Emmanuel

Oh, how we read that verse in Matthew 1:23 each year at this holiday season and gloss over it not fully understanding the power and might of God found in this passage. 

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. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.” So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:20-23 NKJV)

Consider that the virgin birth was prophesied more than four hundred years before Mary gave birth to Jesus. Consider the human cost of the suffering Jesus endured upon the Cross at Calvary and consider the intervention of God himself to raise Jesus up from the dead after three days in the tomb. 

Selah and pause a moment and take that in. 

Take in what it took to make the promise that Emmanuel – God with us – a reality.

And yet the thrice Holy God made it possible for us to proclaim that God is with us. The promise of Holy Spirit is for all who believe that Christ rose from the dead and it is this Holy Spirit that is God with us. 

He lives in our hearts; He is intertwined with our spirit and we are one for all eternity. Oh, what a mystery that God would love us so much as to share himself with us and be with us always, oh what a glorious mystery, Emmanuel – God with us.

John 3:14-17 (NKJV)

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 

John 14:19-21 (NKJV)

“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” 

John 14:26 (NKJV)

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”