517: A Sign for Ahaz | Tim Henderson

Introduction

Well, good morning, friends. Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Every year when Advent rolls around, it's always a time of both great joy and eagerness as we anticipate this celebration, this waiting celebration. We begin December thinking about the first coming of Christ and we do this as a way to train our hearts to anticipate his second coming, for which we also wait.

But even though it's all super fun, it's also, as a teacher, it's always a time of like, how do we present this in a way — this thing that's so well worn and familiar — in a way that might be interesting. So what we're gonna do this year for Advent is we're gonna take a four-week break from our series on John. We'll resume that, maybe this is another Sunday in December, but right after Christmas, we'll resume John.

But between here and there, we're gonna take a look at the Advent story specifically through the eyes of Isaiah. Isaiah was, you guys, he was just an unbelievable person. He had crazy, crazy insight. He lived around 700 years before Jesus shows up. And I think, more than anybody else in the Old Testament, God provided him with insight, with prescience to know what was going to happen.

If you think about, I mean, 700 years is a long time. If you guys had some peculiar insight into what was gonna happen in the United States in the year 2725, that would be Isaiah, right? And that's a long, long time. So we're gonna run through and take a look at what he said. He had to wait, and Israel had to wait a long time to see Isaiah's visions fulfilled.

And Advent is just as much about waiting as it is about the actual coming of Christ. Isaiah lived and wrote and spoke and taught in a really tumultuous time. In fact, he died in a pretty unique and a pretty horrible way. And the New Testament actually mentions this, although it doesn't mention him by name. Does anybody know where Isaiah shows up in the New Testament? Any guess where this is? Hebrews 11, who said that? Whoever said that is exactly right.

It's Hebrews 11. So Hebrews 11, you might know, is that what we sometimes will call it, the Hall of Faith or the Faith Hall of Fame. And he walks through, like, person, whoever wrote Hebrews, walks through all these different characters and kind of tells a story about their life. And then at the end, he kinda speeds up and he tells us of all these people that, like, had great victories, these saints that had gone before, and they just crushed it. And then he switches and he talks about all these other saints who lost great defeats, but were faithful when they did so.

Isaiah shows up in that chunk. Here it is, we'll pick it up in verse 36. It says that some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them.

Which line there was Isaiah? Do you know? Sawed in two, that's right. Tradition has it that he was pursued by one of the worst kings that Judah ever had, a guy named Manasseh, this evil, evil, wicked, bad, bad guy. He doesn't end up repenting and becoming a faithful follower of God, which is kind of its own fascinating story. But while he was still in his terrible phase, he pursues Isaiah, Isaiah hid in a hollow tree, but they found him and they cut down the tree with him in it. And so he was sawed in two, okay?

But as sometimes happens, those who suffer much are also given much. And Isaiah was given a nearly unparalleled set of insights. He was allowed to see things that no one else saw. And so his writings are just filled with these uncannily accurate anticipations of what would happen, okay?

The Context of the Passage

So for the four Sundays of Advent, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at his four visions. We're gonna be in Isaiah 7, 9, 11, and 35. Those first three, 7, 9, and 11, are overwhelmingly already fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. Although really, nothing that the Old Testament anticipates about Christ will be most completely fulfilled until he comes again. But 7, 9, and 11 are really about the first coming. Isaiah 35, however, is almost entirely yet in the future. And so the last Sunday before Christmas, we will take a look at that. It is about his second coming.

So we're gonna kind of front-load it with an activity, and then we'll end up with taking a look at his return, all from Isaiah's perspective. So this morning, we begin in chapter 7 in one of the best-known and most misunderstood passages that relates to Christmas. It's the passage that Laura read to us a few minutes ago. And it's least understood, I think, because although it is prophecy, it is not really prediction, or at least not a direct prediction in the simple sense that we tend to think of such things.

So it's very often taught as if it is a prediction of what the Messiah will be or do, and that's really not accurate, okay? What we want to do is kind of set aside any concern with what it has to do with the Messiah, and just understand what it meant honestly. Just take it straight. What was Isaiah talking about? What does it mean?

If we understand that correctly, then we can figure out what the heck it has to do with Christmas, because Isaiah 7 is not really a prediction; it's a type, T-Y-P-E. A type is an event or a circumstance that bears an uncanny similarity to something that is yet to happen. So it's kind of like foreshadowing. A good author can foreshadow in a novel that he writes, but God is such a genius that he can foreshadow in history and in geography and in the lives of women and men. And he does this dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds of times throughout the Old Testament.

There's some event that actually happens that means something in his day, but if you stand back and you squint at it, you're like, "Hey, hang on a second." That looks strangely familiar to something else that's gonna happen later on, okay? So the Old Testament does have actual predictions about the Messiah. When it comes to Christmas, probably the clearest is Micah 5 about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem, but it also has dozens, maybe hundreds of these echoes of sounds that have not yet occurred, pictures that become recognizable after our Lord appears.

So when I say that Isaiah 7 is a type and not a direct predictive prophecy, what I mean is its first primary reference has to make sense at the time that it was given. It makes sense to Ahas. It makes sense to the people that Isaiah was initially speaking to. A lot of times, Christians will act like it's something else, a direct prophecy. And I want my hope is to enrich your Christmas, not to ruin it by telling you that they're just wrong, okay? And they're just simply mistaken. That is not what's going on here, okay? It is first and foremost, but something that happened in Judah in 700 BC. And I would go so far as to say that if you don't really do the work to understand what Isaiah was actually talking about, then you cannot, with intellectual integrity, claim that it has anything to do with Jesus at all. But it does, you just gotta get there in course, okay?

The Characters and the Sign

So, Christmas will be intact by the time we're done. All right, you're gonna meet four characters, all right? First guy is, right here, there we go, is Ahas. Now, Ahas is the protagonist of the story, which makes you wanna say that he's like the good guy because we like our protagonist to be good guys. He is not a good guy, he's horrible. He is the king of Judah. Bad guy. Just wicked, evil, bad, bad. Every time he shows up, we just do not like this guy, but he is the main character. He's the protagonist, okay?

In addition to him, we've got resin and pika. Resin is the king of Aram. Aram is Syria. So you could think of it as kind of like the northeastern neighbor of Judah and Israel. And then the other, the third guy, is Pika or Pika. I don't know how he says his name. But he's the king of Israel. And if that's confusing at all, that there's a king of Israel, king of Judah, what you gotta remember is about 250 years before this, there had been a civil war. There was one nation called Israel. They kinda split, got mad at each other. The northern tribe kept the name Israel, or the northern tribes kept the name Israel, but the southern part, just a couple of tribes, they took the name Judah after the largest tribe, but they kept the promise. It is from Judah that the Messiah will come.

And so where there had been a civil war with the two split, now we're kind of living more like a cold war, where they just don't like each other very much. There's not generally active hostility, but there's mistrust and dislike. And so Israel and Judah aren't friends. But what is happening, what's about to happen, is that Israel and Syria are gonna form an alliance, right? And so these two guys are kind of getting together, and it's gonna freak out Ahaz, okay?

Then the fourth character here is actually finally a good guy. That's Isaiah. He is a prophet of God. He is of Judah. And he's on Ahaz's side. And as much as he's gonna show mercy to him. And I'm gonna read you this passage. I'm gonna read you the same thing that Laura read, but it's a little bit clearer. So you don't have to make those translations.

So, and Isaiah 7 verse 1, it says, when Ahas was king of Judah, resin king of Aram, and Pika king of Israel, marched up to fight against Jerusalem, but they could not overpower it. Now, Judah was told, Aram has allied itself with Israel. So the hearts of Ahas and his people were shaken as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind. Okay?

So Ahas, again, he's the king of Judah. He's the guy we're gonna keep our eye on. He's all freaked out because his two closest neighbors have formed an alliance. This would be a little bit like if Mexico and Canada decided to like form an alliance and like pinch us in between them, right? If you've got all these dudes on moose wearing some burris, and they're coming in, and we're like all freaked out about it. That's Ahas, all right?

Personally, I think we could take him, but Ahas was afraid, okay? So Isaiah, that prophet, he's gonna go and he's gonna meet with Ahas and he's gonna give him a little bit of divine perspective. He's all freaked out, he's all afraid. He's like, we're dead, we're dead, they're gonna kill us. And so Ahas has this divine encounter with Isaiah, and I want you to notice where it happens, because where it happens is meaningful.

Verse three, the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out, you and your son, share Jasheb, to meet Ahas at the end of the aqueduct of the upper pool on the road to the washroom's field," and say to him, "Be careful. Keep calm. Don't be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood because of the fierce anger of Aram and Israel." Okay, where does he meet him? At the aqueduct. Why is that meaningful, you guys? What kind of war, do you know the general strategy of this war that he's trying to evade? They're gonna lay siege, right? And if they're laying siege, the key issue here, the way that, all you do when you're laying siege, you're just gonna cut 'em off. No food gets in, no water gets in. As long as you got food and water, you can survive forever. But you pinch those off, well, then you're gonna have to capitulate, right? And so Ahas is worried, how long can we survive this? Do we have water supplies? And so he goes to the aqueduct specifically because he's afraid, and that's where God says, go over there, go talk to him. God sends Isaiah to go to him and say, "Hey, hey, hey, shh, it's okay." It's fine. God sees this, he has this. Even though you are a treacherous, wicked man, God is going to be gracious to you.

And so God meets him there and says, "Careful, keep calm, don't be afraid. I promise I'll rescue you, trust me." And then in verses five and six, Isaiah, basically, he's gonna repeat the threat, the taunt that has been coming on him, that Israel and Aram have been saying, and he's gonna say, "It's not gonna happen. We'll not take place." And then he predicts the ultimate fall of these nations. So again, with these names simplified, in verse five, because Syria and Israel have devised evil against you, saying, "Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set a new king in the midst of it," thus says the Lord God, "It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass."

This is intended as a reassurance, but Ahaz isn't buying it. He's still scared. He's so afraid, in fact, that he's just not willing to hope. He's just gonna put his fingers in his ears, and he doesn't wanna hear it. God is so humble, so gracious to him. God is kind of on record as saying, "Don't put me to the test." Right? We're not supposed to put God to the, if he tells you something, just trust him. He doesn't want us to test. He literally says, "Test me." I mean, like, I know you're afraid. I know you're freaked out. I know you can't see any way out of this. So ask me for a sign. Ask me to dig some weird thing, and I'll do it, and I'll prove to you the rescue is coming.

And basically, Ahaz says in verse 10, I don't even wanna talk about this right now, and he just blows him off. Look at this. Again, in verse 10, the Lord spoke to Ahaz. Ask a sign of the Lord, your God. Let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as the heavens. What he's saying is ask me to do something — anything, easy, hard, doesn't matter. Whatever you want me to do, they prove to you that I am for you.

And Ahaz says, "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." He hides behind self-righteousness, what is really fear. And so Ahaz says, "Here then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also?" If God invites you to do something, you can do it. In fact, you should do it.

I think Ahaz's reluctance here is puzzling, because there are things in my life that I dread, that I'm afraid of, that I'm worried about. And if God were to speak into my life and say, "I promise you it's going to work out," how can I prove it to you? Would you not love that? Like, I would love that. The fact that Ahaz won't even have it is just so strange, his heart is so hard.

Nevertheless, in verse 14, God mercifully overrides his resistance to ask for a sign, and he says, "Fine, I'll give you a sign myself." Now, this is really important. In offering a sign, what God is offering to do is make a prediction of something that's about to happen, some quick little short, right now sort of thing. It's irrelevant, it's not directly related to the problem at hand, but it's going to be surprising. And when it happens, when this short-term prediction comes to pass, what it's supposed to do is give you reassurance to be like, "Huh, that's weird." Maybe the other thing that you've told me is also going to be true.

So, here's the sign, here's how this plays out. All right, let me give you an example first, and then we'll read his. Let's just say, does anybody dread anything? Any of you ever afraid of anything? Let's say there's something that you dread. The dentist. So, you want to sign that the dentist's all just go out of business, right? Is that good enough, quick? Okay, you dread, you're afraid of something, right? For you, I don't know what it is, maybe you're afraid you're not gonna get the job that you're hoping for. Maybe you're nervous, you're worried you're not gonna get the cure that you desperately need. Or maybe, maybe you're praying for a reconciliation in a relationship, and you just don't see it happening. Maybe you're praying for a spouse or a pregnancy or the salvation of somebody you love. And somebody shows up and says, "No, no, no, no, it's okay, God is going to do it." He's gonna do it, and you're like, maybe, maybe he is, and maybe you don't know what you're talking about because talk is cheap, right?

But if this person has been sent by the Lord and they were to say to you, "No, no, no, okay, fine, I hear that, I hear you're afraid, but just so that you will know that he will do it, God's gonna give you a sign." Today, you're going to go home, you're gonna make dinner, and you're gonna realize you're missing an ingredient. And so you go to the store to buy it, and while you're there, a woman in a red coat is gonna ask you to help her get something off the top shelf, and then when you do it, she will thank you in a foreign language, and I'll go, okay?

It's random, it's unexpected, and it's a sign, and I'm telling you that if all that happened, if you go home, you go to make dinner, and then shoot, yeah, you're out of breadcrumbs, you go to the store, there's a woman in a red coat, she asks you for help, you get it down, you hand it to her, and she says, "Dunk a shame." At that point, would you not be like, "Okay, hang on a second"? This means something because the sign has been fulfilled, and that would flood your heart with hope and anticipation that the other greater, later thing will still come to pass, okay?

That's what a sign is. Here's the sign that Isaiah gets, verse 14, "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign, the virgin will be with child, and she'll give birth to a son, and she'll call him Immanuel." He will eat courage and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, but before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings that you dread, Israel and Aram, will be laid waste.

Application

Let's recap. To whom is the sign given? Ahas, right? The sign that is given to Ahas, in order to have any meaning or any value, has to help him in his particular problem, which was what again? What's he worried about? Yeah, the Syrians, the kings, the war, this thing that is coming up.

I hope it is clear that in order to reassure Ahas, in order to have any value to him whatsoever, it simply has to be fulfilled right there in his day. And Ahas's context, it's 700 BC. And it was, it was given to Ahas, and it was fulfilled to Ahas, to reassure him about his enemies.

It is not a prediction about the Messiah. If it were, it would be meaningless to Ahas. And Isaiah said, "Hey, Ahas, you know those two enemies that are breathing on your neck and you're all worried about?" Well, don't worry about it because, in 700 years after you're dead, the Messiah is gonna come, be born of a virgin, and everything's gonna be great. That wouldn't have helped him. That is, that things are true, but that doesn't speak to the fear that he had. He needed some sign that everything is gonna be okay right now.

In order to have any meaning at all, it had to be fulfilled in Ahas's day. So here's what the sign means, you guys. It means that there's a young woman. Probably Ahas knows her. She may be in the royal court or community. She may be in Isaiah's circle, and there's probably no anticipation that she's gonna marry or have a child, but she will.

Now, there have been a number of speculations on exactly who is this, and how is this? Could it be that Ahas is gonna actually marry this woman? Could it be that Isaiah does? There's a lot of different ways to play out, and I'm not sure what the proper, what the ultimate correct answer is. But what we know is this woman who is identified here as a virgin is not, it's not talking about Mary.

The word for virgin right here is not the strongest word that Isaiah could have used. There is a word in Hebrew that simply means exclusively and only a woman who's never had sex. That's not the word that he uses. The word he uses can include that, but more broadly it can simply be used in reference to a young woman of sexual maturity. That's the word that he uses.

What we know for a fact is that once and only once has anyone ever been born of a woman who had not conceived in the natural way? Just once. This thing here, this sign for Ahas, cannot be that. There are not two children who have been born of a virgin. There's only been one. So the definition of virgin here has to include the completely grammatically in terms of vocabulary and the appropriate meaning that it has a broader sense of it.

What we know here is there is some woman in Ahas's time, perhaps a virgin in the most distinct sense at the time of the prophecy, who will conceive in the natural way and give birth to a son. And she will name that child Immanuel. They'll call him Manny, and Ahas, when that happens — when this woman, what happened here? — when that happens, there's an altogether unexpected birth. When you see it, you will know that I have told you the truth.

And then just wait because there's more. What he goes on to say in verses 15 and 16 is that the child that Ahas has is gonna see, will he herds in honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. But before that happens, the land of the two kings that you dread will be laid waste. That child, that little boy named Immanuel, is gonna grow up, but before he reaches certain milestones, let's say he's two or three years old, the two kings who threatened you, in whom you are presently afraid of — kings of Syria and Israel — will be destroyed. And so trust me, keep calm. Don't be afraid. For the all-sovereign, all-knowing God is in control.

And that is what happened. It happened in Isaiah's time. That was the historical event that he was talking about. And so, done, except not done. Because this passage, like countless others, was not only speaking accurate history about its own time, but it also had a second, greater, longer-term fulfillment.

And this happens over and over in the Bible. There's just dozens and dozens and dozens of these pictures that point to Christ. Now, we don't have time to unpack the fullness of this one here, but if you're intrigued by this, what you see in Isaiah 7, go home and read Isaiah 8. Because what Isaiah is gonna do in the next chapter is he's gonna play with this idea of a child named Immanuel. He's gonna use a term, in Immanuel, two or three more times. You'll probably see it written sometimes as Immanuel, sometimes it'll be spelled out as God with us.

And what Isaiah is giving us a clue to is that, though this had an immediate meaning, there's more going on than meets the eye. And chapter 8 bridges us from 7, which we're looking at, to 9, which Sloop is gonna walk us through in a week. And Isaiah 9 is the passage that we actually read this morning during the Advent candle.

You're probably familiar with, especially if you know Handel's Messiah. This idea that a child will be given, a son will be born, right? This whole movement from 7 to 8 to 9 kind of erupts in this vision of this wonderful counselor, the Almighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace who's coming to be with us. And in chapter 8, he's building a bridge from 7 to 9 of all that is happening. Sloop may unpack some of that. I'm not sure what direction he'll take with this. But 7 comes to its climax in 9 with this child who was born, okay?

But we know beyond dispute, absolutely, that this sign had a secondary, larger meaning because Matthew said that it did. And Matthew 1, Joseph has this dream in which an angel tells him, Joseph, son of David, "Do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for