God With us Is Jesus With Us

God with Us Is Jesus

Merry Christmas

It’s almost here

The anticipation is all around

Parents of young kids can certainly feel the anticipation at its peak!

We’re happy you’re here with us today

Christmas is here, and God is here with us!

If you’ve been journeying with us the past four weeks, you know that we’ve been celebrating and observing Advent, and now here we are in the last advent Sunday

on the verge of the celebration of the arrival of Jesus, our Savior, the light of the world, Immanuel, God with Us.

As you know by now, Advent is a season of expectant waiting as we focus and reflect on Christ’s coming

And each week of Advent we have focused on a different aspect of God’s character embodied and brought into our world and lives in Jesus: hope, love, joy, and peace.

the theme of our series has been God with Us.

Long ago the prophet Isaiah foretold the birth of the Messiah, called Immanuel.

And that is what took place on the first Christmas’s morning

The Christmas story is a powerful story, filled with wonder and miracles

It is the story of God with Us, Jesus come to earth as the most wonderful gift of all eternity.

In our time together this morning, let’s briefly trace our way through portions of this Christmas story again, highlighting all that it means that God is with us.

God with Us Brings Hope

The book of Luke begins with an account of Jesus’s birth.

Most of us usually start reading at , but if we do, we miss a great deal of important context.

Luke began his story of Jesus’s life with Zechariah and Elizabeth, a priest and his wife, an old childless couple, who receive an angelic message that they will have a son who will be the promised prophet to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. We know him as John the Baptist.

This message to Zechariah was a bright spark of hope

Hope for the couple who had longed for a child for most of their lives

Hope for the people of Israel.

And hope for us

Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, God had been caring for His people and making a way to restore them—and us—to Himself.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this” ().

Other prophets delivered similar messages, but there had been hundreds of years of silence before renewed hope burst onto the scene once again in the words delivered to Zechariah.

It was a tangible hope for the priest and his wife that God had heard their prayers, and He was answering with a tangible fulfillment of their hopes through a son.

And it was a tangible hope for the nation of Israel that God had not forgotten them.

He was still at work, and He was on the move again, preparing the way for the long-awaited Messiah.

Hope in Israel was alive again!

And hope is still alive for us today.

How is your hope today?

Focusing on gratitude can renew and grow our hope.

Recognizing and appreciating the good that God has shown us in the past can increase our hope for all He will do in the future.

Collectively we can all be thankful for the gift of God’s Son.

This is a perfect season for sharing this gratitude and hope with those who love and support us, and as we do, hope can multiply its effects.

Hope can sustain us through our darkest days as we wait for God to move.

This is my prayer for us all in this season:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” ().

God with Us Brings Love

When we talked about love, we talked about Mary and Joseph.

In many ways, theirs was a typical love story for its day: a young couple of humble means enters into the multistep process of marriage in ancient Israel.

They think they know where their lives are headed—and then an angel shows up, announcing a miraculous pregnancy of the Son of God.

Their world is rocked.

Their once quiet lives will never be the same.

Mary and Joseph’s was a love story written by God Himself,

He knew just how to deliver tangible love to Mary and Joseph in exactly the ways they both needed.

For Mary, this was the support of someone who could fully understand what she was going through.

Elizabeth was just the person as she was experiencing her own miracle pregnancy.

For Joseph, a supernatural expression of love was needed.

In his pain, he had decided to divorce Mary, but God lovingly met his needs by sending an angel to assure Joseph that miraculous events were indeed taking place.

In just the right ways, God lovingly provided what Mary and Joseph needed—and God does the same for us.

God is love.

And God gives His love to us freely.

when we open ourselves to it, God’s love flows through us to others.

John wrote, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. . . . We love because he first loved us” (, , esv).

This is the love that knit the universe together.

It is the love that knit you and me together.

And it is the love that entered the world as a helpless human baby

Who would one day willingly lay down His life for us

so that we can be restored

The love of God is a miraculous, and it can transform us

As we respond to God’s love, we find our own capacity to love expanding.

It’s a little like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch’s heart keeps growing bigger and bigger—“three sizes that day”—until it bursts

Perhaps like that transformed Grinch, we too can be bringers and bearers of love in this Christmas season and beyond.

Let’s start with those closest to us—our spouses, our kids, our relatives, the ones we’ve been impatient with in the busyness of the season.

Let’s continue with our friends in this room, in our neighborhoods, at our jobs.

And, yes, let’s include the strangers, the people who seem different from us, the enemies, and even the ones who are just plain hard to love.

Love has come into our world in the person of Immanuel, God with Us. Let’s live and spread His love in every way we can.

God with Us Brings Joy

Elizabeth personifies Christmas joy.

Mary’s cousin, the mother of John the Baptist, was the first, after all, to receive and experience joy in the arrival of Jesus on earth.

But first there was joy in the miraculous gift of her own son, John the Baptist.

And it was all the more joyous because of the pain and shame she had endured.

You remember that Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, had never been able to have children, and now they were old, too old.

Their dreams of having kids, or even a single kid, were dead.

This was a great loss they would have grieved deeply, especially Elizabeth

Because In her culture, she would have borne the blame for this.

She was the one called barren, like a desert.

She was the one considered a failure for not providing a child, especially a son, to carry on the family name.

this was a burden she carried inside most of her life.

then an angel appeared to her husband, telling him the couple would have a son—not just any son, but one who had been prophesied to prepare the way for the Messiah.

Zechariah was in disbelief of the news initially.

Elizabeth must have felt joy when she heard—or certainly when she became pregnant soon after.

And when marry came to visit that joy was multiplied

“As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” ().

Elizabeth’s joy was contagious, filling Mary and setting her free to overflow with gratitude and praise with her own song.

Joy is like that. It spreads,

Peter described that kind of joy as inexpressible and glorious. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” ().

That kind of joy is deep stuff.

it’s the joy rooted in our Savior, who has come and lived and died and lives again and who will return again someday to complete His ultimate work. This is the joy that Jesus said “no one will take away” ().

Christmas is a season characterized by joy—because Jesus has come.

Let’s look for and choose joy no matter what troubles may be swirling around us or what pains may be troubling us inside.

Let’s rejoice together for the arrival of our Lord and in the knowledge that He is with us, always working to provide and heal in our hearts and lives.

God with Us Brings Peace

We like to think of it as a peaceful night in Bethlehem on that first Christmas. But it wasn’t for Mary and Joseph. Mary was giving birth . . . in a stable . . . after a frantic search for lodging of any sort in a city that was so crowded there wasn’t a place for a pregnant woman to stay.

It might not have been peaceful for the shepherds either.

We tend to picture a calm, still night and a pastoral scene with shepherds resting around a campfire and sheep nestled in for the night beneath clear skies and twinkling stars.

But those sheep might have been restless and trying to wander off.

There might have been coyotes howling menacingly nearby—or leopards prowling.

Storms might have threatened overhead, and the men who wandered the hills might have been grumbling about eating the same bland food for the sixth night in a row.

What we do know for sure is that those shepherds were not feeling peace when the angel first showed up.

They were terrified.

They probably thought they were seeing some kind of ghost—or losing their minds.

It was a common reaction from everyone who ever came face-to-face with an angel in the Bible.

But these guys weren’t even necessarily particularly religious.

They undoubtedly believed in God and did their best to follow the laws, but in the social and spiritual order of the day, these guys were at or near the bottom—and they knew it.

They were nowhere near the holiness of those Pharisees.

They probably either felt a lot of guilt about not measuring up to what they perceived as God’s standards or they just quit trying.

So when a heavenly being appeared in the sky, they probably thought they were in for it at last.

But you and I know the story. The angel was a messenger of joy and peace. “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people,” the angel said (). “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests,” the chorus of angels sang ().

God had purposely chosen to let these lowly sheep herders in on the first news of celebration because His Son had come for them.

God with Us was here

and He was here for shepherds and outcasts and the downtrodden and those who didn’t measure up.

And to all of them He brought a message of peace.

This was the peace of shalom, a concept deeply ingrained in the understanding of the ancient Jews.

Even more than an absence of fighting, this shalom peace was a fullness of safety, completeness, and wholeness.

This was the peace of restoration with God.

And Because God is with us, this is the peace that is available for us.

it is the peace we celebrate today.

peace that keeps us looking forward

when Jesus returns one day, He will heal all that’s been broken

and restore God’s Kingdom

My friends, this is the kind of peace we have access to because God is with us

peace that transcends understanding because it defies our circumstances and problems and pain.

Even in our darkest nights and fiercest storms, we can draw near to God and find the settling presence of His Spirit.

During Christmas break this year find rest in that peace

The Prince of Peace has come,

and He can rule in our hearts if we choose.

God with Us Is Jesus

And that brings us to the center of it all.

“While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them” ().

Jesus.

Luke’s description is so understated, yet so definitive.

The Messiah came into the world in the most humble of ways: human, infant, poor, vulnerable, physically dependent—

It was God with Us as one of us.

A miracle

Jesus is the fulfillment of all hope.

Jesus is the embodiment of love.

Jesus is the source of joy.

Jesus is our peace.

Jesus is life.

And because He has come, we can be with God—authentically, honestly, wholly, eternally.

Jesus is the giver of life to the fullest,

He is the way, the truth, and the life,

He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

as we arrive at Christmas, let’s open our hearts to Him in worship.

Let’s receive His hope, love, joy, and peace—and ultimately His life.

Paul captured a snapshot of this life we now have in Christ

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have PEACE with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and JOYFULLY look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident HOPE of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his LOVE”

Romans 5:1–5 NKJV

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

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What a beautiful description of the life brought to us by Christ!

Have you experienced the love ; the hope; the joy ; the peace that God offers to all of us through Jesus

If not why not make him the lord of your life this morning

“‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to thos