Our God Is With Us

Our God Is With Us.  A name is more than a name when it becomes a title and an anthem of trust. Before the angel reassured Joseph that the miracle baby conceived in Mary’s womb would be known by the title, “Immanuel, which means God with us” (Matt. 1:23), Immanuel was a baby’s name given by God as a sign to King Ahaz, 700 years before Jesus.

Ahaz was riddled with disbelief, perhaps because his kingdom was constantly at war on several fronts. God promised Ahaz, “Before the boy [Immanuel] knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted” (Isa. 7:16).  But Ahaz, a chronic sceptic, trusted no one. Therefore, to sure up Ahaz’s faith, God offered Ahaz a rare opportunity—the very thing that Jesus would later rebuke the Pharisees about in the New Testament—“Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven (Isa. 7:11). But Ahaz did not want to be sure by faith, he wanted to be safe by politics. So, God himself gave a sign, which overshot Ahaz. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14).

By advancing the narrative of Ahaz one short chapter in Isaiah, the reader can see the Bible’s only other two appearances of Immanuel. “Behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel" (Isa. 8:7-8). Immanuel here is more than a boy’s name directly mentioned in the previous chapter (Isa. 7:14), but the royal ruler over the combined nations of Israel and Judah. We know this ruler’s common name as Jesus, one of his titles is Immanuel.

Finally, the arc of Immanuel completes in verses 9 and 10. The Assyrian invasion will happen, but the greater battle is faith in God’s eternal promises. “Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; give ear, all you far countries; strap on your armor and be shattered; strap on your armor and be shattered. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing; speak a word, but it will not stand, for God is with us” (Isa. 8:9-10). Assyria’s worst “will not stand” because “God is with us,” which is immanuel in Hebrew. Immanuel is our anthem of trust in the face of evil.

The Dragon Became Furious

The Dragon Became Furious.  Christmastime may be holy, but it was neither silent, calm, nor bright. Peace-making is not a peaceful campaign. The Prince of Peace arrived wearing a sword, so to speak. Herod shook with fury at the wise men for outsmarting him. “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him” (Matt. 2:8). “But being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way” (Matt. 2:12). “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious” (Matt. 2:16).

It doesn’t take much digging to locate Revelation 12 as the only other time became furious was used in the Bible. Interestingly, both Revelation 12 and Matthew 2 orbit the Virgin Birth. “Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). Contrasting to the only other, symbolic woman in the book of Revelation, who is named, “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations … drunk with the blood of the saints” (Rev. 17:5-6), the first woman, who is “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars … pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs and the agony of giving birth” (Rev. 12:1-2), is symbolic for the faithful remnant of Israel who birthed and nurtured Jesus the Messiah. “She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12:5). Nothing awakens evil like the arrival of good.

The murder of “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that [Herod] had ascertained from the wise men” (Matt. 2:16) was despicable, cowardly. Silent night, holy night for the holy family became violent night, bloody night for the unnumbered, other families of baby boys. In an eerie turn that never makes it into our Christmas cards or carols, so many of the nurseries in and around Bethlehem that should have been filled with many happy noises that only babies can make were dreadfully silent. Christ’s birth is forever tinged with the iron-taste of blood and death. 

And All of Jerusalem with Him

And All of Jerusalem with Him.  “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” said King Henry in Shakespeare’s play, Henry IV, Part 2 (Act III, scene 1), denoting the relentless heaviness of leadership. For the leader, there are no small decisions and no small sins. King Herod, also known as Herod the Great for his architectural projects, especially the beautification of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, took the pressure of leadership to negative extremes. The weight of his crown drove him to paranoia. He distrusted everyone, especially his family. A saying about Herod the Great, attributed to Caesar Augustus, captured the warp that Herod took from bearing (and abusing) the weight of kingship, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.” Herod was a supposed Jew (although he was really an Edomite), therefore a pig would have been unlawful (but not unthinkable) for him to eat. Yet Herod infamously killed several of his sons for suspected conspiracy. This sharp joke probably fueled Herod’s mania.

In Christ’s birth narrative, Herod the Great’s mania was on full display. As a false king, he most feared exposure. The fact that his failed assassination attempt on Jesus in Bethlehem did not make it into secular historians’ pages only goes to show how common assassination attempts were for Herod, no need to report the small ones! But a biblical detail within Herod’s massacre that bracketed the entire book of Matthew showed how Jerusalem resembled its mad king. Good, bad, or indifferent, Jerusalem resembled its representative head.

Herod was shaken when the Magi arrived at Jerusalem without forewarning, saying, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matt. 2:2). “When Herod heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3). While it seems unlikely that the entire city interpreted the wise men’s caravan as sinister, since Jerusalem sat along a normal trade route, it seems entirely plausible that the entire city had seen and grieved times when their king became disturbed. They mirrored his mood. The same city had a similar response when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, ‘Who is this?’” (Mt. 21:10).