Matthew 1:18-25

This year Christmas will be celebrated with all the Covid restrictions and regulations. Christmas 2020 will be the most unusual Christmas we’ve experienced. It will not be what we have come to expect each December. But that may be a good thing!

The promise of Christmas is in fact the promise of Jesus. It was the promise of Jesus that enabled Joseph to deal fruitfully and faithfully with his predicament. And the same is true for you and me. Regardless of what people thought of Joseph and Mary, Jesus was the One who would save His people from their sins!

The angel Gabriel appeared to Joseph and told him in Matthew 1:21 "She [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

We sinners, lost and hopeless, who have abandoned God, running with our backs to Him, now have hope! God, in His great mercy, broke into history with the promise of Jesus, the One who would save His people from their sins.

The Promise of Christmas is sure, Jesus actually saved His people from their sins. Jesus’ death on the cross was substitutionary and specific. He died in the place of those He came to save. He did not offer Himself potentially for anyone who would later decide to believe in Him. Rather, He actually purchased His elect people from the slave market of sin by interposing His blood (Rev. 5:9), so that they do not have to pay for their own sins. Those whom He purposed to save, He saved. All whom the Father has given to the Son will come to Him, and of those, Jesus will lose none (John 6:37, 39). Jesus gives eternal life as His gift to all whom the Father has given Him (John 17:2).

We have not been abandoned. He can do the miraculous: He can restore us to a right relationship with Him, and God did that by sending His Son, Jesus to save us from our sins! What is impossible with man is NOT impossible with God.

Discussion Questions

1. Why is believing in the virgin birth essential to the Christian faith? What other essential doctrines fall if it falls?
2. What prophesy from scripture did the angel use to squash Joseph's doubts about Mary being a virgin?
3. Why is it essential to affirm that salvation is totally of God and not partly from God and partly from us? What is at stake?
4. Is it right to give assurance of salvation to a person who claims to be a Christian, but who is living in known sin? Why/why not?