God Is With Us

Matthew 1:20-23 NKJV

“God With Us”

The Bible teaches us that Mary and Joseph were a God-fearing couple. They were not perfect in any way, and yet God used them for His glory! Our lesson in St. Matthew begins at an Angel of the Lord that St. Luke lets us know is Gabriel, who after revealing to Mary the will of God concerning Jesus then comes to Joseph in a dream. But both Mary & Joseph have their doubts… In Luke 1:34 Mary asked the angel, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?" And the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” In Matthew 1:19 When Joseph hears that Mary is pregnant, he begins thinking about calling off the marriage quietly… But while he thought about these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

The Incarnation of God (She Will Bring Forth A Son And You Shall Call His Name Jesus) Incarnation is a theological term for the coming of God's Son into the world as a human being. Matthew says “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.” What did the prophet Isaiah say? Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Isaiah goes on to say in 9:6a For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given… The Angel says, “and you shall call his name JESUS.” The Birth of Jesus Changed Everything… The calendar of time and history changed when Jesus was born. We mark time by BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini translated “In the year of our Lord.”). I know the world has their reason for using BCE/CE but when you know your history its always about Jesus! John said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. The Incarnation is based on clear references in the New Testament to Jesus as God "in the flesh" Verse 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus participated fully in all that it means to live a human life. But the apostle Paul declared, "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" Colossians 2:9. The capacity of Jesus to reveal God to us and to bring salvation depends upon His being fully God and fully man at the same time. C. S. Lewis, speaking in 1942 demands us to answer the question of “whether Jesus is a Liar, a Lunatic or our Lord.” He said, and I quote, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (Mere Christianity 1952, 55-56) And because He is Incarnate, we have a High Priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses! (Hebrews 4:15).

The Intention of God (For He Will Save His People From Their Sins) John 3:17 says, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Jesus is our Savior because we needed SALVATION! You See If…