LS-48-Immanuel

Immanuel They shall call His name Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us.--Matthew 1:23. In days when Jerusalem was threatened by enemies, the prophet Isaiah gave to the king a sign of hope. A child, he said, would be born, who would be called Immanuel--a symbolic name which was a pledge of God’s presence with His people to deliver them.

What fulfilment then occurred, we are not told. But hundreds of years afterwards, in the coming of Jesus, born of Mary, Matthew saw a complete fulfilment of this ancient prophecy. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. In the Lord Jesus, God is with His people in a more complete sense than had ever been realised before. In Him, God was with men in human form. When Jesus came to earth, no new person came into existence, but the eternal Son of God entered upon human experience. God became man, and through the human personality of Jesus, revealed Himself in a new way.

"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel."

God is with us to redeem. "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save the people from their sins." That was what the angel said, and the sacred writer says all this was done in fulfilment of the prophecy that a virgin should bear a son, whose name would be Immanuel. God in Christ became God with us, to bear our sins Himself, and redeem us from all iniquity.

God is with us, a living Presence. It has always been true that God is with His people. God said to Moses, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." Men like Moses could realise it. But the presence of God became a new experience after Jesus came. The incarnation made it possible for the ordinary man to realise God’s presence. Plain men and women, unskilled in abstract thought, were able to understand more of the Divine nature than the profoundest philosophers had understood before. God was manifest in flesh. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age," He said. And conscious of His presence men have been aware of God. May He be made known to us anew today in the breaking of bread.