Isaiah 7:14 -- God With Us

In the dark recesses of Israel’s history, at a most unlikely moment, in a rebuke against the petulant King Ahaz, one of the most beautiful words ever to grace the human tongue found its way into the language of the world. There it was sown in its arid soil, hardly noticed for seven centuries, until God spoke it again. This time it was spoken, not in prophecy, but in fulfilment. Because finally it was here: the day of Immanuel.

Immanuel—what a word that is!

The Word Immanuel Captures the Meaning of This Holy Season,

perhaps better than any other.

I.

Immanuel—God with us. “Pleased as Man with man to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel!” (LSB 380:2). God with us. It could be a prayer, reaching to the very limits of our need and our desires—God be with us. It could be a benediction, a blessing, or a wish. In fact, every time we bid somebody good-bye, we are sharing that blessing, Immanuel, for “good-bye” is simply an abbreviation of “God be with you.” And now, on the brink of the pinnacle of our celebration of that great truth, I invite you simply to contemplate it—as Mary did when first she heard of it­—and ponder it in your heart.

Immanuel is a philosophy and a theology in itself. It sets us apart from any human philosophy and largely from any religion, in saying that God is with us. It draws a line between deism and theism. I’ll explain what I mean by those words. I expect you know some Deists, though they may not call themselves by that name. They believe in a god as Creator. They believe that the world was made by some higher power, and that this god set the world in motion, like a fully wound-up clockwork machine, with its laws of nature like cogs interacting together. And then, their god retired to let it run its course, while we as men and women make the best of it. It is a belief in a god “out there.” But to celebrate Christmas is to reject that idea totally. Jesus is Immanuel—God with us. God down here.

II.

Immanuel might be a frightening word, an awesome and a terrible thing. Because it means God with us, whether we want it or not. In the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord asked: “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord” (Jer 23:23–24).

Immanuel means there is no God-forsaken corner where we can escape the presence of our Lord. And even if we should take refuge in our private thoughts, which are exposed to no man, even there, Jeremiah reminds us, God is with us: “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind” (Jer 17:10).

Yes, Immanuel would be the most terrible word, if it means the Almighty, in all his terror, is here with us now as judge to keep account of our lives, so close we cannot hide. Indeed it would be such a word of terror if the events of this sacred season did not transform the situation and give new meaning to the thought that God is with us.

III.

For here, in the birth foretold to the ancient prophet and, when its time was approaching, announced to Joseph the carpenter, we see an end to the awesome thought that God is a stranger and an enemy to be feared for his holiness and justice. “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (v 14). Here we see what we might call the divine defection, God crossing the lines to take our side, to wear our uniform of weakness and mortality. “God with us” meant God as us. Born a man to live as a man; talking with men, touching them, weeping for them; living as a man and dying as only a man can die. In this life, God with us meant God on our side, taking our part. Here, at the heart of it all is the truth that makes God a friend and an ally: God was in Christ, “reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). God with us, God as us, and God for us.

Immanuel, then, means nothing to fear. God has shown himself a friend, and “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39).

IV.

And Immanuel means one more thing, at least. God with us means God in control. That’s not to say God has taken away all the freedoms and choices with which he created us. But it means that through it all, God has a plan and a purpose to bring us back to him. And nowhere is this clearer than in those few verses of prelude to the Christmas story, where the New Testament first picks up the great word of old, Immanuel. All this took place, says Matthew, to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. From the outset, it was the planning and doing of the Lord. “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Mt 1:20). Again it was the working of God, and the messenger of God, who laid it all clear to Joseph.

From beginning to end, this central event, “God with us,” was the doing of God. Not by chance, not by human design, not by anything or anybody but God. It was a deed untouched by human hand. Indeed, it frustrated and overturned many a human plan. We might reflect that the Holy Family was very nearly a divorced family. “Joseph, being a just man, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Mt 1:19). Until, that is, he was brought to see the truth of one simple fact: God with us. We might reflect on the frustrations of King Herod’s plan to destroy this gift of God—a plan rendered impossible because God is with us, and the Holy Family found protection under God. But most of all, we might reflect on what it means for us, and how in us the plans of Satan and the machinations of sin and death are overturned by God with us.

It may be, as you approach this Christmas, that not everything is as you would want it. Relationships can be strained at this time as much as at any other, and probably more so. Separations are somehow especially painful at Christmas, whether it be those we have loved and lost, or those who just have to be elsewhere. Uncertainties and anxieties spoil the season of peace on earth—health, work, children, parents, even faulty cars and leaking roofs. And perhaps, despite all the efforts of the Advent voice to prepare the way of the Lord in our lives, and to sweep them clean and ready for our God with us, the way can seem anything but straight, as it meanders past greed and selfishness, lust and bitterness within us.

The truth is, it’s probably too late to do anything about those things now, at least this side of Christmas. Don’t panic, and don’t despair. God is with us, and his plan for us will not be laid aside by any of these things; rather, he works all things for the good of those who love him. And God in Christ will have you as you are. “But to all who did receive him,” wrote St. John, “who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12–13).

Or to put it another way: Immanuel.