Sunday, October 26, 2025 PM

Let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter seven. Isaiah chapter seven we're going to look at verses, verse 14 again, kind of follow up a little bit from our very quick survey last time, and let's begin with the word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this evening. We thank you for the opportunity to read your word, and I pray that as we see your son

Jesus Christ in this word, that you would so work in our lives that we would look like him in this world, that we would rejoice in his truth and be changed by it.

I'm going to pray these things in Christ's name, amen. All right, we're going to follow up some more on this very important prophecy from Isaiah seven, and so we're just going to read verse 14 and pick up where we left off last time.

Isaiah chapter 7 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

Emmanuel. Now I think one point that needs to be emphasized is that Ahaz is defying the

Lord when he refuses to ask for a son. This is no trouble to the

Lord. He is not halted, he is not frustrated, or stymied by the rebellion of man.

Thus the prophet says the Lord himself will give you a sign.

So the Lord is emphasized here. The prophet gives a reflexive emphasis on the divine action, the divine purpose.

In Isaiah later on we read that the Lord marveled that there was no man, no man of righteousness, no man of justice.

We read about that in Isaiah 59. No man of faithfulness, but he brings salvation by his own arm, which is a title of the

Messiah. The Lord himself will give a sign. The Lord himself will act in power.

We remember that to make the promise sure, God swore by himself, and there was no one greater to give his promise by.

We read in Hebrews chapter 6 verse 13, he swore by himself, giving assurances of his salvation.

So in this we are reminded that God's power and his sovereignty is the root, and when we see

God acting freely and justly and graciously, that's all the fruit. The root of all of that is his sovereignty.

He has all power and no one can say otherwise. He does all that he pleases, and what he pleases turns out to be his freedom, his justice, and his grace.

Now when we think about this particular sign, we acknowledge the fact that Emmanuel in this context is carefully located in the near history of Judah.

Before this child gets very old at all, before he learns to refuse the evil and choose the good, when he's but a toddler,

Israel and Syria will be overrun by Assyria.

Sennacherib is going to destroy Pecha and Rezin. Nineveh and her armies are going to overrun

Damascus and Samaria and their armies. Not only that, we see in chapter 8 and in the balance of chapter 7, this same

Assyrian army is going to roll through most of Judah, all within the near history of this

Emmanuel when he's but a toddler. So there's a very clear historical reference for this

Emmanuel, and later on we see in very like language in chapter 8 verses 3 and 4 within the context that this same child named

Emmanuel is also named Meher Shalal Hashbaz, secondborn of Isaiah and his young wife, which again brings us back to the prophecy,

Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear essential colors named Emmanuel, and I have no trouble with the translation at all.

The Hebrew word behind virgin Alma can mean either technically a virgin or a young woman of marriageable childbearing age.

And why is that important? It's important because when we go to the New Testament in Matthew chapter 1,

I encourage you to turn there to Matthew chapter 1 in anticipation of Christmas, in Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 through 25 we find a follow -up on this sign.

The Lord himself will give you a sign, and you'll know that it's the sign that the

Lord gave because of the Assyrian invasion, and you're going to call his name Emmanuel, the

Lord is with you, so there's nothing you can do to stop the invasion, but the sign you see is along a path of fulfillment, and the destination is another child named

Emmanuel, Jesus of Nazareth. So see how Matthew treats the matter in Matthew chapter 1 verse 18.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the

Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly, but while he thought about these things, behold an angel of the

Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take to you

Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name

Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the

Lord through the prophet, saying, behold the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name

Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the

Lord commanded him and took to him his wife and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name

Jesus. So if anybody should ask, how do we know for sure that Isaiah's prophecy was really ultimately about the

Messiah and really promised a legitimate virgin conception, how do we know that to be so?

The answer is the Holy Spirit who inspired the prophet, inspired the apostle, and said that the virgin conception of Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the sign that God gave to King Ahaz by the prophet

Isaiah. That's how we know. It says so in the text.

It's pretty clear. Additionally, I would say, given the Spirit's role in creation and in the incarnation, we are meant to rejoice in the correlation of the

Spirit, the Messiah, and new creation, new life. Do you remember, as we're thinking about the doctrine of the virgin conception in regards to the incarnation, do you remember how things were in the beginning?

Genesis chapter 1 verses 1 and 2, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

Now, some interpreters say, look at the chaos that God intervened in.

It wasn't chaos. That was canvas. That's not chaos, that's canvas.

It's ready. It's what he has made. He's created the heavens and the earth. It's not chaos. He's not bringing order to chaos.

He didn't make chaos. He got his supplies together, and now he is, after creating his supplies, he's now going to use them, and he's going to make something beautiful.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

I had a question the other night. I hope you may have met Carl, who visited with us, and you may know

Gary Mickey, who was visiting with us, and Gary had a great question, and he was reading in Psalm, Psalm 139, and he said he's always wondered about this passage, and I thought, what a great question to ask.

In Psalm 139, in verse 13, he's trying to figure out what in the world is this passage about.

Psalm 139 says, verse 13, For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb.

I will praise you, for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me when as yet there was none of them.

Particularly, Gary was interested in verse 15. What does that mean? When I was made in secret, skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Well, it's a metaphor for the knitting and forming of a baby, a child in the mother's womb.

Keeping that in mind, in the way that it is described to Mary, how she is going to give birth to a son, when she says,

I know not a man. In Luke 135, the angel answered and said to her,

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest shall overshadow you. Therefore also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the

Son of God. And so it is, that in the beginning the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep, brooding over the waters until, by God's word, light and life broke forth from the darkness.

And the same Holy Spirit hovers over the face of the deep, in this case Mary's womb. And the

Spirit hovers over the depths of her womb as over the unformed deep, as we read about in Psalm 139.

And there, in that secret place where God knits and weaves every child in fearful and wonderful design, the

Spirit works this new creation. The Word is made flesh. The Word has always been eternal, uncreated, and now takes upon human flesh.

It was made in miraculous, mysterious righteousness.

What was in Mary, this son, this child, was of the Holy Spirit, an act of divine forming.

So it is a wonderful miracle, a very important miracle, to which

Isaiah 714 points. And this language of Emmanuel, God with us, is of great importance and a great promise.

Now, when we look at the context, we say, but what about when we read verse 14?

In its context, the particular historical reference is that this child is going to be born as a sign to Ahaz.

Ahaz is going to receive this sign himself, in his time, in his day. And in his time and in his day, this child is going to prove the mascot of an

Assyrian invasion that is going to wipe out the enemies that Ahaz himself so greatly fears.

And yet, we have as well Matthew saying, this was to fulfill

Jesus of Nazareth being born of Mary, of the

Virgin Mary, that this was to fulfill Isaiah 714. Well, there are a couple of approaches that have been made to this seeming quandary.

One has been to say, well, Matthew got it wrong. It's a fairly popular reading of the

Bible. Matthew got it wrong and he's mixing in pagan mythology with Jewish tradition, trying to bring a robust apologetic for Jesus of Nazareth and trying to prove his point to his readers.

This has been very commonly taught throughout a whole lot of seminaries. So the virgin birth is, virgin conception is something that was one of the first things to go in more enlightened readings of the

Bible, one of the first things to go. Another way of reading it is to say, and the reason why they would say that is because, look, read it in its context, it's clearly about Meher, Shalom, Ahasuerus, Matthew got it wrong.

He's a terrible interpreter of the Bible. But it's not Matthew that we have to worry about, it's the fact that the

Lord said by the prophet this was to fulfill. So we have to push back against that and say, no, the

Holy Spirit is not taking the passage out of context. The other way to read it is to say, take

Isaiah 714 and say, well, now this has to be about Jesus of Nazareth and only about Jesus of Nazareth, it has nothing to do with anything else going on in the text.

It can't possibly be because we have Matthew saying it's about Jesus of Nazareth, so it can't be about Meher, Shalom, Ahasuerus. This approach is more,

I think, common in terms of trying to defend the faith, which I always appreciate defending the faith. A better scholar than I, for example,

Alec Mottcher, who is perhaps one of the best scholars on Isaiah, takes up this defense.

His main idea is this, that prophecy is simple. There is a single prediction, single fulfillment, and it's clearly stated where the beginning point is and the end point is, and everybody is aware of how it works.

Of course, the problem is prophecy is not always that simple. Some of them are really simple, and some of them are fairly complex and very surprising, especially when you have

Jesus and the Apostles saying, have you never read, and this was to fulfill, and you go back and look at the original context, and there was no prophetic fulfillment being declared, no prophecy being, this is a prophecy, and it's not there.

For instance, the passage out of Hosea, out of Egypt I have called my son, there is no context there whatsoever in which the prophet is saying, one of these days

God is going to have the Messiah come up out of Egypt. There's nothing like that in the text at all.

He's clearly just talking about Israel. But of course, everywhere in the

Scripture the Father speaks of the Son by the Spirit, and when he talks about Israel, he's ultimately talking about his Son, Jesus Christ.

And so prophecy can be fairly layered and complex, so it's not a single fulfillment thing.

Also, Matthew will take up this language of the virgin and say the Hebrew word

Alma is actually very inflexible and can only mean virgin. I don't envy his task in that, given the other passages that use the same

Hebrew word, and it's clearly not the case that it's that cut -and -dry. I he says, it's very simple.

Verse 14, Isaiah 7 14, can't have anything to do with Meher Shadol HaShabaz, because Isaiah and his wife named the child

Meher Shadol HaShabaz and didn't name him Immanuel, so obviously it's not him. Which is rather compelling until you read

Matthew 1, and they named him Jesus. He didn't go around with the name

Immanuel, he went around with the name Jesus, but this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet that he shall be

God with as Immanuel. Meher Shadol HaShabaz, not only is a funny name, but this kid is in the line of a whole lot of other kids who were named in hope of Messiah.

For example, Eve named

Cain the way she named Cain, because she said, I've gotten a man -child from the

Lord. She'd been promised a seed, so she hoped it was him. Cain kills

Abel, that goes away, and so she has someone else. Who's that?

So she names him that because she says, okay, the Lord has given me a replacement for Abel.

Lamech names his son Noah, meaning rest or comfort. Oh, this one will give us comfort, right?

He's the seed. Abram names his son Isaac, laughter, the child of promise.

Jacob, his name is changed to Israel, and his wife names one of her children

Judah, God of my praise. How many times do we see throughout the history of the

Old Testament somebody naming their son in hopes of Messiah? Over and over and over again. So that's a common thing.

It's a wonderful thing that old Maher was named, strangely enough, but he was assigned in hope of Messiah.

Now, I think it's important to take the time to address this whole thing, because it is a famous prophecy and it's an important one, and we need to rejoice in the virgin conception, not cringe and walk away from it and say, wow, that was a weird interpretation from Matthew.

And I think when we respond to the criticism, we don't need to swing the pendulum so far in another direction that we miss out on the strength of the prophecy.

Here's the main point. The Holy Spirit does not take Isaiah 714 out of context, and so Matthew does not take

Isaiah 714 out of context. Matthew the Apostle is completely aware of Maher's shalal hashbaz, that the sign was given to Ahaz about a foreign invader coming in by God's own design to bring judgment upon Judah in order to create the conditions necessary to save his people, to bring his people to their promised conclusion.

Matthew is completely aware of all of this. When we read

Isaiah 714, we should read this passage remembering what Matthew says about it, and don't read it as if Matthew chapter 1 doesn't exist.

But we should read Isaiah 714 in Isaiah, in its original context, with the veil pulled back, seeing the glory of Christ.

That we don't have to read it as if the veil is still over our eyes and pretend like we don't know what happens next.

We are to read it with Christian eyes, which means that when

Jesus Christ, when Jesus of Nazareth is declared Emmanuel, that we should remember

Isaiah's original context, that the name Emmanuel signifies both judgment and salvation, both judgment and salvation.

And as Emmanuel is assigned to Ahaz, of both deliverance and destruction, and a promised child of Judah is of judgment and salvation, so is

Jesus Christ. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.

Yes, he saves his people from their sins. His name is Yeshua, Jesus.

He shall save his people from their sins, but he's also going to bring God's judgment upon idolatrous

Jerusalem. Throughout the Old Testament, what happens when

God visits? Judgment. Well, there's no greater visitation of mankind by God than the

Incarnation, Jesus Christ. What is the ultimate outcome of that?

Jesus changes everything. The arrival of the king brings judgment upon his enemies, which means salvation for his people.

Emmanuel brings terror to the proud and hope to the poor in spirit. And so he came and he said to the

Sadducees and the Pharisees, woe, woe, woe, and all these things will come upon this generation, all the blood of all the prophets slain from Abel to Zechariah, son of Barakai, whom you murdered between the altar and the temple grounds, all of that is going to come upon this generation.

Woe, woe, woe. And there's nothing they can do to stop it. Emmanuel. But also he brings salvation and hope to the poor in spirit, when he sets a child in their midst and says of such is the kingdom of heaven.

The arrival of this king to establish his kingdom is going to rouse opposition as surely as it rescues the perishing.

And so when he speaks to his disciples, he says you're going to be persecuted, it's going to be hectic, and yet also he promises salvation.

So the language of Emmanuel we see causes a great deal of disruption.

When Jesus arrives, what is the response, let's say, of Herod?

He and all Jerusalem were troubled. He sees this as a rival to his throne, he's concerned about trying to protect his rule, and so he acts accordingly.

We know the response of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, those who had written themselves into the main character role of the

Old Covenant. We know that Jesus' arrival, we remember how does

Mary, for instance, how does Mary understand the arrival of Messiah, given what the angel said to her?

When Mary starts singing, she's singing in a way that is consistent with Isaiah chapters 7 and 8.

Luke chapter 1 verse 46, Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my

Savior. For he has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant. Behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.

There's going to be a lot of upheaval. How did

Simeon welcome the child? This child will be the cause of the rise and fall of many in Israel, and the sword shall pierce him.

Now, this child that we read about in Isaiah chapter 7, not only do we know that this is about Messiah and someone greater than Meher Shalohashbaz, we know that from Matthew chapter 1 very clearly, but did you know that those who received the prophecy of Isaiah also were shown within the prophecy of Isaiah itself that there was something greater being pointed to by this prophecy?

Because here is the child, here is in chapters 1 through 6, all about the failed children.

Chapter 7 through 12, all about the faithful child.

That's the way that the first 12 chapters of Isaiah are divided up. Here are the, here is the failed children, but here's the faithful child, and this promise is going to be unfolded in the rest of Isaiah.

But so our focus is put upon a child, here is a son, here is the child, in chapter 7 and 8, and then notice also chapter 9.

After wrapping up the whole matter of judgment and destruction and the failure of idolaters in chapter 8, a word to Ahaz and the whole nation, verse 9, gleam of hope.

Nevertheless, despite all destruction and disaster, nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first he lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her by the way of sea beyond the

Jordan and Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.

That sounds familiar, that sounds like Matthew chapter 4. It is

Matthew chapter 4. Isaiah 714, Matthew chapter 1, the very first of seven fulfillment passages in Matthew chapters 1 through 4.

Matthew chapter 1 starts off, this was to fulfill, and he says that seven times throughout the first four chapters.

His first fulfillment is Isaiah 714, his last fulfillment in Matthew chapter 4 is

Isaiah 9 verses 1 and 2.

Who is this? Well, it's the child. Why is this? Why is this light come? For unto us a child is born, verse 6, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder.

His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, in order to establish, to order it and establish it with justice and judgment, from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the

Lord of hosts will perform this. So what we're being shown through Matthew's interpretation is this trajectory.

We have all these fulfillments within the first four chapters of Matthew that begin and end with the same context of Isaiah, and he's saying something that Immanuel's saving revelation will reach the

Gentiles and his glorious light will go to all of those who are in darkness. Thus, this is the son that fulfills the original mission of Israel, that all the nations will be blessed in the seat of Abraham, that all the nations would come to the light of his rising.

This is the son that is faithful to the covenant, this is the son that fulfills the purpose. And that's how the first four chapters of Matthew starts, by putting our attention upon Immanuel.

Well, how do we have and how are we going to have the new and faithful son who brings the kingdom of heaven and says, you have heard it said, but I say to you, salvation is in me, not in being born in Abraham.

How are we going to have that new without there being judgment upon the old? If you grasp that, you grasp the whole essence of the

Gospel of Matthew. Here is the new and here is salvation, and you enter through humility by faith in Christ, and all those who privately cling to themselves as the main character in Israel, those who are the temple lights and so on, they are slated for judgment.

And that is, in the context of Isaiah, the meaning of Immanuel, salvation for those who are faithful but judgment upon those who are proud.

Alright, we'll leave it there, and next opportunity we'll talk about milk and honey in chapter 7 verse 15.

Let's close with singing the doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.