Loneliness and Hope: How Jesus Bridges the Gap
In May of 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, drew significant attention when he called loneliness an epidemic in America. Despite living in a world more connected than ever through the internet, people are feeling increasingly isolated.
Perhaps you’re experiencing this loneliness right now, feeling especially alone during the Christmas season.
If so, there is hope, and that hope is found in a baby born in a manger 2,000 years ago. What we see in the Christmas story reveals to us that the God of the universe wants to be with you. He desperately desires to be with you.
Not only does He want to be with you, but He has also gone to great lengths just so He can be with you.
In Matthew 1:22-23, Matthew tells us that the birth of Jesus was planned and foretold about long ago.
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
(Matthew 1:22-23)
This was written 700 years before Jesus was born by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14), and Matthew is applying it to Jesus based on what he had witnessed as he spent time with Him as one of His disciples.
Matthew saw enough evidence in how Jesus lived His life to be convinced that Jesus really was Immanuel.
He witnessed Jesus do supernatural things, like heal people, walk on water, and raise people from the dead.
He saw the way He taught people and how everyone noticed that He did it with authority.
He noticed the way He conducted Himself and that He never did anything wrong. He never sinned. He was always doing the right thing.
He observed the fulfillment of prophecy. Matthew understood the Old Testament and what it said about the Messiah that was supposed to come. He watched Jesus fulfill many of those Old Testament prophecies.
Above all else he watched Jesus rise from the dead three days after He died on the cross.
Therefore, Matthew, having seen all of this with his own eyes, is now looking back on it all and writing this historical account of Jesus’ life and is saying that what Isaiah foretold had indeed come true.
Jesus was born into this world as God…Immanuel, God with us.
Now let that sink in for just a second. God dwells in heaven. He dwells in a place of perfection, one where there is no blemish, no pain, no imperfection, no hunger, no thirst, and where He is constantly being worshiped and adored.
And Matthew is saying that He left that place and that as the omnipresent God of the universe, He squeezed Himself into a human body, and was born as a baby.
Think about that! The God of the Universe who reigns over all things lowered Himself to a place where He was completely dependent on an earthly mom to hold him, feed him, and keep him alive!
And then as he grew up, He subjected Himself to everything that you and I experience here on earth: hunger, thirst, pain, humiliation, tiredness, etc. And why?
Well, Matthew tells us in 1:21.
21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
(Matthew 1:21)
This is what Jesus left the glory and riches of heaven for: to die for your sins. But why would He want to do that?
Here’s why: So that He could be “God with you” FOREVER!
He didn’t come to just be “God with us” for 33 yrs;” He came to be “God with us” forever. And the only way that could happen is if He removed the barrier of sin that existed between us.
And that is exactly what Jesus did as Matthew would tell us later in this gospel. Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead 3 days later.
Before Jesus ascended back to heaven, Matthew records Jesus as having said these amazing words:
20 ... And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:20)
Jesus was saying, “I didn’t just come to be with you for 33 years. I came so that I could be with you all the time!”
Do you see how much God must love you to go to the lengths He went to so that He could be with you?
Here’s the way Charles Spurgeon, who was one of the greatest preachers in the 1800’s, put it in one of his sermons:
“Observe the wonder of condescension contained in this fact, that God, who made all things, should assume the nature of one of His own creatures. That the self-existent should be united with the dependent and deprived, and the Almighty linked with the feeble and mortal. In the case before us, the Lord descended to the very depth of humiliation and entered into alliance with a nature which did not occupy the chief place in the scale of existence… Oh, the condescension of it! I leave it to the meditations of your quiet moments. Dwell on it with care. I am persuaded that no man has any idea how wonderful a stoop it was for God thus to dwell in human flesh and to be, ‘God with us.’ …’God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh has condemned sin in the flesh.’ ‘Oh, the depths,’ is all that we can say as we look on and marvel at this stoop of divine love.”
Charles Spurgeon
Have you come to understand and grasp how much God must really love you?
He stooped from the highest place that One could be in, to the lowest place one could be in to deal with your sin problem so that He could be with you forever!
Do you see how desperately the God of the universe wants to be with you?
You are loved, valued, and cherished so much that He descended from the glory and riches of Heaven to come and die for you so that He could be with you.
If you have put your faith in Jesus for salvation, you are in Christ and never alone!
There’s never a moment when you do not have the abundant life of Jesus dwelling in you.
There’s never a moment when you don’t have access to His guidance, direction, and empowerment.
He’s there when you are sleeping. He’s there when you wake up. He’s there when you go to work or school. He’s there when you’re working out in the gym or hanging out with your friends socially.
He’s there when you get told that it’s cancer. He’s there when your loved one passes away. He’s there when you lose your job and when there’s not enough money to pay the bills.
He’s there when you are bullied. He’s there when your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you. He’s there when you get served divorce papers and are left all by yourself.
He’s there in the stress. He’s there when you are anxious. He’s there when you are depressed.
You are never alone. Jesus is Immanuel, God with you.
