Good
Lord's Day evening from the Panhandle. Well here it is the second
week of December and the celebrated day of our Lord's birth draws
closer. I know that many say that December 25th was not
the actual day of Christ Jesus' birth and that is most likely true.
Here's the thing at least in our house, it's not the celebration of
the day, but of the long awaited event. It is the celebration of “God
wit us.” So whether you celebrate it on Dec. 25th or
some other day dose not matter, the celebration of our Lord and
Saviour come that we can have a restored relationship with God does.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
may be the oldest Christmas carol still sung today. The author is
unknown, but he is believed to have been a priest or a monk who wrote
it before 800 A.D. He
obviously had a rich knowledge of both Old and New Testaments.
Because of the universal way in which faith is presented in this
carol, it ceased being a hymn sung only in Latin in formal,
liturgical churches and was translated into scores of languages and
used in most Christian denominations in the world.
Originally the carol contained seven
different verses, representing the different biblical views of the
Messiah. One verse per day was sung or chanted during the last seven
days before Christmas. We have this carol in English today because of
the diligent work of John Mason Neale, an Anglican priest born in
1818. While ministering on the Madiera Islands off the northwest
coast of Africa, Neale discovered this Latin chant and saw the
importance of the carol’s message. He translated it into English as
Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel.
The tune, Veni Emmanuel, was a
fifteenth century processional that originated in Lisbon, Portugal.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel was first published in the 1850s in
England. It is a simple, reverent tribute to the birth of Christ and
to the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver His children from
sin. (Source: Ace Collins, Stories behind the best-loved
Songs of Christmas, Zondervan, 2001, pp. 126-131.)
26 In the
sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in
Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph,
a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went
to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The
Lord is with you."
29 Mary
was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting
this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid,
Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and
give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He
will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord
God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will
reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34 "How
will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
Luke 1:26-34.
These verses focuses on the visit of
the angel Gabriel to Mary’s home in Nazareth with the news that she
would conceive and bear the Son of God. Mary had great difficulty
comprehending the miracle of a virgin birth, let alone the fact that
she would bear Him who would be the Savior of the world.
In this sermon, the announcement of the
birth of Jesus is anticipated by the prediction of Isaiah. Just as
God would be “in” Mary in the Person of His Son, He would be
“with” people as a Man during the years of His public ministry,
culminating with His sacrificial death. This morning let's see if we
can capture the meaning of Immanuel (God with us).
Nazareth was a tiny village in Galilee.
It was so unimportant that it is not mentioned at all in the Old
Testament. It rose to prominence only after it was identified as the
hometown of Mary and Joseph, and the place where Christ Jesus spent
His early years. Located in lower Galilee about halfway between the
Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea, Nazareth had only one
spring to supply fresh water for all of its inhabitants. That spring
today is called “Mary’s well,” and we can imagine that Jesus,
as a youngster; may have gone there to draw water for his family. The
Church of the Annunciation stands today over the location
where tradition says Mary and Joseph lived. (Source:
Holman Bible Dictionary, Broadman & Holman 1991, pp. 1010-1011)
Here in Felt it is easy to imagine the
small town life that characterized the population of Nazareth. In the
small synagogue the Jewish men of Nazareth studied the Torah and
cherished the promises of a coming Messiah.14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14). No
doubt Mary had heard the predictions of Isaiah many times while
growing up. “A virgin shall conceive!”
Surely, some young woman of nobility,
familiar with the royal palace in Jerusalem, would be God’s choice.
No matter—just so God’s Messiah would come, and come quickly, and
rescue His destitute people who languished under the heel of pagan
Rome.
Isaiah said that His name would be
called Immanuel, which means “God with us.” O come, O
come, Immanuel! surely was the cry that rose continually from the
hearts of the people. Each of the three words that comprise the
Hebrew translation of Immanuel is significant. The first word is God.
1. GOD with us (Isaiah
7:14)
Then God
said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness. . . . So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female, he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).
A
young boy stood on the sidewalk beside his home with a little black
box in his hand. Several yards down the walk was a small model car.
By manipulating the controls on that little box, he was able to make
the car race up and down the sidewalk. He could make it stop, turn
around, or travel in reverse. Finally, after the car had gone through
all of its tricks and maneuvers, the young fellow with the control
box brought the car slowly to his feet. That’s the way angelic
beings are. They are under God’s “remote control.” Their
control center is but an extension of God’s thoughts and actions.
However
when God made human beings, He wanted more than that. So He made us
with the capacity to have a unique fellowship with Him as our
Creator. God can be with us and we can be with Him in a unique and
special way that the angels can never experience.
Why did God make man? He did not do so
on a whim, suddenly becoming bored with the angelic beings He had
created. The angels, seraphim and cherubim are beings under God’s
total control. They exist to fulfill His wishes, to carry out His
commands, and to do His bidding. But He desired a creature with whom
He could have a different kind of relationship.
God took great pains in preparing for
this new creation. He chose the earth for his staging area, brought
light and order out of darkness and chaos, created a Garden of
indescribable natural beauty, and then made Adam. But God wasn't done
yet. He saw Adam was alone and so He fashioned Eve from Adam’s rib.
The man gave names to all the cattle,
and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for
Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the LORD God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took
one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God
fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and
brought her to the man. (Genesis
2:20-22).
Yet the real difference of God’s
creation of Adam and Eve is that He made them with a moral freedom no
other creature He made had. The freedom of “will” would
make it possible for them to know and communicate with God at a
deeper level. One of the greatest mystery of all time is why God
allowed us human beings to choose to love and obey Him, or to reject
Him and go our own way.
God became the God of many names. In
the beginning He was Elohim,
the majestic God of creation. When He came seeking sinful people, He
became Yahweh, the God who
longs to establish a covenant relationship. When Adam and Eve sinned,
God refused to give up on mankind and would take on the name “Christ
Jesus – Immanuel – God with us.”
2. God WITH us (Isaiah
7:14)
In order to expand our understanding of
Immanuel, we now shift our
focus to the second word: the little word with,
which
joins God and us.
Webster’s
New World Dictionary
states that the word with
means (alongside
of, near to, in the company of, into, among, as an associate or
companion, in support of, on the side of.)
Webster’s
New World Dictionary, Second College Edition,
David B. Guralnik, ed., Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1982, p. 1633
God is alongside His people. One
of the names for the Holy Spirit is Paraclete, the translation
of the word in English Versions of the Bible is "Comforter"
in the Gospel, and "Advocate" in the Epistle.
The Greek word for Paraclete is
passive in form, and historically signifies “one who is called
alongside another.” Christ Jesus told His disciples that when He
went away, He would send them a Comforter, who would be alongside
them, never to leave them nor forsake them.
"But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go
away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you;
but if I go, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:7)
God is near to His people. He is
so near that He knows what we think, how we think, when we hurt, and
when we experience joy and gladness. He knows us completely, what is
happening to us moment by moment. He is Immanuel, which means
God [is near to] us.
God is in the company of His
people. When God made Adam and Eve, He came every day and walked and
talked with them in the Garden. Today in the person of the Holy
Spirit, He walks with us every day, every minute, always “with
us.”
Just as He was in the company of His
first man and
first woman. God longs to be in
the company of
His people when they assemble to worship Him.
3. God with US (Isaiah
7:14)
We can sort of imagine God with His
angelic and celestial creatures. We can even understand that God
would relish being in the midst of His beautiful and flawless
creation. But with us? Come on we have inherited Adam and Eve's
inflated and distorted ego, Their determination to do things their
way, and their resistance to the laws and commandments of God. Why
would God want to be with us?
David asked a similar question in total
perplexity and frustration. He wrote: When
I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the
stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of
him, And the son of man that You care for him? (Psalm
8:3-4).
“son of
man” - ben (bane); a son (as a builder of the family
name) and 'adam (aw-dawm'); ruddy i.e. a human being (an individual
or the species, mankind, etc.) - you and me.
Human logic has a hard time
understanding the possibility of a relationship between a perfect,
all-righteous God and sinful human beings. We do not know why God
continued to love and seek to restore this sinful human race to
fellowship with Him. We don’t know why God continues to love us,
still sinful and disobedient as we are. We just know He does. But
God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8). What a glorious
truth we have in the name Immanuel—God with us.
Conclusion:
Approximately seven miles west of
Jerusalem archaeologists have excavated the remains of a village
dating back to the time of Christ Jesus, which they have identified
as Emmaus, the home of Cleopas and his friend (Source:
Holman Bible Dictionary, Broadman & Holman 1991, p. 417).
As followers of Jesus of Nazareth, they had been to Jerusalem during
that tragic Passovers when Christ Jesus was crucified.
They were returning home on the
afternoon of the third day after Christ Jesus’ death. They did not
know that He had risen from the grave, and had appeared to His
disciples in a closed and locked upper room in Jerusalem. They were
sad, defeated, and were going home to pick up the broken pieces of
their lives. Their hopes had been vested in this Christ Jesus, in His
way of life, and in the Gospel He taught. They had believed with all
their hearts that He was the Messiah. But He had been brutally
crucified by the Romans.
Suddenly, as they walked along under a
dark cloud of sorrow and disappointment, the risen Christ appeared
and fell into step with them. He was alongside them. He began with
the earliest Old Testament Scriptures that prophesied His coming and
shared with them all that was promised regarding the Messiah. After
He had broke bread and prayed with them in their home and vanished
from their sight, Cleopas and his friend said, "Were
not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the
road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?"
(Luke 24:32)
When the true meaning of Immanuel, God
with us resonates with us, our hearts will burn within us
too.
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