Our Lord's Birth | Matthew 1:18-25

Mary

His mother, a virgin, whose name means "bitter" at its root. Coming from the word Mara, which we first read of in Exodus 15, when Moses and the children of Israel come to the bitter waters of Marah. Upon crying out to God, Moses is given wisdom and a tree is cast into the bitter waters which makes them sweet. This is not by accident. The wombs of mankind had been producing only bitter waters, but when this "root out of dry ground" was cast into the bitter womb of mankind, it restored hope and usefulness, making it sweet!

She was a virgin, not a young lady as some have purported, but an actual virgin, proven by the line "before they came together." This child that was found in her was "of the Holy Ghost." This is incredibly important. The Bible is staking down that whilst Jesus came to mankind and was "made like unto his brethren," He was not of mankind, but of God. Mankind since Adam's fall had only produced offspring by a man and a woman coming together and producing children who inherently carried the traits of their fathers before them (Genesis 5:3). This was a new kind of man, the God-man, fully man and fully God. The one and only, the only begotten of the Father, Jesus incarnate.

Joseph

Whilst there was no man involved in His conception, there would be one involved in His care. Joseph, a just man, also a kind man, seeing that he was not willing to make a public example of his assumed adulterous fiancée. He also was a meditative man, because it was whilst he thought on these things that God appeared to him. Then we see another admirable trait—he was a faith-filled man, because upon receiving the news from God, he believed and acted upon the word of God.

His Home

These were the people God entrusted with His Son, who raised the Redeemer of the world. Holy people, young people, poor people, tenacious and faith-filled. This was the home He would come from. His words would likely be formed the way they formed theirs. Their daily routine would be His for the next 30 years. Their food, their chores, their lives would be the lives that God used to make our Savior "like unto his brethren." It was in Joseph's workshop that our Savior knew by experience the toil of a day's work, the pain of a mis-swung hammer strike, the roughness of skin worn from years of work. It was in Mary's house that He would know the struggles of sibling rivalry and family dynamics. Whilst we are not let in on many details of His home life, we know enough to know that it was sufficient and varied enough to be an experience that would shape Him into our "great high priest," "made like unto his brethren," and "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

His Prophesied Birth

Then we are reminded of the intended crowd our author Matthew is targeting: the Jews. He makes sure to mention that this virgin conception was already mentioned by their highly esteemed prophet Isaiah: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). His bloodline was the exact bloodline required of the Messiah in the Scriptures, and also His birth was the exact birth required of the Messiah in the Scriptures. Matthew has delivered a very convincing case for Jesus Christ being exactly who He said He was: the Son of God and the promised Messiah.

His Name

Lastly, we see the name given to our Lord: Jesus. No greater name could have been given. It fits Him perfectly, meaning "Savior." That is what He is. He was the Savior at His birth, in His life, in His death, and forevermore He is Jesus, Savior. No other man could save us, but He, being God in the flesh, condemned sin in the flesh and defeated the curse and its penalty. He saved us from the law by fulfilling the law. He saved us from sin by never partaking in it. He saved us from death by taking it upon Himself, and He saved us from a hopeless eternity by raising from the dead. No wonder they called Him JESUS.