this point, you’ve been a man of honor. You’ve been convinced by God’s Word that it’s right to hold your desires in check until your wedding day – that physical intimacy should wait until you’ve committed yourself, exclusively, to that one woman in the covenant of marriage.

But then one day it becomes awkwardly obvious to you, and to everyone else, that your fiancé is pregnant. What sort of emotions would be running through your mind? Anger? Confusion? Feeling the pain of rejection or betrayal? Feeling shame, as people around town start to whisper?

Joseph initially interprets the situation the way that everyone else was interpreting it. Mary has been with another man. And because of this verse 19 tells us that “her husband Joseph, being a just man, resolved to divorce her quietly.”

Now, the text already refers to Joseph as Mary’s husband, because being betrothed or engaged at that time meant that the marriage process had already been started. By this time, Joseph probably would have already paid a bride price – like making a down-payment for a house. Grooms would make a down-payment on their marriage, to show their commitment and their ability to provide for their future wife. So the marriage had been initiated – just not finalized. But with Mary being pregnant – it appeared to be a serious breach of the marriage relationship.

And so for the Jews reading this account, they would probably find it scandalous for Joseph to marry a woman like this – unless, of course, Joseph really was the father, which would be scandalous in a different way. But Matthew insists that both Joseph and Mary were innocent.

In our text, he makes it clear that Joseph was a just man. Joseph was prepared to send Mary away, because God’s law permitted men to divorce wives who were unfaithful or indecent, in Deuteronomy 24:1. Yet Matthew highlights Joseph’s godly manhood and integrity here by describing that Joseph was planning to divorce Mary quietly – in a noble, gracious way.

And just consider what this tells us about Joseph’s character for minute. Though he’s been deeply hurt by the scandal, he doesn’t take this opportunity to try to get revenge. He doesn’t publicly condemn Mary, or criticize her father or her family.  He doesn’t secretly whisper to other people about his speculations. Joseph isn’t the type of man who instigates immoral scandals. Instead, he’s a just man – that’s Matthew’s point. And in his uprightness, Joseph resolves to divorce Mary quietly.

Supernatural

But before Joseph can do this, something incredible happens. Verse 20: “But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “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.”

So the second thing to understand here about Jesus’s conception is that it was supernatural – that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

If you’ve ever read the account of Jesus’s life written by Luke, you’ll probably remember that Mary already knew that this was the case. An angel had appeared to her, to explain that her pregnancy would be miraculously brought about by the Holy Spirit. And if you’re anything like me, I’ve generally assumed that at some point, Mary would have pulled Joseph aside to try to explain what was going on – that Joseph would have already been aware of Mary’s version of the story, and that the coming of the angel was simply a confirmation of what Mary had already said.

But the text doesn’t suggest this at all. And for historians who are familiar with cultural norms at the time, it actually seems that young couples like this usually weren’t ever left alone to have private conversations with each other. We should understand, here, that when Joseph is visited by an angel in this dream – he’s probably hearing about the extraordinary circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy for the first time.

And so Matthew explains to his skeptical Jewish audience – the reason Joseph took Mary to be his wife, wasn’t because he was feeling pressure from his father-in-law, and it wasn’t because he was admitting any involvement in Mary’s pregnancy – but it was because of this angelic message. Matthew wants to make sure we understand that Jesus’s conception is supernatural – that he was conceived by the Spirit of God.

But why does this matter, anyway? Some people might think it’s just another way to show that Jesus is special – that it’s just one of many miracles that are supposed to give us a vague sense of Jesus’s importance. But the spiritual nature of Jesus’s conception has profound theological importance.

This could almost be a whole sermon in itself, but at this point, I’ll just summarize three reasons why the supernatural, spiritual conception of Christ is an important core belief for our faith. First, it makes it clear that Jesus has God as his Father. In Luke 1, verse 35, when the angel is telling Mary about the baby she’s going to have, the angel explains that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon her, and the power of the Most High will overshadow her – and “therefore the child will be called holy, the Son of God.” And the only other person who can claim similar parentage to this would be the first man, Adam. Because the Spirit of God was breathed into the dust to give Adam birth – to give him life. And now, in a similar way, the Spirit of God is being breathed into a creature of dust – into this young woman, Mary – to bring about the birth of Jesus.

And related to this, the second reason why Jesus’s supernatural conception is important is because Jesus is not under Adam. He is a new Adam. Up until that time, the whole human race has been descended from Adam, and has been affected by Adam’s sin, and its consequences. This is called original sin – all people, by nature, are infected with it. It distorts our thinking, our desires, and our affections. But even though Jesus shares in Adam’s flesh and blood, through Mary, Jesus Christ is not under Adam’s sin. He doesn’t have fallen Adam as his Father. He has God as his Father. He shares our human constraints, our sufferings, our weakness – he knows what it means to be tempted by the devil, by his friends, by his enemies. And yet, Jesus is not sinful. There is no sin on him, either from Adam, or from his own failings. The spotlessness and righteousness of Christ’s human nature is connected to the reality of the virgin birth.

Third and finally, the supernatural conception of Jesus not only tells us that Jesus is not under Adam. It also points to Jesus as being a new representative in the place of Adam. This idea is developed in Romans Chapter 5. Everyone under Adam has been brought under his fallenness, rebellion, and sin. This is our default condition. We stand corrupt and condemned before God as sinners. But there is now a new man – an alternative to Adam. And everyone who is under this new man, Jesus, by faith, is brought under Jesus’s faithfulness, righteousness, and salvation. And this is all because of his supernatural conception. By taking on true human flesh, yet having God as his true Father, Jesus is able to save sinners from the family line of Adam, bringing us new birth and new life in the Spirit.

Scriptural

Now, all this being said, we’ve seen that Jesus’s conception was scandalous – we’ve also seen that it was supernatural. I’ll briefly one more thing that’s important to understand about his birth. The circumstances of Jesus’s birth were scriptural.

And what I mean by this is that in Holy Scriptures, written hundreds of years earlier by the prophet Isaiah, God explicitly revealed that this is how his chosen one, the Christ, would be born. Matthew points this out in verses 22 and 23: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son…” The virgin birth of Jesus is a further piece of evidence that out of all people in human history, from the beginning to the end – out of every billionaire, king, celebrity, or CEO – out of all people who have ever lived – this man, Jesus Christ, is the one God has chosen to judge the world. The Bible confirms that he, Jesus, is the everlasting king over the universe.

Commissioned to Save His People

But in addition to describing Jesus in terms of his miraculous birth, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, Matthew also describes Jesus as the one who has been Commissioned to Save His People. This is my second main point: Commissioned to Save His People.

This description of Jesus comes from our text. The angel tells Joseph what he should do when Mary has given birth – look in Verse 21: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Meaning of Jesus’s Name

As it turns out, the name Jesus has a special meaning. The name Yesous (Jesus) is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Jeshua or Joshua. And the name Jeshua means “The LORD saves.” “Yahweh – the Great I AM – He Saves.” That’s what the name Jesus means.

So there’s an interesting question that arises here. The angel has just said that “She (Mary) will bear a son, and you shall call his name Yahweh saves, Jesus. Good so far. But why give the baby this name? The angel says it’s because HE, this baby, will save his people from their sins.” So wait a second – who’s doing the saving? I can just imagine the Jews in Matthew’s day asking this question. Is it God, the LORD, saving his people? Or is it this little human being, the baby?

Of course, the answer is both. Jesus, the Christ, is both truly God and truly man. And this is something that looking at a nativity scene can’t tell us. This baby, that was born in stable, and laid in a manger, was the Mighty LORD, the Commander in Chief of the armies of heaven, the Prince of eternal glory! His specialness isn’t associated with how cute he looked, or how seldom he cried, or how much of a glow there was around his head – but this otherwise ordinary baby was totally different in that he had (and forever continues to have) a divine nature. Jesus is God. “And he will save his people from their sins.”

Mission of Jesus Explained

Now, it’s no accident that Matthew makes sure to tell us these words of the angel. From the very beginning of his account – from the very beginning of Jesus’s life, Matthew wants to make sure we know what Jesus has come to do.

There are a number of people who read the first three gospel accounts in the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and it can be easy to lose sight of what Jesus has come to do. This is because these accounts of Jesus’s life – they include a lot of things about Jesus’s ministry: the things he taught, and the miracles he performed. And so some people walk away from the gospel accounts thinking that the purpose of Jesus’s coming was to be a good moral teacher, or to give us an enlightened way of thinking, to make ourselves better people. Other people assume that Jesus’s key purpose in coming was to make miraculous things happen. This maybe explains why there are a number of churches today that are so focused on trying to get people to speak in tongues, or to make miracles happen.

But wrapped in Jesus’s name – which is repeated over and over again throughout Matthew’s gospel account – is the good news that the LORD will save his people from their sins. That’s what Jesus has come to do.

And this should help us to understand – the biggest problem in the world, as God sees it – it isn’t lack of education and the need for a moral teacher. It isn’t sickness in need of healing, and the need for a miracle workers. Instead, the foundational problem is the problem of sin – we have missed God’s mark. We have fallen short of his glory. And so we need a savior, to bring us out of our corruption and our guilt and our enmity toward God – and to make our souls safe.

And by saying this, Matthew is pointing his finger at his readers, here. And he’s telling them you are a sinner. You have not perfectly pleased God. You are not a good person. You are not on your way to heaven unless you have been saved by Jesus. The reason that the Divine Son needed to take on flesh, and needed to come to save his people from their sins, is precisely because we could not save ourselves.

But notice – Jesus has come, not just to save us from the guilty feelings we have about our sins – not just to save us from the consequences we deserve for our errors – but Jesus has come to save us from our sins themselves. Though we might feel bad when we sin, that isn’t the main problem. Jesus didn’t just come to save us from our bad feelings. He came to save us from sin itself. Whether we feel happy or miserable about our sin is irrelevant.  Sin is still evil. It’s still an act of violence and rebellion against our Creator. Sin is still deceitful, and damaging to the human soul, and destructive to the world, and deplorable in the eyes of everyone who loves what’s good. And so it is announced to us, here, that Jesus has come to save us from our sins.

But are we willing to admit our wrongs? Are we willing to admit our need for God to save us? Because if you’re willing to admit your lostness, and weakness, and badness before God – there’s good news for you here. The LORD has come down, to save his people from their sins. Everyone who turns to Him – who trusts in Him – will be saved.

Called by the Name “God with Us”

But there’s one more description of Jesus in the text that we need to give attention to. He’s conceived by the Holy Spirit, He’s commissioned to save his people, and He’s called by the name “God with Us.”

Look again with me, at verse 23: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).” Now, Jesus isn’t literally given the name “Immanuel.” But Matthew nonetheless, confidently quotes the prophet Isaiah, here, in verse 23. He seems to recognize that the name mentioned by the prophet is moreso a description of the child born to the virgin, rather than his literal name. The child is God with us.

Immanuel Communicates that God is with us

And each of the words, here, in this simple little three-word phrase, is significant. For one thing, we learn from this description that God is with us. As already mentioned before, Matthew wants us to understand that Jesus has both a divine nature, and a human nature. Because of what the Bible says here, we can’t agree with Secularists and Muslims, who say that Jesus was just a man. We can’t affirm, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses, that Jesus was some sort of created spiritual being, like an angel. Instead, Jesus is called God with us. Don’t take this lightly.

Immanuel Communicates that God is with us

But, notice too, how Jesus operates in his divinity. The name Immanuel describes Jesus as God with us. And this means that God is concerned about human affairs. We are not introduced to him as the distant God away from us. He is not the enemy God against us. He is not even referred to here as the High and Holy God above us – though this is true! But he is God with us!

He’s with us, in that he has lived in our world. He has breathed the same air, has drank the same water, and He’s climbed the same mountains. He has descended into our sorrows, and he understands our suffering. But he’s also with us in our human nature – to be able to stand up in our place, to represent us before God as our mediator. He’s with us, in bringing our prayers to our Father as our intercessor. But he’s also with us even now, by His Spirit, which he has poured out on his people. He’s with us to convict us of His truth, to comfort our fears, and to compel us onward with hope. If you are in Christ, you are not alone! Never alone! But God has sent His Son and we can confidently say, “God is with us.”

Immanuel Communicates that God is with us

But make sure you recognize that Immanuel also describes Jesus as being God with us. Not just “God is with our pastor.” Not just, “God is with the people in the church who are the smartest, the cleanest-looking, or the nicest.” But God is with us – with all his covenant people. He doesn’t show partiality. He doesn’t pick favorites and keep others of us at a distance. But because of Jesus’s coming, God is with me! God is with you! The work of Christ, to cleanse us of sin, and to bring us to God – it’s for all of us!

And this is why, week after week, we can gather together to worship God, having confidence that our worship is acceptable to Him. Because of Jesus, our corruption and guilt has been carried away to the cross. Heaven is no longer closed to us. We don’t have to cower back in doubt or fear. If you are trusting in Jesus Christ to save you from your sins, then take heart by this good news! God is with us. And he will never leave, nor forsake us.

As the chosen one, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin – there is no one else who’s qualified to save you from your sins, and to bring you close to God. Jesus is the Christ, to be received and believed. So let’s believe it. Let’s take hold of the good news, that God has drawn near to us, and let’s take every opportunity to draw near to God with reverence and rejoicing. Because God is with us. There’s no way you’re going to get a better gift than that this Christmas. So don’t be ashamed to speak about it. The baby in the nativity scene isn’t just a little decoration. He is LORD. So let’s ask our Father in heaven to give us a right appreciation of Jesus – not just at this time of year, but all year, every year. Let’s pray: