Series: When God Isn’t There Week 10: God with Us
JOHN 1:9.
LUKE 1:35. God, through His Holy Spirit, became so present with Mary that she conceived a child. God broke all the rules to be present with us.
God was becoming present with the world in a new & unchanging way to save the world in a new & unchanging way.
MATTHEW 1:23. His name, Jesus, explained what He would do. His title, Immanuel, explained who He was.
God not only was with us, but God became like us for the first time in history.
Presence became personal because presence became a person.
JOHN 1:14.
God did not just become present with us; He became present to us. 1 JOHN 3:2.
HEBREWS 4:15.
COLOSSIANS 1:19. HEBREWS 1:3.
Jesus entered the world as an outcast, as someone absent from the inner circle of society.
But within Jesus’ work & miracles there was a message of presence. MATTHEW 4:17. Not only did He become close to humanity by becoming flesh, He drew near to the least of humanity to show that no one was outside His reach.
There is no length to which God will not go to rescue you from absence.
People were not God’s side mission but His main mission. LUKE 4:18.
By going to the lowest of the low & the neediest of the needy, Jesus showed us that there is no amount of absence we can heap upon ourselves that His presence cannot pierce.
John 1:9-11.
God is both revealed & concealed in the person of Immanuel. In Jesus, we have the final word on presence & absence for those who would receive Him & those who would reject Him.
Jesus did not match the expectations of man. God was veiled because He did not look like what the world was expecting.
When man tries to make God into something He is not, God withdraws.
When we make Jesus present in our image, Immanuel may become absent.
Even in Immanuel, God is absent in the way we most desire but present in the way we most require.
