God with us, just three little words from Matthew's account of the Nativity story. But those three words radically changed the course of human history. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah looks more deeply into the meaning of God with us and the impact of the Creator becoming human in the person of Jesus. Listen as David shares the conclusion of his message.
Why call him Emmanuel?
Well, today we're going to finish up what we started yesterday. We're in the midst of discussing three things that are true. Because God is with us. And I'm glad that you're with us today, too, because we continue our discussion of the incarnation. The coming of Christ to be one of us.
And we celebrate that at this season of the year. I know that during this season there are many things that happen to take you away from the true meaning of the season.
So, I believe one of my purposes during this time is to just keep pointing you back to why we celebrate. Every day, as you listen, I don't talk about all of the. Wonderful seasonal things that we do, as fun as they are. I talk about the meaning. The meaning of Christmas is Christ has come.
And, um, We're very excited about Him being with us as our Savior. If you've trusted Him as your Lord, you know He's not just your Savior, He's your friend. In the craziness of this time of the year, you have One who understands and helps and will be with you, and you can count on Him at any time. Today we will finish up our discussion of Immanuel and find out more about why he is important to us in that particular mode. Immanuel is God with us.
We are going through this season with a lot of things happening and. We have so much to tell you about. It's hard to know which things to talk about each day. But the one thing I don't want to miss out on is the privilege of sharing with you this beautiful devotional book, which is our way of saying thank you for your December gift. We have.
Sent these out already by the hundreds and thousands, and it is our most popular resource every year. Many, many, many people will have this. You'll be reading along in this devotional with hundreds of other Christians all over the world. And it's yours available today for a gift of any size. That's right, for a gift of any size.
Just ask for your copy of the 2026 devotional, A Closer Walk with Jesus, and we'll send it to you right away. And now, here's part two of why call Jesus Emmanuel. Dr. Criswell, who was one of my teachers and mentors, used to preach at Christmastime. If you never heard him preach at any other time of the year, you always wanted to hear him preach at Christmas because he could preach at Christmas time.
One time he said, Think of the blessing of it all. God is with us. He shares our labors. He knows the dull, drab drudgery of life's common tasks. The heavy misery of backbreaking toil.
He shares our trials and our limitations. He was poor. With no place to lay his head, he was hungry, he was thirsty, begging water of the Samaritan woman. He was weary and exhausted, and sat for rest on the well. He bore our sorrows and our heartaches.
If there was a death in the home, it brought tears to his eyes. When he looked upon the cripple and the leper and the blind and the helpless, his heart was moved. to compassion. What Dr. Christwel was saying is that when God became one of us and walked among us, He had all of the same emotions and the same feelings that we have.
And that is a part of his gift to us in the incarnation. And because God is with us, there are three things that are true. First of all, because God is with us, we can endure the difficult circumstances of life. I want to read with you a scripture. I want to read it first the way we would normally read it, and then I want to read it the way I believe it should be read.
This is what the Scripture says, For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
So we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?
Now listen. For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
So that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?
What the Lord has said is so that we can say. What God has said about Himself and His presence with us, He has said to us, so that you and I may be able to say, I don't have to be afraid. What can man do to me?
I have the Lord. with me. The Lord is with me. Psalm 27 is almost exactly the same way. Psalm 27, 1 says, The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? Throughout the scriptures, this concept is repeated over and over again. Psalm 118, verse 6 says, The Lord is on my side, I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
Isaiah 43 says, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, neither shall the flame scorch you. Here is the truth of Emmanuel brought down to the everyday experience of each one of us. When we're in difficult circumstances, we are never there alone.
He is with us. He has promised that a part of his coming to be one of us is that he might be with us in the midst of all of our challenges, in the Christmas rush, in the disappointment of the year-end bonus, in the preparation for the new year, in all of the things that touch our lives, he is there. He is there with us. One of the stories that came out of 9-11 was the story of the cross. On a September morning in 2001, as he was searching for bodies amid the wreckage of the Twin Towers.
Frank Cilicia stumbled across a 22-foot-tall steel beam cross. The collapse of Tower One on Building Six had created a chamber in the clutter. and through the dusty sunrise Frank spotted this cross. No winch had hoisted it. No cement had secured it.
The iron beams stood independent of human help. Several days later, engineers realized the beams of the large cross came from two different buildings. When one crashed into another, the two girders bonded into one, forged by the fire. And when people would ask, where is God at 9-11? Where is the Almighty in the midst of all of the rubble?
Frank and his friends would point and say The cross is in the midst of the crisis. He is always there. Max Licato once wrote: God gets into things, doesn't he? He gets into Red Seas and big fish in lions' dens and furnaces. God gets into bankrupt businesses and jail cells and Judean weddings and funerals and Galilean tempests.
Look, and you will find what everyone from Moses to Martha has discovered: God in the middle of your storms. And one of the blessings of knowing that God is with us is that He is with us to help us. in the difficult circumstances of life. I'm sure I speak to some today who are in circumstances like that right now. Maybe you have been feeling particularly alone during this season, wondering if you are going to be left to carry this all by yourself.
I promise you, if you know the one of whom I am speaking. You are not alone, nor were you ever alone, nor will you ever be alone. He has promised to. to be with you. Secondly, because God is with us, We can expect the direct answers to our prayers.
There is a marvelous passage of scripture once again in the book of Hebrews. Where we are told about the lifestyle of this one who came to be. One of us. I want to read this to you, and I think you will immediately make the connection. Seeing then that we have a great high priest.
who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. But was in all points tested or tempted as we are, yet without sin. What the writer of Hebrews has said is this. That our high priest, the Lord Jesus, this one who has come to be with us, Has a vast storehouse of experience that encompasses every experience that you and I would ever have.
He writes about the fact that he has been tested in every kind of weakness that is known to man, apart from having sinned. And that, whatever it is that you experience, whatever I experience, whatever difficulty I go through. I have a high priest. I have An Emmanuel Who has been there and done that? And when I go to him, he totally understands.
Isn't it wonderful to talk to somebody who understands?
Somebody who's been there, who's been through it. And the Bible tells us in this passage of Scripture that this one who has come to be with us is one who has walked where we have walked, experienced what we have experienced, and every sorrow and agony, every disappointment that we have known, the Son of God knew while he was on this earth. And having said all of that, the writer of Hebrews makes this point. Here is the takeaway. Because that is true.
Notice the rest of the verse. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. That we may obtain mercy to help. in the time of need. Oh wow, what a promise.
This one who has known all that we are knowing. All the experience. all of the hurt, all of the sorrow, all the disappointment. This one has invited us to come. Notice, to come boldly.
Just come and blurt it all out. Say, Lord, you've been there, you've experienced it. Let me tell you what I feel, what's happening in my heart right now. Lord God, hear my prayer. And the Bible tells us because of what he has experienced as our high priest.
He is able to sympathize. to identify with our weaknesses. Because God is with us. We can face the difficult circumstances in our life. We can find direct answers to our prayers.
But here's one that may be particularly for me and others like me who do the kind of thing that I do. But in essence, all of us here. In some way or another, they are involved in some sort of ministry. Touching the lives of others. But the third point is this: because God is with us, we can embrace the demanding challenges of ministry.
I made a startling discovery when I was studying the Old Testament some time ago. It probably won't surprise any of you to know what I discovered. And that is that everybody that God wanted to do something difficult didn't want to do it. Yeah. Every time God went to somebody and said, This is what I want you to do, they had a hundred reasons why they weren't the right person for the job.
Sound familiar? And most of the time, behind their reticence to respond was fear. The thought that they weren't able to do it. That they couldn't accomplish it. Think of Moses.
One day God came to Moses and he said, You know, these four grumbling, complaining, Miserably unhappy Jewish people here in Egypt, four million? I want you to lead them out. You want me to do what? I want you to be the leader and take them out of Egypt to the promised land. And if you know the story, you've read it.
Moses had his own little paradigm of why he shouldn't be the person. But I want you to remember what God said to him in Exodus 4:12. These are the words of the Lord.
Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth. And teach you what you shall say. I couldn't help but throw in, don't you wish some people you know would take this seriously and let God be with their mouth? I mean, this is something we should probably just put in the footnotes of our message for today. God said, Moses, I know you don't consider yourself to be an orator, that you're slow of speech, and you don't think you can stand in front of this horde of people and lead them.
But, Moses, don't worry about it, because I will be with your mouth, and I'll tell you what to say. Joshua had a similar problem. He was supposed to take the children of Israel into the promised land and help them settle the land of Canaan. And just like Moses, He was afraid. And one day the Lord God said to Joshua in the first chapter of Joshua, Have not I commanded you, be strong and of good courage.
Don't be afraid, Joshua. Don't be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. When Jeremiah the prophet was commissioned to go to a stubborn people with the message of judgment and was told in advance of his going that, number one, they wouldn't listen to anything he had to say, and if by accident they happened to hear any of it, they wouldn't do it. And obviously Jeremiah wasn't too excited about that assignment. God said to Jeremiah, Wait a minute, Jeremiah 1:8, do not be afraid of their faces.
For I am with you. to deliver you says The Lord. And to the disciples in us, The Lord comes with this incredible challenge to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Baptizing them and teaching them everything the Lord has taught us and teaching them to observe it. And we stand in awe of such an assignment that is so overwhelming to us, and then we hear these words from the Lord.
And lo, I'm with you always, even to the very end of the age. Can you imagine our friends? Alan Sue Graham. being called to go to a tribe of Indians. To teach them the word of God and discovering.
that they did not even have a language. that they had no written language of any kind whatsoever. And I can hear Al praying and saying, Lord God, I'm happy to teach these people how to read the Bible, but they don't have any language. And God said, Al? That's why I'm sending you there.
I want you to write their language. You want me to make up their written language? How are they going to read the Bible, Al, if they don't have a language? All right. I'll do it.
And for fifty years This man and his sweet wife went to that group of people, and starting with no written language at all, they scratched out words and letters and sentences until finally they had a coherent Language. and then using the language that God had helped them create, They translated the New Testament into the Satir language. And I could hear Al say, God, I can't do this. And God said, no, that's all right. I'll go with you.
I'll help you. One of the lessons I learned early in my life was this: God's commandments are always God's enablements. If God calls you to do it, he'll help you to do it. It is inconceivable that God would call you to do something and then leave you helpless to accomplish it. And when God called this couple to the Satir Indians to translate the scripture and to write the language, they were not brilliant translators.
They were just humble people who were ready to accept God's plan. And understood that they weren't ever going to be alone, that God would be with them and He would help them. That's what Emmanuel does. He comes alongside of us when we're threatened by the things we know God wants us to do. And he stays with it.
Until it's done.
So that's Emmanuel, God with us. helping us in our difficult circumstances. Answering our direct prayers because of what he's experienced. and equipping us for difficult things. that we would never be able to do without him.
I began with a story. And I'm going to take the literary license to end with one as well. For this, like the first story. helps us comprehend in a better way what it means that God has become one of us. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard told this parable.
To explain why God communicated His love to us the way that He did. Here is his story. Imagine there was a king who loved a Humble maiden. She had no royal pedigree, no education, no standing in the court. She dressed in rags.
She lived in a hovel. She led the ragged life of a peasant. But for reasons no one could ever quite figure out, the king fell in love with this girl in the way that kings sometimes do. Why he should love her is beyond explaining, but love her he did. And he could not stop loving her.
And then there awoke in the heart of the king an anxious thought. How was he to reveal his love to this girl? How could he bridge the chasm that separated the two of them? His advisors, of course, would tell him to simply command her to be his queen, for he was a man of immense power. Every statesman feared his wrath.
Every foreign power trembled before him. Every courtier groveled in the dust at the king's voice. Why, she would have no power to resist. She would have to become. His queen.
she would owe him an eternal debt of gratitude. But power Even unlimited power cannot command love. I mean, he could force her body to be present in his palace, but he could not force love for him to be present in her heart. He might be able to gain her obedience this way, but coerced submission is not what he wanted. He longed for intimacy of heart and oneness of spirit, and all the power in the world cannot unlock the door to the human heart.
It must be opened from the inside. His advisors might suggest that the king give up this love. give his heart to a more worthy woman. But this the king will not, cannot do. The king himself could try to bridge the chasm between them by elevating her to his position.
He could shower her with gifts, dress her in purple and silk, have her crowned the queen. But if he brought her to his palace, If he radiated the sun of his magnificence over her, if she saw all the wealth and power and pomp of his greatness. She would be overwhelmed. How would he know if she loved him for himself? or for all that he had given her.
How could she know that he loved her, and would love her still, even if she had remained only a humble peasant? Would she be able to summon confidence enough never to remember what the king wished only to forget? That he was the king. And she had been a humble maiden? Every other alternative came to nothing.
There was only one way.
So one day the king rose, left his throne removed his crown. relinquished his sceptre. Laid aside his royal robes. Took upon himself the life of a peasant. He dressed in rags.
He scratched out a living in the dirt and groveled for food and dwelt in the hovel. He did not just take on the outward appearance of a servant. It became his actual life, his nature, his burden. He became as ragged as the one he loved.
so that she could be united to him forever. It was the only way. His raggedness became the very signature of his presence. And this shall be a sign to you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.
lying in a manger. Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. He had no form of majesty that we should look at him. nothing in appearance that we should desire him. The God who at the last was mocked with and then stripped of a purple robe.
and crucified wearing a crown of thorns. This is the ragged god. This is Emmanuel. And this is what God did. to demonstrate his love to you and you and you and to me.
He could not get that message across. From where he was and where we were. The chasm was too great. How does the creator of the universe Communicate to his creature. That he loves him.
that he loves her. Ah, he said, this is what I will do. I will go down to where they are and become one of them. I will take off the robes of deity and put upon myself the clothing of humanity. And as the God-man.
I will give myself for them on the cross. Then they will know. That God so loved the world. that he gave his only begotten son. that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.
but have everlasting Life. Did anyone ever tell you that John 3:16 is the best Christmas verse in the Bible?
Well, indeed, it is. It tells the whole story. The coming of Jesus Christ. for our sin. And to save us For eternity.
I hope you're a Christian. I hope you have trusted Christ. You say, well, if I'm not a Christian, why would I be listening to this program? Many people who aren't Christians listen to Turning Point. And oftentimes they tell me, I listened to this program for two years, and then finally one day it all made sense to me and I accepted Christ as my Savior.
That might be true of you. There's no reason for you to go on being lost. You can be found. You can become a Christian. Simply pray this prayer.
Dear God, I know I'm a sinner. I want to be a Christian. I want Jesus to be in my heart. I believe he's the Son of God, and I accept him right now as my Lord and Savior. He will hear your prayer and you will make a dramatic change in your life.
And thank you so much for listening every day. Keep listening, keep growing. We'll see you next time. Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah.
We love hearing how God is using this ministry in your life.
So please write to us at TurningPoint, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new 365-day devotional for 2026, A Closer Walk with Jesus. Yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen with our streaming service Turning Point Plus for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series, Why the Nativity?
on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
