December 18, 2022 Text: Isaiah 7:10-17
Dear Friends in Christ,
Is God with us? Is Immanuel here? This must have been a question of the Boston College football team on November 28, 1942. They were the top-ranked football team in the nation and that day they were playing Holy Cross before 41,000 at Fenway Park. Boston College had only allowed 19 points in eight games. Holy Cross was a three-touchdown underdog. That day the Holy Cross Crusaders defeated Boston College 55-12. The largest margin of defeat by a top-ranked team in college football. A loss. A defeat. A bad day for the Boston College team. Because of this defeat the team cancelled a victory party that night at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. That same night, 492 people died when the Cocoanut Grove caught fire. The 2nd largest loss of life in a fire in the United States.
There are two ways to look at that story. Some will say God was there because a football defeat saved the lives of many young men. Some will say He wasn’t there because 492 perished. How do you see it?
“IS GOD WITH US?”
If you have a hard time with these questions, you are not alone. You are not the first to question God’s presence. There are very few humans who have never questioned God. It has been ongoing since He brought people into the world.
God had a great relationship with Adam and Eve. Walking and talking. His presence was obvious. Once the serpent led them into sin, they started to doubt His reliability.
Moses ran into this problem when he went to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God. The people got fidgety and began to question the presence of God. By Exodus 32 they came to the amazing conclusion that God didn’t exist so they had to make their own god – the golden calf. When God didn’t respond, they concluded He was no longer there.
This is what we see in our text from Isaiah 7. King Ahaz doubted God was with him. God had promised to be with his people forever but now they are surrounded by foreign armies. They looked around and were not sold on God’s presence.
Enter Isaiah. His message was short and direct to King Ahaz. God is with you. He said so. Believe, man. God even goes to this extreme. He invites Ahaz to ask him for a sign. But Ahaz wouldn’t do it. He had already lost his faith. He had already put his faith in a “golden calf”; this time it was an alliance with a foreign army.
That is when Isaiah spoke those words that Matthew would quote seven hundred years later. You don’t trust God enough to ask for a sign? “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (v. 14)
How many times do we act like King Ahaz? Is God with me? We have been baptized into His name. We hear His Word of assurance constantly. We see Him working through His means in the world. You and I are the most blessed people in the history of the world.
It should be an easy call, but we let our eyes deceive us. “The world’s a crappy place.” “Where is God now that I have cancer?” “He can’t be here. Come hang out with my family for a day.” The serpent has us believing that God isn’t reliable. “Take a look around man, you must be a fool.” Are we?
Sinful fools maybe but can’t we see the Lord at work? A child born to a maiden? C’mon God can’t you do better than this? Immanuel appeared as Jesus. This child was and is the eternal Son of God. He is God’s sign. He is God’s proof. He is God’s guarantee that He with us. This is why Christmas is big. God with us – He came to save us.
In 1946 at the Los Alamos Atomic Laboratory Dr. Louis Alexander Slotin and seven co-workers were experimenting with plutonium. Harmless by itself but deadly in certain combinations. A chain reaction started. The room filled with radioactivity. Slotin acted at once. He separated the pieces of plutonium with his bare hands. He died nine days later. His actions saved his colleagues.
When God became Immanuel He didn’t come into the world as a safe, sterile laboratory experiment to study how things were down here. He became part of our world – – our sinful, corrupt world, dangerous, dripping with death. And our sin and death He got all over His hands, knowing it will kill Him – and save us.
God is with you. You know that because of your Baptism. As you scurry from one errand to another, one gathering and then another. Remember your Baptism – in the way you treat clerks and other shoppers, in the way you treat visiting loved ones that may be hard to love, in the way you select gifts for others. Your Baptism is a sign that babe is the manger is not only the Savior of the world. He is your Savior from sin.
Think back to the opening illustration. Was God there? Yes. In good times and bad times. In wins and losses. In life and death. Always with us . . . until we are with Him.
Amen.