Praise Immanuel!

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel
Isaiah 7:14

Immanuel.  Literally, God with us.  Has this name passed through our heads so many times that we've lost its significance?

God.  With.  Us.  And not with us in some form that we can't comprehend or appreciate.   He emptied Himself and came in human likeness.  God came as a baby!  The all-powerful Creator of the Universe came as a baby.  Remarkable.

But why?  Why is it so remarkable?  And why is it easy to read that previous paragraph and not immediately fall to our knees praising our God for sending Jesus?  Why can we hear the Christmas story every year for dozens of years and yawn in reply?

Maybe one reason is we don't think about the form God didn't take when He came into the world.  Or, more specifically, maybe we don't think about the form God in His justice should have taken when He came.  See, we're wicked you and I.  Wicked beyond what we'll ever know.  Listen to these statements about us:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for imaged resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles
Romans 1:21-23

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator
Romans 1:25

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.  They are full of envy, murder, strive, deceit, maliciousness.  They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors, of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Romans 1:28-32

No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God
Romans 3:10-11

We are sinners and we like sinning.  What's worse, when we read sentences like these, we want to object to them!  The case against us is insurmountable and God's punishments of death and hell are just.  When God came as Jesus on that first Christmas morning, He could have come as our Great Condemner, wiping us out and sending us to hell.  And He would have been perfectly just in doing so.  God could have come as Judge.

But He didn't! 

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him
John 3:17

The glory of Christmas is that Jesus did not come to judge us, but to save us!  He did not come as an exalted King, executing His wrath that we all deserve.  He came as a humble baby, eventually growing to serve and love and redeem.  He can identify with our struggles and pain and temptations because He experienced them.  And remarkably, He came not to Judge but to be judged.  He had no sins, yet He bore our sins.  He deserved no punishment, yet He bore God's wrath intended for us.  He became a curse as He bled and died on that cross, thus removing the curse our sins deserve.  Our God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!

Yes, Immanuel deserves all the praise in the Universe!  Because He is God with us, not God against us.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God

2 Corinthians 5:21

Life

Take a moment to think about the following words:

"As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more"
Psalm 103:15-16

These are some sobering words. Do we really understand them?

Do we realize that our days are like grass? Grass doesn't live very long. Neither do we. Life is short.

Do we know that a mere gust of wind can come and our lives will end? One accident, one disaster, or one disease later and our lives will be over. Life is fragile.

Do we accept that after we're gone, our place will know us no more? Our world is forgetful. A handful of people are remembered past a few decades, and even those quickly fade. We are insignificant.

It's easy to gloss over these truths in our culture. We like to assume that tomorrow will always be here. We like to pretend that we'll be remembered forever. If we take an honest look, we'll realize these assumptions are overwhelmingly false. Worse, we don't like them to be false. We desire longevity and permanence, but right now we're faced with the stark reality that this life is neither long nor permanent. We do a million things to alleviate or avoid or deny this fate. And we may start to wonder, why do we desire permanence while in the midst of impermanence? Why do the brevity and fragility of life bother us so much? Shouldn't we just own up to our fate and stop trying to prolong everything?

The psalmist gives us a resounding no:

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him
Psalm 103:17

God is eternal and His love is forever. We desire forever because God made us to desire Him. It's proper that we don't like death because death is not natural. It's proper that we desire significance because God made us to love us. Life is not supposed to be short or fragile. We were not meant to die apart from God's love. His love is steadfast and forever! We should want that above all else!

Now there are two roads to go from here. One is for the people that fear, love, and trust Jesus, and the other is for everyone else.

To the Christian, praise God that you do taste God's steadfast and everlasting love! Use this short life to help others know Jesus. There is far too little time to do otherwise.

To the non-Christian, you realize there's a problem here. Life is short and fragile. People do die apart from God's love. Why? We are the problem. If you notice the last part of this verse, you'll see that God's love is forever for a specific group of people: those who fear him. From Adam until today, we all don't fear or love or worship God as we ought. We trade an eternal, glorious, and perfect love for silly things in this world. Therefore, God in His justice cursed our world with death and impermanence. Now we're faced with a terrible fate that we all deserve, but none of us want. We're deprived of enjoying the love of the Lord from everlasting to everlasting.

But that's not where it ends. Eternal life is not lost. In this short, fragile, and insignificant life, God gives you opportunities to know Him and love Him forever. When you hear the name Jesus and hear that He lived the perfect life you should have lived, died the death you deserve, and rose from the dead to conquer Death itself, God reaches down to you to grab you out of death into eternal life. Take His hand in faith. Give your sins to Jesus. Let Him be your God. Life's too short to reject Him.