Matt.1:23 – BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN WILL CONCEIVE AND GIVE BIRTH TO A SON, AND THEY SHALL NAME HIM IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.”
This verse is at the very heart of the Christmas story, God Himself came to live among us. He had human parents and lived among common, ordinary people. He lived in a small village, apparently worked as a carpenter, attended synagogue with family and friends, and seemed to be just an ordinary child. But today’s verse tells us He was anything but ordinary. His very name Immanuel means that He was God with us. This was the name spoken by the prophet Isaiah some 700 hundred years before Christ was born. The angels that visited Joseph called Him by a different name, the name we all know, Jesus. So which one was it, Jesus or Immanuel. He was called Jesus by family and friends but Immanuel describes exactly who He was. He was God with us; as John said, “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”. This was surely the Immanuel spoken of by Isaiah, God had come down and was living among us in some sort of disguise as the son of a carpenter with the name of Jesus. Here is how Charles Spurgeon describes this.
“His name is called Jesus, but not without a reason. By any other name Jesus would not be so sweet, because no other name could fairly describe his great work of saving his people from their sins. When he is said to be called this or that, it means that he really is so. I am not aware that anywhere in the New Testament our Lord is afterwards called Immanuel. I do not find his apostles, or any of his disciples, calling him by that name literally; but we find them all doing so in effect, for they speak of him as “God manifest in the flesh”, and they say, “The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” They do not use the actual word, but they again interpret and give us free and instructive renderings, while they proclaim the sense of the august title and inform us in divers ways what is meant by God being with us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a glorious fact, of the highest importance, that since Christ was born into the world God is with us.”
This is what we celebrate at Christmas each year. Our hearts turn to Bethlehem once again as we are reminded that Immanuel has come, the word did become flesh and came to live among us. When Jesus lives in our midst everything is changed, He makes all things new as we make room for Him in our hearts.
