Note:
PLEASE PLAN TO JOIN US FOR:
Christmas Eve Candlelight Service: Saturday December 24th 7 pm.
Christmas Day Service: Next Sunday December 25th at 10:30 am.
MATTHEW 1:22-23
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
Springford Baptist Church KNOWING LOVE
December 18,2022.
We have been steadily approaching the celebration of Christmas-“God with us” through His Son Jesus.
On this Sunday when we focus our attention on LOVE and have lighted the Advent candle of LOVE, there can be no better way of KNOWING LOVE than knowing the truth of “God with us.”
From the very beginning God has wanted us to know how loved we are by Him.
Over the centuries leading up to Jesus’ birth, God kept on revealing His LOVE for human beings.
We can read about this in the Bible and we can hear other people talk about their experiences of God with them. Nothing can replace a personal experience of God with me and God with you. This is what will confirm for us that God is real and that God loves us unconditionally.
Both Joseph and Mary received assurance that God was with them and that the birth of the baby that Mary would mother was God’s own Son. This convinced them of God’s LOVE for them. God wanted to come and be with people and live with His creation because He loves us that much.
When Matthew writes that the message of the angel was to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, he is referring to what God had said to Isaiah. Now this is being fulfilled in the anticipated birth of Jesus.
Today I ask, do you believe that God is with you?
Have you experienced what the people we read about in the Bible maintained, that God was with them?
I want to share some of my own journey of faith with you that has consistently confirmed for me that God is with me.
I was raised in a home where my parents believed in God and trusted that He was with them.
I had to decide if this was what I believed too. I can remember at a young age having the very big thought that if I had never been born, I would not have been thinking at that moment or even know what it was to exist. This led me to the conclusion that God had given me this gift of life and that my life had purpose. I committed my life to Jesus when I was 8 years old.
I prayed about what God’s purpose was for my life and felt this strong sense of call to be a Pastor. This is what I have followed through on. Over and over, I have had a profound awareness of God with me. And I have had the gift of seeing evidence that God has been with others who have also trusted Him.
You will know that as a Pastor and Chaplain I accompany people in their happiest of times and in their saddest of times.
I have spoken with people who have experienced deep grief and loss and have decided that God cannot be real.
This is such a desperate conclusion because if people give up believing that God is real, there is no hope of Someone loving them and always with them. This is an intense aloneness.
God never intended for us to feel alone. God knows that aloneness is soul crushing. He arranged for Jesus to enter our world to bring that certainty of “God with us.”
The comfort and reassurance of “God with us” can only be comforting and reassuring if it is really true.
I want to tell you about something that happened at our house this week that helps to illustrate this:
I got up early on Monday morning and was going to make cranberry sauce. I boiled the water and sugar and went to get a bag of frozen cranberries out of the freezer. It seemed that the contents were frozen in a big clump and I wondered about that. When I opened the bag that had a picture of cranberries and that indicated with writing that the contents were cranberries, instead it was chicken bones. These had been put in the freezer in a zip sealed bag that indicated cranberries. When we believe and are expecting something that turns out to be not what we thought, it is disappointing.
If we have trusted that God is real and that God is with us and that God loves us, we will not be disappointed. This is true and Jesus is the one who proves this.
Jesus came into our world to demonstrate that God exists and that God is with us and loves us.
When we want to know the love of God, we can turn to Jesus.
Joseph and Mary could never have fully understood or imagined the life changing and history changing event that would take place with the birth of Jesus.
This tiny baby that is born in a stable and placed in the feeding box of cattle is the Son of God.
People have had pen pals that they have corresponded with for years and then one day get to meet in person. There are siblings who were separated at birth who come to find out about each other and then eventually arrange to meet together. I have a good friend whose daughter is in Australia. They can be in regular contact through Facetime, but it is just not the same as being with each other. We came to understand this during pandemic restrictions when we were not with family and friends in person.
“Being with” is irreplaceable and God knew this. God also clearly understood how costly it would be to send Jesus to be “God with us.”
Jesus not only entered this world to live with us. He came to die for us.
This demonstrates for all time that we are loved by God!
Whatever we encounter in our lifetimes, God is with us and God loves us.
When we are convinced that this is true, we hold tightly to this truth.
Christmas can be a time to renew our faith that God is with us and that God loves us.
There will be far reaching implications of this truth.
Immanuel (“God with us”) means that we matter greatly to God.
Immanuel (“God with us”) means that God wants us to know Him.
Immanuel (“God with us”) means that we can know God.
Immanuel (“God with us”) means that we will never be alone.
Immanuel (“God with us”) means that God can guide every circumstance and every decision of our lives.
Immanuel (“God with us”) is not an exclusive gift for us alone. It is a truth to be shared to give anyone who will receive Jesus the hope filled promise that they too are loved by God!
Christmas highlights for all of us that we can KNOW GOD and we can know that God loves us because Jesus came to be “God with us.”