Matthew 1:23 (NKJV)
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
This is the first of over 40 quotations that Matthew takes from the Old Testament. Our Success Scripture this week foretells the birth of Jesus Christ.
The word “Noel” means birth. The English borrowed the word from the French, who adapted it from Latin. This traditional English Christmas carol, The First Noel, dates from the fourteenth century, but was first published in its present form by William Sandys in 1833. Noel is always capitalized because it signifies one particular birth – the birth of Jesus Christ.
The significance of the word first in The First Noel is that Jesus was the only human being who was ever born without a sinful nature of spiritual death and He is the only human being who ever lived a perfect sinless life. Jesus was the only human being ever born without a sinful nature of spiritual death and He is the only human being who ever lived a perfect sinless life. The reason Jesus was the only human being ever born without a sinful nature of spiritual death is because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (See Matt. 1:18, 20). The reason Jesus is the only human being who ever lived a perfect sinless life is because the thing that causes one to sin (a sinful nature of spiritual death) was never in Him.
Early folk carols such as The First Noel often had a memorable chorus. When we sing the refrain, “Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, Born is the King of Israel,” we are proclaiming, “Birth, Birth, Birth, Birth, The King of kings and Lord of lords has been born.”
Matthew 1:23 is a quote from Isaiah 7:14, which was written hundreds of years earlier. Isaiah 7:14 reads this way: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus are both foretold in Isaiah 7:14. The deity of Jesus is implied in the word Immanuel because the footnote defines the word Immanuel as meaning “God with us.” Jesus was the final fulfillment of this prophecy. God is with us in the birth of Jesus Christ because He was God manifested in a human body.
Human history includes untold billions of births, but The First Noel recognizes just one – the birth of Jesus Christ. The birth of Jesus is indeed one-of-a-kind and so deserves a word reserved for it only – the word Noel.