Isn’t it amazing how much of a role angels and dreams play in the narrative about Jesus’s birth! They keep showing up, announcing, worshiping, and explaining. (See Matthew 1:20, 24; 2:13, 19, and more than a dozen times in Luke 1–2.) It’s even more striking coming right after we read that Joseph “considered” all that was happening. This narrative weaves together the natural (“considering”) and the supernatural (“warned in a dream”).

The birth of Jesus is the greatest display of the supernatural crashing in on the natural, the divine entering the mundane, God becoming a baby. The cast of characters includes, on the human side, shepherds and animals and, on the heavenly side, angels and songs of praise to God. Living in a highly secularized culture today, where God is simply ignored, omitted, or patronized, Matthew’s account seems terribly out of place.

As Christians, it is easy to get caught up in all the “natural” aspects of Christmas and down play the startling reality that God came to earth to save sinners. That’s why the angel needed to explain what Jesus’ name means. Yeshua, a form of the Hebrew verb “to save,” must remind us that “He will save his people from their sins.” It’s the ultimate “good news/bad news” message all wrapped in a name. The good news is He saves. The bad news is we all need saving!

No wonder people want to remove that message from Christmas and focus on gifts, trees, reindeers, and egg nog. Charles Dickens even wrote a whole book about the holiday without even a mention of the main character: the One whose name means “Savior.”