SERMON
God with Us Brings Love
Matthew 1:18-25
Advent 2; December 7, 2025
It's impossible to know the exact number of love songs, but it is estimated that there are over 100 million recorded, and they make up a significant portion of all recorded music. Research suggests that about 60-65% of all recorded songs are about love, and some analyses claim that up to 90% of pop songs focus on romantic love
On this second Sunday of Advent, our focus is “Love.”
But what really is LOVE?
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love…” (1 John 4:16)
“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19)
No amount of songs, poems, Hallmark movies can ever help us understand what love truly is, until we realize
Only when we know God will we really
know and understand and experience and express
Love as it is meant to be!
Love is a part of us only because that is a part of being an “image bearer” of the Creator in whose image we are made.
But our brokenness, our sin, our battered souls because of being sinned against – has corrupted that love. By itself, our loves will always be imperfect, incomplete, even distorted.
If you weren’t with us last week or if Advent is unfamiliar to you, let me briefly explain our journey toward Christmas. As Pastor Paul explained last Sunday, “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival,” and the season is marked by expectation, waiting, anticipation, and longing. Advent is not just an extension of Christmas—it is a season that links the past, present, and future. It offers us the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the Messiah's coming, to celebrate His birth, and to be alert for His second coming. In Advent, we wait, looking forward expectantly, in hope, as Pastor Paul preached. We wait for that “Love that came down at Christmas-time” to be reminded that love is what will sustain us until he comes again. Jesus came as Immanuel – God with Us – as God incarnate. We wait in faith because he came as love incarnate, to stay – to give us Peace…
So let us look at Advent through the perspective of love. Let’s look at it through the lens of “Love Story” – Isn’t that what the Bible is, anyway – God’s love story with humanity, indeed with all of his creation?
Here is a Love Story between two people, because all love stories need at least 2 entities.
Joseph and Mary.
Jewish marriage customs of the day were quite different from ours. There were three stages: the contract, then the consummation, and finally the celebration. First, Mary’s father would have gone to Joseph to propose and arrange the marriage. A cash price, like a dowry, would be set that Joseph would pay to Mary’s family, maybe along with some gifts, and a contract, called a ketubah, would be signed. And at that point, Joseph and Mary were married 100 percent. He was her husband. She was his wife.
At some point in the future—maybe a year, maybe years, depending on the bride’s age or other factors—Joseph would lead a procession of his friends to Mary’s house, where she would be waiting with a group of her friends. Then, while everyone waited in the house, the couple would consummate their marriage. This stage two of the marriage was called the chuppah. And then everyone would go together and have a marriage feast to celebrate the final stage of the process.
Matthew 1:18 and Luke 1:27 tell us that Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph. The ketubah had been signed. They were married according to their customs, though not yet living together. They would have got to know each other. We get a hint of “love” through what Joseph does later in the story.
Then we read in Luke 1 how Mary conceives Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit. Does Mary tell Joseph? We don’t know. What we do know is that Mary immediately goes to the hill country of Judea to Elizabeth, a much older relative, who is herself in her 6th month of a miraculous pregnancy with John (later known as the Baptizer) [Luke 1:36-39]. She ends up staying there for three months.
Eventually, Joseph finds out – I’d like to think that Mary somehow told him.
Love always protects (1 Corinthians 13:7a)
Love always trusts and hopes (1 Corinthians 13:7b)
Love always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:7c)
Love never fails! That is why Immanuel is “God with us.”
Advent reminds us that God, in his Love, always wants to protect us, always wants to trust us with his Gospel message of love and hope, and always will persevere with us… because Love never fails.
The question is:
Do we want that Love this Advent?
On this second Sunday of Advent, our focus is “Love.”
But what really is LOVE?
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love…” (1 John 4:16)
“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19)
No amount of songs, poems, Hallmark movies can ever help us understand what love truly is, until we realize
Only when we know God will we really
know and understand and experience and express
Love as it is meant to be!
Love is a part of us only because that is a part of being an “image bearer” of the Creator in whose image we are made.
But our brokenness, our sin, our battered souls because of being sinned against – has corrupted that love. By itself, our loves will always be imperfect, incomplete, even distorted.
If you weren’t with us last week or if Advent is unfamiliar to you, let me briefly explain our journey toward Christmas. As Pastor Paul explained last Sunday, “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival,” and the season is marked by expectation, waiting, anticipation, and longing. Advent is not just an extension of Christmas—it is a season that links the past, present, and future. It offers us the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the Messiah's coming, to celebrate His birth, and to be alert for His second coming. In Advent, we wait, looking forward expectantly, in hope, as Pastor Paul preached. We wait for that “Love that came down at Christmas-time” to be reminded that love is what will sustain us until he comes again. Jesus came as Immanuel – God with Us – as God incarnate. We wait in faith because he came as love incarnate, to stay – to give us Peace…
So let us look at Advent through the perspective of love. Let’s look at it through the lens of “Love Story” – Isn’t that what the Bible is, anyway – God’s love story with humanity, indeed with all of his creation?
Here is a Love Story between two people, because all love stories need at least 2 entities.
Joseph and Mary.
Jewish marriage customs of the day were quite different from ours. There were three stages: the contract, then the consummation, and finally the celebration. First, Mary’s father would have gone to Joseph to propose and arrange the marriage. A cash price, like a dowry, would be set that Joseph would pay to Mary’s family, maybe along with some gifts, and a contract, called a ketubah, would be signed. And at that point, Joseph and Mary were married 100 percent. He was her husband. She was his wife.
At some point in the future—maybe a year, maybe years, depending on the bride’s age or other factors—Joseph would lead a procession of his friends to Mary’s house, where she would be waiting with a group of her friends. Then, while everyone waited in the house, the couple would consummate their marriage. This stage two of the marriage was called the chuppah. And then everyone would go together and have a marriage feast to celebrate the final stage of the process.
Matthew 1:18 and Luke 1:27 tell us that Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph. The ketubah had been signed. They were married according to their customs, though not yet living together. They would have got to know each other. We get a hint of “love” through what Joseph does later in the story.
Then we read in Luke 1 how Mary conceives Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit. Does Mary tell Joseph? We don’t know. What we do know is that Mary immediately goes to the hill country of Judea to Elizabeth, a much older relative, who is herself in her 6th month of a miraculous pregnancy with John (later known as the Baptizer) [Luke 1:36-39]. She ends up staying there for three months.
Eventually, Joseph finds out – I’d like to think that Mary somehow told him.
Love always protects (1 Corinthians 13:7a)
- Maybe he tried to listen to those first words—an angel, a miracle, the Messiah—but all he must have felt was the weight of the word “pregnant.” Everybody knows there is only one way to get pregnant, and Joseph knew he had not been involved. Everyone would have known he had not been involved—unless he dishonored Mary and her family and all he held to be true. And if he had, he too would be a disgrace to their entire society.
- Then we read the words of verse 19: “Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” The original Greek calls Joseph her “husband” and therefore any separation would have to be a divorce (even though the chuppah, the sexual consummation, had not yet taken place). Yet there is an interesting reason why Joseph wanted to divorce her quietly and secretly. It was because he was a righteous man, a just man. Normally, legally, he would have “called her out.”
- But he wanted to protect her. “Love always protects.” That is why God, in his justice and righteousness, seeks to protect us from damnation because he is Love. He comes as a baby because of love. He shows us God’s Way because of love. He suffers and dies for our sin, taking on our punishment to fulfill the requirement of justice and righteousness because of Love
- God’s love is like the backdrop into which every part of his Being, his Character, is embroidered, including his justice and righteousness
- Joseph, in his wanting to protect Mary even after her presumed unfaithfulness, was manifesting a Love that God has for us – Love always protects
Love always trusts and hopes (1 Corinthians 13:7b)
- Joseph then has a dream in which an angel of God visits him. The “do not be afraid…” is the normal opening sentence of an angel!
- He is told to trust the unlikely “story” of Mary’s virgin conception. It was an act of God (the Holy Spirit’s work), based on God’s promise (Isaiah 7:14), and had God’s confirmation (the angel’s word)
- Interestingly, God seemed to be telling Joseph, “Joseph, my love for you is so certain that I am willing to trust my one and only Son to you and Mary. Not only that, I leave with you the hope that he will save his people from their sins – that’s why you need to give him the name “Ye-sus, Yeshua, Savior. But just as in my love, I trust you, you will need, in your love for her, to trust Mary. Take her home as your wife”
- This Advent, we remind ourselves that “Love always trusts.” Holding on to the hope of Jesus, we will trust God with our complete selves. But we will do more. We will show that Love means we will trust those whom God has given us
Love always perseveres (1 Corinthians 13:7c)
- Joseph goes and does what God through the angel tells him. He takes Mary home as his wife before any gossip can go around. To the world around, the marriage had been consummated, the chuppah was over. And I’m sure there was a celebration. But only Joseph and Mary knew the truth
- “ Love always perseveres” means “keep on keeping on,” because that’s what Love calls for. It means never giving up. And that’s what Joseph did
- He didn’t give up on Love, he didn’t give up on Mary
- Just as God perseveres with everyone of – he will not give up
- Long ago, I used the phrase “God forsaken” – whether referring to a place or a people, I am not sure. I remember the Truth immediately convicted me about God’s Love. God will never forsake a place or a people or a person. To God, no one is too far gone, or hopeless, or garbage
- Immanuel – God with us – means that God in his love will never give up on anyone, not until their last breath
- Because God is Love, “he is patient with you – or perseveres with you – not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9)
Love never fails! That is why Immanuel is “God with us.”
Advent reminds us that God, in his Love, always wants to protect us, always wants to trust us with his Gospel message of love and hope, and always will persevere with us… because Love never fails.
The question is:
Do we want that Love this Advent?