Advent Week 1 Matthew 1:18-25 - “God With Us”
This past Sunday our church family began our Advent Sunday discussions with Matthew 1:18-25. Last year (in this sermon and in this article) when looking at the same passage we focused on what the incarnation did, effectively in making Jesus the Great High Priest, as described in Hebrews 2:10-18; 4:14-16. This is a significant part of the Gospel aspect of the Christmas narrative. “It’s the Creator of the universe, Jesus, stepping into our brokenness as shown being set up through the genealogy and birth narrative (Matt. 1 & 2), then later through the temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11). Jesus, our Savior, is like us in every way through temptation and life's difficulties, yet without sin.”
There’s so much depth and meaning in the idea of Jesus being God with us, it is the essential element to the effectiveness of the Gospel, that God decided to enact a rescue plan for us messed up sinners. Henri Nouwen, the famous professor, priest, and author says this, “The great mystery of God becoming human is God’s desire to be loved by us. By becoming a vulnerable child, completely dependent on human care, God wants to take away all distance between the human and the divine. Who can be afraid of a little child who needs to be fed, to be cared for, to be taught, to be guided? We usually talk about God as the all-powerful, almighty God on whom we depend completely. But God wanted to become the all-powerless, all-vulnerable God who completely depends on us. How can we be afraid of a God who wants to be “God-with-us” and wants us to become “us-with-God”? God made a covenant with us. The word covenant means “coming together.” God wants to come together with us… God wants to be as close to us as our breath.”
This reminds me of what Nick was saying on Sunday about us dealing with suffering in life. Instead of asking for a fix from God, share your heart with Him and seek to be more like Christ through your suffering. This is because God wants a relationship with us, that is why it’s so amazing that the Creator of all things intended to be God with us, and go out of His way to open a way to establish a relationship with us. So being in a relationship with us He wants to hear from us how we’re doing instead of just having a list of grievances handed to Him in our prayers.
Related to that from Sunday, the main question was: What areas of your life are you not surrendering to God because He is not being God on your terms? We can easily feel this way, especially if there’s certain areas in life that we’ve been hurt in or feel, from our perspective, that God isn’t hearing us or acting quick enough. This comes and goes through seasons of life and shouldn’t cause you shame. Remember the names of God we see in Scripture, like “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), they point us to the reality of God’s character being that of comfort and peace. But it is also balanced against the frustrations in life, such as seen in Psalm 42, where the author goes back and forth wrestling with knowing that God is steadfast, but that he still feels downcast.
The reality of the Kingdom that we are called into through Christ, is of peace in the midst of the broken world. Just as Christ did not come into the world to condemn it, but to bring salvation through Himself (John 3:16-17), we are called to bring Kingdom values and the Gospel message into the world. That can look very different depending on circumstances, but like Jesus stepping into our brokenness and yet upholding Kingdom values and fully depending on God, we too will have the opportunity to honor God in our suffering. Just as Jesus suffered because He is God with us, we aren’t alone in our suffering because He wants us to be “us-with-God”, walking closely with Him in all things, especially our doubts and frustrations.