Matthew 1:18-23
December 24, 2019
preached by Don Willeman
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“‘Immanuel, God with us.’ It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it…. Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word, ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused…. ‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky…. Feast, Christians, feast; you have a right to feast….”

~C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), famed London preacher

“The Church’s central Fact is a person, not a proposition, Truth made flesh, a man in history, thereby transforming both humanity and history’s trajectory.”

~Ken Myers, social commentator

“If the only thing human beings needed were a little external tweaking of their life circumstances, then the coming of Jesus to earth wouldn’t make any sense. But if the greatest danger to all of us lives inside us and not outside us, then the radical intervention of the incarnation of Jesus is our only hope.”

~Paul Tripp, author and speaker

“The Bible is God’s anthropology rather than man’s theology.”

~Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), leading Jewish theologian-philosopher of the 20^th century

“Jesus had the guilty in mind when He hung high and stretched out wide…. He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God… Didn’t He know that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew… Without asking my permission, a good God had come to my rescue.”

~Jackie Hill Perry, writer, poet and hip-hop artist

“God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.”

~St. Augustine (354-430), bishop in North Africa

Sermon Passage

Matthew 1:18-23 (ESV)

¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ 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. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

²³ “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”
(which means, God with us).