Isaiah 7: Faith in Immanuel

A sermon by Nate Wilson, delivered 13 Aug 2006


1. In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah,

Rezin the king of Aram and

Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel

came up to Jerusalem to war against her,

but could not engage war upon her.
2. And it was related to the house of David, saying,

"Aram has settled with Ephraim,"

and his heart and the heart of his people trembled

like the trembling of trees of the forest before the wind.
3. And Jehovah said to Isaiah,

"Go out to call on Ahaz,

you and Shear-jashub your son,

at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer's Field.

4. And you shall say to him,

'Be careful, be quiet,

do not fear, and do not let your heart faint

because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands,

at the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah.

5. Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah,

has devised evil against you, saying,

6. "Let us go up into Judah

and terrify it,

and let us conquer it for ourselves,

and cause a king top reign in her – a son of Tabeel!"

7. Thus says the Lord Jehovah:

"'It shall not stand,

and it shall not be.

8. For the head of Aram is Damascus,

and the head of Damascus is Rezin,

and within sixty-five years Ephraim

will break from being a people.

9. "'And the head of Ephraim is Samaria,

and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.

If y’all are not caused to believe,

then y’all won’t believe.'"

10. Then again Jehovah spoke to Ahaz saying,

11. "Ask for yourself a sign from Jehovah your God;

Ask it to be deep or make it to the heights."

12. But Ahaz said,

"I will not ask,

and I will not test Jehovah."

13. And he said,

"Hear then, O house of David!

Is it a trifle from y’all to weary men,

that you weary my God also?

14. Therefore the Lord himself will give a sign to y’all:

Behold, the virgin conceives

and bears a son,

and she shall call his name ‘Immanuel.’

15. He shall eat curds and honey

until He knows to refuse with the evil

and to choose with the good.

16. For before the boy knows to refuse with the evil and to choose with the good,

the land which you are dreading will be deprived of the presence of her two kings.

17. Jehovah will bring upon you and upon your people and upon the house of your father days such as have not come since the day of the turning away of Ephraim from Judah--the king of Assyria."

18. And it will come to pass in that day

Jehovah will whistle for the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt,

and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

19. And they will come and settle – all of them

in the steep ravines, and

in the clefts of the rocks, and

in all the thornbushes, and

in all the pastures.

20. In that day

the Lord will shave with a hired razor beyond the River--with the king of Assyria--the head and the hair of the feet, and also it will sweep away the beard.

21. And it will come to pass in that day

a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep,

22. and it will come to pass that from much making of milk, he will eat curds,

for everyone who is left in the inner part of the land will eat curds and honey.

23. And it will come to pass in that day

every place where there used to be a thousand vines worth a thousand pieces of silver, will become briers and thorns.

24. With bow and arrows one will go there,

for all the land will be briers and thorns.

25. And all the mountains that were hoed with a hoe, you will not go there for fear of briers and thorns,

but it will be for sending out an ox and for a lamb to trample.


INTRO

Story of two hikers in the mountains who encounter a grizzly bear. One offers the use of a .306, but the other opts to pull a rotten tree branch off a tree to fight the bear. He looses. Silly, isn’t it, but we do that all the time, except it is not with grizzly bears, it is with life’s problems. This passage before us is a warning not to try to solve our problems merely with our own smarts and resources and friends, we need the .306 of faith that God offers us in order to be overcomers.


SETTING: Isa 6 is dated the year Uzziah died, when Jotham, his son, was king of Judah, and the prophecies of ch 1-5 may have been delivered during Jotham’s 16-year reign. Now Jotham’s son, Ahaz, is king of Judah and Pekah is king of the northern kingdom of Israel, which is called Ephraim in this chapter. From the history books of 2 Kings (chapter 16) and 2 Chronicles (chapter 28), we can read from a historical perspective what is going on at the time of Isaiah’s prophecy. The problem that Ahaz, king of Judah, has is that the army of Aram (also known as Syria) has allied with the northern kingdom of Israel in a plan to conquer Judah and put a puppet king on the throne of Judah that they can control. Ahaz has reason to be afraid because this army does indeed manage to kill 120,000 people and take another 200,000 captive from Judah and Jerusalem, even capturing Ahaz himself. So Ahaz is faced with a faith-challenging decision of how to respond to this national threat. Would he trust God to save him, or would he trust in his own resources? As we will see, Ahaz decides to refuse to exercise faith in God and instead to rely upon an alliance with Assyria, a nation north of Aram/Syria, hoping that Assyria will raid Damascus and Samaria so that the Aramean and Ephraimite armies will pull back to defend themselves and leave Judah alone. That is Ahaz’s plan, and in v. 3, Ahaz is checking out the water supply for the city of Jerusalem to see if he can withstand a siege for long enough until he gets the result from Assyria that he wants. Remember this geographical spot by the pool, because it will show up again in Isaiah 36.


But God sends a message to Ahaz by the prophet Isaiah to call Ahaz in a different direction, namely to trust in God rather than in man for his deliverance. He does this through people, through commands, and through signs in this chapter.


PERSONS: Part of the message comes through Isaiah’s son, named Shuar-yashuv, which means “A remnant shall return.”


COMMANDS: v.4 “Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, do not let your heart faint.” Calvin: “outward restraint and inner calm” Do the opposite of fear.


SIGNS: In v. 7, God says that the evil plans of Aram and Ephraim will not stand. They are fire-pokers with nothing but smoke to them – they have no fire to burn Ahaz. They are on their way out. Verses 8-9 go on to say that Rezin will remain king over nothing but Syria and will not therefore control Judah, and Pekah will remain king over nothing but Ephraim and will therefore not control Judah either. Note how God shows his disdain for Pekah by not even mentioning his name. In fact, in v. 8, God says that Ephraim will no longer be a people within 65 years.


Then Isaiah delivers the challenge of faith at the end of verse 9: “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.” (ESV) There are two verbs in this phrase and they both come from the same root meaning to “be firm” or to “believe.” The first is in a causative stem, “If you do not cause trust,” and the second is in a passive stem, “then you will not be trusted.” He delivers this challenge not just to Ahaz but to everyone standing there at the pool, for he uses the second person plural, “If y’all don’t believe, then y’all will not be established.”


Verses 8 and 9 parallel each other. , and this prophecy of Ephraim no longer being a people within 65 years is a warning to Ahaz: Ephraim will be obliterated within 65 years, and if you do not place your faith in God, you too will be obliterated.


How easy it is to see the foolishness of King Ahaz! He would rather trust a half-baked plan to form an alliance with Assyria than trust in the all-powerful, living God! And that when God was offering him any help to his weak faith that could be asked! We would never have been so foolish as Ahaz… or would we? Do we ever balk at trusting God and stepping out in faith? Do we ever hide our fear behind the guise of human wisdom and common sense? Abraham did when he decided God wasn’t trustworthy to make good on his promise to provide him with many descendents through Sarah, and he took matters into his own hands by depending on his human resources and trying to have children through Sarah’s maidservant. It was the sensible thing to do, but now we have the Arab-Israeli wars as a result of Abraham not trusting God. The Jews had the “common sense” not to enter Caanan when the 10 spies told them that the land could not be conquered… and because they would not obey God and step out in faith, they did not get to enter into the promised land, but had to wander in the desert 40 years. We do the same thing. We look at our finances and sensibly conclude that we aren’t making enough to be able to pay our bills and give God a tithe, so we rob God and He makes our finances difficult as a result. We worry that things which only God can control will destroy our assets, so we hire men to insure those assets for us. We look at our calendar and cannot find time to get involved in ministry or a Bible study, so we fail to obey God’s call on our lives. I’m sure you can think of other ways in which you are paralyzed by fear from stepping out and doing something that God calls you to do.


There are two applications here.

1. Faith is impossible without an outside cause to have faith. Faith does not come naturally to us, it is caused by God. If you have faith, it is because God has given it to you, so be thankful to Him!

Joh 12:37. But though He (Jesus) had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on him: 38. that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, Lord, who hath believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? 39. For this cause they could not believe, for that Isaiah said again, 40. He hath blinded their eyes, and he hardened their heart; Lest they should see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, And should turn, And I should heal them.


2Th 2:11-15 And for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie: 12. that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 13. But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, for that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: 14. whereunto he called you through our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15. So then, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours.


Eph 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God


2. We must look for ways to strengthen our faith and the faith of others. “Cause to believe” commanded God to Ahaz and his court. This is also a command we can obey. We also can do what strengthens faith. Reading the Bible, enjoying Christian fellowship, partaking of the sacraments, praying, these things all serve to strengthen our faith. Pursue these things and practice these things with other believers so that your faith will be strengthened so that you may stand firm in faith and not waver. In Hebrews 10:38-39, it says, “…my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul has no pleasure in him. 39. But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition; but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul.


It was for this very reason that God commanded Ahaz in v. 11 to ask for a sign. This sign was to bolster his faith. As Paul wrote in I Cor. 1:22, “Jews seek for signs…” It was part of the Jewish culture to ask a sign from God to strengthen one’s faith. That is what Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah did, asking for the sign of the shadow on the sundial to go back a certain number of degrees as a sign that God would indeed give him the 15 more years of life that were promised. Notice that the first word in v. 11 is a command, “Ask for yourself a sign from Jehovah your God…”


But Ahaz refused to take a step that might increase his faith in God because he did not want to trust in God in the first place. He wanted to pursue his plan of deliverance with the king of Assyria. He hides his refusal to obey God’s command behind a pious-sounding pretense, but God cuts through the façade in verse 13 “is it too small a thing to weary men that you weary my God also?”


God, in His mercy gave a sign even though Ahaz did not ask for it. It was at both a promise and a threat:


PROMISE: Messiah is coming, and Syria and Israel will no longer be a threat

v.14 “Virgin conceives and bears a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”

v. 15 “reject evil and choose good” this is the nature of Jesus, the man who never sinned


v.16 “land of the two kings will be forsaken”


THREAT

V. 15 & v. 22 “Curds and honey”


v. 8 “within 65 years” / v. “the Lord will bring upon you… the king of Assyria”


The signs all came to pass; God’s word was true, but Ahaz didn’t want to trust God. The very thing he put his trust in (Assyria) was the very thing that brought destruction to his nation. This is the consequence of placing our hopes in life on anything or anyone but the one true God.


In this passage of Scripture, God is telling us to:

  1. Place your trust in God alone; stop pinning your hopes on anyone else!

  2. Use all the means of grace at your disposal to strengthen your faith.

    1. Prayer

    2. Worship

    3. Fellowship

    4. Bible study

    5. Baptism and Communion


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