What does the name "Emmanuel" mean?

"God with us." In Matthew 1:18-25, an angel tells Joseph that Mary's child will be Emmanuel — God come to dwell with His people. Dr. Toby Holt explains the comfort packed into that name.

Mary was found with child by the Holy Spirit while only engaged to Joseph. He planned to end it quietly until an angel explained the child was from God, giving two names: "Jesus," the Lord saves, "for He will save His people from their sins"; and "Emmanuel," "God with us."

Questions this study answers:

1. What is the difference between God being "for" us and "with" us? A God who is only "for" us helps from a distance; a God who is "with" us draws near and shares our life. Emmanuel means God came to be with His people.

2. What did the angel tell Joseph? That Mary's child was from the Holy Spirit and must be named Jesus, for He would save His people from their sins — turning scandal into salvation.

3. What comfort does "God with us" give the hurting? It assures us we are never alone. The God who came as a baby promises to be with His people always, even in their deepest pain. "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, 'God with us.'" — Matthew 1:23 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

Throughout the Old Testament, our Creator has been actively involved with His creation.

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For example, in the book of Genesis, He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden,

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and His glory later dwelled in the temple in Jerusalem.

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This was Emmanuel, which means God with us.

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Today we'll consider how the word Emmanuel can be applied to God's own Son

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in our study of Matthew 1.

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You know, there is a world of difference between saying to someone that I am for you and telling

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them that I am with you. These two things do not mean the same thing. There's a world of difference

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between telling someone I'm for you, I'm in your corner, I'm rooting you on, you got this. There's

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a world of difference between telling someone that and telling them I'm with you. In World War I,

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there was a lieutenant. His troops were getting ready to go over the edge. They're ready to take

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on the enemy. They're ready to cross the trenches. And this lieutenant, he's anxious. He's nervous

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about what might happen. And he sees the commander coming down through the trenches. The commander

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looks at this man, and he can see the anxiety. He can see the nerves there. And so he comes alongside

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him, puts his arm on him, and he points out. He points out to where they're going. He points out

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to no man's land. And he tells them, when we go out there, I'm going to be with you. We're going

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to do this together. And that gave the younger man a sense of confidence. It wasn't the old

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grizzled veteran just saying, you got this from a distance and go do it. Rather, he was saying,

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I'm going to be with you as you do it. I'm with you in the trenches and I'm going to be with you

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in the battle yet to come. As we said, it's one thing to tell someone I'm for you. That's easy.

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You can do that to anyone. It's another thing to say, I'm going to invest myself in the outcome

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of what you're going through. I'm going to enter into the crucible of your pain with you, at your

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side. There's a comfort when a commander or a general does it, but how much more so when a God

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does that. When God not only gives us a word and says, hey, you got this, I'm for you, I'm in your

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corner, but rather when he says, I am with you as you face this. There's something encouraging about

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that. In today's text, it's exactly what we see. In today's reading, the birth of this child,

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the one who had come from a throne down to a manger, in this text we see that this one was

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to be named Emmanuel, that this one was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and that

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his name literally means God with us. God with us. Not just God for us, but God with us. Verse 23 of

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our text will say, behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son. They shall call his

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name Emmanuel, which means God with us. This is one of the primary attributes, one of the primary

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things that makes our God cool, that makes our God awesome. One of the primary things is because

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he didn't just create the cosmos, spin it like a top, and then go off and watch us from a distance

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to see how things would turn out. Rather, from the get-go, from Jump Street, from the garden,

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that which he created, he dwells with. He creates Adam, he creates Eve, and then he walks and talks

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to them in the cool of the afternoon. The pagan gods didn't do this sort of thing. They didn't

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pay attention necessarily to everything that was going on. The god of the deists, the people who

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think that God is just this aloof god out in the cosmos somewhere that has nothing to do with us,

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who wants that kind of god? Thank God that's not the god we have. Rather, we have a god who is

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with us in the midst of everything we're going through. This was true in the garden. It was true

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at Sinai. It was true in the tabernacle. It was true in the temple. That's true for even us as

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New Testament believers, because where does God reside now? God is with us. Do you know how the

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book of Matthew closes? You know what the very last verse is? Here we see, as Jesus is introduced,

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his name means, I'm with you, God with us. The very last verse in the book of Matthew,

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the very last block of text in the book of Matthew, says the same thing. In the Great

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Commission, we see this. Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them

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in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

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teaching them to deserve all the things I've commanded you.

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And lo, I am with you even to the end of the age.

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You see that?

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There's a bookend.

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The moment Jesus is introduced in chapter 1,

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the message is that God has come down from the throne

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to be with his people.

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And then prior to his ultimate ascension,

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he says the same thing.

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He says, I'm going to leave you my helper.

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Oh, and by the way, I am with you even to the end of the age.

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That's a God we can love, that's a God we can worship, a God who's not just for us,

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but a God who is with us. All right, if you would, let's look at verses 18 and 19. We're

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going to talk about the God who is with us as we see of his birth. And verses 18 and 19,

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we're going to see what was going on with Mary and Joseph, and then we're going to work our way

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through the text as time will allow. Okay, verses 18 and 19. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as

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follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together,

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She was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not

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wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. All right, at the start

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of this passage, we see something just very ordinary, something as natural as natural can be.

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There's a woman, an individual who's pregnant, a pregnancy that will lead to childbirth. Very

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natural. Happens all the time. However, however, in these verses, we see that there's something

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unnatural, or at least unusual, that's going to take place. Verse 18 adds an unordinary qualifier.

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It says that there's going to be a pregnancy, normal, but in this case, it will occur without

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physical union. Now, I'm not a physician, but I have studied anatomy and the like,

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and I know that's just not the way that this works. Well, verse 18, we're seeing the seeds

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for something that we call the virgin birth. And this is one of the most important things

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to understand with regards to Christ's birth, with regards to the incarnation, because this is not an

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average everyday event. Rather, this is a miracle, and it's not just a miracle, but it's a fulfillment

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of prophecy, because Isaiah said this is the way it was going to go down. Behold, there be a virgin

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who would give birth to a child. Now, verse 18 clarifies it. It's not Joseph's child, and for

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these verses, we know this much. They're betrothed, but there's been no physical union there. Now, if

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you've seen Fiddler on the Roof. You remember the matchmaker? Well, they had similar things

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throughout Jewish history. They would have a season in which people were brought together.

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This was tradition. They were brought together by matchmakers and parents and others. They were put

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into a union, and yet there was a year. I know you want to sing it. There was a year of time

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after they were brought together in which they were sort of betrothed. We might consider it

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engaged. It's not really a point-for-point analogy, but they were betrothed. They spent a year in this

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estate prior to physical union. That's what's going on here. It's actually much stronger than

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an engagement. This is a strong relationship that they have, and yet it has not been consummated

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physically at this point. And so, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Mary is with child. Uh-oh.

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Now, we have lost touch with the word scandal. We really have. I mean, dear heavens, everything is

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a scandal. It doesn't matter what news, you know, whatever you pick up, there's a scandal on every

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page from every direction. It seems like every aspect of celebrity or politics or athletics or

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what have you, there's scandal, scandal, scandal. We've lost touch with it. You know, in fairness,

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it didn't always used to be this way. If you're watching a TV show, you know, if Barney Fife stole

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part of Andy Griffith's sandwich, they can make a whole scandalous episode out of that. There was

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things in the past that seemed scandalous at the time that now it's absolutely nothing. We've lost

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touch with scandal to the point we look at this text and we don't understand what Joseph's going

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through. In his culture, in his time, what he and Mary were just experiencing, she's pregnant and

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there's no father, there's been no physical union, he is betrothed to someone who's pregnant, doesn't

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know what's going on. This was a scandal of scandals. And in his day, based on understanding

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of Deuteronomy, this could even have led to her death. This was not a small thing. This is a huge,

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huge event that's taking place. And so, and so in verses 18 and 19, we see Joseph's in the middle

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of a conundrum. He's betrothed this individual who has this situation going on. He doesn't know

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how it happened. He doesn't know exactly what's going on, but he has concern. Now, he cares for

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Mary enough that he doesn't want to see this become the public spectacle that it otherwise

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very well could be, and so he attempts to find some way to accommodate her well-being, but apart

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from being able to marry her, because he's a just man, and there's obviously been in his mind an

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infidelity that's taken place that would disqualify that union. Now, before he could act on that

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impulse, an angel intervenes. Let's look at verses 20 and 21 to see what happens in this

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intervention. Verse 20, but while he thought about these things, while Joseph thought about all this,

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behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be

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afraid to take to you Mary your wife for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit

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and she'll bring forth a son you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their

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sins all right as we said in verses 18 and 19 Joseph and Mary the betrothed Mary's now pregnant

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Joseph is trying to figure out what to do and in verse 20 we see that while he's contemplating

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which I'm sure this took some time for him to work this through, but while he's thinking about

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these things, he goes to sleep. He's worried, he's anxious, he falls asleep, and in the midst of his

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sleep, an angel of the Lord comes to him in a vision, in a dream. And this happens at other

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intervals of scripture as well. And when the angel comes to Joseph, it's a simple message.

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It says, Joseph, what you think has happened is not accurate, but let me tell you. You're worried

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you should take Mary as your wife. You shouldn't be. Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,

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for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't know what kind of theologian

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Joseph was at this point. We believe him to be older than Mary, but we don't know what kind of

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theologian he was. But whatever his theology was, he probably didn't fully understand that last

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statement. That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Joseph didn't have John Calvin

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around to explain all the Trinitarian implications of this, and I imagine Joseph had more questions

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than answers, even when he hears this news. And yet, he knew this much. Even if he didn't have

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all the Trinity figured out at this time, even if he doesn't know what it means for the Spirit to

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overshadow her, even if he's still going, what does that mean? He at least knew this much,

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that Mary's pregnancy was not a function of her sin.

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He knew that there was not some other father in some tent down the street

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he knew that the child that she was pregnant with was from God

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in some way that he probably couldn't fully articulate,

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but he knew it was from God.

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And then God, through the angel, tells Joseph what to name him.

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Now, naming rights in Jewish culture or any culture

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come from seats of authority.

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If you think about it in the garden,

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in the garden, Ab and Eve, you know, they're given the garden

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and all the animals are frolicking about as animals do,

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and Adam and Eve had a job.

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They actually had a couple of jobs.

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One was to take dominion over that which God had given them,

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and another thing was to do what for the animals?

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To name them, right?

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The greater names the lesser, right?

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That's why parents name children

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and not children naming parents.

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Kind of glad it doesn't work that way.

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In this case, we see that God himself,

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through the angel, takes ownership

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over the name of his own son.

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It's not up to Joseph to name.

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He says his name will be Jesus.

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His name will be Jesus.

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We'll see that a little bit more in the verses yet to come.

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Whatever the case here is, the idea is that as this child is born of the Holy Spirit,

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this child comes with a purpose.

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His name will be Jesus because Jesus means what?

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It means the Lord is salvation.

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His person is yoked to his work.

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The angel identifies his person and his origins from God, the Holy Spirit.

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But he also identifies, here's what he's come to do,

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And we're going to see that a little bit more in the verses yet to come.

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What we're also going to notice here, just a minute,

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is that when the angel talks about he will come to save his people from their sins,

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remember last week we talked about this.

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The people didn't necessarily have a problem with their sins.

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You know what the great irony is?

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You give someone a cure for a disease they don't think they have.

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If you come running up to someone on the streets of Gulfport

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with a vial of some cure, some medicine, or what have you, for a disease,

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they don't understand they got.

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They'll just say, you crossed to the other side of the street.

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They won't care because they don't recognize what you're holding

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is the cure for a problem that they have.

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The same is true of sin.

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The culture around us doesn't really think

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they have a problem with sin.

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And if they do think sin is a problem,

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they do this thing that's convenient.

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They redefine sin to be something

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that is external to them,

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a problem other people have.

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Whatever the case,

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when people had no understanding

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that they needed to be saved from sin,

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if anything was that they needed to be saved from,

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it was going to be from Rome,

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which is what we talked about last week.

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Their fear, their concern,

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Joseph's concern, Mary's concern,

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the people down the street's concern

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was not so much that, oh, my sin is going to get me.

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And yet, that was the spiritual guillotine that was over their necks and ours

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apart from this child that was born.

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Every man, woman, and child has stood condemned under sin.

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You read the book of Romans, the first five, six chapters,

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as Paul is condemning the human race and saying, well, this is our problem.

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Then, of course, he introduces the solution.

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Well, the angel introduces the solution, too, and says,

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this one has come not just to make your life better,

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not just to pour a little Jesus seasoning on things to give you your best life now,

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this one came to this end, to this object, to save you from your sins, to save you from a problem

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that you might not even understand that you have, and that our culture certainly doesn't understand

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it has. That's why he came. And here's the thing, that's what the whole Old Testament said he would

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do. The Old Testament said when he shows up, when the Messiah we've been waiting from since Genesis

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3.15, when the seed shows up, he will come to save people from their sins. Not what they were

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looking for in the first century, not what they're looking for in the 21st century. And yet the Old

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Testament prophecies said that's the guy to look out for, one who is not what you expect, one who

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will come to save you from those sins, one who's not going to come down on a red carpet from God,

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but will be born in a place like a manger. Isaiah 53, one of the most famous chapters that speaks

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to these issues, says this, this one would be wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our

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iniquities, the chastisement for our peace would be upon him, by his stripes we'll be healed. All

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we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to our own way, and the Lord has laid

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upon him the iniquity of us all. The angel got it. And he says, in the manger, Joseph, and in the

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womb of Mary right now is the one that has come to do just that. And the cruel irony is that people

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won't be looking for that. As he gets older, they'll reject him. They'll reject what he came

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to do. And yet, this is the one. This is the child. All right. Let's take a look now at verses 22

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through 25 and just kind of build on this case. Verse 22. So all this was done that it might be

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fulfilled which is spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, behold, the virgin shall be with

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child and shall bear a son. They shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.

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Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him,

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and took to him his wife, and did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son.

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And he called his name Jesus.

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All right, as we just said a moment ago, Christ's person is yoked to his work.

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The great problem in our age is that our culture doesn't do the same thing.

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At Christmastime in December, you just watch.

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People don't have a real problem with the person of Jesus so much.

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They like cute Jesus, even divine Jesus.

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That's not really the problem.

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The problem is his work. He came to convict us of our sins, to turn our hearts to God,

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to cause us to repent, and to rescue us from sins that most of us don't acknowledge that we have.

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But in this text, the angel spells it all out. He says, this is the reason he's coming.

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This is the reason he's coming, in order to save them from their sins. And as he saves them from

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their sins, he'll be the fulfillment of prophecies that said he would do just that, which is why even

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the angel quotes the Old Testament here. In verse 23, behold, the virgin shall be with child,

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shall bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.

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There's a continuity you're supposed to see with that which is written down, recorded

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in the Old Testament, and that which comes on the scene here in Matthew chapter 1.

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God wants us to see that, and Matthew was desperate that his contemporaries saw it.

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Remember, their problem when they killed Jesus was they didn't recognize him for who he was.

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I mean, they had other issues too, but that was chief among them.

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They just didn't know what they were doing.

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Isn't that what Jesus said?

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Father, forgive them.

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They don't know what they're doing.

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Same idea.

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They had a Messiah on their radar that they wanted, and it wasn't this one, this guy.

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So what Matthew, when he's writing chapter 1, when he's writing to the Jews,

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he started with the genealogies we talked about last week.

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And he said, all right, this Jesus is going to be a son of Abraham, which makes him a Jew,

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and it's going to be a son of David, which makes him a king, or in the line of kings.

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His objective was to tell the Jewish audience who this Jesus was.

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Well, here, as chapter 1 continues, he gives the biography even more so,

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and he says that this one, this Jesus, which means God is salvation,

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is also named Emmanuel, which is an Old Testament prophecy that means God with us.

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Matthew's making the case, even here in chapter 1, clearly in chapter 1,

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to a Jewish audience that this is the Jewish Messiah.

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Now, would that be compelling?

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Well, to some, yes.

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To others, not so much.

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Now, the past 15 minutes or so, we've quoted Isaiah a few times.

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I think I referenced Malachi as well.

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But there in verses 22 through 25, we see the reference again to Isaiah more acutely, more specifically.

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And this is a reference that to the Jewish audience should have resonated with them.

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But again, as we just said a moment ago, the irony is that it didn't.

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The reason that's ironic is this.

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Matthew knew that many of his fellow Jews had rejected Jesus while simultaneously longing for

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a Messiah. And his objective here in chapter 1 is to say, hey guys, they're the one and the same.

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The one you rejected is the one you were looking for. And that's what Peter does in Acts 2. He

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tells the Pharisees, you know the one you killed, the one you nailed to a tree, the one you hung

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on the cross? That was him. And when they finally get it in the book of Acts, when they finally get

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that, what happens to them? Scripture says they're just broken to the heart because then they

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understand what they did. They understand that the light of life had come to them. They didn't

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recognize it, and then they killed him. As we look to wrap up, we're going to build on all these

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things as we head towards his baptism, as we go towards the temptation, and the things that are

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going to follow in the book of Matthew. But as we wrap up, I want to return briefly to the word

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Emmanuel, which we've already established means God with us. Now, earlier I used the term, the

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term deus. Let me explain briefly. I know many of us know it, but let me explain briefly for those

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who don't. Every culture, when it comes to religion, there's two camps that they fall in.

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One, assuming that they believe in God at all, one is the camp of the deist. That camp believes

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God exists, but we can't know him. He formed the world around us, but then he went off and he does

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this thing and we do ours. That's deism. As Christians, we're not deists. The alternate,

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the alternate is what we call theism. Theism posits that God exists, but you can know him.

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And what's more, he wants you to know him.

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You and I are theists, and if you drill into that term even more, we're monotheists.

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We believe in one God.

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We're not polytheists that believe in a lot of them.

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We believe there is a God, you can have a relationship with him.

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There is a God, and there is just one.

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Now, that's highly desirable because the alternative is you have a God you can't know that doesn't care about you.

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And that's what a lot of agnostics in our day do.

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They go, I think there might be a God somewhere, but they really don't think you can have a relationship with him.

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Who wants that? Who desires that?

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Well, the picture in Matthew 1 and throughout the book of Matthew,

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the picture that's painted here is completely different.

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It's not about a God who formed the cosmos and went away.

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Rather, it's a God who's ever-present with creation

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and undergoes the life experiences, the human experiences that we do,

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up to and including birth.

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You have a God that can relate to you.

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You know, one of the greatest hardships or plagues on our age is the plague of loneliness.

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It's this idea that no one can relate to what I'm going through.

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The life circumstances have conspired in such a way

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that I'm going through something that no one can really understand,

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no one can really relate to.

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And then there's an isolation that comes with that, even a withdrawal.

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And maybe some people withdraw from us.

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And then we're left in this state, some of us, maybe many of us,

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are left in a state of loneliness, maybe for a season, maybe for a lifetime.

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And it's the hardest thing if you've experienced it.

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If that's you or someone you know,

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this message of God with us,

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and this word Emmanuel should hold a special meaning.

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Others might leave us, others might forsake us,

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others might let us down,

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and yet the God who walked with Adam and Eve

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when there was just two of them in the cool of the afternoon

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walks with us still.

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Even we're just one of us.

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God is with us no matter what we're going through.

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He's not just munching popcorn

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watching what you're going through this week.

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Some of us have a picture of God

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that he's up there in the clouds

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somewhere with a long beard, a long robe, and he's just kind of doing this to see what we do,

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and he's ready to punish us and the like, and he's there, and we're here, and there's this distance.

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That's not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture is a God who is intimate and close

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and wants to be close to you and wants your hand to fit in his. He doesn't call you a peon in the

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kingdom of heaven. He calls you a son or daughter, and that has meaning. What father or mother among

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us has not held the hand of our child and felt that proximity, felt that closeness, felt that

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bond, felt the unity that comes with holding your own. Well, that's what God wants with you.

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And even now, even if we've been fleeing from him, his arms are open to this. He came as a babe in a

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manger, the most defenseless thing that you can possibly come. He came from a state of great glory

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into a state of great hardship, great difficulty. It would ultimately lead to his death, and yet he

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did it because he loves his people. He's not indifferent to us. He's not indifferent to us.

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The other problem that we can sometimes verge into is we can think that he's indifferent to me,

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but he's cool with other Christians but I've done something that is so egregious or he knows my past

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or he knows the things I did yesterday because of that there's this gap if there's any gap in your

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walk with God it's not because he's drifted away from you it's because you're pushing him away

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the God of this book does not withdraw from children from sons and daughters but he's like

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the parable of the prodigal son. His arms are open wide. Matthew 1, God with us. Matthew 28,

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God with us. Behold, I'm with you even to the end of the age. Whatever you face this week,

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this book is not an abstract thing that just applies to other religious people or you on

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occasion. It applies to you today. God's with you as you face whatever you're facing. Whatever

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hardship you're walking down, whatever valley you're traversing, God is with you. And that's

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a great encouragement of scripture, and no other faith can present it except this alone. God is

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with us. We see it in Matthew 1. We're going to see it in Matthew 2 and the balance of the book.

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Let's pray.