With Us All - Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (December 21, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 7:10–16 | Psalm 80 | Romans 1:1–7 | Matthew 1:18–25

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” (Matthew 1:23).
 
Our journey through the season of Advent is almost at an end. In a few short days, along with our Christian sisters and brothers around the world, we will celebrate the birth of our Saviour King: Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, and the Son of God.
 
But as we face the final days of Advent together, awaiting not only His birth in Bethlehem, but also His coming again in glory to set all things right once and for all… we are invited to reflect on one of the most important elements of our faith and the Christian way of life: and that is love.
 
Love… offering oneself to another… and not just when it’s easy… when things are going great and we’re all getting along… but when it’s really hard… when tensions and divisions keep pulling us apart… when doubts arise, and dangers threaten, and when we’re really afraid. That’s when love’s needed the most.
 
And in our readings from Holy Scripture this morning we are reminded that even when things seem to be at their darkest, and our tensions and divisions seem to be the fiercest… God shows us that we are not left alone… and that, no matter what, we can trust that God’s saving love is still with us.
 
In our first reading from the book of Isaiah, we hear about a heated exchange between the prophet Isaiah and King Ahaz, the leader of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
 
At the time King Ahaz was facing a serious crisis: two of his neighbouring nations, the Kingdom of Aram, in what is now Syria, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel… their estranged countrymen… had raised up their armies and allied against him, and were now threatening to conquer Jerusalem. And we can hear their response in Isaiah 7:2, “When the house of David heard that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim [another name for the Northern Tribes of Israel], the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” And can you blame him? Judah was facing an invasion from two powerful kings right on his doorstep.

But through the prophet Isaiah, the Living God promises that Judah will not be conquered by the armies of Aram and Israel. And yet, along with these words of encouragement, God also calls Ahaz to do something… to trust Him. Isaiah 7:9, “If you do not stand firm in faith,” God says to the king, “you shall not stand at all.”
 
Of course, the LORD knew that would not be easy. God understood exactly how Ahaz and all his people were feeling. And so, to help strengthen their faith, God offers to give King Ahaz a sign… anything that would help him and his people to stand firm in faith. But instead of receiving this gift of encouragement with gratitude, Ahaz refuses… in what seems to be an attempt to appear pious… but has all the hallmarks of hypocrisy.
 
Exasperated by Ahaz, God decides to give him a sign anyway. In the middle of this war, and their city’s siege, God says that a maiden will give birth to a son, and the child will be called “God-is-with-us”… Immanuel. And this child’s life would become a sign of God’s salvation! Born in the hell of war, God promises that “He shall eat curds and honey [wholesome, rich foods, not war rations] by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, [while still young] the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.” (Isaiah 7:15-16). In other words, Judah was assured this terrible trial would not last forever: in a few short years, their enemies would be long gone. But in the meantime, the only path forward would be to place their faith in God their Saviour.
 
This episode reveals both the great tension that often existed between God and His stubborn, slow-to-faith people… and also God’s utter determination to remain faithful to them… to encourage, and coax, and urge, and even at times angrily offer them the help and hope they can only receive from turning to Him in faith… loving us, even when it isn’t easy to, and seeking our salvation in spite of our stubbornness. 
 
Turning now to our Gospel passage this morning, we find a very different episode unfolding in the life of God’s people… but one which has its own serious crisis and tensions at work. Instead of an impending war between neighbouring nations, we have a family about to fall apart: a man who feels betrayed by his fiancé, and an innocent woman facing a future of public shame and abandonment.
 
As St. Matthew tells us the story, while she was engaged to a man named Joseph, a young woman named Mary came to be with child through the power of the Holy Spirit alone. Discovering this, Joseph suspects his fiancé of being unfaithful to him. Understandably, he feels deeply betrayed… but rather than give in to the strong impulse to act against her out of spite and seek to ruin her, we hear that Joseph still wants to do right by her… to be as caring and kind as he could, under the circumstances, and break off their relationship quietly… that is, trying to avoid publicly shaming her.
 
How often do we see people like Joseph these days? People who, instead of lashing out at others when they are wounded, can act in love even towards those who they believe have hurt them? People who seek to be as caring and kind as they can be, even when they could easily pursue revenge. I pray we can all become a lot more like Joseph… even though he was plain wrong about Mary.

Thankfully, before he broke off their engagement, Joseph was visited by an angel in a dream, telling him not to be afraid to marry Mary. That she had not betrayed him… and God was at work doing something new in and through her. And this miracle child would be a sign of God’s love, not just for their little family, but for the whole world!
 
And this child will be called “God Saves”… Yehoshua… shortened to Yeshua, or Joshua… or as we know Him, Jesus… “for he will save his people” not from invading armies… but “from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)… from everything at work in them that keeps them cut off from one another, and from the LORD. He will save them through the gift of forgiveness… offering His life in love at the cross to make atonement for us… reconciling the world to God through the gift of Himself.
 
And St. Matthew sees Jesus in the same light as the child in Isaiah Chapter 7: a sign of God’s saving love for His people… graciously offered when they deserved it the least, but needed it the most. But St. Matthew recognizes that Jesus is more than a sign of God’s saving love. He’s God’s love personified… God’s love embodied and walking around in our midst. In other words, Jesus is Emmanuel… Jesus is God-Himself-right-here-with-us! And in Jesus, we see God’s saving love in action… especially at the cross.
 
In Romans 5:8-11, my favourite passage of Scripture, St. Paul unpacks what Christian love… what the love of God really looks like in action: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
 
Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
 
Jesus is God-with-us… giving Himself at the cross to save us while we were still enemies… in order to reconcile us to God… and to each other. Taking those who were far apart, and bringing them together once and for all.
 
And this is where God’s love gets really hard for us. It’s one thing to believe in and receive God’s saving love at work in our own lives… welcoming Him in to heal our hurts, forgive our sins, and graciously embrace us when we don’t deserve it. As hard as that all can be… and believe me, believing in God’s saving love for ourselves can be really hard at times… it’s another thing entirely to share God’s love… this Christ-shaped, cross-shaped love with those around us… especially when they are the ones who have hurt us… and sinned against us… and when they seem to be our enemies.  
 
But the miracle of God’s saving love that we have come to know in Jesus Christ is given to us for this very purpose! To reconcile us to God, and to reconcile us to each other… overcoming our deepest divisions so we can share in the blessed life of God together. This is a central part of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus… the one place where we can stand firm in faith. 
 
Turning at last to our reading from the first Chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, where we are given a glimpse of the incredible scope of God’s reconciling love in action… in the overcoming of the deep divisions between Israel and the Gentiles.
 
Throughout the letter to the Romans, St. Paul is addressing a deeply divided Church… where tensions between Jewish Christians and Gentile… non-Jewish Christians were particularly problematic. This powerful letter works through the implications of the Gospel… the Good News of Jesus Christ, who He is, and what He has done… within the context of a community struggling to find a way forward past all their differences… differences in language, in diet, in cultural practices… in their own understanding of their place within God’s story… in contrast to ‘those people’ over there.
 
And throughout Romans, St. Paul makes the case, again and again, that in Jesus our Saviour King, God is with us overcoming the apparent chasms between Israel and the rest of the nations… embracing everyone through Jesus, and joining them together into God’s family of faith.

From the start… in the opening lines of St. Paul’s letter, which we heard in our second reading today, we see the Apostle tying both Israel and Gentiles together in Jesus.
 
St. Paul begins by proclaiming that he is a servant of Jesus Christ, set apart to share the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus, the Saviour of God’s people… the Messiah of Israel, who is the fulfillment of the LORD’s promises through the prophets, and the whole story of the Old Testament Scriptures… descended from King David, and proven to be God’s own son by His resurrection.
 
And then Paul insists that he has been called by God’s grace to share this Good News with Gentiles too… in order that they too might come to know what he calls the obedience of faith… walking in the holy ways of the Living God, and placing their faith in His saving love.
 
And then, addressing this deeply divided community, he says this simple, but world-changing phrase: “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
 
To all God’s beloved… both Jews and Gentiles… distinct in part, but now united and embraced together by God’s saving love in Jesus Christ.
 
In Jesus, Paul sees that God is with us all… to save us all from our sins, so that in forgiveness we can all find the way forward to live in God’s love side by side… standing firm together in faith, trusting that as hard as it might be at times, His saving love really will see us through.
 
And so, when we are faced with our own times of great trouble, and find it really hard to love those around us… may we look to Jesus Christ and receive from Him the gift of God’s saving love in all its fulness… so that we can truly share it with God’s messed up but still beloved world, and help them come to know that in Jesus Emmanuel, God the Saviour is with them too. Amen.