Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: We will explore the idea of God being ‘with’ us.

In two places, we learn that the Messiah’s name is going to be Emmanuel and yet that’s not actually what Mary and Joseph end up calling him.

They are given a different name: Jesus.

Emmanuel isn’t a title either.

Messiah, Christ, Wonderful Counselor, and Prince of Peace are all titles.

So if Emmanuel isn’t a name and it isn’t a title…what is it?

That’s what this series is about.

In this first installment in the series, we will look at how Jesus’ coming is the fulfillment of an age old promise to bring blessing to the entire world through the family of Abraham when God came to be ‘with’ men for the very first time.

Immediately in that story, we are suspect of this mans ability to bring blessing into the world as it leads directly into Abrahams first of many failures.

If this blessing is truly going to come, the Old Testament makes it clear that we are going to need a better man born from the line of Abraham than any who’ve come before.

I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving…

Explain that I was looking up the origins of Thanksgiving…honestly, its origins are super dark and bloody and people remember that holiday for many different reasons, and not all of them are good.

Nobody really knows why we actually celebrate it…which I think is wild.

The story that many of us grew up hearing about the pilgrims and native Americans eating together is largely due to a story told by Abraham Lincoln and nobody really knows if it is true or not.

We do know that the Holiday’s origins are rooted somewhere in giving thanks for the life sustained through the final harvest… if that is truly the case, then this was celebrated way before the 1620 event.

Also of note, the 1620 giving of thanks event between two different people groups (Pilgrims and Native Americans) isn’t even unique or the first of its kind.

The first recorded instance of that type of Thanksgiving actually happened in 1565 in Florida when Spanish settlers and members of the Native American Seloy tribe ate salted pork and garbanzo beans together…anybody want to adopt that as their new Thanksgiving tradition?

We do know that some combination of all of those events is what led George Washington, and later Abraham Lincoln to mark the final Thursday in November as Thanksgiving day.

For a number of years, Thanksgiving day was celebrated on the first Thursday in December.

And for two years 1939 and 1940 president Roosevelt tried moving the holiday to the third Thursday in November because…and get this…he wanted to extend the Christmas shopping season.

And here I thought black Friday starting on Thursday afternoon was bad.

Whatever the case may be, Thanksgiving is typically recognized as a time to give thanks for the blessings that change our lives.

In fact, that’s what just about all of our major holidays are about: they are a marker for remembering change.

Have you ever thought about them that way before?

Here I’ll show you:

Let’s start simple:

New Years Marks the change of the New Year.

We’ve already talked about Thanksgiving.

Independence Day Marks the day we won our independence from England.

Sometimes though, it is about celebrating the people who have brought change.

Presidents Day, although originally called something else is on the birthday of George Washington.

Then there is Columbus Day…but I’m not touching that one with a 39 and a half foot pole.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And then there is Christmas… I think there is a certain beauty and goodness about Christmas that is lost when we reduce it down to simply the birth of Jesus.

We don’t celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr…he was just a man.

No, we celebrate the change that man brought to this country.

Obviously the birth of Jesus is a big deal, and yet, just celebrating His birth can come off sort of trite and reductionist.

Its easy to turn it into a Christian platitude that really doesn’t mean anything other than being our rote response for the true “reason for the season.”

No, Christmas is a lot like Thanksgiving.

It has a very storied past and a lot of it is dark and bloody and way more complex than we imagine it to be as we are stuffing ourselves full of ham and cranberry sauce.

Unlike Thanksgiving, however, the more you look into this dark, complex, and bloody story, the greater appreciation you come away with.

That is why we have chosen the text we have for this Christmas season:

Let’s check it out and just dive right in:

The title of our sermon comes from two verses in the Bible and they are honestly one in the same.

The first is:

And

Here is why I think these two verses (which are really one and the same) deserve five sermons dedicated to them.

Let’s look at the verse from Matthew in its context and I think you’ll understand why:

Did you catch the seeming contradiction?

The prophesy which came close to 700 years before the birth of Jesus said he was going to be called Immanuel and yet that wasn’t his name.

Now our first clue that should tell us there is more than meets the eye is the fact that Matthew references this prophecy in the context of Jesus receiving his name.

You would think if this was a Bible mistake that Matthew would just sort of glaze over it and yet, he actually draws attention to it.

Here is the deal:

Immanuel is not a name.

His name is Jesus (or Joshua in Hebrew) which means: God is Salvation.

Immanuel is also not a title.

Isaiah, who gives us Immanuel also gives him a bunch of titles that we also throw around at Christmas time.

Check out Isaiah 9:6

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and Prince of Peace are all titles referring to what he is and what he will do.

We also get the titles of Messiah meaning anointed one from the Old Testament.

And translated as Christ in the Greek New Testament.

Those are titles.

Immanuel is a marker of remembrance for change.

Honestly, given the last few years, we could stand some change right now.

For that reason, I can’t think of a better thing for us to study this Christmas Holiday.

Here is how we get the marker of remembrance for change.

Let’s go back and look at our verse again:

Underline that phrase in your Bible: “God with us.”

If Immanuel is about God being ‘with us’ then we have to understand that there was an entire history about when God came to be ‘with’ His people.

Matthew just dropped this huge bomb on us that he is using to make a statement with, but because Matthew was written with a decidedly Jewish audience in mind, he expects you to understand the significance of it as well as the dark, complex, and often bloody history of it.

Five weeks is a long time to wait for the full picture so I’ll give you the spoiler now:

When God shows up, things drastically change.

For the next several weeks, we are going to unpack that small yet significant bomb that Matthew referenced by looking back at the times that God came to be with His people and see what it was showing us about this Immanuel that was coming into the world.

My hope is that a fuller understanding of that concept will bring about worship, hope for future change, and a deeper celebration in your heart this Christmas season.

So…if you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis chapter 12 with me.

Before you start reading, give the context that it had been hundreds if not thousands of years since God last spoke.

The last four times God spoke it was all pretty doom and gloom.

Just to catch you up on what those were:

God came down in the Garden of Eden to curse the serpent, man, woman, and earth and then proceeded to kick mankind out of paradise.

Next, God spoke out to arbitrate the first murder trial where he cursed Cain.

Then, God spoke to Noah because mankind was so wicked he was about to wipe them from the face of the earth…which he proceeded to do.

THEEEEN, God came down because man had rebelled again at Babel and scattered them across the face of the earth confusing their language effectively setting mankind back technologically 2,000+ years.

And so, when you open up to chapter twelve…one chapter after the last time God spoke out…and you hear the words: “Now the LORD said to Abram...you are meant to sort of cringe…like oh goodness, what’s coming next.

But let’s read it together.

This is a big deal in the story thus far.

Everything since the Garden has been a downward spiral into worse and worse problems marked by greater and greater acts of judgment from God.

We are going to talk about this again here in a few weeks, but Genesis chapters 1-11 are an expose in human brokenness and depravity.

These first eleven chapters in Genesis are what happens if God doesn’t intervene in our story somehow.

Within four chapters, God has to wipe all of humanity off the map and begin again.

And just in case you are inclined to see Noah as some sort of savior, the very next story is how he and the family he brought onto the ark are failures too.

Then as if that weren’t enough, we get the tower of Babel story to show that…yep…the problem of sin is still humanity wide.

Chapter twelve marks a turning point in the story, however.

God is beginning the great rescue plan of humanity through this promise of blessing…whatever that may be.

Look at how God seals this promise.

God comes to be with Abram.

And Abram realizes the importance of remembering this moment when God came to be with him so he builds this altar to bring his mind back there.

I think there is a benefit from stopping here and just resting in the fact that:

It is important to set up intentional moments of remembrance for how God has intervened in our story.

This is what the Christmas season is for us.

We don’t have altars anymore, we do this with a holiday.