The Virgin Birth

Mt. 1:18-25

Prayer: Father, I pray that You would teach us by Your Spirit what these Words mean and apply them to our hearts and lives. I pray in particular that You would give us the joy and courage of Joseph this morning, that we would not be afraid to obey You. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Introduction
The doctrine of the virgin birth is one of the key doctrines of the Christian faith. Chesterton says that the Creed is like a key that unlocks the world, and as with any key, every ridge and angle matters. The virgin birth is not merely “another cool miracle,” like the healings of blind men or walking on water. The virgin birth is central to our salvation. 

The Text: “…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…” (Mt. 1:18-25)

Summary of the Text
When Joseph found out that his fiancé was pregnant – and not by him, he was planning to end their engagement quietly, until an angel of the Lord assured him that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18-20). The angel told Joseph that the child would be a son, and that he ought to name him Jesus because he would save his people from their sins (Mt. 1:21). And the gospel writer, Matthew, says that all of this was a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, foretelling that a virgin would conceive and bear a son and his name would be called Emmanuel (Mt. 1:22-23). So Joseph obeyed the angel and married Mary, but they did not consummate their marriage until after Jesus was born (Mt. 1:24-25). 

Isaiah’s Prophecy
It’s important to note that Isaiah’s prophecy has an immediate historic context in which King Ahaz of the southern kingdom of Judah was being assured that God would deliver him from two threatening kings (Is. 7:16). Clearly there is an immediate fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, perhaps even referring to Ahaz’s own wife (or Isaiah’s, cf. Is. 8:4). Some critics accuse Matthew of random, free-association exegesis, but one of the hallmarks of Matthew’s gospel is seeing the Messiah as the fulfillment of all the promises to Israel. King Ahaz was a wicked descendent of David, and therefore a promise that David’s line would continue is not at all unrelated to the Messianic promise. It is also common for Old Testament prophecies to have more than one fulfillment: e.g. David prays “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” in his particular circumstances, but he was a type of Christ who would suffer on the Cross (Ps. 22:1, Mt. 27:46). There’s no reason why the birth of a baby boy in the 700s B.C. as a sign of God’s favor and salvation could not also be a prophetic “type” of Christ born of Mary.

Many anti-Christian apologists also try to make hay out the fact that the Hebrew word used in Is. 7:14 is “almah,” which means “young woman,” not necessarily “virgin” (“b’tulah”). But simply because the Hebrew word has a lexical range that is broader than “virgin,” does not exclude that meaning. In Gen. 24, Rebekkah is called both an “almah” and a “b’tulah.” Some Jewish apologists claim that Matthew is making up an interpretation whole cloth, but the Greek Septuagint translates the word “almah” as “parthenos,” which usually means “virgin,” so the Jews already had a tradition of interpreting that word in that way, and Matthew is following that exegetical tradition and recognizing its significance. 

Covenantal Fathers
The significance of the virgin birth is that it is the means by which God took on human flesh without any sin. Sinners have two sin problems: not only do we sin easily and regularly, the reason we do is because we have inherited a sin nature from our father Adam – all people are naturally conceived in sin (Ps. 51:5, Rom. 5:12-19). One of the lessons of the virgin birth is that sin is covenantally passed down through human fathers, going back to Adam. But Jesus did not have a human father. He had a true human mother so that He is a true human being, but He did not have a human father so that He would not inherit Adam’s sin nature – so that He could save us from our sins. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). We are redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:19). “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). 

So the virgin birth is the means by which God ensured that He would be fully man and fully God and completely sinless. This was necessary so that Christ could pay for our sins and so that He might become the head of a new human race, free from the power of sin. We are grafted into that new family tree through faith in Christ crucified for our sins and raised for our justification. 

Conclusion
When Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14, he is linking several things for us: He is linking the Messiah with the Davidic line, which included Ahaz (Mt. 1:9), but he is also identifying the greatest enemy of all (our sin) and pointing out how God determined to begin that great saving work: by a virgin birth – a new human race. 

Some critics like to point out that the name “Emmanuel” doesn’t necessarily mean that the child is God, since it simply means “God with us,” but this is a meaningless objection. Yes, it is true that God can be “with us” in various ways (e.g. Is. 8:8-10). But in order to save us from our sins, God must come down. If Jesus is not God, then He cannot save us from our sins. He cannot bear God’s wrath and survive, and He cannot truly, fully reconcile us to God. But He has and that is why it is such a very merry Christmas. 

And our Christmas joy must be rooted here. If you try to build your joy on family and friends and some vague Christmas spirit, it will collapse like one of those Jenga towers. But if your Christmas joy is the sinless Jesus born of a virgin, crucified for sinners, raised for our justification – that is a joy that cannot be taken away. Puking babies, little sleep, cancer, major financial problems, difficult family members – all of that can be truly hard, but if your sins have been taken away, your joy cannot be taken away. And then whatever gifts you receive on top of that are just icing on the cake.  

Prayer: Father, teach us to find our joy in You so that we may rightly enjoy Your gifts. Teach us to find our joy in Christ our Savior so that we may not have our joy stolen from us by any earthly circumstance. I pray that we would be a people known for our joy, in good times and in hard times, because Jesus has taken away our sins. And it’s in His name that we pray, and we pray as He taught us…