"Immanuel" Our GOD is with Us

Immanuel or Emmanuel or Imanu'el (Hebrew עִמָּנוּאֵל "God [is] with us" consists of two Hebrew words: אֵל (’El, meaning 'God') and עִמָּנוּ (ʻImmānū, meaning 'with us'); Standard Hebrew ʻImmanuʼel, Tiberian Hebrew ʻImmānûʼēl). It is a theophoric name used in the Bible in Isaiah 7:14 and Isaiah 8:8. It appears once in the Christian New Testament: in Matthew's quotation of Isaiah 7:14.

The name "Immanuel" occurs in Isaiah's important prophecy (7:14-16). The name relates to the confirmation that the plans of Jerusalem's adversaries would fail because God's purposes are immutable (Isaiah 7:4-9). His presence ensures this. The great prophecy of chapter seven is followed by some important details about "Immanuel" in the next chapter.

The key passage interpreting the meaning "Immanuel" is Isaiah 8:10 ("Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing; Speak the word, but it will not stand, For God is with us"). This means that God's purposes stand no matter how strenuously evildoers oppose them. Note the similarity of Isaiah 7:7 and 8:10.

Regarding Matthew 1:23: "Immanuel," meaning "God with us" carries the implication that God is sovereignly working His purpose in the lives of His people to protect them and work through them. He will fulfill His promises no matter how earnestly men may oppose them (See Ro. 8:31 and following). The reference in Matt. 1:23 teaches that Jesus in His Person is truly God, but it also includes the idea that God’s plan of redemption is unstoppable and that our ultimate security and provision is in the Person of Christ.

The Conception of Jesus Foretold

Mary, a virgin, was living in Galilee of Nazareth and was engaged to be married to Joseph, a Jewish carpenter. An angel visited her and explained to her that she would conceive a son by the power of the Holy Spirit. She would carry and give birth to this child and she would name him Jesus.

At first Mary was afraid and troubled by the angel's words. Being a virgin, Mary questioned the angel, "How will this be?" The angel explained that the child would be God's own Son and, therefore, "nothing is impossible with God." Humbled and in awe, Mary believed the angel of the Lord and rejoiced in God her Savior.

Surely Mary reflected with wonder on the words found in Isaiah 7:14 foretelling this event, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (NIV)

The Birth of Jesus

While Mary was still engaged to Joseph, she miraculously became pregnant through the Holy Spirit, as foretold to her by the angel. When Mary told Joseph she was pregnant, he had every right to feel disgraced. He knew the child was not his own, and Mary's apparent unfaithfulness carried a grave social stigma. Joseph not only had the right to divorce Mary, under Jewish law she could be put to death by stoning.

Although Joseph's initial reaction was to break the engagement, the appropriate thing for a righteous man to do, he treated Mary with extreme kindness. He did not want to cause her further shame, so he decided to act quietly. But God sent an angel to Joseph in a dream to verify Mary's story and reassure him that his marriage to her was God's will. The angel explained that the child within Mary was conceived by the Holy Spirit, that his name would be Jesus and that he was the Messiah, God with us.

When Joseph woke from his dream, he willingly obeyed God and took Mary home to be his wife, in spite of the public humiliation he would face. Perhaps this noble quality is one of the reasons God chose him to be the Messiah's earthly father.

Joseph too must have wondered in awe as he remembered the words found in Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (NIV)

At that time, Caesar Augustus decreed that a census be taken, and every person in the entire Roman world had to go to his own town to register. Joseph, being of the line of David, was required to go to Bethlehem to register with Mary. While in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to Jesus. Probably due to the census, the inn was too crowded, and Mary gave birth in a crude stable. She wrapped the baby in cloths and placed him in a manger.

The Shepherd's Worship the Savior

Out in the fields, an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds who were tending their flocks of sheep by night. The angel announced that the Savior had been born in the town of David. Suddenly a great host of heavenly beings appeared with the angels and began singing praises to God. As the angelic beings departed, the shepherds decided to travel to Bethlehem and see the Christ-child.

There they found Mary, Joseph and the baby, in the stable. After their visit, they began to spread the word about this amazing child and everything the angel had said about him. They went on their way still praising and glorifying God. But Mary kept quiet, treasuring their words and pondering them in her heart. It must have been beyond her ability to grasp, that sleeping in her arms—the tender child she had just borne—was the Savior of the world.

The Magi Bring Gifts

After Jesus' birth, Herod was king of Judea. At this time wise men (Magi) from the east saw a star, they came in search, knowing the star signified the birth of the king of the Jews. The wise men came to the Jewish rulers in Jerusalem and asked where the Christ was to be born. The rulers explained, "In Bethlehem in Judea," referring to Micah 5:2. Herod secretly met with the Magi and asked them to report back after they had found the child. Herod told the Magi that he too wanted to go and worship the babe. But secretly Herod was plotting to kill the child.

So the wise men continued to follow the star in search of the new born king and found Jesus with his mother in Bethlehem. (Most likely Jesus was already two years of age by this time.) They bowed and worshiped him, offering treasures of gold, incense and myrrh. When they left, they did not return to Herod. They had been warned in a dream of his plot to destroy the child.

The Blood of Jesus is Alive Today

None of us are a finished product, without the Blood of the Lamb. None of us are complete without the Blood of the Lamb. It's the Blood of the Lamb that is taking us from Glory to Glory right now. Continue to walk and serve Him and obey His Word and the good work that GOD has begun in your life, He will see it through to completion.

There will be...

No more Brokenness - He has come to heal the broken hearted.

No more Feeling of being unaccepted or unloved - He has chosen us. He has not rejected us.

No more Wondering what Life is all about - I am complete through the Blood of the Lamb.

Because the Blood of Jesus is Alive...

It Redeems

1 Peter 1:18-19

18-21 Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ's sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It's because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God.

Hebrews 9:12,14

Pointing to the Realities of Heaven

11-15 But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven's "tent"—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.

2 Corinthians 5:17

16-20 Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.

Revelation 5:9

6-10 So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God's holy people. And they sang a new song:

Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals. Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women, Bought them back from all over the earth, Bought them back for God. Then you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God, Priest-kings to rule over the earth.

It Will Cleanse You

Hebrews 13:10-12

10-12 The altar from which God gives us the gift of himself is not for exploitation by insiders who grab and loot. In the old system, the animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside the camp. The blood is then brought inside to the altar as a sacrifice for sin. It's the same with Jesus. He was crucified outside the city gates—that is where he poured out the sacrificial blood that was brought to God's altar to cleanse his people.

It Will Keep You Clean

1 John 1:7

6-7 If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth—we're not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God's Son, purges all our sin.

It Releases Forgiveness Into Your Life

Ephesians 1:7

7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

It Provides A Pathway For You To Walk

Hebrews 10:19-22

Don't Throw It All Away

19-21 So, friends, we can now—without hesitation—walk right up to God, into "the Holy Place." Jesus has cleared the way by the blood of his sacrifice, acting as our priest before God. The "curtain" into God's presence is his body.
22-25 So let's do it—full of belief, confident that we're presentable inside and out. Let's keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let's see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.

Ephesians 2:13

11-13 But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

Colossians 1:12-14

9-12 Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven't stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you'll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.

13-14 God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He's set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.

Hebrews 13:20

18-21 Pray for us. We have no doubts about what we're doing or why, but it's hard going and we need your prayers. All we care about is living well before God. Pray that we may be together soon.

May God, who puts all things together, makes all things whole, Who made a lasting mark through the sacrifice of Jesus, the sacrifice of blood that sealed the eternal covenant, Who led Jesus, our Great Shepherd, up and alive from the dead, Now put you together, provide you with everything you need to please him, Make us into what gives him most pleasure, by means of the sacrifice of Jesus, the Messiah. All glory to Jesus forever and always! Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Quotes from Timothy Davis and The Message Bible

Letting the Life of the Holy Spirit Bring Faith's Works Alive in You!

In I Corinthians 4:20, Paul is speaking to the Corinthian Church who were puffed up, bloated with pride and says, For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.

Paul then gives three illustrations of putting things in perspective as a church.

1. You are God's field: True spiritual growth requires God's Word. Diligently study this book and allow the truth to change the way you live. Turn from sinful behavior. Agree with God; acknowledge your sin, and ask Jesus to cleanse you. Glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not give yourself to immorality or sin of any kind. By the power of the Holy Spirit, walk away from it. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Only by the Holy Spirit can you understand the deep things and ways of God. Let God's unconditional love permeate your attitudes, motives, thoughts, words, and actions. Understand that love authenticates spiritual gifts. Remain steadfast, unwavering in your dedication to the work of the Lord.

2. You are God's building: The church has been given a responsibility to forward the Kingdom of God by working together in planting, watering, and then God gives the increase. Fully support and honor those who serve for the sake of the gospel. Give financially and in other ways that will support those who lead. Understand that the church is the New Testament temple of God. Do nothing that will tear down the body, but build on the foundation of Christ Jesus. His Spirit dwells in the corporate body, which is composed of many members in whom the Spirit also dwells. In corporate worship, only exercise spiritual gifts in ways that build up the whole body of Christ. Seek to use your spiritual gifts to build up the church and glorify Jesus.

3. You are stewards: Put your confidence in Jesus, who has sanctified you. Live your calling as a sanctified one, living daily in His holiness. Find true wisdom, power, and holiness in Jesus. Reject living in your own wisdom and ability. Boldly preach Christ and Him crucified. This is the simple gospel. Make room for the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power when you speak and preach. We are servants of Christ, not his masters. We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. Do all things for the glory of God.

Instruction in godly living is as vitally important today as it was to the church in Corinth. Because human nature remains the same, we find ourselves facing the same issues and needing the same instruction as the Corinthians did. Our source of power for godly living remains in the Cross and in the power of the Holy Spirit. The motive for our godliness continues to be love, and our goal to glorify God.

God's present reign in Christ through the lives of believers is backed up by the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit, which carries a moral authority that we as disciples by faith can use if necessary. Faith enables us to believe and receive all God has for us as Christians. By faith, walk in the fullness of the gifts and power of the Spirit. By faith, proclaim God's Word without reservation. By faith, dedicate yourself to the work of the Lord. Recognize that kingdom ministry includes signs, wonders, and miracles that demonstrate the power of God.

Kingdom of God: God's present reign in Christ through the lives of believers is backed up by the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit, which carries a moral authority that we can use if necessary.

-Debi Webster Personal Study from The New Spirit-Filled Life Bible-