Sunday, August 3, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Sign to Ahaz and the Threat Against Judah

Alright, let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 7, we'll be reading verses 1 -9 this evening, Isaiah chapter 7 verses 1 -9, let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father we thank you for this evening, we thank you for the gathering, the fellowship, the singing, the prayer, the study of your word, these precious gifts that you give to us, we ask Heavenly Father that you would take these mercies and apply them to our lives in a gracious and fruitful way, and I pray that you would give us a clear look at your son in this word, that we would look like him in this world, we pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Isaiah chapter 7 beginning in verse 1, 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 Peca 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, Serious 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 faint hearted, for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and 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. So we are looking here at the beginning of chapter seven, and leading up to the moment where God is going to give to Ahaz a sign.

Ahaz is unwilling to ask for a sign. He is full of fear. He has no interest in growing his faith in the Lord. He does not want to fear the Lord, to think of Him first, to think of Him most. He is not interested in growing his devotion to God.

We have seen many examples already in 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings that Ahaz is interested in expanding his devotion to other gods. He wants to grow in his devotion to the gods of Syria, whose altars are in Damascus.

He fears Rezin king of Syria, Pekah king of Israel, for their forces have won a mighty victory against Judah. 120 ,000 valiant soldiers dead, 200 ,000 taken away captive. Once again, the forces of Syria are encamped in Ephraim, poised to strike again at the southern nation of Judah.

To once again attempt to take Jerusalem, this time by means of a plot, a scheme, in which they are going to break down part of the wall of Jerusalem. They are going to send in their troops and infiltrate and overturn the government of Judah and install their own king.

A coup is on the horizon, and so Ahaz is shaking like a leaf in the wind. God sends his prophet Isaiah with his toddler son, Shear Jashub, to confront Ahaz, as Ahaz is inspecting the aqueduct, preparing for a siege, and God has something to say to him.

He sends Isaiah with his son. His son's name, Shear Jashub, means a remnant shall return. Here is the word of God, a promise of God, a word of God in the flesh. He will soon give him a sign of another child yet to come, the word of God in the flesh, named Emmanuel.

In this context, it is important for us to remember that this is just a few years after the call of Isaiah as a prophet. We find Isaiah in a vision in the throne room, in which he stands guilty before God.

He is a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, and his eyes have seen the Lord of glory, the Lord of hosts. And yet we see that God extends to him mercy, forgiveness from the altar, cleansing from the altar, so that Isaiah stands holy and acceptable, forgiven of God before the very presence of God, even though he belongs to a guilty people.

This is an important reminder for those who live within a doomed people, the Old Covenant people who are doomed by their rebellion, the judgment that's on the horizon, that even though the nation itself is under the judgment of God and the exile is going to come, the walls will be broken down, Babylon will eventually have its way, that they themselves individually should be looking to the Lord, that they should recognize that they need forgiveness from the Lord individually, and they should be putting their attention upon the promises of God, even unto that promised child, the child of hope, who is the true answer to the children of woe.

There is a seed, there is a son, one who is promised to come, and that is what Isaiah chapters 7 through 12 really emphasize, and of course the famous passages that we like to quote on Christmas we find here in these six chapters.

Trusting God Instead of Fearful Political Schemes

Now, given where we are in chapter 7, we are looking at verses 5 through 6. Ahaz has been confronted by Isaiah with his son Sheer Jashub. God has given his command through the prophet to Ahaz, to basically, why don't you be quiet and don't do anything for a little while.

Stop flailing about in your fear. As we talked about last time, Ahaz wants to build an alliance with us, Syria, the great superpower of that time, the superpower that was just before Babylon, who has a standing mercenary army, the real great threat, truly the reason why Syria and Israel have conspired against Judah is that they want Judah to join with them in a tri-national alliance against Syria, but Judah was unwilling, and so they are going to take care of their threat to the south before they consolidate and then attempt to hold a front against us, Syria, who comes from the north.

Well, in this political quandary, Ahaz senses an opportunity, and so his plan, and so he doesn't obey the Lord in this, when the Lord says, why don't you be quiet and do nothing, Ahaz takes sacred artifacts out of the temple, chops them up, sends the gold and silver to the king of Assyria to bribe him to attack Damascus, the capital of Syria, to defeat King Rezin, and this is the way that Ahaz does business.

Now, he doesn't follow the command, but he does have a great concern, the plot against Ahaz's throne, verses 5 and 6. The prophet exposes the particular fear that Ahaz possesses, verse 5, because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Amalia have plotted evil against you, saying, let us go up against Judah and trouble it, let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over them, the son of Tabel.

Somehow, through the intrigues of conflict and war, a spy has brought the information that this is the live conspiracy going on to the north. This is their plan, this is what they're going to do against you, and so Ahaz is very focused on that.

They have not been able to take Jerusalem in a classic siege, which is very difficult to do, so this is the plan of the enemies of Judah. They're going to have a coup with follow-up military action. They're going to install a new king.

Now, this plan that Pekah and Rezin have against Judah, against Jerusalem, against the king of Jerusalem, should have no merit in the eyes of a man who trusts in the Lord. Ahaz, in his position, given all of the advantages and blessings that God had given to Ahaz, he should not invest any concern or anxiety into that plan in the least.

Why is that? When we're reading in the context, we hear Sheer Jashub is the son of Isaiah. We have the son of Remalia, verse 4. Rezin, the son of Remalia, is Pekah. We have Rezin being named a little bit later on.

We have this riddle of sons and fathers. It should bring to mind who is Ahaz. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, the son of David. Ahaz is occupying the throne of his father, David.

He should recognize why he has a throne at all. Why is he ruling at all? What city is he in? He's in the city where the throne of the Lord, the Ark of the Covenant, occupies a higher hill than his own throne, where the true kingship of God is declared.

Ahaz should be recognizing that his God, his master, is king of all the other kings, and that he is simply the servant, and that he reigns by the promise of God, not by his own power and skill. He should recognize that his grandfather, Uzziah, had been arrogant in his reign and died a leper for his arrogance against God.

So many advantages, so many opportunities for Ahaz to reflect and be humble and trust in the Lord and to not fear man and not be thoroughly consumed by these conspiracies, by what men may do in all of their evil.

The Bible is very clear that men are evil. There's no doubt about it. As we look about the world today, we know men are evil. The Bible says in more than one location about the different types of evil schemes that men come up with.

And indeed, our age is no different than the ages that have preceded us. But what are we to make of evil men with all their scheming? Is this to dominate our thinking? Is it to dominate our lives? Is this to capture our attention and drain our energy and resources?

Or shall we remember who our king is? Shall we remember whose son he is? Shall we remember the city that we belong to? And should we remember what has already been promised and laid out for us in the future?

It is well worth remembering in a day where fear sells that we are children of God, that we have Christ as our king. When we think about the temptation that the serpent brought against Adam and Eve, what did he strike against?

Their confidence in the goodness of God, wasn't it? Did God really say? He's keeping something from you, despite all the evidence to the contrary and all the blessings that God had given to them. Let us not get so caught up in the details of what men may do that we forget what God has done and what God will do.

This is the tantamount to forgetting God. The best way to forget about God is to fill up our meditations with man, to fill up our meditations with the self. Every time we are confronted with man's conspiracy, we are to remember there is a greater agenda that will not be thwarted.

When we go to the very heart of the details of the historical gospel, what do we find there? That Pilate and Herod and the Jews, along with the Romans, have gathered together to conspire against Jesus of Nazareth to put him to death.

But they had gathered together to do exactly what God had foreordained to occur. This was the prayer of the saints when they faced persecution in Acts chapter 4. They confessed that this great and awful evil conspiracy that had been wrought against Christ, this great evil act upon the face of the world, God had ordained to bring about redemption, to bring about good.

So, okay, Ahaz, you know all the details of the wicked conspiracy. Okay, fine. Tell me about God. How well can we elucidate all the facts of wicked conspiracies and bring all of those fear facts together?

But what? Well, tell me about God. What do we know about God? Let's bring those things together in our meditation. So fear needs to be redirected away from man and unto God, and that's what the Lord does for Ahaz in verses 7 -9.

The Lord’s Promise That the Conspiracy Will Fail

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, the head of Samaria is Ramaliah's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. The surveys are complete. The analysts have weighed in. The data has been arranged into undeniable facts.

Ahaz knows what is going on, and he knows what's about to happen. Only he doesn't. As we said before, at the very moment that Ahaz is shaking like a leaf in the wind, at that very moment, with 200 ,000 of Judah captured and slated for enslavement by Ephraim and Syria to the north, God has His prophet in the north, preaching to the leaders there, and nobles rise up and agree with that prophet, and they say, Let us not do this wicked thing against our brethren.

And they send the 200 ,000 captives of Judah back from the north, fed and clothed and cared for. Ahaz doesn't know that. He's assuming the worst. He thinks he knows the score. God is the one who delivers them from this great disaster.

God is the one who's going to deliver them from the armies of Assyria when they finally come. Ahaz knows nothing of this. He thinks he knows how it's all going to happen, but he doesn't. He does not know the future, and he cannot manipulate the world to fit his preferences.

He's extremely interested in preserving his own rule. He worries, and he works to save his own life. But clearly, unless he fears the Lord, he will lose it. So notice the Lord's termination of man's plans in verse 7.

Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass. What shall not stand? What shall not come to pass? The conspiracy, the evil plot. It would be well worth picking up a few old newspapers and news articles and even using just the Wayback Machine on the Internet and go back and see just how certain folks were not so long ago about how everything was going to come crashing down in a great disaster.

It's good to remind ourselves of how certain all the experts are when they weigh in about how everything is going to fall apart and just completely implode, and how all the predictions are continually wrong.

It's good to not only recognize the limitations of men, but ourselves to be humbled when we recall how much stock we put in to the words of the experts and the prognosticators about what was going to happen.

Ahaz sends word to Assyria to try to counter the conspiracy, but he had not considered nor was he interested in hearing the word of the Lord. So the Lord sends word by Isaiah to Ahaz that is not a rumor, that is not a conspiracy.

The word of the Lord through Isaiah to Ahaz is not manipulation. God sends word, I'm going to put a stop to all this. It reminds us of who's in charge. Proverbs 16 verse 1 says, The preparations of the heart belong to a man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

Proverbs 16 verse 33 says, The lot, the dice, is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. So the Lord says it's not going to happen. He gives a timeline in verse 8. For the head of Syria is Damascus and the head of Damascus is resin.

Within 65 years, Ephraim will be broken so that it will not be a people. So God gives Ahaz a timeline. So this is being spoken around 735 BC and in about 65 years, God says Ephraim is going to be dissolved.

You're not going to be able to point to a map and say, there's Ephraim. You're going to have a hard time finding where they are, who they are. They're going to be wiped out. In 671 BC, Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria, had exiled all of the Israelites from the entire region of the north and he had scattered them amongst the whole empire of Assyria and he imported new settlers into the tribal allotments of the northern kingdom and thoroughly took away that inheritance.

There's a story in 2 Kings 17 about how these new folks came in there and they had no idea what was going on, what rules God had set up for this particular land under the old covenant. They did their best to try to follow some of the sacrificial rules, but they really never understood.

Interestingly, they had kept it up all those years and when we read in Ezra chapter 4, they came to Ezra and said, oh yeah, yeah, we worship the same God. Let us help you build the temple. And Ezra's like, no, no you don't.

We're not going to cooperate together. The fact of the matter is we don't worship the same God, just so you know. And so this prophecy in 65 years, Ephraim is going to be dissolved, came to pass. The dissolution of Ephraim is covenantally significant, something that Asaph reflected on in Psalm 78.

In verse 67, Asaph writes, moreover, he rejected the tent of Joseph. Remember Joseph had Ephraim and Manasseh and Ephraim the younger was blessed over the elder Manasseh. And Ephraim became the name by which the northern kingdom went because they were the preeminent tribe of the north.

And so in rejecting the tent of Joseph, he's saying he's rejecting that northern kingdom. He did not choose the tribe of Ephraim, verse 68, but chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loved. And he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth, which he has established forever.

He also chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds from following the ewes that had young. He had ewes that had young. He brought him to shepherd Jacob, his people and Israel, his inheritance.

So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. So as Asaph is reflecting on how it is that the Lord is moving his promises forward throughout redemptive history, he notes that Ephraim was rejected, Joseph was set aside, but it was Judah that the Lord set his favor upon for the sake of David.

And the attention comes upon David and therefore the son of David through whom God keeps all of his promises, meaning Christ. And so this timeline is going to come to pass. Ahaz thinks he knows what's going to happen.

He doesn't. The Lord does. He tells him exactly what's going to happen. And then the Lord, through Isaiah, gives a little taunt in verse 9. The head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son.

If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. Isaiah is poetically making the point. So Rezin, the king, is the head of Damascus, which is the capital city, which is the head of Syria.

Remaliah's son Pekah is the head of Samaria. Samaria is the capital city of Ephraim, the kingdom. And these two have conspired together. They have come together to make plans and execute those plans. But what will the outcome of their conspiracy be?

God has already said. He's going to make it fail. He's going to cause it to fail. He will cause them to fall. But Ahaz looks at Pekah and Rezin like his whole world. Like, I have got to do something about these two men.

When he goes to sleep, he thinks of Pekah and Rezin. When he wakes up, he's worried about Pekah and Rezin. When he's eating lunch, he can't enjoy it because he's thinking about Pekah and Rezin. But God has already said what's going to happen to them.

His focus on these two men brings to bear an opportunity, reminding Ahaz who is he the son of, what city is he head of. If he is as foolish as Pekah and Rezin to think that conspiracies and political intrigues will save him, will he not also fall just like them?

Isn't that what he's trying to do with the king of Assyria? He wants to make a pact with them. Ahaz should remember that he is descended from David. He reigns in the city of David over the tribe of Judah.

And who is the head of Jerusalem? Is it really Ahaz or is it the Lord? Do you see where God is bringing the attention? Ahaz needs to believe if he's going to be established. In the Hebrew, Isaiah is very witty.

The NIV translates this last part of verse 9 this way. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. The reason why the translation does that is because of the rhyming in the Hebrew, ta 'amenu, te 'amenu.

Isaiah is very pithy in most of his writing. And he's putting something into Ahaz's mind that hopefully will stick there and rattle around. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.

The point is the king should believe in God. He should believe in God's word. He should trust God alone. Pekah and Rezan are going to lose their heads in their conspiracies. Will Ahaz do the same? Is that going to happen to him?

What is the great need for Ahaz in this moment? It says it in the text. If you will not believe, you will not be established. Because Ahaz needs to believe because he needs his faith strengthened. Do you know what God does for Ahaz?

He says, ask me for a sign.

Right?

You need to believe. You need to get your attention off of men and onto me. You need to believe in order for you to be established. That's your great need. You need to have your faith strengthened. So Ahaz, ask me for a sign.

And you see how the Lord is gracious and long-suffering in that. Verses 10 and following. And how ungrateful and arrogant and resistant Ahaz is to that offering from the Lord. The Achilles heel of the old covenant, the reason why God found fault with them, as Hebrews puts it, was the unbelief of the people at large.

Ahaz, not Ahaz but Asaph, put it this way in Psalm 78 verse 22. Because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation. That was what the problem was again and again among the people because they didn't believe in God.

This is a problem that isn't unique to Israel. The image of God was made for the word of God under the glory of God. We were made so that we would believe what God has to say to us. The very first thing God did after he made man in his own image was give him the word of God.

The first thing he did after he made man was speak to him, say something to him. We're made for that. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We were made to hear the word of God and believe it.

That's what we were made for, to believe it and to live accordingly. If we listen to the serpent, you'd think that God had conspired against Adam and Eve. You'd think that there was a conspiracy in the Godhead against Adam and Eve.

God was trying to keep something good from them when in fact their greatest good came by trusting him. We are reminded from Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God but we live by faith because Christ is our life.

And Christ pleases God in all of his merits. If we do not stand in Christ, we do not stand at all. Yes, men engage in conspiracies but Christ remains king. Psalm 2 tells us that. The people conspire a vain thing.

The Lord who sits in the heavens laughs. He has set his beloved, his Messiah on his holy hill. God laughs at the conspiracies of men because he has made Christ king of kings. Our last thought is this.

Given all the wonderful works of God in creation and redemption, why do we have any room for lack of trust and faith? How does that space get created in our hearts in the first place? I think it comes from focus upon the self, focus upon men, and in doing this all kinds of room for doubt is made.

The more we focus on the self, the more we focus upon men, the more we make room in our hearts to forget. We forget to fear the Lord, to think of him first and to think of him most. And you may recall that the most fundamental thing you ever taught in how to grow in Christ, your most basic spiritual disciplines were what?

That you would regularly somehow make time to remind yourself of the greatness of God. How were you taught? You should read your Bible and pray every day. You know you never outgrow that. You never outgrow that.

Why not? Because we are to remind ourselves of how great God is, how good he is, and keep our focus there. Alright, let's close by singing the doxology.