Immanuel – Nature Breacher

Immanuel – God with us. Jesus Christ is Immanuel, Jesus Christ is God with us. But how did He become our Immanuel? There was a sign given for that. “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” – Isaiah 7:14 (NKJV)

The sign was that a virgin shall conceive and the Son she bears would be the Immanuel. Now, we know that a virgin conceiving is against the laws of nature, the same nature that the Lord created. By breaching it, to be with us, the Lord God points out few things.

• The LORD God reigns supreme. Everything in this universe is under His sovereign control and nothing is impossible for Him. We may not be able to break the laws of nature, but for the LORD Almighty, the laws of nature are nothing.
• By breaching one of the inviolable laws of nature, the Lord is pointing out how irrational that some people believe in nature to be god, and how some people try to explain miracles and wonders that God does for His children by twisting and turning the nature. Nature cannot explain God; it can only be a witness bearer to the Almighty God and His awesome power.
• By breaching the laws of nature to be with us, Jesus Christ is assuring us that being with us is very important for Him. If needed, He will breach the laws of nature again and again, to be with us, to keep us and to save us. If need arises, He will go against the laws of nature to perform miracles and wonders in your life. For He is Immanuel.

A horror of great darkness

As I was reading my morning devotional after a very long time, I was sort of disheartened by the opening verse.

Lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. – Genesis 15:12

But the devotion written by F. B. Myer strengthened me spiritually and made me steadfast in my wavering faith, and here I am, sharing… hoping at least one more Christian will be strengthened by our Lord this morning. All praise, honour and glory to our Lord God and to His Son and our Redeemer Jesus Christ. Amen.

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The sun at last went down, and the swift, eastern night cast its heavy veil over the scene. Worn out with the mental conflict, the watchings, and the exertions of the day, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep is soul was oppressed with a dense and dreadful darkness, such as almost stifled him, and lay like a nightmare upon his heart.

Do you understand something of the horror of that darkness? When some terrible sorrow which seems so hard to reconcile with perfect love, crushes down upon the soul, wringing from it all its peaceful rest in the pitifulness of God, and launching it on a sea unlit by a ray of hope; when unkindness, and cruelty maltreat the trusting heart, till it begins to doubt whether there be a God overhead who can see and still permit– these know something of the “horror of great darkness.”

It is thus that human life is made up; brightness and gloom; shadow and sun; long tracks of cloud, succeeded by brilliant glints of light, and amid all Divine justice is working out its own schemes, affecting others equally with the individual soul which seems the subject of special discipline.

O ye who are filled with the horror of great darkness because of God’s dealings with mankind, learn to trust that infallible wisdom, which is co-assessor with immutable justice; and know that He who passed through the horror of the darkness of Calvary, with the cry of forsakenness, is ready to bear you company through the valley of the shadow of death till you see the sun shining upon its further side. Let us, by our Forerunner, send forward our anchor, Hope, within the veil that parts us from the unseen; where it will grapple in ground and will not yield, but hold until the day dawns, and we follow it into the haven guaranteed to us by God’s immutable counsel. — F. B. Meyer

Immanuel – Where?

Immanuel – God with us. Jesus Christ, our Saviour is Immanuel; Jesus is with us.

Unfortunately we have confined the presence of our Lord to few places like Gentiles do. In the places where we worship, Jesus is with us. If two or three gather in His Name and pray, then Jesus is among them. And there are few more places where, depending on your denomination and your spiritual background, Jesus Christ is with us.

But our Lord Jesus Christ is Immanuel – He is with us. Wherever we go, He is with us. It is not the place that matters to Him; it is our hearts that matter. HE resides in our hearts and whether we like to take Him to certain places or not, He is with us.

Does Jesus love to be with us wherever we go? Yes, He does. Is He pleased with certain places we go? Now, that is a question I wish every Christian asks before going and I am sure, if we sincerely ask this question before we decide to go somewhere, we will be saved from lots of sins, temptations and sufferings.

The psalmist puts it in a very elegant manner: “If I go up into Heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” (Psalm 139:8, MKJV) Sheol here is not Hell as some translations say, but the place of the dead. And the psalmist says even if he makes his bed there… he is not talking about his death, but lying peacefully among the dead, just like sinners, even then the Lord Immanuel is there with him.

You may not agree with me in this. But there are times, deep in sin, with no hopes left, I have heard the silent whisper; I have felt the tender breeze; I have realized the wounded hand of my Redeemer. More than anything, this realization, that even in my worst moments, moments I have ever been ashamed of, moments I would never share with anyone, my Lord Jesus was with me, with that one look that broke Peter’s heart on that night when he denied knowing the Lord… yes, my LORD is Immanuel. Jesus Christ has always been there, even though I deliberately chose to ignore Him.

Dear friend, if the temptation of sin overwhelms, know that Immanuel is with you. The God Who overcame is with you. Because He is with you, you can also overcome this world and its lusts. You can win this battle and the war – for our Immanuel is also the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

More than conquerors

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

The Gospel is so arranged and the gift of God so great that you may take the very enemies that fight you and the forces that are arrayed against you and make them steps up to the very gates of heaven and into the presence of God.

Like the eagle, who sits on a crag and watches the sky as it is filling with blackness, and the forked lightnings are playing up and down, and he is sitting perfectly still, turning one eye and then the other toward the storm. But he never moves until he begins to feel the burst of the breeze and knows that the hurricane has struck him; with a scream, he swings his breast to the storm, and uses the storm to go up to the sky; away he goes, borne upward upon it.

That is what God wants of every one of His children, to be more than conqueror, turning the storm-cloud into a chariot. You know when one army is more than conqueror it is likely to drive the other from the field, to get all the ammunition, the food and supplies, and to take possession of the whole. That is just what our text means. There are spoils to be taken!

Beloved, have you got them? When you went into that terrible valley of suffering did you come out of it with spoils? When that injury struck you and you thought everything was gone, did you so trust in God that you came out richer than you went in? To be more than conqueror is to take the spoils from the enemy and appropriate them to yourself. What he had arranged for your overthrow, take and appropriate for yourself.

When Dr. Moon, of Brighton, England, was stricken with blindness, he said “Lord, I accept this talent of blindness from Thee. Help me to use it for Thy glory that at Thy coming Thou mayest receive Thine own with usury.” Then God enabled him to invent the Moon Alphabet for the blind, by which thousands of blind people were enabled to read the Word of God, and many of them were gloriously saved.

– From “Streams in the Desert”

Immanuel – When?

Immanuel – God with us.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us.

When I was growing up, in our boarding school, we were taught that if you are good, God would be with you; otherwise, He would forsake you. I understand that it was said to keep the kids in order. But it took years for me to accept that Jesus is Immanuel – God with us.

There are no qualifications, no conditions to be met, no stipulations to be fulfilled and no clauses attached. God with us. The revelation is one of the most glorious revelations I have received so far in my life. That God is with us.

Are there times when He won’t be with us? Absolutely not. HE is with us from the beginning to the end. Till the world ends. Even after the world ends. Every single day, God is with us. Every single moment, God is with us. We may fail to recognize His presence in the mundane life that we live; we may neglect Him because of our “busy” schedule; we may even reject His holy presence for some earthly things. But He is with us. God is with us. Jesus is Immanuel.

When things go wrong, we often feel that the Lord has abandoned us. When failures become routine part of our life, our heart feels as if we are forsaken by God. When afflictions, pain and sufferings increase manifold, we feel no presence of the Most Almighty as we look unto the heavens. Only darkness is there and it is, at times, difficult to believe that Jesus is with us. But dear friend, He is Immanuel. And look beneath. Underneath are His everlasting arms (Deut.33:27), holding you and sustaining you during these tough times.

Yes dear friend. It is not the situation that dictates whether God is with you or not. Do not look for signs to know if the Lord is with you or not. Do not let the external circumstances to tell you whether Jesus is with you or not. JESUS is IMMANUEL – God with us. With us always.

May His everlasting presence bring abundance of joy to all of us during these holidays. Amen.

Immanuel – the Name

The name “Immanuel” was sort of an enigma for me when I grew up. Since it is mentioned in the very first chapter of the New Testament, every year when the New Year begins, I would read the name and then hear it again in the month of December during the Christmas season. As a kid, the only thing I was asked to remember was that Immanuel means “God with us”, which obviously did not take to memorize.

But memorizing as a kid is not the same as experiencing it in our life, is it? As I grew up, and the Lord in His grace, saved me, I started to read the Bible with more prayers and initially, I ended up with more questions than answers. And the very first question every time I start reading the Bible afresh in the New Year (please don’t get me wrong, I only start reading afresh every year; whether I finish reading the Bible or not, is a different question) is, how Matthew 1:21 is the fulfilment of Matthew 1:23 or Isaiah 7:14.

Matthew 1:21 is the command by the angel to Joseph to name the Child: “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

Matthew 1:22 asserts that this happened as the direct fulfilment of the prophecy by Isaiah: So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying…

Matthew 1:23 quotes the verse from Isaiah 1:14 which was the Old Testament prophecy: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.””

Now for someone growing with thousand questions already, this one was very confusing. When the birth of certain people were given as a prophecy, they were given the same names that the Lord had mentioned, as a direct fulfilment of the prophecy – Isaac and John the Baptist readily come to our minds. But here, the prophecy tells that His Name shall be “Immanuel” and Matthew writes that this was fulfilled when the Son of God was named “Jesus”. It was confusing to me.

But then the Spirit of God revealed that the name “Immanuel” needs more meditation with His guidance to understand how it is fulfilled by the Name above all names, “Jesus.” God willing, let us meditate on this wonderful name of our Lord during this Christmas season.

May the joy of this holiday season be with us all. Amen.

Trust and Rest

“Trust and rest when all around thee
Puts thy faith to sorest test;
Let no fear or foe confound thee,
Wait for God and trust and rest.

Trust and rest with heart abiding,
Like a birdling in its nest,
Underneath His feathers hiding,
Fold thy wings and trust and rest.”

– From “Streams in the Desert”