The Incarnation, According to Matthew

December 11, 1988

Download Sermon

Listen to Sermon

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25

During the Advent season this year, we’re taking a look, I hope you’ll remember, at the birth of Jesus through the eyes of the people who first wrote about it. Typically, traditionally, we’ve thought of the Christmas story as a kind of collage, as a kind of composite picture, drawn from all the Gospel sources. We’ve tended to juxtapose shepherds, and wise men, and angels, and Herods, even though at no time do they all appear together in any of the accounts. EACH GOSPEL WRITER TELLS A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT STORY, depending on his particular emphasis, and we are the beneficiaries of this rich variety.

This season we’re trying to ask, What did the Incarnation mean to the 4 Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? How did they individually think of it? How did they conceive this strange, unprecedented event, which broke history in half, and brought God down to dwell in their midst?

2 weeks ago, we looked at the picture drawn by Mark, the earliest Gospel writer....and you remember, Mark doesn’t have any Christmas story, as such. Sort of surprising, isn’t it? Mark doesn’t even mention the birth of Jesus...nowhere...not so much as a single word.

And yet, his very silence tells us something about his attitude toward it. FOR MARK, GOD HAD DONE SOMETHING MOMENTOUS IN JESUS CHRIST, SOMETHING BREATHTAKING....God was in Christ...never mind how...and it was the deed that mattered more than the interpretation. The fact of Christ, the reality of Christ was more important than the explanation of Christ.....that’s the point, and because he was writing to meet a very practical, pressing crisis---the horrible specter of persecution---he doesn’t even bother about analysis at all.

But now see what happens. It’s a fascinating story, I don’t know any subject in the world as inherently interesting as Biblical history. This is good stuff....Move 20 years, just another generation along the line. The background has changed....Nero has gone, blessedly, and a new Caesar sits on the throne.

For Christians, in the empire, harassment momentarily has subsided, intimidation has slackened....Rome still opposes Christianity, but at least pauses for a time to catch its breath.

AND IN THAT RELATIVELY PEACEFUL LULL BETWEEN PERSECUTIONS---there weren’t many---THE YOUNG CHURCH, STILL LESS THAN 50 YEARS OLD, has a chance to look at itself. It begins to ask questions about its future and its destiny......

Who are we? That’s a theological question. What is our relationship to the world, to the people around us? What’s a mission question.

What is our relationship to the Jews? Are we Jewish first, and incidentally Christians, or is it even necessary any more to be a Jew to be a Christian?

I guess you could call that an evangelism question. AND WHAT ARE WE GOING TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN AS THEY GROW UP IN THE CHURCH? What are the really important things, after all, the things they need to know, MUST know about the Faith? That’s an education question.

Now, in a sense, of course, all these are questions we’re still wrestling with, aren’t they? At least we’d better be. BUT IN THIS EARLY MORNING TIME OF THE CHURCH, THEY WERE QUESTIONS THAT WERE ESPECIALLY CRITICAL.

They needed answers, they needed to put it together. The first generation of Christians was dying out. Hardly any were left among them who actually remembered Jesus in the flesh. The original 12 were gone, not available for reference. Young people were coming along, and asking, WHAT ABOUT THIS JESUS, ANYWAY?

WHAT was He really like? What did He say? What did He teach? Tell us more about Him.

I don’t know if this would pass the scrutiny of my New Testament professor, or not, but he’s not here, I don’t think....is he? I don’t know if he’d buy this, but really the Gospel of Matthew might almost be called the very first Church membership training manual. That’s what it was, and I might add, it’s a good bit better than most of the ones we use today.

It was written to help a new generation of Christians understand and appreciate the magnificence of the Christian story. The author was so inspired and did his job so well that succeeding generations ever since have caught the glory that radiates from his words.

If you want a date to hang it on, the year 85 A.D. wouldn’t be too far off, and most scholars, though not all, associate it with the city of Antioch, that famous Syrian city on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, which served as the base of operations for the missionary journeys of Paul.

The mood, the tone of the material doesn’t reflect the tension of crisis Mark’s Gospel does, yet the author, whom tradition identifies as Matthew, uses Mark as the basis of his writing. He obviously has a copy of Mark’s Gospel before him as he writes....He incorporates over 90% of Mark into his story, sometimes word for word, but more often editing, changing, adapting, adding, until he gets it the way he wants it, and by comparing the two Gospels carefully, you can begin to see some characteristics of Matthew emerge.

He almost certainly is a Jew, and by that I mean, of course, a Jewish Christian...His Gospel is by far the most Jewish book in the New Testament. All the way through you find it… references to the Messianic hope, references to fasting and almsgiving, references to the Law.....even his tirades against the Pharisees don’t change the fact that for him “not one jot or title shall pass from the Law until all be fulfilled.” Matthew obviously is saturated in the Jewish tradition.

He’s also a very strong CHURCHMAN. More than any other Gospel, Matthew is the ecclesiastical Gospel, the CHURCH Gospel. He’s the one who tells us about the incident at Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus says to Peter, “On this rock I will build my Church....”

He’s constantly concerned about the Church. On almost every page you find the Church’s interests and problems reflected. Matthew writes from the inside, and telling the story of Jesus, he never neglects simultaneously to remind his readers of the strict standards that pertain for membership in the Body of Christ.

I tell you, if you want to be half-hearted, lukewarm, tepid members of the Church, you’d better stay away from the Gospel of Matthew. This man is a Churchman, a loyal, faithful Churchman, through and through.

And yet, maybe even more than any of these, he’s a TEACHER. That’s how you can always recognize the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a teaching book. I imagine new Christians were put to work memorizing portions of it. The arrangement of the material would suggest that. Much of it is grouped together in clusters of 3’s and 5’s and 7’s. Read it sometime and look for that.

And the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in Chapters 5-7 is organized so as to make it easy to memorize----blessed are the poor in spirit...blessed are those who mourn...blessed are the pure in heart....and on down the line.

As a teacher and compiler of the first Church handbook, Matthew wanted to make his work eye-catching and memorable, and so successful was he that his Gospel is the most quoted book in all the world.

Now, we’re under pressure to keep moving. What’s embarrassing to me, and undoubtedly will be terrifying to you is that all up to this point has been INTRODUCTION. I mean, all that is just background. How’s that for depressing news with the NFL kick-offs less than an hour away?

I’ve been trying with sweeping strokes to paint a picture of the broad outlines of Matthew’s interests and perspectives, so you can see his masterpiece, not a vague, ephemeral writing, but as a real, flesh and blood kind of thing.

Like Mark, he, too, wrote for specific people, to meet specific needs, AND HE WROTE BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST WAS ALIVE IN HIS HEART AND SOUL. Like any preacher, he had to pour it out...

He was under conviction to get it out of his system, as it were, and into the hearts and souls of others.

His treatment of the Incarnation clearly shows this. I lift up, without nearly enough elaboration, 3 elements of that account.

1. In the first place, as a good Jew, a good Jewish Christian, as a person saturated in the tradition of the Old Testament, Matthew sees the Incarnation as THE FULFILLMENT OF OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECY.

Here is a new element, dealt with here for the first time in the unfolding Christian story. Mark hadn’t bothered with it. I’m sure he believed it, too, but he never got around to it. He had no particular need to in his situation.

BUT MATTHEW DID. He’s saying, it’s not enough to think of Jesus, a 1a Mark, simply in terms of present companionship. That’s vital, of course, that’s central, but there’s even more. WHO IS THIS PRESENT COMPANION, WHO IS WITH US NOW TO SUSTAIN AND NURTURE US?

Don’t you see? He’s linked with history, with all that’s gone before. Don’t think for a minute that God just suddenly bopped into history without warning or antecedent. The Baptism, where Mark began, doesn’t reach back far enough.

Jesus came, as Paul put it, “in the fullness of time”, at the right time, at the opportune time....when at least some were ready for Him, and He came after literally centuries and centuries of preparation and promise.

That’s the meaning of the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew. Did you plow through that when you were doing your homework? Nobody reads that part of the Bible much, that long list of names, what we call the “begats”.

But by the beginning his story with that genealogy, Matthew deliberately ties Jesus with

everything that had preceded him in Hebrew history.

Somewhere I remember reading about a New York playwright, who was leafing through a copy of one of those gigantic Manhattan telephone directories. Finally, he looked up and said, “Not much plot, but, boy, what a cast.”

Matthew is saying more than that---WHAT A PLOT AND CAST!

Maybe it doesn’t look like much close up....just ordinary people for the most part, BUT BACK OFF A LITTLE, LOOK AT IT IN PERSPECTIVE, and you’ll see what God has been up to, all this time.

This whole cast, for centuries, has been playing a role in God’s redemptive drama. For decades now, God has been preparing His people, prompting them, softening them up, getting them ready for this---THE COMING ON STAGE OF THE STAR...THAT THE WORLD MIGHT KNOW THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE PLAYWRIGHT.

This is BIG. We’re in the Advent season now. Matthew is saying, in essence, “Look!” THE ENTIRE OLD TESTAMENT IS ADVENT....That’s the meaning of it.

The Old Testament is anticipation, preparation for the climax of the drama.

There are the supporting characters...each one in his own way contributing something to the drama....Joshua, Samuel, Ruth, David, Amos, Hosea....each one in sequence stretched insights, until, finally, through the dark years the shadows began to melt away, and the true outline of God began to take shape.

Maybe the unknown prophet of the Exile saw the shape with clearer eyes than anybody. Out of the punishing humiliation of refugee life in Babylon, when they were picked up and carried off in disgrace, hundreds of miles from home, when everything they thought was solid fell apart in their hands.....out of that devastating experience he caught a vision that probably represents the noblest thought the human mind ever entertained prior to Christmas day....THE ESSENCE OF TRUE GREATNESS....the highest form of human life....is to be found in VICARIOUS SUFFERING...the willingness to take upon yourself, when you don’t have to, the hurt and shame of another.

He sensed in his bones that God would some day send a leader who would DO and BE just that. And he wrote a poem about it, which even to this day, sears the soul with its intensity----

He was despised and rejected of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief

And we hid as it were our faces from him.

He was despised and we esteemed him not.......DO YOU HEAR THE PRONOUN?

Surely, he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, And with his stripes, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way, And the Lord hath laid him the iniquity of us all. Can you ever hear those words without thinking of Jesus? THAT’S WHO HE IS, Matthew is saying.......fulfillment, the coming at last, the embodiment in a real man of this magnificent ancient vision.

Through the centuries God has been leading us up to it, and now it has arrived in a BABY, who will grow and suffer for the brokenness of the human situation....WHAT A STORY!

What is the Incarnation in Matthew? It is the fulfillment, packed down and overflowing, of the faithful promise and planning of God.

2. But let’s move on. In the 2nd place, there is THIS in Matthew’s gospel about the Incarnation. HE SEES IT AS THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD’S INITIATIVE AND LOVE. This is tied to the first point, of course, but I think it’s worthy of a place by itself. The Incarnation is something God has done, by Himself, on His own, above and beyond our deserving. It’s a declaration of His love and concern and feeling for us in our loneliness, and anxiety, and bewilderment. The Good News is that GOD DOES LOVE YOU.....GOD DOES CARE FOR YOU, despite your unworthiness, and the proof of it is that He came, when it wasn’t required, in an act of divine compassion.

Please don’t misunderstand this, but I’ve come to believe that God’s initiative is the real point of the Virgin Birth story. That’s why Matthew tells it.

He’s not talking about biology. He’s not concerned about the scientific difficulties of a fatherless birth. He doesn’t even address Himself to the obvious problem involved in tracing a genealogy back through Joseph’s side of the family, and then maintaining that Jesus was born without Joseph.

Matthew isn’t even thinking about biology. His Christmas story is not a study of genes and chromosomes. WHAT HE’S STATING IS THAT IN THE BUSINESS OF REDEMPTION, IT’S GOD HIMSELF WHO GETS IT GOING.

It’s God Himself who bridges the gap between earth and heaven, and if we are reconciled with God it can never be through our own efforts, but only because love incarnate came down at Christmas, for us and for our salvation.

I will have to tell you in sincere honesty that I am an agnostic with respect to the literalness of the Virgin Birth story. I don’t know. I don’t think the literalness of it is all  that important, though I respect those for whom it is.

For me the real miracle of the Virgin Birth story is not a miracle of birth, but a miracle of love.....that’s always the real miracle. Matthew is saying something here, very strikingly and very eloquently, the details of which are not so important, BUT THE TRUTH OF WHICH IS.....

GOD HIMSELF WAS IN CHRIST, COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH WAS LOST. And what does it have to do with Monday morning, and with our everyday world of pressures, and deadlines, and telephones, and appointment books? Just this, and let us pray that we’ll not forget it in the feverish hubbub of Christmas activity---CHRISTMAS, LIKE THE GOSPEL ITSELF, IS A GIFT.

The incarnation, God’s coming to earth in human form, is a GIFT. His presence among us, His acceptance, His companionship is not something we earn, it’s something we receive. He wants you to know that richness....He wants, more than anything, for you to be whole, and complete, and fully alive, and you can be, the minute you stop trying to prove yourself, and simply allow Him to give you His love.

What is the Incarnation in Matthew? THE MANIFESTATION OF THE ALMIGHTY’S INCREDIBLE LOVE, POURED OUT IN OUR BEHALF.

3. Now, one more thing, quickly, one more key element in Matthew’s account of the Incarnation. He closes his Christmas story by reminding us that wise men, magi, came from the east to pay their homage. None of the other Gospel writers mention this. The magi with their gifts appear only in Matthew.

Who are these strangers from far away who travel all that distance to worship a Baby? Ah, what a surprise....How startling! THEY ARE GENTILES, of all things right there in the middle of a nice Jewish book. In this most intensely Jewish book in the New Testament, in this writing which more than any other focuses on the fulfillment of the promise to the Hebrew people, the coming of the anointed One of the line of David, the Messianic hope.....in this book saturated in the Jewish tradition, among the very first to acknowledge Him are these foreigners with no Jewish background at all.

They were more responsive than most of his own people....Many of them weren’t ready for Him, didn’t want Him...Matthew says specifically that when Herod heard the news of the birth, he was “troubled”, AND ALL JERUSALEM WITH HIM.....they didn’t want Him...But these gentiles, even without the background and preparation, recognize and respond to Him at once. They come, though it requires great expense and sacrifice, to kneel in reverence before the truth and glory of the divine condescension.

Doesn’t it say to us that something big, something momentous has happened to Matthew? It must have been on the order of what happened to Paul. SOMETHING certainly happened to him.

It broke the bonds of his parochial upbringing...The Jesus experience flooded his soul and flung open his heart, and here is the consequence---THE STORY OF THE MAGI IS A MISSIONARY STATEMENT.

Jesus, the quintessential Jew, the final distillation of the Remnant, THIS MAN, is not only the hope of Israel, He’s the Light of the world. His birth, and life, and death, and resurrection are not elitist in nature for a limited, exclusive group. HE’S FOR EVERYBODY. That’s big, and Matthew saw it.

He opens his Gospel with outsiders, worshiping the Baby King....He closes it with the grown-up, Risen King sending out His disciples---“Go ye into all the world to proclaim the Good News to every living creature.....”

At both the beginning and the ending of his story, there is a mission emphasis.

You see.....and I guess  this is the commercial....you’ll have to let me exhort....THE RELIGION THAT CENTERS ON JESUS....wherever it’s found....THE RELIGION THAT CENTERS ON JESUS REACHES OUT. There’s no way to get around that. ANY EXPRESSION OF CHRIST-CENTERED FAITH IS MISSIONAL.

If it isn’t, it’s not authentic, it’s not real, and it’s not faithful to the Biblical testimony. Matthew knew it. Out of his own experience it had captured him. It had grabbed him and opened his eyes. That’s why he put it in. It’s the meaning, of course, of those gifts the magi brought. Remember.....gold, frankincense, myrrh...precious gifts, the very best they had, the most expensive things they could lay their hands on. Remember those gifts? They say to us, don’t they, THERE IS NO REAL REVERENCE WITHOUT GIVING.

I’m sorry I can’t let you off the hook any easier, but Matthew won’t let me. It’s built into the story, and the story is not complete without it. UNTIL WE SHARE, WE HAVEN’T REALLY WORSHIPPED.

A Christianity without mission is sort of like a tuxedo without a party.....All dressed up and no place to go.

Well, it’s the 3rd Sunday of Advent. We’re talking about the birth of Jesus, according to the Gospel writers....the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, the wonder and miracle of God’s gracious initiative, and the call to reach out in missional caring and sharing to others...... This is the Incarnation, according to Matthew.