Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14
I recently read that “Man can live forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope!” There are many this time of year who feel they have lost hope; many in the world struggle to find something that gives them hope. Those who do not know the Lord Jesus as their Lord and Savior are “without hope and without God” (Eph. 2:12). But to know the Lord Jesus is to know the God of hope, who is able to “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).
About 700 years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah spoke about the coming Messiah. He said, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.” In Matthew 1:23, we read this verse again in connection with our Lord’s birth. Immanuel means “God with us.” Mankind has been separated from this God of hope because sin came into the world through one man’s transgression. But the Son of God came into the world, not to condemn it, but that through Him we might be saved (John 3:16–17). The God of hope entered the world to provide hope. Jesus Christ is our hope (1 Tim. 1:1).
He suffered and died upon the Cross “once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). The death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus have brought us into what Peter calls a “living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3), and this hope is now anchored for us in Heaven, as we read in Hebrews 6:19–20: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the Forerunner has entered for us—even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
Anchor For Today:
When we find it hard to hope, the psalmist would say to us, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance” (Psalm 42:5). When the Lord Jesus came into this world, went to the Cross, suffered, and died, He was declaring, “Hope is here.” And He has said to those who follow Him, “I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20).