Today we kick off our Advent series entitled "God with Us".
Christmas, in a word, is about presence. You can't talk about the significance of Christmas, the most life-changing story in human history, without talking about presence.

This week we begin by understanding why the presence of God with us is such a foundational part of Christmas, and how we can experience His presence in seasons of waiting.

-Matthew wants to make sure that we understand more about what type of Savior this would be, so he points back to the prophecy in the book of Isaiah some 700 years earlier. His name literally means, 'God with us'.
-We live on the other side of Christmas, and the other side of the cross and resurrection. Perhaps it’s difficult to imagine the glory in the presence of God – God actually being with us – unless you know what it’s like to be away from His presence, which is the Israelites had experienced for far too long.

The presence of God with us changes everything.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to talk about what it means that God is with us no matter where we find ourselves:
-He is with us in the waiting...waiting for answers, for the fulfillment of His promise.
-He is with us in our uncertainty, in spite of our doubts and fears.
-He is with us in the midst of obscurity, when our present reality seems insignificant or undesirable.
-He is with us always, both now and for all eternity.

The arrival of Jesus didn’t happen until after there were 400 years of silence. Four centuries of waiting.

-If you think about it, the Christmas story is a story of waiting, so it's only fitting that we would begin our series talking about "God with us in the waiting."
-Some may have waited so long; they forgot about the promised Messiah and went on with their lives, or perhaps some believed it was a promise that wouldn't come true.
-But the people we find in the story of the first Christmas hadn’t forgotten:
Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. The people present for the young life of Jesus hadn’t let 400 years cloud their memory – the Magi, Simeon and Anna.

How we wait matters. What we do 'in the waiting' matters to God.

That's why we see Abraham's name attached to the Christmas story. At the start of Mathew's Gospel, in the lineage of names, begins with Abraham.

Through Abraham's obedience, even in the face of waiting, we receive the Presence of God, God with us, Jesus the Messiah.

Two questions for us to consider:
1. What are you waiting for?
2. How are you waiting?

Verses for further study/reflection:
Exodus 33:15
Isaiah 40:31
Isaiah 53
Malachi 4:2-3
Luke 1:18-25
2 Peter 3:8-9