Well, this Advent we are taking a look at the Christmas story largely from the point of view, as it were, of Joseph. And so let me invite you if you would to take your Bibles in hand and to turn with me to Matthew’s gospel, chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1. If you’re using a church Bible, you’ll find it on page 807. Last Lord’s Day we were looking at Joseph’s family tree with all its misfits and difficult individuals and were reminded of God’s rich grace in sending Christ for people like that. This week, I want to think with you about the circumstances surrounding the name “Jesus” that Joseph gave to the infant boy born that first Christmas in Bethlehem. And I want to do so under three very simple headings. Jesus is, first of all, a surprising name, secondly, Jesus is an assuring name, and thirdly, Jesus is a missionary name; that is to say, it describes Jesus’ mission. Alright, so Jesus’ name is a surprising name, an assuring name, and a missionary name. Before we unpack those headings together, let’s bow our heads and pray and ask for the Lord’s help and then we’ll read the passage. Let us all pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, we cry out to You, please, for the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit to speak Your Word with new vigor and force into our hearts. Some of us have been walking with Christ for many, many years yet we have not outlived our urgent need for the ministry of Your Word, for light to guide us, for manna from heaven, for water from the rock. Others of us are brand new believers and need You to show us how to follow Christ, to strengthen our trembling faith, to deepen our understanding, to put new steel in our resolve to kill our sin and walk in obedience. Some of us here do not know Jesus. We pray, O God, that under the hammer blows of the Word of God, the Gospel of grace, wielded in the mighty hand of the Holy Spirit, You would crack open stony hearts and You would take away that stone and make hearts of flesh and write Your law upon our hearts by the finger of Your Spirit. Do all this, we pray, for Your glory by Your Word, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Matthew chapter 1 at verse 18. This is the Word of God:
“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.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy Word.
Joseph, as we find him in the second half of Matthew chapter 1, the passage we’ve just read, Joseph must have been a heartbroken man at this point. Mary, to whom he was betrothed, was found to be pregnant and Joseph was not the father. Now you may know in Joseph’s culture and time, marriage had two stages. First came betrothal, which was a much, much more solemn and binding thing than the modern engagements which we are familiar with here in the West. You were considered bound together in such a way that a dissolution of the betrothal arrangement actually required a formal divorce. So it’s really the first step in the marriage covenant. But in the betrothal stage, the couple did not yet live together as man and wife, which came later in the second stage. And so to discover that Mary was pregnant before the marriage had been ratified and consummated would have been devastating to Joseph. It’s not hard to imagine Joseph’s distress, his sense of profound betrayal flooding his heart in these days.
But we’re told in verse 19, for all that, Joseph was nevertheless a just man, a righteous man. That is to say, he is a man of integrity and of godly character. And so he does resolve to divorce her, doubtless concluding he could not build a life with a woman he could not trust, but clearly he still cares for Mary and we’re told he was unwilling to put her to shame and so he sought to procure a quiet divorce, a divorce out of the public glare.
And so at this point in the story so far, it is a story of family disaster, of marital breakdown, of heartbreak and grief, of anger and betrayal and shame. It’s a story, frankly, it sounds an awful lot like our family stories. Doesn’t it? And seeing that in itself, actually, I think, is a wonderfully useful corrective to the sort of sentimental editing that we tend to do to the nativity story. Would you agree? We love that, “The stars in the bright sky look down where He lay. The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.” It’s all very picturesque, bathed in the golden hues of romance and nostalgia. I don’t remember the stanza in “Away in a Manger” that deals with apparent adultery and betrayal, unplanned pregnancy and looming divorce. Do you? It doesn’t tend to feature in our Christmas carols very often. But that is the world that we inhabit, isn’t it? And I dare say if we reread the situation confronting Joseph in Matthew chapter 1, we ought to pause to give thanks that it is not at all to the rose-tinted world of sentiment and nostalgia that Jesus comes. It’s to the real world of sadness and disappointment and heartbreak and He comes. Praise God that ours is a real-world Gospel, robust and solid and resilient, uniquely suited to deal with the grime and the regret that sin smears over everything.
And Joseph, Joseph here is about to discover for himself the great power of that Gospel, to speak hope into a world as broken as his was, as broken as ours continues to be. Verse 20 tells us, “Joseph considered these things.” He was preoccupied with them. Who can blame him? He turned them over and over in his mind, presumably trying as any of us would in the same circumstances, somehow to make sense of what was happening. How could she do this? What am I going to tell people? The angel’s mention of “fear” in verse 20 certainly implies an emotional recoil on Joseph’s part as he wrestles with what to do next. And suddenly, into the swirling turbulence of this crisis, an angelic messenger brings the voice of God, cutting through what turns out to be his misconceptions, exposing his deep misunderstandings that have generated so much pain in his heart. And the core of the angel’s message, you will notice, has to do with the meaning of the name to be given to Mary’s child.
A Surprising Name
The first thing I want you to see about that name is how surprising it really is. This is a surprising name. The angel in verse 21 tells Joseph that “Mary will bear a son and you shall call his name, Jesus.” In verse 25 we learn of Joseph’s obedience to that command. Mary had given birth to a son and he called his name, “Jesus.” Luke 2:21 gives us a little bit more color. Eight days after Jesus’ birth, the baby was circumcised in obedience to the law of Moses. And in accordance with custom, on that occasion he was called “Jesus,” the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb. So not unlike at the baptism of a covenant child today here in our congregation, in addition to the primary spiritual meaning of circumcision, the ritual also had become a sort of formal, public naming ceremony. And so we imagine the priest at this point in the service asking the parents as I typically ask parents at a baptism, “What is your child’s name?” And everyone is expecting something, you know, from the family tree of Joseph – Josiah or Perez or Amos. And so when Joseph says His name is “Jesus,” it would have come as a real surprise to many. He was riding roughshod over social convention. That’s not how you did it. You used a family name.
And we still often do that today, don’t we? We use family names. When I was born, I was given four names – thank you Mom and Dad! David – I think just because my parents liked it; Thomas – for my maternal grandfather; Andrew – for my paternal grandfather; of course, my family name, Strain, which is a version of the Scottish surname Strachan. And the naming conventions of Joseph’s time and culture really were not so very different. A similar set of expectations surrounded them. And Joseph completely ignores them here, doesn’t he? A point highlighted really for us by the long list of family names that we considered last Lord’s Day in the opening seventeen verses of this chapter, among which there is not a single “Jesus” to be found. So, calling the baby, “Jesus, Yeshua, Joshua,” was just one more bump in an already very bumpy beginning to married life for Joseph and Mary. More grist for the gossip mill no doubt.
But whatever the gossips might have said, we know what they didn’t know. When Joseph named the baby, “Jesus,” he was acting in holy obedience to the call of God in His life and not in accordance with the expectations and conventions of his culture, which is a pattern worth noting and imitating. All who follow the Lord Jesus must be willing to follow that same pattern. The call of Christ, as Joseph’s example reminds us, is the call to own His name, to live for Him, whatever the pressures and expectations of the world around us may be to the contrary. What’s more, the naming of the baby signalized publicly that Joseph was adopting him into his own family, acknowledging Jesus openly as his legal son and heir. Remember, Joseph is not Jesus’ biological father, but here, naming him in this way, Joseph is claiming Him as his own. Sinclair Ferguson suggests Joseph is saying in effect, “I am taking you as mine, whatever the implications may be. I am taking you as mine, whatever the implications may be.”
Of course, that’s always the demand the name of Jesus makes of us. Isn’t it? Maybe that comes as a bit of a surprise to all of us still. Perhaps you’ve been ready to do a thousand things for Him. You’ve thought that for God to welcome you, you had somehow to measure up, to qualify, to perform. You’ve been trying to do it, of course – cleaning up your language, attending worship, reading your Bible – but your guilt and your sin cannot so easily be chased from your conscience, much less can it be so conveniently expunged from your record in the courts of God’s justice. And so, you redouble your efforts – you do more, give more, pray more – and still you don’t have peace. And listen, you never can have peace that way. For peace, there’s a sense in which you must do what Joseph did. You too must come to Jesus and say, “I take You as mine, whatever the implications may be. I am Yours. You are mine.” What’s needed, you see, is not a contract of religious employment in which in exchange for services rendered the Lord might show you favor. That’s not what we’re doing here. You can never render enough service to merit the favor of God. What you need is to establish a new relation to God in Jesus Christ. You must take Him for your own by faith. That’s what is required, and nothing else will do. “I’m taking You as mine, whatever the implications may be.” So, Jesus, first of all, is a surprising name.
A Comforting Name
Secondly, Jesus is an assuring name, a comforting name. Look again at what the angel says to Joseph in verse 20. “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.” “Do not fear” – well, easier said than done. I mean it all sounds pretty terrifying to me. Wouldn’t you agree? As a new dad, having your first child is always daunting, but think about the unique challenges of this situation. The Holy Spirit has caused Mary miraculously to conceive her son. The child will be called Jesus because He is going to save His people from their sin, fulfilling ancient prophecy? Moreover, He will be God with us? Oh, by the way, Joseph, you’re dad! You have to raise this boy! No wonder the angel quickly says, “Do not fear.” Who wouldn’t fear when that’s the responsibility being entrusted to us?
When the angels appeared to the shepherds, or the angel, singular, appeared to the shepherds in Luke 2:10, he said the same thing. Do you remember? “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” The only way this isn’t paralyzing, the only way is if this baby is the Savior, Christ the Lord. The only way Joseph marries Mary and adopts and raises Jesus is if Jesus really is Joseph’s Lord. Joseph may be Jesus’ dad, but Jesus is Joseph’s King. Joseph may raise Jesus, but Jesus saves Joseph. “The name of Jesus was comforting at the first mention of it,” says Spurgeon, “because of the words with which it was accompanied, for they were meant to remove perplexity and anxiety from Joseph’s mind. The angel said to him, ‘Fear not,’ and truly no name can banish fear like the name of Jesus. It is the beginning of hope and the end of despair.” No name can banish fear like the name of Jesus. It is the beginning of hope and the end of despair. “Jesus the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease, tis music in the sinners’ ear, tis life and health and peace.” There is no need to fear tomorrow if you have Jesus today. There is no need to fear tomorrow – 2024 is looming. There is no need to fear it if you have Jesus today.
A Missionary Name
And that gets us to the third thing about this name that explains why taking Jesus as our own, as Joseph did, is so important. It explains why Jesus’ coming dispels fear and brings assurance and comfort like nothing else can. You see, this isn’t just a surprising name and an assuring name. It is a missionary name. That is to say, the name Jesus summarizes the mission entrusted to Him. Look with me at verse 21, would you please. “You shall call his name Jesus, for” – so here’s the reason – “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).” The name Jesus means “the Lord saves.” Jesus Himself understood that, understood His mission in those very terms. John 3:17 – Do you remember His conversation with Nicodemus? Jesus tells him, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” He has come on a rescue mission. His name itself proclaims it. John 12:47 – “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” That is Jesus’ mission. Jesus saves.
Listen to the way one writer puts this. “Imagine you were alive, perhaps 35 years or so after this scene, and you were able to take a tour of Israel. You might meet a man you hear was once blind and ask him, ‘How come you are now able to see?’ and he would reply, ‘Because Jesus saved me.’ Then you might meet a deaf man, who could now hear perfectly, and ask, ‘How on earth did you get your hearing back?’ Again, this same answer, ‘Jesus saved me.’ Or we might imagine ourselves in heaven, arriving recently in heaven, and there you meet a man who lived a life of criminality all his days, of violence and rebellion, arrested, imprisoned, eventually condemned by the state to the death penalty, and so he met his end, crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem. And you would ask him, ‘How is it possible that you, of all people, find a welcome here?’ And what would he tell you? He would say, ‘Hanging on a cross of His own, right next to me, Jesus said, ‘Today, you will be with Me in paradise.’ I’m here for the same reason everyone else is here. I am here for the same reason you are here. I am here because Jesus saved me.’” That’s His mission.
And if you’ll look at the text, you’ll see that the angel and Matthew each tell us about two essential dimensions of His saving mission. First, the angel says, “He will save His people from their sins,” and then Matthew, quoting Isaiah 7:14 adds, “They shall call His name Immanuel, (which means ‘God with us’).” Those are the two principle parts of the salvation that Jesus gives us. Do you see them? He saves us from sin and He saves us for fellowship with God. He saves us from sin, for fellowship with God. “Jesus saves” means He came for us and He came to be with us. He came first to save us from our sin. He makes perfect satisfaction of the justice of God, obeying, bleeding, dying, paying our penalty that sin’s penalty might be forgiven in our case. He gives Himself as a sin offering, on the cross, that we might be cleansed of sin’s pollution. He pays in full all our debts that we might be free from sin’s power. And then one day, when the work is finished and we arrive home in glory at last, He will have freed us in that moment, even from sin’s remaining presence. He saves us from sin’s penalty and pollution and power and ultimately even from its very presence in our lives. He will make us like Himself. Jesus came to save us from our sin. At great cost to Himself, He secures our salvation from sin.
But as glorious as that truth is, it’s not the end. It’s the principle means to an even more glorious end. Jesus saves us from our sins – listen to this – He saves us from our sin so that He might save us for fellowship with God. Isn’t that an amazing thought? Why has He come? Human beings are sinful, twisted, disappointing, inconsistent – we are a selfish mess, aren’t we? Why did He come for us as one of us? He came, Matthew says, to be Immanuel, God with us. He is with us in three tenses. He is with us historically, as man among human beings. He is with us right now, today, by the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. And He will be with us in intimate fellowship, face to face forever in the glory to come.
Think about the first of those – He is with us historically. He came into the full experience of our humanity. The divine Son took into union with Himself a full and entire human nature that He might be with us in sorrow and in joy, in weariness and in grief, in eating and drinking, in resting and working. We see Him asleep in a boat, in the middle of a storm, because He was so exhausted. Not even the howling wind or the soaking waves could wake Him. We find Him weeping at Lazarus’ graveside at the enormity of death’s unwanted intrusion. We stand in awe as He is wrongfully accused, cruelly beaten, as nails are hammered home into His hands and feet. We can barely take it in when the divine Son, second person of the blessed Trinity, infinite and eternal and unchangeable God, made flesh, cries out to His Father in the despair of utter abandonment from His cross and He died. The mighty Maker Himself died. His heart stopped. His lungs ceased. He was brain dead! And then His body, torn and emulated, laid in a cold, dark, rock-cut tomb. He was God with us. He came all the way down here into the full experience of our humanity, into all of it, from the cradle to the grave. That’s why Hebrews 4:15 is so precious to us, why it’s true, why it says Jesus is a perfect High Priest who is “able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. He was,” as the King James Version puts it, “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”
“He knows our frame and He remembers that we are dust.” He knows our frame not just because He is the omniscient God who knows all things; He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust because He bore our frame. From dust He came and to dust He returned. He was laid in the dust of death. He knows our frame because He is Jesus, Lord come to save us, because He is Immanuel, God with us. There is, listen, there is no circumstance in which you can’t go to Him and find in Him one whose heart beats with complete sympathy, with tender compassion, with total understanding. Because He is Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, He is a Savior perfectly suited to your need. I can say that to a room as full as this one with absolute confidence. Whatever your need, whatever your background, wherever you are from, whatever is going on, whatever your sin, your guilt, Jesus is suited perfectly to be your Savior because He is God with us, as one of us.
Secondly, He is with us not just historically in the incarnation, He is with us right now, here, by the Holy Spirit. John 14:16, Jesus has told His disciples after His ascension, “The Father will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him because He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.” “Another Helper” – in Greek that word “another” means “another of the same kind; another of the same order; another like Christ; another come to extend and fulfill His ministry in your hearts.” That by His presence within us, Christ is present to us. Jesus is Immanuel still, with us still. He does not leave us as orphans, He says. “I will come to you.” He comes to you by the Holy Spirit. Wherever you go, Christian, you have Jesus with you. That’s both immensely encouraging and profoundly challenging, isn’t it? Wherever you go, you have Jesus with you. That’s a pretty helpful way to determine whether you ought to be where you have gone since you bring Jesus with you. But it also comforts wonderfully because there is nowhere so far, no far country into which you might stray, where you can stray beyond the reach of the Lord Jesus. If you are His, you always, always have Him with you. You are never alone. You are never alone if you have Immanuel who is God with us.
And Jesus is Immanuel, God with us in the age to come. He will bring His people to glory and there we will be with Him and He with us in final, unbroken fellowship forever and ever. Revelation 21:3 pictures that great day. “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things shall have passed away.” On that day, Christ will be Immanuel, God with us, fully, gloriously, and it will fuel our praises, don’t you think, down the long ages of eternity in the new heavens and the new earth. We will be turning to each other and saying, “He is right there! We can see Him! He can see us! We are face to face with the exalted Christ at last. He is with us.
Jesus is a surprising name, an assuring name, a missionary name. He tells us of His mission. It means, “the Lord saves” – saves people like me, like you. Saves us from our sin. Saves us for fellowship with God, here and in the world to come. As we close, let me ask you this. What does the name of Jesus really mean to you? Maybe for some of you it refers to a historical figure and really very little more. Maybe the name of Jesus is the object of religious worship or nothing more than a swear word often found on your lips. Whatever His name has been to you in the past, I hope you are beginning to see that Jesus’ name actually describes His mission. He came to rescue you, to save you from your sin so that He can be with you forever. And really the only proper response to that is the response of Joseph, isn’t it? We must name the name of Jesus, in faith and in trust. We must take Him as our own, no matter the implications. The name of Jesus means “the Lord saves.” Romans 10:13, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” What should you do in response to the glorious truth that Jesus saves? Call on His name, call on Him, cry out to Him for mercy. Whoever seeks finds. “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.” Seek Him. The Lord promises to give Him to you if you will.
Let’s pray together.
Our God and Father, we adore You for Christ Your Son, our Savior and King. We bless You that He who is eternal God took flesh, and so was and continues to be both God and man in two natures and one person forever. That reigning at Your right hand is glorified humanity in Jesus Christ. He is the anchor of our hope, the guarantee of our bright destiny. Would You fix our eyes upon Him? We pray for any here who do not yet know Him. O God, today, now, here in this room, in these moments, may they do what Joseph did and say to Christ, “I take You as mine, the one who means, ‘the Lord saves.’ Save me. I take You as mine. I trust You with everything.” O Lord, would You do that? Would You have mercy and deliver sinners from their sin that they might enjoy fellowship with You forever, for we ask it in the name of Christ, amen.