✠ Psalmody: Isaiah 45:8a;Psalm 19:1;24:7, 3-4a;145:18, 21;Isaiah 35:4b;7:14b
✠ Lection: Isaiah 2:2-5;Isaiah 7:10-15;Luke 1:26-38a
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is by the prophet Isaiah that we have the prophetic sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel, a name that is especially popular around this time of year as we ponder upon the Advent of our King. It’s a name so popular that countless children have received it as their own over the past millennia, as well as a multitude of schools and churches, causing it to become quite sentimental to us, to those who care about godly things, godly names, and the godly reasons behind them. Let us ponder on this Advent evening the setting into which Isaiah spoke these words that are dear to us nearly 3,000 years after they were first given.
That is who is speaking here, the prophet Isaiah, though technically it is God speaking through him. Consider what has led up to this portion of chapter seven in the prophet’s lengthy book. Chapter six is the well-know vision of the heavenly throne room, filled with incense smoke, with angels crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and Isaiah saying, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” He rightly assesses his demise as a sinner and that of the sinners in whose midst he dwells upon the earth. Yet, it was the Lord’s purifying fire, taken from His holy altar in the form of a coal that cleansed Isaiah when it touched his lips. This is the Lord’s doing and it was marvelous in the prophet’s eyes.
Then comes chapter seven and the setting returns back to the earth where the kingdoms of man do not possess the holiness that was observed above. King Ahaz of Judah, of the royal lineage of David nonetheless, is sent word by God through Isaiah to warn him that the kings of Syria and Israel have joined and are coming to make war against Jerusalem. Such a warning is merciful, so it seems, because it gives Ahaz time to contemplate what he will do so as not to fall. Already, he knew the Lord’s promise that David’s kingdom would be an everlasting one; not by man’s doing, but by God’s. But Ahaz was wicked, one of those kings who did evil in the sight of the Lord, for not only had he replaced the Lord’s altar in Jerusalem with a duplicate one modeled after that of a false god in Damascus, 2 Chronicles 28 tells us that 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. This was indeed a wicked man and a worthless king.
So, when we read only this small section about the virgin bearing a Son, calling His name Immanuel, and that it shall be a sign for which Ahaz refused to ask, it wasn’t that Ahaz had piously refused to put the LORD to the test when the Almighty prompted him to ask. If the LORD says to do something, then doing it cannot result in putting Him to the test, which means Ahaz was feigning piety in his faithlessness. He was acting as if he didn’t want to impose on God, because he had no trust in the Lord in the first place. A lack of trust in God coupled with a prideful insistence on our own independence, ability, and self-worship, shows that the idolatrous heart of Ahaz runs all the way back to Adam and all the way down to us. If we refuse to ask God for the things that we need, consider that it may not be out of piety that we do so, but out of sinful pride and false worship.
Thanks be to God though that He is merciful and remembers His promises and that is why he still sent warning to Ahaz about Syria and Israel. He didn’t only send warning, He sent more promise; promise that the war intended against Jerusalem shall not stand, Nor shall it come to pass. In other words, He was keeping His word while showing mercy to Ahaz, calling him to repent, and to trust that the LORD was in control and would preserve Jerusalem and its people.
All that is what leads right into the LORD extending even more mercy to Ahaz by saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” What the LORD put to him would obviously force him to repent of his false worship, to turn to the true God, and to confess that goodness is from Him alone. The Lord was calling Ahaz to repent of his limited earthly reason that he had exalted over his trust of omniscient God. He was calling him to choose that day whom he would serve and that consequences for himself and for Jerusalem hung in the balance of whom he chose to trust: the false gods and the false assurances of worldly reason, power, and success, or the Holy One of Heaven.
Ahaz refused, again in feigned piety, to ask God for a sign, even with the LORD telling him that the sky was the limit to what he could ask for. Ahaz said no, thank you to God’s mercy. All praise, honor, and glory be to God that His mercy depends not on man’s righteousness, but on His own. For, the mercy that He intended in His offer to Ahaz would not be withheld simply because a wicked king sat upon the throne that was intended for the Son of David, for Immanuel. That is when he, Isaiah, responded and spoke not to singular you, Ahaz, but to plural y’all, to the house of David and to all who hear these words in hope of receiving the mercy and Promise they proclaim. “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for y’all to weary men, but will y’all weary my God also?” In other words, the distrust that you share among yourselves might be understandable, but not that that you hold toward God. It is a sin not to place our entire well-being in the hands of the Lord; not to trust that He will always act for our greatest good; and to act instead in hurried, worried ways of man. We succumb to the flesh and refuse to call upon the Name of the Lord.
“Therefore the Lord Himself will give y’all a sign: (and here’s the sign from our determined, merciful Lord:) Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” The mercy we need, He Himself has made it a point to give to us in God with us, in a virgin-born Son named Immanuel, named Jesus. He has done this in spite of our lack of willingness, not to force feed us the Christ, but to awaken us out of deadly slumber, so that we ask with humble, repentant longing of heart to be given the signs of Him in Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which give us hope and victory over our enemies. It is in these holy signs and in His Word that we have Immanuel, God with us, God for us.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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