Wednesday, July 30, 2025 PM

Isaiah 7:1-9 and the Crisis Facing Ahaz

We're reading verses 1 -9 this evening. Isaiah chapter 7, verses 1 -9. You weren't here, we made it to 7. See, you're spraying your ankle and you missed stuff. Alright, let's read. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Amalia, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it.

And it was told to the house of David, saying, Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim. So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind. Then the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shear, Jashub, your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the fuller's field, and say to him, Take heed and be quiet.

Do not fear or be fainthearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin in Syria and the son of Amalia. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Amalia have plotted evil against you, saying, Let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over them, the son of Tabel.

Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people.

The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Amalia's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. As we've been talking about, we come now to chapters 7 -12 of Isaiah, where we learn about the child of hope, in contrast to the children of woe.

The Child of Hope and the Sign of Emmanuel

Judah itself will not be the Savior, but one from among Judah will be the Savior. All the attention will be now on the Messiah who is to come. We start off in chapters 7 and 8 thinking about this child of hope, and the sign of Emmanuel.

This will be the first series of passages that talk about this child of hope, with this key word, Emmanuel. We see in chapters 7 and 8 that there is a crisis at hand. We especially looked at verses 1 and 2 last time, how the king of Israel and the king of Syria have combined their forces together.

Pekah and Rezin invaded Judah, hoping to completely defeat the country by taking Jerusalem. They were unable to do so. However, they killed 120 ,000 valiant men of Judah, which would constitute basically the whole army of Judah, and then took 200 ,000 captives north towards Damascus.

The idea was to enslave the entirety of Judah's population, all those who didn't make it into the safety of the walls of Jerusalem. This is practically the end of the nation of Judah, looming before King Ahaz and his court and all those with him in the city.

That is why he is shaking like a leaf in the wind, for he has heard that after this initial invasion, Pekah and Rezin are now marshalling their forces again for round two. The plan is to go back up against Jerusalem, make a hole in the wall, infiltrate and cause a coup in the city, and install their own king, and thus they would control Judah as a vassal state and use them as slaves.

That was a genuine conspiracy. That is what Ahaz is afraid of. But as we looked at verses 1 and 2, and the fact that Ahaz was shaking like a leaf in the wind, we examined other passages from 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings and reminded ourselves of how wicked Ahaz was.

He was such a wicked king that he wasn't even buried with the other kings. The other kings were buried together, those who had some degree of honor, some sense of a connection to the previous lineage of David.

But Ahaz was so wicked, when he died, they wouldn't even bury him with the other kings. And we surveyed several incidents in which he paganized the worship of Judah, even going so far as to make blood sacrifices on a pagan altar in Damascus and to make a copy of that altar for the temple courts, displacing much of the artifacts and sacred furniture that was prominent there.

So he led the entire nation into paganism, the entire nation he led into blasphemy. This is the kind of man that Ahaz was. And he was very afraid of men, and so afraid of men that he was ensnared to pay obeisance to whoever seemed to be the strongest.

So God sends his prophet Isaiah to Ahaz to confront him with this misplaced fear, to remind Ahaz of who really is in charge. And we were reminded from the passage, especially in 2 Chronicles 28, how that while Ahaz was shaking like a leaf in the wind about what was going to become of his nation, at the very same time, God was using a prophet in the north to confront the leaders there about their evil and wickedness, and they actually released the 200 ,000 captives and supplied their needs and ensured that they would make it back to the nation of Judah.

That's what God was up to while Ahaz was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Now, we're coming to verse 3 of chapter 7, where there's a confrontation as the Lord has sent his prophet Isaiah to speak to Ahaz.

God Sends His Prophet and Child to Confront Ahaz

Verse 3,.

Then the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz. You and she are Jashub, your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the fuller's field. So, Lord sends his prophet.

Very common occurrence in the Old Testament. The king has got it wrong or the priests have got it wrong. The people have got it wrong. How to get it right? God sends his prophet to point his finger at them and say,.

Stop that.

That's my father's favorite application in preaching and in counseling.

Stop that.

The prophet goes out and says, Stop that, Ahaz. Stop fearing and trembling. Stop trying to come up with some sort of contingency plan. Stop being afraid of men. And he comes with his son, Shear Jashub.

Shear Jashub is the firstborn son of Isaiah. And God tells Isaiah to take the little guy with him out to meet Ahaz. Now, Shear Jashub would have been very young. Perhaps an infant. Perhaps a toddler. Possibly weaned.

If so, just so. Why send the little child with Isaiah? What's the point? Well, God sends a prophet and he also sends a child to his rebellious people. Now, that's going to be a theme in chapters 7 through 12 of Isaiah.

Begins here. What's the answer? I send you a child. We have to keep track of that. That is not a new theme. At the very beginning, Genesis 3, in the face of great hopelessness and difficulty, what was the promise?

The promise was a child. So, God sends Isaiah with a child, Shear Jashub, to meet with Ahaz. Now, Ahaz is busy doing the job of a king. He's inspecting the aqueduct. The reason why he's interested in the aqueduct is prior to King Hezekiah, the water for this great city of Jerusalem came in from the outside.

They had to get water in somehow. If a siege occurs against Jerusalem, this would be their weak point. If the enemies are able to break the aqueduct, disrupt the aqueduct, then the siege won't last as long because the people inside Jerusalem will not have enough water.

It was the greatness and the wisdom of King Hezekiah to dig tunnels beneath the city to get access to the water that would keep them going no matter how long the siege was. But Ahaz is out looking at the aqueduct, and as soon as Isaiah shows up with a little child, before Isaiah says a word to the king, a message has already been revealed because Shear Jashub, his name means, a remnant shall return.

And that's just loaded with prophetic meaning. In the very near future, even though 120 ,000 soldiers have died in a single day, and what a massive judgment that was on Judah, 200 ,000 women and children lately clothed the weak, put upon donkeys.

They've been fed. They've been cared for by their captors, and they are in the process of a very long pilgrimage down south from Damascus back into Judah. Shear Jashub, this little baby, his name is saying, a remnant shall return to the king who's shaking him like a leaf in the wind.

Additionally, when we close out Isaiah chapter 6, when Isaiah was asking the Lord, how long do I have to preach this message, the message about how you're going to hear but not understand, you're going to see but not perceive, and the Lord says, you're going to preach until the whole countryside is laid waste and disaster occurs.

The Lord also promises Isaiah that a remnant shall be left and a remnant shall return. And so Isaiah has named his firstborn son, a remnant shall return, Shear Jashub. I imagine that's what God instructed him to name his son, given that his secondborn son also receives a name from the Lord, very particular to the prophetic context.

So the situation is that before God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign, and of course that sign will be a child by the name of Emmanuel, before God tells Ahaz to ask for a sign, he's already given Ahaz a sign.

Isn't that generous? Isn't that kind of the Lord, long-suffering of the Lord,.

Merciful of the Lord?

He's already given a sign to Ahaz in the form of a child with a strange name, a baby mascot, a prophetic child with a standout name, a name for the times, Shear Jashub. So it's a promise of deliverance that God would spare the Jews.

It's also a name that promises disaster. If a remnant is returning, then it indicates that there is a whole lot who are missing. So it's a double-edged sword so often as we find with the Word of God.

God's Word so often comes as that, judgment and salvation. We'll see the same thing with the name Emmanuel. It comes as a double-edged sword. The name Emmanuel will declare judgment and salvation. Now, God's salvation and judgment regards, in this particular case, his covenant people, the Jews.

He is bringing punishment and also promising preservation. He's doing both of those because they agree together with his purposes for them and his promises to them. This is because Israel is the living tapestry upon which God paints the vibrant colors of his redemptive drama before Christ.

When we look at Israel's blessings and cursings, they're in vivid color in the history that we have in Scripture. The whole world, all the nations are witnessing the Creator and creation. They're witnessing God and Adam.

They're looking at glory and sin. They're looking at promised redemption, and they see it time and time and time again in the cycles of the life of Israel. And God promises a son. Every time things are really bad, any time we have a really vital situation in the Scriptures, it seems that God promises a seed.

He promises a son. All the most important crossroads at the crisis moment, God reminds them of a seed, and he promises a son. There in the garden, God promises a seed when there is the exile of Cain after the murder of Abel.

God gives a son, Enosh, and then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. When the earth is filled up with violence, Lamech has a son named Noah and says, maybe this one will give us rest from all of our labors.

And then we follow through all the covenants that God made. There it is, the promise again and again of a seed and a son, a seed and a son. What is God doing in the course of these Scriptures but preparing all those who are of faith to look forward to a child?

The answer is a child. The answer is a son. Look for the seed. The needful son was the new son of God, the last Adam. Not just another one, not just an optional one, but the last, as in the point, the very good ending, the culmination son that we read of in the New Testament as Jesus Christ.

Fear of God, Fear of Man, and the Tower of Babel

Now what about Ahaz? Ahaz is there, he's inspecting his aqueduct, and maybe he's hoping to get a message that not only are all the remnant coming back down south, but also that somehow the threats of Israel and Syria are already done away with.

Maybe he's hoping for a promise of, you will reign for 30 more years in prosperity. What message does he want from God? What he gets is, a remnant shall return. That's the message he gets. Is he happy with that?

Perhaps it wasn't good enough for Ahaz. How often are we confronted with a future that our good God has... So just as Shear Jashub shows up, just as his younger sibling, Meher Shalal Hashbaz shows up, so also Immanuel shows up.

He is the prophetic child with a standout name, fitting for his time, for our time, and for all time, because Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But are we ready to hear what God has to say?

There's nothing wrong with Ahaz being out there inspecting the aqueduct. Nothing wrong with that. But Ahaz's soul was a dry and thirsty land already overthrown. He's a king overseeing his defenses, and that's well and good, but he has missed on the more critical point.

He does not fear God. Far better for a king to be inspecting his defenses while he fears the Lord. Apply the principle from Oliver Cromwell, fear God and keep your powder dry. Yes, that's the job of the king.

He should be inspecting the aqueduct, but he should primarily and most importantly be fearing the Lord and leading all those under his rule to do the same. The problem is he does not fear God. He does not, therefore, perceive or understand the message, and more than that, he doesn't want to.

So we'll see a little bit later on when Isaiah says to him, the Lord says to Ahaz, ask for a sign. Ahaz says no. He's like, I don't want a word from the Lord. I don't want to be convinced. I don't want to believe.

I don't want a sign from you. The fear of man has so overtaken him, he is ensnared.

Now, why is that?

What is going on in the heart of Ahaz is something that is common to many. He is very concerned about those great matters which afflict him and his nation, the most immediate dangers that he sees. This is all he can deal with.

These are the anxieties that define his life. And it would seem like disloyalty to one's own infections, even disingenuous and somehow morally wrong, to ignore the consuming concerns of the heart, allowing God to reset for us what we ought to be concerned about.

That's not right that I would be no longer consumed with this problem and rather focusing on something else. That would seem wrong. It would seem like I'm going against my own values. But God so often says, why are you so concerned with this?

Shouldn't you be paying attention to this over here? And this is why God sends Isaiah with his son to Ahaz to reset the focus that Ahaz has. Don't look at men. Look at God. This is what the Word of God does for us, isn't it?

The Word of God so often enters into our lives and redirects our attention away from men and unto the Lord. Now look at this command in verse 4. God commands Isaiah to command Ahaz and say to him, Take heed and be quiet.

Do not fear or be fainthearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Resan in Syria and the son of Amalia. The basic idea of what God says to Ahaz is this. Be careful and do nothing.

Be careful and do nothing. Why is that? Because Ahaz was all about doing something and he wasn't being very careful in his fear. He was lashing out. He was flailing. He was on tilt. As we see from 2 Kings chapter 16 verses 7 and 8, he went ahead and reached out to the king of Assyria.

The big bad superpower of that time and place. He sees a threat of Syria and Israel. So how does he counter his enemies to the immediate north? Ahaz says,.

Oh, I know.

I will appeal to the superpower even farther north of these two enemies of mine and I will bribe him to attack Syria, thus taking pressure off me and my kingdom. What a sage move. How does he bribe the king of Assyria?

Well, the king of Assyria, of course, does his business in warfare by having a standing army of mercenaries renowned for their cruelty, but they're fairly expensive. So how does Ahaz make it happen? He begins to take piece by piece the sacred treasures of the temple, cut them into pieces, and he sends them to the king of Assyria to bribe him to attack Syria, to attack Damascus.

So he uses the Lord's treasure to hire the king of Assyria to deal Damascus a fatal blow. When this proves successful, what does Ahaz then do? He makes a calculation, says, You know, having been defeated so soundly by Pekka and Rezin, I know the gods of Israel, the Ephraim, the northern kingdom.

They're the same as our gods, right? But, you know, these gods up in Damascus, they're a little bit different. Boy, they had power. They really beat us good. So I'm going to go up there and learn about those gods because I need to worship those too if I'm going to have more power.

This is the calculation, the mindset of the pagan. So that's when he goes to Damascus, and that's when he sees the pagan altar, and that's when he offers a blood sacrifice there in Damascus and then brings all of that pagan cult material down with him, the copy of it, and he brings it to Jerusalem and installs that in the temple of the Lord to worship false gods.

That's why the word from the prophet, from the Lord, was what? Be careful and do nothing because he wasn't careful, and he would do far better to do nothing and wait upon the Lord as we see the faithful servants of old doing.

They waited upon the Lord. They were careful and did nothing because they were turning their attention to the Lord and his power and calling for him to help them. So Ahaz fears men. He puts his trust in men, even as God describes the scary enemies of Judah as smoldering coals.

Now, they weren't smoldering coals yet, but they are just about to be. So this was a proleptic metaphor, but God, through his prophet, was describing these enemies as they would soon be. Now, the issue comes down to whether or not the king of Judah would fear God or fear man.

There is the decision time. Fear God is wisdom. Fear man is foolish. Will the king boast in the Lord, or will he boast in his political clout, his military alliances, or will he boast in himself? This disparity, this decision is there for all of us because we were made in the image of God.

We were made to make a big deal about God in everything we do and everything we are. Do you remember the great sin of the Tower of Babel? It wasn't the building of a skyscraper. That wasn't the great sin.

Building tall buildings is not a sin. What was the great sin that went on in the plains of Shinar? Make a name for themselves. They gathered there to make a name for themselves, but they had no right to do that.

They were already named after the creator. They were made in the image of God to glorify him. They gathered to glorify themselves. That was the problem. Ahaz is all about predicting his rule and glorifying himself, and that's why he's foolish.

We get very twisted up when we make a big deal about ourselves. We make a big deal about man. We make a big deal about death. We do not fear God. But as we've noted, because Christ is our horizon, we must see men in the now as they will be in the not-yet-before-Christ throne.

Pekah and Rezin were not, at that moment, smoldering firebrands. They were not, at that moment, charred wood with a little bit of smoke coming out of them, about to be completely extinguished. They were not, at that moment, that way.

But they were about to be because of the judgment of God, because of God's purposes that were about to take place. We must look at men in the now as they will be before Christ's throne because we only see men aright when we look at them in the light of Christ.

This is why, when it comes to those frightening situations and those enemies of the faith and those dangerous persons that we can often obsess about and be concerned about, we can take heed and be quiet.

We can be careful and do nothing. Not that we don't pray. We do pray. Not that we don't do righteousness. We do righteousness. But in that sense, we're not panicking. We're not flailing. We can wait upon the Lord.

We don't have to fear. We don't have to become fainthearted. We do not have to become discouraged because we can look at men and look at situations in light of God's purposes that are fulfilled in Christ.

Closing Prayer

Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you so much for the time that you've given us in your word. I thank you for the word of the prophet, the name of his son, and the message that you give to us that we should trust in you, that our attention should be upon you, even as we do the work that you have set before us.

And we pray that you would help us to rejoice in this joy.