Emmanuel
Isaiah 7:14
Therefore the Lord himself shall give you
a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall
he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and
choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her
kings.
Matthew 1:23
Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being
interpreted is, God with us.
There is no doubt that Jesus is the
Emmanuel that Isaiah prophesied.
There never was a virgin birth before his, neither shall there be after.
It was the first time and the last.
Yet another reason Jesus can claim to be 'the first and the last'.
He is utterly unique.
So in what sense can his name be
called 'God with us' without Jesus being God Almighty himself?
To understand this we need to go
back to the book of Exodus:
Exodus 25:8
And let them make me a sanctuary;
that I may dwell among them.
It has always been God's desire to
dwell among his people, and the first means he chose of doing this was through
the Old Testament tabernacle (Tent).
It was there, in the Ark of the
Covenant that his shekinah glory would abide and Moses would speak with him
face to face.
But this was a far cry from God's
ultimate dwelling place among men.
The Ark was no more than a shadow
of how God would talk to us and walk among us, tabernacled in his Son, Jesus.
Jesus was absolutely clear that he
was not God; However it was God the Father that indwelt him:
John 10:38
But if I do, though ye believe not me,
believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me,
and I in him.
Now I ask you:
Did the shekinah glory dwelling in
the sanctuary stop it from being a tent?
Neither did the fullness of the
Godhead dwelling bodily in Christ compromise his humanity one iota. He was
absolutely 'Son of Man'- that is to say, human.
Colossians 2:9
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of
the Godhead bodily.
Not all of God dwelt in Christ since the Bible declares
1
Kings 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee;
how much less this house that I have builded?
God is everywhere present :
Psalms 139:7
¶Whither
shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in
hell, behold, thou art there.
The body of Christ occupied just a few cubic feet of space.
That does not make him God any more
than the shekinah glory filling the sanctuary turn it into God.
This also gives the scriptural
perspective on the Trinitarian teaching that Christ is ‘God-the-Son’ incarnate.
The mystery of Godliness is that it
was God the Father who indwelt his Son, the man Christ Jesus:
2 Corinthians 5:19
To wit, that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;
and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
John 14:10
Believest thou not that I am in the
Father, and the Father in me?
the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me:
or else believe me for the very works' sake.
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1. Introduction |
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10. Seen! |
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17. Jesus- a Godsend |
18. 1 Creator |
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20. The firstborn |
21. The name of God |
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