God With Us

Series: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Leslie Basham: We sing it every Christmas season, but do you know what it means?

*O come, o come, Emmanuel"¦

Today we'll discover what a wonderful word Emmanuel really is. This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for December 22. Christmas carols provide such a rich backdrop to the holiday season, but sometimes we can get so used to hearing them that we don't pay attention to the important things they're saying.

Let's join Nancy and take a closer look at a song we've all heard hundreds of times.

Nancy DeMoss: One of the things I love most about the Christmas season is the chance to sing Christmas carols. I looked up the word "carol" in the dictionary this week, and it says that a carol is a joyful song, usually celebrating the birth of Christ.

I want to tell you this week about my new favorite Christmas carol. It's called "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Perhaps you've been singing it already during this season. As I've looked into the background of this carol, I learned that it may be one of the oldest Christmas carols that is sung today.

It dates back to the ninth century--written sometime in the 800s.We don't know who wrote it, but it was obviously someone who had a very great knowledge of the Scriptures--both Old and New Testaments--because there are a lot of references to Old and New Testament passages.

This Christmas carol, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," was originally written in Latin. It had seven stanzas, most of which we don't sing today and most of which are not familiar to us today. One of those stanzas was sung each day during the last seven days before Christmas.

Each of those seven stanzas highlights a different name of Jesus--a title for the Messiah. Most of those titles are found in the Old Testament. Let me read to you what the seven different titles are.

The first stanza talks about Emmanuel. Then there's a stanza about Adoni, which is the Hebrew word for "Lord." Then there's a stanza on Christ as the Rod of Jesse--another one on the Key of David, then one that calls Christ the Dayspring, another one called Wisdom From on High. The final one, which is in many of our hymnals, refers to Christ as the Desire of Nations.

You may not have had a chance to get all those down, but we're going to look at several of those names. Each of those names, those titles for the Messiah, was fulfilled when Christ came to earth. Those titles express who Christ is and why He came and what He came to do and what He intends to do in our lives.

I've been meditating for the last several days on the words of this carol. It's been fun to go back and study the Scriptures that are referred to in these stanzas, the Scriptures on which these names for Christ are based.

As I've been meditating on those passages, I found that God's been giving me a new love for Jesus and a fresh sense of gratitude for who He is and for what His work and ministry and life mean for me.

This week we want to look at four of those stanzas, and I think it will help us get a fresh sense of the One whose birth we celebrate at Christmas and a fresh look at the Savior and what He means to us. Some of these stanzas may not be in your hymnal, but we'll have the words on our Web site, ReviveOurHearts.com so you can look there and follow along if you're not able to get them all down.

The first stanza is the one that is most familiar to us.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

The picture here is of the Children of Israel in captivity in Babylon. They were in mourning. They were lonely. They were in exile. They were away from their homeland.

They were living somewhere they didn't really belong. They were in a culture that was foreign to their faith, a culture that didn't know and honor Jehovah as they had been trained to do.

It was a season where life was just hard, and that's what's reflected in these words: Ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here. It's a sad time; it's a hard time. The words of this stanza express the longing of the Jewish people to be delivered. "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom us"--deliver, save us out of this captivity.

The Messiah was the One that God had promised for centuries, the One who would come and deliver His people, the One who would ransom them from their captivity. The song expresses a longing: "Come Emmanuel and do it."

The chorus is a statement of faith and assurance and praise that Messiah will come. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel! It's a promise; it is sure to happen.

Emmanuel is a title for Messiah that is first found in Isaiah 7:14, where we read, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel." Emmanuel, as many of you know, is the Hebrew word that means "God is with us."

"God with us"--this was a promise that was given to Ahaz who was a king of Judah. He was being threatened by an alliance of two northern armies coming from Syria and Israel. He was terrified.

God sent to Ahaz the prophet Isaiah with a promise from God. It's a promise that the enemies of God would be defeated, that Ahaz had nothing to fear, that he should not be terrified. God gave Ahaz a sign that His promise would be fulfilled.

The sign was that a woman who had never had a child would become pregnant, would give birth to a child and before that child was old enough to know right and wrong--when the child was still a toddler, within two or three years--the threat of the opposing armies would disappear. The armies would go away.

The deliverance would come, and the sign was that God would send this child named Emmanuel, whose name means "God is with us." That was the immediate fulfillment, but there was a longer-term promise here that was not fulfilled until 700 years later when an angel made an appearance to a young, unmarried virgin in Nazareth and told her she was to have a child.

We read in Matthew 1:22 that all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Isaiah. "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means 'God with us'" (verse 23). Here was a second and more important fulfillment to God's promise--that God would be with us and we could be free from terror, from the enemy, because God was coming to earth.

In answer to that promise, we know that God did come. He came to this earth. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). I want us to be reminded this Christmas that the coming of God to earth in the form of Jesus Christ makes all the difference in the world--not just for those Jews who were "mourning in lonely exile," but for us as the children of God in this Church Age as well.

God's promise was not just one to deliver His people from physical captivity; but more importantly, it was a promise to deliver His people from spiritual captivity, from their sin. Until the Son of God appear, the song says. Well, until the Son of God appeared, until Jesus came, we were in captivity.

We were enslaved to sin; we were enslaved to Satan. We were in exile, just as those Jews were in exile. We were alienated--lonely, separated from God, separated from others, barriers and walls in our relationships--because we didn't have God. We had reason to mourn even as those Jews did. Our plight was miserable and hopeless.

As we read in Ephesians 2, we were dead in trespasses and sins. We were separated from Christ. We were alienated and strangers to the covenants of promise. We had no hope, and we were without God in the world.

What a way to live! And just a reminder, that is the way most of the world lives yet today--mourning in lonely exile, in captivity to Satan and sin. Until the Son of God appears, the song says.

What does the coming of Emmanuel mean to us? It means the end of captivity. It means we've been ransomed, we've been redeemed. It means the end of exile. We're no longer alienated. We're no longer separated from God and from one another.

Ephesians 2 tells us, "You're no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." You know what that says to me? We're back home--no longer in a foreign land but back home with God.

It's the end of aloneness when Emmanuel comes. It means that God is with us. I don't know about you but my heart says, "If God is with me, what else and who else do I really have to have?" If God is with me--and Jesus said to His disciples as He left this earth and returned to heaven, "I am with you always [Emmanuel], even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

The coming of Emmanuel means we can rejoice--not just because Emmanuel is coming but because Emmanuel has come. We no longer mourn as those who have to hope.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to you, O children of God.

Leslie Basham: As we sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" this year, I think we'll all have a new perspective. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been showing us how amazing it is that God is with us. We hope you'll be looking for ways to share that Good News with others this season.

Would you write and tell us ideas you find effective for sharing your faith? I'll give you the address in just a minute. Your letter is important to us at the end of the year as we make plans for 2004. By telling us where you hear Revive Our Hearts, you'll help us continue providing the program in your area.

You can also help by supporting us financially. Here's Nancy to explain why it's so important to hear from you soon.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I hope that in the midst of all the hubbub and busyness that you're probably facing in your home during this Christmas week that you're taking time to reflect on the incredible gift that God has given to us in His Son Jesus Christ.

Let me remind you that every gift you send to Revive Our Hearts between now and the end of this month will be doubled. It will be matched one for one, up to a maximum of $250,000. I'm so thankful for the many listeners who have already responded to this challenge.

We're trusting the Lord that He's going to enable us to be able to take full advantage of this opportunity between now and the end of the month. What an incredible privilege it is for us, especially at this time of the year, to give generously as an expression of our gratitude for the generous giving heart of God.

Leslie Basham: Thanks, Nancy. To qualify for the matching challenge, get your letter postmarked by December 31. You can mail it to Revive Our Hearts. You can also call toll free 1-800-569-5959, or donate on-line at ReviveOurHearts.com. Make sure to check out our special Christmas page at ReviveOurHearts.com/Christmas.

Tomorrow we'll analyze verse two of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Who is the Rod of Jesse? We'll find out tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

*Arranged by Clifford Barny Robertson, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," A Cappella Christmas Classics PD.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is a ministry partnership of Life Action Ministry.

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