Isaiah chapter 7. Let's read most of the chapter and get in
your mind an overall picture of what's happening here. We'll
try to look at this whole chapter just as a whole tonight, not
verse by verse. It came to pass in the days of
Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Reason, the king of Syria,
Pekah, the son of Remaliah. I can't hardly see, so if I see
these. Some glasses up here somewhere.
Here we go. Son of Remaliah, king of Israel,
went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail
against it. Now Judah, You know a little bit of Jewish
history maybe you know that there were originally twelve tribes
of Israel and those tribes split up into ten the ten tribes of
the north and then to Judah and Benjamin Who are referred to
simply as Judah from from then on and these ten tribes of Israel
are called Ephraim we'll see in verse two and It was told
the house of David saying Syria is Confederate with Ephraim.
Ephraim is those 10 tribes that were separated, split off from
Judah and Benjamin. And his heart was moved in the
heart of his people as the trees of the water moved with the wind.
Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, go forth now to meet Ahaz. Ahaz
is the king of Judah. It looks like he's the grandson
of Uzziah. Remember in the beginning, in
the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah said, I saw the Lord,
I lifted up. Well, now it looks like his grandson
is king of Judah, but he's a wicked king. He's
king of the people of God in an earthly sense.
God's blessing is still upon this nation in an earthly general
sense, but Ahaz is an evil king, as we'll see as we read. Go forth to meet Ahaz, thou and
Shiar-Jeshub, thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper
pool in the highway of the fuller's field, and say unto him, take
heed and be quiet. Fear not, neither be fainthearted,
for the two tails of these smoking firebrands for the fierce anger
of reason with Syria and of the son of Ramaliah. Because Syria,
Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah have taken evil counsel against
thee saying, let us go up against Judah and vex it. And let us
make a breach therein for us and set a king in the midst of
it, even the son of Tabeal. Thus saith the Lord God, it shall
not stand. It's not gonna happen. That's
why he said, be quiet, don't worry about it. Neither shall
it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus." Sounds
like God's calling the shots, doesn't it? Oh no, ISIS, you
know. Well, God's still calling the
shots. They've taken counsel against
you. They've decided, you know, they're gonna kill you and set
up their own king. Don't worry about it, God said. Don't even
think about it, don't even worry about it. The head of Syria is Damascus,
verse eight. The head of Damascus is reason.
Within three score and five years shall Ephraim be broken, then
it shall not even be a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,
and the head of Samaria is Remaliah. Son, if you will not believe,
surely you shall not be established. Moreover, the Lord spake again
unto Ahaz, saying, ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either
in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will
not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, here you
now, O house of David, this is God speaking now, O house of
David, Judah, you know, David. Is it a small thing for you to
weary men? But will you also, will you weary
my God also? That's Isaiah speaking, but of
course it's the word of God. Therefore the Lord himself shall
give you a sign You don't want it, but you're gonna get it.
Anyway, you see that Behold a virgin shall conceive And bear a son
And shall call his name Emmanuel Now That's as far as we'll go
in this chapter. You'll see some other things
will happen some prophecies concerning Judah Come after that And you
can study that yourself later if you'd like to, but this is
key right here. No matter what is threatened, no matter what
actually comes to pass, this is the sign from God. This is
what's important. And this beautiful message of
God's grace, in spite of man's rebellion and unbelief, is couched
here in this historical account of a military threat against
Judah, a threat mounted by the alliance of Ephraim and Syria.
It's told the king of Judah, as we read there, who's a very
wicked king, Ahaz, that these two confederates are plotting
against him and the nation of Judah. But he's told not to worry
about it because it's not going to happen. It will not happen.
And the Lord sends word here by Isaiah to Ahaz to ask of the
Lord a sign. Can you imagine that? Would you
say no? Would you say, I will not ask? A sign of the assurance that
God will protect them, that God will preserve them, that God
will save them, that they can be at rest, that they can be
at peace. Ask a sign concerning this matter so you can have some
assurance. And Ahaz refuses the sign under
the pretense, I will not tempt the Lord, which is absolute foolishness. How could it be tempting the
Lord if the Lord sent his own messenger saying, ask aside?
Kind of foolish, isn't it? The truth was that Ahaz despised
the Lord and didn't believe Isaiah, his prophet. He had no interest
in what God had to say or what Isaiah had to say. And that's
pretty clear. I will not ask. I'm not interested.
We'll just deal with this matter however we have to. I don't want
to hear from God. But the Lord says through Isaiah, I'm going
to give you a sign anyway. There's a lesson or two in this
for us. See an instructive picture first of the rebellion of sinful
man. Here God's spokesman, God's prophet
has good news for Ahaz. Good news. Gospel. Good news. That's what the gospel
is. Good news. But Ahaz doesn't want to hear from God. The same
scene is played out tonight, all over this world. There's
a gospel of good news from God. I give you a sign, a virgin shall
conceive. You know what his name is? God
with us. As we talked about this morning,
God's going to send his son down here to deal with sin. There's
a way back to God. There's reconciliation for sinners.
But what's man's reply? God says, ask and you'll receive.
I will not ask. I will not ask. No interest. And the sad thing is Ahaz knows
it's a word from God. You remember Paul talking to
Agrippa? He said, do you believe what the prophets say? I know
you do. I know you do. You know God has spoken. This
thing wasn't done in a corner. So it's willful ignorance. It's
willful rejection of the word of God. He knows that Isaiah
is a true man of God here. Ahaz does not care. He completely
refuses to hear even good news from God. You might understand
if the Lord said, you know, they're going to come and wipe you out.
You want to see a sign about that? No, I don't want to see that.
But he said, it's all going to be good. Would you like to see? Nah. No interest. Have you ever wondered
about that? How a man, how a sinner can be
so adamantly opposed to a gospel that is so free and good as the
gospel of Jesus Christ? We know the answer. We're just
flat blind by nature, aren't we? We're wretched, and not blind
as in a victim of blindness. We're willfully blind, wretchedly
and rebelliously blind toward God's truth. But here's a message
that promises to absolve the sinner of all obligation to keep
God's law for righteousness. The monkey's off your back. There's
no need for you to keep God's law. Does that mean anything?
A message of complete and unconditional
pardon for all of the sin that you've already committed, all
the sin that you're committing right now, and all the sin that
you will ever commit. That's the message. Would you
like to see about that? Are you interested in that? Nah.
Not interested. That's happening all over this
world, isn't it? A message of full, free redemption
from bondage. The Lord said, I'll make you
free indeed. They said, we're free? We've never been in bondage.
I'm not interested. Life from the dead, untold blessings
and happiness, the promise that everything that happens will
work in your favor. Would you like to see a sign
regarding that? Would you like to see confirmation from God of absolute blessing for sinners? Absolute resolution of sin, of
the sin problem. Absolute freedom. Perfect life. Untold blessings and happiness. And all of it, you know how much
it's going to cost you? Absolutely nothing. All of it
at the expense of somebody else. And people do not want to hear
it. They don't want to hear. You
know what they do want to hear? They want to hear what they need
to do to earn God's favor. They'll flock to hear about that,
won't they? What can I do? What do I need to do to earn
the favor of God? Does that amaze you at all? Even
though we know we were there. It's just amazing though, isn't
it? How dead we were. How dead we are by nature. Here
in our text, God sends word to Ahaz saying there's a confederate
alliance plotting to join armies against you. You have powerful
enemies, in other words. You have powerful enemies, and
they want to destroy you. And you deserve it. You're a
wicked, rebellious wretch. And you deserve what they want
to do to you, to be wiped off the face of God's earth. But
I'm going to do you good. I'm going to thwart all of your
enemy's plans against you and I'm going to save you. Are you
interested in knowing more about that Ahaz? Are you interested
in some confirmation? You want to see how I'm going
to do it? You want to see why? No thanks. I'm not interested. That's lesson
one. That's just how absolutely stupid
we are by nature. Do you know why sinners don't
want to hear of God's salvation? There's a lot of reasons. We'll
just think of a couple of them tonight. They don't think they
need it, first of all. There doesn't seem to be any
immediate threat. And if a threat does arise, I'm
sure we can handle it on our own. We don't need God. This
is why our Lord said what he did when he gave that beautiful
illustration of this very problem. The whole have no need of a physician. I feel fine. Here we are in Judah. The sun
is shining. We're going about our business.
I don't see any armies to you. I don't see any threat. I don't
see any enemies. Everything's fine. And when the enemy comes,
we'll just deal with it when it comes. That's how most people
think with regard to spiritual things. There's no immediate
threat. And our Lord said, the whole
have no need of a physician. Why would I go to the doctor?
I feel fine. We feel fine spiritually because
we're blind and ignorant Of our problem The sick now they need
a physician And he said I came not to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance I came to heal the sick Sickness being unrighteousness
To receive the gospel You must acknowledge that you are incurably
and helplessly vile before God, a leper before God. Incurable.
There's nothing you can do about it. Nothing that can be done.
There's no cure for sin. It's got to be paid for. And
you're helpless to do anything about it. You're a repugnant
spiritual leper. And the sad truth is we just
don't see it that way by nature. We just don't see ourselves that
way. We look in the mirror and we look pretty good to ourselves,
you know, spiritually speaking. We're not perfect, but who is? God's got to show us the truth.
Paul said, sin became exceeding sinful. And then I cried. I'll
tell you why all sinners don't want to hear the good news. They
don't want to, they don't want to sign from God. They don't
want confirmation from God that his son is coming into this world
to solve every problem that can be called a problem. There's no glory in it for them.
There's no glory in it for them. Man's not interested in much
that doesn't have any glory in it for man. We're enmity against
God by nature. We're rivals to his throne. And
we cannot stand to see him exalted and ourselves abased. Can't stand
it. And the gospel does that. Oh,
how the gospel exalts him and puts us in the dust where we
belong. And men don't like that. He never has and he never will.
And if you're going to receive the gospel, if you're going to
receive this sign from God and rejoice in it, you're going to
have to take your place in the dust at the feet of the Savior.
And say, Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. We're
going to have to say he must increase and we must decrease.
There doesn't seem to be any end to that. How long? How much
must he increase? Don't even need to put a qualifier
on it because you can't exalt him too high. How low do we need,
how much do we need to decrease? To what point? Don't even qualify,
because we can't go low enough. We're never gonna know the depths
of our depravity, never. He's just gonna have to keep
increasing, and we're gonna have to keep decreasing. That's the
truth of it now, and we don't like that by nature. We will and must, by God's grace,
if we're gonna receive this sign from God, we're gonna honor his
son. And we can only do that from the dust. Because he that
honoreth not the son, honoreth not the father. And you see the
thing is the father hath given authority unto the son to give
life to whomsoever he will. And he said, I did that so that
all men should honor the son. So if you're gonna have life,
you're gonna honor the son. And it wasn't that Ahaz wasn't
religious, we see that here too. He said, I don't want to tempt
the Lord now. You know, he tried to make himself look good in
this thing. It's like when Saul, you know,
the Lord said, you go in and you kill every man, woman, and
child, and every animal. And Saul saved the good stuff
because he wanted to enrich himself. And the Lord said to his prophet,
what are you doing? And he said, oh, well, we saved
these animals so we could offer sacrifice to the Lord. You're
disobeying God in order to honor Him. Really. That's what's happening
here. You're rejecting God's sign that
He's told you to ask for. And giving Him a kiss on the
cheek in the process. Oh, I don't want to tempt you.
I don't want to tempt the Lord. Really. How vile and wretched. How hypocritical. He wanted to
hide what was truly in His heart. He didn't want to just come out
and say, No, I hate God and I don't want to hear from God. He would
never say that. Oh, no. This is man's religion. Man doesn't want other men or
God to know what is actually in their heart, so they take
up religion and they pretend to be something they're not.
It's called hypocrisy. It's what our Lord put his finger
on when he said, whoa, unto you scribes and Pharisees, you bunch
of hypocrites. He told them, the hottest place
in hell is reserved for you, you hypocrites. Isn't that what
he said? It's gonna be easier for Sodom and Gomorrah than it
is for you. In hell. And this is what Ahaz was, hypocrite. He was pretending to honor the
Lord. He honored the Lord with his lips, but his heart was far
from him. But here's the glory here. The
Lord's gonna give you a sign anyway. It may be the saver of
death to you, may be the saver of life, but you fixin' to get
a sign from God whether you like it or not. You see that in the
gospel? God's gonna give you a sign whether
you like it or not. He's gonna tell you of his salvation anyway. If you not wanting to hear from
God, stopped God from speaking to you, then we'd all go to hell,
wouldn't we? You not wanting to hear from
God ain't gonna stop God from speaking to you, aren't you glad? And remember now, this is a message
already revealed beforehand. Before he told him anything about
it, before he told him how or why or in what way or what he
was gonna do specifically to bless and preserve Judah, he
already told him it was good news. It's good news. Revealed beforehand to be a blessing,
a message of blessing and salvation from God. So what's it going
to be? What is the blessing and salvation
of God? Behold, a child. A virgin shall conceive and shall
bear a son. This is what we talked about
not long ago. Glory to God in the highest. and peace and goodwill
on earth toward men. What is that? It's a person. He's being born in that little
manger over there. And he is God's glory, the express
image of the glory of God. He is the glorification of God
by man. There's no glory to God from
man to God except right there in that manger. And he is the embodiment of peace. Goodwill, good news. A sign from God, a confirmation
from God that all will be well towards sinners. It's a person. Same message here. It's a person.
What's the good news? What's the blessing? How are
you going to set a person? What are you going to do for
us? How are we going to be protected? How are we going to be safe?
How are we going to be blessed? A virgin is going to have a baby. She's gonna bear a son. But wait
a minute, here's another important lesson here tonight now. What
does this prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ have to do with
Judah not being destroyed by these enemy armies? You see that? This is just a, this is a common
everyday problem. This is a problem that Israel
had all the time, an enemy's coming. Oh really? Yeah, that's
just another day in the life for them. They're gonna destroy
you. We've heard that before. What
in the world does the birth of Jesus Christ have to do with
what we're faced with right here, right now, this very day? We
could ask that question about ourselves. What does Jesus Christ
have to do with what's going on in my life right now? Don't
you see? God has declared that his son
must come from Judah. His Messiah must come out of
Judah because he said so Judah can't be destroyed And this teaches
us this greater lesson that's so deeply important Everything
has to do with him and he has to do with everything Romans 11 36 of him and through
him and to him are all things To whom be glory forever, amen. You ever think about that as
you're going through your daily life? This is of Him. This is through Him. And this
is to Him. Do we understand what that says? Everything has to do with Him. And He has to do with everything. Do you see that in this? What does what's going on in
my life right now have to do with him? Oh Lord, open our eyes
that we might see. It might comfort us here also
to see that although Judas King was evil, rebellious, and had
no interest in God or his servant, do you know any rulers like that?
Let me say it again, let me see if this reminds you of any rulers
that you might read about in the paper today. Evil, rebellious,
no interest in God or his spokesman. But it might interest you to
see here, and this is the same God that we have to deal with
today. Judah's king was evil, rebellious,
had no interest in God or his servant, but God had purpose
to save Judah anyway. He's going to send his son anyway.
He's going to bless him anyway. His light is going to shine on
him anyway. He's going to preserve them anyway. The picture here
is not that God is going to save America. You may get that from
what I'm saying. Oh, God's going to save America
anyway. In spite of all of our evil rulers. No, no, no. Here's
the thing. I don't know what happens to
America. I don't know what happens to America. But I know what happens
to God's people. I know exactly what happens to
God's sheep. That's the message here. It doesn't
matter who's in charge on this earth. And you know how I feel
about that. I'm concerned with that. But
I'm not overly concerned with it. I would much prefer that
we had a leader that knew who God was. Wouldn't you? But I'm
not going to despair that we don't. How is a baby being born going
to save us? We know the answer to that, don't
we? By God, we do. It all depends on who that baby
is, doesn't it? Depends on who that baby is.
He will be conceived by a virgin. He will not be infected with
the sin of our father Adam. I am, you are, our children are,
and their children will be, but not him. You can't get clean
water out of a dirty fountain, but our Lord Jesus Christ did
not come from a dirty fountain. That holy thing that is born
of Mary is conceived of the Holy Ghost. Oh, what a prophecy, what a sign. He had no interest in that. That's how dark our hearts are
by nature. God used a virgin's womb to carry
and nurture his only begotten son, the Lamb of God without
blemish and without spot. His name shall be called Emmanuel. God with us. You see how it goes all the way
back to the garden? What was the result of what happened in
the garden? What was the result of seeing God against us? The name of that baby is God
with us. God with us. God is with us. Turn to Matthew
1. Verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ
was on this wise. That's just the old English way
of saying this is how it happened. When, as his mother Mary was
espoused to Joseph, before they came together, before their marriage
was finalized, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not willing to
make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately.
She was found with child of the Holy Ghost, but Joseph didn't
know that. All he knew was she's with child. You can imagine how
that made him feel. And so he didn't want her to
be the object of scandal. They're not yet married. Their
marriage is not finalized. They're a spouse to one another,
but they haven't come together in marriage, and she's with a
child. And so he puts her away. He tries to cover it. He doesn't
want her to be scorned. But while he thought on these
things, and you can just imagine what was going through his mind,
heartbroken, and yet still not willing to make her a public
example. That's the grace of God already
on Joseph, isn't it? By nature now, if that happened
to us, we'd want everybody to know. Look, I've seen people
holding up signs, you know, you're a, you're a cheating, you know
what, you know, in public and have their name on it. That's
our nature. But God's grace is on Joseph
here. He still loves her. And while he thought on these
things, While his whole world was crashing down around his
head, God sent a messenger to him. Behold, the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived
in her is of the Holy Ghost. It's not another man. The impossible has happened. A virgin is going to have a baby. And she shall bring forth a son.
And thou shalt call his name Jesus. And here's why. He shall save
his people. Isn't that beautiful? He's a successful savior. His
very name declares that he shall save his people from their sins,
every one of them. He said, I'll not lose a war,
not a war. Now, all this was done that it
might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet
saying, behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring
forth a son. And they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. God with us. Then Joseph, being
raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden
him, and took unto him his wife. Can you imagine that? Here he
feared the worst, I'm sure. If he's anything like me, His heart had been broken. But
now, knowing what he knew, their relationship must have been even
more precious than it ever could have been before. Don't you imagine?
She's carrying God's son, and I'm her husband. Isn't that just
wonderful, isn't it? He took unto him his wife, and
knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son. And
Joseph said, here's what we're gonna call him. Let's call him Jesus. For he shall save his people
from their sins. Jehovah's Savior, Joshua. Isaiah chapter 7 seems to be
about God saving Judah from its enemies. But what it's really
about is God saving his people from their sins. Do you see that? God's gonna save his people from
their sins. In spite of our rebellion, in
spite of us not wanting any confirmation from God, any good news from
God, we're gonna get it anyway. And that good news is a child,
a son. A son from God. A son given. Why did God send his
son into this world? Well, John said in this was manifested
the love of God toward us. When his son came into this world,
it became manifest. It became clear and obvious and
undeniable that God loves somebody down here. Isn't that right?
He's loving somebody down here. And this was manifested God's
love toward us because that God sent his only begotten son into
the world that we might live through him Our enemy is powerful we're helpless
against our enemy and we deserve what we're going to get Life and death hangs in the balance,
but it shall be life because God says so And here's how he's
going to make it happen virgin is going to have a baby. Herein is love. Not that we love
God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the sin offering
for our sins. John 3, 14. Let's turn there
because I'm going to close with this right here. So we ought to look at it carefully. Why did God send his son? Why
this sign? You know what sign God ought
to have sent them? That rebellious bunch of fools ruled by a rebellious
fool. Why? Why this sign? Why this
message? Why this good news? John 3, 14. As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life. Why? For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son That whosoever believeth
in him should not perish. But have everlasting life. For
God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world. But that the world through him.
Might be saved. There's good news. And I pray God, as is his way
in his will, he has done. And I'm sure he will do this. I pray that even those, those that I love, those that
I pray for, that have no interest in good news from God, I pray
he'll send it to them anyway. And that they'll receive it by
his grace and power as the very word of God. Faith being mixed
with it. That He'd give them the gift
of faith to believe. You see what it said there? Whosoever
believeth in Him shall have everlasting life. That's why God wrote a
book. You may not be interested in
it now. But that's never stopped God before. Bless His holy name. Let's pray.