God Is With Us!
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son,
and shall call His name Immanuel."
Isaiah 7: 14
Ahaz, king of Judah, was faced with enemies who sought
to conquer Jerusalem (Isaiah 7:1). So Prophet Isaiah told
Ahaz God would give him a sign: A virgin
would bear a son
who would be named Immanuel—meaning “God with us.”
The sign would convince Ahaz that God would be with him
and deliver him from his enemies.
But Isaiah’s prophecy proved to be a foreshadowing
of what would happen to another virgin some
seven
centuries later: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him
Mary’s pregnancy was from God. Matthew explains that Mary’s
conception was fulfillment of prophecy given to Ahaz that a virgin
would be with Child and bear a Son who will be called Immanuel,
“which is translated, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23).
And it
happened just as Isaiah
prophesied and Matthew confirmed.
Christmas celebrates the reality that God came to
dwell among us (John 1:14). And He is with us
still
by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
"Nothing in or of this world measures up
to the simple pleasure of experiencing
the presence of God."
A. W. Tozer
