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Who was the father of Jesus Christ. The subject of the virgin birth of Christ is one that you don’t often hear talked about. Usually we assume the reason it’s not talked about is because it’s an oversight. But I believe that the reason that the virgin birth of Christ is not more often spoken about in churches is because there is at that subbasement of belief in the virgin birth, the spring from which all of the rest of the understanding of the scripture flows. And when you ask a clergyman, do you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin?

You are really asking one of the dividing questions that separates churches that accept the Bible as totally the word of God, as opposed to those churches which take the word of God and begin to choose in one way or another those teachings which they would think are appropriate. Now, in previous generations, the question of the virgin birth was highly debated. As a matter of fact, through the last 50 years in the life of the church, there’s been a tremendous amount of interest in the subject. But historically, we should realize that prior to the last hundred years, the previous 1800 years of the church, the question of the virgin birth of Christ was virtually accepted by all who professed belief in Jesus Christ.

From the word of God. We invite you to stay tuned for the next half hour as we bring you a message from the word of God brought to us by the Reverend Ken Smith, minister of the Princeton Presbyterian Church in historic Princeton, New Jersey. Once again, here’s Ken Smith as he continues his message from the word of God.

In the last generation, there was a man by the name of Harry Emerson Fosdick who was one of the well known ministers of the day. And in a personal letter that he wrote to he Fisher, he made this comment about the birth of Jesus. He said, quote, of course I do not believe in the virgin birth, and I do not know of any intelligent Christian who does. Bringing it a little closer to the memory of many of us is the year 1961. An article in Newsweek magazine about the famous Bishop Pike. Bishop pike, who was known primarily for his attempts to contact his dead son through various psychic phenomena. And later on, pike himself died in the wilderness where Jesus had spent his time being tempted.

And pike was responsible for one of the leading thrusts in the questioning of the virgin birth of Jesus. Pike had this view of the virgin birth. He said that it represents the allergic reaction of our church and that the virgin birth is a myth. Now, if the question of the virgin birth were not in our own time, then it probably would not be something for us to give much thought to. But in recent years there’s been a book written called the myth of God Incarnate. An author from Princeton who incidentally just recently was accepted in a mainline church as a pastor, as one who would come and teach. His belief that it was simply a myth that Jesus Christ came into the world as the Son of God, and that myth of an incarnate Christ is a great error for Christians to believe.

There is mounting on the horizon a great deal of concern related to this question, the birth of Jesus. It’s taking place in seminaries; classrooms and it is out of that discussion that ministers then come and speak on the subject to their congregations. I think at the base, the bottom line is the question of a basic opposition to the idea of miracles in the supernatural. This goes back to several hundred years a philosopher named David Hume, who was responsible for beginning the questioning of supernatural power, especially within the Christian religion. It was Hume’s belief that miracles by definition are impossible. For there in his mind were a fixed set of principles and that no force ever went out of those principles. And Hume had the belief that science of the day had enough understanding and so that everything could be explained.

Well, CS Lewis, centuries later, thinking about Hume’s opposition to miracles and the unique occurrence of miracles, said this, our entire planet is a singular occurrence which happened but once. Does that therefore make the earth improbable and something that I should not believe in? You see at the base question, the bottom line question of Jesus Christ as a son of a virgin whose father was God in heaven, is the question of the miraculous. It only happened once. Will it ever happen again? No. Why? For it only came into the world once through Christ that someone should pay for the sin of man. And so the virgin birth does not need to occur again. But we are constantly barraged by the fact that people say, but it’s a miracle, it never occurred before and therefore we should not accept it today.

Doctor Peters reminds us of an interesting fact, and that is that there was a time when hieroglyphics in Egypt were totally unintelligible. Men didn’t know whether these were words or simply scratches. And it wasn’t until they found a little clue. And with that clue they began to unlock and to understand what seemed to be meaningless scratches, to find out that in fact it was a language that told about princes and kings and empires. And the same is true about Jesus Christ. Those who do not understand him look upon his writings as meaningless words. But it is not until you see behind it the truth that Christ is the son of God who came to tell us things that we could never understand on our own. And, in fact, there are many witnesses to the veracity of the virgin birth.

Gretchen Macham was a professor at Princeton, the last generation. He wrote a book called the Virgin Birth. It is considered to this day to be the definitive work on the question of the birth of Jesus Christ. It may interest you, going to one of the greatest theological libraries in the United States, Princeton, and there is a section of books on the virgin birth. Do you think that it is hundreds of books on such an important topic? Would it surprise you to find that there are less than two dozen books on the topic? And of those several dozen books, a number of them are copies, repeat copies, of Machen’s work on the virgin birth. He brought facts about that birth that have still not been answered by liberal scholars. And he strongly says that Jesus, in fact, was born of a virgin.

Now, there are many witnesses to this fact. One is as we look at the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a witness of miracles. We find a staff that is turned to a snake. We find water in the wilderness that comes from a rock. We find a bronze serpent that as the people look at that serpent, they are not poisoned by the bite of snakes at their feet. We find, in fact, that in the Old Testament, it is one repeated miracle after another. And you cannot say in the Old Testament that one miracle is greater than another. And if by comparison were to ask the question, is water from a rock a greater miracle than the coming a man into the world without the aid of a human father? Which is a greater miracle?

You see, tied into the Christian faith is the whole point of miracle. It begins from Genesis and carries all the way to revelation. St. Anselm, who is a bishop of Canterbury about eight or 900 years ago, wrote an interesting book. It’s called cur Deus. Why God, man? Let me ask the question. To have a baby, do you need a father and a mother? As you look at the Bible, you begin to see, and this is Anselm’s observation, that, in fact, there are five ways in which God has made people. The first is, by natural generation, an earthly father and an earthly mother. The second is making a person without an earthly father and without an earthly mother, case in point, Adam.

But there is a third way that God has made a person, and that is with the aid of a man and the aid of a woman, who themselves could not have children. Case in point, Abraham and Sarah. Sarah, whose womb had dried and was unable to produce children, was told as an old woman that she would have a son, Isaac, an impossibility. And when she heard that son was to be born, she laughed. But God said she would have a son, and he did it against all odds. But then we find also in the scripture that people have been made only through an earthly father. Case in point, Eve. Eve, who was born of a man.

So should it surprise us when we come to the New Testament to find that God would have his son born without the aid of an earthly father, but with the aid of an earthly mother, and that God himself would bring the seed that his son Jesus Christ should be born. You see, in the Old Testament there are many references to the birth of the coming of Jesus Christ through a virgin. In Isaiah, chapter seven, verse 14, we read, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel.

In Isaiah nine six, we find more about that son, that unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace, of the increase of his government. In peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice. From henceforth, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform it. You see, according to the promise of Isaiah, chapter nine, the promise was not only that a son would come, but that the Jewish people in Jerusalem would live in peace until the birth of that virgin son.

And that as that son was born through a virgin, then, and only then, would the Jewish people in Jerusalem be scattered and no longer have the peace that they enjoyed. And it’s remarkable, as you look at the history of the Jews, that it was tied to the coming of this virgin son, and they lived in peace until Jesus came. And then within that generation, they were sent out of Jerusalem and scattered. But also there is a witness in the New Testament that is affirmed by Mary the mother. For in Matthew, the incarnation of Christ is presented this way. Now the birth of Jesus was on this wise when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

And in Luke we, the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, Mary and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore, also that holy one that shall be born of thee shall be called the son of God. And when Mary learned that she was to be the mother of the Son of God, she reacted like any woman would react. She was troubled by the saying. She did not understand. Joseph naturally decides that if in fact she is with a child, that it must have occurred through an earthly means. And he naturally decides that it would best to quietly leave and put her away. But the Lord appears to Joseph through angel, a vision. And the words are repeated to Joseph that were spoken to Isaiah. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. His name will be Emmanuel.

And it was those words that caused Joseph to see the miracle, to continue to marry, to live with Mary. But also Jesus himself affirms that he, in fact, was born of a virgin, that he himself had a father who was in heaven. Jesus affirmed this when he drove the merchants out of the house of the temple. Jesus affirmed; it is my father’s work that I come to do. It was Jesus who said, it was his father who sent him into this world. It was Jesus who identified himself as the true bread comes from the father. I think beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As you read the New Testament, you find that Jesus himself believed that he was born of a virgin, that in fact, he expected his followers to believe that would be a fulfillment of the prophecies that have been spoken of centuries before. But then there’s also the witness of the early church. In the year 110, Ignatius, one of the early church fathers, wrote this for our God. Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Ghost. Now the virginity of Mary and he who was born of her are the mysteries most spoken of throughout the world, yet done in secret by God, said Ignatius. We have further evidence, writes Clement Rogers, which shows that the belief of Ignatius time was no new one.

For we know that the belief of Christians in the virgin birth was attacked by those outside of the church. Cerinthus, for example, was the contemporary and opponent of St. John. It was said that the evangelist, meeting him in the public baths, cried out, let us flee, lest the bath fall in. While Corinthus, the enemy of truth, is here. It was he, Corinthus, who taught, says Irenaeus, that our Lord Jesus Christ was born of Joseph and Mary just like any other man. Another of the early writers of the church was Aristides. He speaks in 125 about the virgin birth.

He says he is himself son of God on high, who was manifested of the Holy Spirit, came down from heaven, and being born of a Hebrew virgin, took on his flesh from the virgin he, Jesus it is, who was, according to the flesh, born of the race of the Hebrews by the God bearing Virgin Mary. Justin martyr in 150 AD gives evidence that the belief of a virgin birth was very clear when he says, our teacher Jesus Christ, who is the first begotten of God the Father, was not born as a result of sexual relations. The power of God descending upon the virgin overshadowed, over showered, overshadowed her, and caused her, while still a virgin, to conceive. For by God’s power, he was conceived by a virgin in accordance with the will of God. Jesus Christ, his son, has been born of the Virgin Mary.

And even by the end of that century, there was a technical name given to this virgin birth, Tessera. It was found written in many of the early writings of the church, Tessera related to ex Virginia Maria of the Virgin Mary. The apostles Creed comes to us as one of the earliest writings of the beliefs of the church. Gresham Machen tells us that it was not until the fifth or 6th century that it was finally put in its present form for us. However, they can trace back to as early as 100 to 140 ad that the apostles Creed, in fact, was used for baptisms. And one of the phrases that was found in the earliest statements of the apostles Creed, that Jesus conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.

Machen tells us that even if there was not a word about the subject of the virgin birth in the New Testament, the second century testimony would show that the belief in the virgin birth must have arisen, to say the least, well before the first century was over. There were those who opposed the teaching of the virgin birth. One of them was a man named Marchione. Marchione constructed his own Bible. He removed most of the gospels. He kept only the gospel of Luke. He removed from the Gospel of Luke, the first two chapters of that book, because there was taught the virgin birth. And so, as he put together his Bible, it was a piecemeal of various portions of scripture. Now, it should not surprise us that Maricon was concerned about the virgin birth.

As a matter of fact, he was not even willing to accept that Jesus was born at all. And that was one of the first heresies of the church. Later on, there was a group called the Ebionites. They opposed the belief in the virgin birth. And along with them and a few of their friends, there was no body of Christians in the early church who are known who did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Now, the consequence of the virgin birth flows through the Christian teaching of the scripture. For one of the concerns is if in fact Jesus was not born of a virgin, then that throws into question the entire deity of Christ.

James Orr, a noted professor from Glasgow, wrote this among those who reject the virgin birth, I do not know a single one who takes in other respects an adequate view of the person and work of the savior. It is well for us to consider the sobering fact that when one tampers with the great doctrines of Christianity, particularly those having to do with the person and work of our lord, one does not pull out a doctrine here and there and leave an unimpaired a careful reading of God’s word makes it abundantly clear that these great truths hang together, and they fit together perfectly. Jesus came into this world in a miraculous way the first time. He will return to this world a second time in a miraculous way, and we shall stand before his judgment seat.

Thank you, Ken, for this scholarly and biblical presentation of the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we approach this Christmas season, I’m sure this message will underline for us the glory involved in Christ coming to this earth to provide us with redemption. We invite your response, friend, to the Reverend Ken Smith’s message, the virgin birth. If you’ll take the time to write us at this Christmas season, we’ll be happy to send you a gift book. And here’s our address from the word of God, Box 3003, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. If you’d prefer to call Ken Smith, here’s the telephone number. Area code 60992 110 20. That’s nine 2110 20. Don’t forget, we’d be happy to welcome you to our Sunday services.

The Princeton Presbyterian Church meets at the John Witherspoon Middle School on Walnut Lane, just out from the main square of Princeton, New Jersey. Sunday school is at 930 and the morning worship service is at eleven. We hope you’ll tune in again next week when Pastor Smith will speak on the topic. Wise men still seek him same time and station. Until then, this is your announcer, Joe Springer. On behalf of Ken Smith and all the Princeton Presbyterian Church family, praying for each of you God’s richest blessing.

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