GOD is With Us

In the Old Testament, the Lord said that he would never leave us nor forsake us. In both Testaments, Jesus Christ is called Emanuel, which means, "God with us." We may have the promise that God is always with us, but it may not have always seemed that way.

In Genesis 21, Hagar seemed to be forsaken. Sarah had Abraham send her away. She wandered aimlessly into the wilderness of Beersheba, and when the water was gone, she left her son Ishmael under a bush, and she sat down a bowshot away to die.

Where was God then?

God was there. He was the God who sees, the God who heard the boy crying, the God who remembered a promise. He sent an angel, who showed her a well, and she and her son lived to become a great nation.

In Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego might have felt abandoned. They had faithfully refused to bow down to an idol that Nebuchadnezzar had built, and now they were being thrown into a blazing furnace because of it. God, they said, could deliver them, but even if he did not, they would not bow down. Their words angered king Nebuchadnezzar, and he heated the furnace even more. And in they went for their ultimate punishment.

Where was God then, when the three were in the fire?

God was there, in the fire. Sometimes he delivers us out of the fire, or the flood, or the disease, and sometimes he does not. But a lesson we can learn from these three holy men is that he will join us in the fire, not waiting until we are delivered to become "God with us."

Later, in chapter 6 of Daniel’s book, the prophet Daniel himself had a lonely experience. A law had been issued in that ungodly society that no one was to pray to anyone but Darius. Daniel was undeterred, and he prayed three times a day to the Lord, just as he had always done. If you know the story, you know it was a trap, and that Daniel was martyred for his prayer by being thrown into a den of lions.

Where was God when Daniel was thrown into the den of the lions?

He was there. God joins us in our pit, our furnace, and our desert. He is God with us. And he proved his presence by delivering Daniel from the mouths of the lions.

So what about today? Where is God when a four-year-old boy is sexually molested by an uncle? Where is God when an eleven-year-young girl is beaten and raped by a teenage acquaintance? Where is God when a black American saint is tied up and dragged behind a pickup truck until he literally is pulled apart? Where is God when a 69-year-old man has a stroke and can no longer speak? Where is God while a young woman in southern Sudan is sold into slavery, and her husband tortured and killed, all because they would not deny Christ and convert to Islam? Where is God today?

Jesus said in Matthew 28 that he would be with us to the very end of the age. Have we reached the end of the age yet? Evidently not. So, Emanuel is with us. He is still with us. It is He who is being molested; He is being raped; He is of the hated race; He is the One who is silenced; He is sold into slavery and martyred. He was, and is, God with us, Emanuel.

Romans 8:31-37 says, "If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else? Christ Jesus is . . . pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? . . . No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us." (New Living Bible)

Jesus was God incarnate, which means "in flesh." The Bible says that Christ "emptied himself and became nothing" in order to serve us and die for us (Philippians 2:7). Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus was tempted in every way, yet he was without sin. The fact that God would come to us in weakness and choose to become a man has some profound implications.

We don’t have to be smart enough, strong enough, or good enough to have God love us. Did your heart hear that? And we don’t have to know more or do more to earn his favor. Do you believe that deep down? God loved us all (the whole world) so much that he gave us his only Son. God did the giving here. He reached down to us; we don’t have to reach up to him. We come in weakness, and we see that he joins us at our need. So our boast is in the Lord, not in ourselves. And Christ Jesus makes us acceptable to God. He makes us pure and holy, and he gave himself to purchase our freedom (1 Corinthians 1:30).