God With us

My friend, John handed me a button a few weeks ago that said, “Christmas: God with Us.” At first I didn’t pay much attention to it and slipped it into my pocket.

Another friend had given me a similar button last year, it had a picture of Santa on it with the words “Happy Holidays” in the middle of a red circle with a diagonal line drawn through it and the words “Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays.”

Both of the buttons were a reminder to me that we now live in a time in our country when there are multiple generations of people who do not know why we celebrate Christmas.

To the people in those generations Christmas is simply a time to listen to fun music that speaks of snowflakes and Santa Clause; it’s a time to put up cool lights, a brilliant tree and fight one another for Black Friday gifts to be given to one another. They have never heard of who Jesus is and what he did.

While studying the scriptures recently I discovered the story of Christmas is much bigger than even I realized; in fact, it stretches from Genesis 3 to Revelation 21.

I grew up in a time where most people were familiar with the Christmas story as recorded by the apostle Matthew…

Matthew 1:18-23

18Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23″Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

As a kid I sang Christmas music in school that had Jesus in the lyrics, our school programs were specifically about the arrival of the Christ child and it was okay to have a manger scene in public places like the court house; even Charlie Brown knew the true meaning of Christmas.

The essence of the Christmas story is and has always been “God with us”—Immanuel.

I was reading Genesis recently when the whole “God with us” thing shone with a brilliance I hadn’t seen before. In the first two chapters of Genesis God creates everything; the heavens and the earth, birds and fish, cows and snakes, the seas and dry land and everything else. At the end of six days God says it is, “very good.” He liked what he made.

And, God made man and woman and ushered them into his paradise where they encountered the Serpent, the Devil in disguise.

Genesis 3:1-8

1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

The account of Eve and Adam’s disobedience to God in the Garden reveals that God was use to walking in the Garden with them. God had created man for himself and he chose to dwell with man in the Garden. “God with us” wasn’t a new concept that was revealed to Joseph upon the impending birth of Jesus; God was with man in the beginning of creation—dwelling with him.

Man had communion with God and God had communion with man—because that’s what God desired.

I’m not sure what God did with Adam and Eve on their walks through the Garden; I gotta believe that walking and talking with God was something better than I could muster up in my imagination.

But, with Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience came separation—God could no longer dwell with man because of man’s sinfulness. But God’s desire was to one day dwell with man again and have man dwell with him. And, he made this promise a little later in Genesis 3…

Genesis 3:14-15

14The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

God’s promise was that one day, through a woman, God would send The One who would bruise (or destroy) the Serpent, and in the process The One would be wounded. There would be a continual warring between the children of light and the children of darkness.

Christmas is the story of God loving man so much that he incarnated himself into our world through his son Jesus–Immanuel, so that Jesus would reconcile man to God and God could once again dwell with man and man with God

I don’t know that we, as followers of Jesus grasp that God wants to dwell with man and wants man to dwell with him. I think that means that God likes us; he likes people, human people, who are made in his image.

Jesus—Immanuel—“God with us”–is the beginning of God’s promise to bring man back into relationship with himself so man could again dwell with God and God could dwell with man.

As I read Genesis and Matthew I was reminded of something I had read in Revelation…

Revelation 21:1-3

1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

In the new heaven and new earth there is the re-unification of what existed in Genesis 1-3; God comes to dwell with man once again, as he had originally done at creation with Adam and Eve. It was made possible through Jesus Christ—Immanuel—“God with us.”

I’ve heard it said “the gospel isn’t a way to get us to heaven; it’s a way to get us to God,” and I believe the person who said it had great insight.

Christmas was the necessary action to get us back to what we were originally created for—a dwelling place for God. God desires to dwell with us—to commune with us.

The longer I meditated and pondered the fact that God desires to dwell with us the more I wondered if we, as Jesus’ followers understand that the truth of “God with us” should shape not only our individual lives, but also the life of the Church.

If God desires to dwell with us, our individual lives need to be lived in such a way that we welcome the dwelling of God. Similarly, our corporate lives as a Church need to be lived in such a way that we welcome the dwelling of God.

I can’t help but think that the manifest presence of God would be the thing we’d most pursue both individually and corporately.

We could probably let go of most of the trappings of “church” if we simply said “come Lord Jesus, we want you to dwell with us,” and then waited on him to walk among us as he did with Adam and Eve.