Sunday, July 27, 2025 PM

The Crisis in Judah and the Sign of Emmanuel

All right, let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah 7. We're reading verses 1 through 9 this evening. Isaiah chapter 7. And let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word.

We thank you for your grace towards us, the mercy that you have shown us in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit who indwells us and we have from you that your love is poured out in our midst by your Spirit.

We thank you that we have confidence to look to you as our Heavenly Father and that by the very grace and mercy that you give to us, we may come before you to your throne and seek all that we need. And we thank you that you are a generous Heavenly Father.

And I pray that you would help us now to read your word, to understand it, that you would illumine it to us, that we would rejoice in its truth. 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 Pecah, 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 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 Tabal.

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 will not be established. So Isaiah chapters seven through twelve present to us the child of hope as the response to the children of woe in chapters one through six.

Since there is no hope regarding Judah as a whole, the people are invited to look to one that will come from among them, the son of David, the promised seed from the tribe of Judah, the child. The child is, of course, the Messiah, and we have many messianic promises and prophecies in this section of Isaiah, and attention is drawn there.

That will be their hope. And in chapters seven and eight, the first of three sections under the heading of child of hope, we have the sign of Emmanuel. When we think of the sign of Emmanuel, we, of course, think of Christmas, and we think of the Christmas carols, and we think of the passage in Matthew chapter one.

When we read about the sign of Emmanuel in its original context, I think it is somewhat surprising to discover the complexity of the sign, the details that surround this promise of Emmanuel. And so we're going to be exploring that as we go through chapters seven and eight.

The sign of Emmanuel was given to a king named Abel who was not a great king. He was a wicked king. He wasn't even buried with the other kings he was so bad. And the sign was given to him regarding coming destruction.

And so it's a surprising thing when we get to the New Testament and the sign of Emmanuel is appropriated for the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We'll talk more about that later. For now, we need to think about the crisis that had arisen in the life of Judah, which gave occasion for the sign of Emmanuel.

Why was Ahaz in need of a sign? Why was Judah in need of a word from God that God would send Isaiah to offer a sign and to speak of Emmanuel in the first place? With the crisis we see in verses one and two, and as we look at this crisis, it'll be important for us to remember three things.

First, that God is in charge, right? The crisis looks like it's manmade, but really it's God ordained. So God is in charge. The second item that should catch our attention is that Ahaz does not fear God.

Even though God is in charge, Ahaz doesn't fear God. Ahaz should be thinking of God first and God most, but he doesn't. The third thing we should pay attention to is I think very applicable to ourselves, to our own day.

Men do not know what God is up to. Men do not know what God is up to. Not in the details of history, for sure. So let's begin with this crisis and the truth that God is in charge. Now, listen to what goes on in verse one and verse two of Isaiah seven, and we're going to read from 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles and fill in the historical details.

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.

So that is an invasion of the northern kingdom of Israel, often called Ephraim, sometimes called Samaria after her capital city. They have allied with the nation of Syria, whose capital was Damascus, whose king was Rezin.

And so Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, have allied their forces together. They have invaded Judah and won a victory, but were unable to capture the capital of Judah, which of course is Jerusalem, a notoriously difficult city to successfully lay siege against.

Now, the first siege has failed, but verse two, it was told to the house of David, saying, Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim. Sounds like they're getting ready for round two. And we hear later on that word of a conspiracy has reached Ahaz's ears, and so he fears round two.

And he thinks, this time they're going to succeed in overthrowing me, I will lose my throne. This is why we read that Ahaz's heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind.

They were shaken like a leaf in the wind. Very, very scared. But God is in charge. So let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Kings 15. 2 Kings 15, and let's look at verse 37. And we'll back up to verse 36. Remember that Ahaz is the son of Jotham.

So keep Jotham in mind, he's the father of Ahaz. And we read in verse 36 of 2 Kings 15. Now the rest of the acts of Jotham, right, that's Ahaz's father. And all that he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

Now notice, notice what's going on even back in the days of Jotham. In those days, the Lord began to send Rezin king of Syria and Pecah the son of Amalia against Judah. So Jotham rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David his father.

Then Ahaz his son reigned in his place. As Jotham's reign is waning, as his rule is coming to an end, as he is weakening physically as king, and the transition is coming for his son Ahaz to reign in his place, Rezin and Pecah, Syria and Ephraim are beginning to move against the southern kingdom of Judah but notice, God began to send them.

Do you see that? Why is Syria and Ephraim having success against Judah? The Lord sent them. This is a just action of judgment against Judah who is forgetting God, rebelling against God and so God raises up enemies against them to bring judgment against them as he promised he would do in the covenant blessings and covenant curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

So the Lord is at work. God is in charge. He's the one sending them. There's a greater power behind the combined threat of Rezin and Pecah. So who should Ahaz and Judah fear? Should they fear the characters in the crisis or the author of the crisis?

Fear the author, the one who's organizing it all. We also ought to ask ourselves, if God is the one who sent Rezin and Pecah against Judah, why were they unable to prevail against Jerusalem itself? If God sent them, why didn't they succeed?

Would it not also be that because God didn't ordain for them to have that much success? God is the one who sent them so they had the level of success they were supposed to have. They didn't take Jerusalem because that wasn't part of God's plan.

That they had success up to that point was God's plan. God is the one in charge. Now, how grand was their success? We learn from 2 Chronicles. So we just flip forward a little bit to 2 Chronicles chapter 28, verses five through eight.

2 Chronicles 28, verses five through eight. 2 Chronicles 28 is talking about the reign of Ahaz. First four verses tell us how awful he is. And then verse five says what the Lord did about it. Verse five, therefore the Lord his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria.

Remember that God, the Lord was Ahaz's God, not because Ahaz had personally appropriated the Lord God as his Lord by faith, but the Lord was Ahaz's God by covenant. Ahaz was a member of the old covenant.

And so even though he forgets God and hates God and blasphemes God and does everything he can to kick against God, the Lord remains his God. Kind of like being made in God's image. God is our creator whether we like it or not.

And every atheist who would deny that God even exists, God is still their God because he made them in his image, whether they like it or not. So God delivers Ahaz into the hand of the king of Syria. They defeated him and carried away a great multitude of them as captives and brought them to Damascus.

Then he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel who defeated him with a great slaughter. For Pecha the son of Amalia, that's the king of Ephraim, killed 120 ,000 in Judah in one day. All valiant men.

Meaning the whole army, right? The whole army was wiped out.

Why?

I mean, it'd take about three battles from the war between the states, the total 120 ,000. And those were very bloody days. 120 ,000 fallen in one day, why? Verse six says, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers.

That's why. This is covenant judgment. And we read how terrible it was. Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, killed Mosiah, the king's son, Asrechem, the officer over the house, and Elkanah, who was second to the king.

And the children of Israel carried away, captive of their brethren, 200 ,000 women, sons and daughters, and they also took away much spoil from them and brought the spoil to Samaria. Essentially, such was the victory of the northern kingdom against the southern kingdom that they slaughtered Judah's entire army and then took the entire populace captive except for who remained in Jerusalem.

You can't have a more solid victory than that other than taking Jerusalem. They take them all away captive. So, who brought this to pass? God brought this to pass. And this is why Ahaz is so afraid. But Ahaz does not fear God, he fears man.

When we think of Ahaz, we don't think of somebody who had any degree of reverence or faithfulness in the whole history of Judah. As I said earlier, he was such a bad king, he wasn't even buried in the tombs of the kings.

He wasn't even honored to be amongst the kings. And just how bad of a king was he? Well, we're still there in 2 Chronicles 28, so look at verses one through four. Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem and he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord as his father David had done, for he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made molded images for the Baals.

He burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom and burned his children in the fire according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places on the hills and under every green tree.

So he was idolatrous to the max, as much as he could. And we talked about in a previous lesson, what would happen, God promised, what would happen if Judah engaged in the abominations of the nations who were there in Canaan before them, that as the land had vomited out the tribes of Canaan, it would vomit them out too.

So this is a signal that things are getting very bad. Even later, after God grants mercy to Judah and graciously preserves Ahaz's life and his reign, Ahaz proves to be one of the most profane and blasphemous kings in all of Judah's history.

An example of that is in, we can see that in verses 22 through 25 of 2 Chronicles 28. Now, verse 22 of 2 Chronicles 28. Now in the time of his distress, King Ahaz became increasingly unfaithful to the Lord.

This is that King Ahaz. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, which had defeated him saying, because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel.

So Ahaz gathered the articles of the house of God, cut in pieces the articles of the house of God, shut up the doors of the house of God, and made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem. And in every single city of Judah, he made high places to burn incense to other gods and provoke to anger the Lord God of his fathers.

And then it concludes by saying he didn't, he wasn't buried with the other kings. He was so bad. His apostasy went so far that he took those articles from the house of God that he had cut up and he sent those pieces of precious metal, gold and silver and so on.

He sent it to bribe Assyria to attack Damascus, the capital of Syria. Even after God had delivered Judah from the hand of resident Pekah, Ahaz figured I got to take out my enemies before they take me out.

So he bribes Assyria with gold from the temple to go take out Syria. And then Ahaz went to Damascus to discern the gods that Syria had worshiped that had defeated him prior. And so he went there to learn all about the gods of Damascus, the gods that Rezin and his people had served.

And he figured that whatever gods those were what gave Rezin success in defeating Judah in the first place. So I'm gonna learn their ways. I'm gonna worship their gods. And then I'll have the same type of success and the same type of power.

They have some sort of system, some sort of formula. I'm gonna copy that. Well, he went to Damascus. This story is in 2 Kings 16. He goes up to Damascus and he sees a pagan altar there and he approaches it and then he makes blood sacrifices on this pagan altar in Damascus.

He's gonna appease the foreign gods that had defeated him. And then he commissioned a similar pagan altar of the very same type to be built in Jerusalem and placed in the temple. And the altar that Solomon had built was put over to the side.

And this new pagan altar was placed front and center to be worshiped at. And he made many different sacrilegious changes in the temple. And he just started moving everything around and he completely ignored the prescribed way of worship that God had given to the Levites, to the priests, to the people of Israel.

So he led the whole nation into blasphemy. Really interesting. At that time, there was a priest, the high priest was a man by the name of Uriah. Uriah. And there's a little note in 2 Kings 16 that says, Uriah did everything that Ahaz told him to do.

What do you think about that? Big time failure, right? Now remember, this is Isaiah chapter seven. We're talking about Ahaz. We're talking about what a wicked king he was. And we're remembering the stories of his life, how he profaned the temple and was able to profane the temple in a lot of ways because the high priest Uriah just did whatever the king told him to do.

Wasn't there a mentioning of another king back in Isaiah chapter six? Who was the king in Isaiah chapter six?

Uzziah.

In the year that King Uzziah died. And why did he die? He died a leper. And why did he die a leper? Because he went in to the temple to do something far less blasphemous and far less sacrilegious than what Ahaz ever did.

But why was Uzziah unsuccessful? Remember why? That's right. High priest stood up to him, guy named Azariah. Azariah said, oh no you don't. And do you know who stood with Azariah? 80 valiant men. And do you know why 80 valiant men stood up and did something about that?

Because Azariah did something about that.

Uriah?

Whatever you want boss. I'm just doing my job. You want worship different? We'll do worship different. Not Azariah. Azariah stood up and said, oh no you don't. And all of a sudden, just out of the woodwork, there's 80 valiant men standing right with Azariah.

You know, we mourn the passing of our Azariahs, don't we? We miss R .C. Sproul, we miss John MacArthur, don't we? We miss our Azariahs. And we're kind of sick of all the Urijahs alive today. But, as we reflect on that, what do we remember?

Not to fear man, but to fear God. We remember the story of God's prophet when he said,.

I'm the only one left.

God says, I've got 7 ,000 having bowed the knee to Baal that you don't know about. So we know the Lord has valiant men. And we know that an Azariah is always around. And maybe you're the Azariah to stand up.

I've been encouraged by stories from some of you about how you have spoken up in the name of Christ in your workplace and among your family. And I've been encouraged most of all by hearing about how others come out of the woodwork and say, thank you so much for saying that.

Thank you so much for doing that. Isn't that interesting that when an Azariah stands up, suddenly valiant people come out of the woodwork. Now, Ahaz does not fear God. And apparently Urijah did not either.

But Ahaz is fearing men. But you know, men do not know what God is up to. When verse two says that there's this, the report comes to the house of David, it comes to Ahaz and to the king's house, that the serious forces are deployed in Ephraim.

They're shaking like a leaf. Their army is gone, 120 ,000 valiant men dead, 200 ,000 people captured. I mean, what's going to happen? Ahaz and the whole house, his whole house is shaking like leaves in the wind.

It's fear, fear, and more fear dominating their every breath. Do you know, do you know what was happening at this very moment? Wow, they're shaking like a leaf in the wind. Second Chronicles 28, verse nine.

This is what's happening while Ahaz is shaking like a leaf in the wind. Behind the scenes, way up north, God was doing stuff. But a prophet of the Lord was there. Remember, they've got 200 ,000 captives up north whose name was Oded.

And he went out before the army that came to Samaria and said to them, look, because the Lord God of your fathers was angry with Judah, he has delivered them into your hand, but you have killed them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.

And now you propose the force, the children of Judah and Jerusalem to be your male and female slaves. They just captured 200 ,000 slaves. But are you not also guilty before the Lord your God? Now hear me therefore and return the captives whom you have taken captive from your brethren for the fierce wrath of the Lord is upon you.

Then some of the heads of the children of Ephraim, Azariah, the son of Jehanin, Berechiah, the son of Meshalemoth, Jehezekiah, the son of Shalem, and Amasa, the son of Haldai, stood up against those who came from the war and said, you shall not bring the captives here.

We already have offended the Lord. You intend to add to our sins and to our guilt for our guilt is great and there is fierce wrath against Israel. Now see that, Oded starts talking and then all of a sudden people just start standing up and say, we're with Oded, don't do this.

Verse 14, so the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the leaders and all the assembly. Then the men who were designated by name rose up and took the captives. And from the spoil, they clothed all who were naked among them, dressed them and gave them sandals, gave them food and drink and anointed them and they let all the feeble ones ride on donkeys.

So they brought them to their brethren at Jericho, the city of the palm trees. Then they returned to Samaria. Well, who could have thought that was going to happen? Judah had just gotten depopulated, 200 ,000 people gone.

They're all supposed to become slaves. There's no hope for the tribe of Judah at all. But all this while they're in Jerusalem, shaking like leaves in the wind, God was at work and the captives were returned, clothed, fed, cared for, dressed, all of that.

All their wounds taken care of. We think we understand what's going on in the world. We think we understand what's going on in the world. The more afraid we are, the more informed we feel. The more deep and dark the evil conspiracy is, the more insightful and perceptive we are.

Smart people are scared people. It's the world in which we live, but we don't know. Let's be honest, we don't know. Our temptation for knowledge beyond our design was there in the original sin, wasn't it?

And it's expressed in the folly, in the cycles of Israel. And we recall that nobody really knew what was going on when Christ was murdered. If they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

But grieving women at the tomb and fretting disciples in their bunker met the risen Christ. Had no idea what was going on. They thought they understood. They thought they had entered the darkest of days, but they did not understand what God was up to.

And we have the risen Christ, who is the apex of God's truth and grace. Something to remember. Let's close by singing the Doxol.