Where was God?
Where was God when terrorists struck on September 11?
Where was God in the theater in Aurora?
Where was God when Hurricane Sandy struck?
A lot of people are living there. Someone left. Someone has died. Life has changed. Things that once were certain are now shaky. Where is God? When my child died, when my spouse left me, when I lost my job, when I was diagnosed with cancer, where was God?
It’s an honest question from someone who is having a hard time reconciling the presence of an all-powerful and loving God with life in a broken world.
Let’s step back to 735 BC. Ahaz is king #11 in Judah. Kings Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Syria have formed an alliance against Ahaz. If he doesn’t comply with their plans, he’ll be replaced. So, they advance as far as Jerusalem. Ahaz is in no position to resist. Even though he’s a descendant of David, he’s not a godly man. He isn’t depending on God or the courage of his people for help. He’s more inclined to turn to the king of Assyria for help. Later on, he actually did, and it cost the nation dearly. It’s a crisis moment for Judah and King Ahaz, and it’s into this crisis that God injects His prophet Isaiah.
Strange, isn’t it, as we talk about the names of Jesus around His birth time, that we’re back in the book of Isaiah and in the middle of a situation that seems completely unrelated to Jesus?
Isaiah 7:10-14
Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, "Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights." But Ahaz said, "I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test." Then Isaiah said, "Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also? 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.”
Let me begin by saying that Jesus was never called “Immanuel” by name. It’s a title, or a moniker.
Mike Ditka is called [Coach].
Wayne Gretsky is called [the Great One].
We understand how memorable names get applied to people. Jesus just happens to have over 400 names applied to Him throughout the Bible.
It wasn’t until Jesus was born that Matthew got ahold of this title and helps us see the way it’s so much more than a 730 year old prophecy for King Ahaz. In fact, within the first 2 chapters of Matthew, he shows us 16 different references back into the OT to help us see how Jesus fulfilled these.
Matthew 1:18-23
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."
For every hurting person, every skeptic, every straying believer, who has ever questioned God’s location, I want to give an answer that’s simple and complicated at the same time. It goes as far back as the OT, and as far ahead as forever. It’s tied up in this name of Jesus
Maybe you don’t understand God’s plans, or God’s actions or what to think of God’s promises. I hope we can change that with one word, right now. Immanuel. What does it mean, for us?
1. God’s plans aren’t always easy, but they’re always wonderful
Maybe you think that Christmas is a difficult time of year. I concur. But the story of Christmas is hardly a story about doing things the easy way. Talk about complications during pregnancy! Joseph and Mary were both faced with some really big ones. Joseph was faced with disgrace and a broken heart all at once. His only way out was to take his broken trust with Mary and quietly back out of the marriage that had never begun. That was Joseph’s plan. But God others. Did you see the text? “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said…” “All this”? An engagement. An unexplainable pregnancy before marriage. Heartbreak. Changes of plans for a lifetime. This all happened to fulfill a verse back in the book of Isaiah 730 years earlier!
We talk about being in God’s will. In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus taught us to pray to God, “Your will be done.” We’re even told in James that we should pray “if the Lord wills.” We tell God we want to be in the center of His will. Really? Because what I’ve found is that being in the center of God’s will isn’t always easy. In fact, it’s often the most challenging, out of control, terrifying place to be. Be careful when you pray that God’s will be done in your life. You may get what you pray for! He may teach you a lesson in patience! He may help you relate to those who grieve. He may improve your prayer life. He may help you let go of treasure on earth for something better. His plans for you will most likely be a lot more exciting than your plans for you! It may even leave you asking, “Where is God?”
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis wrote this,
“Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
If this sounds foreign to your way of thinking, look at it this way.
What if the Christmas story were different? Let’s say, instead of “these things” coming to pass the way that they did, the story was easier, less work. Let’s say, rather than a young unmarried woman miraculously conceiving a child and all the scandal and gossip that came with that, rather than God entering the world as a helpless infant who had to grow and develop and become a man, rather than angelic announcements and a jealous king, rather than an escape to Egypt, and wise men with gifts, let’s say that one day a 30 year old man named Jesus just appeared in Jerusalem. There He was. How much easier that would have been on everybody, including Jesus.
Would we celebrate that with a holiday? Would we be in wonder over that? Would we retell that story over and over to our children? Would we write carols about it? Would we send cards to our friends and family with pictures of Him?
This story that so engulfs us this time of year wouldn’t have been as “wonderful” if it was easy, would it?
Eph 2:10 – we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance in order that we should walk in them. The word is poiema – where we get our word “poem.” We are God’s work, this thing into which He throws His creative power and energy and perfection. We are His finely crafted work. You are God’s handiwork! And God doesn’t make junk. That may not be easy in this life, but it’s wonderful!
I know that it’s easy for us to wish for less right now. It’s easy for us to wish that God would make things less exciting than we would. But the fact is we really would be wishing for less.
Do you want your life to read like a poorly written play or movie where the plot is “predictable” and “dull”? Or would you rather that God be doing something exciting here?
It may not be easy, but I’ll take the wonder. I’ll read the adventure. Immanuel reminds me that God’s way is to make life full of wonder, if we’ll learn to look at it that way.
Something else we can learn from Immanuel is…
2. What God is doing isn’t always clear, but it will be
The situation in Ahaz’ day is far more complex than we have time to cover here. You can read about it in 2 K. 15-16, 2 Chr. 28 and Isaiah 7. God’s sign to Ahaz wasn’t entirely clear to him. He had no idea that this would ultimately be fulfilled in Jesus. Isaiah, who delivered the message to Ahaz, didn’t understand it all either! It took several centuries before Matthew helps us fit it all together. But I don’t see any words of apology from God that this won’t be entirely clear all at once. In fact, it’s just one of many prophecies in Isaiah that won’t be very clear for a long time, and some still aren’t! Sometimes what God is doing isn’t clear. If that’s where you live today, I have good news: it will be clear.
Immanuel. God is with us. That doesn’t always explain what He’s doing. We so often get bogged down in the “fog of life” but later come to realize that God can and will use every circumstance to His glory. Sometimes we get the blessing of seeing that in this life. Sometimes we don’t!
One of the great features of Heaven is that we’ll have an appreciation for some of the things we went through while we were here. I wonder how many “Aha!” moments there will be in Heaven. And, I wonder how many of life’s hard times will just be so outshined that they just won’t even matter to us anymore. Paul said (Ro 8:18) that our present suffering isn’t worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.
I get this sense in John as he writes the letter we call I John.
1 John 1:1-3a
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard…
Let’s get into John’s sandals for a second here. John didn’t understand this about Jesus from the first day he met Him. It was over those 3 years of following Jesus, witnessing His miracles, seeing Him die, and then seeing Him alive again, that John came to realize that Jesus is the Christ of God. Can you picture it, as he starts to write I Jn? He’s looking back, thinking this through – Jesus was God, there in the beginning of creation – we saw him with our eyes! We spent time at His feet! We touched Him – God in a human body! We saw and heard Him! We didn’t understand it all at first! We didn’t realize the significance of those months we had with Jesus. But now, he does!
The disciples didn’t understand what God was doing, but later, they did. God doesn’t apologize for this. Maybe it’s another way God makes life more exciting than we would choose for it to be ourselves.
I look back over my relatively brief life and the longer that is, the more I see this. I didn’t always understand the way God was preparing me for what was down the road. I look at the hard things He brought me through – things I never would have chosen for myself – and now I understand it better. And I look at some of the good experiences too, things I didn’t realize had a grander design than just to bless me at the time, and now I see how God gave me those to use them now too.
Immanuel reminds us that, even though we don’t understand at first, even if we don’t get the blessing of understanding what God is accomplishing through us in this life, the time is going to come when we will.
Finally, Immanuel helps us to learn…
3. God doesn’t promise to make everything simple, but He does promise to be with us
There’s this recurring message from God: I am with you. He promises it to Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, and to the entire nation of Israel. Then, Jesus promises it to His disciples before He leaves: I am with you, even to the end of the age.”
The comfort God offers is very often a reminder that He is “with us.”
I used to tell my kids I could tell that a train had been through an area, because it left its tracks.
Tracks are a sign. When God’s around, you can tell by the signs that He’s there – pretty much by the blazing fire and the blast of the trumpet that made Israel shudder, or by the bush that was on fire but didn’t burn up, or by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, or by the bodies of 185,000 Assyrian army men killed overnight, or by the donkey turning around and talking, or by the bright light shining over the Ark of the Covenant. All of them are signs that might make you say, “Hmmm, God was here, wasn’t He?” God goes out of His way to make that much clear.
Isaiah 8:9-10
Raise the war cry, you nations, and be shattered! Listen, all you distant lands. Prepare for battle, and be shattered! Prepare for battle, and be shattered! Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted; propose your plan, but it will not stand, for God is with us.
This was a wonderful sign for Ahaz and the people of Judah. But 730 years later, when Jesus came to earth, it wasn’t just a sign that God had come to be among us, He WAS God among us!
God is with us! Immanuel! “How do you know that?” Well, not just by His tracks - there He is!
This presence of God is supposed to mean something to us.
Jesus said, if anyone loves and obeys Him, He and the Father will make their home in him.
Jesus said He was going to come again and take His followers to be with Him
Paul talks to the Colossians about the mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And then, in Revelation, when time-space history finally comes full circle, we read these words: “…the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
Simple? No. Is God with us? Yes! Immanuel.
Now, what do we do about that? Let me quickly suggest 4 actions to take:
Application:
Since God is with us through the person of Jesus…
1. Acknowledge God’s presence to Him (like we do to with each other)
We say hello, good morning, howdy, and a number of other things to simply acknowledge each other’s presence. The moment we fail to do that, someone feels slighted. Why would we do any less to God? Do you believe God is with us? Tell Him so!
2. Remind each other of it
There are times when we need to be reminded that God hasn’t left us. It’s a comfort when we’re hurting, and it’s wake up when we’re tempted. Let’s do this for each other.
3. Take comfort in the fact that we’re never alone.
There are widows and widowers among us here all the time. Those people need our special care, because it’s tough to be alone. There are people here who are alone, and not by choice. They need our special care. But for every one of us, we face times when we’re tempted to feel lonely. Let’s take comfort in this fact: God is with us, even when no one else is. Immanuel.
4. Live actions that reflect we believe it…if you do.
If Jesus were sitting next to you, would you be watching the same movie on TV? Doing the same thing with your computer? Saying the same thing about your ex? To your kids? If Jesus were able to read your mind, would you be thinking the same thought? Belief that God is with us necessarily means we live like it. If we’re not, it’s time to review this word: Immanuel.
Conclusion: It’s 2012 AD. The land is covered with darkness and spiritual oppression. I don’t want to try to do this alone. It’s a crisis moment. Where will the people of God turn for help? The Lord has given us a sign. Immanuel. God is with us.
If the thought of being in God’s presence is no big deal to you, you’ve come to the right place, and this is the perfect time of year for you to get over your…condition.
Immanuel - God is with us. He’s with those who love Him now, and they’ll live with Him forever.
