God With Us Emmanuel--Christmas

Emmanuel God With Us

Isaiah 7:10- 17 Matthew 1:18:25 12-8-2019

Have you ever had someone say to you, I have some good news and some bad news? Which do you want to hear first? How many of you want the good news first? How many of you want the bad news first? How many of just don’t want to be in the at position at all. Sometimes to understand and appreciate the good news, we have to know what the bad news is.

We are in the Christian season of Advent. Advent literally means the “coming” or the “arrival.” For us as believers, Advent is associated with the coming of Jesus Christ to the earth to provide salvation by his life, death, resurrection and ascension. Believers today look forward in anticipation to the second advent of Christ in which Christ will return to the earth in a bodily form in bodily form to receive the church and to judge the nations.

The term Advent also refers to a season of the church year during which the church prepares to commemorate Christ's first coming to earth (Christmas). The first four Sundays before Christmas Day make up the Advent season. That is why sometimes Advent begins in November and other times in December.

Have you ever been singing a song for years, and then discover that a phrase you’ve been singing for years is not what is really in the song? You catch yourself saying, “I never heard that before in that song.” Sometimes things that seem so familiar are distortions of what is really being stated in the song.

Sometimes we learn Christmas Carols at an early age and sing them without knowing what they really mean. One of my favorite songs is O Come, O Come Emmanuel. But who is Emmanuel and what exactly is he supposed to do when he gets here.

The tune of the song causes the emotions of sadness and hope to rise up in us. It is obvious that things are going to change when Emmanuel arrives. Emmanuel literally means “God with us” and is only found 4 times in the bible, 3 times in Isaiah 7 and once in Matthew 1. In both places there is a struggle going on with a person, and they don’t know exactly what to do or where God is at the moment.

God’s people were known as the nation of Israel. They would often disobey God and go after idols to worship, and at times God would let them suffer the consequences of their actions. This often meant being defeated at the hands of the nations around them.

As a nation, they would often only seek God when they were in trouble from warring nations. Instead of seeing God as the Almighty God worthy of praise and honor, they kept God at a distance until things really got bad and they had nowhere else to turn. They wanted a God, but not one that expecting them to live righteous lifestyles.

The king of Israel at the time was King Ahaz, and Jerusalem was his capital city. Two armies had surrounded the city and held it captive, but they could not overthrow it. King Ahaz had received word, that they had contacted a third king to come and help them overthrow Jerusalem.

He and the people in the city were terrorized with fear. King Ahaz himself was not walking with the Lord. He was doing a number of things God had ordered never to be done. Ahaz had even sacrificed one of his sons in the fire to a pagan God.

Yet with all he had done contrary to the will of God, God had compassion on him and the people. God sent the prophet Isaiah to him, to let him know that his enemies would not prevail. They would not enter the city of Jerusalem ,and the people being held captive in the city would be set free.

Isaiah asked the king, “what sign would you like to see to know that God was going to do this?” The king refused to ask for a sign, because his pride wanted to continue to handle things his way. If he asked for a sign and got it, then he knew he would have to admit he was not serving the Lord. Sometimes we ask God for a sign, but we don’t want to accept the changes required of us when the sign comes through.

So Isaiah said “I’m going to give you a sign, so that when it happens, everybody will know that God is the one who brought about the deliverance.” Isaiah told him, a virgin will have a child, who will be called “Emmanuel” and by the time the child is two years old, the nations attacking Israel would be destroyed.”