O Come O Come Emmanuel

Welcome

Good morning once again everyone, and welcome to church. Can you believe that Christmas is this week?! Where did this last month go? Remember that we will have our Christmas Eve service on Friday at 6:30 so make sure you come to that! This morning we are on our fourth Advent sermon, looking at classic Christmas carols and how they relate to scripture and our faith. This morning we are going to be looking at O Come O Come Emmanuel. So before we get into our theme from the hymn and scripture, let’s ask God to be the one to teach us this morning.

Engage / Tension

As we start this morning, I want to start with an interactive question. So I really do want you to answer if you have an answer. I want to know, who is the most famous person you have ever met? Who here has met anyone famous? I’m curious to see just within our small church who the most famous person is that someone has ever met.

For me, probably the most famous person I have ever met is an actor by the name of Joonas Suotamo. I don’t expect anyone to know this guy, but I have a picture of Amy and I with him here. He is the new actor for the role of Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies. I know, super exciting stuff. But he is probably the most famous person I have met and you can believe I was extremely excited to meet him. I was just shocked that I got to meet a real person who plays a major role in the Star Wars movies. If you think I get excited talking about Star Wars, you should have seen me on this day where I got to meet Joonas. We all likely have some people, maybe it’s a celebrity, an author, someone that if we got to meet them, we would be a little starstruck. We’d get flustered around them and probably say something silly because we wouldn’t be able to think straight because we are meeting someone we really like or look up to.

But this is where our Christmas carol comes into play. When we sing O Come O Come Emmanuel, we are singing O Come God with us, Emmanuel means God with us. As we look at the Christmas story we see this very truth come to be. We see God live amongst his creation through Jesus. He literally is God with us because of the birth of Jesus. That is what Christmas celebrates, the fact that the God of the universe, the creator, became one of us. Another way to think of it is that God moved into the house next door to you. This is what I want us to think about this morning. As excited as we get to meet someone famous or well known, do we have that same reaction when we realize we get to have God with us through Jesus? Does it cause our hearts to beat fast, does it cause us excitement and anticipation? I think that the incarnation can and should cause us to have a reaction. We should stand in awe of the fact that God was not satisfied with being a distant God, he entered into our humanity so that we could be with him forever. So let’s start this morning by seeing how Jesus was first described as God with us. One of the first times we see Jesus as God with us is actually through the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 7:14 NIV

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, God was speaking through Isaiah and letting people know what he was going to do. God himself would come to the earth and be God with us, Emmanuel. Then in the Christmas story we see Matthew explain how the prophecy came true through the birth of Jesus.

Bible

Matthew 1:18–25 NIV

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

When we celebrate Christmas, we need to remember that Jesus is God with us. Similar to what we talked about last week, we have to know that Jesus is not just a cute baby, he’s not just a good man who said wise things. Jesus is literally God with us. Let’s talk about what this means exactly for us, because it has to affect our lives, Jesus being Emmanuel, being God with us, should change our lives. There are three things I want us to think about this morning and I’m going to relate all of them back to that illustration of a famous person to help us better understand and see how amazing the Christmas story is.

Application

God with Us

The very idea of being with someone famous or well known is exciting, but recognizing that God is with us should make us amazed because of who God is. God with us should cause us to be in awe because of who we are talking about. This is God, not a famous athlete or celebrity, this is the God who knit you together in the womb, who knows what is on your heart and mind at all times. Job 26 points out how big of a deal God is. (We should already know that God is a big deal, but Isaiah points it out to us)

Job 26:7–14 NIV

7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing. 8 He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight. 9 He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it. 10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness. 11 The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke. 12 By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces. 13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent. 14 And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”

I love what that last verse has to say about God’s power. After listing all of these amazing things that God does, the author says that those are just the outer fringe of his works. That’s the small stuff, essentially is what the author is saying. We can’t even understand how powerful God is. We look at the universe and we see glimpses of God’s power. We see how the planets revolve around the sun, we see how we are the perfect distance away from the earth, all of these things in nature and creation we look at and can think, “Holy smokes, God is so powerful.” But those are just small glimpses of his power. That last verse, verse 14, says, “Who then can understand the thunder of his power?” We are not even capable of understanding God’s power. You can be the smartest person in the world, you can read every book there is, have all the degrees in the world, and yet you still would not even come close to understanding the power of God. Ephesians 3:20 tells us this.

Ephesians 3:20 (NIV)

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine

God can do more than we ask, he can do more than we can even imagine, and yet he came to this earth through Jesus to be with us. Just let that blow your mind away for a second. Think if the queen of England just decided to fly over to the US, land in Bloomington, and take a drive and come hang out with all of us in Graymont. That doesn’t make sense does it? Why would she? Why would someone of that status come and be with us?

Yet, that is exactly what God does through Jesus. He lowered himself to humanity and even to the cross because that is how important you are to him. Breathing is important when we sing, but when we sing O Come Emmanuel it should almost take our breath away. This all knowing, all powerful God is with us.

(Scared of Santa illustration) (Scared to go sit on Santa’s lap, but was able to when I was younger because mom and dad were with me.)

God for Us

God is not only with us, God is also for us. Going back to the illustration of the famous person. If God with us is like meeting the celebrity, God for us is like meeting that celebrity but then having them as a friend, who supports you and encourages you. Romans 8:31 reminds us of this.

Romans 8:31 NIV

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Now, this doesn’t mean that you won’t face hardships or trials, but we are promised that God is for us. God is able to encourage us in our spirits when we are most desperate, he is able to give us peace in the midst of situations where peace seems impossible. Time and time God will remind you of his love for you. God is with us, yes, but he is also for us. He wants the best for you and for you to rely upon him.

God in Us

So God is with us, he is for us, and finally, God is in us. Go back to that famous person that you would love to meet. You had your encounter with them, they became your friend and want to encourage you in life, now imagine that person says, “You know what, I want to be with you all day. I want to make my home your home.” I guess in some ways this might be a little creepy, but it isn’t when God does it!

John 16:7 NIV

7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

Jesus tells the disciples here that he has to leave so that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit would come. Why does this happen? Well Jesus is Emmanuel, right, God with us. In order to do that he put on flesh and became a man in the deepest way. Because of this, he took on certain limitations. He could not be in all places at once as a man, he could only be where he was. But when Jesus ascends into heaven and the Holy Spirit fills the disciples at Pentecost, the Sprit of God moves into the hearts of the followers of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 6:19 NIV

19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

The Holy Spirit has taken up residence within your body if you are a follower of Jesus. God didn’t just come to earth for a visit, he didn’t just come to earth to remind people that he is for them, he came to earth and continually dwells within his believers because that is how much God loves you.

Action

So I want to close with this. This morning its a pretty simple application point for us in our lives. As we come to the end of the Christmas season, as we take in these last few days before the 25th, I think it is good for us to remember the blessings that are made possible to us through the Christmas story. We need to remember and have hearts full of gratitude as we think about Emmanuel, God with us.