A WORD FOR TODAY, December 17, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, December 17, 2025
Lectionary Scriptures for December 21, 2025, Fourth Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 7:10-17; Psalm 24; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14, WEB
What does it mean to be righteous? Most people define it as doing what is right. As a matter of fact, the dictionary definition is: (of a person or conduct) morally right or justifiable; virtuous. Some people use it to describe something that is especially good or excellent. This is the law centered definition, which is the way the people in Jesus’ day understood righteousness. Those who lived according to the Law were righteous. The truth is that it is impossible for any of us to live perfectly according to the Law. We fail every day. We sin in many ways: big sins, little sins, obvious sins, and hidden ones. We might be more righteous when we compare ourselves to our neighbors, but we are nothing but corrupt, perishable flesh when we compare ourselves to our God.
The Bible teaches righteousness from a completely different point of view: we are not righteous because we have done what is right, we are made righteous by what God has done. Those who are righteous in God’s eyes are those who trust in Him. Righteousness is being right with God, something we’ll never do on our own.
Today’s lessons include the tale of two men who are faced with tough decisions. Ahaz had to deal with an oncoming invasion from Israel and Syria against Judah. God is faithful to His promises, and all He asks of His people is that they trust in Him, but Ahaz sought the help of allies to help him with his war. He went to Assyria for strength. Isaiah spoke to Ahaz with a promise: “This is what the Lord Yahweh says: ‘It shall not stand, neither shall it happen.’” And a warning, “If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.” The decision facing Ahaz was to believe in God and to trust in Him.
God even offered to prove Himself. “Ask a sign of Yahweh your God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.” It isn’t very often that God offers to prove Himself, but He did so with Ahaz. Ahaz, however, feigned righteousness by refusing. “No thanks,” he told Isaiah, “I won’t test God.”
How many of us would love to have proof that something we’ve heard is really from God? I know that there are times when I just wish He would speak more clearly so I can be sure. When we are making career decisions, considering marriage, or making a move to another city, it would be so much easier if God said, “Yes” or “No.” But we are left without such clear guidance. We don’t have Isaiah to tell us when we are going the wrong way. We just have to trust that God is guiding us in ways or people we don’t always see and that He can use even our wrong choices to do His Work in the world. We glorify Him by our trust. Ahaz didn’t trust God, and He didn’t want the proof of God’s promise because then he would have to do things God’s way. God sent the sign anyway, and in the end, Ahaz was not established. Ahaz faced war and God was prepared to save Judah from destruction, but Ahaz seized control and his plan failed.
God promised to send a son. The immediate fulfillment of the promise was probably a child born to Isaiah’s second wife. That child suffered from the devastating invasion of Assyria, which decimated the countryside and made fresh food impossible to produce. That child also saw the destruction of Israel and Syria before he turned twelve or thirteen. That child was called Immanuel (God with us) as a reminder that God is truly with His people, inviting them to turn to Him, trust in Him, and believe that He does have everything under control.
That child was a foreshadow of the ultimate plan of God. From the beginning of the world, He planned to send His own Son to be the true Immanuel. Jesus was in a right relationship with God, trusted in Him and obeyed His commands. Jesus willingly lowered Himself, giving up the glory of heaven to take upon His shoulders the burden of our sin. He was righteous so that we might become truly righteous, not by our own actions but by His grace. Jesus, Immanuel, would make an eternal difference for God’s people. Jesus, born of Mary, was set apart from all others, including the son of Isaiah. Mary was the virgin in Isaiah’s prophecy. The first Immanuel was a reminder that God is with His people, but the Immanuel we look forward to greeting on Christmas Day is truly God with us.
Ahaz chose to go his own way, do his own thing, follow his own path, but in the Gospel story we another man who trusted God. Imagine the scene: you are legally bound to a woman who becomes pregnant. This doesn’t seem like a scandal these days, but it was catastrophic for Mary and Joseph. Not only would they suffer the ridicule of their community, but there were legal ramifications for this kind of unfaithfulness. Joseph could insist Mary be stoned to death. He did not want to do so, but there was still a problem: the child in Mary’s womb belonged to another man. That man had all the rights and responsibilities of the child. That’s why he felt he should divorce her, to free her to marry the father of her child.
God appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to yourself Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” God was in control. The child was not the product of infidelity, but of the Holy Spirit. God is the Father, and in this dream, He invited Joseph to act as His legal guardian. “You shall call his name Jesus.” By naming the child, Joseph became His father with all the rights and responsibilities. Jesus became his son, with the heritage of the House of David. It was all in the plan.
Just like Ahaz, Joseph faced a dilemma: to believe or not believe? Joseph chose to believe. He did all that the Lord told him. He took Mary as his wife and cared for her. And when the child was born, Joseph did what God said. He named Him Jesus. Joseph could have taken matters into his own hands and done what was within his rights according to the Law. He could have sent Mary. The choice to take Mary, to live with the ridicule and raise a child that was not biologically his seems crazy. Just as the choice to face the enemy without allies seemed crazy to Ahaz. God calls us to trust Him and do the crazy because He is able to make it all work out right. God makes His plans succeed when we don’t trust but, but ours fail. We think we know better than God, but we always discover that we don’t know much. We try to succeed by doing things our own way, but blessedness comes when we are obedient to Him.
Jesus is the fulfillment of all God’s promises, including this one from Isaiah. He is Immanuel, “God with us.” Sometimes we prefer Him to be a far-off God, separate, out of touch, because we want to be in control. We want to do what we think is right and follow our own ways. We are more like Ahaz than Joseph. I don’t know many people who would be so willing to follow a dream. We prefer to do what fits in our character or the expectations of society. We act with a righteousness on our own terms, not God’s.
We might say or do what we think God expects, claiming like Ahaz that we don’t want to test Him, but this is not true humility or obedience to God. Trust means acting according to God’s Word. God knew that Joseph’s righteousness was not false humility or self-righteousness according to the Law as he understood it. Joseph had a right relationship with God, a heart to do God’s will, and a spirit that discerned that what he heard was true.
God does not leave us to our own faithlessness. He chose to come and dwell among us. He sent Jesus, His Son, our Lord. It is for this Immanuel that we wait. It is for this Messiah that we watch. He will be all that God has promised, all rolled up in a tiny baby born in Bethlehem. This is the most extraordinary aspect of our Christian faith: God came down to be born of the humblest circumstances and live among us. He took the risk that His chosen helpers would do what He asked of them. What other god would become like his creation rather than demand creation strive to be like a god? He saw our heartache close-up. He experienced our temptations. He is Immanuel.
We are like Ahaz, trying to solve our own problems, turning to allies instead of God. During Advent, however, we are invited to look toward the sign He sent in promise. “A child will be born.” We wait for that child each December, remembering for a brief season that God did all that was necessary to make us right with Him. If only we could remember every day of the year, not just at Christmas. If only we could live consistently as the disciples God has called us to be. God knew from the beginning that we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, live this way, which is why Jesus came. We are not able to be right by our own power or ability. So, let us trust in God and dwell in those promises, living in the faith that God now dwells among us. That is the only way we will ever be righteous.
The Christmas miracle was an incredible risk. Jesus did not just appear one day in flesh and begin preaching. He came into the world in the normal way: through the birth canal of a woman. Infant mortality was high; many children never made it to their first birthday. Jesus lived in a world with disease and was threatened by the sword of the Herod. He faced the dangers of the road when Joseph took his family to Egypt.
God risked everything by trusting the faith of one human man whose ancestry was vital to the fulfillment of the prophecy and promises. Joseph was from the House of David and by that heritage, Jesus could become the King of the Jews. It was worth the risk; God’s choice of every aspect of Jesus’ life removed the wall that separated us from our Creator. We trust in ourselves because we are sinners in need of a Savior, looking to everyone and everything but God. Grace set us free from the bondage of our flesh.
In a book about Martin Luther, Martin E. Marty wrote that Luther saw God as contradictory. “He makes most sense to me as a wrestler of God - indeed, as a God-obsessed seeker of certainty and assurance in a time of social trauma and of personal anxiety, beginning with his own. However you choose to explain his life, it makes sense chiefly as one rooted in and focused by an obsession with God: God present and God absent, God too near and God too far, the God of wrath and the God of love, God weak and God almighty, God real and God as illusion, God hidden and God revealed.” Unlike humans, however, God’s opposites are not contradictory. They encompass the wholeness of His character. He is a God who is bigger than any human understanding.
Unfortunately, we see things from our own perspective, a view that is a fraction of God’s omniscience. We try to fit God into a box, to limit His character and nature to fit our own needs and desires. We want God to be what we want Him to be. Yet, God can’t fit into any box. He is all that He is and all that He does is within His character. He can only be true to Himself. The God that Luther sought was a God of seeming contradictions, but the reality is that He is present and absent, near and far, wrathful and loving, weak and almighty, real and illusion, hidden and revealed. He is more than we can ever imagine, but always the King of Glory.
The psalmist knew that only God deserves our praise. There are many Christians who are immature in their faith. They confess the saving forgiveness of Jesus and yet often look to themselves to accomplish the work. There are too many Christians who think too highly of themselves and their righteousness. There are people who preach and teach a gospel that makes people equal with Christ. They believe that humans can reach the level of perfection that we will have when we live in eternity. They think they are sinless and know all that needs to be known about God and His kingdom. This makes them irresponsible, taking chances that can lead to destruction.
Human beings never reach the point of perfection by our power or ability. We cannot approach the throne of grace with our own righteousness. We must look to Jesus Christ who can ascend the hill, receive the blessing and vindication as described in the psalm. As His followers, believers in His name, we can go with Him before the throne. He clothes us in His righteousness; we are called to simply believe.
Joseph was the adoptive father of our Lord Jesus Christ because by his heritage our King was a son of David. He was the true Messiah that would save His people from their sins as promised throughout the Old Testament. He was not only the son of David through Joseph and Mary; He was the true Son of God. He was flesh and blood, born of a virgin and claimed by a man. But He was also Immanuel, God with us and by Him we have life and faith and hope and peace.
This message, this Gospel, is often lost in the midst of the Christmas celebration. There is symbolism in the things we do to honor our Lord’s birth. The lights on our houses and in our tree remind us that Jesus is the light of the world. The tree, an evergreen of some sort, reminds us of the everlasting love of Christ. The wreaths and poinsettias, balls and ribbons, even the candy canes have some deeper meaning to those of us who believe that Christmas is more than a time to party and give presents.
Yet, the world does not always see the Gospel in our festivities. They might know that Christmas is about Jesus. They might even know about the kings, the stars, the shepherds, the virgin on a donkey, the birth in a stable among the beasts. As we celebrate, however, we need to remember that they do not see the Gospel in our glitz and tinsel. They will only know that righteousness comes from God alone if we go out in faith and obey the command of God to tell the world that Jesus has the power to defeat sin and restore all men to God. It is risky. Evangelism is rejected more than it is received. Faith is ridiculed. In some places, even today, faith will bring persecution and death. But they will only hear the Gospel if we tell them. Without the words of grace, the glitz of the Christmas season is worthless.
Are you going to be like Ahaz, taking control of your world and ignoring God’s word, trusting only in your own plan rather than God’s? Or will you be like Joseph, who despite the risk offered by God’s Word, walked in faith and saw the fulfillment of God’s promises in his own home as he cared for the son of God as His earthly father? We have been restored to our Creator, and we now live in a world where the God of all creation dwells in the hearts of all those who believe. This is truly Good News which we can trust now and forever. It is in this message that we will find true peace.
Advent is almost over; our wait is almost complete. It will soon be Christmas Day, and we will celebrate the birth of Jesus. But Jesus came for more than a holiday. He came to call His people to lives of discipleship, lives of sharing the forgiveness, compassion and hope that comes from God through Christ Jesus. It might seem like the world is against us. It might seem like the world has rejected God and wants to destroy God’s message. It does, because the message of God is that He is greater than the world. The world wants to stop what God has done, is doing, and will do, but God always has a greater purpose. Now is the time for us to trust that He is in control. We are called to be like Joseph, responding to God’s word with faith. We should not be tempted to take the battle into our own hands but instead learn what God would have us see in the circumstances that surround us. He took the risk for our sake. The only risk we take is to let go and believe that He has heard our cries and has come to save us.
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