Episode 16 - Matthew 1:18-25

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Introduction

What’s up, guys!

This is Josh with Shepherd’s Cast and I want to welcome you to the podcast where I talk to you about the things that I find important. My content is meant to inform, educate, puzzle, or be funny. If it does something other than what I’ve just said, then Soli Deo Gloria, we will just call it providence. All of what I say is read from blog posts that I have written and can be found on my website with the link in the show notes.

So, anyway, yeah, here we go…

Episode

In our last episode we covered the genealogy of Jesus up until His birth, which we will be focusing on in today’s episode of Shepherd’s Cast. I will be supplementing some of the explanation by pulling some from Luke in order to add more to the story than what we see.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Matthew 1:18-25

As tradition goes, thus ends the reading.

As we’ve mentioned before, Matthew’s Gospel account should be understood in light of the intended audience, or, the Jews. Jewish marriage rites, then, would have been what they Jews would have read into this text, as that is what they would have known. Matthew would have built his story around them already knowing this, thus, it is important that we, too, know the marriage ordinance of the Jews.

In a Jewish marriage, parents would arrange the marriages by contract, and these were negotiated until a mutual understanding could be reached. Once this is done, the individuals would be considered married, as in, they would already be known by others as husband and wife. Even though this was considered complete, however, they would remain separate for a year in order to show the cleanliness of the woman. To explain, a separate year without a birth would show whether or not the woman would be faithful to her husband. If she had a child, she would be considered unfaithful, and the marriage would thus be annulled. However, if she did not have a child, she would be considered faithful, and the man would lead a large procession to her house to gather her, take her back to his home, and physically consummate the marriage. At this point, they could start their lives living together as a married couple.

Now that we have some backstory about Jewish law, let’s fill in a little more information from another one of the canonical gospels.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:26-38

I wasn’t originally going to read the entire section, but I feel as if it is important to take this knowledge, along with the knowledge of Jewish weddings, into the reading of Matthew. An interesting note, John MacArthur created a really great harmony of the gospels called “One Perfect Life.” Of course, he is dispensational, so keep that in mind as you go into it and read his study notes on the bottom of the text. However, that does not actually take away from the wonderful harmony.

So, to recap, Mary and Joseph are betrothed to be married. They’ve just begun their year stint at being separated to determine if Mary will be faithful. In the midst of this betrothal period, Mary has just opted in for the deal of a lifetime, as in, to birth the Messiah, and all of this is to be done through the power of the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, Joseph, still living at dad’s house, being currently none-the-wiser, finds out about her pregnancy, and we must imagine he would have been broken about it. The woman he was meant to marry has just been found to be with child.

In the Old Testament, specifically Duetonomy 22, we can find an ordinance that would go along with this betrothal. “If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” So, not only could he (Joseph) have divorced her, but he could have had her stoned in city gate for her crime. Him not doing so shows even further his love for her as before he even knew about the immaculate conception he objected to divorce her quietly.

While considering these things he (Joseph) had a dream that was filled with a vision. An unnamed angel calms his thoughts about the ending of his marriage. And, beyond this, the angel refers to Joseph as “son of David.” If there was any question after the genealogies that Matthew gave to his reader, this should calm their nerves. It is clearly stated “... Joseph, son of David.”

The angel first calms his assumedly broken heart before going on to explain what exactly is going on. “...for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

This language should have brought up red flags for Joseph as Israel was currently awaiting their Messiah who would take away the iniquity of His people and bring forth the New Covenant. From the Prophet Jeremiah we read “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:33-34. Thus, not only would Joseph have been calmed by an angelic being explaining the situation, but he would most likely have been excited to see the fulfillment of the promise of God in saving His people.

Matthew goes on in this retelling to cite a prophecy that was fulfilled in the Messiah. The prophecy is taken from Isaiah 7:14 and it has been hotly debated. The significance of the verse from a Christian perspective is the promised dwelling of God with His people. At the time, the promise was explicative of God being with the people of the current time in both judgment and salvation. It is of no great surprise that the Lord of Hosts is assumed, in this time period, to show up and clear the oppression of the Roman empire. However, His being with the people was a different kind of salvation - one that the people didn’t realize they even needed until He had arrived.

But the idea of God being with us extends beyond the idea of simply His dwelling with us in His humiliated state, or, His humanity. The sign of God being with Israel was, simply put, the temple. Now, there are clear records of His departing from the people and from His temple in Ezekiel 10, but the fact remains, that in this New Covenant, He was coming to be with us in a totally different manner. No longer would the people be determined to come to the temple in order to be with God - He would simply be with them. But, just as Jesus promised the Samaritan woman in John 4, no longer will we have to go to a specific place or Jerusalem in order to worship the Father, “but the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.” John 4:23.

Now, Joseph, after hearing this, woke and did as the angel of the Lord had told him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he (Joseph) called his name Jesus. Some bibles translate that to be “did not have sexual relations with…” rather than “did not know” and I believe that this is appropriate. We must remember that in doing this Joseph probably faced quite a bit of gossip or misunderstanding from the rest of the Jewish community. Despite his knowledge of what had happened with Mary and about Who dwelt within her womb at this time, those around him would have thought that she was unfaithful and deserved anything from divorce to death.

I don’t believe I need to remind you that we affirm against the papacy, here. But, if you needed a reminder, that word “until” does not mean “forever more he did not know her or sleep with her.” That word means until. Either Mary and Joseph were not consummately married and thus they sinned against one another as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7, or they eventually submitted to the consummation of their marriage. The idea that she was a perpetual virgin, despite Jesus having multiple half-brothers, is silly and not supported by the text. And to suggest by your magical tradition that such Marian dogmatic ideas are equal with the text is both heinous and blasphemous.

Final Word of the Day

I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. It is always a pleasure to bring the word of God to those who are seeking to know more about Him.

The final word of the day comes to us from John MacArthur’s explanation of the promise, or, covenant of redemption, in his book “None Other.”

*Listen to my podcast for this!*

A special thanks to Jesus Wannabeez for allowing me to use their track, Ephesians 6, in my intro and outro music. You can find a link to their Spotify in the show notes.

And, as always, may the light of the holy God shine upon you.

Amen.