Devotionals

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Immanuel.




O come, O come Immanuel,
And of your blessed kingdom, tell.
Come tell us of your home on high,
Come give us life, no more to die.

O come, O come Immanuel,
To free the captives bound by hell.
Come unto this darkened earth,
Come to give us second birth.

O come to us as helpless babe,
Your sacrifice alone can save.
Come live amongst us, feel our pain,
Come bear our sin and take our shame.

O come Thou blessed Prince of Peace,
Make war with God and strivings cease.
Come make our guilty conscience rest,
And lead the way to heavens best.

Immanuel, thou heavens gift,
Reconcile us; end the rift.
That keeps us from Your Fathers heart,
Immanuel, how great Thou art.

Immanuel, O ‘El Shaddai’,
Almighty God has come to die.
That You would leave Your throne above,
Christmas means just one thing – Love.








All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew 1:22,23.

At Christmas time we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, yet how little of the magnitude of this event we really comprehend. We have become so accustomed to the traditional manger scene and the story of the angelic message to the shepherds and the wise men bearing gifts that we somehow miss the fullness of the message communicated by this extraordinary event. That message is none other than the boundless love of an almighty God who would go to any lengths to save His lost creatures because of no other reason than an unconditional love which flows from His heart and is the essence of who He is and what He does.
Immanuel as we are told by the apostle Matthew means ‘God with us’, and the birth of Jesus was a truly remarkable event, because Jesus was not just the only perfect and sinless man who ever lived, but also very God of very God; the God-man. The very fact that the fullness of God who inhabits infinity could dwell in finite human flesh is mind boggling, and add to that the fact that He chose to inhabit a helpless newborn baby and we can see how love stoops down low in the ultimate act of humility.

Humility is an essential characteristic of love, which identifies and sympathizes with the objects of its affection. No doubt there were donkeys around as the baby Jesus lay in that feeding trough that we call a manger. So too there was a donkey involved towards the end of His earthly life as He entered Jerusalem as king, as had been prophesized, knowing that He would be rejected by the vast majority: “Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). The love of God displays itself by coming down to our level, not condescendingly but genuinely, ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses’ (Heb 4:15a). God does not merely love from afar but being willing to take the chance of rejection He comes to love us up close and personal, coming to us in our pitiful state knowing that we could never possibly make it to Him.

‘In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world’ (1 John 4:9a).
But exactly why did He come to us? The verse above continues and tells us the answer, ‘so that we might live through Him’. Jesus came to this earth to give us life, life that is true and eternal, and above all, good; life which starts here and continues forever without end. In Jesus’ own words, “And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). The shadow of the cross loomed large over that stable in Bethlehem, because Jesus was born for the purpose of dying, so that we might have life.

Some people will say that Jesus came chiefly to give us His teaching such as in His sermon on the mount, so that we could get our lives in line, sort of pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. If that were the reason why He came, it would be a cruel thing indeed, because His teaching looked beyond the mere external compliance of God’s law to the heart and motives, basically condemning all who could not measure up all of the time, which would be all of humanity. If He came merely to tell us what it was that His Father expected of us it would be like telling a drowning man to struggle harder while making no attempt to save him, thus making him expend more precious energy and speeding up his sure demise. Jesus did not come to exhort us to try harder, like some divine cheerleader, no; He came as rescuer, because we were drowning as a result of our own sin and desperately in need of rescuing. His very name tells of His mission, “and you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). Jesus is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name ‘Yehoshua’ or ‘Joshua’, which means ‘The Lord is Salvation’. We needed a savior because we were lost and without hope, sin had separated us from God, and reconciliation was impossible without a mediator; Jesus came to be our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5,6. Hebrews 9:15).
Jesus is Lord and He is teacher, but we as subjects have committed treason; we as students have flunked the test and failed the grade. We needed a savior to rescue us first and foremost, we needed a mediator with God to make peace, and no mere man could have ever accomplished this, so God compelled by love did it all for us.
God could possibly have done it a little differently, Jesus could have been born in a palace and raised in the lap of luxury, and that would only have befitted the great king that He is. He could have lived a life being served instead of being the one who did the serving; He could have had all earthly riches instead of owning nothing and having no place to call home. And what about His death? We know that He had to die in our place to pay the penalty for our sins, but could He not have done it some other way, such as a carefully planned religious spectacle with explanation and sermon, receiving praise for His selfless act of charity? Why did He choose to die in such a humiliating fashion, hanging naked and nailed to a tree as a curse, being spat at, mocked, beaten and reviled?
There is only one answer and that answer is love. It is not a thing that we can readily comprehend, that a perfect, all-wise, all-powerful, holy Being, in whom there is no darkness at all, who can create whatever He wills, and do whatsoever pleases Himself. That this awesome God over all creation, would love you and me and demonstrate that love by the giving of Himself to us who are so unworthy; who can understand it? That is what love does, it helps those unable to help themselves, it sacrifices for the good of the other, and it gives of its own resources and keeps on giving even to those who are very often thankless.
Just as the love of God as displayed in Jesus Christ from His birth throughout His earthly life to His death, was manifested in humility, so too it is to those that are humble that His love is perceived more intimately and appreciated more fully. This is something that seems to have been forgotten as the church often marches after the culture instead of standing in stark contrast to it. We do not like to be humbled and abased but are exhorted to stand up for our rights, what a contrast to the humble King we claim to follow, who came as a suffering servant, (see Isaiah 53:2,3, 7,8). We are told to assert ourselves, yet God tells us that He opposes the proud but gives His grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5,6 James 4:6). We seem to lack pity for the downcast and the outcast, saying that they need to do something to help themselves, having forgotten that if the Lord had taken that attitude with us we would have remained eternally lost, pitiful and pathetic - without hope.
So what can we learn from the Christmas story that we can apply to our own personal walk with God in this earthly pilgrimage, so that we can know Him more closely and represent Him more accurately?
The Most High God became the lowliest Man to carry out the rescue mission of the ages. As John Calvin put it, “The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God”.
Love was the motivation and humility was the operation as God came to live among us and to die for us. Let ours be the imitation: -
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8). That is love at its greatest.

Just as Jesus humbled Himself by divesting Himself of His glory in heaven to come as Immanuel, so too, it is only those who are willing to humble themselves who will ever know Him as Savior and Lord. Unfortunately a great many people refuse to accept the offer of being rescued, being too proud to admit that they can do nothing to save themselves or too oblivious to realize that there is a coming judgment to be saved from. Do not make that mistake, for a single sin is enough to eternally drown the stoutest swimmer without a Savior. A single offense is enough to earn damnation without a mediator. A single act of defiance is enough to be called an act of war against God Almighty if we do not look to a peacemaker.
Praise God that it has all been prepared for us, just as the unlikely birth of the Messiah was prepared before time began. Jesus is the Savior, He is the Prince of Peace, and He is the only mediator between a holy God and sinful man. He came humbly as a gift to us to bring us life in the truest and fullest sense of the word; have you humbled yourself and received His gift?

Oh one more thing – humility leads to glory. ‘Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father’ (Philippians 2:9-11).

And for those of us who have received Jesus, ‘When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory’ (Colossians 3:4).

Love is God’s gift and He gives you Himself, for ‘God is love’, will you humble yourself to see your need and receive His love?

For us who have received His gift, let us not forget that He keeps giving and that we need to humbly keep receiving. Then we will know Jesus by the name ‘Immanuel’ because we will truly know that God is with us, and only then will we be able to take Jesus to others so that the humble may receive His gift and know for certain that God has visited them too.

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