20th December

20th December

Pray (ACts)


Read - Matthew 1:18-25 (focus v19)


Message Alan Burke 


I keep trying to emphasising how scripture from beginning to end is about One Lord, One Plan, One People and is the title of a book by Rodger Crooks which I can recommend to you. The bible in his words with “all its sixty-six books focus on Jesus, the one Lord who is the terminal point of God’s promises. It is the story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, reign, and return which is the Bible’s big theme”. For Mary and Jospeh the child that was to come, that baby who was born, that they held in their arms, was like no other, for he was part of the unfolding plan of God fulfilling what he had decreed before the foundations of the world. One that the Lord had been revealing throughout the history of the human race of the coming of the child that would be born to Mary. 


Throughout the Old Testament God was pointing his people to the hope that they had in the one who would come, with numerous prophecies about the coming that the people could look to and live in the hope of the one to come from the very first announcement of his coming. In the midst of the fall as part of God’s judgement he said to the serpent;“15And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen 3:15 NIV). This first prophecy was making it clear that the coming of the Lord Jesus the one that Mary and Jospeh would hold in their arms as a newborn baby was like no other, born as baby he was destined for Calvary, all unfolding according to God’s plans and purposes, to what he had decreed before the foundation of the world. Today as we think of The Name Of Jesus, He Will Save His People From Their Sins in v19 it is this plan of God that was being fulfilled. 




Well here the earthly father of Jesus is told by the angel that he is not to break of the engagement instead he is to marry Mary and to name the son that is within her ‘Jesus’, the reason why we are told is that ‘he will save his people from their sins’. 


The name Jesus that we are told here Jospeh is to name him because he will save their people from their sin comes from the name Joshua, it is a shortened version of it. Joshua (Yehoshua) means ‘The LORD is Salvation’.He came to save his people form their sin, the penalty of their sin, the eternal judgment that they deserve so that they would be justified before God but also to save his people from the power of their sin, breaking the chains that bind us something that we forget today so that we may grow in our sanctification, grow in our holiness, more and more into the likeness of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Notice who he had come to save from their sin, his people. Who are his people, 1 John tells us who his people are, they are those who receive him, those who believed in his name, to those he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (Jn 1:11–13 para.). It’s unlikely that either Joseph or Mary fully understood the significance of this and what that it would entail. Jesus came for all who would receive him, who would believe in his name, he came as their saviour. If you have not received him, if you have not believed in his name, if you have not been born of God then unless you receive him, believe in him then the salvation that he has brought is not yours, receive him, believe in him and it will be.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q20 Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, (Eph. 1:4) did enter into a (covenant of grace), to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer. (Rom. 3:20–22, Gal. 3:21–22)
​