The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.
—Rev. 11:15
I. A Rather Vulgar Tangent
We save our favorite Christmas story in the Bible until Christmas Eve when we read Luke’s account of the Nativity. But every once in a while (once every three years, to be specific) we read Matthew’s account on the Sunday before Christmas. And on that same day, we get to hear one of our favorite verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. As special as it is to get to hear these two passages on the same day, if we actually pay attention, it’s a bit jarring to hear them together.
Our first shock comes when we hear the modern version of the Bible we use telling us to “look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” [1] We’ve all listened to Handel’s Messiah enough to remember that the Authorized Version of the Bible—that is the King James Version—actually says that a virgin shall conceive… And, indeed, this was confirmed a few minutes later when Mars read those exact words to us from Matthew.
But Matthew does little to settle our holiday nerves, because just before he tells us “a virgin shall conceive,” he says something equally as disturbing, and that is that the Baby born of the virgin is to be named not Immanuel, but “Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” [2]