Wednesday, November 12, 2025 PM

Immanuel as the Sign to Ahaz

A sign of the Lord. Then he said, Here now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men? But will 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 Immanuel.

Curds and honey he shall eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.

The Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. So we've been thinking about this indictment from the Lord upon Ahaz and the house of Judah for their unbelief.

And he has just spoken of the suddenness of their doom, that there is a child that will be born in their day, and this child is going to be very young, slurping baby mash, not even able to say mama and dada, very young.

And before this baby gets to be very old at all, and crosses those very important, wonderful thresholds, then the kingdoms of Ephraim and Syria, those kings of pecca and resin that haunt Ahaz's dreams, that he spends all his life obsessing about, they're going to be gone.

In a couple of years, these two men that have become the centerpiece of his world, he's always thinking about them, talking about them, worrying about them. But God says they're going to be gone. And rather than trust in the Lord and ask for a sign so that he would be established in his faith as he ought to be, he has refused to ask for a sign.

He does not want to be alleviated of this burden. He, at some level, likes worrying about pecca and resin. These are men whom he is tangled with, he is in a struggle with, he is conspiring against them as they are conspiring against him.

He's probably already by this point sent out messengers to the king of Assyria, wanting to conspire with him so that they can strike against pecca and resin. He has invested a lot in this, and he's not about to let it go in order to trust the Lord.

He has got a lot of invested thought and worry and concern in this. He doesn't want alleviation from the problem. He wants his world to be consumed by this fear, the fear of pecca and resin. Well, God has rebuked him for this, and he has rebuked him and given him a sign anyway, the sign of Immanuel.

God as the Real Mastermind Behind the Invasion

And we talked about how this child born in Ahaz's day is a sign, but the destination, of course, is the Messiah, as we find in Matthew chapter 1. This was to fulfill the promise of the virgin giving birth to Immanuel.

But in Ahaz's own day, the Lord is describing now how there's an invasion. This little baby is going to be the mascot of that invasion, and it's going to happen suddenly. And this is the point we see in verse 17.

And now also, God is going to clarify the source of the doom in verse 17. The Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah.

So here's the source of the doom. Isaiah clarifies. He's saying to Ahaz, here's the true power you ought to fear. Here's the real glory around which you should orbit. Here's who should captivate your attention and your thinking.

And so Isaiah is not allowing Ahaz to escape from the real meaning of Immanuel, which means what? God with us. So Ahaz, pay attention. God is present, active. He's working in your life. Pay attention.

Yes, Israel has forgotten God. Judah no longer remembers that God is her father, and you live ignoring God. But you can't ignore this, Immanuel. God with us. He's bringing the invasion to grab your attention.

And so Isaiah says, the Lord will bring the king of Assyria. So he's telling Ahaz, this is not something where you should stop being afraid of Pekah and Rezin, and now you should start obsessing about another person, the king of Assyria, Tiglath-Pileser, and start obsessing about him.

No, the Lord will bring him. Who's the one who's acting? He's the mastermind. The Lord is the mastermind of this invasion. Ahaz is worried about the conspiracy of Pekah and Rezin, but here he should be concerned about the Lord.

There's a plan larger than Ahaz can see, and it's going to roll over him, and it won't slow down for him. There are decisions and mechanisms in play that he is not going to like. So yes, there is a conspiracy, and there is a mastermind, but it's God, and God is going to roll this straight over Ahaz, and Ahaz needs to reckon with it.

There is a king over all the other kings. There is a Lord over all the other lords. There is a God who laughs at the idols of the nations, and that's a major theme in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah draws many cartoons in his lengthy work in which idols are mocked, and God is honored and glorified.

The prophet points out the folly of the great men who are easily swayed by little trinkets, and the great men who are easily distracted and afraid of small things when compared with the Lord of hosts.

If you have the opportunity to scan through the forties of Isaiah, you will find a great deal of scorn against idols and a great deal of praise to the Lord. So Ahaz has a great deal of information about the world in which he lives.

He's the king. People bring him reports all the time. He's trying to make sense of it all, trying to make preparations for an invasion. Even now, Isaiah has met him at the aqueduct as Ahaz is inspecting, making sure that the water is going to be safely brought into the city in case of a siege.

But even though Ahaz has a lot of information, he doesn't have wisdom. He has a lot of information, but not a lot of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Somebody with not a lot of information, but a great deal of the fear of the Lord, is in a far better situation than someone with a lot of information who doesn't fear the Lord.

The value is placed on the fear of the Lord. This is not to say that information and education are wrong, but there's no replacement for the fear of the Lord. Rather than defaulting, and this is our application, rather than defaulting in doom-scrolling to determine the diabolical demise, have you thought that with all of the things going on that we are made aware of in a variety of ways from a variety of sources, have you given thought to who the real mastermind is?

Was it that R .C. Sproul said there's not a rogue molecule in all of the universe? Who is the real mastermind? We have to give credit to whom credit is due. When wicked things happen, we have to remember who governs these griefs for our good and for his glory.

We remember the praise of the church when they were persecuted, and their first thought was the crucifixion of Christ, and how it was that that grand conspiracy involved Pilate and Herod and the Romans and the Jews, and they gathered together to only do exactly what the Lord had planned, to accomplish what he had intended.

God Works All Things Together for Good

There's a reason why Romans 8 is the favorite chapter throughout all the years of believers. We are reminded that God works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose, and that having given us his Son, will he now also with him freely give us all things?

What can separate us from the love of Christ? What condemnation can we possibly face when the judge of the universe has declared us right with him? To keep those things at the forefront of our mind, as in this information age, we keep on being sold fear.

It's not to say that there are not evil actors, there are evil actors, but what of the boogeyman in whatever form he shows up? He's a tool. He's a tool. And speaking of the tool, the minion, the mastermind is the Lord, the minion is the king of Assyria.

Now, he was no small potatoes, but he was still just a minion, he was still just a tool of the Lord. And I think Ahaz's ears must have perked up, and I don't know if they got a little bit red at this point, because the king of Assyria was his great trump card.

That was the ace up his sleeve. This was his whole idea. He has already begun to communicate at some level with this king. So if we're in 2 Kings chapter 16, we're told about Ahaz's political play with this king of Assyria.

And so in chapter 16 of 2 Kings, in verses 5 through 9,. Then the resident king of Assyria and Pekah the son of Amalia, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war, and they besieged Ahaz, but could not overcome him.

Now that's a very short summary of what happened. This was the event in which 120 ,000 men of Judah were killed, the army was slaughtered, 200 ,000 were taken captive back up north. We get a fuller story of this in Chronicles.

But they couldn't take Jerusalem at that time. So verse 6,. At that time the resident king of Assyria captured Elath for Assyria, and he drove the men of Judah from Elath, and the Edomites went to Elath and dwell there to this day.

Things are going very badly. So Ahaz has to figure out some way to fix this and to save his throne, save his kingdom. So he's going to send word to the king of Assyria. Now about this time, the Lord has sent Isaiah to go meet Ahaz with his toddler, his firstborn son, Sheer Jashub, whose name means, a remnant shall return.

And about this same time, God has sent a prophet in the northern kingdom to address the leaders there to say that what they have done in taking captive 200 ,000 people of Judah is wrong, and they need to send them back home fully clothed and cared for, put those sick on donkeys and make sure they get back safely, fully equipped.

Sheer Jashub, a remnant shall return. And so Ahaz is confronted by the prophet Isaiah with a toddler with a funny name and the word of the Lord while he is scheming and thinking about how to get the king of Assyria on his side because he's got to find some way to fix this, while God is already working and telling Ahaz, you need to trust me or you won't be established.

That's all the background. So verse 7, Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pelazar, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the hand of the king of Assyria and from the hand of the king of Israel who rise up against me.

And Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and the treasuries of the king's house and sent it as a present to the king of Assyria. Now this is in play at some level. The message or the money or something at some level, this is in play when Isaiah confronts Ahaz at the aqueduct.

Now the king of Assyria did follow through on this. After all, he leads an army of mercenaries. This is what they do. They get money and they go to war and they make more money. This is their whole program.

But Ahaz should be very surprised to hear, and perhaps a little bit worried now, when the prophet says to him, the Lord is sending the king of Assyria, and not only is he going to take care of Samaria and Damascus, Ephraim and Syria, but he's going to attack you too.

And he's going to run roughshod over your entire nation. So this new ally you made is not really your ally. And so this is an invasion by Tiglath Pelasar, and the expanded version of what happens when the king of Assyria comes through is in 2 Chronicles 28.

But this is the invasion of Tiglath Pelasar, which paves the way and weakens the nation for an invasion 30 years later by Sennacherib. And this is the one where he coops up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage, as he once wrote.

And that's where we read about in the middle of Isaiah, and they cry out to the Lord, and the Lord sends the angel, and 180 ,000 Assyrians are killed in one night. That's 30 years from this point. But what we hear is that, whether it's now or later, when God whistles for his minion, he comes ready to do his master's bidding, as we see in verse 18.

Judgment, Kingship, and the House of David

So God has chosen a fitting oppressor to bring about a desired end. We have to remember who's in charge. We must remember who holds the rod of iron, and who has determined that certain clay pots must be smashed.

This is the prerogative of the king of kings, the ruler of the kings of the earth, who is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is this ruler. Psalm 2 gives very sound counsel to all magistrates, to kiss the Son, do homage to the Son, and recognize who the true king is.

God is the one who determines the proper timing and the proper scale of judgment, even on the minions whom he used to bring out other judgments. So, for example, a classic passage in this is Jeremiah 25, and Jeremiah gives word to his people and also to the surrounding nations, and says, look, God has appointed Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies as his servant, and they're going to come through, and you either ally with him and you come under his authority, or he's going to bust you up.

And that was a very unpopular message. Jeremiah lost a lot of ratings for that. The other ones were very popular, they said, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord will never fail.

Nebuchadnezzar can't do anything to us. They were very popular. Jeremiah lost a lot of followers. And the point that Jeremiah continues to make about Babylon is, after God is done using them to judge and destroy, then God will bring judgment and destruction on them in their time, because he is the just judge of the earth.

Now, God has a mandate to deal with Judah, because as he says in verse 17, the Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house. You, your people, your father's house.

So, what is being said here is that God is going to use the king of Assyria with his army, not only to scatter the forces of Pekah and Rezin, but also to act in judgment upon Ahaz, upon Judah, upon the house of David.

Ahaz is the son of David. He has a righteous mandate to order this judgment. Tiglath-Pileser has a mandate from God to execute his orders, even though he is completely unaware that he is fulfilling God's designs.

This language of you, your people, your father's house reminds us of whose house? The house of David. And there was another occasion when God sent another servant, an angel, with a mandate to judge on David.

Remember this at the end of 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, where David had sinned greatly, and he had to take responsibility at the threshing floor of Arunah, the site of Isaac's altar in the future temple, and he offered sacrifices to propitiate the wrath of God against his people because of his sin.

And that was exactly what was said there at that threshing floor. You, your people, your father's house. Same language. And so it's personalized as David intercedes, and we are reminded that God has a mandate to judge the sinner among sinners and descendant from sinners.

You, your people, your father's house. What God does here is righteous and just given the covenant, but it's also righteous and just because he's the creator, and he has a right to do that with those he has made and he has made in his own image.

If you flick the whip of the covenant, you will hear the snap of Adam's fall, but the lashings land upon another. Isaiah 53. So God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me, as the hymn says.

We'll leave it there. We'll talk about the scale of doom next time. Verse 17 concludes with days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. That will require a bit of a history lesson about what happened in those days, and so we'll leave it for there.

Let's close with prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this night. We thank you for the gift of prayer and fellowship. We thank you for the hope that we have in Christ. We thank you that we can trust you, that you are in charge of all things, and we give you praise as the Lord of hosts.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.