Matthew: Salvation and Presence

Listen in as we look at Matthew 1:18-25 and see how Jesus brings His people across the gaps of life.

Notes/Quotes:

"Sin is not a mistake. A mistake is taking the wrong exit on the highway. A sin is treason against a Holy God. A mistake is a logical misstep. Sin lurks in our heart and grabs us by the throat to do its bidding. One very difficult aspect of sin is that my sin never feels like sin to me. My sin feels like life to me, plain and simple. My heart is an idol factory, and my mind is an excuse-making factory.In accepting misrepresentations of the gospel that render sin anything less than this, you will never learn of the fruit of repentance.” - Rosaria Butterfield

“Here Matthew gives the Messiah two names, by which we learn the essentials of the person and work of their bearer. Jesus is a human Jew—this is what his name says: “Joshua”; Jesus is also the divine Lord—this is what his name means: “God Saves.” Only when Jesus is seen through this dual optic does the gospel of Jesus finally make sense. And Matthew, perhaps intentionally, begins to grind the lens of this dual optic of true humanity and true divinity already in the initial chapter of his Gospel, a lens that will be polished still more in John’s Gospel and brought to a sheen in the Creeds.” - Dale Bruner

“Man's maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother's breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.” - Augustine

What’s incredible about the Incarnation is not so much that a virgin conceived (remarkable though that might be) but that God became man. “What is truly amazing about the Christian faith,” says the physicist Jonathan Feng, “is the idea that God made the universe—from quarks to galaxies—but at the same time cared enough about us to be born as a human being, to come down, to die and be crucified in the person of Jesus, and to bring forgiveness and new life to broken people.” - Rebecca McLaughlin

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.” Brennan Manning