Immanuel: God with Us
Pastor Matt Pierson
“God became man; the Divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child… the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation.”
– J.I. Packer
“A God who was only holy would not have come down to us in Jesus Christ. He would have simply demanded that we pull ourselves together, that we be moral and holy enough to merit a relationship with Him. A deity that was an ‘all-accepting God of love’ would not have needed to come to Earth either. This God of the modern imagination would have just overlooked sin and evil and embraced us. Neither the God of moralism nor the God of relativism would have bothered with Christmas.”
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas
Isaiah 11:1-5 + Luke 2:25-32
- God is weaving a tapestry throughout Redemption history.
- God never gives up on us.
- The God who is with us is the God who is for us.
“This story is so miraculous in every way that it could have only come out of the mind of God in eternity before the foundations of the earth were laid down by His mighty hand… This story is itself an argument for the existence of God and is a portrait of His holy character.”
– Paul David Tripp, Come Let Us Adore Him
“The cumulative testimony of the four Gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about Him, His deepest impulse, His most natural instinct, is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it. And if the actions of Jesus are reflective of who He most deeply is, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is the very fallenness which He came to undo that is most irresistibly attractive to Him.”
– Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers
“For God so loved that world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
– John 3:16
God so loved YOU that He gave His only Son!
“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
– Romans 8:31b
“You rescued me because you delighted in me.”
– Psalm 18:19
“You can know the glories of God from the Old Testament, so overwhelming and daunting, but in Jesus Christ they come near. He becomes graspable, palpable. He becomes above all personal, someone with whom to have a relationship. Christmas and the incarnation mean that God went to infinite lengths to make Himself one whom we can know personally.”
– Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas
Discussion Questions
- Are we waiting in hopeful anticipation of Jesus coming again, or are we allowing the waiting to wear us down? While we live in this already-but-not-yet-kingdom, what are some ways to remind ourselves of the reality of the coming glory of Jesus’ return?
- Can we rest in the reality that Jesus came not only to rescue us, but also to make all things new? How does this truth shape our thoughts, actions and attitudes?
- God is not angry with us, but at the sin in our lives that does us harm. He loves us completely, finds us in our hiding places and runs toward us when we least deserve it—even when we are actively running away from him. What better gift could possibly be given to us? While we exchange earthly gifts this Christmas, what are ways for us to share the news of this greatest gift of all with our friends, family and neighbors?
“How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.”
– Phillip Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”
“He comes, and all our
Words though wide as worlds, and all our songs
Though voiced in grandest composition
Can never carry the incomparable weight
Of this one who comes, whose incarnation
Is our hope, our joy, heaven’s confirmation
That though light from us was long withheld
God has shattered the sin that was our hell
He comes, he has come, Immanuel.”
– Andrew Roycroft, “He Has Come”