Today’s reading is found in Isaiah 7:13-14 (NLT).
Then Isaiah said, “Listen well, you royal family of David! Isn’t it enough to exhaust human patience? Must you exhaust the patience of my God as well? All right then, 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’).
In this passage Isaiah was speaking to King Ahaz, a descendant of David. However, it wasn’t until over 800 years later that a pregnant young girl marries another descendant of David and gives birth to the one they had been waiting for – the Messiah. The sign that God had given to King Ahaz then became the sign for all of us. God is with us.
We see this verse again in Matthew 1:20-24 (NLT):
As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”
When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife.
Take some time today to focus your mind on Christ, the Messiah, and consider this question:
What is one thing you can do today to reveal to a lost world that “God is with us?”