Wednesday, August 6, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Warning to Ahaz and the Sign of Emmanuel

Finished our look at the first nine verses in Isaiah chapter 7, so we will begin by reading verses 10 through 16. Isaiah chapter 7 and we will begin in verse 10. Let's start with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father we thank you for the day.

We thank you for the blessing of studying your word and singing together and fellowshipping together. We pray that you would bless our time tonight as we think about your clear and vital word that you have given to us to sanctify us and to draw us unto you to lead us on to Christ.

We thank you for the blessing of being known by you and loved by you in Christ and so we pray all these things in his name. Amen. All right Isaiah chapter 7 and beginning in verse 10. Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz saying, ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God.

Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask nor will I test the Lord. Then he said, hear 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 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. Let's go ahead and read 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 at this juncture in Isaiah, the guilt of Judah is well established. Judah is conceived of as the children so rebellious they have forgotten who their father is, God, and he was a good father. They are like sour grapes in a vineyard, very well cared for intended and yet all they bring forth is sour fruit.

So God has promised judgment, he has promised a great devastation, he has promised that there is no hope in and of themselves. But even as the children of woe are greatly warned, the hope is given to them, a child of hope.

One from among them will be their Savior. And so we first begin to hear of the child in chapters 7 through 12 of Isaiah and we have this sign given to Ahaz of the child, his name is Emmanuel. Now we've been thinking about who Ahaz is and how Isaiah has been sent to Ahaz, the manner in which God sends his prophet, the significance of the historical context, the importance of the moment, and all of this leads us to verse 10.

It's important for us to remember that Ahaz does not fear God, he fears man. Ahaz thinks he knows what's going on but he doesn't. It's important to remember that he is a schemer, he is plotting all manner of things in order to help himself out of this difficult situation.

But the Lord has told him what he needs and it's the need of any king that sits upon David's throne and it would be to believe, it would be to have faith, it would be to trust God and his promises. If there was anything that the king of Israel ought to be doing, it would be understanding God's Word, fearing God, and believing what God has said.

And so also leading everyone in that special nation to do the same. They were in covenant relationship with the Lord and their primary duty was faithfulness. They were to show loyalty to the Lord and not be idolatrous.

They were to depend upon the Lord instead of trying to marshal great military power. They were to be faithful to the Lord in their worship and not seek the powers of idols of other nations. But these are things that Ahaz is doing in great abundance.

Ahaz needs to believe but in order to believe this will necessitate a great deal of repentance on Ahaz's part. So let's think about verses 10 through 13 in particular. The sign of the Lord is promised to Ahaz and there is an invitation to Ahaz, one that is the mandatory kind.

It is a compelling of his Lord, his master, the one who has every authority claim over Ahaz, tells him this is what I want you to do. I'm inviting you to do this. And it is indeed to be a blessing to Ahaz.

It is something that should be good for him. It would be good for the nation but it's not something that Ahaz wants to do. So verses 10 through 13 again. Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz. Remember the first time he speaks to Ahaz he sends Isaiah with his very young son Shear Jashub to confront Ahaz as he's inspecting the aqueduct, the source of water for Jerusalem.

Ahaz expects a siege any day. Will the water hold out? Ahaz is getting ready for a hard time and so God sends Isaiah with his son Shear Jashub, a child whose name means a remnant shall return. Even at that moment the 200 ,000 captives of Judah in the north were in the process of being returned.

And meanwhile Ahaz is shaking like a leaf in the wind thinking the end is nigh and yet the Lord is already working. But he doesn't listen well and so the Lord speaks again to Ahaz saying verse 11, ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God.

Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said I will not ask nor will I test 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?

Now Ahaz is deeply rooted in his paganism. He is deeply afraid of men worrying about what men may do to him. God's invitation here, his request is truly a command. It is the kind of request that a loyal vassal dare not refuse.

But Ahaz is no loyal vassal. He rejects God's request of him and then God gives a rebuke along with a sign. The request itself is a very gracious thing for God to continue to show long-suffering to the likes of Ahaz.

We've read several things in 2nd Kings and in 2nd Chronicles about how wicked Ahaz is and we will revisit some of those. But for the Lord to show such long-suffering and then once again come to Ahaz offering him what Ahaz truly needs, it shows the patience of God, it shows the grace of God.

I think it's important for us to see that Ahaz's resistance to God thus far, his staunch unbelief, his paganized thinking, all of these together are no bellwether as to the Lord's activity. Just because somebody is extremely resistant and rebellious against God, has told him off in more than one ways, doesn't mean that God's going to leave them alone.

God may bug them for quite a long time. He may leave them alone in judgment. But man does not dictate the activity of God. There are stories in the Scriptures where someone rejects God once and very casually and God in judgment leaves them alone for the rest of their days and he is righteous to do so.

There are other times that people reject the Lord and are greatly entrenched in the rebellion, hot in their hatred for God, and God continually sends to them prophets, preaching to them his word, calling for their repentance, offering them hope of salvation.

The activity and attitudes of men do not dictate what God will do. God is free as he is sovereign. He will determine how gracious he will be. He will say when he is done, he alone. We don't get to say what God does.

God says what God will do. We can remember stories to this effect. Man may be utterly resistant to God, raging against him, and God compassionately, graciously, sovereignly moves in for salvation. We see this in the life of the man named Saul of Tarsus.

If there had ever been a man that made his position on God more clear, I don't know who it was. Saul of Tarsus was absolutely opposed to the followers of the way. He hated the Nazarenes, those who followed Jesus of Nazareth.

He considered them occult, considered them blasphemous, considered them to be the enemies of God, and he breathed murder against them, Acts says. He was hostile to the gospel of Jesus Christ in every way.

He was thoroughly engaged in his will and his emotions and in his thinking. He was absolutely convinced as to the danger of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he had shown his willingness to go all the way as he killed many followers of the way.

And yet this did not dictate what God would do. God stopped Saul of Tarsus. Jesus stopped Saul of Tarsus and converted him on the road to Damascus, turned him around, said, oh no you don't. You think that you are doing God a service, but in fact you are fighting against the king of the universe.

And Jesus told Ananias when he sent him to give assurance to Saul of his conversion, go, he is a chosen vessel of mine. Saul thought he had been a chosen vessel of the Sanhedrin to go stop the preaching of the gospel in Damascus, and Saul thought himself self-directed in his zeal.

None matched the zeal of Saul of Tarsus. However, Jesus said, no he's mine for my purposes. And also we remember another story that's briefly mentioned in Hebrews chapter 12 verses 16 and 17 that also shows us the freedom of God.

Do we remember Jacob's brother? In Hebrews chapter 12 verses 16 and 17 we read this, a warning about bitterness, lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.

For you know that afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears. A sinful man may bitterly weep and seek blessing, even willing to acknowledge several key tenets of God's Word, and yet remain justly exiled from God's favor.

Man does not get to say to God what he does. All the while God proves himself faithful, and God proves himself constant by speaking to Ahaz again, addressing the critical issue of unbelief. You'll see that in verse 9 of our text in Isaiah.

In verse 9 God, through his prophet Isaiah, says the very last part of verse 9, if you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. Now this was the fear. Ahaz had heard the conspiracy. His enemies were going to come, break a hole in the wall, and overthrow his rule, and put a puppet king on the throne.

Ahaz was convinced that his time and power was coming near an end. His great passion was to be established. He was out there inspecting the aqueduct to make sure that the siege would not succeed against them, that the city would not fall, so that he could establish his throne.

This was what he desired, and God said to him through the prophet, if you want to be established, you must believe. He told him what he needed to do, but Ahaz, of course, had difficulty believing. And so God says, well, I could help you there.

You have trouble believing? You don't want to believe? Well then, Ahaz, ask a sign for yourself. Do you need confirmation? Do you need some sort of help in believing? Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God.

Ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. Well, we don't know if this is the exact same occasion as we read in chapter 7, verses 1 through 9, because, again, it says, moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz.

Is this Isaiah still there with his son, just saying the next thing, or did he come back later? We don't know. But they're not going to be too far distant apart. The trauma is still on Judah. The fear is still there.

But it's important to recognize that Isaiah's sons, in chapters 7, they have names that declare the Word of God. So his firstborn is named and that was a promise of God, a prophecy of God, the Word of God, a promise of God, a Word of God in the flesh.

His secondborn son was also a Word of God in the flesh, which was also a word of prophecy for everybody who would pay attention. And so, Isaiah's sons are there to live and breathe as continual signs to a rebellious and unbelieving people.

That's just the way of the Lord, to constantly reveal and speak and compel and reach. As we think about God's mercies, this is a theme throughout Isaiah about how merciful God has been, how he does not simply give up at the first sign of resistance.

But we see this in Isaiah 65 verse 1, I was sought by those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by my name. I have stretched out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good, according to their own thoughts.

A people who provoke me to anger continually to my face, who sacrifice in gardens and burn incense on altars of brick, who sit among the graves and spend the night in the tombs, who eat swine's flesh and the broth of abominable things is in their vessels, who say, keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you.

These are smoke in my nostrils of fire that burns all the day.". Well, there it is, Isaiah 65 verse 5. You wanted to know where holier than thou came from. It comes from right there, Isaiah 65 verse 5.

And what is so insulting is that the holier than thou's are those who are thoroughly defiled. And God is saying, all day long I am reaching out to this rebellious and stiff-necked people, these people that are full of abomination and full of idolatry, and they don't listen to me, but I continually reach out to them.

That's the way of the Lord throughout the scriptures. We see his long-suffering, we see his grace, we see his compassion. The repeated mercies of God only display his righteousness, they amplify his righteousness, when he suddenly then judges those who have hardened their necks.

Proverbs 29 verse 1 says, he who is often rebuked and hardens his neck will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. And we hear that second part, oh, suddenly destroyed and without remedy, how harsh.

But do we hear the first part? Often rebuked. Often rebuked. The sense of the fool is the one who knows better, but engages in the folly anyway. And how often the fool has been rebuked and told again and again and again, until they get accustomed to it, and it's just part of the normal pattern of life, and then suddenly, it seems that all of a sudden, out of the blue, supposedly without any warning at all, destruction hits, when in fact there was a great deal of long-suffering prior.

There were many rebukes, there were many opportunities for repentance prior. We cannot fathom God's long-suffering, and all who would presume upon it are fools. Now the story of God's constancy to fools like Ahaz is really incomplete until we read of the greatest expression of God's mercy and grace.

We remember the story that Jesus told of the unjust tenants of the vineyard, and how they were there to cultivate the the vine and the grapes, and to give what was owed to the master of the vineyard, as he would send to them his servants on the cycles of harvest.

And yet, when the servants came, they refused to give what was owed to the master, and they would beat one and kill another, until finally the master sends to them his son. Surely they will respect my son.

But when seeing the son, the evil tenants of the vineyard say, ah the heir, if we get rid of him, then this will be our inheritance forever, and we'll possess it forever. And so they took him outside the vineyard and killed him there.

This, of course, was a parable that was also a prophecy and fulfilled as Israel, who was to welcome and find in Jesus Christ the fullness of all their significance, rather the leaders murdered Jesus Christ, designed to retain the inheritance for themselves that never belonged to them in the first place.

And yet, the story itself, even though the story ends in judgment and disaster for these evil tenants, is also a story that includes how many opportunities, how many calls for repentance, how many times did the Lord rebuke them and call for them to change their ways.

Well, God commands Ahaz. He says, ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. And the verb ask is in the voice of a command. God is telling Ahaz what to do. And it's correct that God should tell Ahaz what to do.

God is the covenant Lord over all of Israel, and he's also the creator and maker of Ahaz. And so God gets to tell Ahaz what to do. And so he says, ask a sign for yourself. Now Ahaz needs belief, but Ahaz doesn't want to seek the Lord.

He's very ensnared to the fear of man. So God commands Ahaz to do what he needs to do, but what he will not do on his own. Ahaz is a bad guy, but he's also very important in the life of Judah. He is key to the covenantal prospects of the nation.

If he is an evil bad king, then curses will fall upon his nation. If he does poorly, the whole nation will do poorly. If he does well, the whole nation will be blessed. And so he's a key person. He's very important to the status of Judah, but he is pagan in his heart while circumcised in his flesh.

That's bad news. He's bound to the covenant by circumcision and by birth, by being from the lineage of David. He is king of Judah. He's bound to this covenant, and yet he is pagan in heart. He's an idolater in his heart.

And the Lord, as his true master and true God, comes to Ahaz and confronts him and says, you need to repent. You need to believe. Now Ahaz never asked for Yahweh, for the Lord, to be his God. He didn't ask for that.

He didn't even remember getting circumcised. He didn't want to be a part of this covenant. He liked the other gods. He liked the gods of Syria. He was very impressed by them. He figures the gods of Assyria are even greater than those.

He likes all kinds of things that his covenant Lord forbids. And like this, Ahaz is a whole lot like Adam, and a whole lot like a lot of us. We didn't ask to be born. We didn't ask to live. You know, all these lawsuits from children suing their parents.

You didn't ask my permission to give birth to me. You know, we didn't ask for this life, and yet here we are. Our Creator gets to tell us what to do. He gets to say how things are, and how things should be.

And this is given to us unbidden. Thus the unbelieving man is in quite the pickle. Not only unable to outthink his own unbelief, but also unwilling to be convinced. Remember in Proverbs that the lazy fool buries his hand in the bowl, will not bring it back to his mouth.

You know, he stays home saying there's a lion in the streets. Can't go to work today. There's a lion about. So also, the unbelieving skeptic is a lazy fool. His mind is like wastewater. It just, it flows into the cracks and gutters and sewers, whichever way seems easiest.

You just try to keep his attention on the evidence, and he flows off into one exception or another. Any direction downhill will do. It doesn't have to last long. It doesn't have to have meaning. It doesn't have to have coherency.

What is interesting is that given every opportunity to have God's sovereign and righteous government proven to him, Ahaz and those like him wouldn't want that anyway. It's about the heart. So notice that God says, ask it.

Ask for this sign, either in the depth or the height above. You see the range of the sign? It encompasses the whole of creation, anywhere, anything. Just ask for a sign. I'll bolster your faith, Ahaz.

I'll prove myself to you. And this reminds Ahaz, as God offers this to him, that he's sovereign over every bit of it. It was the boast of kings. You remember Herod boasting to the young dancer, ask anything, I will give it to you, up to half of my kingdom, right?

It was a big boast. God is saying, ask for a sign anywhere in the whole universe. I'll show you a sign. I'll prove to you how powerful I am, how much authority I have in all things. That's certainly in contrast to the pagan gods with which Ahaz is so infatuated.

I mean the pagan gods, this guy would be a god of this bit, and that goddess would be a goddess of this little bit over here, and they all had their little areas. But God is God over all things, and so he invites Ahaz to point at.

Ahaz, point at whatever you're afraid of. Just point at it. Are you afraid of Pekka and Rezin? Are you afraid of Assyria? What is it? What are you scared of? Just point somewhere and watch me work. I'll prove myself to you.

I mean, put a bullseye on the problem, Ahaz. I'll show you a sign. Watch me work. Isn't that interesting? The traditional, this is a reversal on the traditional approach to unbelief, right? The complaining challenge of the skeptic is usually, show me anything anywhere that proves God, right?

God doesn't take that bait. He doesn't believe in atheists. He just, it's just unbelievers, right? It's unbelievers, but there's no atheists. So his challenge is this, point to anything anywhere that would convince you to believe in me, and they can't point to anything that would convince them because they don't want that kind of authority and accountability in their life.

Now, when God says anything in heaven or in the earth, there's also a little bit more depth going on given Ahaz's context. Remember the opening of the book of Isaiah, where God brings charges against Judah?

In Isaiah chapter 1 verse 2, "'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.'". Now, God calls the heavens and the earth as witnesses against Judah because he invoked them as witnesses when the covenant was first forged.

And you'll see that in the blessings and curses, that the blessings and curses are tied to heaven and earth. Good things are going to happen above and below if you are faithful. Bad things happen above and below.

Namely, no rain and famine, warfare and plague, hailstones from the sky. Bad things happen from heaven and earth if you disobey. Good things happen from heaven and earth when you do obey. The seasons are very fertile, and you get rain right on time, and the ground is really good.

And so heaven and earth are invoked here again to remind, with language that encompasses all of creation, that God is in charge of it all, and Ahaz and Judah are accountable before it all, before God.

The heavens and the earth comprise the whole of creation, which of course, sin enters creation through Adam. And then the covenants that God makes address the ruin of creation, and then anticipate the reign of Christ over that creation, which he makes new by his new covenant.

A sign that would be shown either in the depths of the earth or in the heights of the heavens would confirm the Lord's faithfulness and sovereign power in all spheres. The witnesses, heaven and earth, the witnesses to the covenant would confirm God's faithfulness.

And this is important for us to bring up, because the sign that Ahaz refuses, the sign that God insists on going ahead and giving to Ahaz, is the sign of Emmanuel. God with us. You see, the sign that God gives in its fulfillment spans the fullness of the covenant and mediates between heaven and earth.

God with us, the one mediator between heaven and earth. God with us. He says, ask a sign anywhere in heaven and on earth, and Ahaz could have asked for a star to wink at him. He could have asked for a river to part just like it did for Joshua and Moses.

He refused to ask for any sign at all, but then God gave him a sign. And that you care about us who are made in your image. And we pray that we would, by your grace, rejoice in the mercy that you show us in Jesus.

We pray these things in his name. Amen. We're dismissed.