Emmanuel, Maranatha!

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"God with Us"

"The Final Chapter"

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Dannah Gresh: Okay, I think any parent who’s ever gone on a Christmas road trip with younger kids has heard this.

Whiny kid: I'm bored! Are we theeeerrre yet???

Dannah: To which many diplomatic parents have answered truthfully (but maybe not really all that helpfully) . . .

Tired-sounding dad: We’re getting closer.

Dannah: Who knows, maybe you’re in the car right now, heading to Grandma’s house for Christmas! 

While it’s true that kids can sometimes be impatient, let’s be honest, adults can be too! We’re just better at disguising our impatience. 

So here are some questions I want to ask. Christmas is almost here. Like the song says,

Song:

And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for school to start again!

Dannah: But, what are we waiting for? Are we more excited about the trappings of Christmas, while the substance is ho-hum? 

Well, there is a right way to look forward to Christmas, but I think it needs to have less to do with presents and food and family (as good as those things are) and more about the One it’s all about.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. In a moment we’re going to hear from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, who has more to say about that sense of expectation and longing related to the coming of Jesus Christ.

But first, I want to acknowledge that sometimes our expectation for Jesus is eclipsed this time of year by pain—a loved one who is missing for the first time . . . or tenth, but it still hurts; a prodigal child who makes the family dinner difficult, or even political differences that come up when you get together. Lots of things have lots of people feeling hard things this weekend. 

My friend Janet Mylin is here to help us put things in perspective. Janet originally shared this on the MomCast for True Girl. It’s a podcast for moms of seven-to-twelve year old girls that Janet, Shani McKenzie, and I host together. I thought what Janet shared about Christmas emotions on this month’s True Girl MomCast was so good that I wanted you to hear it!

Janet Mylin: All right, picture this. It's Christmas Eve and a woman is home getting ready to go out for Christmas Eve festivities with her family. All of a sudden she flops onto the couch in our living room, and she starts to sob. She tells her husband she just can't do it. She just can't do Christmas Eve this year. 

Yeah, it's sad. It's a sad picture, right? Insert sad face here. Well, that woman was me. I was in a season of waiting to be matched with our daughter in China. And Christmas just marked one more year without her. One more year of noticing the emptiness.

Christmas can do that for a lot of people, including our daughters. These holidays can be markers of either times of waiting or times of remembering that you're alone or times of a loss. 

We can kind of push things off, and then a holiday comes and suddenly you're faced with it all over again. They kind of force you to notice another year has passed, and that can be really hard.

I bet you and everyone listening knows someone who really struggles over the holiday season. Maybe it's you. Maybe you're the one who struggles. But whether you're on the holiday struggle bus or your daughter is, there are two words that are packed full of power and truth to help you through it. The first word is “Emmanuel,” which may sound familiar to you if you've sung Christmas songs before or read a couple Scriptures. 

So Dannah, the first time we see it in the Bible is Isaiah 7:14. Can you read that please?

Dannah: I would love to. 

The Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means “God is with us.”) (NLT)

Yeah. And we hear it again, actually in Matthew 1:23, when they quote that same Scripture in regards to the birth of Jesus. It’s possibly easy for us to think of Emmanuel as just a Christmas word. There are some words and studies maybe we do just over Christmas time. We don't think about them other times of the year, but I love Emmanuell all year long, personally. 

There's all kinds of ways that God is with us in Scripture. Emmanuel means “God is with us.” And his with-ness is all through Scripture. So we're gonna go through the Bible really fast. Are you ready for this? 

So in the Garden of Eden, we have perfect with-ness with God. And then with the Israelites, there in Deuteronomy 1 there's a Scripture that says, “You have seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son” (v. 31).  With-ness.

Psalm 46:1 says that “God is . . . a very present help in trouble.” And then Matthew 1, like we just talked about the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. And then John 1:14, talks about Jesus coming in human form. So the word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son. 

And then the with-ness of God shows up again because of the Holy Spirit, in John 14:15–17. “If you love me obey my commandments, I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate who will never leave you.” He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth. With-ness.

And then in Revelation 21, Eden is restored,

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, ‘Look, God's home is now among his people. He will live with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there'll be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever’” (vv. 1–4).

That gives me chills.

Right? I love it. The witness of God is all through the whole Bible. And that last one, that eternity piece, is where I want to talk about our next words. Our first word was Emmanuel, God is with us. The next word is “Maranatha.” Maranatha means, “Oh Lord come, or our Lord will come.” 

So in 1 Corinthians 16:22 is where we see this word. “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed, and our Lord come.” The word is Maranatha. 

Now, I know not everyone grew up like me, but my dad always, always pointed us to the hope of heaven. We talked about heaven. He answered questions about it. He preached about it. It was a normal conversation for us to talk about Jesus coming back. And from what I can see, maybe, we've gotten away from teaching our kids about heaven as something more than where we go when we die. 

Heaven is the ultimate with-ness of God. It is the very reason we can go through hard times because we know our problems on earth are light and momentary compared to eternity. This is not our home. 

So when our girls are struggling over the holidays, we can teach them this two-word prayer, Immanuel Maranatha. Essentially we're teaching them to say, God, thank You that You are with me during this hard time, and I look forward to the day that Jesus comes back and I'm living with you forever. Wow. I love that. 

Very seldom do our hard things just go away when we pray. But knowing that one day all of our troubles will be gone forever gives us strength to keep going in the midst of these hard times. Second Corinthians 4:17–18 says,

For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever.” 

So we don't look at the troubles we can see now. Rather we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen, for the things we see now will soon be gone. But the things we cannot see will last forever. Emmanuel Maranatha God is with us, oh Lord, come.

Dannah: What a great prayer! Thank you Janet Mylin. 

So if we start feeling like whining and saying, “Are we there yet?” as in, “Can this hard thing be over?” “Can I be done with the struggles I’m facing right now?" "I don’t like this illness," or "I’d rather be at peace in this difficult relationship." Are we there yet? This journey feels like it’s too long and no fun! We can pray that wonderful prayer. Emmanuel, God with us. Maranatha, “Oh Lord, come!” 

I love that.

Well, speaking of the “with-ness” of God, that’s something Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has meditated on a lot, related to the familiar song “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The first stanza is the one that is most familiar to us.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

The picture here is of the children of Israel in captivity in Babylon. They were in mourning. They were lonely. They were in exile. They were away from their homeland.

They were living somewhere they didn't really belong. They were in a culture that was foreign to their faith, a culture that didn't know and honor Yahweh as they had been trained to do.

It was a season where life was just hard. The words of this stanza express the longing of the Jewish people to be delivered.

The Messiah was the One that God had promised for centuries, the One who would come and deliver His people, the One who would ransom them from their captivity. The song expresses a longing: "Come Emmanuel and do it."

The chorus is a statement of faith and assurance and praise that Messiah will come.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel!

It's a promise.

Emmanuel is a title for Messiah that is first found in Isaiah 7:14, where we read, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name [E]mmanuel." Emmanuel, as many of you know, is the Hebrew word that means "God is with us."

"God with us"—this was a promise that was given to Ahaz who was a king of Judah. He was being threatened by an alliance of two northern armies coming from Syria and Israel. He was terrified.

God sent to Ahaz the prophet Isaiah with a promise from God. It's a promise that the enemies of God would be defeated, that Ahaz had nothing to fear, that he should not be terrified. God gave Ahaz a sign that His promise would be fulfilled.

The sign was that a woman who had never had a child would become pregnant, would give birth to a child, and before that child was old enough to know right and wrong—when the child was still a toddler, within two or three years—the threat of the opposing armies would disappear. The armies would go away.

The deliverance would come, and the sign was that God would send this child named Emmanuel, whose name means "God is with us." That was the immediate fulfillment. But there was a longer-term promise here that was not fulfilled until 700 years later when an angel made an appearance to a young, unmarried virgin in Nazareth and told her she was to have a child.

We read in Matthew 1:22 that all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet Isaiah. "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name [E]mmanuel, (which means God with us)" (vv. 22–23). Here was a second and more important fulfillment to God's promise—that God would be with us and we could be free from terror, from the enemy, because God was coming to earth.

In answer to that promise, we know that God did come. He came to this earth. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). I want us to be reminded this Christmas that the coming of God to earth in the form of Jesus Christ makes all the difference in the world—not just for those Jews who were "mourning in lonely exile," but for us as the children of God in this Church Age as well.

God's promise was not just one to deliver His people from physical captivity; but more importantly, it was a promise to deliver His people from spiritual captivity, from their sin. "Until the Son of God appear," the song says. Well, until the Son of God appeared, until Jesus came, we were in captivity.

We were enslaved to sin; we were enslaved to Satan. We were in exile, just as those Jews were in exile. We were alienated—lonely, separated from God, separated from others, barriers and walls in our relationships—because we didn't have God. We had reason to mourn even as those Jews did. Our plight was miserable and hopeless.

As we read in Ephesians 2:1, "We were dead in trespasses and sins." We were separated from Christ. We were alienated and strangers to the covenants of promise. We had no hope, and we were without God in the world.

What a way to live! And just a reminder, that is the way most of the world lives yet today—mourning in lonely exile, in captivity to Satan and sin. "Until the Son of God appears," the song says.

What does the coming of Emmanuel mean to us? It means the end of captivity. It means we've been ransomed; we've been redeemed. It means the end of exile. We're no longer alienated. We're no longer separated from God and from one another.

Ephesians 2 tells us, "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (v. 19). You know what that says to me? We're back home—no longer in a foreign land but back home with God.

It's the end of aloneness when Emmanuel comes. It means that God is with us. I don't know about you but my heart says, "If God is with me, what else and who else do I really have to have?" If God is with me—and Jesus said to His disciples as He left this earth and returned to heaven, "I am with you always [Emmanuel], even to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20).

The coming of Emmanuel means we can rejoice—not just because Emmanuel is coming but because Emmanuel has come. We no longer mourn as those who have no hope.

Dannah: It’s such a comfort to remember that, in Jesus, our Emmanuel, and through His Spirit, God is truly with us. That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, explaining some of the lines in the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Earlier in this episode, Janet Mylin encouraged us to pray, “Emmanuel, Maranatha.” Meaning, “God is with us. Come, Lord Jesus.” Well, when Erin Davis was leading a study on the life of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, they thought about that word, “Maranatha.” 

Let’s listen to Erin, in conversation with a couple of friends, including Jaquelle Crowe.

Erin Davis: Don’t you hate it when movies end in such a way to just T-up the next movie? You know that they are just trying to get more of my dollars because we’ll go see it. That’s sort-of how Elizabeth’s story ends, seemingly. We know the child grew; he was strong, and he lived in the wilderness. Was she in the wilderness? It feels like we are just T’ed up for the next part of the story, and it can be frustrating.

But . . . this is why the whole counsel of the Lord is so rich, why it is so good for us to know what it says in Genesis and Revelation and everywhere in-between.

In a way we can know the end of Elizabeth’s story because it is the same as the end of our story. While we’d want it to wrapped up in a tidy bow: She had a longing. The Lord met her longing. She saw the Messiah. We don’t get that, but we do know she will get to see the Messiah.

Every day of Elizabeth’s life, He was moving her toward the day He when the Messiah would come. She didn’t know that. She had no way of knowing.

When we open the pages of the New Testament, we’ve just ended a 400-year period of God’s people waiting. That’s a long time!

There’s no way for Elizabeth to know that she’s about to come to the exclamation point at the end of that in the next chapter. As she faced the disappointment of infertility, God was really busy preparing the way for Jesus to come. That is the same thing that He’s doing in all of our disappointments.

Spoiler Alert: Let’s read the end of Elizabeth’s story. It’s in Revelation 22:12. Do you have it for us?

Jaquelle: I do. “Behold I am coming soon bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done.”

Erin: He’s coming! He’s coming for each of us. There’s that word that we find only once in Scripture, “Maranatha”—come quickly Lord Jesus. 

All of Elizabeth and Zechariah’s life was that word, Maranatha. They knew the Messiah was coming. They were faithful. They were from faithful, Levitical families that were waiting for the Savior. Yes, there was this unfulfilled longing, but there was this, “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

They got to see Him come for the first time as Emanuel, Christ with us. But they will be a part of the moment when you and I and Elizabeth and Mary all get to see Him come for us.

The Bible says He is coming quickly. It doesn’t feel quickly sometimes.

I know I don’t get to tell the Lord what to do ever. But every day I’m like, “Today would be a good day.” There’s still time today for Him to come.

So we share with Elizabeth that watchfulness in hoping for a Savior and waiting for Him. Really, the end of her story and the end of her disappointment isn’t really the baby. It’s the redemption that came when Jesus came the first time and then when He comes for us.

What’s cool about Elizabeth’s story is that we share the happy ending with her. We don’t get to see the happy ending completed. But we do know that Jesus is coming for each of us. And that gives me such great hope in the face of disappointment.

Jaquelle: It really connects us to Elizabeth and these women of the Bible as real people. We are going to experience that with Elizabeth. All of God’s family, we will be united together. All of our longings and disappointments and desires will be fulfilled in, Jesus is coming back. We’re going to see Him and know Him and be with Him.

Erin: There will be this new home for us where there is no crying, there is no pain. We could insert into there, there is no disappointment. If we’re not crying and we’re not worried, then we are not disappointed.

There’s not the sun because Christ Himself is our light. Elizabeth will be there with us. And Elizabeth’s story bleeds into Mary’s. We know that they are relatives from the text. We know that when Mary finds out she’s pregnant, it’s Elizabeth’s home that she goes to hide herself in.

It seems like the ending of both of their stories are these miraculous baby boys. But really, the ending of their stories is being with Jesus for millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of years.

They didn’t know that. They didn’t have what we have, the book of Revelation. They didn’t have text that tells the story. They just had this hope that Jesus was going to keep His promises. I think that’s the final chapter of your disappointment. It’s the final chapter of my disappointment. There’s going to be redemption.

That’s all really high-level thinking. Practically, in your own lives, when you face disappointment, how do you hold on to that happy ending that’s coming.

Jaquelle: I think we can talk about gratitude in things like this. Count your blessings, and be grateful. But in the Old Testament, there were so many times that they set up alters of remembrance—when He gave them the Ten Commandments, and when He cleared the Jordan River.

They set up all these stones of remembrance so they could remind themselves in a physical, tangible way that God was faithful. They could go back to that.

So I think that’s what we are really trying to get out to encourage each other. Gratitude is, “Go back to those alters of remembrance.” Where has God been faithful? How have you seen Him come through before? Remember that now.

Erin: I have all these sayings that I say to myself. I’m not trying to be tweetable or sharable, but I need them for myself. I tell myself often, “It won’t be long now.”

In the span of eternity, it won’t be long now. In the midst of pain and heartbreak and disappointment, it doesn’t feel like it’s been a little while. It feels like this is going to go on forever. But it won’t be long now. He’s coming for me. It won’t be long now.

I remind myself often that He’s done it before, He’ll do it again. He’s rescued me. That’s those alters of remembrance. I put that everywhere. If you were to be in my home, you would see words everywhere. Part of that is because I identify with words stronger than some other things.

I want me and my family, wherever we turn, to be smacked with the truth, because we need it. We have spiritual amnesia all the time. We forget . . . “Oh no, this is going to be the time . . .” So nearly on every wall of our home . . .

When we bought our home and remodeled it, we ripped out all the floors and painted all the walls, we wrote Bible verses everywhere. Before we put new floor down, everywhere before we painted the walls, behind the cabinets before we installed the cabinets . . . We were like, “We’ve got to know that underneath all this stuff is the truth that is going to shore us up.”

I think that woman that is listening, she needs to put it where she can put it. Sometimes I just get a Sharpie and just scrawl it on my arm. I need it that close to me.

There’s a different ending to this story than what I can see right now.

Dannah: Good reminders from Erin Davis and her friends on the Women of the Bible podcast, from the season on the life of Elizabeth.

I hope your Christmas is filled with wonder and the right kind of excitement. And in those moments when you’re sick of the journey God has you on, don’t forget that simple, two-word prayer that’s full of meaning: “Emmanuel. Maranatha.”

I’m Dannah Gresh. Thanks for listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. And, Merry Christmas! 

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹ Bing Crosby. “It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas.” White Christmas ℗ 1945 UMG Recordings, Inc.

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