“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’)” Matthew 1:23
As a child, one of the great things for me about Christmas over the years was always being surprised at the gift. I never knew ahead of time what I was getting. The element of surprise was wonderful - absolutely wonderful. Like many kids, I lifted a few boxes to see how much they weighed and I even looked at the tags to see who the presents were for and which ones might be mine. I never guessed and I never found out about the gift ahead of time. My mom knew that I was looking and she also knew my brother was snooping a little bit. That’s when she got creative and started using some sort of numbering system as a code, rather than putting names on the tags. For me, it was important to have a little fun but never know. I really don’t even remember thinking I might know what I was getting.
My upbringing is so different from that first Christmas. There were signs and wonders, prophecies and markers that pointed to the birth of Jesus. The people who knew the Scriptures knew what they were going to be receiving in a Messiah. They were getting God in the flesh - God with us. I love that phrase “God with us.”
Let’s come back and compare my not knowing anything about my Christmas presents and the Bible giving prophecies about what to expect. Since there are many prophecies about what to expect in the coming Messiah, we can know for sure that He is the real thing. After all, we want to worship the real one and only God and not someone fake.
