God With Us

Welcome to our strip district, Butler County campus, as well as those in the chapel and those of you in this space.

It's about this time of the year that we realize that there are two different types of people: the 90% who can't wait for spring to come, and the 10% of you that make the rest of us sick.

I've been told that by the 10% of you that the way that you endure Pittsburgh winters is by playing winter sports.

So last year, for the first time in 14 years, I went skiing, and I took my son along, who was seven years old at the time.

Miko is like me.

You could sum up our life motto this way: always confident, sometimes right.

So Miko was very confident that skiing would be super easy.

There's nothing to it, right?

You just point the skis down the hill, and by the end of the day, you'll be doing backflips and jumps.

So, needless to say, the first trip down the hill was a bit of a wake-up call for him.

Um, he would spend about five seconds on his skis, followed by about 25 on his butt sliding down the cold snow.

And so it was a rough start to the day.

Now, even though it had been so long since I had skied, it's kind of like riding a bike, you don't forget.

And so I was able, because of my experience, to teach him how to ski.

I was able to give him sort of the basic rules of like don't let your skis cross, don't ski into a tree, etc.

The important things.

And by the end of the day, he was able to really pick it up.

Now, it was because of my experience and my ability to teach him how to ski that he was able to sort of pick up skiing because he had somebody with him who knew what they were doing.

He had somebody with him who saw that he was overconfident.

He had somebody with him who kind of could expect how the day was gonna go.

And by the end of the day, he was doing great.

I mean, we didn't spend any time on the bunny slopes, uh, the green circles were easy for him, and we spent a lot of time on the blue squares, which are sort of the intermediate ski slopes in Pennsylvania.

Now that's not a very unique experience.

You've all had times in your life where something felt overwhelming to you.

You were faced with something that you did not feel like you had the resources to solve.

But there was somebody with you in it who helped you succeed.

Maybe for you that was a parent or a boss or a professor or a mentor, even a friend, somebody who had greater expertise than you, greater ability than you, and were able to make you overcome because of what they knew and because of their experience.

Just like I was with Miko to help make him succeed, you had somebody who is with you to make you succeed.

And you've also had times in your life where you had something slightly different.

A time where you felt overwhelmed by something, but it wasn't the kind of thing that you could fix.

But simply by the circumstances of your life, something was overwhelming.

And there was a group of people, or maybe there was someone, who stuck with you through it all and it made all the difference.

When my dad passed away six years ago, I had a community of people who were with me in it all.

I had a wife who was with me.

I had a life group, friends who were with me.

And while they couldn't solve that problem, they were able to stick with me.

And their presence was able to give me both comfort and confidence.

And so to be with someone can be really powerful, can't it?

To be with somebody to help them, to be with someone to support them.

And it's so in light of that that I want us to look at one of the names of God, Emmanuel.

God with us.

A name that we normally hear around Christmas time, if you've heard the name before, which is appropriate because it's a name that's given to Jesus at his birth.

But what I want for us is to spend some time looking at this name and understanding how you can tap into the power of God.

Just like somebody who is with you to help you succeed, you can tap into the power of God.

Because when we understand the presence of God, what happens is that we can learn how to live without fear.

And so, Emmanuel, the story begins long before the birth of Jesus.

We're gonna go back about 700 years before Mary or Joseph are written into the pages of history.

It was a time of great crisis for the nation of Israel.

When young Ahaz comes to the throne, he inherits quite the mess.

The country had been divided into two kingdoms, Israel to the north, the northern kingdom, and the southern kingdom, that's Judah.

Ahaz ruled over the southern kingdom with its capital city in Jerusalem.

Assyria was the world power at the time, and its king led a massive expansion campaign that covered much of the world and stretched all the way to the land of Judea and Israel.

Now these were very dark days for Israel.

With Assyria reaching into this land, they brought all of these countries and their neighbors under their authority and forced all of them to pay heavy tribute.

Israel had abandoned worshiping God.

And just as God had promised, he gave them over to the result, a life without God.

They would live as servants of Assyria.

Well, Ahaz looked at the map as it advised as his advisors updated it before him.

There they were, Judah, completely surrounded by land that had been claimed by the Assyrian Empire.

And Ahaz wondered why.

Why did Assyria leave them alone?

Why is it that they were the only country that was left standing?

While Israel to the north had abandoned worship of God, Judah still maintained periods of true faith in God.

And so as Ahaz sat in the throne room, surrounded by the walls of Jerusalem, Ahaz wondered, is it because of the walls?

Or are the promises of long ago really true?

That God has come to the rescue of his people.

A day came for Ahaz when he breathed a sigh of relief, but it was premature.

His advisors came to him and told him that Assyria was vacating that entire region just like that.

They were up and moving all of their forces to fight battles on another front.

And just as Ahaz thought that they were in the clear, his neighbors seized on the opportunity.

See, the neighbors surrounding Judah formed a coalition.

One by one, Ahaz could see each one of those countries, the Philistines, the Edomites, Damascus, all joining forces with Israel.

They thought that if we could all join forces together, then we will be able to overthrow Assyria once and for all.

And so the coalition came to Ahaz and they tried to force him to join them.

But Ahaz refused.

And this they took as an act of betrayal.

And suddenly King Ahaz found himself at war on nearly every border with their enemies, including the very country that they used to regard as family.

Israel.

See, this problem for Ahaz is much larger than anything else that he had ever experienced.

This could be the end.

The end of his kingdom.

The end of his reign.

The end of his family.

That was a dark and hopeless day.

A chill hung in the throne room as Ahaz considered what to do.

But just then a servant brought a message.

Your Majesty, Isaiah is here.

And he has a message.

Bring him in.

And so Isaiah comes before King Ahaz with a message from God.

And this is what God had to say to Ahaz.

Be careful.

Keep calm and don't be afraid.

Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood.

Because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Ramaliah, Aram, Ephraim, and Ramalia's son have plotted your ruin, saying, Let us invade Judah, let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves and make the son of Tabiel king over it.

Yet this is what the sovereign Lord says it will not take place.

It will not happen.

Listen, Ahaz, God has a message for you.

The countries that you are so afraid of that you think are plotting your ruin, you have nothing to worry about.

They're not going to destroy you.

God has something else in store.

He goes on.

Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

Not only am I going to give you my word, I will give you a sign.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel.

He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.

For before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.

Ahaz, listen.

You have nothing to fear.

God is with you.

The countries that you are so afraid of are not going to be an issue to you.

Just trust in God.

And Ahaz, I will give you a sign.

That child that's going to be born in your house, you better name that child Emmanuel.

Because that child is going to be a sign to you that God is with you.

And before that child reaches the age where he will make decisions on his own, the countries that you are so afraid of, not only will they no longer be a fear to you, they will be gone.

Because God is with you.

And so Isaiah has a very important word for Ahaz.

Do not be afraid.

And Ahaz learns a very important lesson that day.

When God is here, you have nothing to fear.

You might say that the entire Bible, all of human history, could be organized around this thread of God and humans being in each other's presence.

And to varying degrees throughout the story, God allows his presence to be with people.

The story begins in Genesis with humans, Adam and Eve, living in the very presence of God, the complete and perfect presence of God, where they would walk together in the garden.

They could see God face to face.

And this is a perfect picture of what it is to be in the presence of God.

Because here there is a casting out of all fear.

There's a driving away of anxiety.

The loneliness, the pride, the insecurity, all of those emotional crises that threaten humans are chased far away in the presence of God.

But in the story, it doesn't last very long.

Adam and Eve disobey God, and immediately this fear overcomes them.

God comes walking through the garden and calls for Adam and Eve, and they respond, We hid because we were afraid.

And from the very beginning, we see something.

That when God is here, you have nothing to fear.

But Adam and Eve do something to the presence of God.

They put this thing in between them and God.

They put this sin that separates them in some way from God.

And apart from that presence, there's fear.

And from this point forward, the presence of God becomes more like a long-distance relationship.

If you've been there, you know what that's like.

My wife and I dated for a season when we were living far apart from each other on different sides of the country.

And all we had was phone calls to keep in touch.

And the relationship is still there, right?

Any of you who've lived that know, but it's different.

It's less close, it's less near.

And that's sort of what becomes of the relationship between God and humans from that day forward.

Well, many generations and many years go by after the garden.

And God forms this group of people that he calls the Israelites, and one day they leave Egypt where they were enslaved.

Maybe you've heard that story.

And as they're leaving Egypt, they stop at this mountain partway between Egypt and the land that they would go and establish their country in.

And it's there on that mountain that God's presence descends and meets with Moses.

He gives them the law.

And it's here also that Moses comes to this realization that people are stubborn.

God's people are rebellious.

And God says to Moses, go.

I can't go with you because of the rebellion among your people.

But my angel will lead you.

Now go, go, take these people to the promised land.

I will not go with you.

But Moses, he hears this.

And it's a crisis for him.

He calls it a disaster to have to go on and not take the presence of God with him.

See, it was in that moment that Moses realized he had a problem.

God's people were rebellious and he needed God deeply.

Then this thing happens that is often confusing to people when they read this story.

Moses protests.

He said, No.

Because Moses realized something: that when God is here, you have nothing to fear.

But without God's presence going with him, Moses had something to fear.

He needed God's presence.

And so Moses says to God, No, I need you to come with me.

And then this wild thing happens.

God says, Okay, I'll come with you.

And it wasn't that God changed his mind.

It was that God wanted Moses to come to that moment of crisis where Moses realized he needed God desperately.

Maybe you've been there.

Maybe you've had that moment of crisis, that brief moment where it felt like everything was about to come crashing down, and you felt like you had nothing to do but to cry out to God.

Maybe that's what brought you to this moment right now.

Just that brief moment of crisis to remind us.

That brief moment of fear to teach us that God is here.

And so God's presence, in some veiled sense, stays with his people.

Eventually, this temple was built according to God's instructions, and in the middle of this temple, there's a place called the Most Holy Place, and it was a place that God's presence was said to in some way reside.

Yet even here, with all of the restrictions, one person was allowed to go into that holy place one time a year with one sacrifice in one specific way.

Even with all those restrictions, no human ever saw God face to face in the same way that Adam and Eve did.

And so as time goes on, eventually Israel by and large stops worshiping God.

Time and time again, God uses people like Isaiah to call the nation back to true faith.

The Ahaz story comes and goes.

Other prophets come and go.

And the people never really do turn back to God.

Eventually there's a prophet that shows up on the scene named Ezekiel, and Ezekiel has this vision.

And in his vision, he sees the presence of God or the glory of God that sort of hovers in the most holy place, and he sees it lift up and pause above the temple.

Then he sees that presence leave the temple, leave Jerusalem, and go to a nearby mountain.

And it's this strange vision.

But the message is clear.

The presence of God is gone.

You have turned your back on God, and his presence is no longer here.

Isaiah says this in Isaiah 11, 8.

You fear the sword, and the sword is what I will bring against you, declares the sovereign Lord.

As if to say, God is no longer here.

Now you really do have something to fear.

And all of that brings us to the well-known verse in Matthew.

Matthew is retelling the story of Joseph and how he found out that the woman that he was engaged to was pregnant.

Joseph, we learn, has in mind to quietly divorce Mary because of all the shame that the unplanned pregnancy would bring on them.

But while he's considering all of these things, an angel appears to him.

And here's how the story reads.

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.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

That was verse 21.

I want you to pause and skip verses 22 and 23.

It interrupts the narrative.

We'll come back to it.

Verse 24.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and he took Mary home as his wife.

But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus.

Now, as Matthew is retelling this story, many years after the birth of Jesus, many years after the death of Jesus, he interjects something into the story, something that interrupts the flow of the story, and it's very important.

He makes a theological statement.

Something that wasn't spoken by Mary or Joseph or the angel to our knowledge.

What Matthew does is he connects the dots and he makes a theological statement.

Now, the most reasonable thing, if you're telling the story, would be to wait until the end of the story to then make your point.

But that's not what Matthew does.

He interrupts his story because something is said.

Here's what that angel says one more time before he interrupts.

Mary will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

And now Matthew says this.

All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

And so what Matthew is doing is he's telling us that in some way what the angel is saying, that you will name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins, is connected to Isaiah 7, is connected to the story of Ahaz.

See, in Ahaz's day, the prophecy that Isaiah brought stood on its own.

It had meaning.

There was a child born.

He was named Emmanuel.

And that child was to represent the presence of God with his people to save them.

But Matthew is telling us that we have an even greater fulfillment of the promised Emmanuel.

And so Matthew picks up the King Ahaz story and he says, Remember what happened in Isaiah's day?

Remember when our people had this great crisis and they needed God to save them?

That is happening once again.

You know, the crisis for Ahaz, that was a big crisis.

I mean, he was literally looking at the end of his reign, the end of his kingdom, the end of his family, children, grandchildren just were threatened to be completely wiped out.

Yet the crisis that Jesus enters into is all the more significant.

Because the crisis that Jesus resolves is not one of life and death.

It's one of spiritual life and death.

You will give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sin.

The same sin that drove Adam and Eve away from the presence of God, out of the garden, is the very same sin that threatens to separate us forever from the presence of God.

To banish us to a place of fear, the place of insecurity, the place of anxiety, the place of loneliness, the place of the absence of the presence of God.

And so Matthew picks up the Ahaz story and says, Remember, Emmanuel, we have an even better Emmanuel, a more full version of God with us.

Isaiah 7 set a precedence for what it means for God to be with his people to save them.

And in Jesus, we have an even better Emmanuel.

Because Jesus would go on to live the perfect life that you and I can never live.

The only life that could ever be lived perfectly, righteously, in the face of God.

Jesus would go on to die, the only death that is capable of finishing and completing sin once and for all.

And he did all of that to save his people from their sin.

See, that's the good news to you and I at the birth of Jesus.

That with Jesus entering into this world, we have a greater Emmanuel.

We have God with us.

God with you.

Like the caring friend who's with you in your moment of deepest crisis.

Like that brilliant mentor who's by your side and able to help you solve a problem that seems unsolvable.

Like a person of power who can pull some strings and get you out of your situation.

Except God is better than all of those.

God is better than a friend because he sees your greatest offense and still sticks with you.

What do our friends do?

They tend to minimize our wrongs.

They assume that we're innocent.

Friends tend to love us conditionally.

Yet God can see the depths of your heart.

He's better than a mentor because his advice isn't colored by cultural limitations.

He sees your problems inside and out, and he knows exactly what you need.

And he's better than a person of power who can simply pull some strings for you.

He's the only one who's able to solve your greatest problem and every other problem.

Because our greatest problem is our sin offense to God.

And our offense when it comes to sin is chiefly against God, not against somebody else, which means that God is the only one who can rightly solve it.

And so it's in God that we have all of these things.

A God who is with us.

And when God is here, you have nothing to fear.

You have nothing to fear.

Because God is here.

The only one who has the perfect ability to solve whatever it is that's causing you to be in crisis.

And even if he doesn't solve it the way that you want him to, he's still with you, knowing exactly what you need.

With you in every tier and in every triumph.

I've lived this very personally over the past few months.

I've had a project outside of Orchard Hill that's just caused a lot of stress, a little bit of fear in my life.

And there have been times where the project has felt too big to handle.

And what I have had to do is to remind myself to continually come back and to see the presence of God in it.

See, I already know that God is with me.

I already know that God is with me in Jesus to solve my sin.

I already know about that.

But what I've had to do is learn to set my thoughts on God whenever I'm feeling the strain of this thing so that I can find comfort knowing that God is with me in it.

And there have been two things that I've done that have been particularly helpful.

I don't know if they'd be helpful to you or not, but one of them has been journaling.

I don't journal all that often, but it's been unbelievably helpful for me to sit down and just write out some prayers to God.

God helped me remember, but also to write notes to myself.

Joel, remember God is with you.

Remember what really matters.

Remember your priorities in life.

Remember all of these things.

And then the second has been to read the Psalms.

Because the Psalms are full of very real, emotional, raw feelings expressed to God.

I am overwhelmed.

Help me, God.

Psalm 37 is one of my favorites.

Now listen, I'm not gonna lie to you.

It's not that like you start getting stressed out and sit down and read Psalm 37, and like a magic pill, you suddenly have no fear.

But what happens is as you do those things, those are just a couple examples of what we call spiritual disciplines.

We're reminding ourselves of the presence of God.

And when we remind ourselves of the presence of God, very slowly those fears begin to unwind.

Those insecurities, those worries, they begin to melt away because we are reminded of what truly matters.

Your project might not succeed.

You might fall flat on your face.

But ten years from now, you might look back and say, it was the best thing that could have possibly happened to you.

God is here.

You have nothing to fear.

The story of the Bible concludes with a vision of a day when people will once again live in the perfect presence of God.

And here's how this reads: Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

And so we look forward to a day when the perfect presence of God will banish all fear from your life.

But until then, we lean on the partial presence of God.

We learn to see God as being present with us.

Emmanuel, the God who is with us.

And as you lean on his presence, what you'll find is that God is here and you have nothing to fear.

Let me pray for us.

God, we are grateful that you are the one who casts out all fear, and that your presence is perfect, and that it is a good place to be.

Help us to believe that and help us to see your presence.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.