Wednesday, December 10, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Sign of Immanuel and the Future Record

We'll be reading verses 1 through 10 this evening.

This is the word of the Lord.

Moreover, the Lord said to me, take a large scroll and write on it with a man's pen concerning Meher Shalalhashbaz. And I will take for myself faithful witnesses to record Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeborakiah.

Then I went to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son. And then the Lord said to me, call his name Meher Shalalhashbaz. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, my father and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria.

The Lord also spoke to me again, saying, inasmuch as these people refuse the waters of Shalawa that flow softly and rejoice in Rezan and Remaliah's son, now therefore behold the Lord brings up over them the waters of the river, strong and mighty.

The king of Assyria and all his glory, he will go up over all his channels and will go over all his banks. He will pass through Judah. He will overflow in Passover. He will reach up to the neck. And the stretching out of his wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel.

Be shattered, O you peoples, and be broken in pieces. Give ear, all you from far countries. Gird yourselves, but be broken in pieces. Gird yourselves, but be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing.

Speak the word, but it will not stand, for God is with us. So it's good to remind ourselves of the place we are at in this message of Isaiah. In the first 35 chapters of Isaiah, we have a series of sermons for a difficult present.

And of course, Assyria is the main threat in the world at this time. But the problem really stems from the lack of faith amongst God's people, their fear of man and their fear of death, rather than their fear of the Lord.

It's not the first time that they live during the looming threat of other superpowers. If they would only trust the Lord, their times would not be so difficult. The Lord must convince and show forth to his people that he is their true redeemer.

Yes, he's the one who convicts them of their sin and shows them how backward they are. And he's the one who arranges for their chastisement, for the curses of the covenant to fall on them. Nevertheless, he still remains their only hope of deliverance.

He still remains their only hope of redemption. So they must not look away from the Lord to find help someplace else. And God makes this point in the first 12 chapters of Isaiah. The first six chapters really seals the case for Israel, for Judah, particularly being under the judgment of God.

They deserve it. There's just no getting around it. The first five chapters that have no historical anecdotes at all is simply a survey of the entire spiritual situation of Judah, and it's bad, it's very bad.

There is interleaving of hope within those first six chapters, but nevertheless, we come away understanding that Judah are the children of woe. What is needed, therefore, is a child of hope. Even as Adam and Eve stood before God, children of woe, God promised them a child of hope.

Once again, here again, before the children of woe, God says there's a child of hope, and that's where we are right now, thinking about that child, the Messiah, the promises of Jesus Christ. And we are in the very first of three sections in chapters seven through 12, and the first of three sections focuses on the sign of Emmanuel.

We've been through chapter seven, where we see he is the future ruler, but there's a play on that title, as God is the one who rules the future of Judah. It's not Ahaz, it's not Tiglath-Pileser II, it's not anybody else who thinks that they can control the future, it's God.

He's arranging everything. And they don't want to hear it, but he's going to tell them anyway. Sometimes people don't want to hear it, but they need to be told anyway. So God is going to bring a forceful revelation to Judah.

That's what we find in chapter eight. And no matter what kind of scheming men do, the word of God always prevails. God says it, it shall come to pass. It doesn't matter what men say behind closed doors and plot and scheme and form a conspiracy, it doesn't matter.

God's word will be unstoppable as he lays down the future record before it ever happens. And this is what we're going to see in verses one through four. It's going to be our focus, verses one through four, the future record.

Now, all of this is against the backdrop of men not wanting to submit to God. Ahaz refuses the sign. God doesn't want to give you a sign anyway, Emmanuel. Ahaz, I'm not going to be in partnership with the Lord.

I'm not going to play my part in the dance. I'm going to sit this one out. I don't have anything to do with God. That doesn't stop God. He just brings the revelation anyway. He brings the sign anyway.

Ahaz has sent the gold and silver of the temple to the king of Assyria because he sees the king of Assyria as the name of the game, that Tiglath-Pileser the second, that the empire of Assyria, that is what will be controlling the future.

So he wants to end up on the winning side. So he allies himself with the winning side, he thinks. He thinks that Assyria is going to be the unstoppable force in the coming days. But the prophet Isaiah says, no, it's actually God.

And Assyria is simply his tool. He has many tools and Assyria is one of them. So the one you should be allied with, the one you should fear and connect with is God. So God's word, not man's will, shall prove to be the great power in the world.

That's the basic contention of Isaiah. But how do you prove that? How do you prove that? Well, God proves it by saying what's going to happen before it happens. And he does so in a clever way, in an eye-catching way, or actually an ear-catching way, using prophetic names.

We've already had the prophetic name of Immanuel. And of course we have Isaiah's son, his firstborn son, Shear-Jashua, but remnant shall return. So that's already got the attention of the people. But once again, we have names like Meher-Shallal-Hashbaz and others, which none of us name our children at all for obvious reasons.

But they all have something to say about the future. And it's interesting too, because you can write down the prophecy of what shall come to pass, and you can put it on a papyrus scroll. And you may remember that the prophet Jeremiah did that, and he put it down on a papyrus scroll, and he wasn't allowed to go to Jerusalem, he wasn't allowed to have an audience with the king, but he sent his servant anyway.

And the servant brought the prophetic scroll to the king, and the king would listen for a little bit, and then he'd have one of his servants cut a strip off of the papyrus and burn it in the fire. Don't like that part, don't like that part, don't like that part.

And so he burned the entire scroll in the fire. And after that was done, God said to Jeremiah, now write it all down again. But you know, when you name your child the prophetic word, every time that child gets called home, every time that child's name is introduced, the name just keeps on being said again, and again, and again, and again, and bringing before the people this confluence of ideas.

Number one, the word of the Lord shall prevail, and the word of the Lord shall prevail in a promised child. Now, how central is that to the message of the scriptures, and of course, to the Christmas season?

So God is teaching Judah the priority power of his word, and he does so through the covenant. They're like the toddler, that no matter how they wriggle, twist, and flop, they can't get out of the arms of the father, right?

He's got them, and the grip is either a blessing or a cursing, depending entirely on what? On the posture of the toddler to the dad, right? If the dad has the toddler gripped tightly, and the toddler loves it, then it's a wonderful experience.

Toddler doesn't like it, toddler's not getting away. The toddler's having an awful time, and the dad's like, hey, you're getting down. Yeah, I got you, all right, you're not going anywhere. And that's the situation that Judah's in.

So they can't get away from God, they are bound to him, they are bound to his word. Their entire past, present, and future was bound by his word. They think the real powers in the world were foreign and domestic, who was king in Jerusalem, and who was king beyond the borders of Jerusalem.

No, that's not what determined them. What determined them was the word of the Lord. The word of God. They say that history is written by the victors. We're concerned these days with who controls the narrative.

Terms like spin, revisionist, framing, slant, and propaganda. Now those words show up a lot, don't they? They show up a lot in the current epistemological war. I think over 20 years ago, John MacArthur wrote a book called The Truth War.

Truth War preceded that book and is still going on, but it's a truth war. We know that the sophisticated politician never ceases to engage in discourse shaping and rhetorical strategy to achieve narrative dominance.

You can almost hear the serpent's hiss in each one of those terms. But God has spoken, God has spoken, and it's not that God controls the narrative, he's the one who writes the entire history of what actually has happened, and history is written not by simply a victor, but it's written by the maker.

When you read the scriptures, you find prophecy that is given and prophecy that is fulfilled, and that shows us that God is the author, the finisher, the alpha, and the omega. When we look back at what has occurred, it is informed by what God said would occur, and the trajectory that we're on even today is set by God's word and will come into its fitting end in Christ's preeminence.

We, too, are bound by the word of God. What will happen is what God says will happen. What we're experiencing today is, by his definition, we are bound by the word. It's unstoppable, and that's the message of verses one through 10 of Isaiah 8.

And so this future record, God charts the future with a written word, a written word, and God is not jotting down predictions, and surely one of them might come true, and if you're confusing enough, maybe like Nostradamus, if you're confusing enough and vague enough, then somebody somewhere will think that you got it right.

No, God doesn't merely jot down predictions, but truly shapes the outcome. And notice he does it by naming. What do we learn about naming when we read Genesis? Whatever Adam owned, he named. God owns everything.

He even owns the future, and so he names it. He's naming people based on what is about to happen, showing his ownership of men and their outcomes, the times and all their unfolding God owns. And so Judah's gotta learn that again and again and pay attention.

The Sign Written on the Large Scroll

So, moreover, the Lord said to me, said to Isaiah, "'Take a large scroll and write on it with a man's pen "'concerning Meher's shallow hash-baths.'". Well, this large scroll. Now, the translators are trying real hard here to make this seem manageable for us, but this is not the word for scroll.

The translators are trying to connect with English readers about trying to make it make sense to us, but have you ever noticed that sometimes the prophets do things that don't make sense? This is the exact same word that we find in chapter three of Isaiah, verse 23.

This is the exact same word. In Isaiah 3 .23, this will be very interesting. It says, "'And the mirrors.'". The first line of chapter three, verse 23, is finishing up a thought from verse 22. It says, "'And the mirrors, the fine linen, "'the turbans, and the ropes.'".

Kind of listing various things that God takes away. See that word mirrors? Same word is here. Isn't that weird? Mirrors. God says to Isaiah, take a large mirror. This is not like our mirrors that reflects the exact opposite image, you're looking at yourself in the mirror every morning, but these are still very bright.

What they had back then were very bright. They reflected light. Very, very eye-catching, very shiny. So God says to Isaiah, take a big, shiny piece of metal and craft a billboard for everyone to see.

I'm gonna have you write something on it.

That's the idea.

A really big, shiny piece of metal, and you're gonna put something on it. It's gonna be eye-catching, light-reflecting. It's gonna catch everyone's attention. In other words, God is, through this, he's announcing the grand opening of Emmanuel's invasion with a slick ad campaign.

He's commissioned the crafting of a light-catching billboard, the equivalent of a flashing neon sign. He's getting everyone's attention, and he says, write on it with a man's pen. Now, again, this term is not the word used for the, not used for the reed, the reed stylus that you would put in some ink and scratch along on a papyrus.

This is the word, man's pen, this is the word in the Hebrew for an engraving tool. The word was only used one other place, and that was when Aaron used an engraving tool to shape the golden calf. That's the only other time this word is used in the Bible, as a noun.

But the verb form is used all over the place, and it has to do with God forming something in creation or shaping events in history, or a man shaping something for industry or for idolatry. So, because it makes sense when you look at the original language, why would Isaiah be using an engraving tool to write on a scroll, punch right through it?

No, he's using an engraving tool to work on metal. Now, that makes sense. A shiny piece of metal with an engraving tool, and so he's putting something on it.

The word,.

The word for this engraving tool literally means something that screeches, right? You imagine if you're writing on metal, a big shiny piece of metal, you're writing on it, how pleasant is that gonna sound?

I imagine Isaiah is doing this at a busy intersection in Jerusalem. He's got this big shiny piece of metal, and he's making quite a racket. Well, the idea is to get everyone's attention. A big shiny piece of metal,.

That's to get everyone's attention.

He's supposed to write a name on it. The Lord is announcing to everybody what's going to happen. He's showing them the power of his word, so he's getting their attention, and he's out there making a horrible racket.

Each letter written by, very prominently on this large placard, this big shiny piece of metal, and someone comes up and says, Isaiah, hey, hey, Isaiah, what are you doing? It's like, I'm writing a name.

Screech!

Screech!

Oh, hey, hang on, what name? Oh, you'll see.

Screech!

This has gotta be seriously annoying. It's like, whoa, why are you writing a name? God told me to.

Screech!

You're ruining this mirror, and you're ruining my ears. Why can't you just write on a clay tablet like a regular prophet? Why do you gotta be so weird? God ordered the mirror.

Screech!

Just how long of a name are you writing? You have no idea. May her shalal hash baz. Longest word we have in the Bible. That's a lot of scratching on a mirror with an engraving tool. It's gonna take a long time to write it, and everyone's gonna be paying attention by the time you're done.

The point is being made. Ahaz thinks that he's the maker. He's gonna make for himself a name, he's gonna make for himself new gods, in fact, he makes an altar to their name. He's gonna make himself great by means of his political and religious reforms.

The Bible says idolaters are damned for all such pride. God is the maker. God makes by his word, and so he has his prophet make this sign because God makes the world. God makes its days. The ebb and flow of history are by his word.

Now, we may expect to find Immanuel being written on this big, flashy mirror, but we have this other name, may her shalal hash baz. Immanuel is the nickname of the child, a sign given. May her shalal hash baz is the, that's his actual everyday name, imagine that.

This name is a prophecy. It means swift to the spoils, speedy to the prey. That's what the name means, swift to the spoils, speedy to the prey. So the second-born, first-born child of Isaiah is she or Jashua, the remnant shall return.

Second-born son of Isaiah is, may her shalal hash baz, swift to the spoils, speedy to the prey. Because the Lord is with them in this invasion, it's going to happen so easily and so smoothly that the attention of the conquerors are gonna be far more upon the spoils than on any hindrance to them.

I mean, the idea here is that the Assyrians are not going to have their pre-battle strategy meetings and talk about how to defeat the armies of Judah, no. Before they go into battle, they're just gonna make the shopping list.

Here's what I'm gonna go grab, what are you gonna go grab? That's how easily Judah's gonna fold. That's the level of resistance that the enemy's expecting. Judah's gonna fold like a wet paper bag and be just as easily shredded.

Now that's the prediction, that's the whole point of may her shalal hash baz. And it's a name that intrigues, the child hasn't even been born yet. The name evokes curiosity. Those who were in the know, know.

Like, oh, I know what's going on there. Other people are like, what does that mean? The word's gonna get out, it's gonna draw attention. And once the meaning of the name is understood, they're gonna see it come to pass and God is gonna be vindicated.

Faithful Witnesses and the Meaning of the Names

Now, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word will be established. And so God says, I'm gonna get some witnesses here to testify to this. He says, verse two, I will take for myself faithful witnesses to record.

So Isaiah is out there screeching along on this big mirror, making the prophetic name, may her shalal hash baz. He's going to have a son by that name. And it's going to be very clear what God is saying about the near future.

But God says, I'm gonna take for myself faithful witnesses to record. So there's gonna be people who are gonna be paying attention. Uriah the priest and Zechariah, the son of Jeborakiah. All right, well, what kind of witnesses are these?

God calls them faithful witnesses. Sarcasm alert. Uriah the priest is the same as Uriah the priest, just that the J in there. The Germans, when they tried to convey the Hebrew language to the world, they took the Hebrew letter that is basically their W, for lack of a better way of saying it.

And for the Germans, they made it a J. Silly Germans. So depending on how translations go, it's either Uriah or Uriah, and you don't get the W in there. So don't worry about it too bad. It's the same person.

But this Uriah and Uriah is the same person. And who is this? This is the high priest that King Ahaz came to in 2 Kings 16, verses 10 through 16. King Ahaz comes to this high priest and says, here's the blueprints for that big pagan altar that I saw up in Damascus, and I want to worship the gods of Syria right here in the comfort of my own city.

So please build this big pagan altar and please move the holy furniture of God someplace else. And the priest said, you got it, boss. This is one of the two faithful witnesses that God has chosen. So that's why I'm saying sarcasm alert.

Okay.

Uriah the priest and Zechariah, the son of Jeborakiah. These are the witnesses God selects. Now, we don't know who the second guy is. We don't know who his father was. So what's the point? Why Uriah? And why, and this is the only place we have the name Jeborakiah in the whole Bible.

Why are their names even showing up here? Because God is making a big deal about names recently, isn't he?

Right?

Verse one, may her shallow hash baths pay attention to the name, think about the meaning of the name. And let's add some more context and layers to this name game. Let's add Uriah, let's add Zechariah, let's add Jeborakiah.

And what do these names mean? The Lord enlightens, the Lord remembers, and the Lord blesses. The Lord is with us, right? This whole invasion, this whole thing is saying, hey, God is still here, God hasn't left, God is your redeemer, turn to the Lord, remember who the Lord is, is the Lord enlightens Uriah, the Lord remembers Zechariah, the Lord blesses Jeborakiah.

It's the name game. Even in the midst of the judgment that God brings, may her shallow hash baths, he reminds them and brings faithful witnesses of who he is as their only redeemer and savior. Even as he brings their punishment, he invites them to turn to him as their savior.

They must turn to him, they must find salvation in him. So these are the themes of Isaiah, these are the themes of Emmanuel. If we were to read through Isaiah, we would always be running into these three themes.

The Lord enlightens, the Lord remembers, the Lord blesses, right? These are the themes of the prophets. The Lord gives light to those who are in darkness, the Lord remembers those who have forgotten him, the Lord blesses those who have only known curses.

And how will he do so? Through the promised child. He will do so through the promised child. It's the child who will turn the tides, bearing the judgment, bringing the salvation, born of a woman, born under the law.

This is this chapter eight that is moving through and telling them of the great judgment and how it's all going to come out, is going to emphasize the unstoppable nature of God's word, that his word will not fail, his promises will not break.

And that's a very important thing for the Jews to grab hold of and think of, because God is about to say a whole lot more about a child. Chapter nine, chapter nine is the promise. The people who have walked in darkness will see a great light.

Chapter nine is the promise for unto us a child is given, unto us a son, a child is born, a son is given. That's chapter nine. He's going to give those promises to a people that have been questioning whether God is even around.

He's going to give those promises to a people who are wondering if God ever keeps his word. Chapter eight is going to show them in no uncertain terms, God keeps his word. You can always trust what he says.

He always comes through and he's worth trusting. That's chapter eight. Then he gives the promises that we're so familiar with in chapter nine. All right, we will leave it there and close with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the time you've given us in your word. We thank you for the way that you are in charge, the way that you give us your promises, the way that you have given these names to remind us of who you are.

And I pray that you would encourage us and help us in our trust of you, that you would increase our faith as we reflect upon the names that you have given to us by which we know you. So we thank you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.