Dennis Tuuri

Matthew 1:17-25

Outline says verse 23. That was an error. It should be through verse 25. If you have the handout from today, and I hope you do, the second page shows the structure of the text, at least as I understand it. My thanks again to my wife. She actually is in Providence of God teaching the same lesson to her Sunday school class and came up with a structure that she saw there and I modified it a bit, but it was the basis for this one, much as I did with Isaiah 60. So Matthew 1:17-25, and our topic today will be Emmanuel.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife.

For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. For he will save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, God with us.’ Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we bless your holy name. We thank you Lord God for your scriptures. We thank you that you have declared that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Emmanuel, God with us. We thank you Father for leading us through an understanding and a contemplation of our Savior over the last couple of months here as we celebrate his birth, his advent, and then look forward to his coming as well in time and history to continue to work out the implications of who he is in the context of our world.

Wisdom that comes out of the mouth of the Most High, that reaches from one end of the heavens to another and does mightily and sweetly order all things, come to teach us now the way of prudence. O Adonai and ruler of the house of Israel, who did appear unto Moses in the burning bush and gavest to him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with outstretched arm. O root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign to the people at whom the kings shall shut their mouths, unto whom the Gentiles shall seek.

Come to deliver us. Make no tarrying, O key of David and scepter of the house of Israel, that openest and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth. Come to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. O Dayspring, brightness of the everlasting light, Son of Righteousness, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O King of the Gentiles, yea, and desire thereof. O Cornerstone that makest of twain one, come to save man whom thou hast made from the dust of the earth. O Emmanuel, our King and our Lawgiver, longing of the Gentiles and salvation thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God. Come, O Wisdom, O Christ, and make us wise and ordered. Come, O Leader of Christ, O Christ, and show us the way according to your law.

Come, O Root, O Flower, O Christ, and help us grow, be rooted in you and blossom. Come, O Key, O Christ, and open us. Open the door of heaven for us. Open the door to all of our struggles. Come, O Dawn of Christ, and chase out the shadow of death, and let your justice shine in this world. Come, O King, O Christ, and save us. Come, O Emmanuel, O Christ, be with us and set us free. In Jesus name we ask all of these things and by his authority.

Amen.

Please be seated.

We conclude today with the seventh verse of this ancient song of the Church, that’s been so interesting, at least to me, to meditate upon and think about. So many references in the seven O antiphons, in these seven verses of this ancient song, to Jesus and the Gentiles, to Jesus and victory, to Jesus and triumph over enemies—all of that stuff is wrapped up in how the Church perceived her Savior in the ancient times and how we should perceive the Savior.

Now, we’re going to talk about O Emmanuel today. Now, at the outlines, I’ve got “Arco cross”—for those of you that haven’t heard this before. If you take the seven letters of the first word of the seven verses of the O antiphons, always sung during Christmas season and concluded by the Magnificat, if you take those seven letters—”Arco cross”—the first is “Sapientia,” but it’s at the end because we’re going backwards.

Now, in Latin, then this spelled out: “tomorrow I will be there. Tomorrow I will come.” So it’s a backward acrostic song, and you know, we think, well, that can’t be. That was intentional. But you know, people are a lot smarter—have been smarter in terms of language in the past than we have been now. It’s the same thing with this term Emmanuel. What I hope to do today is to open up a little bit more of an understanding of what we should think of when we think of the word Emmanuel and to broaden it out just a bit.

I heard something on the radio yesterday, and I’m not sure it’s actually true—may not be—but it’s still a good illustration, I think, of language. You’ve heard of Ivy League schools. And so, where does the term Ivy League come from? Well, some people think it came, and even, by the way, a term like this—it’s only, you know, 70, 80, 90 years old in this country. You’d think we’d know, but we really don’t know with a great deal of precision yet.

What I’m about to tell you is one of the theories, but we’re not really sure. Most people think, well, it means Ivy League—the great schools of brick buildings and ivy, you know, growing all over them. And that may be true. Other people think, though, that it was an early designation for the top four schools in the country. Four. And that Ivy is Roman numeral IV. So the Ivy League would be the top four schools.

Now, it’s the same thing as my illustration from Dune, where the Navigator comes, and he’s been to planet X, and they’ve lost knowledge of what IV is, and they don’t really know it’s planet number nine because they don’t know Roman numerals anymore. So language is sort of interesting. And for our modern contemporary church, the name Emmanuel is a great source of inspiration. It’s in a lot of our Christmas hymns, of course.

It has tremendous significance, really sort of beyond its occurrences in Scripture. There’s only a couple of places where it’s used, and we’ll look at every one of them today. So we have this vision of it that’s kind of New Testament oriented, and it’s just sort of a, you know, isn’t it great that God is with us now? God with us. And we think in terms of salvation from sin, which, as we saw in the text, it is related to.

But when a part of an Old Testament tune is written for us in the New Testament, God expects us to know what that prophecy was about and how it was fulfilled in the past and bring that freight into a present understanding of what it means to us. And we tend not to do that.

Next week, anticipation of the Lord. I’m going to talk about mayhem in Bethlehem—kind of like the Thriller in Manila, the great heavyweight fight in the Philippines. Probably a lot of you don’t know the reference anymore. But contemplation of this song: “this little babe, so a few days old, has come to rifle Satan’s fold.” And I want us to look at the rifling of Satan’s fold by baby Jesus next week, based on the events between the two kings that are combating each other for control of the world—King Jesus, who’s a baby, and then King Herod, who tries to kill all the babies and kill Jesus.

So we’re going to talk about that next week in terms of spiritual warfare. What do we see? How does our Savior wage war as a child, as a baby? And it reminded me of Talladega Nights, you know, where I haven’t actually seen the movie, but in the clips they show, you know, this race car. It’s a comedy, and you know, I think it’s his wife or maybe he loves to pray to baby Jesus. “I just love praying to little baby Jesus because people perceive of baby Jesus as no threat.”

And we’ll see next week that’s just all wrong. Baby Jesus came to rule, you know, and he ruled from the manger and began to shake the whole world as a result of his advent. So I want us to kind of, you know, stretch out our understanding of Emmanuel a little bit from the normal stuff we bring. I don’t want us to lose any of that great feeling and response we have when we hear the word Emmanuel. You know, we sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” where we read about or we sing about “pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.”

That’s a good thing to do. It’s good. “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and in that town—in that song, rather—will come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. It means a lot to us. God with us. And that’s appropriate and proper. But I want us to just sort of expand our definition of that out a little bit. As an example, really, one of the songs we sing at Reformation time every year—in the context of the celebration of the Reformation, October 31st—we sing “A Mighty Fortress,” or we actually sing a version of Psalm 46. And Psalm 46 is one of these few places where not the word Emmanuel, but God with us—which is what the word translated means.

I should mention that Emmanuel is a combination of two Hebrew words: “with us” and then “El,” short for Elohim, our strong one. “With us” and “our strong one.” So that’s what Emmanuel comes from as a Hebrew word. And it means God with us. And in Psalm 46, we read that God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in times of trouble. And we’re familiar with Psalm 46. If not, we’re at least familiar with the paraphrase or the fact that it’s kind of the model for what Luther wrote in terms of “A Mighty Fortress.”

God is this embodiment, this place of great refuge for us. Verse 5 of Psalm 46: “God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved.” That’s Emmanuel. That’s God with us. Verse 7: “The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come. Behold the works of the Lord, who has made desolations in the earth. Who makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariot in the fire.

Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

So we have this mighty fortress image in Psalm 46. But if we think about God with us, Emmanuel, it means more than just a refuge. It means that Jesus comes to destroy all of his enemies. Just as we’ve sung about—as we sang the kind of the song version of the Antiphons: “Come, will come Emmanuel.”

And as we’ve talked about for the last seven sermons, Jesus comes to declare victory and to prosecute warfare, holy warfare. And Emmanuel is part of that. Psalm 46 shows us that.

The Belgian Confession has a nice reference to Emmanuel. So not only in the Reformed songs and in the Psalter, but also in the Reformed confessions—at least in the Belgian Confession—we have this reference to Emmanuel. It’s in Article 18, which deals with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

And in terms of Article 18, this is what the second paragraph of the Belgian Confession says: “Therefore, we confess in opposition to the heresy of the Anabaptists—nice. We had a time when we could actually refer to Anabaptists as heretics. Remember that most people we think of as Baptists, they’re not Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were like the Mennonites, Amish, that kind of thing. Baptists in America have their heritage in the Reformation. They’re like us, whether they know it or not. We have the same lineage.

But anyway: who deny that Christ assumed human flesh of his mother, that Christ partook of the flesh and blood of the church, that he is fruit of the loins of David after the flesh, born of the seed of David according to the flesh, fruit of the womb of Mary, born of a woman, a branch of David, a shoot of the root of Jesse, sprung from the tree of the tribe of Judah, descended from the Jews according to the flesh, of the seed of Abraham—since he took upon him the seed of Abraham and was made like unto his brethren in all things except sin—so that in truth, he is our Emmanuel, that is to say, God with us.

Conclusion of Article 18 of the Belgian Confession. So their great section on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ concludes with what we see is the concluding verse of the O antiphons in our last sermon on this series—this consideration that Jesus is indeed our Emmanuel, God with us.

All right. So let’s look a little bit at the Old Testament roots. As you read along with the handouts, if you listen—as you look at the handout, you’ll see that the center, I believe, and I think it’s quite clear in this particular text, there’s not a whole lot of difficulty in figuring out where the center is. The center of the Matthew account of Jesus as Emmanuel and being named Jesus: “The birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise.” The center of it is the fulfillment of prophecy.

Remember, we said last year that Matthew is about fulfillment of the past. Mark is more about the victory into the future. And Matthew touches on that—well, more than touches on it. It talks about it, but in relationship to the past. So if we think about, you know, who we are as we’re tethered in the past, we can’t cut the ties to the past, and we lean toward the future and engage in the future. Matthew is the gospel that focuses more on the idea of fulfillment. This fulfillment of Old Testament is found over and over and over again in Matthew.

And you know, that makes sense. The first gospel that’s written ties the New Testament to its Old Testament, the completion of the canon. So it kind of weaves the Bible into one piece by stating how Jesus fulfilled all these things. So Matthew wants us to know that the coming of Jesus Christ is understood as the fulfillment of stuff from the Old Testament. So he wants us to look back—if we don’t already know what that stuff was in the Old Testament where Jesus is referred to—to the coming of Christ as Emmanuel. So that’s what we’re going to do.

So first of all, we’re going to look at 1 Kings 8, verse 57, but broader than that, verses 54-62. So let’s—if you have your scriptures, turn in the scriptures to 1 Kings 8. And as you’re turning, I can give you the context for this. 1 Kings 8 is an account of Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the temple. And you know, this is a prayer that should be a lot more familiar to us than it is. I mean, this is the height of the revelation of God in the context of the worship and what prayer is all about in the context of the assembled people.

And so Solomon’s prayer of dedication, which I think is in rather obvious seven sections and kind of tracks the creation week—we don’t have time to go through all that—but Solomon’s prayer of dedication is the immediate predecessor to this. And his prayer of dedication of the temple is really about the light of God coming to give us discernment in causes between groups. And then we’ll look at a historical account in just a little bit where two groups—God brings discernment of causes.

And then many of the portions of that prayer of dedication is about forgiveness of sins. When bad things happen because we’ve sinned, forgive us as you hear our prayer in this temple, you know, and give us restoration. And so it really wraps up that in terms of God being with us as light. God is with us in terms of forgiveness. And Matthew makes that connection very clear. God is with us in terms of bringing in the Gentiles—from the very construction of the temple, its initiation.

The fifth element of Solomon’s prayer of dedication is: when foreigners come in here and pray to you, hear them. The anticipation is the temple will be a draw for all the nations in the way that Jesus Christ will ultimately be that desire of the Gentiles. But the temple was to be a foreshadowing of that as well. And so the prayer of dedication reminds us of that aspect of what will happen when Jesus comes and tabernacles or temples with men.

And then also, the prayer of dedication prays for victory over enemies. It prays that God would be on our side in the context of our wars as we battle those who are against God and give us victory and dominion in the context of the earth, that God would defeat all of his enemies. And as we saw last week, the center of the idea—or last week, yes—”desire of the nations”—that Jesus, in terms of the sun rising of Christ, part of that context has to do with God’s destruction of enemies.

In the middle of Isaiah 60, when we have the great wealth of the Gentiles being brought in to rebuild the temple and ultimately to rebuild world worship system, at the middle of that was a very short sentence, but nonetheless at the center, the destruction of all the nations that oppose Jesus. So this is the prayer of dedication that precedes what we’re going to look at here in verses 54 and following.

Okay. Verse 54: “So it was when Solomon had finished praying all this prayer.” So the description of God being with us is linked to the prayer here—prayers and supplication to the Lord—”that he arose from before the altar of the Lord from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to heaven. Then he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord God who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised. There is not failed one word of all his good promises.’”

His words don’t fall to the ground. Nothing has failed which he promised through his servant Moses. “May the Lord our God be with us as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us nor forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to himself to walk in all of his ways.” So part of the benediction, the blessing of Solomon on the people who were gathered for the initiation of temple worship, was a recognition and an invoking of God to be with them—give them victory, give them forgiveness of sins, give them discernment of causes by his presence with them in the context of that temple worship.

All of this informs our knowledge of who Jesus is, Emmanuel, God with us, particularly on this worship day. The benediction is placed at the end. It’s a reminder that the benediction is that God is now with us. He is with us. God is with us to affect these things as he is faithfully. He’s been faithful to his word. So it’s great gospel. But then it also calls for response—that we might walk in all his ways and keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments which he has commanded our fathers.

“And may these words of mine with which I have made supplication before the Lord be that the Lord our God be near the Lord our God day and night, that he may maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel as each day may require, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, that there is no other.”

So he prays that the end result of God being near to us would be that he would maintain our cause, that our response would be an increased faithfulness to walk in the ways of him who is with us, and that the end result of this is that the earth would be converted. Now, that’s all wrapped up when Jesus is declared in Matthew’s gospel to be the fulfillment of God with us here in the context of our worship.

This first reference we speak of is directly related to what we do today and to the confidence with which we should leave this place today. In spite of all our enemies round about us, in spite of whatever we may feel like today, God is with us. And it isn’t just to hold your hand and get you through all this. It’s to empower you to transform the world, to bring the Gentiles into the church, to draw them in through the desirability of your life, through the proclamation of the word—that we spoke about last week—that he’d maintain your cause and give you victory this week.

All of that’s involved with Jesus being with us, our Emmanuel.

All right. Next reference is found in 2 Chronicles 13:12. So turn to 2 Chronicles 13. And now what’s going on here? Well, we’ll just begin to read and make some comments.

So 2 Chronicles 13: “In the eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, Abijah became king over Judah. He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Micaiah, the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. And there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.”

Okay. So what’s going on? Jeroboam. Remember him? He’s the one that God gave Israel to after Solomon’s death. Rehoboam is an idiot. Doesn’t listen to the old guys. Listens to his young Turks, you know, full of vim and vigor and all that stuff, and wants to make life even tougher on the people. So he loses the kingdom and God grants to Jeroboam the tribes of Israel to the north.

Well, Jeroboam perverts all of that. And Jeroboam, he’s worried. He didn’t want those people. “How you going to keep them on the farm after they’ve seen Pareee? How’s he going to keep them up there in the north if they go down and worship at the temple in the south? That won’t work.” So he sets up alternative worship sites in the north, three of them. And he wants to jazz up worship and he brings in the golden calf as part of the worship of Yahweh.

Jeroboam is not a Yahweh denier. He’s a syncretist. He’s taking the worship of God and jazzing it up. He’s still worshiping Yahweh and he still claims to be faithful to Yahweh, but he’s really idolatrously merged the worship of Yahweh with that of the golden calf worship. And now, so Jeroboam is going on up there, and Abijah becomes king of Judah in the south. And so there’s a problem now. There was war between Abijah and Jeroboam.

“Abijah set the battle in order with an army of valiant warriors, four hundred thousand choice men.” So Judah in the south has 400,000 guys. “Jeroboam also drew up in battle formation against him with eight hundred thousand choice men, mighty men of valor.” So the guys in the south who are faithful to the worship of Yahweh, they’re outnumbered two to one. But it doesn’t deter them from wanting to get rid of the syncretistic idolatrous worship going on in a large part of God’s people, the people in the north in Israel.

“Then Abijah stood on Mount Zemaraim, which is in the mountains of Ephraim, and said, ‘Hear me, Jeroboam, and all of Israel. Should you not know that the Lord God of Israel gave the dominion over Israel to David forever, to him and his sons by a covenant of salt? Yet Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, the servant of Solomon, the son of David, rose up and rebelled against his Lord.’”

Well, you know, he didn’t really in the sense of rebelling against Solomon. He was called by God, right? But ultimately, he did rebel against his Lord. He rebels against the very God who gave him the northern tribe. So Abijah, you know, he’s sort of—he’s not exactly getting a full detail here, but we have to understand it that way. And he talks then about: “then worthless rogues gathered to him and strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon, when Rehoboam was young and inexperienced and could not withstand them.

And now you want to withstand the kingdom of the Lord, which is in the hands of the sons of David. And you are a great multitude and with you are the golden calves which Jeroboam made for you as gods. Have you not cast out the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests like the peoples of other lands? So that whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams may be a priest of things that are not gods.”

So Jeroboam, in addition to changing the worship by jazzing it up with golden calves, has decided that he doesn’t want the Aaronic priesthood worshiping—leading worship—he kicks all them out, and he sells the office basically. Now, remember that by the time Jesus comes and the prophecy that we read in Matthew is fulfilled, Israel has done the same thing in his time, right there. Syncretistic in their worship.

They’re driving out the Gentiles that were supposed to attract, right? That’s why he cleanses the temple. And they’ve decided that they’re going to sell the high priest office. They’re not abiding by having for a long time God’s ordained ministers in terms of the worship. They’re selling the office basically. So there’s a definite parallel between the idolatry of Jeroboam and the idolatry of Israel in the time when Jesus comes.

And so, you know, this is significant to us in terms of the parallels that are drawn. But as for us: “the Lord is our God and we have not forsaken him. And the priests who minister to the Lord are the sons of Aaron and the Levites attend to their duties. Let me just mention that, you know, I’m not saying that Abijah is all right here. He does get a few things wrong. And he seems to be animated. We can’t really tell. Is he animated by the desire of the united kingdom under David, or is he sort of prideful and wants to rule the north, too? The text is not that clear yet. But it will become clear as we go along.

And they burned the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense. They also set the showbread in order on the pure gold table and the lampstand of gold at the lamps to burn every evening. For we keep the commandments of the Lord our God, but you have forsaken him. So forsake worship and you’ve forsaken the Lord and his commandments.

Now look: “God himself is with us as our head.”

So here it is: God with us. Another reference. So Psalm 46, Solomon praying in the temple, God with us. And now Abijah doing warfare against an idolatrous, rebellious people in the north headed by Jeroboam. And he says that God is with us. Remember, he’s outnumbered two to one, but he’s not deterred by that.

“God himself is with us as our head and his priests with sounding trumpets to sound the alarm against you. O children of Israel, do not fight against the Lord God of your fathers, for you shall not prosper.”

But Jeroboam caused an ambush to go around behind them. So they were in front of Judah and the ambush was behind them. And when Judah looked around, to their surprise, the battle line was at both front and rear. And they cried out to the Lord and the priest sounded the trumpets. So not—and Jeroboam’s been around a long time. Abijah is just coming to rule. Jeroboam knows stuff. He knows tricks. He knows strategy. We should know strategy, too. Strategy is not bad. But he uses it against God’s anointed messenger to him to cease and desist idolatrous worship.

So not only is Abijah and the guys from the south outnumbered 2:1, they’re also behind the curve in terms of tactics of warfare. Jeroboam has set an ambush against them—surprises them so much that what do they do? They cry out to God, right? And they sound the trumpets.

“Then the men of Judah gave a shout. And as the men of Judah shouted, it happened that God struck Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah and the children of Israel fled before Judah and God delivered them into their hand.”

So they win. God is with them. So now we know that Abijah’s motives are essentially pure and good, that he really is prosecuting godly warfare against an ungodly group in the north and against Jeroboam for idolatrous worship. So God is with us—though we’re outnumbered, though we’re out-tactics and outstrategized on the battlefield.

The worship of God, we could say, the blowing of trumpets, the calling on his name, the shouting of the men is what motivates God to spring into action. And he begins then to route the opposition to the church here in the context of them doing nothing but crying out to him. It’s like Solomon’s prayer. God is with them, and because he is with them, he will defeat the enemies of him and them.

So here another story from the Old Testament reminds us of the great truth that God is with us. And when we read that in these texts, in these few texts, we see that it’s with us to forgive sin. It’s with us to discern causes. But he’s with us to defeat all of our enemies in spite of overwhelming odds. Now, that’s a message of encouragement.

At the time of the coming of Christ, his birth, the same thing was going on. It’s a message of encouragement to those that love God and hate the idolatrous worship and the false servants of God that are taking part in temple worship. It’s an encouragement to us.

I’m going to have to take another little break for a minute. Maybe someone could play the piano while I’m over there for a couple minutes. Sorry.

(Piano music)

You know, maybe you should stand over this at these times. Give a good break, break up the sitting for so long. Well, anyway.

So you know, this is important lesson for us too, because you know I’ve stressed a lot from this pulpit and in our actions unity. The church has to become one again to speak with a united voice into our culture before much change is going to happen. But this story of Emmanuel, God with us, is a reminder that unity cannot be entered into apart from truth, right?

We face a situation where much of the church, you know—Jeroboam’s an extreme example. I’m not going to say they’re Jeroboamites. But we are certainly—we can certainly see the implications in our day and age when the worship of God is jazzed up in ways that are not appropriate. Now, maybe it’s appropriate to jazz it up some ways in terms of what the scriptures actually teach. But that’s not what’s going on. There’s an attempt to change the worship of God to make it more popular, to get people to go to this church, not that church. That’s just what Jeroboam is doing.

And it’s important. It’s important enough for God to declare war on it. Because if you’re not following God’s word in terms of worship, then probably you’re falling off in terms of God’s law at all. And the very purpose of Jesus coming to be with us is to cause us to respond by walking in his commandments and statutes and judgments, okay?

So, you know, in that time, and in the time when Jesus Emmanuel comes, and in our time, there is work to be done to call the church to the true worship of Yahweh and to forsake, you know, trying to jazz up worship, and then to try to bring into the public offices of worship those that shouldn’t be there. And I’m talking about women preachers and officiants, and I’m talking about young kids, teenagers preaching—these little—you know, some Sunday schools they bring in these youth, kids, some young woman or something or young guy to preach the sermon.

Jeroboam messed with worship by making it jazzier, and he messed with who should be leading and officiating in worship. We must not do that. Now, if we think the scriptures teach this, that or the other thing, fine. We can talk about that. But if all we’re doing is meeting psychological needs of the kids or jazzing it up or whatever it is, Emmanuel is a reproach to that. Emmanuel isn’t sweet baby Jesus. Isn’t it cool? Isn’t it nice that he’s with us? He’s with us to judge us when we allow those kind of deviations from God’s word to occur in our context.

So, you know, this is what the Bible wants us to associate with Emmanuel, and then translated God with us in Matthew. He wants us to remember the temple. He wants us to remember the warfare in which God was with the south over the north because of idolatrous worship, because of the supplanting of God’s ministers with other people. He wants us to remember that stuff.

One-third set of occurrences in Isaiah. Now, I’m going to combine the next two sections here, because really it’s Isaiah 7 right through to 11. And I’m going to have to, you know, do this in summary form. But you know, this is to help you get a handle on what the book of Isaiah is all about. We spent a lot of time in Isaiah because the early church saw so much fulfillment from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah, of course, pictures the coming of Messiah in some very radical and distinct ways.

So Isaiah 6, you’ll probably remember, is the commissioning of Isaiah. This is where he becomes ordained, as it were, as a messenger of God. So Isaiah 6 is about that. And so Isaiah 7 begins then to discuss, or actually shows us rather, the ministry of Isaiah and what it consists of. And what we’re going to see here in these next couple of chapters is that a lot of what Isaiah’s task was to declare Emmanuel is coming, okay? And this of course is specifically Isaiah where the sign of Emmanuel is given, and where the specific prophecy in Matthew is actually references back to these texts in Isaiah.

So in Isaiah 7: “Isaiah’s first commission here is sent to King Ahaz. It came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham the son of Oziah, king of Judah, the Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it.”

Okay. So what’s going on? Isaiah’s been commissioned. And the first thing Isaiah is going to do is he’s going to address the king of Judah because what’s happening is the northern tribes, who are apostate at this time, are in coalition or confederation with Syria to throw off Syrian rule over them, okay? So you got the north has become nearly godless. There’s a confederacy with godless Syria, and now they’re going to make war against the south, Judah, who are more faithful because Judah won’t join their confederation against the emerging Assyrian power.

Okay. So the message that comes here in terms of the virgin being with child—this message comes to someone who is tempted to form alliances with Assyria, another godless nation, against other godless nations for its defense, okay? So the context of the Emmanuel sign is now, you know, again it has to do with military battle, and specifically with the temptation in that military battle to give in and rely not on the Lord but rely instead upon foreign armies.

So that’s the specific context of what’s happening here. Isaiah tells him in verse 4: “Take heed and be quiet. Do not fear or be faint-hearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands.” And he’s referring to the head of Ephraim—the northern tribes—and the head of Syria. He refers to them as smoking brands. And he tells Ahaz that these two will come to nothing. Another few years and these guys are going to be dead.

So don’t worry about them. Verse 7: “Thus says the Lord God: It shall not stand, this conspiracy, nor shall it come to pass, for the head of Assyria is Damascus.” And he describes this. And then at the end of verse 9: “If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.”

So the problem isn’t—you know, are these two guys going to work or not? Are you going to prosper? They’re done with. The only question for Ahaz is: will he be established or not? Will he either believe the word of the prophet that God is our defense, or will he seek to accomplish his defense through worldly means, through cooperation with godless nations?

So then in verse 10: “Moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, ‘Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.’”

So God says, “I know it’s hard to believe that these guys shouldn’t be a worry to you. With God on your side, you can conquer everybody. I know that’s hard—or at least you can stand up to everybody. I know it’s hard to believe. I’ll give you a sign.” He says, “Ask a sign.” And in typical unbeliever fashion, Ahaz presents himself as some super religious creature.

Ahaz says: “I’ll not ask, nor will I test the Lord.”

So he says, “Oh no, I don’t want to do that. You know, I believe.” So he’s a liar. And he is has false piety in terms of his response to Isaiah. And then he said: “Hear now, house of David. It is a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary God also?” This is Isaiah talking to Ahaz. “You’re wearying God. God said, ‘Ask a sign.’ He didn’t say, you know, ‘Be super pious with me.’ He said, ‘Give me—ask a sign and I’ll give it to you.’”

And then verse 14 says: “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign, whether you ask for it or not. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Curds and honey he shall eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread—those two foreign nations including Israel—will be forsaken by both the kings and the Lord God will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father’s house.”

So your bigger problem is going to be Assyria. Don’t make a confederation with him because he’s godless as well, and God’s going to bring him to punish your people. But here’s the point. The point is Emmanuel, God with us, is a sign to Ahaz not to rely upon earthly, you know, worldly ways to defend himself, but rather to believe what Solomon had prayed for: Give us victory over our enemies, God be with us. And which we had seen then in terms of Jeroboam. God was with an outnumbered group, outstrategized group, to give them victory over godless Jeroboam.

By this point in time, believe these same things the prophet is telling Ahaz. And the sign will be that a virgin will bring—have a child—and before the child is old enough to know right or wrong, in a few years the guys you’re worried about, they’re toast. You’re foolish for worrying about things like that. Your fear is not well-founded because Yahweh is with you. And when Yahweh—if God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing. Nobody.

So again, we won’t—I won’t actually proceed through the rest of the Isaiah text. I’d love to, but time is wasting. And I want us to get then to the Matthew text. But this is the freight that comes with this fulfillment of the prophecy. The phrase is God’s assurance of victory to his people, defense against enemies, and all of that is brought into a connection with what’s going on here.

Now, you kids, there’s a nice coloring sheet on the back that my wife did. It’s a picture. You got Joseph there, and he’s thinking about this stuff as he goes to sleep. He’s thinking about sending his wife Mary away, giving her a bill of divorcement. So you see the finger in the upper left-hand corner of that picture. He’s going to send her away. There’s a scroll behind it because he wants to obey God’s word, okay? He’s a righteous man. So this is given to us in the text.

Okay. So in the—on the outline from Matthew, the A section: “The birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.”

Now, now see what it tells us about Joseph here. Joseph is a model for us. You know, Jesus, of course, is the main frame of these texts, but Joseph and Mary are models for us. It tells us the sort of people that God decided to have his son given to. Joseph is a just guy. Mary’s pregnant. Somehow something’s happened here. He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know why. But he’s just. He doesn’t want to put her away publicly and make an example out of her.

He’s not into it for vengeance of his own against his betrothed wife who he thinks has been unfaithful, appears to have been unfaithful. He recognizes his limitations of knowledge, but he does know he needs to put her away. And so Joseph is described here as a man that’s very much the sort of people that we should be.

It’s interesting because then when the angel actually speaks to Joseph in the B section—as he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to you marry your wife. Don’t be afraid to marry her. You’re betrothed. Don’t be afraid to marry her.” He’s afraid to. Why? Well, because he’s a righteous man. Who is he afraid of? Is it some sort of irrational fear that dreams then could put us at ease about?

No. Joseph, I think the text seems to clearly be pointing us to a realization that Joseph is fearful of disobeying God’s word of taking to him a woman who has committed grave sin as his wife and should be put away, divorced. Notice too that the divorce laws make provision for this in a private way. That’s interesting. We could think about that. But God’s law is written in such a way as to take care of this sort of case in a way that would be more just, not knowing exactly what’s happen. Just put her away secretly. That’s not fear on his part of men. That’s the right thing to do from his perspective, studying the word of God, being fearful of disobeying God, he comes up with the only solution he can figure out.

Well, as we know, it’s the wrong solution. And so God sends an angel to Joseph while he’s dreaming, while he’s thinking about these things, to tell him that, “No, no, no. I know you’re a great guy, but don’t be fearful to take Mary as your wife.”

Look at the B sections. “But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take her to marry your wife.’” And then B prime: “Then Joseph being aroused from sleep… so he was thinking about these things, now he’s aroused, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. So the angel came and commanded him, and he’s doing what the angel commanded. And the angel commanded to him, take Mary, your wife. And he takes Mary to be his wife. Took to him his wife.”

So the parallelisms 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 between B and B-prime are rather obvious. And what they show us is that Joseph, understanding what the word of the Lord is, being brought to a knowledge of how those scriptures apply to him, applies obedience immediately to those truths. Joseph’s a model to us. We’re supposed to obey the word of God. We’re supposed to be steadfast with God.

We want Emmanuel to be with us to forgive us our sins, to give us victory over our enemies, to be a discerner of causes. Here, Emmanuel is already discerning causes. Who’s right and who’s wrong here? When God discerns causes, sends the angel of the Lord to him to say, “No, Mary’s okay. She hasn’t sinned in this thing. It’s been of God, of the Holy Spirit. You’re fearful of her. What’s going on is of God.”

You know, that picture—the coloring picture—it’s got that finger telling her to go away. That’s Joseph’s head up there. That’s what’s going on in his mind, right? He’s thinking about this stuff. You see his eyes? Furrowed brow. He’s worried. Now, the eyes also look like the spirit of God because the angel comes and ministers the spirit to him to help him to understand that what’s going on is a work of God. It’s the divine work of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

And so you have that beautiful picture over to the right of Mary bearing a child conceived by the Holy Spirit. So Joseph is an example to us, and he, first of all, he’s an example because he considers this stuff. He thinks about things. He’s not rash. “Well, this means you must be a horrible person. I’m going to get rid of you.” No, he meditates on it. And why? Because he knows Mary. He knows her devotion to Christ. He can’t figure out what’s going on.

And he then meditates on it. He’s thinking about it. He’s an example to us to consider the difficult things in our lives and ask for God’s revelation. And when God brings forth the revelation to Joseph of what it is, with the angel commanding him to do something, he knows just what the angel commands him to do. He doesn’t have a fear of men who are going to count the months perhaps after the marriage and figure out that something funny was going on here. He doesn’t care about men. He’s fearful of God.

He doesn’t want to displease God. But when God makes clear the scriptures are being fulfilled in this thing, he obeys God. He fears God enough to obey God, obey the commandment that the angel has brought to him in the B sections.

Now, the next sections as we move toward the center are the C-sections. And where are my C-sections? C-sections—birth narrative. Okay, so the C-sections. And again, here there’s a very obvious parallelism going on.

“That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She shall bring forth a son. You shall call his named Jesus. He will save his people from their sins.”

And then look at the corresponding C-section:

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, conceived by the Holy Spirit. She shall bear a son. Earlier, she shall bring forth a son. Call his name Emmanuel.”

And before this, it says: “call his name Jesus.” There’s a parallelism there in names. And then instead of: “he’ll save his people from their sins,” which is translated “God with us.” So there’s a 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 in the C sections around this middle section of the fulfillment of prophecy.

She’s conceived as a virgin, okay? She’s going to bring forth or bear a son. And you’re to call his name Jesus in fulfillment of the prophecy of that boy back in Isaiah’s day that was to be called Emmanuel. He will save his people from their sins. Then matches up with “which is translated God with us.”

Beautiful parallelism. And what it does is it draws our attention. Jesus will save us from our sins. You know, there’s a movie out, “Grand Torino,” and in this movie—I’m not going to give it away—but it’s a wonderful movie, Clint Eastwood’s newest movie. I encourage you to go see it. And in it, he’s got a bunch of tools, and he’s teaching somebody to use tools. And you know, you have to have the right tool for the right job. And he explains this in one of the early scenes.

And really, in a way, that’s what the movie is about. You need the right tool for the right job. Now, the job is saving us from our sins. And in order for that to happen, we have to have Emmanuel, God with us. Only God taking upon himself the form of becoming incarnate in the flesh, suffering as the God man for us can remove from us the judgment due to us for our sins. He’s the right tool. And the text wants us to see these connections.

When we think of Emmanuel, we must think that indeed God must be with us. Jesus must be that second person of the Trinity, or he cannot save us from our sins. That’s one thing that’s being taught here. But the other thing is that the salvation is far broader than simply forgiveness of sins. Just like Solomon’s prayer in the temple included forgiveness of sins and the rolling back of curses due for them, but it was more than that. God might be with us to discern causes, as he discerned between Jeroboam and the other king.

God is with us to bring the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. Jesus will do that. And in Isaiah, if we would have gone on, we would have seen that essentially this great movement of the first few chapters of Isaiah leads up to the coming of Jesus who will be a light to the Gentiles, to the desire of the Gentiles, the Galilee of the Gentiles. And all the Gentiles will come to his light, in Isaiah 11. In Isaiah 9, a son will be born and the government will be upon his shoulders. All the people will come to it.

So that’s part of Emmanuel. What’s going on here is a lot more than just salvation from sins. It is that. But the text wants us to see the connection to that is Emmanuel, which brings in all these connotations that God is so much more to us. And yes, it brings in the absolute connotation that God will give us victory over every enemy. You got Mary and Joseph commanded about by the Roman emperor—Caesar of Caesar’s section, I suppose—having to go to the—you know, going to be taxed. You got heavy taxation. You got an oppressive—actually, you know, an occupying force. You’re like Lebanon right now. You got an occupying force in there. Not Lebanon, not Gaza.

And this is who you are. And in the midst of that, the great message of the birth of Jesus Christ is that God will forgive us our sins. All those hoped-for things that the sacrificial system taught us will actually come to pass now with the work of Jesus for our sins. And more than that, God will declare us victors over all of our enemies. And any nations that don’t submit to Jesus over the period of time in history will be crushed. They’ll be destroyed. They will perish.

But most of those nations will come to the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. Emmanuel is a message of victory. It’s a call to war, not to live syncretistically with the world and even with Christians who aren’t really living like Christians. But more than that, it is a call to victory. It’s an assurance to us that we will receive the victory of God with us.

Just as all those pictures of Solomon’s prayer, the battle against Jeroboam, the battle against the enemies that Ahaz was tempted to come up with—no, God says that victory comes because Emmanuel is with us. Jesus Christ is the great picture of that. And this text tells us that the fulfillment of all these things is ours now and is what we celebrate at the time of this year.

May the Lord God give us an understanding, a confidence in knowing that there is nothing to fear as we move into this year of who knows what. Emperor worship now that we got an empire—now we got an emperor that people want to worship. Maybe we got emperor worship going on. We don’t know. Economic collapse. They’re throwing Keynesian and Friedman economic solutions. Both ends are being promoted in Washington D.C. trying desperately to get out of this economic situation that’s been created.

We have a situation where most pastors continue to not give a clear message to their congregants of the dangers of the public school system when the teachers are now lesbians and homosexuals, when evolution, environmentalism—we can save the world by, you know, cutting back on this, that, by turning off the lights—all these political manifestations are being proclaimed in the public school system, and people still won’t get their kids out of them.

We live in dark times and probably going to get a lot darker in the future. But in the midst of those dark times, the message of the seven antiphons climaxes in saying that Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. We have no reason to fear.

Apostate Israel to the north, the Syrians over there, the coming Assyrians coming in—what did Hezekiah do? The Assyrians were there on the gate, and he went into that temple and asked for God to be faithful, be with us, give us victory over enemies, just like Solomon said we should do. And when Hezekiah prays that, God begins to work in the world.

As the men of God are overwhelmed by the forces of Jeroboam, two to one, strategies going against them, what do they do? They sound the trumpets. They give a shout. They echo. They call on God to be their protector and more than that, give them victory in the field. God answers and begins to sovereignly move to destroy Jeroboam’s army, and then we, you know, then the other army moves in and cleans up the rest of it. But God leads us into victory.

The proclamation of Emmanuel in the context of the convocative church in worship is a proclamation of victory, and it is based on that victory in the gospel. It calls us to be the sort of men that Joseph was—to be obedient, just like Solomon prayed in the temple that God would be with us, that we might then be diligent to be obedient to the one that God has called to be our head and our victor.

We have no reason to fear. We have every reason to walk into this world with confidence as we leave this place. I know Jesus promised in the great commission, “I am with you always.” He knew he was sending people off into a culture that was radically in opposition to what he taught. He knew he was sending people off to a Jewish apostate church that would kill most of them by A.D. 70. He knew he was sending them off into darkness.

And yet he called them to go forth as light-bearers, promising that he would be with them. “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” God is with us. We need not fear what man can do. We need not fear. Whatever the dark things are that trouble us, whatever the things are that cause us to be unrestful and unpeaceful, God says, “Put it at ease. I am with you. Jesus Christ has come.”

Emmanuel—the long-promised Emmanuel—has come, and now is in the process of prosecuting war against all nations that will not bow the knee to him.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, help us to bow the knee. Help us as we come forward to come forward with confidence, Lord God, and giving you tribute for who you are, for Jesus Christ, our Emmanuel, for consecrating ourselves anew to him and to his purposes and to putting away foolish fears of the future, knowing indeed that our future is bright because Jesus Christ has come. In his name we pray. Amen.

Joy and strength of Israel.
Lofty Adam and sing.
Glorious are his ways.