A Brief Address For A Carol Service: Immanuel, God With Us (Advent In Isaiah 4, Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25)

Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

There’s a story I tell sometimes that some of the church regulars may recognise. If you do, I just ask you to smile in the right places.

Before I met my lovely wife Debbie, I had a broken engagement. Or, as my sister called it, a narrow escape.

One lunchtime while I was still grieving the end of the relationship, two friends of mine called Kate and Sue turned up on my doorstep. “We’ve come to take you out for a pub lunch,” they announced.

When we got to the pub, they explained why they wanted to take me out. Before each of them had met their husbands, they too had been through broken engagements. They had a good idea how I would be feeling.

And because of that, they were able to come alongside me in my sorrow in ways other people couldn’t.

For me, this is a picture of what Jesus does for us. The Christmas story says he is called Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’ God takes on human flesh. He is born into modest, if not downright poor circumstances. He lives as one of a nation suffering an occupying army from a powerful empire. He dies an unjust death.

Perhaps you are troubled by personal circumstances or what’s happening in our world. Figures say inflation is down, but the prices we are paying, especially for our food, seem to be a lot higher. How many of us have had to rethink our Christmas meal because bird flu means a turkey is too expensive? More seriously, how many of us are struggling with affording just the basics? Many will be choosing between food, heating, and presents this year.

Or look at the world. Will members of our younger generations have to fight in a war? Some nations are becoming more aggressive. Others think they only become great again when they put others down. It all feels very uncertain and unstable.

And that’s without terrorists shooting people on a beach, a man with a violent temper driving into football supporters, a nine-year-old girl stabbed to death and a fifteen-year-old boy charged with her murder, and numerous other horrific stories that fill our news sources.

I think God knew we needed someone to come alongside us. Someone who would embrace the human condition and experience it from its very best to its utter worst.

Because that’s what the birth, life, and death of Jesus are about. Immanuel, God with us, comes alongside us in the joys and sorrows of life. He knows from the inside what they are like and what they mean to us.

Immanuel, God with us. That’s what each of us can have when we invite Jesus into our lives. With us in the trials of life. With us in the joys of life. With us when we’re just plodding along, too.

Immanuel, God with us, who knows our hopes and fears, our doubts and faith from the inside of human existence himself.

My friends Kate and Sue helped me by their example to know God was with me in the disappointment at the time of that broken engagement. I have gone through the struggles of bereavement and then found he was there with me. In the bleakness of depression, I have found God there at the bottom of the pit with me. Not judging me, like some would, but holding me.

He can come close to any one of us. When Jesus was on earth, he could only be physically present with a limited number of people at a time. Now, he comes to us by his Spirit, and that means he can with all of us simultaneously.

Wouldn’t it be your best Christmas present ever if you asked Jesus into your life?