GOD'S INDESCRIBABLE GIFT!

II Corinthians 9:15 “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable (indescribable) gift.”

Christmas Day, a day we give and receive gifts, and a good day to talk about God’s unspeakable, amazing, beyond our comprehension, gift.  This gift was Jesus, all wrapped up in love.

God’s ultimate gift to us was His Son, Jesus.  Of Himself, Jesus said “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

Because of God’s wonderful gift, we can have other gifts such as the ‘gift of a relationship’.  John 1:12 states that all who receive Him, those who believe in His name, He gives the right to be called the sons and daughters of God.

He also gives the ‘gift of His Grace’.  Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by Grace you have been saved…” We have received the ‘gift of Eternal Life’, as according to Romans 6:23 “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

One reason I think of God’s gift as ‘indescribable’ and perhaps part of Paul’s thinking in II Corinthians 9:15, is that it is greater than we can grasp with our finite minds.  Jesus was God, 2nd person in the Trinity, totally God.  Yet in order to become the propitiation for man’s sin, He had to take on a human body.  In doing so He had to become a human being.  Now we have something beyond our imagination, something incredible, indescribable.  He was still God, just as though He had never been man; yet He was man as though He had never been God.

And He did this as a gift to each of us.  “For God so loved the world that He gave (this indescribable gift) His only begotten son, that whosoever believes on Him will have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

So at this Christmas Season, as we open all our wonderful, no doubt expensive gifts, remember the most unspeakable, indescribable,  gift of all, ours for the taking.  This Gift is Jesus!!

IMMANUEL

In Matthew 1:23 it states “they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.”  Why, you may ask, was Jesus not called Immanuel as His given name?  The notes in my Scofield Bible say that ‘according to Hebrew usage, the name does not represent a title, but a characterization.’  It shows that He really was “God with us”.  It also shows that the diety of Christ, our anointed one, was emphasized at the very beginning of the New Testament.

The word “Immanuel” consists of two Hebrew words:  ‘El’, meaning God, (the reason the word is sometimes spelled ‘Emmanuel’) and ‘Immanu’, meaning “With us”.  It is pronounced ‘ih-MAN-yoo-el’, and is used only three times in Scripture; the first appears in Isaiah 7:14, with prophetic words spoken by Isaiah about 700 years before Christ.  It is used again in Isaiah 8:8, and then in our verse of Matthew 1:23, which is quoting from Isaiah.    Matthew is applying it to the child to be born of Mary, the virgin betrothed to Joseph.  In Jesus, God would become a man that He could save the world and bring man back to God.  Through Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, would redeem and restore this relationship between man and God.

David tells us how God is with us as our ‘Immanuel’ in Psalm 139:7-10:

“If I go up to the heavens, you are there,

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

If I settle on the far side of the sea,

Even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast.”

How can we lose?  What do we fear?  Immanuel, God is with me.

A 4th century prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate, says:
“Christ be beside me, Christ be before me,
Christ be behind me, King of my heart;
Christ be within me, Christ be below me
Christ be above me, never to part.”

‘Immanuel’, God with us.
                      He is our God 
                                         He is truly with us!