The Birth Of The Messiah

Uplook –December 2016 — Grace & Truth Magazine

The Birth Of The Messiah

God desires that we know and enter into His own delight in His rich grace as He speaks of Christ, the Messiah. As to the Messiah, three conditions had to be absolutely met:

He had to be truly born of the Virgin.He had to inherit the royal rights of the Solomon branch of David’s house, according to promise.He had to be, in the truest and highest sense, the Jehovah of Israel, Emmanuel – God with us.

All of these are crowded into the brief account given us in Matthew’s gospel: “the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Mt. 1:18 KJV ). We note that it was His grace which caused Him to humble Himself so fully, and it was His all-sufficient wisdom that knew how to reconcile conditions too difficult for man to put together. God speaks, and it is done.

The Spirit of God fixes our attention upon several facts in Matthew 1. There we find that Joseph was the descendant of King David through Solomon. The Messiah must be the son of Joseph; yet had He really been the son of Joseph all would have been lost – how seemingly hopeless. But what are difficulties to God? With Him all things are possible; and faith receives all with assurance. Jesus Christ is not only the son of Joseph in such a manner that no Jew can deny it, yet He is not his son. In contrast, He is also in the fullest way the son of Mary, the Seed of the woman.

God took particular pains to give all importance to the Messiah being strictly, in the eye of the law, the son of Joseph and thereby inheriting the rights of the kingly branch. He also took particular care to prove that He is not, in the reality of His birth as man, Joseph’s son. Before husband and wife came together, the espoused Mary was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Such was the character of the conception.

Besides, He is Jehovah. This comes out in His very name. The Virgin’s son was to be called “Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins” (v.21). He is not a mere man, no matter how miraculously born. Jehovah’s people, Israel, are His; He shall save His people from their sins. This is further revealed by the prophecy of Isaiah cited next, and particularly by the application of that name found nowhere else but in Matthew: “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (vv.22-23).

This, then, is the introduction and the great foundation in fact. There is nothing that so summarily banishes a doubt and silences every question of the natural man as the simple but happy assurance that what God says must be true and is the only right thing.

Surely, too, since Jehovah humbled Himself to be Messiah, to be born of the Virgin, there must be some most worthy aims infinitely deeper than the intention, however great, to sit upon the throne of David. His glory was so bright that He must have a work commensurate, or comparable, with that glory. He whose personal dignity was beyond all time and even thought, who thus humbled Himself to enter the ranks of Israel as son of David, must have had some purpose in coming, and, above all, to die, suitable to such glory.

Continuing, we see that Matthew 2 shows us what reception Messiah would find. From the very first He was the rejected Messiah, and that most emphatically, or forcefully, by those whose responsibility it was most of all to receive Him.

What brought out the unbelief of Israel so distressingly was this: God would have a due testimony to such a Messiah; and if the Jews were unready, He would gather from the very ends of the earth some hearts to welcome Jesus, the Messiah of Israel. Therefore, we see Gentiles coming from the East, led by the star. In His love, He led hearts prepared by Him. And so it was. From their distant home they headed to Jerusalem, for even the universal expectation of men at that time pointed there.

When they came to Jerusalem, the outward sign of the star was hidden. Where in the city were faithful souls awaiting the Messiah? The visitors found active minds – as there were not a few that could tell them clearly where the Messiah was to be born. God made His people dependent upon His Word and they had learned the Scriptures as to His birth. The travelers learned from those that cared neither for it nor for Him, but who nevertheless knew the Letter of God to some degree.

On the road to Bethlehem, to their exceeding joy, the star reappeared, confirming what they had received, until it rested over the young child. There, in the presence of the father and the mother, they proved how truly they were guided of God; for neither father nor mother received the smallest of their worship: all was reserved for Jesus – all poured out at the feet of the infant Messiah.

Further, to these ones a warning was given of God, and they returned another way. Thus they defeated the design of the treacherous heart and cruel head of the Edomite king – notwithstanding the slaughter of the innocent children in and near Bethlehem (vv.16-18).

Next comes a remarkable prophecy of Christ through Hosea. Our Lord was carried outside the reach of the storm into Egypt. Such indeed was the history of His life. It was continual pain, one course of suffering and shame. There was no mere heroism in the Lord Jesus, but the very opposite. Nevertheless, it was God shrouding His Majesty; it was God in the person of man, in the Child that takes the lowliest place in the proud world. Therefore, we find no cloud that covers Him, no pillar of fire that shields Him. He was carried by His parents into the ancient furnace of affliction. Thus even from the very first our Lord Jesus, as a baby, tasted the hate of the world – what it was to be thoroughly humbled.

The prophecy, therefore, was accomplished in its deepest meaning. It was not merely Israel that God called out, but His Son out of Egypt. Here was the true Israel; Jesus was the genuine stock before God. He went through, in His own person, Israel’s history: He went into Egypt and is called out of it.

Returning in due time to the land of Israel, His parents were instructed as we are told and turned aside into the parts of Galilee. Thus was to be fulfilled the word: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” It was the name of man’s scorn; for Nazareth was the most despised place in the land. Such, in the providence of God, was the place for Jesus.

By William Kelly, adapted from “The Gospel Of Matthew.”

“Oh, the brightness of the glory shining in the Saviour’s face!
Telling all the blessed story of the ways of God in grace: Lowly, hated, and rejected in the world He came to save,By the glory of the Father raised triumphant from the grave.”—Mrs. J. A. Trench (1843-1925)