Well, let me have you guys turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter one. For our time of, of studying the word this morning, what we do every week here at Cornerstone is we We gather together to worship God and we worship Him through the songs that we sing and we've done a lot of singing this morning celebrating God and what He has done for us, but we also worship God. by listening to Him, God is honored as we listen to Him, and we take a sizable part of our service times to open up the Bible and allow God through His word to to speak to us, and we're going to let God this morning speak to us from Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 to 25. Do I have PowerPoint?
OK, thank you. This being the Sunday before Christmas, what we normally do in this particular service is we, we pick one of the sections of the Christmas narrative, and there's basically 4 passages that we tend to rotate through every 4 years, and this morning we arrive at Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 through 25, and this particular passage focuses on the virgin birth, conception and birth of Christ through the eyes of Joseph, all right. Mary's perspective is found in the Gospel of Luke, but, this account in Matthew 1, beginning in verse 18 is more of the birth of Christ from the perspective of Joseph, who was Jesus' earthly father. And one of the things that you find really pounded home in this section of Matthew 1 is the subject of the virgin birth, the virgin conception.
And birth of Christ, which obviously would be a matter of great importance to Joseph, right? when you find out that your wife during your engagement period is pregnant, it's pretty important to know what happened there and, Joseph, gives us his perspective here and it's amazing how often this theme comes up just in these verses. Look at this in verse 18. It says now the birth of Christ was as follows when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together.
In other words, they had not been sexually intimate with each other. The events that are happening here are before that happened. It says she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit, so it was a miraculous conception that occurred in her womb through the Holy Spirit, not through a human father. In verse 20, an angel is speaking to Joseph and says the child who has been conceived in her is of The Holy Spirit....
