God with us

 Isaiah 7:14  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and^[will call him Immanuel.

Matthew 1:20-25

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “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. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”^] (which means “God with us”).²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

 

The Christmas story is a story of the greatest love of all. It is also the fulfillment of the prophecies of Scripture. Specifically today I want to consider Isaiah 7:14. The word given to the prophet Isaiah that Jesus would be born of a virgin and that this son would be called Immanuel.

You might ask, "Does it really matter... the virgin birth I mean. Perhaps it is hard to believe and it surely had never happened before or after but I believe it's critically important. 

The virgin birth makes perfect sense if we are to believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. 

 In the same way that the  Spirit of God hovered over the waters at the first creation as recorded in  Genesis 1:2, now the spirit of God would once again hover over Mary and she would conceive new life. In Luke 1 starting with verse 34 Mary asks, "How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."  

Truly only Jesus could be called the Son of God because he was not the son of any earthly father. 

 Jesus was God and He was man.  Without the virgin birth the Spirit of God would have to come upon Jesus in the same way that the Spirit had come upon many others before. Yet to do so would mean that the Spirit would have entered into an imperfect man since all men or women born of human parents have a sinful nature. Jesus could be perfect because he had and was the very essence of God's perfect nature! At the same time he was born of a human so Jesus knew the temptations, pain and feelings of humans.   

 This is truly mysterious and truly amazing. It is also how God could become Immanuel which means God with us. Yes, the Spirit had descended upon many women and men of the Bible but now God would dwell inside the body of a man from beginning to the end. What a truly amazing mystery!!

 But that's how much God loves us!

 Why don't you spend some time in prayer today to say thank you.