Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
December 21, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
Advent 4A
Immanuel – God With Us
11 ASK! a sign of the LORD your God; let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven! 12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD.” 13 And he said, “Listen now, please! O house of David. Is it not enough that you exasperate man, that you should frustrate my God also? 14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign! Behold! The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you will call his name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:11-14 (DKV)
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Today the church is once again privileged to hear “mother” of all Messianic Prophecies. The one that the LORD God spoke by the lips of his most elegant prophet, Isaiah. Though he often has Isaiah thunder terrifying prophecies of judgment against the sins of his people; it is never the last word, but always followed up by pronouncements of the incomparable affection the Almighty holds for his Creation.
Some have wondered why, upon creation’s rebellion, the LORD God did not scrap the entire enterprise and start again: to which there are two answers.
Firstly, the human being whom God created “of dust from the ground” and into whose nostrils he “breathed the breath of life by which he became a living soul,” could not be improved upon. It took millennia for scientists to create wobbly facsimiles of a man (a man mind you), which has given every robotic scientist a new respect for what God created out of dust. Why would God destroy what to this day stands as unparalleled.
Secondly, it was not man, the brilliant creation, that went bad. But it was the ultra-jealous devil who poisoned God’s chief creation, then strangled then holiness out of him, and turned him into the prodigal sons that we all are today.
But man was not a robot. God gave Adam and Woman a free will by which they could fear, love and trust in HIM above all things, or be distracted. We know what happened which is why we are here today worshiping HIM and HIS Son Jesus Christ who re-created us to exclusively love our God, His Word, His Will, then to see HIM face to face; And bask pure, unalloyed wonder:
as it was in the beginning
is now
and every shall be
world without end.”
The LORD God did not go back to the drawing board and create anew because God had already formed us IN HIS OWN IMAGE and what can be better than that? But rather he chose to RE-CREATE us in the image of His Son. Whom we resemble so much, and who has such resemblance to us, that God could send him into the world and everyone assumed he was just another Man. Just another man that is, until he opened his mouth! “Never a man spake like this man” (John 7:46) said the temple police who were sent to arrest him, and came back empty handed.
No! Once a person heard Jesus he could not un-hear him, or un-see him. Yet they blindly assumed he was just a man until they heard Isaiah’s prophecy, and realized that while these words of Isaiah were fulfilled during the reign of King Ahaz, moral midget that he was. That the final accomplishment of this divine promise was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus.
That he is the Son by whom, with whom, and in whom our Almighty God and Father, our Creator and source of every good thing, was now WITH US! And so not only are we not alone in the great big universe, the Maker and Monarch of all is at our side at all times, and in all places, clearing the way, and seeing to our every need.
It is not accurate to say that Jesus came to repair what went wrong with God’s original creation. He did much, much, much more than that! In the words of St. John the Divine, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) But it all starts with the virgin’s womb. Specially prepared by God to be able to conceive a unique Seed in her Womb – who is both God and Man in one Person.
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King Ahaz of Judah whom we meet in today’s Old Testament reading was an Israelite who was likely circumcised and catechized to be a good Israelite. But when we meet him on the throne of Judah he is a pagan’s pagan! The crème de la crème of a porcine heart. The master sorcerer that led God’s people to divine judgment in “outer darkness.” A place never want to be. He was not even slightly comforted by the promise of a child whose name means “God is with us.” Not consoled because he had no faith; which made him as unstable as a stormy sea.
But we, by God’s grace, do believe and are consoled because “In HIM dwells the fullness of the God-head bodily.” And what we believe is what we see and hear. Our Lord’s holy voice reading to us aloud from his Scripture, washing our feet by absolution, hearing our prayers, accepting our praises and thanksgivings, nourishing us with his exalted Flesh and Blood, sending us home with his blessing, keeping us in the one true faith until we reach the fullness of Christ. It is coming as surely as Christmas.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.