God with us in Jesus
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God is with us. Immanuel. What does it mean for God to be with us? Until he came to be with us, to take on human flesh and weakness, the world didn’t know. God’s plan was unknowable but it was also foretold by the prophets who didn’t fully understand how far their prophecies pointed. Isaiah foretold the name Immanuel would be given to a baby born to a virgin, a young woman amongst the Judeans of his time. And this prophecy could very well have had a literal fulfillment in the time of Isaiah. This is because God would direct Isaiah and other prophets to use the people and objects around them, and sometimes even make new things to use, as a visual aid when giving prophecies. There very well could have been a young woman or a young, pregnant woman in Isaiah’s audience. And if she existed, whether or not she had a son and named him Immanuel, the prophecy would find it’s greatest fulfillment hundreds of years later in the person of Jesus and his mother, Mary. Our gospel text from Matthew gets into these details. It’s here that we learn the account of how Jesus got his name for the first time and what it means in the dream that Joseph received. So let’s start by looking at Matthew 1:18.
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Joseph’s fiance was already pregnant. This would have been a total scandal. As the rhyme goes: First comes love, then comes marriage, THEN comes the baby in the baby carriage. Not only does the whole rhyme get messed up if things are out of order, but so does that family, and so does society. And here we are. And so God in his goodness provides boundaries where marriage happens first and then the baby gets to be a consideration.
Vs 19 tells us:
19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
Joseph would have been a righteous person if he brought her into judgment. He looks like the bad guy when his fiance turns out to be pregnant. To protect his own innocence and be able to move on with his life, it would have made sense for him to expose her shame and distance himself from Mary. But Joseph didn’t want to maximize her shame and maximize his own innocence in the eyes of everyone they knew. From an earthly perspective, if the Son of God was not a part of this story, Joseph was even better than a righteous man. His righteousness was also loving. He decided to let people wonder if he was guilty if it meant that Mary would have a chance to somehow move on with her life. Ending the engagement quietly was a sacrificial move on Joseph’s part. I don’t know if Jesus as the Son of God needed role models or how we should talk about Jesus being formed by his parents, but his stepdad Joseph had something of the godly character of sacrificial love that foreshadows what Jesus would later do at Calvary.
Let’s continue with verse 20:
20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
The circumstances of the incarnation are vulnerable. Let’s look at the people involved. The Son of God becomes vulnerable when he takes on human flesh to be born as a baby. Mary takes on the physical vulnerability of pregnancy and the risk of her character being called into question and her reputation ruined. And Joseph is being asked to do the same. There’s vulnerability on all sides . But Mary, Joseph, and the Son of God all knew that what they were doing was from God. It would have seemed indefensible from outside. But the truth of what was really happening, that God had smuggled himself into his world, behind enemy lines, to save humans from their terminal disease of sin meant that if Mary and Joseph would risk their reputations and make themselves vulnerable and foolish in the eyes of the world, they could be a part of ushering in the most important thing that would ever happen to humanity. And just as importantly they were obeying the command of God. They aren’t just opportunists grabbing future glory for themselves because they seized a great opportunity. They are obeying God at great personal cost to themselves.
And their sacrifice should makes us ask the question, what can I do to obey God? Where am I privileging my status or reputation over playing my part in building the kingdom of God? Am I willing to look foolish for the sake of God and my neighbor? What could that look like? Maybe it means offering food to the hungry and talking to them about Jesus. Maybe it means baking some cookies and giving them to an unbelieving neighbor with a note that says “God loves you.” Maybe it’s helping victims of flooding clean up their houses in the name of Jesus. Let’s care about God and neighbor over ourselves as we move closer and closer to Christmas. Let’s look for where we could be just a bit more vulnerable if it means we could help spread the kingdom of God. And our only hope of doing this is the same hope of Christmas, that God would show up, that the Holy Spirit would come into our lives and accomplish so many of the longings of the Old Testament, I think especially of Ezekiel: that our heart of stone might be removed and replaced with a heart of flesh, that the valley of dry bones that is the weary and godless state of our lives might be re-formed and remade into what they were always supposed to be, functional and full of life again able to love God and love our neighbors.
So it’s not at all out of place to sing Come, Lord Jesus, Come, and then sing Holy Spirit, Come. Our need is great and his mercy is great. And Jesus inaugurated his kingdom at his arrival in Christmas and maintains it by his Holy Spirit. So let us pray for the Holy Spirit to show up and do his saving work in our lives as we move into Christmas.
Look at verse 21:
21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
That saving work is why he came. It’s the name he took unexpectedly: the name of Jesus means salvation. This visitation from God would be different from the Immanuel we see in Isaiah. What do I mean by that? Let’s look at verse 22:
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
But Isaiah’s “God with us” meant something quite different. Something that makes the Immanuel of the New Testament so much more gracious. Let’s look at Isaiah’s Immanuel. If you look at the Old Testament reading, it starts in verse 14:
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
So far so good, but what happens if we keep going? Look at verse 15:
15 He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. 17 The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria!”
The king of Assyria almost never gets his mention in the Christmas story. But he should. Isaiah’s God with Us meant that a countdown was starting. In a few short years of Immanuel, the visitation of God would show up in the mean, punishing army of the Assyrians. Israel had not been following God and they were about to be judged. God would show up and judge them through the Assyrians. Immanuel, God’s is with us and about to bring judgment.
But fast forward to Matthew’s Gospel, and Joseph would hear a new take. This virgin, Mary, would give birth to a Son who would be God with us. To judge, yes, but not us. He would do battle with sin and Satan. He would be the fierce King against the evil of this world, but for us he would take the name of salvation: Yeshua, Joshua, the salvation of the Lord, Jesus, God with us, in a new way. In the scandal and vulnerability of Mary’s pregnancy, this little family needed to endure just a few months and they would see the salvation of God brought into his world.
And, as verse 24 tells us:
24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
And so we see in Mary and Joseph what can happen when we trust God and obey his word, and as we move into our time of Communion, we remember the ultimate picture of obedience in Jesus at the Cross. The Cross is the vulnerability that his incarnation points to. It is the picture of perfect trust in God. And there God accomplished the salvation that Jesus is named for. I hope here at the end of Advent that we can see this promise in Isaiah of the coming of Jesus as not only God with us, but God with us for our salvation. Because he came our sins are forgiven and death is defeated. And as we look forward with hope at his coming in Christmas, let all our hearts prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.
