what the Bible says

One of the criticisms of the apostle’s creed is that it misses out vast chunks of Jesus’ ministry on earth. They have a point!

There were people then (as there are today) who said ‘well Jesus is just a man like any of us – he’s just an ordinary human being’. But even at the time of developing the creed Christian thinkers were saying “yes, he is a human being, but he’s surely much more than that!” And how might we know – well the events surrounding his birth give us a massive clue.

Isaiah 7:14

Ahaz was king of Judah and was being threatened with invasion from some neighbouring kings. Ahaz was considering making an alliance with another enemy to counter this threat and Isaiah is saying loud and clear “No, no, no! This is NOT a wise move, Ahaz!”

• The the Lord spoke to Anaz and offered to give him any sign the chose to show how unwise it was to join with Assyria.

11 “Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”

I wonder how you would respond to an offer like that? >>>

12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test.”

So he turned down God’s offer. Pretending to be oh-so-very humble So Isaiah (the prophet) said

13 … “Hear now, you house of David! (i.e. not just king Ahaz, but everyone) Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also?

“This false humility of yours, Ahaz, is a smokescreen for you wanting your own way!

• Ahaz, God has seen straight through this sham humility and said …”

14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign (anyway):

And what will that sign be?

14 … a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

We might have expected a promise of military victory, or a thunderbolt or some such dramatic happening

• But no. God is going to work through the one thing Ahaz probably least expected – a baby.

Two key words here:

“virgin” Scholars agree that the Hebrew word used here “almah”, doesn’t necessarily mean ‘virgin’ but it would certainly be inferred from the way people regarded young unmarried women at the time.

‘Immanuel’ – a highly evocative word – it means God-with-us!

And Isaiah goes on …

15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right,

Curds and honey were the food given to babies before they took solids on board.

• so this unique baby will possess an accurate moral compass before he is even weaned!

• This is God in a baby! – and it’s 700 years before Jesus was born!

Matthew 1:

What evidence do we have?

18This is how the 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. 19Because 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.

20But 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. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet:

What’s going on here?

• Matthew spotted the link between Isaiah’s prophecy and the birth of Jesus

22 … All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet Isaiah 23“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

A miracle of a virgin birth will take place – and that will be a verifiable sign that God’s at work

24When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Question many of us ask: Is this believable in a scientific age?

• For the first 1800 years of the church nobody batted en eyelid about it. But then some people started questioning it

• For me, there is no reason to disbelieve either miracles or the supernatural on scientific grounds;

I sometime read people who argue “Well, these people were pre-scientific communities, they didn’t understand the world like we do and therefore we shouldn’t really believe them” It is absurd to attribute belief in miracles to ignorance of the natural laws revealed by science.

• Jesus’ contemporaries in first century Palestine may have lacked the knowledge of modern physicists, but they were perfectly well aware that His virgin birth or His other miraculous signs (like stilling storms and healing lepers) were events which ran counter to the normal course of nature.

• If they didn’t think these things were unusual, they would never have regarded them as miracles.

Matthew tells us that Joseph was resolved to break off his engagement to Mary precisely because he knew as well as you and I do that women don’t usually become pregnant without first having had sex!

• So we can’t dismiss the accounts of Jesus’ virgin birth as the unreliable testimony of gullible witnesses. You must examine the evidence for them with an open mind.

Luke

Luke 1: 29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. …

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God.

In order to be both God and man Jesus has to have both human origins and divine origins and the Bible gives us both.

• It only required God to create or manipulate a single cell to begin the process of coming to earth as a baby and the Bible is clear about this (although they were unaware of the microbiology of it all)

Luke is at pains to point out that Mary and Joseph did not have sex with each other until after the birth of Jesus.

• In fact Joseph wanted to break off their engagement, and do so in a dignified way, when he heard Mary was pregnant.

• Both of them were mystified by all this – so much so that it was only when an angel appeared to Joseph (as he had to Mary) that Joseph changed his mind and publicly stuck by his future wife.

• In doing do he took an enormous personal risk!

It is unimaginable, psychologically, for Mary and Joseph to behave the way they did if they knew they had a guilty secret!

But as the truth dawned on both of them that this was God at work – and doing something much bigger than they had imagined, Mary’s heart just leapt for joy!

“My soul magnifies (exalts, commends, praises) the Lord! My spirit rejoices in God my saviour”

>>>

So what? – This has huge implications to do with Jesus

He is fully human because of his birth

Really, we should talk about the virgin conception of Jesus.

• Jesus was born at the end of a normal 9-month pregnancy and went through all the trauma of birth and childhood, not just (as some people say) so that he could be similar to us but so that he could actually be one of us.

• To be as fully human as you or me, and as fully God as God the Father

He is fully divine because of his origin

How can that work out? It has been a theological tussle for centuries. I find it helpful to think of it using this illustration

• This week I filled my car with diesel – for £78! – and I filled it to the brim

• When I filled it, I filled it to the brim. There was lots more diesel in the garage’s supply, but only so much I could get into my tank.

• In a similar way God invested as much of his nature and power and majesty into Jesus as one human body, one human being was capable of carrying.

There was no more God-ness that could have been placed in Jesus than was actually there in Him. He was fully God!

That’s similar to Jesus being filled with God

And now the wonder of the gospel is that it’s this very person who gave himself for you!

The one we are following and modelling our lives on is the one who was born of an ordinary girl, Mary, but whose father was God almighty.

How does the Virgin birth help us?

The virgin birth helps us see who Jesus really was

Both human and divine – fully man and fully God

In His wisdom God worked it so that both the human and the divine were happening at Jesus’ birth.

• We see His full humanity from the normal gestation and birth he went through, and we see his full deity in the from the conception in Mary’s womb which was an act of God’s spirit.

• This is why this doctrine has such a key place in our faith.

If the virgin birth of Jesus was untrue, then the whole trajectory of Jesus’ life changes.

• We would have a sexually promiscuous young woman who lies about God’s miraculous part in the birth of her son. She would then be living a life of complete deception when she declared Jesus to be God and joined his ‘religion’.

• If Mary is nothing more than a con merchant, then neither she nor Jesus can be trusted.

• But all the evidence we have from the people who were there at the time is that Mary’s story is reliable and Jesus is who he claimed to be, God in human form.

Shows us God was at work from the very first moment of Jesus’ life

And continued to be right up to the very last moment – his ascension from the earth.

All the way through his life Jesus is spoken of as being the person in whom we could see the Holy Spirit more than any other character in history. Filled with God-ness is a way nobody else could be.

Jesus was aware of his origin from a very early age

e.g. incident at the age of 12 in the temple

• story >>> “I must be about my father’s business” –

• If he’d meant his human father he’d be doing carpentry – but he was there speaking about God and showed an intimate personal knowledge of what God was like

• That is what so impressed and amazed the priests and teachers of the law. “Where did this boy get all this from?” they asked.

• Had he made himself subject to his human father he would have been on the way home with the rest of the entourage. But he was subject to his heavenly father and therefore stayed .

In the virgin birth God was taking the initiative.

The angel didn’t ask for Mary’s willingness to have the baby. He just announced that it was going to happen “ You will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will call his name Jesus. God didn’t ask Mary’s permission, He acted gently and decisively.

It was a one-off moment and not something we should expect again or pray for.

When you became a Christian (assuming you have), you took that step because God – you loving heavenly Father – was on your case.

• He was then – and he still is today.

Next week – I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son

• we’ll see how this works out

• I want to talk in about salvation and how Jesus makes it happen for us. – If you want to bring a friend to hear the message of Jesus Christ, this would be a good Sunday to invite them.

Pray