Some of the most painful times in our lives come about whenever we feel a strong sense of separation.
- The grief we feel at the death of a loved one is the most extreme separation we experience.
- But it’s more than that. We hurt whenever a friend takes a new job and moves to another city. We dread the thought of being separated by all those miles.
- Even a good thing like sending your kids off to college brings some strong feelings of separation — for parent as well as child. That’s been the big adjustment in our family over the last six months.
- And being estranged from your family members is a category all by itself. It’s really heartbreaking to hear the stories of parents, children, husbands, wives who for one reason or another are now alienated from one another.
- You probably know what it feels like to experience at least a few of these separations.
But I don’t say any of this to make you feel sad. I simply bring this up as a point of contrast to the next name / title for Jesus that we’ve come to in our Knowing Jesus series. Today we will be looking at what it means when the Bible refers to Jesus as “Immanuel” — a name which means, “God with us.” And we’ll begin this morning by returning to a passage we looked at a few weeks ago: Matthew 1.
Matthew 1:18-23
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. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
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. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
We looked at part of this passage a few weeks ago when we began this series. But in that first message, we were simply focusing on the name “Jesus” and its significance — which is explained here in this passage. But as you can see, Matthew also gives us another name by which we might know Jesus: He is Immanuel.
Matthew tells us that the birth of Jesus fulfills a prophecy from Isaiah — Isaiah 7:14. Approximately seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah predicts that a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son. And this child will be known as Immanuel — His arrival will be a sign that God is with His people. And Isaiah makes this prediction seven hundred years before it is fulfilled. Just for a point of reference, that would be kind of like Leonardo da Vinci’s great-grandfather predicting the winner of the Super Bowl tonight. It is only through the power of God that Isaiah is able to make this prophecy.
And Matthew says this prophecy is fulfilled in the virgin birth of Jesus. The big idea here is that His unique birth parallels His unique death. He’s born of a virgin — definitely a unique birth — and He will die on the cross for the sins of the world — certainly a unique death. This unique birth is a signal of what is to come. Everything about Jesus is unique.
In addition to all of this, His unique birth is a signal, a sign, that God is with His people.
The word “with” is a really small word but it is also a life-changing word. It simply means, “to be accompanied by another person.” And sometimes that knowledge can be enough to change your life — just knowing that someone is with you.
- When you’re the new kid at school and someone invites you to join in with their group, to sit at their lunch table.
- When you’re grieving and your best friend drives all through the night just to hold your hand and join in your pain.
- When your friends and family gather around to celebrate a birthday or an anniversary and you know, “These are my people.”
These moments are powerful because someone chooses to be with you.
When my children were younger and they had to do something they didn’t want to do, they’d often ask, “Dad, will you go with me?” And even as we grow older, we continue to find comfort in being with our people in those key moments of our lives.
So it’s only natural that we would bring this same idea into our relationship with God. You can hear this in the way we pray: At the heart of so many of our prayers, we ask God to be with the people we love.
- I think I’ve prayed the same prayer at every funeral I’ve done over the last 25 years: “God, please be with this family in their hour of grief.”
- And I’ve prayed a version of this same prayer at every wedding ceremony, too: “God, please be with this couple and this new family that begins here today.”
Whether in grief or in joy, the most comforting thought we can imagine is God being with us.
And in Jesus, God says, “I’m right here…I’m with you.”
The most repeated promise in the Bible is God saying to His people, “I will be with you.” It’s as if we have this universal desire to know that we’re not alone — and God seems to have this overwhelming desire to let us know that He is always with His people:
When God spoke to Moses out of the midst of a burning bush, He called Moses to return to Egypt.
- This was the place of Moses’s greatest moral failure, the place where he killed a man and fled as a fugitive. God says to Moses, “I want you to go back there. I have work for you to do.”
- But Moses balks at this idea. He says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? God, I’m a nobody. Worse than that, I’m a wanted man — I’m a murderer. If I go back to Egypt, I’ll never get out of there alive.”
- Exodus 3:12, God says, “But I will be with you…” He says, essentially, “Don’t worry. I’m with you. I’ve got this. You just follow me and I will take care of the rest.“
- God’s presence — His with-ness, if we can invent a word here — is great enough to overcome our shame, our failures, our greatest mistakes. God says to Moses, “I’m with you and I’m going to help you do this.”
And God repeats this same promise to Moses’s successor, Joshua:
- Years later, Joshua stood on the brink of the Promised Land. He’s about to enter a place he’s never been before; and he will be going up against new enemies and he will be facing new challenges. And he’ll be doing all of this without Moses, who had been leading these people for forty years. That’s a lot of change, a lot of transition — and Joshua was feeling what a lot of us feel whenever we go through times of transition: fear.
- But God says to Joshua in Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
- God promises that He will give the Israelites every place where they set foot in the land of Israel. All Joshua needs to do is remember that God is with him. God’s presence will help Joshua navigate through this uncertainty.
And it goes on and on from there throughout the Bible. The people and places may change, but God’s promise is steadfast: He says over and over, I am with you.
And in Jesus, God is saying to us, “I am with you.”
- Like Moses, so many of us are crippled by shame. We have mistakes in our past, things we’ve said and done that still haunt us. And those feelings of regret and shame weigh so heavily upon us, to the point that we say, like Moses, “I’m nothing. I’m worthless.”
- But God’s response to all of that is to say, “Don’t worry. I am with you.” God offers the power of His presence as a counter to that narrative of negativity. God says, “I am with you” because He knows that His presence is transformative. Like we said, just knowing someone is with you can change your life.
- And just like Joshua, many of us are facing challenges that seem overwhelming. We’re spread thin at work, we’re dealing with challenges in our personal lives. Like Joshua, we’re fighting our fears.
- But that’s right where God shows up — in the story of Joshua, but also in our own lives. And He says, “I will be with you, wherever you go.”
- God must love saying this, because He says it all the time in the Bible. And He says it once and for all in Jesus.
The picture of Jesus as God with us is a strong counter to some of the false understandings people have about God. Misunderstandings such as:
God doesn’t care about me. This is the idea that I’m insignificant in God’s eyes, that He overlooks me or ignores me.
- Our world is home to over 8 billion people. So some people adopt this view of God as detached, far removed from our lives. They think, “How could He possibly care for me? I’m just one of 8 billion other people on the planet.”
- But this comes from a skewed understanding of humility. If we think that God somehow loses sight of us because of all the other people in the world, our view of God is too small.
- When He promises to be with us, He does so because He cares.
God is against me. This is the idea that God opposes me, that God is seeking to punish me.
- It’s a picture of God as the cosmic enforcer. He’s just waiting for you to step out of line so He can zap you into oblivion, to nuke you for your mistakes.
- This comes from a skewed view of God’s role as judge. Is God going to judge each one of us in the end? Yes, we will talk about that in a few weeks. There IS a day of judgment awaiting us.
- But Jesus comes to be with us in order to save us from condemnation. 1 Thess. 1:10, … Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. When He promises to be with us, it’s because He wants to save us, not punish us.
God has forsaken me. This is the idea that God has abandoned me, that God is somehow not trustworthy.
- This usually comes from a skewed view of our pain — our pain is all we can see, so we turn to God and blame Him for everything. This is usually because someone has hurt us — we put our trust in someone and they let us down. So we just assume that God is the same way. But God won’t do this to us.
- Now, God will let you hurt sometimes. He’ll let you hurt but He will never harm you. God will let you hurt for a little while because sometimes He has a redemptive purpose for some of that pain. I mean, pain is a great catalyst for change — so there are times when God will let you hurt, at least for a moment. But here’s the thing: He will never harm you. You’re safe with Him. Prov. 29:25, those who trust in the Lord are safe. If He is with you, then He won’t let anything ultimately harm you.
Jesus as Immanuel is evidence of God’s faithfulness. All of His promises come to fruition. He is light; in Him, there is no darkness. The story of the Bible is the story of God’s faithfulness to us throughout the ages. And Jesus is the ultimate sign of that faithfulness.
All three of these views of God are proven to be false whenever we see Jesus as Immanuel, as evidence that God is indeed with us.
Do you know the first verse of the Bible? A lot of people can recite it from memory: Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is a foundational statement that grounds everything that follows in the Scriptures.
But do you know the last verse of the Bible? That one probably doesn’t come to mind as quickly, does it? But the last verse of the Bible contains a foundational truth as well: Revelation 22:21 (NKJV), The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
- The Bible begins with this epic scene: God speaks the heavens and the earth into existence. It’s this huge, wide-angle scene with the creation of the sun and the moon and life here on earth.
- But the Bible closes with these simple words of hope: may the grace of Jesus be with His people. The entire Gospel is bound up in that one little word: “with.”
- That word carries all of our hopes and dreams, our deepest desires — to be with God someday. And Jesus has come to be with us to give us what we need more than anything else: the grace that leads to eternal life.
- It’s as if God wants to say this one more time before we close our Bibles: I am with you. If My Son is with you, then My grace is with you. God promises to be with those who put their trust in Him.
Are you in need of His grace today? Are you in need of His presence? Maybe you have everything you’ve ever wanted, and yet it still seems like something is missing. That’s because you were made for more than what this life can offer. You were made for eternal union with God — and your soul remains restless until it finds rest in Him. His grace is extended to any who would respond today in faith. Would you receive the Lord Jesus in baptism, confessing Him as both Lord and Savior today?
He is Immanuel, He is God with us. May His grace be with us all.
Invitation:
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Lord who makes all things new, he who has ears let him hear.
Discussion Questions:
- Think back to a time when you experienced the pain of separation. Maybe it was the passing of a loved one or moving away from home for the first time. Why is separation so painful? It is universal; everyone experiences, no matter their age, culture, background, etc. What spiritual lesson can we learn from the fact that separation is a universal human experience? What do you think this says about God’s universal desire to restore?
- Today’s message emphasized the idea of Jesus as “Immanuel” which means “God with us.” Read Matthew 1:18-23. What stands out to you about this passage? What encouragement do you receive from the idea that God promises to be with His people?
- Spend some time talking about the practical implications of this. How does the idea of God being “with” us change the way we live?
- Read Exodus 3:1-12. When God asks Moses to go back to Egypt, how does Moses respond? Shame is a powerful force and it can paralyze us at times. How does God counter Moses’s shame in this passage?
- Read Joshua 1:1-9. Based on the fact that God tells Joshua three times to be strong and courageous, is it fair to assume that Joshua was NOT feeling especially strong or courageous in this moment? How does God’s promise to be with us give us greater strength? Greater courage?
- Jason noted that the idea of God being with us helps to counter three common misunderstandings about God: God doesn’t care about me; God is against me; and God has forsaken me. Can you think back to a time in your life when you held one of those misunderstandings about God? Which of those three has been the greatest challenge for you in your spiritual journey?
- Read Revelation 21:3 and Revelation 22:21. What comfort do you draw from the fact that the final words in the Bible are God’s promise to be with us?
- Close with some time in prayer together.
already & not yet 