Copyright © 1997, 2013 Bob Haines

Emmanuel: God With Us*

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and his name be called Emmanuel'(which means, God with us.”
Matthew 1:23

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of books promoted the theory that in ancient times, our planet had been visited by astronauts from outer space and that these alien visitors had left their marks upon the earth. Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? for instance, says that the stone figures on Easter Island, cave drawings, and temple carvings portray spacemen who landed on earth thousands of year ago. Although I’m not prepared to comment on the plausibility of these theories, I have to admit that it’s a fascinating thesis.
von Daniken and others of his persuasion aren’t really that original, however. The Bible has taught all along that the earth is a visited planet. It received a visitor from another realm of being about 2000 years ago, and it’s still displaying the evidence of that visit. That visit in fact, is the heart of the Christmas message. In the person of Jesus Christ, God visited earth and revealed himself more perfectly than he had ever done before.

It’s not that God had never communicated with earthlings before. The Bible reports, that before the advent of Christ, that God has been revealed through nature.

The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1). Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. (Romans 1:20).

In addition, God has called special people to be his spokesman. These Old Testament prophets had remarkable insights into the spiritual nature of things. They cut through the ritualism of the day and called people to repent and to live lives of genuine righteousness.

These forms of revelation however, had their limitations. God’s revelation in nature was impersonal and non-directive. His revelation through prophets, although more complete, was limited by the idiosyncrasies of the spokesperson. So finally, after many years of waiting, God communicated to his earth creatures by an entirely new method. As the book of Hebrews says, In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days, he has spoken to us by a Son. (Hebrews 1:1,2).

The Apostle John also speaks of this translation of the eternal into the temporal in the opening chapter of his gospel: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14).

This phenomenon is also beautifully expressed in the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew, speaking primarily to a Jewish audience, uses the Hebrew word Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

What does this mean to us?

The preposition, with, means “alongside,” “close to,” “in the company of,” or “as an associate or companion.” Thus, God’s revelation through Emmanuel is close, homey, complete, full, intimate, face-to-face. By means of a human personality the eternal God was able to communicate to us in a thoroughly understandable and personal way.

THE MESSIAH. In Christ, God translated the melodies of the angelic realms into the Aramaic of the market place Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God expressed the love of the ineffable by means of mudballs applied to a blind man’s eyes and e a lap which welcomed small children. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ God communicated the wisdom of the ages through rustic stories about farmers seeding their fields and a woman sweeping her house. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God expressed the universality oh his concern through dinner parties with outcasts and stories which made heroes out of underdogs. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God expressed his anger with ecclesiastical greed by wielding a whip in the commerce department of the Temple. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God communicated his Oneness with our problems by walking our dusty streets, experiencing our hunger and thirst and weeping at the graves of a friend and a stepfather. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God demonstrated his sacrificial love by submitting to one of the most cruel methods of execution ever devised by mankind. Emmanuel! God with us!

In Christ, God gave a preview o our eventual resurrection by restoring the body of a friend three days dead, and then himself raising from the dead on the third day. Emmanuel! God with us!!!

This revelation of God through Emmanuel has a number of practical implications for us, at least five.

1.) Emmanuel means that if we want to know about God, we must study the life of Jesus Christ. We must listen to his words and we must take note o his deeds. We must go right to the source. We can’t rely on secondhand sources; we must personally study the gospels. Emmanuel! God with us!

2.) Emmanuel means that we don’t need some ectatic spiritual experience in order to be a true believer. We need not seed some beatific vision or some out-of-body experience. We don’t have to be transported up to God in order to experience him, because he came right down here to us. “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he had made him known” (John 1:18). Emmanuel! God with us!

3.) Emmanuel means that a person need not be a theologian or a philosopher to know a lot about God. Jesus spoke in the plainest of words and illustrated his teachings with the commonest of stories. We don’t need a seminary degree, and we don’t have to be able to contrast the teachings of Karl Barth with those of Rudolf Bultmann in order to be intelligent, knowledgeable Christians. Emmanuel!
God with us! — You!

4.) Emmanuel means, further, that we have a model to follow. We have more than instructions and command. We have living illustrations of how God wants us to treat minorities and parents and how God wants us to pray, and how God wants us to deal with a brother who cheats us, and how God wants us to live under a secular government. Emmanuel! God with us!

5.) Lastly, Emmanuel, “God with us,” means that our religious faith can be a personal one. It implies that God cares and loves, that he desires a personal relationship with us. God reached down to communicate with us, and he continues to do so through his Holy Spirit. He invites our conversation, our prayers, our personal devotion. Our proper response to God is more than intellectual assent or ritualistic symbolism. Our proper response to God is a personal acceptance, through faith, of Emmanuel, God with us.

*Matthew 1:18-25