Sunday, December 14, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Sign-Children and the Coming Assyrian Invasion

Prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. 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 Shiloah that flow softly and rejoice in Rezin 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 go over all his banks. He will pass through Judah. He will overflow and pass over. He will reach up to the neck and the stretching out of his wings and 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 last time we began looking at Isaiah chapter 8, and we see Isaiah being called to etch this name of Meher Shalal Hashbaz on a very large shiny placard.

The translation may say scroll, but it's not a papyrus scroll. It is something you write on, but it's more like a billboard, a huge sign. The same word is translated as mirror in chapter 3. And so Isaiah writes this very long name in a very obvious way to get everyone's attention, and God calls for witnesses to this name, others who have names that remind his people of who he is.

God is still mercifully getting the attention of his people, telling them about who he is, and telling them what is about to take place. God is naming names because he owns history. He owns the future.

He's telling them what's going to happen before it happens, and he provides the proper interpretation of those events before they even take place. We are accustomed to receiving our news with a limited amount of information, only partial stories ever told, with lots of interpretation and spin.

In this case, God says, here's what's going to happen before it happens, and here is what it means. We need to look at verses 3 and 4 this evening, and then compare these to a couple of previous verses to remind ourselves of the direction that these two chapters have gone as we think about this name, Immanuel.

In verse 3, we read, this is Isaiah speaking in the first person, that I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, call his name, Maher 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. Now, let's compare these two verses to Isaiah chapter 7 and 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. Courage 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. Day that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. When you put those two passages side-by-side, we see that there is a young woman, here a virgin, here a prophetess.

She bears a son named Immanuel, named Maher Shalalhashbaz. Before the little one gets very old at all, there's a grand invasion. Both times is the king of Assyria invading, and he runs right over all of the lesser nations in his path, namely the two nations that Ahaz was scared of, Syria and Ephraim, but also the king of Assyria is going to invade the nation of Judah as well.

So as we put these two things together, we see we have a child whose proper name is Maher Shalalhashbaz, and it has something to say about the events that are about to take place under the Lord's strong, powerful hand of judgment.

He's also called Immanuel because this whole invasion is under that heading, that the Lord is with us. So in other words, there's no avoiding it. You can't run away from God. The Lord is with us. He's going to make sure that this invasion is a success.

Now when we read Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, and some of us have already exchanged many Christmas cards, and on some of those Christmas cards Isaiah 7, verse 14 shows up. It also shows up in Matthew chapter 1, when it gets quoted in Matthew chapter 1, verse 23.

So what goes on here? What goes on here is the Lord gives a sign, and that the sign comes to pass in the life of Isaiah, his wife, and his second-born son, but that sign is pointing to a destination, pointing ahead to its fulfillment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

So we have a young child with a name, Maher Shalalhashbaz, but he's also called Immanuel. Later on we have a child by the name of Jesus, who's also called Immanuel. And in both cases we are reminded that God is with us, and he is powerful in his acting, that he will take action.

And what the people feared was not what their great threat was, but that God will come, and he will act, and what he will do will bring about righteousness. And so when we look at the verse 3, we should focus on the woman.

We looked at the writing and the witnesses last time, so now the woman. Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Now this is Isaiah's wife. I mean, there's nobody else who can bear Isaiah's children.

She already had one, Shearjashib, and now her second-born son. This word in chapter 7, verse 14, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, shall call his name Immanuel. That word shows up in the Old Testament, and it can be translated either as, technically, yes, a virgin, or as a young married woman of child-bearing years.

The word is flexible, it can mean either, and therefore it's precisely the word that we need in this case, so it can refer both to Isaiah's wife in the near future, and Mary, the virgin, in the far future.

So, one is the mother of a sign, the other is the mother of the destination. Well, the prophetess conceived and bore a son, and God is saying to the nation, He says first Immanuel to Ahaz, and then by Isaiah writing Meher Shalohashbaz on a big flashy sign with Uriah and Zechariah, the son of Jeborakiah, as witnesses, He says to the nations in both ways, Immanuel and, meaning God is with us, and Meher Shalohashbaz, which means swift to the spoils, speedy to the prey.

So, God is saying, I'm going to ensure the grand success of this invasion, and the invaders are going to come rushing upon you and take everything. They're going to be like flies, like bees, like briars and thorns, everything covered and consumed.

The Assyrians are going to invade, and they're going to have great success. It will happen before the child shall have knowledge to cry, my father and my mother. He's not going to be old enough to discern right from wrong, much like Judah, who can't tell right from wrong anymore because they're so backwards.

He's not going to be even able to say, my father and my mother, much like Judah, who forgot that God is even their father. So, this is why this child functions so well as a mascot for the invasion. Before he gets very old, while he's still eating baby mash, honey and curds, guess what?

All of Judah will be lucky and grateful to eat honey and curds by the end because their economy will be so devastated. And so, before this happens, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria.

So, that wraps up the first part of chapter 8, under the heading of the future record. Again, all of this has yet to happen, but God declares it before it happens. And now, verses 5 through 8, we have the flooding river.

The Waters of Shiloah and the Flood of Assyria

Verse 5, the Lord also spoke to me again, saying, Inasmuch as these people refuse the waters of Shiloah that flow softly, and rejoice in Rezin 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 in all his glory.

He will go up over all his channels and 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 Immanuel.

Those of you who have the good old-fashioned oil skin, gilded page Bibles, leather covers, and these nice little colorful maps in the back, when you go back there, you're probably going to find a map that kind of spreads out a little bit.

You might even be able to find the Euphrates River. I don't know if I don't really have the best maps. I'm kind of disappointed in this one. Do you remember growing up and everybody had the same maps in the back of their Bible?

Do you remember that? Those were good days. Everybody, you know, there's three translations, but everybody had the same maps in the back of their Bibles. It was really easy to communicate. But when you find the Euphrates River, that's the river, the big river, that Isaiah is talking about in his prophecy.

And in contrast, he's talking about the slow, gentle rivers of Shiloah. And so, if you look at the map that says Jerusalem, not the big Mediterranean map that shows, you know, Assyria and Babylon and all of that, but find the map that you have just Jerusalem now, and look on there, and look over there at the Kidron Valley.

It's on the east side of Jerusalem, and you're going to see Kidron Valley. See if you can find the Gihon Spring. You can find the Gihon Spring. It might even show a little bit of a water flowing from the Gihon Spring into the lower city of Jerusalem, even to the pool called Siloam, near the Watergate.

So, we have a contrast here. We have the contrast of the river, the Euphrates River, which is deep and powerful and is the basis of the wealth of many different nations throughout history. In contrast, we have the waters of Shiloah.

The waters of Shiloah. So, let's talk about those, because those flow from the Gihon Spring down into the Kidron Valley, heading south near the bottom corner of Jerusalem. Now, if you're thinking about two bodies of water, it's hard to find a better contrast than that.

You might say something about an ocean in a puddle. Here we have a mighty river and a gentle flowing burble of water from a spring. So, this is kind of the contrast. And what does God say about what the problem is with Judah?

It's not that they're non-believers. They actually do believe, but they believe wrongly. Regarding the Lord and his promises, they are unbelievers. They're unfaithful to the covenant. He says, "...inasmuch as these people refuse the waters of Shiloah that flow softly.".

The very same waters are spoken again of in the New Testament, where they're called the Pool of Siloam. You hear the word Siloam in the Hebrew. The S sound, with a little dot, goes from the S to the S sound.

So, Shiloah and Siloam, in the transliteration into the Greek, we have the same kind of waters. Do you remember in the story of John chapter 9, when Jesus spit on the ground and made some mud, and he put the mud upon the eyes of a blind man?

A blind man about whom the disciples had asked, was it his parents or him that sinned, that this man was born blind? And Jesus said, neither, but that the glory of God would be shown. And so he spits on the ground, makes the mud, puts it upon the blind man's eyes, and then he tells him to go wash.

Where? Go wash in the Pool of Siloam. And then John puts a little translation into the text, gives a little interpretation. The Pool of Siloam, which means sent. Remember that part? The Pool of Siloam, which means sent.

And once John provides the meaning of the name, we think, oh, we're done. Okay, Siloam, Shiloah, or Siloam means sent. But why does it mean sent? Does it mean sent because Jesus sent the man there? It's possible, yes, but as often in John's writing, he's just layering in the meanings.

So Shiloah was not always a pool. The Pool of Siloam was not always a pool. Before Hezekiah, in the days of Ahaz, the waters of Shiloah were an aqueduct. Now you may remember at the beginning of chapter 7, Isaiah goes out to meet Ahaz with the word of the Lord, and where does he find Ahaz the king?

He finds him at the aqueduct. Check all the way back to the beginning of this series of word of the Lord to the king. The problem with Jerusalem was not that it was, not its situation. It was high up, easily fortified.

It was very difficult to take Jerusalem in a pitched battle. Their problem was water. They did have a spring up there on the mountain, the spring of Gihon, and the waters flowed off that spring into the valley of Kidron, but those waters remained outside the walls of the city.

So imagine that if you were under siege, it would be very difficult for you to run out and try to grab the water and bring it back in to the city. At the water gate, they would leave the city, go get the water, and bring it back in.

I mean, you're glad to have water up there, but it's not inside the walls. And so, the genius of Hezekiah was that he built a tunnel to capture the waters of the Gihon spring and to channel the waters underneath the wall.

They dug about 1 ,750 feet through solid bedrock from two different directions and met up. That's quite an engineering feat, especially during the days of Hezekiah. This was about 701 BC. And it's a very gentle gradient, and it redirected water from the Gihon spring to the pool of Siloam, and then all of a sudden they had water even during a siege.

It's a marvelous bit of engineering. But at this time, it was simply a series of pools down there in the Kidron Valley, and it just kind of flowed very softly. This was their water supply. Now, remember that when Isaiah went out to confront the king, he's out there at the aqueduct.

He's inspecting the city's water supply. Why? Because he is anticipating a siege. He's anticipating Pekah and Rezin to bring their armies down and finish them off. They just lost this grand battle, lost 120 ,000 men.

200 ,000 have been taken captive. The only thing left for their enemies to do is to come and defeat Jerusalem. So he's out there at the aqueducts. And what does he see when he gets there? Unsecured water.

We're not gonna make it. We're not gonna last in a siege. There's no way that we're going to win if this is our water supply. He's out there looking at the aqueduct. He's looking at the softly flowing water of Shiloah and saying, I'm not gonna cut it.

So what does he do? He sends the gold and the silver of the temple to the king who reigns in Nineveh, Nineveh that sits on a mighty river, and asks the king of Nineveh, Tiglath-Pileser II, to come and rescue him.

Come and defeat our enemies. Attack Pekah and Rezin and liberate us. Here is my good faith payment to you. And so what is going on? These people refuse the waters of Shiloah that flow softly. They look at the Lord's provision and this water is meager.

This water is slow. This water is not enough. We're not going to survive based upon this water. And so they look to who could defeat Rezin, king of Syria, reigning from Damascus, and Remalia's son, Pekah, who reigns in Samaria, king of Ephraim, and they're going to rejoice in them, meaning they're going to rejoice in their fall.

They're looking for the destruction of their enemies, and how will they do that? They will turn to a mighty river, and they will compel the king of that mighty river, King Tiglath-Pileser II, the king of the Euphrates, and say, bring your river, bring your resources, and come and destroy our enemies.

And indeed, the king of Assyria and his glory did so. He goes up over all his channels. He goes up over all his banks. Verse 8 is very tragic though. You know, the hard thing about starting a flood is stopping it.

Once you breach the levees, are you going to be able to stop it? Are you going to be able to direct that water to where only you want it to go? Proverbs says that he who digs a pit will fall into it. He who rolls a stone, it will have it rolled back on him.

And like fools, Judah does this very thing. They break the levees of the Euphrates. They invite the destructive force of the Assyrians to come south, and they just keep rolling until this river overflows and passes over.

He reaches up to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings, fill the breadth of your land, O Emmanuel. And so God is saying they refused the waters of Shiloah. They refused those waters, meaning they could have relied on them.

That was their option. That was their opportunity to humbly rely upon the provision that God had given to them, but it was so meager. It was not enough. How could this ever be enough? And yet that was what God offered to them.

God was with them the whole time. They could have relied on Shiloah. Emmanuel could have been a sign for them of God saying to them, I am with you. Imagine the sign of Emmanuel if you are looking at the aqueduct, the king is looking at the aqueduct and saying, this is a meager amount of water.

But then God says, Ahaz, ask for a sign that you may be established. He says, okay, Lord, I need a sign that we're going to be okay. And then God says, Emmanuel, I am with you. Well then, who can defeat us if the Lord is with us?

But instead, in his rebellion against God, and in Judah's rebellion against God, he refuses the sign, and God gives one anyway. He says, oh I'm with you. I'm bringing the armies. I'm going to stick with it all the way, and you're going to see the folly of trusting in the river when I had given you the waters of Shiloah.

And so that's the background, and that is the richness of what happens when Jesus meets a blind man in John 9. And the disciples see a blind Israelite, and they say, this man is blind. Why is he blind?

What's going to happen? Oh, he's blind so that the glory of God will be shown. And then he says, go to the waters of Siloam. Go to the pool. Go to the pool and wash so that you can see. Don't refuse the waters of Shiloah that flow softly.

And the man who was born blind did not refuse. He did not refuse the waters of Siloam, did he? What did he do? He went and washed, and then he saw. Other people on that same day didn't see. They were a little upset, weren't they?

They were upset that he had gotten healed on the Sabbath, that Jesus had made mud on the Sabbath. That's construction work. Healing is doctoring work. That's all work, work, work. He's breaking the Sabbath.

And of course, this man went and washed his face on the Sabbath. Oh, this is terrible. And they accused the man of being on Jesus' side. Look, I don't know. You say he's not from God, but he heals the blind.

Here's the this I know. I was blind, now I can see, right? And so when Jesus says, go to the pool of Siloam, there's a rich background to that. And we are reminded that trusting in the Lord's provision is always humbling.

Trusting in the Lord's provision is always humbling. What God has made for us, what God has provided for us, the path that he sets out for us, the next thing that we need to do, relying upon his forgiveness, embracing the people of God, obedience is always humbling.

Trust is always humbling. Trust is never friendly to pride. Trust is never friendly to autonomy and self-rule. And so when God calls us to these things, we recognize that it may look meager, but it's the Lord's provision for us, and we can rely on it.

We don't have to leave the waters of Shiloah for the Euphrates. Let's close singing the doxology.