Wednesday, October 22, 2025 PM

14 through 25, Isaiah chapter 7, verses 14 through 25.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we thank you for this passage of Scripture.

I pray that you would help us to bring the opportunity that we have here to learn more about your

Son, Jesus Christ, as we look at this prophecy concerning Him and concerning your dealings with your people

Israel. So I give you thanks that we would take it to heart and that you would guide us through it by your

Spirit. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right,

Isaiah chapter 7, beginning in verse 14. 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 the Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people in your father's house, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah.

And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

They will cut those from beyond the river with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the legs, and will also remove the beard, sheep.

So it shall be from the abundance of milk they give that he will eat curds. For curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land.

It shall happen in that day that wherever there could be a thousand horns with arrows and bows, men will come there, because all the land will become theirs.

We are looking at the indictment of the Lord regarding the state of Judah, state of their king, and the main problem, of course, is

King Ahaz and his fear of Pekah and Rezin, king of Israel, king of Syria.

The capitals of Samaria and Damascus loom large in Ahaz's thinking, and so all that he does is in regard to these great threats.

He's lost his army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, two hundred thousand captives taken, but the

Lord is in the process of bringing those captives home. A remnant shall return, as Isaiah's firstborn son is named,

Shear Jashub, a remnant shall return. But Ahaz is fearful of man and fearful of death, and so God sends the prophet

Isaiah to confront Ahaz in his fear, and the fact of the matter is he need not fear

Pekah and Rezin, he need not fear Israel and Syria, for they're not going to last.

And God wants him to operate in faith, and so God says to him, ask for a sign, ask for any sign,

I'll prove myself to you where you need to trust me rather than fear men. Ahaz refuses to ask a sign of the

Lord. The Lord rebukes him through the prophet Isaiah, which now brings us to this passage and a very famous verse about the virgin being with child, bearing a son, and his name being called

Emmanuel. And this is a very treasured verse as well it ought to be.

It is, I think, perhaps interesting for most of us to read this verse in its original context and hear that God says this in the context of judgment, even a near judgment, coming upon the land of Judah.

So let's think about this passage, verses 14 to 25 as a whole, and then let's think about, think of it briefly in survey, and then think about verses 14 through 17 as we hone in on this sign of a child in Israel.

What we see when we read through Isaiah chapter 7 verses 14 through 25 is that Ahaz's refusal to ask for a sign does not stop

God. God gives him a sign anyway. I'm going to give you a sign, a sign of a child with a funny name, and it's going to be important that you pay attention to that name.

Now this is very much in keeping with what God has just done, because he sent Isaiah and told him, take your son

Shear Jashub with you to go confront Ahaz. So there is Isaiah with his toddler

Shear Jashub, putting his finger in the face of the king saying, fear

God. And the little tyke's name is, a remnant shall return.

And God's already at work bringing those captives home. Well the next thing, you know, there's a sign given to Ahaz, and once again it's going to be a little child with an interesting name.

In this case, Immanuel. And when you read through, you discover that the young child, before he gets to be very old at all, before he knows to choose between the evil and the good, verse 16, as he is eating curds, milk and curds, eating his yogurt and honey, that before he's very old at all, an invasion is going to sweep through.

It's going to take out Syria, it's going to take out Israel, and it's going to wash over even the land of Judah.

And here Ahaz is worried about Pekah and Rezin, but they're not long for this world.

He's worried about those kingdoms north of him, but they're not long for this world. And in fact, this invasion is going to overflow even

Judah. So buckle up is the word. And this little child,

Immanuel, is going to serve as the mascot of this invasion, because Assyria and its capital of Nineveh and its king,

Sennacherib, is going to come rolling through and take out everybody and wash even up into the walls of Jerusalem, though he will fail to take it.

So all of this is on the horizon. The idea is this, that while the little tyke is still slurping baby mash and incapable of making basic ethical decisions, the

Assyrian invasion is going to hit with devastating force. We see that in verses 15 through 17.

The word is that by the time the Assyrians are finished with Judah, the survivors are all going to be slurping baby mash, verses 21 and 22, and they'll be grateful to have it.

When all the crops are burned, when you have no food stores because the Assyrian mercenaries have taken it all, all you can do is milk your goats and hope to get enough to survive on.

Well, why are they being judged? They're being judged, Judah's being judged because of their poor ethical decision -making, because they keep on going against God, rebelling against him.

We see that from chapter 5 already. Now, they're being told,

Ahaz is being told in advance about this invasion, but it doesn't help. There's no advantage in knowing that it's going to come, you're not gonna be able to stop it.

In fact, the sign Immanuel declares that this invasion is unstoppable.

The name Immanuel in this context, God with us, means that God is with them in this invasion, with Judah in their judgment, meaning he's leading it and no one's going to be able to stop it.

How do we know that's the meaning of the name Immanuel in this context? Isaiah chapter 8 verse 10.

Still talking about the invasion that's coming. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing. Make your plans, try to stop this invasion.

Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing. Speak the word, but it will not stand. Notice, for God is with us.

God is with us. What is he saying? He's saying you're not going to be able to stop the invasion because Immanuel.

You can't turn him back. You can't stop God and his purposes. Now, this is the original context for the sign of a child in Israel, and we see that in verses 14 through 17.

Now, hear it again in its most immediate context, verses 14 through 17. Therefore the

Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he 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," which is what?

Israel and Samaria and Syria and Damascus.

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, the big civil war and split during the days of Rehoboam, when

Jeroboam took the ten tribes, went north and they got themselves into a civil war. So, devastating days.

So, God will give a sign. In fact, God will give a child.

His answer to the unbelief of Israel, to the unbelief of Judah, is what? I will give you a child.

Now, that's just setting things up for later, isn't it? To an unbelieving people who have been completely distracted in all their ways of worship, what does

God do? He gives a child. He gives a promise of a child, and he gives a child.

Now, just who is this baby mascot, and who is his mother?

And it may surprise you to learn that the near fulfillment of this prophecy is this, the baby is

Isaiah's second -born son by his own wife. Isaiah already has a son,

Shearah Jashub, that's clear, it's Isaiah 7 verse 3, he's got Shearah Jashub, the remnant shall return, but the prophet's son,

Shearah Jashub, is himself a prophecy. And so, there's the sense of looking for the next child to come along, to have also a name that says something significant.

And so, here comes another son, and he says this child is going to be named

Emmanuel. Now, we see that in verse 15, that, verse 14, his name is

Emmanuel, 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.

Now, keep that in mind, keep your finger right there in verses 15 and 16, and then look over at chapter 8, verses 3 and 4.

Then I went to the prophetess, that's Isaiah's wife, and she conceived and bore a son. And the

Lord said to me, call his name Mehershalohashbaz, longest word in the

Bible for those of you interested in trivia, for before the child shall have the 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.

So, you see the parallel. There's the child over here in chapter 7, before he gets too old, before he can make those decisions of good and evil, before he can get that old, then the land that you dread shall be forsaken by both her kings.

Over here, chapter 8, this child also has a weird -sounding name, and before he gets old enough to say dad, dad, and mama, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria taken away before the king of Assyria.

So there's a clear connection being made here between the two. Now, that's not the full meaning of the sign, there's a promise that there's going to be a child born within the context of this invasion by Assyria, this child will be born before the

Assyrian invasion, but he won't be that old before the Assyrian invasion comes, and his name will be called Immanuel, God with us, because God is going to be with you in this whole invasion, and you're not going to stop it.

So there's the near fulfillment of the prophecy, but that's not all that is meant by this prophecy. The Lord will give you a sign, and this sign has a fulfillment in Christ.

So there's a prophecy about a sign, and the sign has its fulfillment in Christ. So this is a very special, very important prophecy in the

Old Testament. The point is being made,

God is with us, and from an Old Covenant Israelite's point of view, this falls in a heavy way.

The visitation of God often is put into the context of judgment in the

Old Testament. You know, for some children in certain contexts on certain days when someone says,

Daddy's almost home, lots of excitement, this is going to be great.

For other children in another context who have not been obeying and everything's going sideways, their mother has prophesied over them and their behavior, just wait till your father gets home.

And when she says, your father's almost home, this is not good news.

In this context, Immanuel is, the Lord is just about to arrive, and you're all in a world of trouble, okay?

And that's the original first context of the name, of the sign of Immanuel.

So the idea is that God is not going to be working remotely, he's going to be on -site.

He's gonna be in person, no Zoom for him. He's calling Judah personally into his office to handle this business directly.

Now when we think about the language here, this is meant to be understood as a miracle.

The idea that there's a sign, it's not a miracle necessarily that Isaiah's wife has a second -born son, every child is a gift, but the fact that it's a sign says there's something miraculous about it.

Certainly, the prophecy coming true in just the way that it does makes it very special, but this son is going to be very special in that his name is

Immanuel. And notice, you'll notice in the text, and I think it's correct, the word son is capitalized there in verse 14.

You may have that in your translation. Notice that this son, and how often does

God call Israel his son, but what's different about this son and how much hope is there in the promised son, ever looking for the promised son, circumcision was all about looking for the promised son, the seed of Abraham, looking for the promised son, the son of David, looking for the promised son, this son, notice how different he is from Israel as a son.

Israel as a son does not know to refuse the evil and chooses the good.

They call evil good, and they call good evil, but this son, he will know, and he will choose between the good and the evil.

So this son is going to be a miracle son, he's going to be a mediator son, and he will have all the merits.

Now I want to dive in here to clarify as much as possible what it means that he is a miracle son here in verse 14.

Therefore the Lord himself, so by his own power in his own way, he will give you a sign.

Now this sign, he offered a sign to Ahaz, ask for a sign,

I'll give you whatever you need to believe, and Ahaz refuses, so God says I'm going to give you a sign anyway, and after it comes to pass you're going to know that I am

God and that you are in big trouble. The coming to pass of this sign is going to be an amen in history, a confirmation that God's plan is coming to pass despite all of Ahaz's shenanigans and schemings.

When we zoom in on the language of the virgin shall conceive, this term in the original

Hebrew has been controversially translated as young woman. It was a big scandal when the

Revised Standard Version came out many moons ago and translated Isaiah 714 and said, behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name

Immanuel. And this was considered a whim by liberal scholars and was demonized by fundamentalists and said you're trying to get rid of the virgin birth, and most of them were.

But the argument proves to be an adventure in missing the point. There are two terms that could have been used to describe a young woman of childbearing years, and the one that's used here,

Alma, implies a virgin in certain contexts, and it is not as specific as the

Hebrew word betula, which more directly means virgin. So it was noted that the

Hebrew word that is less often specifically about a virgin was used here. It's more flexible than the other one.

It's actually a win for Bible -believing fundamentalists. Why? Because the term can only mean virgin in some passages, it can be indefinite in others, but that flexibility is precisely what we need for this prophetic sign to work.

The fact of the matter is this term Alma can refer accurately both to Isaiah's wife and to the

Virgin Mary. That's what we needed. That's exactly the word we need, given the fact that one is the mother of the sign and other is the mother of the destination.

There needed to be a young woman giving birth to her second -born son, nicknamed

Emmanuel, named Meher Shalom HaShabaz, to work in the immediate context, and this prophecy has to refer to Mary, who was a virgin.

So it had to be Alma, it couldn't be Bechula. So it's actually a win. So we have the type and the anti -type, the promise and the fulfillment, the shadow and the substance, and the scriptures are full of these kinds of glories of Christ.

But God says to, through his prophet Isaiah to Ahaz, he says, behold, pay attention.

Pay attention. He's dealing with the rebellious and worrisome

King Ahaz. Ahaz doesn't want to pay attention, he doesn't want a sign, he doesn't want to deal with this

God who he sees has let him down. We've read in Chronicles and Kings how he saw that the gods of Syria, he said, well they didn't let

Damascus down, didn't let Rezin down, didn't let the Syrians down, I want to know more about those gods.

So he went up there and copied their altar and built that in the temple, and he wants to worship the gods of Damascus.

But God is saying to Ahaz, through Isaiah, pay attention. Ahaz is like a fussy 18 -month -old unwilling to eat his mashed peas.

Sticks out his lip, twists his head back and forth and away from the spoon. Ahaz does not want a sign, he does not want to believe, he does not want

God to prove himself to him. He doesn't want to eat his peas, so God says, behold.

Takes him by the fat little cheeks and shoves the green goo in there. You're going to take this sign, pay attention, there's going to be a young woman giving birth to a child, he's going to be the mascot of this invasion,

God with us, there's no escape from it, and we're going to name him Meher Shalal Hashbaz. What is the meaning of that word, of that name, anyway?

Well, it means to hasten the swift to the spoils, speedy to the prey.

It's a name that says this is how quick and devastating this invasion is going to be.

So when we, and I skipped over a lot of notes and we'll look at those later, but when we were going through, it's good to see that the sign of a child in Israel, in its original context,

Immanuel, is a child is going to be born, and before he gets too old,

Assyria is going to wipe out all of these other nations that you are scared of, and he's going to be rolling over like a overflowing river through the land of Judah, and you guys are going to have a hard time, and you're not going to be able to avoid it.

That's the original context, and this is not an exhaustive fulfillment of that prophecy, because immediately after we see how that works out in the near context about Immanuel in chapters 7 and 8, we come to chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12 that is still talking about the child.

We're still talking about the child? Yes, because the promise of a child, the promise of a son was larger than this one moment, and what was said about Immanuel here in chapter 7 verse 14, and what is said about the child in Isaiah chapter 9, what is said about the child in Isaiah chapter 11, is all said of Jesus Christ in the

Gospels. Now why that's important we don't have time to get into right now, but that's the original context of Immanuel.

It's not clean. It's not especially nice.

It's pretty messy. There's a guarantee of judgment, but ultimately it means

God's salvation through judgment, and this ultimately is going to be echoed in the expression of Immanuel that we find in the

Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. So we'll leave it there for now, and let's close with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your Word, and I thank you that your Word is rich, and I thank you that it is safe enough for a child to wade and deep enough for an elephant to drown, that it's clear that this child

Immanuel is Jesus, and his mother the Virgin Mary gave birth to him just as you said, and that also this is a prophecy with a deep and complex history, and one in which you are showing yourself to be faithful in bringing your holy judgment against covenant breakers, even as you declare that there's a

Son to come who will be faithful and righteous and worthy of your delight and satisfaction.

So we thank you for the way that your Word works and the way that you work in us through it. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.