In Matthew 1:21, an angel appears to Joseph to give him some very special instructions, including the naming of the Baby that's about to be born. The name given is "Jesus." Which means Savior. Saving from sins. Only God can do that, by the way. Israel has had many saviors that saved from enemies, but only one Savior that saved from sins. With me so far? That was not the question.

Matthew adds on, and we believe he is being directed by theSpirit, that all this is happening to fulfill a prophecy. Well and good. Which prophecy? Isaiah 7:14. "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call His name Immanuel, God with us." In 2 more verses of Matthew, after he quotes Isaiah, we see Jesus born, and the name given as the angel directed, Jesus.

Pretty glaring isn't it? It's obvious that Matthew was not contradicting Matthew.But he really believed that the naming of the child Jesus fulfilled the prophecy about a special child being named Immanuel. How can this be, my student wanted to know.

I explained to her that to this day we call this child Immanuel, because we know he is "God with us." Songs are written to Immanuel. So it was fulfilled. But something said I needed to go a little deeper. So I came home & did my homework, and here's my report. My student will get a copy, and so will my internet readers.

When this message was first given to the prophet Isaiah, about 700 years before Jesus, there seems to have been an immediate fulfillment. Hebrew scholars who want you to do away with this Jesus-is-the-Messiah message, will point you to the next chapter, Isaiah 8, where the prophet, and a prophetess who had been a virgin up to that point, bring forth a son. The name Immanuel is not given to that child, but the term is used later on in chapter 8, as though Immanuel had already been born. Case closed, says the Hebrew scholar. This has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth.

But Matthew was a Hebrew too. He knew the Bible, as did the Spirit who led him to quote Isaiah 7:14. The answer to this riddle is more fully answered in terms of dual fulfillment.

For example, what does the idea "Out of Egypt have I called my son" mean? The Israelites were led out of Egypt? Yes. The "son" a collective term for all those redeemed on that special day? Sure.

But Jesus is a part of this one too. Remember, His mother had to take Him to Egypt as a young child? So now it also means, "Jesus was brought out of Egypt back to Nazareth." It can also allude to the fact that we, believers in Jesus, have been saved from "Egypt", the world's kingdom, by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Passages can thus have a local and and a much larger application. True, a prophetess, a young lady, had a son and technically fulfilled the prophecy. But also true, and a greater truth is that a virgin - who remained a virgin all during the birthing process of Jesus- gave birth to a Son Who saved us from our sins, Jesus, and therefore made it clear to us that God is with us. We will call Jesus "Immanuel" forever.