MVOPC 18 December 2011
Call to Worship: Psalm 100:1-5
Opening Hymn: 14 “New Songs of Celebration Render”
Confession of Sin
Almighty God, Who are rich in mercy to all those who call upon You; Hear us as we humbly come to You confessing our sins; And imploring Your mercy and forgiveness. We have broken Your holy laws by our deeds and by our words; And by the sinful affections of our hearts. We confess before You our disobedience and ingratitude, our pride and willfulness; And all our failures and shortcomings toward You and toward fellow men. Have mercy upon us, Most merciful Father; And of Your great goodness grant that we may hereafter serve and please You in newness of life; Through the merit and mediation of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon: Titus 2:11-14
Old Covenant Reading: Isaiah 7:1-14
New Covenant Reading: Luke 1:26-38
Hymn of Preparation: 194 “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
Sermon Text: Matthew 1:18-25
Sermon: You Shall Call His Name Jesus
Hymn of Response: 30 “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past”
Confession of Faith: Apostles’ Creed p. 845
Doxology (Hymn 732)
Diaconal Offering
Closing Hymn: 196 “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”
PM Worship: Isaiah 9:1-7 – On His Shoulders
Adult Sunday School: Fellowship Lunch – No Sunday School
Suggested Preparations
Monday (12/12) Read and discuss Matthew 1:18-25. One of the most moving contemporary songs about Christmas is called “Joseph’s Song” by Michael Card. This song looks at the extraordinary reality of Jesus growing up as a little boy through the eyes of his adoptive father. At one point the song has Joseph sing:
Father show me where I fit
into this plan of yours
How can a man be father
to the Son of God
Lord for all my life I’ve
been a simple carpenter
How can I raise a king, How
can I raise a king
As overwhelming as this may have seemed to Joseph, it pales in comparison to the decision he had to make when he received the astonishing news: Mary was pregnant! Legally, Joseph and Mary were already married. Normally marriages were arranged so that the man would be between 18 and 20 and the woman in her early teens. Joseph was in the process of trying to establish himself financially for his soon to be family. He would almost certainly have been in the process of physically building the home (perhaps a room on his parents’ house) for where he could take Mary and start their life together. As he fitted the stones together and erected the beams he must have constantly been dreaming about what their new life as a couple would be like. Now it was over before it ever really began. Mary was pregnant and not by him. This crisis dramatically reveals what sort of man Joseph was in three key decisions:
- First, Joseph, because he was a righteous man sought to divorce Mary quietly. Whatever plans and dreams Joseph had needed to put aside in order for him to live consistently with the law of God. Please notice that Scripture does not pit being righteous against being compassionate. Joseph did not seek to torment Mary for her supposed sin by making her a public disgrace. He chose to do the right thing in a compassionate way.
- Second, God chose to override Joseph’s decision. The Angel of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him that, in spite of Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph was to marry her anyway. We will look at what the Angel of the LORD told Joseph on Saturday.
- Third, Joseph chose to obey God’s word. There is a beautiful touch in how Joseph does this. In verse 25 we are told that “he called his name Jesus.” In naming Jesus, Joseph claimed him as his own son. We are prone to pass over this fact too easily but we shouldn’t forget that the Angel of the LORD appeared only to Joseph in a dream. He did not appear to the whole town. Taking Mary to be his wife would open Joseph up to the scorn of all his neighbors. Undoubtedly, most of them would think that Jesus was Joseph’s son born under illicit circumstances. But Joseph chose to suffer the contempt of man for a time because he was committed to seeking His praise not from man but from God. Joseph was a righteous man. “Mary’s obedience in Luke 1 is the same, so we see what kind of pious, God-fearing parents Jesus had, who are models for us all (Grant Osborne).”
Read or Sing Hymn: 14 “New Songs of Celebration Render” Prayer: Please pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Iran.
Tuesday (12/13) Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. How do we pursue genuine spiritual maturity? In today’s passage, the Apostle Paul is unmasking the Corinthians for their spiritual immaturity and worldliness. But the goal isn’t that we become skilled at critiquing others but that we would grow into Christian maturity ourselves. So how do we do it? Three key aspects to this growth are learning and applying Scripture to our lives, the Holy Spirit, and learning from Good Role Models:
- SCRIPTURE: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Reading, hearing, and meditating upon God’s word is essential … but it isn’t sufficient. You could simply be puffing yourself up with factual knowledge. In fact, you could be using your newfound knowledge to sow divisions within the body of Christ. It is not enough to store up the word of God like bags of seed along the side of a field. You actually have to plow the field. That is, you need to put what you are learning into practice in your daily life.
- CULTIVATING THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: Galatians 5:22-26 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”
- IMITATING GOOD ROLE MODELS: Paul regularly encouraged other Christians to imitate him as he imitated Christ. For example, when he wrote to the Philippians he said: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” Paul, of course, is a great role model for all of us – but it is important to find role models that you can see and talk with. If you think that you are too spiritually mature to need role models … you are not!
Read or Sing Hymn 194 “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” Prayer: Ask that the LORD would cause you to evidence more of the Fruit of the Spirit.
Wednesday (12/14) Read and discuss Isaiah 7:1-14. One time C.S. Lewis was talking with a colleague in his study at Oxford when a group of students began singing Christmas carols outside his window. His colleague condescendingly said something like, “These are Oxford University students. Don’t they realize that virgins don’t give birth?” To which Lewis dryly replied, “Don’t you think they already know that?” Odd, isn’t it, that, having heard the Christmas story so often, people sometimes forget what a spectacular miracle the virgin conception was? Indeed, it was nothing less than a new creation of the Second Adam. Over the past two centuries many have attempted to strip the miraculous from Scripture. One place where such “scholars” seem to have gained traction is with respect to Isaiah 7:14. At first this may seem odd. Since Matthew and Luke clearly and repeatedly declare that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived in her womb, what is the point of arguing that Isaiah 7:14 merely speaks of a young woman giving birth and not a virgin? The answer is that it is extremely embarrassing to liberals that God would promise the virgin concept seven centuries before it happened. Oddly, many conservatives have tended to take the liberals at their word and have become very tentative at suggesting that Isaiah 7:14 speaks of the virgin conception of Christ. Nevertheless, there are really strong (even compelling) reasons for holding to the traditional understanding:
- Although liberals have repeatedly asserted that the Hebrew word ‘alma simply means “young woman” no one has ever produced a single example in either biblical or extra-biblical Hebrew where the person referred to was not a virgin. As the Old Testament scholar J. Alec Motyer observes: “Wherever the context allows a judgment, ‘alma is is not a general term meaning ‘young woman’ but a specific one meaning ‘virgin’.”
- The Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek (done in the two centuries prior to Christ) translates ‘alma with the Greek term parthenon which everyone recognizes means virgin. This is the same term used by Matthew and Luke in the New Testament to record Christ’s virgin conception.
- Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 as being about the birth of Jesus.
- Consider how dramatic a sign the LORD promises to Ahaz: “Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” As Homer Hailey put it, what is in view is “a sign so momentous that only Jehovah could give it.” Then ask yourself this question: “How dramatic a sign is it that a young woman would bear a son?” The fact is, not only would a young woman bearing a son not be a particularly dramatic sign – it wouldn’t be a sign at all. Young woman have children the natural way all the time.
- If we keep reading from Isaiah 7 through chapter 9 we can trace some interesting details about the child that will be born to this woman: (1) He will be called Immanuel – meaning “God with us” (7:14); (2) In 8:8 he is called Immanuel again and the Land is described as His Land. (3) It is impossible to separate this child from the description in Isaiah 9:6-7 where the child is also described Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. There simply is no way that an ordinary child in Isaiah’s time could have fulfilled all of this – even as a type of the Christ who was to come.
“Following these pointers, we have a sign that lives up to its promise. Heaven and earth will be truly moved. Isaiah foresaw the birth of the divine son of David and also laid the foundation for understanding the unique nature of his birth (Motyer).” Read or sing Hymn: 194 “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”. Prayer: Please pray for friend or loved one who does not know the LORD that they would be brought to Christ this Christmas season.
Thursday (12/15) Read and discuss Luke 1:26-38. This story is about Jesus. The Bible does give us a great deal of information about many people, but they are in the biblical narrative primary to help us see: (1) Who God is; and (2) How we should respond to and live in light of who God is. Today’s passage is no different. The Lutheran scholar Arthur Just, Jr. points out that “the brevity of the sketch of Mary as a person is arresting; the only significant piece of information is her status as a ‘virgin,’ which is referred to twice in 1:27. The weight of the text falls not on Mary herself, but upon her miraculous conception.” Just goes on to show that he literary structure of this passage forms a chiasm with the virgin conception at the center framed by the designations of the Messiah whom she would conceive:
A1. Mary is going to conceive.
B1. Designations of the Messiah
Jesus
The child will be great
Son of the Most High
King over the house of Jacob forever
C. The virgin will conceive.
Mary’s question: “How will this be, since
I do not know a man?”
Gabriel’s answer: “The Holy Spirit will come
upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you.”
B2. Designations of the Messiah
The child to be born will be holy.
He will be called the Son of God
A2. Elizabeth has conceived in her old age.
As this structure makes clear, even in the section on the virgin birth, the emphasis is on the involvement of the Holy Spirit in conceiving the Messiah and not upon Mary herself. Matthew is keeping Christ where He belongs – at the center. Read or Sing Hymn 30 “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” Prayer: Pray for the Roman Catholic Church that they would become centered on Jesus Christ and that they would come to embrace the Gospel in its purity and power.
Friday (12/16) King Uzziah was an exceptional ruler. This is something that should not be taken for granted either in ancient Israel or in the modern world. To be led by a wise and godly ruler is a great blessing. Furthermore, Uzziah reigned for 40 years. Most of the people living in Israel at the time of his death had never lived under another king. Now Uzziah was dead. Would Israel revert to wicked rulers or even to chaos? Would her next king try to fleece the sheep rather than protect them? Isaiah tells us that “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.” When the earthly king was dead and gone, Isaiah saw the King of Kings who lives and reigns forever. So what? What good does it do us if there is a perfect ruler way off in a distance while we have to live with wicked rulers down here on earth? First of all the Biblical portrait of God is of a Sovereign who is actively involved in even the apparently smallest aspects of creation – so that He cares even for the sparrows and the hairs on your head (Luke 12:6). Secondly, our passage declares the glorious news that the LORD Himself is coming down to be with us as Immanuel – which means “God with us”. Rather than history moving from bad to worse, or even in cycles, God is guiding history forward. With the coming of Christ He has established a new visible reign on earth. According to verse 7, will this righteous government be defeated by the kingdoms of this world? According to the end of verse 7, how committed is the LORD to bringing about His own righteous reign on earth? Looking around, we do not yet see everything under Christ’s righteous rule. While the Kingdom of God has come there are still many who love the darkness more than the light. Let us give thanks that this is not the end of the story. Read or sing Hymn: 30 “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past”. Recite the Nicene Creed. Prayer: Prayer: Faith Alone is one of the most fundamental rallying cries of the Reformation. Nevertheless, we all tend to place part of our hope in people, things, and organizations rather than in Christ alone. Take a few moments to consider what you are trusting in to make your life fruitful. Pray that God would re-center your hopes that you would trust in Christ alone.
Saturday (12/17) Read and discuss Matthew 1:18-25. The story of Christ’s miraculous conception is beautiful and moving, but does it really make any difference in the way that we think? A surprising number of New Testament scholars treat the virgin conception as a nice story that we could very well get on without. But they are wrong. At the heart of today’s passage is the truth of Jesus’ title Immanuel – God with us. Consider the rich theology found in the Angel’s message to Joseph on why he should still take Mary to be his wife. We should remember that all his life Joseph had been called Joseph bar Jacob (which means Joseph the son of Jacob). Yet the Angel immediately introduces messianic overtones by calling him Joseph son of David. Then he says:
Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,
for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit,
and she will give birth to a son,
and you are to call his name Jesus
for he will save his people from their sins.
Furthermore, this was going to fulfill the word of God which was given through the prophet Isaiah:
Look, a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son.
And they will call his name ‘Immanuel,’
which means ‘God with us.’
This passage makes it clear that Jesus’ origins (the Greek word is “genesis”) come uniquely from God and that in Christ we will experience God’s saving presence. It is not without meaning that Matthew begins his account of the Gospel with the origins of the one called Immanuel. The very last words of Matthew come from our Lord when He tells His disciples: “Look, I am with you always, even until the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).” Read or sing Hymn: 230 “Thou Who Wast Rich beyond All Splendor”. Read or sing Hymn 196 “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” Prayer: Please lift up tomorrow’s morning and evening worship services.
