HeavenBound General Baptist Ministries

[guardian]

What about Joseph in all this? Both Matthew 1:18 and Luke 1:27 tell us that he and Mary were betrothed (legally engaged). Scholar John Nolland notes that “in Jewish tradition a girl was normally betrothed in the thirteenth year and for legal but not domestic purposes was from that point on considered to be married. Around a year later the girl was taken to the bridegroom’s home for normal married life to begin. Sexual relations prior to this ‘taking home’ would be considered a violation of marriage customs.”

Read Matthew 1:18–25 and note Joseph’s response to the news about Mary’s pregnancy.

What does Joseph initially resolve to do? (v. 19)

How does God persuade him otherwise? (vv. 20–23)

The angel (vv. 22–23) says Mary’s situation is the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. What is that prophecy?

How does Joseph respond to the dream (v. 24) and how long does Mary remain a virgin? (v. 25)

Extra

The dual reference of the Immanuel prophecy of Isaiah 7 often goes unnoticed. It was a prophetic sign “to Ahaz as an assurance of Judah’s hope in the midst of adversity. It therefore had an immediate, historical fulfillment. Its usage in the New Testament shows that it also had a messianic fulfillment. The Hebrew word for virgin (˒almah) means either a ‘virgin’ or a ‘young woman’ of marriageable age. Isaiah’s readers could have understood it to be either. Messianically, it irrefutably refers to the Virgin Mary Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27, where the Greek parthenos (virgin) removes any question.”
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I have always said, "I just want to be a nobody that is willing to tell everybody that their is somebody that can save anybody!" Amen! That is Jesus Christ, my Savior and Lord!

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