The Naming of a Baby [Part 1]

Matthew 1: 18-23 (Part 1 of 2)

When couples are about to have a child one ne of the things they have to do is to decide what the name the child. That’s normally not much of a problem. In some countries they name a son after the father and a daughter after the mother. Matter of fact, in some cultures, that’s tradition. (Fascinated by a conversation I had a few years ago with someone from Iceland who explained to me my so many Icelandic men and women have similar sounding endings to their names.

My middle name is Ronald and that was the name of my father. Until a few generations ago my family surname was double-barrelled when someone from a higher social status wouldn’t drop her family name which was Brownlow, and we became Brownlow McCandless but my grandmother dropped by moving the Brownlow surname to a middle name for my father. I also took it as a middle name and it has now it has been passed on as a middle name down the years since then. So, you can see sometimes it gets complicated, but what happens if the parents don’t agree. Names can also be deeply significant, they can determine your status, the image of yourself that is projected into the world, determining what other people might  think of you. 

Now, with all of that in mind, let me ask a question. How did Jesus get his name? And what was the significance of that? And what does that have to do with us 2000 years later? Well, the answer to those questions are really fascinating and they do have some things to say to us today. Even as you live your life this coming week, the name chosen for him steal means something really important. Now there are a lot of things going on in this passage but one of the major issues in this passage is what to name the child and it concludes with the decision they make.

So let me tell you a story. Let me tell you the story of how Jesus got his name and what it means and more than that, what it means to us today. With that in mind turn with me to Matthew, Chapter one, verse 18

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

(Genesis 1: 18)

What is significant in this verse is that before they came together, which simply means before they had any kind of marital relationship an angel appeared to Mary and said to her that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and you're going to become pregnant. In Luke’s account she is seen to question, how can that be, seeing that I have not known a man. Also, in Luke’s account we also find when the angel explains to her that the Holy Spirit was gonna come up on her and that that was going to be the reason that she was going to be with child. Now that elaborates slightly what is stated here in Matthew 1: 18 where it says she was found with child by the Holy Spirit. To put all of that very simply, Mary was a virgin, and yet she had a child, hence this is why many call this the virgin birth of Christ.

Now that doctrine gives some people a problem. How could a woman never having had relations with a man be a pregnant? That doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, and they have a problem with that. I don’t really understand why some Christians also get hung up on this. They can believe that God made the world and is creator of the universe. Well, it seems to me if God has the ability to create the world, do you think it’s any kind of a problem for him to see to it that a young virgin girl got pregnant? The simple reality is the Bible teaches the virgin birth of Christ. If you accept at all what the Bible says in the first verse of Genesis that, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, then the idea of a virgin birth should not really be a problem. 

But one another little detail about Mary that might be helpful here. We’re not given this information here, but in the Luke account we were told that she went to see Elizabeth, her cousin, who at the time was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. Now, putting a whole bunch of this and other scriptural references together, Bible scholars come to the conclusion that this means that Mary at this point was about three months pregnant.  In other words, she was beginning to show. Now that’s Mary. Let’s now shift to the second main character in this story. Joseph.

   Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

(Matthew 1: 19)

Now what’s going on is this, and we also know this from Luke that she’s three months pregnant and Joseph not wanting to disgrace her has plans to put her away secretly, as the KJV says. What is going on? In order to understand what’s going on in this verse, you have to understand a little bit about the marriage custom in ancient times in Israel. In modern Europe and America, it tends to go like this. You go out on dates; you get engaged and then you get married. Three phases to getting married. In ancient times, the arrangement was a little different. First of all, an arrangement was usually made when you were still a child between the parents of the bride and the bridegroom. One historian I read this said marriage was considered to be, quote, far too serious in the quote to be left to human passions. The parents made the arrangement, well in advance., this was the way they did it back in biblical times. So, they had this arrangement  which would also have involved the parents made whilst they were young. 

The next phase of a marriage was called the Petropol period. Now that usually happened about a year before the marriage ceremony, during that phase, they were considered married, though they had not consummated the marriage yet. If during that period the girl did not approve, she was free to back out, but  beyond that, this relationship was now binding. If it was broken at all, you had to do it by the strict rules. As a matter of fact, if the man died during that period the woman was considered a widow and inherited his estate. Then of course the final phase was the marriage property. Now that explains what’s going on here. Verse 18 says Mary was betrothed to Joseph. So, they were in this phase where they had not yet come together to consummate the marriage. They hadn’t had the marriage ceremony and Joseph, her husband when discovering she was pregnant the text says he was mindful was made to put her away, If during this petropol period the woman to whom you were, we would say, engaged became pregnant by another man, the Mosaic law required that she be taken out and stoned to death.

Now the first part of verse 19 means he was likely going to do what the law says. But if he stood up and say she’s committed adultery she would have been taken out and stoned. On the other hand, part of him that was just wanted to do what the law says, but apparently loved her and he didn’t want to humiliate or endanger her, he did not want to make her a public example. So, he’s in a dilemma and verse 19, says what he was thinking about what to do. Putting her away meant secretly divorcing her so as not to publicly humiliate her and at the same time not to go through with Mosaic Law option of seeing her stoned. I want to pause here for minute? I think there’s something interesting about Joseph. 

The fact that it says he was mindful seems to  suggest to me that there is a gentle rational aspect to his  behaviour, and it just seems to me this is a person who is in emotional conflict that can go on when sometimes we have to make a difficult decision. Our heart can tell us to do one thing, and our mind tells us to do another. He was torn between a desire to protect Mary on the one hand, and a desire to be religiously correct on the other. Between choosing a public disgrace and a private divorce, he struggled between his conscience and his love. Can you identify with that? Have you ever been faced with a problem you knew what was right, but your heart was somewhere else, and your heart and your head struggle. Well, that’s where Joseph is. At that point there enters the third character in the story. Look at verse 20. 

 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph’s son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

(Matthew 1: 20)

Notice the angel calls him the “Son of David”. Now. In one sense, that’s true. He was in the line of the ancient Hebrew Kings, but this child is Mary’s child, not his. So, this is deeply, significant, and it is especially significant in relation to this as a gospel event. Back at the start of chapter one, verse one, the book starts out with the genealogy of Jesus Christ as being from the from the tribe of Judah, who was from the family of David. In fact, the Old Testament constantly narrows down until it pinpoints that the Messiah as been born out of the family of David and born in Bethlehem. And now for the first of many time the New Testament will point to the fact that this will be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  The angel calls Joseph “Son of David”, and says don’t be afraid to marry her. This relieves the tension and helps solve his dilemma. He is no longer perplexed he is confident of the route he now needs to take. He knows that Mary did not commit adultery. So do the Mosaic law shouldn’t apply to her, and he also doesn’t have to put her away secretly, he can go through with the marriage. But that’s not the end of the story., the angel then says in verse 21 

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

(Matthew 1: 21)

This passage makes a big deal out of what he is to be his name. So right, he’s virgin born. But that’s not the main point of this verse. The point of this passage is, and I want to be sure that you get the message, he is to be called Jesus. Jesus is the Greek translation of a Hebrew word, and the Hebrew word is Joshua. And Joshua means Jehovah saves. So connected with the name Jesus is the whole idea of being saved by God. As a matter of fact, look at this verse. It says the reason I want you to call him Jesus is because he shall save his people from their sins. “His people”, is obviously a reference to the Jews, but the rest of the text makes clear he’s the Lamb of God that died to the sins of the world, So the salvation offered by Jesus will includes the whole world. But I want you to be clear at this juncture, the whole point of naming him Jesus is to point out that he is the one who saves people from sin. 

22 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

(Matthew 1: 22-23)

So, Jesus has a second name and his second name is a title and it is  “Emmanuel” and the meaning of that name is “God is with us”. So, the God who is with us is the one who will save us. Let me just take a minute and talk about Isaiah 7:14, which is being quoted in this passage, and is where the title Emmanuel is given to the Messiah, 

Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.

(Matthew 7: 14)

That’s a problem because in the Old Testament was written the word “virgin”, and Isaiah 7: 14 some say should be translated “young women”. Have you ever had somebody tell you the Bible doesn’t teach the virgin birth because the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7:14, just means young woman. Ever had that happen? Well, if you ever get any discussions about this, and it may come up, and since that’s probably going to happen, let me address that if I may. It is true that the word used does mean young woman, but what should be added it actually means a young woman of a marriageable age. Not young woman in the sense of a child and in the Old Testament context, that word would imply, if she wasn’t married, that she was a virgin. Matter of fact, this word only occurs six times in the Old Testament and the other references bears out that what is implied in that word is the fact that this was a young woman of marital age and of unblemished character. 

So just flippantly saying the Hebrew word means “young woman”, not virgin is not totally accurate. When taken within the context of the Old Testament where it is drawn from it can only mean a young woman who would have been a virgin. In fact, when the Old Testament was translated into Greek about 200 years before Christ those translators got to Isaiah 7:14, they chose a Greek word, years before Christ had even been born, which meant  virgin. The Greek word they used then meant virgin, so, they understood that Isaiah 7:14 was talking about Virgin. Furthermore, Matthew argues that it’s that word, and he uses the Greek word for virgin, not just the word for a single woman and Luke’s account does the same thing. So, if anybody ever says to you Isaiah 7:14 means young woman, you say, hold on, that true but by it’s use and it is representing her as a young woman of good character implies the virgin birth, and besides later, under inspiration, Matthew and Luke said it’s virgin birth. So that it that, in my estimation.

But there’s one other problem we need to talk about, but we will do that in the next episode.