This morning, if you would turn with me to Matthew chapter 1, as we read together verses 18 through 25, our focus being verses 20 and 21, Matthew chapter 1, 18 to 25, as well, if you would turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to our confessional reference, page 21 in the back of the Psalter hymnal, to Lord's Day 14, questions and answers 35 and 36. We will give expression to what we believe with these answers in just a moment. If you open to those two places. Beloved, it had been about 400 years since God had spoken to His people. Well, they had what we call the Old Testament. They had the law, the prophets, the writings. They had the beautiful Psalms. But God had not come to His people in the way that they were, we might say, accustomed to through a prophet for about 400 years. He was silent. What happened to God's promises? His promise of the Messiah who would be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. What happened to the one who would not only proclaim freedom for the captives, as Isaiah 61 says, but also who, as the psalmist says, would lead captives in His train. You see, 400 years is a long time. And if you think about it, these promises were even older than that. These promises were handed down from generation to generation to generation. Generations came and went. They were born, they died, and they hung on to these promises. A bit different than today when we are given promises and those promises aren't kept within a relatively short period of time, we lose hope. We give up after a couple of weeks, maybe even after a matter of days. We figure they will not come true. But 400 years, this man Joseph that we're going to read about, an ordinary Israelite, he most likely did not wake up every morning wondering if this could be the day. But all of a sudden, at some point in time, Joseph had a visitor. But not just any visitor, an angel of the Lord. Joseph received the greatest news possible from God Himself through this messenger. And the angel's message to Joseph was that the time had come. The time had come for the expected Messiah. The time had come for the unexpected Messiah. We turn to Matthew chapter 1, beginning at verse 18. Familiar portion of Scripture. Again, our focus being verses 20 and 21. We'll read through 25. Hear now the Word of God. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 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. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife, but he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus. May God add His blessing to the reading and the preaching of His Word. Lord's Day 14, page 21, let's confess these answers together. Question 35 asks, What does it mean that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary? That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to Himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, A truly human nature, so that he might become David's true descendant in all things like us his brothers, except for sin. How does the holy conception and birth of Christ benefit you? He is our mediator, and with his innocence and perfect holiness, he removes from God's sight my sin, mine since I was conceived. Well, beloved in the Lord, the angel of the Lord came to Joseph with a birth announcement. Now, birth announcements are exciting, aren't they? We love them. And even parents, especially first-time parents, they can't even wait to tell about that until the baby's born. They're excited. They're excited to tell their family and friends that they're expecting a child, even if it's months down the road. and they tell when that expected due date is. And with our modern technology, they might even share whether that baby is a boy or a girl. And when that baby is born, what joy! They want everyone to share in their joy. But what an announcement the angel gave to Joseph. The angel's message was that the child Mary carried was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would be born of the Virgin Mary. Now, this is what we confess about the incarnate Christ, God come in the flesh. And beloved, it's no accident that we confess this. This is what God Himself teaches us. The angel announced it. Now, boys and girls, we just commemorated on that day we call Good Friday, we just commemorated the crucifixion and the death of Jesus. And we celebrated last week Sunday on that day we call Easter Sunday, We celebrated His resurrection. But here we have the Christmas announcement. You might say, we're a little late. We're about four months late. Christmas was about four months ago. Lord's Day 14 is the Christmas announcement, the Christmas Lord's Day. Indeed, we celebrate our Lord's work, the fullness of His work, every day of the year. But we must remember that without the crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, Christmas and His birth mean nothing. But also without Christ's conception by the Holy Spirit and birth of the Virgin Mary, the crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus would have never happened. God's people did not yet fully understand. But this very one announced by the angel was the very one they needed. The time had come for the expected Messiah. And even though they did not yet fully understand, the Jews waited for a Messiah to come. The promise to be fulfilled. The promise that had lasted for generations upon generations. They waited for a Messiah to come. And this included Joseph. Now, this news would be good news to Joseph, obviously for a couple of reasons. One of them, a very practical reason. This would be good news to him because if what the angel said was true, that meant Mary had not broken her vow to Joseph. The angel said that Mary conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. That meant that she was still a virgin. That meant that she was the one Isaiah prophesied about in chapter 7, verse 14. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel. You see, beloved Joseph was in the midst of what we might call an unsettling circumstance. A very unsettling circumstance. He knew that Mary, his bride-to-be, was pregnant. She was found to be with child. And at first, this news was not very exciting to him as it should have been because he knew that he was not the baby's father. Things were not going according to his plan. Now, the text describes him as a righteous man, which means that he was a believer. He had true faith. He loved God above all and his neighbor as himself, and therefore it was not his desire to rake Mary over the coals, as we say. It was not his desire, as verse 19 says, to expose her to public disgrace, to parade her through the streets and say, look what she has done to me! And to make himself look all the better. Joseph knew what the law demanded. Deuteronomy 22, verses 23 and 24 calls for death, for unfaithfulness. And what other explanation could there be here, right? Many today would say, what's the big deal? Many women get pregnant outside of marriage, sometimes even by men to whom they are not committed. That's life. What's the big deal? Who cares? If you don't like it, there are measures you can take to take care of the problem, the result. And of course, we know better, don't we? But at that time, you see, Mary was pledged, betrothed to Joseph to be married to him. It's kind of like our engagements, only different. Our engagements can be easily broken off if one of the two changes their mind for whatever reason. But back then, the betrothal was really the act of commitment. It was binding. It was as if the wedding had already taken place. The vows were said, and in the eyes of the law, Mary and Joseph were legally married, although they were not living in the same house. The wedding celebration had not yet taken place. They had not yet consummated their marriage relationship. Mary was still a virgin. But she was found to be with child. And because she was committed to Joseph, pledged to him, that's what was so unsettling for Joseph. You see, the fact that she was found, well, people talk. They gossip. They don't really care about the facts. and this would bring about dishonor for Mary and for him. So he would simply divorce her quietly. Who would believe their story? Well, we would be skeptical, right? But God overcame Joseph's skepticism and provided in such a way to keep away any dishonor from this glorious message of the expected Messiah. And He does this by sending the comforting messenger. Again, this was no ordinary messenger. and this message it didn't come by smoke signal it didn't come by telegram it didn't come by snail mail or email it didn't even come but through another human being now we know of course that joseph wasn't the first to hear from god after a 400 year dry spell zachariah john the baptist's dad was and then mary when the angel gabriel came to her but it appears that mary didn't tell joseph that Mary didn't tell Joseph about the angel's visit to her. How could she keep a secret like this from Joseph? We don't know. We're not told if the angel told her to keep quiet about it. Or whether she figured, you know, this is too unbelievable, he'll never understand. Obviously, the news would show sooner or later as it obviously had. She was found to be with a child. And even Joseph, as a righteous man, would have a hard time believing another human being about how she conceived. Mary couldn't prove her situation. But in God's providential care, He restrained Mary. He kept her from telling Joseph and left that in God's hands. The only one who would be able to convince Him. And God would not allow any unfavorable suspicion to fall on the blessed heavenly message. The angel's message put everything into perspective and calmed Joseph's troubled heart. The work of God, the work of God, the Holy Spirit, left no doubts for Joseph. And he was able to take Mary as his wife with confidence and become the child's earthly father. And in that way, beloved, as we confess in answer 35, this child would become David's true descendant. You see, this was the long-awaited announcement. The Jews expected an heir to David's throne. In Luke 2, verse 4, it says, Joseph belonged to the house and line of David. And actually, it's believed that Mary herself belonged to David's family line. But Jesus would be seen as Joseph's son. And through Joseph, God fulfills His promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, verse 16, when He says, Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before Me. Your throne will be established forever. See, God had not forgotten them. The One they had been waiting for to bring them released from Rome and to restore Israel to worldwide honor and acclaim was coming. The time had come. They expected a man to lead them. They expected a man, and the Messiah would indeed be a man, human. Like you and me. Paul makes that clear as well, that Jesus was a man, a human being, when he says in Galatians 4, verse 4, that Jesus was born of a woman. What great news for Joseph. His wife would give birth to the man they had long been waiting for the one they expected. Yeah, wait a minute. What was that the angel said? You see, Joseph had to process all of this. He couldn't just take a part of it. He had to process all of this. This child, the angel said, was conceived by the Holy Spirit of God, would be born of a virgin, and if Joseph remembered his Bible class when they studied Isaiah, this child would be Emmanuel. God with us. But that's not all. The angel said Joseph was to give him the name Jesus because he would save his people from, wait a minute, not Rome, not earthly oppression, but from their sins. In other words, the angel's message to Joseph was also that the time had come for the unexpected Messiah. This message, you see, was a little different than expected. This Messiah was a little different than they thought He would be. You see, we sing, Come thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free. But you see, that song came long after our Lord Jesus Christ came. We sing that from the perspective of having the whole story. but for them this Messiah was somewhat unexpected beloved the divine conception and virgin birth proved that the Messiah's work was entirely God's plan it was entirely his work again we don't know how much of this Joseph really understood but but again God's people would not be saved from Rome's rule as they thought they would be saved from their sins but was this really necessary that's not the problem we're having is it it's oppression from Rome not sin isn't that true of us once in a while too we hear the law of God and we very quickly and very flippantly compare our lives maybe in the last day or two against the law of God and we think I'm doing okay I've been doing pretty well but you see there could be no greater news than this all political, all earthly ideas were wiped away instead God's salvation plan was to save us from a danger that we can't even truly understand or fathom how deadly and serious it is I think so many reject the gospel message because they do not truly understand we don't truly understand just how deadly our predicament was. Boys and girls, it's kind of like a small child in the path of a speeding car sure to be hit by that speeding car and that child doesn't even understand the danger. Or a child reaching up to the stovetop just ready to touch that fiery hot burner. That child is saved from the speeding car when someone snatches him out of the car's path or from that fiery hot burner when mom pulls his hand away. Saving presupposes a need to be saved. That one needed to be saved. We know, beloved, that our sin has separated us from God, from His glory and from His eternal blessing and placed us on the path to the fiery torment and the deadly danger of hell. God sent Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to save us from being lost forever. To save us from the peril of hell. We couldn't save ourselves. Not even if we wanted to. That simple message, beloved, that simple phrase is something we need to be reminded of over and over and over again. That we couldn't save ourselves, not even if we wanted to. Because we so quickly forget, don't we? In order to be saved from our sin, we needed our sin removed. The result of our sin is that God is terribly offended, terribly angry with us. And we are unholy. We are unrighteous. And God will not look on us. He will not accept us into His holy presence because of sin. The wages of sin is death. This unexpected Messiah came to rescue us according to our true need. As we celebrated just recently, Jesus suffered and died on the cross and by doing that, He paid for our sins. He was punished in our place. He removed the curse of sin from us and because He did that for you and for me, as we confess in answer 36, He removes from God's sight my sin. Mine since I was conceived. Meditate on that just for a moment. He removed from God's sight all that God sees. My sin. All that characterizes me. My sinful human nature. Gone. God doesn't see it. And only He could do this because He was perfectly righteous and holy. And not only does He take away my sin and shame and guilt, but He replaces it with something. He gives me His perfect righteousness and holiness. And that's now how I stand in God's sight. God looks at you as a believer. He looks at me as a believer. And He doesn't see me as I know I am. He sees me as I have become in Christ Jesus. Beloved, we are saved from the greatest evil and given the greatest good. We all face things in this life that we think that we need to be saved from. Bullies in school or in the neighborhood. Financial stress. Illness. Annoying friends. Maybe your job. Outrageous gas prices. We need to be saved from that. But our true need is salvation from sin, beloved, in the broadest sense of the word, sin's guilt, sin's penalty, sin's power, sin's consequences. And for this, we needed none other than the unexpected Messiah. And what did He merit for us? Well, the forum for the celebration of the Lord's Supper says it so well. He fulfilled for us all obedience and righteousness of the divine law. He was bound that we might be loosed. He was innocently condemned so that we might be acquitted. He suffered the curse of the cross so that the curse might be removed from us. He suffered hell so that we might be able to enjoy God. Notice, beloved, notice, boys and girls and young people, that none of these things is what we call material benefits. Money, clothes, cars, homes, power. None of those things is what Christ merited for you and me. But all of these things are benefits we needed to stand before God cleansed and holy. Yes, Christmas and the birth of Christ is a time of rejoicing. Emmanuel has come. Yet it's also a time of indictment. His coming must convict us of our sin and shame because that's why He came. See, sometimes I think even believers at times at Christmas time, we rejoice at Christmas time as we ought to. We rejoice because the Savior has come. But we rejoice sometimes, in a sense, forgetting why He came. Forgetting our sin. Whereas on Good Friday, so many evangelical believers, they mourn. It's a Black Friday. They mourn, they mourn, they mourn the death of Jesus. Oh, how shameful, how pitiful. Yet that's when we are called to rejoice. Because Christ died. He took the punishment of God upon Himself for you and for me. And you see, this unexpected Messiah came to fulfill a task that required no ordinary man. We confess in Lord's Day 6 why the Savior had to be both true and righteous man and true God. Very simply, just a refresher, man sinned and therefore man must pay for his sin. But he couldn't because he's sinful. Pardon me. One of those scratches that won't go away. Man couldn't pay for his sin. In order to pay for the sin of another, he had to be perfect. He had to be perfectly holy and righteous. Only God is perfectly holy and righteous. And only God could bear the punishment of Himself. His own punishment against sin. He had to be a true and righteous man, yet God to do what needed to be done. And now the angel's message in our confession in Lord's Day 14 is how He could be both. Notice answer 35 again. That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to Himself through the working of the Holy Spirit from the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary a truly human nature so that He might become David's true descendant in all things like us His brothers except for sin. As John says, the eternal Word, our Savior, became flesh and dwelt among us. Now we must admit that the incarnation, God becoming flesh, is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. Two natures, divine and human, in one person. Fully God. True God. Fully and true man. Many throughout history have and still deny that either Jesus was God or that He was man. Today, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus is God. But this is what we are called to believe because this is the truth which our God Himself teaches us. Without this Savior, not simply one like Him, But this particular Savior, without Him, we have no hope. This One conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary is God Himself. His name is Jesus because He alone, no one else, He alone would save, rescue, deliver from sin all the ways that man misses the mark. But save from sin His people. Who are His people? As John says over and over and over again, whoever believes in Him. Those graciously chosen by God and given new birth in Him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is to be our response to the angel's message of this Messiah. To believe in Him. Notice Joseph and Mary's response to this message. In Luke 1, after the angel Gabriel gave the very same message, news to Mary, we read in verse 38, She says, I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. May it be to me as you have said. She believed. Here in Matthew 1, verse 24, it says, When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. He too believed and obeyed. Again, beloved, so many distort the truth of Jesus and many, we know, even distort the truth of Mary. And they raise her up to a status that Christ never gave her. They raise her up to a status that nowhere in Scripture do we read she took to herself. She was indeed greatly honored by God to be the mother of the Messiah, but that too was only by grace. Her response, along with Joseph's, her response to God's call is to be a type of the obedience of faith that all believers are called to. This truth of Jesus is a call for our obedience, beloved, to believe and trust in this one and only who could, who would, and indeed did save us from our sins. Many say that in the broad scheme of things, it doesn't matter if you believe these things. You see, there are constant attacks against the truth of Jesus by groups such as the Jesus Seminar, which in effect denies, to put it very simply, the Jesus Seminar denies everything about Jesus that simply can't be explained or can't be explained simply. Or that goes against our common sense. Or we think about recent attacks and lies against Jesus by the Da Vinci Code. Beloved Satan is indeed busy. But again, to many, it really doesn't matter if he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. You know, those are just juicy details to spice up the story a little bit. Because we're a lot smarter than that, aren't we? We know, of course, that this couldn't be possible. We know what it takes to make a new life. In fact, it doesn't matter, they say, if you believe in the historic Jesus at all. All that we have about Him recorded in Scripture about His life is most likely fairy tale anyway. What's really important, they say, is that you believe in the concept of a Jesus like this. Your Jesus could be anything you want it to be, just so the concept is on this order. Or as Dr. Godfrey reminded us last week, as so many, they simply, at this time of year, they find comfort in the principle of a new life. Springtime. New growth. Flowers. Bunnies. but you see beloved the holy conception and virgin birth of Jesus Christ points to new birth it points to new life for you and me it points to the only way of salvation including the regeneration of his people John says again in John chapter 1 12 and 13 yet to all who received him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. Beloved, true faith is knowing what the Bible says. It says that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, fully and truly God, fully and truly man. That's what the Bible says. Faith is believing what the Bible says, even if we can't explain it. And the God-man is indeed a mystery. And then true faith also includes trusting that it's true for me too. This is the Savior. The only one we needed. The only one able to remove from God's sight my sin and to give me His righteousness. Do you believe in Him? Do you trust He has done this for you? You see, this blessed message is for all those who look to Him in faith. Even if you're here this morning and it's your very first time, you've never before prayed and looked to Jesus Christ, this is true for you. It's for you. He alone has freed us from sin and we are called to strive to live in thankful obedience to God. You see, in reality, the Christmas message includes the Easter message. He has accomplished God's salvation plan and we live this life beloved in His power and in His strength in expectation and anticipation of the life to come. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, we praise You that indeed when we cannot make full sense of the mysteries that You have placed before us in Your Word that we may have full confidence that You understand these things full well. And we come before You this morning with that confidence, O Lord, that You have provided for us the salvation and the Savior, the only one we needed. We thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You for the truth of Your Word. We thank You, Father, for the faith to believe that word. Strengthen our faith, we pray. If there are some here this morning who do not have that gift of faith, Father, we pray for your blessing upon them. Open their hearts, their lives, that they too might believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Father, hear our prayer for Jesus' sake and in His name alone. Amen.