Hope for a Sinking Ship

I love the time of year when some of the passages of Scripture which are most familiar to us become rich with meaning again. Today I’m thinking of Matthew 1:22-23, where the apostle simply records: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). An angel of the Lord revealed to Joseph the needed specifics regarding Christ’s birth, by means of a miraculous dream. And the “all this” includes the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (7:14) some seven centuries earlier. Jesus Himself will be that promised sign.

When the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic – the largest and most luxurious ocean liner of its time – crashed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912, it enjoyed the first on-board swimming pools and even a gym, a squash court, and some of the most elegant furnishings and scrumptious food in the world. But the famous ocean liner ended up dragging more than 1500 of its 2200 passengers to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Two government investigations conducted immediately after the disaster agreed that it was the iceberg, and not any weakness in the ship itself, that had caused the Titanic to sink. Both inquiries wrongfully concluded that the vessel had gone to the ocean floor intact, even though a few survivors had reported seeing the ship come apart. Neither investigation substantiated those reports, however, because that was believed to be an absolute impossibility. So the full blame for the incident fell on the ship’s deceased captain, who was widely condemned for racing at 22 knots through a known ice field in the dark waters off the coast of Newfoundland. And the case of the Titanic was considered closed.

But in 1985, when oceanographer Robert Ballard – after years of diligent searching – finally located the ship’s remains 2.5 miles down on the ocean floor, he discovered that the Titanic had in fact broken in two on the surface before it sank. And this one discovery caused people to wonder, for the first time, if perhaps the Titanic was never as strong a vessel as had been commonly believed. Now we know even more of the truth. When the Titanic struck the iceberg, six of its sixteen watertight compartments were damaged. The ship started taking on seawater in the bow through openings about twenty feet below the water line. And as the liner nosed down, water flooded compartments one after another – as the ship’s stern began rising out of the ocean. But as the stern rose higher and higher, the stress on the vessel was more than it could handle, and the Titanic – just forward of the third funnel – broke completely apart. Days before its first voyage, a White Star Line employee had boasted, “God himself could not sink the ship.” But, in less than four hours, it was all over. The “Ship of Dreams” had become nothing short of a nightmare. Such was the fate of the ocean liner that had everything, except lifeboats.

Back to Matthew 1. It’s the genealogy of Jesus. At first glance, you might think: “Isn’t that nice! One generation after another preparing the way for the Messiah.” But it would be a crying shame to gloss over the truth like that. Take David, for example. We remember him as “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), and he was, but David was also guilty of horrific sin. He committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then conspired to cover his sin with the treacherous murder of her husband. David’s polygamy and his ungodly parenting produced tragic results in his family life. When David’s son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar, David did nothing about it (2 Samuel13:1-22). That neglect set in motion the events that darkened the final years of his reign: Tamar’s brother Absalom murdered Amnon, usurped David’s throne, and committed public immorality with David’s concubines. Other than that it was a Hallmark movie.

The first period of Christ’s genealogy from Abraham to David was that of the patriarchs, and of Moses, Joshua, and the judges. It included wandering, enslavement, deliverance, covenant-making, lawgiving, conquest, and victory. And in living color there, in spite of God’s faithfulness, we see people doing their own thing and sinning in every possible way. The second period from David to the deportation to Babylon represents the monarchy. David, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah were the only decent kings – the rest led Israel away from God and into all manner of trouble. That was a period of almost uninterrupted decline, degeneracy, apostasy, and tragedy. There was defeat, conquest, exile, and then the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The third period from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ was that of captivity, exile, frustration, and of marking time. It was a period of obscurity and anonymity, Israel’s Dark Ages. I didn’t even mention the sin before Abraham, and the Great Flood, but I’m sure you get my point. We have a checkered past – privately, personally, and corporately. Every one of us has, and we together have, a closet full of skeletons!

Friends, one thing we must not do is think of ourselves as stronger than we really are. Truth is, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, you and I are on a collision course with unspeakable disaster. This is not merely validated by the Scriptures, but it’s validated by every period of human history. We may have the luxuries and amenities of a grand ocean liner, but we’re not unsinkable. And God’s verdict is: the ship is sinking. We haven’t simply been wounded by sin, but we’ve suffered a death blow because of it. But Matthew offers us the best news in the world: a lifeboat has come for us, and His name is Immanuel!

The eyewitness reports recorded in the Scriptures are not erroneous, incidental, or accidental: Christ is alive! He is here! And He will reign forever as King of kings and Lord of lords! For you and I to be men and women “after God’s own heart” is nothing short of a miracle of grace. And it’s only possible in the lifeboat. But the good news of this wonderful season is that the lifeboat has come for us.

He is Immanuel, God with us.

Pastor Charles