Text — Matthew 1:18-25
Subject — Messiah’s coming
Theme — The purpose of Messiah’s coming
Proposition — The purpose of Messiah’s Coming is seen in the name of the Messiah
Introduction
“Give me the songs of a nation and it matters not who writes its laws.” ~ Plato
Music is reflective of what a people believe and at the same time formative unto what they will believe.
One way of understanding a people group is by examining their anthems and those songs. A people sing who they are.
This is true of our Christian hymns and the Christmas Carols we sing during the advent season. They (hopefully) reflect what we believe. Music takes the complex theology and puts it on the bottom shelf where people can reach it. (Unfortunately the bottom shelf keeps getting lower and lower.)
This morning we want to look at the purpose of the Messiah’s coming and see how the Christmas Carols have underscored and reinforced that purpose.
I.) The Virgin Birth and Salvation
II.) The Name of the Child and Salvation
III.) Saved From What
A.) Sins (Matthew 1:21)& Guilt
If we are to be saved from our sins then it is incumbent upon us to understand what sin is.
WSC — “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.
Notice the Vertical nature of this definition of sin.
God has a standard. Our lack of conforming to that standard or the breaking of that standard is sin. Sin is primarily vertical — an offense and rebellion against God — before it is horizontal and it is only as we see Sin as being primarily against God that will allow us to see the true gravity of our sins against others.
The purpose of Jesus coming was to save us from our sins. The idea communicated there is that our sins stood between us and the ability to have an intimate family relationship with our Creator. The idea communicated in Jesus saving us from our sins is that nothing else in our creaturely lives can be set aright until we are aright with God and only the Christian faith gives us a Messiah who can set us right with God.
This simple idea needs to be recaptured again today by the contemporary Church in the West for the Church in the West has reduced sin to personal unhappiness or a lack of personal fulfillment and thus Jesus is sold as the means by which personal happiness and personal fulfillment can be gained. In the words of mega popular Joel Osteen Jesus came to give us our Best Life Now. But on a surface level, we can have personal happiness and personal fulfillment and still not be right with God.
This idea of being saved from our sins is implicit in quite a bit of our traditional Christmas Carol but in Charles Wesley’s “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” we find that idea being explicitly laid out.
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.
———————————
And again in “Lo how a rose e’er blooming”
This Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere;
True man, yet very God, from sin and death He saves us,
And lightens every load
B.) Self (Old Man)
When we say that Jesus saves us from our selves we are seeking to get at that Jesus delivers us from who we are in Adam. That old self (or Old Man as the Scripture frequently puts it) needs to be saved from its propensity to make self God. To be saved from self then is to be saved from the notion that I am God and that all the world orbits around me.
The fact that we’ve been saved from self is captured in Romans 6
6We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7For one who has died has been set free from sin.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How jesus the saviour had come for to die
For poor orn’ry creatures like you and like i
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.
C.) The Disposition of God Against Sin
Question 10. Will God suffer such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished?
Answer: By no means; but is terribly angry with our original as well as actual sins; and will punish them in his just judgment temporally and eternally, as he has declared, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things, which are written in the book of the law, to do them.”
Being saved from the wrath to come is a truth that has fallen on hard times in the contemporary Church. The last way we want to speak of God is as if He has any contrariety towards men at all. No longer are men sinners in the hands of an angry God but rather it is God who is in the hands of angry sinners.
This whole idea of needing to be saved by God from God teaches the idea that fallen man is alienated from God and needs to be reconciled. Apart from being reconciled to God, fallen man remains alienated from God and so only knows God’s condemnation.
But Jesus in saving men from their sin, thus reconciles man to God and saves man from the wrath to come.
Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”
D.) The Devil’s Tyranny
So seriously did the early Church take this idea that we had been saved from the Devil’s Tyranny that it devolved an understanding of the Atonement that found the ransom in the Atonement being paid to Satan.
Essentially, this theory claimed that Adam and Eve sold humanity over to the Devil at the time of the Fall; hence, justice required that grace pay the Devil a ransom to free us from the Devil’s clutches. God, however, tricked the Devil into accepting Christ’s death as a ransom, for the Devil did not realize that Christ could not be held in the bonds of death. Once the Devil accepted Christ’s death as a ransom, this theory concluded, justice was satisfied and God was able to free us from Satan’s grip
13He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel
———————-
God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy
“Fear not then,” said the Angel,
“Let nothing you affright,
This day is born a Saviour
Of a pure Virgin bright,
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan’s power and might.”
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy
E.) Death
51Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
56The sting of death is sin, and(BT) the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Death came into the world through Adam but in Jesus Christ we are saved from that living and eternal death by being united to Christ and His resurrection life. No longer
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
————–
Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”
