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Immanuel

With Us

by TerryLema

The Christmas decorations are down, put away and stored in the garage for another year. They emerge sometime after Thanksgiving each year and decorate our homes for a few weeks and then disappear.

Santa, it seems, has left the mall, and returned to the North Pole. The reindeer are back to grazing. The bells are silent. The songs of the holidays have disappeared from the airwaves. Christmas 2022 is behind us, and Christmas 2023 is far ahead. (No matter what people advise I cannot bring myself to shopping for next Christmas in January!)

But one thing has remained the same. One thing has never changed ever since that first Christmas two-thousand years ago. Immanuel, “God With Us.” [Isaiah 7:14]

Each Christmas we are reminded that God entered this world containing Himself in a tiny baby. We celebrate that over the “Holiday Season.” It often seems to be the theme in many messages and church services. But … BUT, let us not forget that “God With Us,” never left us. He is still “With Us.”

When Christ Jesus returned to the Father’s House following His death and resurrection, He sent the Spirit of God to dwell – IN-dwell – us.

Immanuel, “God With Us,” is no longer self-limited to a physical body, but now is present in this world in everyone who has through His grace, by faith, become a “Child of God.”

Santa and Frosty and Rudolph and The Grinch and Elf have left us … but Jesus through the power of His Holy Spirit never has. NEVER WILL.

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Immanuel

by TerryLema

Matt 1:20-23:  “’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 be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’-which means, ‘God with us.’”

The prophet the angel referred to was Isaiah. He lived about seven centuries before and foretold of the birth of Christ Jesus. “The virgin will be with child and give birth to a son.” [Isaiah 7:14]

That alone is miraculous, but then Isaiah said something even more miraculous … “they will call him Immanuel.”

Immanuel means God with us. One author called that “The Glorious Impossible.”

God with us. Of all the names of God, this one may be the most amazing. God with us. The Almighty, Holy, Uncontainable, All-Knowing God, the Great I Am, set aside His Glory and Godly Prerogatives, and “contained” Himself in the body of a baby, totally dependent upon a teenage mother for life and a simple village carpenter for protection.

How? That’s the part that cannot be completely understood and must be accepted by faith.

Why? Because He loved us and was not willing to see His creation condemned and separated from Him.

God with us, Immanuel. He came to be with us. HE HAS NEVER LEFT US. He is God with us, Immanuel.

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The LORD Himself

by TerryLema

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” [Isa 7:14]

Immanuel, God with us. That’s the old, old story. God came to us so that we could one day go to Him. He wanted His children around Him, but we had rebelled, shaken our fists at Him and declared we didn’t want Him to rule over us. We became His enemies. We didn’t want His laws or His moral obligations. We wanted to do things OUR WAY without interference from His Holiness or His Righteousness.

But God was relentless. He pursued us until one day the time was exactly right. One exact moment in time, God entered the world through a humble, obedient servant who found grace, favor with Him.

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” [Gal 4:4-5 NKJV]

Immanuel, God with us. I am always undone by the thought that the God of the universe wants me. For God doesn’t just love people, He loves PERSONS, individuals, you, me, our neighbors, family, friends, and yes even our enemies. He loves us with a sacrificial love that spans the millenniums from eternity past to eternity future. It is a love that is as boundless, as glorious, as He is.

And on that day so long ago – in the fullness of time – God proved that love and glory and grace when He sent His Son to redeem lost mankind.

Immanuel, God with us.

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