12-22-19 Sermon Notes
“Overwhelming – Virgin Birth” Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-25; and Luke 1:26-27, Luke 1:34
Last week, we focused on the prophecy of the birthplace of Jesus. This week we will focus on the prophecy of the birth of Jesus and its fulfillment.
Introduction
The Virgin Birth falls on one of the great fault lines of the Christian faith. It rests on the “great divide” that separates those who believe the Bible is God’s Word, and those who don’t. It separates those who believe in a supernatural Christ from those who believe he was just a good man, a moral teacher, a revolutionary, a prophet perhaps, but not the Son of God from heaven.
Therefore, it must be of paramount importance as a foundational doctrine of our faith. Here are three simple statements about the Virgin Birth of Christ:
1) It is clearly taught in the Bible. Isaiah prophesied it 700 years before Christ’s birth. Matthew and Luke explicitly included it in their gospels.
2) It has been universally believed. This doctrine reaches across the various divisions of Christendom—Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical.
3) It has also been hotly debated. Until the last 150 years, few people challenged this teaching. With the rise of liberal Christianity, some theologians have attacked this doctrine as a fanciful superstition, or they have branded it a legend created to make Jesus seem divine, or they have said the church borrowed a pagan myth or a Jewish tradition, or they have declared that the silence of the New Testament outside of Matthew and Luke regarding the Virgin Birth must mean that either it doesn’t matter or it didn’t happen. If you go all the way back to the gospel accounts, you can find hints here and there that even in Jesus’ lifetime, there were rumors about his unusual parentage. Some people thought he was illegitimate. Others suggested an act of immorality. A pagan opponent of the early church said that Jesus was the result of a sexual encounter between Mary and a Roman soldier. That slander has been repeated across the generations down to the present day.
Virgin Birth Verses
“14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
26 “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
18 “Thow thhis is e birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 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. 21 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.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”
Message
Each one of the prophecies about the coming Messiah not being fulfilled would cause the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah to collapse like a ‘house of cards.’ This applies to today’s message about the virgin birth as well. If we cannot accept the virgin birth, then we may as well ‘fold up the tent’ and go home.
So, some things to consider to base our acceptance of Jesus being the Messiah.
- The virgin birth of Jesus (the fact that He was conceived by a miracle of God, without a human sexual union) is affirmed by the genealogy (i.e. family history) Matthew 1:16 “and Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Notice how the words “the father of” are used in describing Joseph’s father, then comes a change. It does not say that Joseph “was the father of” Jesus, but rather, that Joseph was the “husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus.”
- The importance of the virgin birth cannot be stressed enough.
In order for Christ to be our Savior, three conditions must be met:
1) He must be a man. An angel could not die for our sins. He must truly share our humanity.
2) He must be an infinite man. A mere mortal could not bear the infinite price that must be paid for our sins.
3) He must be an innocent man. A sinner could not die for the sins of others.
- The Virgin Birth guarantees that our Lord fulfills all three conditions. Because he is born of Mary, he is fully human. Because he is conceived by the Holy Spirit, he is fully God. Because he is born holy, he is sinless in thought, word and deed. Thus he is fully qualified to be our Savior.
Concluding Remarks and Application
The Virgin Birth teaches us that our salvation is entirely supernatural. When God wanted to save the world, he had to take the initiative to send his Son. We were helpless even to take the first step in the process of bringing Christ to the world. The Virgin Birth teaches us that salvation is entirely by grace. God does it all because we could not do any of it.
The Virgin Birth becomes the beginning of a new humanity—the restoration of the human race. Because Jesus is born of Mary, He is truly human; because He is conceived of the Holy Spirit, He is free from the inherited guilt handed down from Adam. Thus He is fully able to stand in our place, taking our guilt, our shame, our punishment. He could pay for our sins precisely because He had no sin and no guilt of His own. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might receive the righteousness of God through him (). This brings to the forefront Paul’s words in Romans 5:6, “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” At the precise point of our weakness, Christ was strong. He succeeded where Adam (and all of Adam’s descendants) failed. We were so helpless that we could not do anything to save ourselves
The Virgin Birth forces us to confront what we believe about Jesus Christ. Who is he? Where did he come from? At issue is the supernatural character of our Lord. Is he truly the Son of God from heaven? If we answer yes, we have no problem with the Virgin Birth. If we answer no, we will have no reason to believe it. Is he just a prophet, or is he “more than a prophet?” Is he a great teacher and nothing more? Was he a martyr who died for his cause? Was he a revolutionary who never intended to start a religion? Is he a divine leader who came to teach us about God? Or is he God incarnate, the Lord of Glory, the Son of God, our Lord and our Savior? The Virgin Birth forces us off the fence about Jesus. It tells us that we can’t be neutral and we can’t say that the stories of his birth don’t matter. The fact that this is a miracle and a mystery doesn’t let us off the hook. Those with an anti-supernatural bias will have no use for the Virgin Birth, and they will explain it away. But those of us who believe in a supernatural Christ will find the Virgin Birth a mysterious miracle that, instead of destroying their faith, actually makes it stronger.
Thus the Virgin Birth matters greatly because it tells us plainly who Jesus is and lays the foundation for the great work he will accomplish on the cross.