Isaiah 7:1-17
Amen. Turn in your copy of God’s
word to Isaiah 7. Isaiah chapter 7. We’ll be looking at
verses 1 through 17. This is in a sense the first the time that Isaiah fulfills
his call that we saw last week in Isaiah chapter six. He is
sent to a people that won’t hear, they won’t see, they won’t believe,
and they won’t do. And unfortunately it’s Ahaz the
king. And when the king doesn’t obey
God, it has national impact. So let’s hear the word of the
living God together. In the days of Ahaz, the son
of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, Rezan, the
king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, the king of
Israel. They came up to Jerusalem to
wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against
it. When the house of David was told,
Syria is in league with Ephraim, The heart of Ahaz and the heart
of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the
wind. And the Lord said to Isaiah,
go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shir Jashub, your son, at the
end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer’s
field and say to him, be careful, be quiet. Do not fear and do
not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps
of firebrands at the fierce anger of Rezan and Syria and the son
of Ramaliah, because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah
has devised evil against you saying, let us go up against
Judah and terrify it. and let us conquer it for ourselves
and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it. Thus
says the Lord God, it shall not stand and it shall not come to
pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus
and the head of Damascus is resin. And within 65 years, Ephraim
will be shattered from being a people. And the head of Ephraim
is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. And again,
the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it
be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask,
and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said, hear then,
O house of David, is it too little for you to weary me that you
weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will
give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. He shall eat
curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose
the good. For behold, the boy knows how
to refuse the evil and choose the good. Those two kings you
dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring upon you
and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days
as have not come. Since that day, the Ephraim departed
from Judah, the King of Assyria. Amen. The word of the living
God. I want you to wrap your minds for
a moment around Israel’s history. Remember, Abraham was called
out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He was a pagan in Babylon. And
God said, up, leave your country, you and your family, your kinfolk,
and go to a land that I’ll show you. So he sojourned as far as
Haran, and then at a point, Haran. From Haran, he moved into the
promised land, taking his nephew Lot with him. God came to Abraham
and promised him, I’ll give you grapes and grandkids, right?
Remember that’s the covenant promise. I’ll give you a land
flowing with milk and honey. That’s the grapes. I’ll give
you offspring that outnumber the sand on the seashore, the
stars in the heaven, or the dust of the earth. That’s the grandkids.
So he promises him grapes, grandkids, I’ll be your God. You’ll be my
people. Then there’s Jacob. And his favorite
son, Joseph, sold into slavery. He becomes the Pharaoh or the
steward of Egypt. He’s second in command of the
Pharaoh or his steward. Israel becomes numerous in Egypt,
in the land of Goshen. And the people of Pharaoh in
Egypt say, we don’t want them to outnumber us lest they rise
up. And so let’s begin to kill the first born children. And
so he tells the midwives, don’t, don’t let boys be born. You got
to kill them. So Moses, whose name means drawn out as hidden
in the basket and the bulrushes and Pharaoh’s daughter. plucks
him from the river, raises him as her own. And of course we
know the great passage from Hebrews 11, Moses did not consider the
riches of the palace of Egypt to be his background or his life
story. He said instead he chose to identify
with the people of Israel and he considered the reproach of
Christ better than the riches of Egypt. So God raised up Moses
to rescue his people who had become numerous and cried out.
And so Moses comes, he has the showdown with Pharaoh and his
fake gods. He leads the people into the
wilderness. We’re thinking on Wednesday night about how they
built the tabernacle and all the instruments and utensils
and things to make atonement and have the presence of God
dwell among them. And then there’s Joshua and the conquest of the
promised land, the period of the judges, where everyone did
what was evil in the sight of the Lord, but what was right
in their own eyes. And then we get to the kings
and the kingdom. Give us a king, the people of
Israel said. And God said, well, I’m your king. Isn’t that good
enough? No, we want one like all the other nations. So they
got Saul. And he was like the other kings of the other nations,
a wicked king, God deposed him. And so David, a man after God’s
own heart was chosen, then after him, his son Solomon, but because
of their unfaithfulness and their sins, the kingdom would split.
You had Judah in the South and then all the Northern kingdoms. The Northern kingdoms and tribes
would be hauled off by Assyria. And then as we well know from
our study of the return from Babylon, Ezra, Nehemiah and Haggai,
the Southern kingdom, Judah and Jerusalem would be hauled off
a little bit later, a hundred years or so by Babylon, but they
return and rebuild Judah and Jerusalem. They restart all the
temple worship and the cultic sacrifices and all those wonderful
things. And then there’s the intertestamental
period where Israel is occupied by Romans and Greeks and all
kinds of people. And then Jesus is born. So we’re
talking from the time Isaiah says, what he says in chapter
seven to the birth of Jesus, 700 years, seven centuries, a
really long time. That’s enough time to be forgetful.
That’s enough time to lose hope. That’s enough time to have changes
of kings. What did Matthew tell us? 14
generations. That’s a really long time. But
I want us to remember and to understand and to leave here
knowing this tonight, God makes and keeps promises. He makes
and he keeps promises. And this is a royal promise.
This is a promise that he kept to David or made to David in
his keeping. There will be one of your offspring, one from your
loins, one of your own children will sit on the throne of Israel
forever. And that’s why it’s important
for us to read that, that genealogy from Matthew. If you were 14
generations away from Isaiah and your parents hadn’t told
you Bible stories, You read that genealogy as the first readers,
or you heard that genealogy as the first hearers. To us, it
may seem ho-hum, a bunch of names that are hard to pronounce. Let’s
see if the preacher can do it. Maybe we skip over it in our
daily Bible reading. But it meant David, Jesus, Messiah
forever. Somebody to sit on the throne
and rule. It was a big promise. In fact, it was such a big promise,
Mary sang a song. It was such a big promise that
when Zachariah finally could open his mouth, he said, you’ve
kept your promise, God. And so I think the encouragement
to us, the challenge to us is to remember when God makes a
promise, he means to keep it. And all the promises of God are
yes and amen and Jesus. And though it may seem dark and
God has forgotten, maybe you feel like Joseph in the prison
and the cup bearer has forgotten to tell the Pharaoh about you
and that you’re a dream interpreter. It may seem to you that God has
forgotten his promises, but he never does. He never will. He
cannot forget his promises. And so we remember tonight that
to, to respond to God’s promise and God’s word and unbelief is
detrimental. It’s detrimental for Ahaz. It’s
detrimental for Israel or for Judah, and it’s detrimental to
us from the loins of David, one will sit on the throne. The throne
of God is never at risk. Think about Abraham when he was
told by God, take your son, your only son, Isaac, not Ishmael,
your son, Isaac, the child of promise, the one you’ve waited
and waited and waited and waited for. Take him up to the mountain.
I’ll show you. And there worship me by offering
him as a sacrifice. Well, God, how can this be? He’s
the child of promise. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham
reckoned God was able to raise even Isaac from the dead. So
he was willing to put the knife into his heart and sacrifice
him. Is our faith that strong? Is
our knowledge of the promises of God throughout the scriptures,
is it, is it Is it a good knowledge? Do we understand, oh, he said
he would, he did, I can believe him. If he says he will, he will.
Do we understand the promises and believe the promises? Well,
tonight, as we think about Ahaz and his response to God’s word
through Isaiah in unbelief, we need to remember this, human sin does not nullify the promises
of God. It may shake us and it may make
us wonder, but human unfaithfulness does not nullify the promises
of God. So let’s think about this passage.
There’s kind of three sections. The first section is in verses
one to three, and we have this alliance. And I don’t know if
you understood it as we read it, but here’s a quick explanation.
So you’ve got Judah, the Southern Kingdom, that’s basically Jerusalem
and the surrounding countryside. And their king is Jotham, who
would be, or I’m sorry, Ahaz, who would be the grandson of
Uzziah. So remember in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah
saw the Lord high and lifted up on the throne, his train filled
the temple. I’m a man of unclean lips. The
angel comes with a call from the altar and touches him. who
shall go, here I am, send me, and he gets the call. So here
he is, sometime later, Uzziah is dead, Jotham is dead, and
now son Ahaz is the king of Judah. And then you’ve got, in the northern
tribe, you’ve got Pekah, the son of Remaliah, the king of
those tribes that are in the north, that separated when the
kingdom split after King Solomon. And so you’ve got the northern
kingdom, making an alliance with Rezan, the king of Syria. And you know from reading your
Bible, maybe your eyes glaze over as you read through all
the history, but how many times God has says, don’t put your
trust in horses. Don’t put your trust in chariots. Don’t put your trust in Egypt.
Don’t put your trust in Assyria. Don’t put your trust in Babylon.
Don’t make alliances with these big bad nations. You have a God. And even though you’re teeny
tiny Judah, you can win. And how many times in the Bible
have we seen little puny Israel come under attack, even 200,000
Assyrians, and God says, I got this. And ultimately we see that,
don’t we? When Jesus goes to the cross
and all the foes, all the evil forces come out to the cross
and said, look, we got them. But Jesus wins. Jesus is victorious. And we know from our reading
of the book of Revelation, at the end times, when things get
dark and dirty, Jesus comes on the white horse and says, behold,
I make all things new. And so we need to remember the
promises, trust in the promises, and live according to the promises.
But that’s not what Ahaz does. So there’s this alliance. Ahaz
is the king of Judah, and against him are Rezan, the king of Syria,
and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel. So they come
up to Jerusalem to say, hey, we’re gonna come and we’re gonna
tear down your gates. We’re gonna come plunder your
city. We’re gonna take over and we’re gonna put our man on the
throne of David. So if you’re a thinking person
today or tonight, or even way back then, you’re gonna say,
how can somebody other than one of David’s offspring sit on the
throne? And what’s the answer? They can’t. And that’s really
the dilemma here. Are they really gonna come in
and tear down our gates and attack us and take over our city and
put a pagan man on the throne of David? And the answer is,
of course, no. That’s sort of like asking the question, when
you’re struggling spiritually, maybe Satan is throwing darts
at you, the world is throwing bright, shiny things at you,
and your own flesh, because you’re not crucifying it, is saying,
come on in the door. I’ll have a little of this and
a little of that, and you’re having a buffet of the self.
And you get to feeling bad about it. You come, begin to come to
your senses and you say, God, is there a way you can forgive
me? And we know because of the promises of God and Jesus, if
anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, even Jesus Christ,
the righteous, and we can go to him and we can seek his face
and he will never turn us away. Those who truly repent because
our justification Our standing before God leads us to understand
what Paul says in Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation
for those in Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter how bad you
screw up. It doesn’t matter how far you fall. It doesn’t matter
if you commit more than a trifecta of sin like David with Bathsheba
and Uriah and all the rest. God in his son Jesus keeps his
promises to forgive. And so when, when we come to
something like all these enemies around us, we have to be reminded,
yes, God, God can win. Even if the odds are against
us, even if our heart is sinking, God can do all kinds of mighty
things. So they’re going to mount an
attack against the city. Well, whoop-dee-doo, God made
promises. Well, there’s a bunch of them. Well, whoop-dee-doo.
Can I say that in church? God made promises. Syria is in
league with Ephraim. They knock on the city gate,
right? Verse two. Syria is in league with Ephraim. And you
want to say, what? Weren’t these our brothers at one time? Ephraim
is a son of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. He’s one of the sons
of God. This is a tribe. This is an inheritance
in the promised land. And they’re in league with Ephraim.
And it says the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook.
as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. I don’t know
if you’ve ever been that scared. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt
the forces of Satan against you. Think of old Martin Luther, who,
when the devil would torment him, he would throw his inkwell
at the wall, it was told us. Get away, devil. Get out of my
life. Get out of, you know, he would, Sing the 46th. Mighty fortress is our God, a
bulwark never failing. But the people of God shake. The people of God are worried
about this nasty alliance, but they’ve forgotten, haven’t they,
the promise of God. I will never leave or forsake David or his
throne. And so that’s the setting. That’s
the situation. And perhaps in our lives, we
can have all the forces of Satan, all the shiny things of the world,
even our own flesh that’s ready to have a buffet of the self.
And we can say, fork and knife in hand, let’s eat. But we come
to our senses because God rescues and redeems his people. Well,
the next thing is an assurance by God to Ahaz. And I want you
to understand before we hear this, Ahaz doesn’t care. Okay. Ahaz is not a good man, not a
good king, and he doesn’t care what God has to say yet. God
is still making the promise. Notice in verse three, the Lord
said to Isaiah, go out and meet Ahaz, you and Shir Jachub. Okay. That’s one of his sons
and his name means a remnant will return. Okay. That’s a little
prophetic. Um, don’t name your kids things
like this. Name them good, meaningful names,
but unfortunate for Oshir Jashub on the playground, you know,
a remnant will return. But his name was for the purpose
of this prophecy, wasn’t it? So you go meet Ahaz, you and
your son, whose name means a remnant will return. And he gives them
the GPS coordinates. You remember a couple of years
ago, there was a, foreign leader from a foreign nation. Maybe
it was Iran or something that were threatening us. And so our
president at the time, being the tough man that he was, called
and gave the guy the GPS coordinates. I think of his bathroom. I know
where you live. I can take care of business,
right? Here God comes, and he comes
right to the GPS coordinates of the conduit of the upper pool
on the highway to the washer’s field. When a city is about to
be laid siege to, the thing you worry about is do we have enough
food stored up? Are the gates strong? Do we have
enough resources to outlast? You remember when Israel surrounded
Jericho, the city was shut up tight. And one of the things
you gotta protect is your water source. You run out of water,
you die. And they didn’t have milk jugs, you know, like we
do, where you go buy 89 cents, distill water and you stock it
up and you store it up. Or they didn’t have Patriot food,
you know, like you see on TV for when the apocalypse comes.
And if you’re still living, you can eat your Patriot food or
whatever. They didn’t have all that. So where is Ahaz? He’s making sure that things
are going to be okay when this when the siege comes and they
go out to him. And they say to him, Isaiah says
to him, be careful, be quiet and do not fear. And do not let
your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of
firebrands. Don’t be afraid of the fierce
anger of Rezan and Syria. And he doesn’t even name Ahaz. He just says that son of Remaliah. Because Syria with Ephraim and
the son of Remaliah, there’s the no name again, they’ve devised
all evil against you saying, let us go up to Judah and terrify
it. Let us go and conquer it for ourselves. And let us set
up the son of Tabeel, who’s not a son of David. It’s the king
in the midst of it. God says, it’s not going to stand.
It’s not going to come to pass. The head of Syria is Damascus.
The head of Damascus is resin. And within 65 years, Ephraim
will be shattered from being a people. All right. That is
the biggest curse you can get. You either are my people or you’re
not my people, but the people of Ephraim will not be a people. They’re going to be hauled off
by Assyria. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria. The head of Samaria
is the son of Remaliah. Again, God won’t name him. And
I want you to notice really well the next little phrase. If you
are not firm in the faith, you will not be firm at all. This is a wonderful play on words. If you’re firm in your faith,
God says, I’ll firm you up. Talking today about our enemies,
the flesh, and we need to crucify it. Do you believe that if we
firm up our faith and we crucify the flesh, God will firm us up? We should, shouldn’t we? If you
are not firm in the faith, you will not be firm at all. Stand,
and I will stand with you, or I will make you to stand. I think
of old Margaret Thatcher. You remember back when Iraq invaded
Kuwait back in about 1990? And the UN was trying to figure
out what to do. And so there was Margaret Thatcher and there
was George H.W. Bush. And she says, George, this
is no time to go wobbly. Remember that? Ahaz, this is
no time to go wobbly. Dear Christian, this is no time
to go wobbly. Keep firm in the faith and then
you will stand by God’s grace. Well, there’s a last thing here,
it’s the sign, it’s verses 10 through 17. And I wanna say something
about this before we look at it. This is a sign of Emmanuel,
this is a sign of the coming of Messiah, but it’s couched
in the context of a curse. God is gonna say to Ahaz, look,
I’m gonna save, I’m gonna save my throne. Soddy from David’s
loins is gonna sit on it, it’s not you. And a long ways off
is gonna be the Messiah who’ll be the king forever. But for
now, I’m mad at you. For now you’re not listening.
For now you’re sticking your head in the sand. For now you’re
doing wicked things and you’re going to receive a punishment
for these wicked things. They’re going to get hauled off by Babylon.
But now he’s going to speak of a long off, um, Messiah. And in the near term, he’s going
to say, there’s going to be a remnant. Remember that’s the name of boy. Number one, a remnant shall remain. Um, Look at verse 10. It says, again,
the Lord spoke to Ahaz, who, mind you, has a hard heart. Ask
a sign of the Lord your God, let it be as deep as Sheol or
as high as heaven. So as far down in the earth,
the grave as you can get, and all the way up to heaven where
God is. Ask for a sign. Now remember, Ahaz doesn’t believe
God. And so he can’t ask for a sign. God has put him in a
dilemma, really. Hey, if he asked for a sign,
he has to believe it, right? So what does he say? I’m not
going to ask. I’m not going to put the Lord to the test. Isn’t
that pious of him? I’m not going to put the Lord
to the test. No, he just doesn’t want to be found to be a faithless
liar. And so God says, here then, O
house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you
weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will
give you a sign. So stop there for a minute. Ahaz
is being a meathead. And he’s the king of Israel and
what he does has consequences for everybody else. And God says,
I’m still going to do it. Isn’t that amazing? Uh, we would
say, well, you know what? Three strikes and you’re out.
I think we’re down to one strike in our age. We just write people
off, you know, go away, leave me alone. But God says, I’ll
give you a sign. Behold, the Virgin shall conceive
and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And we know
it means God with us. He shall eat curds and honey,
and when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good,
before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good,
the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. God lasts
forever. These wicked kings are a short
term. You know, some of us, I think, are worried about what’s coming
in our country. Some of us are worried about what’s coming in
the world. Some of you say, I won’t live to see it. My grandkids
or my great grandkids will. Perhaps, right? But I love this
passage. They will come to nothing. The
two kings you dread will be deserted. God is being merciful here. He’s
going to give a sign that you couldn’t imagine in your hard
heart. He’s saying, I’m gonna give you
Jesus, but he won’t listen. And so he goes on to say in verse
17, the Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and
upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the
day that Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria. Oh boy, they’re in for it, aren’t
they? Can’t you hear the echoes of Jeremiah when he laments over
the destruction of Jerusalem? Emmanuel is for those who believe. Emmanuel is for that remnant
that is promised in the naming of Isaiah’s son and in the promises
of Almighty God. So Ahaz has unbelief, the land
is gonna get torn apart. Ahaz has unbelief, the glory
of God is gonna depart the temple. Ahaz has unbelief, and so the
city and all its surroundings will be destroyed, but God will
keep a remnant. You think about Daniel. who would
not defile himself by eating the king’s rations. You think
about Esther, who was born for such a time as this, and she
saved the Jews from Mordecai. And on and on, we could speak
of the beauty of the people from the remnant who will come back
and rebuild and make way for the Messiah. There is a royal
hope here. And I think it’s helpful for
us to remember the words. I think of Psalm 115. I think
Psalm 115 is unrelated to this story particularly, but in general,
it is related because it’s all in the Bible. And there’s a refrain
in Psalm 115 that goes like this, and we ought to remember it.
Oh, Israel, oh, house of Israel, trust. in the Lord. Let’s do pray together. Lord,
thank you for showing us that when you make promises, you keep
them. And when all seems lost, dark, hopeless, we see our own
fears and our own failures. You tell us to be calm. You tell
us to be quiet. You tell us to not worry because
the thing that scares us to death will not stand. And so, Lord,
we pray that you would make us firm, firm in the faith so that
we can stand, and remembering from Ephesians that when we stand
firm in the strength of the Lord and in his might, we can run
the battle with great success. So hear us, help us, and bless
us as we make our prayer and our plea in Christ’s name, amen.
We want to sing of God’s goodness in bringing the Messiah to us,
but we’ll sing of the longing for Messiah. O come, O come,
Emmanuel. We’ll stay seated as we sing.