Peace for Us
Christmas 2022 • Sermon • Submitted
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Over the last two weeks, we have been talking about finding peace at Christmas.
Last week, we took time to remind ourselves about what it is to trust Jesus as our Prince of Peace.
We saw a series of titles last week that gave us indicators of who Jesus is and what he is going to accomplish.
We are going to build on that this morning by looking at two more names given to Jesus.
Go ahead and open to Matthew 1.
We are picking up in the middle of the story, but let’s try to catch up with what is going on.
For thousands of years, God had promised to send someone special to save his people from their sins and establish his kingdom on earth in a new way.
When the time was right, God told a young, unmarried woman named Mary that she was going to have a son.
This son would be the fulfillment of that promise he made all those years ago.
Here was the problem: Mary wasn’t married. In fact, she was engaged to a man named Joseph.
However, Mary was a virgin and God miraculously caused her to become pregnant.
Joseph was a good man. However, he knew that Mary was pregnant even though they hadn’t been together, so he naturally assumed she had been unfaithful.
In those days, you had to get a divorce to break off an engagement.
Joseph was going to divorce her quietly to protect her from additional shame or punishment.
That’s where we pick up this morning, so read Matthew 1:20-23.
The angel told Joseph some incredible things here, and Joseph obeyed what the angel told him.
That baby who was born is the one we celebrate today: Jesus, the Son of God.
I want us to take just a few minutes together and look back at what the passage told us about this baby.
Specifically, let’s focus on the two names that we find for this baby.
In verse 21, the angel tells Joseph to name the baby Jesus.
In verse 23, Matthew shows that this fulfilled a promise God made through Isaiah, and that he would have the title “Immanuel”.
While we talked about these concepts some last week, they bear repeating and slowing down to focus on this Christmas morning.
When we put the two titles together, we see that this baby at Christmas gives us peace with God by being God with us.
I want you to recognize who he is today and rest in his nearness.
First, let’s look at the name Joseph is supposed to give him.
The baby will be called:
Jesus - “The LORD will save”
Jesus - “The LORD will save”
Read verses 20-21 again.
Jesus’s name is a variation on the name “Joshua”, and it means “The Lord will save”.
The name Joshua has God’s name in it—the first part of the name has a part of the name “Yahweh,” which he told to Moses back in Exodus 3. Interestingly, Yahweh isn’t just a title given to God; it is the name he gave us to call him.
The name Jesus doesn’t just point to some abstract god or any number of gods that you might choose; the name itself points us to the fact that there is only one way to be saved, and that is through the God of the Bible.
Jesus isn’t the only one to have this name. Back in the Old Testament, we find a Joshua who took leadership after Moses and a Joshua who was the high priest in Zechariah’s day. I’m sure there are more.
Here’s what is unique about Jesus, though.
The Bible uses a lot of names in symbolic ways. Throughout Isaiah, Ezekiel, and other prophecies, you see God naming a child a name that points to something God will do in the future.
However, there is something subtle that the angel says that was radically different than we expect.
What did we say Jesus’s name means? The LORD will save, right?
Read verse 21 again.
“Name him Jesus,” because who is going to save?
He—the baby Mary is carrying—will be the God who saves his people from their sins.
John MacArthur puts it this way:
“All other men who had those names testified by their names to the Lord’s salvation. But this One who would be born to Mary not only would testify of God’s salvation, but would Himself be that salvation. By His own work He would save His people from their sins.”[1]
Every little Hebrew boy who bore the name Joshua pointed toward the one who would ultimately fulfill that promise.
From before the time Jesus was born, it was clear that he was destined to save his people from their sins.
You see, our sin separated us from God.
The Bible tells us that initially, God and people could hang out together. There was no sin to separate us, so Adam and Eve got to walk with God and be in a perfect relationship with him, nature, and each other.
When they chose to abandon God’s plan and do what they wanted instead, they separated themselves from God by sinning against him.
Ever since then, we have been trying to earn our way back to God through what we do. Whether we are trying to achieve a high enough status or even be so kind and nice that God has no choice but to let us into heaven, we have not ever been able to attain it.
Rebelling against God brought hostility to our relationship with him, and Jesus came to bring back the peace we needed but couldn’t make on our own.
Here’s how the Bible explains it:
and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions.
But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him—
Jesus was the one who brought us peace with God through his death, burial, and resurrection.
What an incredible promise is bound up in that name!
When God chose to come after us and restore our relationship to him, he didn’t do it from a distance.
You see, that leads to the second title the angel gave to Joseph about this child.
His name is Jesus, and He will also be called:
2) Immanuel – “God with us”
2) Immanuel – “God with us”
Matthew gives us this side note in the middle of the story, reminding us that God had promised to dwell with his people.
Look at verse 22-23.
Remember, it was our choice to break the relationship.
Yet what did God do?
He came to us.
God knew that ultimately, all our efforts would fail and only lead to more and more brokenness, so He came and died in our place.
We broke the peace, yet he is so good, so loving, so merciful, that he would come back to us and forgive us to bring us peace.
What a tremendous price he paid for loving us!
That’s what makes Christmas worth all the lights and all the sparkles and all the beauty; the beautiful God of the universe came seeking after us!
That truth alone sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. In every religion, including the false, cultural Christianity that we see so much in America today, is about doing good things to get yourself to heaven. You hope your good deeds outweigh your bad or that you have sacrificed enough to appease God.
He knew you never could, so he came to you to provide a way for you to be saved!
If you have never surrendered your life to Christ, listen to this truth: God has come and died in your place so you could have eternal life.
If you’re here today and you have accepted Christ, you know this! Rest in this truth.
Also, remember that it is your responsibility to tell that to the world around you! Some of you are getting ready to go be with family who doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus. Pray and look for opportunities to tell them what Christmas is all about.
God is with us; there is a way of salvation available for everyone who will call on the name of the Lord.
Christmas is about so much more than glitz and pageantry.
It’s about more than gifts and civility.
It’s about a baby named Jesus who would grow up and save his people from their sins by his own death. It’s about this baby in a manger, who literally is God in the flesh, seeking to reconcile his world back to himself.
Today, we celebrate him taking on flesh to become God with us in an unimaginable way.
If you are going from here to a house of laughter and joy, celebrate Jesus who makes this holiday worth celebrating.
If you are going from here to a home that is quiet and still, rest in the fact that, if you trust him today, he is there with you. He is the God who came to you, even if you don’t see him right now.
Rest in his peace today.
Let’s pray...
Endnotes:
[1]MacArthur, John Jr. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Matthew 1-7. Chicago: Moody Press (1985). 18.