And You Shall Call His Name Immanuel, Not!

And You Shall Call His Name Immanuel, Not!

Denn Guptill

Matthew 1:23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us).” Now that’s a familiar verse, isn’t it? We hear it every Christmas, We read it with every reading of Matthew’s Gospel. Yet have we ever really stopped and really listened to what it is saying to us? Matthew 1:23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us).” Matthew is calling upon the prophet Isaiah here in regards to a particular Messianic Prophesy, which simply means a prophecy about the Messiah or about Jesus. This particular prophecy was written by Isaiah in the book that bears his name Isaiah 7:14 All right then, the Lord himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel—‘God is with us.’

Now let’s see if I’m straight on this point, that sign that God was going to give Israel that the Messiah was born was that he would be born of a virgin, and then that he would be named Immanuel, right? The first part has to be the tricky one, that the virgin will conceive a child, that means whe will be pregnant. Now in High School Biology was not one of my strongest subjects, as a matter of fact in High School my only strong subjects were study hall and lunch. Somehow though I’m still under the impression that a virgin being with child is not the way it happens, you know it’s not in the right order. And yet I’m sure that you’ll remember in Luke 1:30-31 “Don’t be frightened, Mary,” the angel told her, “for God has decided to bless you! You will become pregnant and have a son, and you are to name him Jesus. In the same chapter Mary presents a small problem which she mentions to the angels in Luke 1:34 Mary asked the angel, “But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin.” Do you remember what the angel said, and I quote, “Not a problem” If he had of been an Australian Angel he would have said “No worries, or She’ll be right” actually that isn’t what he said, what he said is found in verse Luke 1:35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. So that takes care of the first part of the prophecy, the virgin birth. The part that I thought would have been the most difficult. But hey if God can make the natural laws that say that virgins don’t conceive then God can overrule those laws, right? The second part of the prophecy should be more easily dealt with, it was he will be called Immanuel.

Now that is no sweat, I mean you’ve gotta prophesy that concerning naming a child right, so all you gotta do to fulfil that prophesy is to name the kid what the prophesy says you’re gonna name the kid, right? Right. I mean you don’t have to be an Einstein to figure that one out, do you I mean a preacher could figure that out. It’s not rocket surgery.

OK, so how come I never read about “Immanuel the Son of God” in my New Testament? And how come nobody ever calls him, “Immanuel the carpenters son?” How come Mike, you never hear about “The Immanuel Video” and how come Andrew Lloyd Weber didn’t write “Immanuel Super Star”? How come? Inquiring minds want to know.

Because He wasn’t called Immanuel, he was called Jesus or more correctly because He was Jewish and his parents spoke Hebrew they called him, E-A-Soose. Well then maybe Immanuel was his middle name. Now I can appreciate that because I think that parents give their kids their middle name out of revenge. My mother has two middle names they are Hillary Aldia, which isn’t bad when you compare it to her father’s middle name which was Theophilus, he was named after his father. My middle name is Vance, and as an adult I don’t think that is too bad, although I normally just use v, I mean my folks really weren’t thinking when they gave a kid with a lisp a middle name with a c in it. I used to cringe when at school on the first day the teacher would go down her roll and call out Dennison Vance Guptill, and all my friends would snicker and say “Dennison Vance?”