The Sign of Immanuel
Download MP3Our second gospel reading today comes from Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 to 25. You can follow along in your worship guide or in the scriptures themselves. Listen carefully, for this is God's word. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Collin Hansen:And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us.' When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
Collin Hansen:He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:If you would, pray with me. And, God, we give you praise for that, and thanks. We thank you for your word, how your word draws us closer to you. We pray that now through your spirit, your word would come alive in our hearts and work tremendous change, that it would draw us closer to you, Jesus. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. This Christmas season, I actually hid a certain CD from my children. Andrew Peterson's behold the lamb of God.
Joel Brooks:Now, before I I get people just yelling and screaming, only yell and scream if you have 3 children who sing the begat song over and over and over and over. Because that's what my children would do is sing the begat song, which is based on Matthew 1 that we just read, and it simply walks through the genealogy of Jesus. And I confess, the first time that I listened to that song, I thought Christian music had stooped to a new low, that we have resorted just to reading genealogies. We would finally run out of songs, rhyming fire with desire, which is half the Christian song. So so next, it went to genealogies.
Joel Brooks:The only next step is dictionaries. And so I thought we were we were resorting to a new low, but I've since had a change of heart, not enough to bring the CD out, but a change of heart because I do appreciate the genealogies, because they meant a great deal to the Jewish people, and they should mean a great deal to us. For example, if you go through Genesis, the Jewish people call the book of Genesis the book of generations or the book of toledot, because there are 7 times where there's 7 lists of generations in it, genealogies in it. And we typically would just skip over these things, but the the Israelites would stop, and they would ponder this. They would slow down.
Joel Brooks:They would contemplate every name. Now now we just read through one of the most popular Christmas stories, most popular Christmas passages that we have. One of the most famous verses we have with behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, genealogy. It comes after this part of the Bible that we normally skip, and we skipped it tonight simply because I wanted to have mercy on Colin that he wouldn't have to go through every single name and pronounce it right. But for the Israelites, this is when they would slow down.
Joel Brooks:To rush through genealogies in a way is to kind of rush through Advent. Because it's when they would remember the story, every name had a story. And it would walk through Israel's history as person after person waited for the Messiah. I guess you could say that reading the genealogies are a way that we do celebrate Advent. This the sermon tonight is is gonna be a little different than some of my others, because we are gonna go over a good bit of history, because I wanna set this verse, this famous verse of behold, a virgin shall be with child.
Joel Brooks:I want us to look at it in context, what it means. And so to do that, we're going to walk through some of these genealogies, and I'm going to start with David. I'm not going to start with Abraham because we would be here until Christmas, but I'm going to start with David. King David is the 2nd king of Israel. He ruled around a 1000 BC.
Joel Brooks:King David's son, Solomon, ruled after him, and then the kingdom split. It's amazing when you look at the kingdom of Israel, it was only united under 3 kings, King Saul, King David, King Solomon. But after King Solomon died, the kingdom split. Israel split. And so you had up north, this this kingdom called Ephraim, sometimes just called Israel, but Ephraim, and it was 10 tribes of Israel.
Joel Brooks:Then you had this Southern Kingdom, which consisted of 2 tribes, and it was called Judah. So, you had Ephraim up in North, and you had Judah in the South. And these two kingdoms fought each other all the time. They fought within all the time. It was a, it was a nasty time in Israel's history.
Joel Brooks:It was a time full of sin. It's hard to go through and read through, 1st and second Kings or 1st and second Chronicles and hard to find any righteous king. There's very few. This was a dark time in Israel's history. And often you had Ephraim, and you had Judah fighting each other, and that's where you find this prophecy is during one of those times.
Joel Brooks:These words, behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel. They're not said in the context of a quiet, candlelit church with kids dressed up for some kind of Christmas pageant there. Usually, the these lines, these lines will be read maybe between courses of a way in a manger or silent night or something like that. That is not how these words came into being. These words were originally said 27 100 years ago to a faithless, terrified people on the verge of war and annihilation.
Joel Brooks:Also in your worship guide, we have Isaiah, the chapter, Isaiah 7. If you want to look at that, we're gonna walk through these words. We'll look at the first two verses here. Isaiah 7. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it.
Joel Brooks:When the house of David was told, Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. The year is around 735 BC, and Ahaz has just become the king of Judah. He's about 20 years old. So picture yourself a junior in college, and you just became king. And you you inherit the throne actually from one of one of the better kings of Judah.
Joel Brooks:Actually, his his father and his grandfather both followed the Lord. Jotham, his father's described in 2nd Kings 16 as someone who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. That was extremely rare in this day. So, so Ahaz has a godly heritage. Now when Ahaz became king, he immediately had to deal with this crisis.
Joel Brooks:Ephraim has joined forces with another kingdom, Syria, and is advancing towards Jerusalem. They had already been attacking all of these neighboring cities around, and they've been closing in, tightening their grip, and now they're ready to take the capital city of Judah, where Ahaz is. They're ready to conquer Jerusalem itself. And so the people are obviously terrified. Verse 2 describes Ahaz and his people as as people who were shaking like trees and the wind, scared of what was coming.
Joel Brooks:They simply, they didn't have the army. They didn't have the people to hold these opposing armies at bay. They knew they were doomed. Now, when you're a junior in college, you kind of think of your whole life is before you. And now, A has, he's looking out the window and he's seeing all of these armies and he knows it's all coming to an end.
Joel Brooks:And he doesn't know what to do. And all the people around him are terrified. And it's at this time that the Lord sends the prophet Isaiah. This is when the greatest prophet in the old testament, he comes in and he makes his appearance. Isaiah meets Ahaz at Jerusalem's main water conduit.
Joel Brooks:Ahaz is likely working on the water supply, because that would be very important during battle. He's making all of his war preparations, and Isaiah comes to him and we read this in verses 46, And say to him, this is God's telling Isaiah, say to Ahaz, be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these 2 smoldering stumps of firebrands. At the fierce anger of resin in Syria and the son of Ramaliah. Because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah has devised evil against you saying, let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves and set up the son of Tobiel as the king in the midst of it. Thus says the Lord, Be careful.
Joel Brooks:Fear. I mean, imagine that when you're this young guy, you're thinking, yeah, right. Isaiah, have you have you looked out there? Have you lost your mind? I'm supposed to be quiet.
Joel Brooks:I'm supposed to do nothing in the midst of this. So Isaiah gives them these more comforting words. Verse 7, when he says, thus says the Lord God, it shall shall not stand. It shall not come to pass for the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. Within 65 years, Ephraim will be broken to pieces, so that will no longer be a people.
Joel Brooks:And the head of Ephraim is Samaria. And the head of Samaria is the son of Ramallia. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. So the Lord tells Ahaz, he goes, all right, all right, listen, listen, the plan that Ephraim and the plan that Syria have against you, I know it looks really imposing. I know it looks dark, but it's not going to happen.
Joel Brooks:And let me simplify it for you. Your problem with Syria just boils down to 1 person, their king, Rezin. And your problem with Ephraim boils down to 1 person, Remaliah, their king. So don't worry about kingdoms here. Don't worry about armies here.
Joel Brooks:It's just 2 people worry about the heads of their kingdoms. Now implicit in this argument that the Lord is giving here is the question. Hey, Ahaz. Who is the head of Judah? Because if it's you, you're gonna get conquered.
Joel Brooks:But if it's the Lord, do you think these two people have a chance? Do you? Isaiah then gives Ahaz a, what I like to call a bumper sticker. I'm serious about this. He gives Aas one of those one liners, you know, that you only find, on, you know, Christians putting a cheesy bumper sticker on driving by.
Joel Brooks:He says something like this, and your bible is going to read, if you're not firm in your faith, you will not be firm at all. It's a pretty good translation, but it misses some of the rhyming and some of the, the bluntness of it. Literally in Hebrew, it's Taminu, Tiaminu. Taminu, tiaminu, which you could translate trust or bust. Told you.
Joel Brooks:It's just like a bumper sticker, trust or bust. I mean, Isaiah was a preacher. I mean, he was incredibly cheesy here, but he did a line that gets stuck in your head. It's better than let go, let God. Alright?
Joel Brooks:But I kind of picture this young guy, Ahaz, rolling his eyes and groaning as the old man tells him, trust or bust. Trust or bust. But Isaiah wants this phrase, these 4 short terse words. He wants them stuck in Ahaz's head, taminu tiaminu. Stand firm in your faith, or you will not stand firm at all.
Joel Brooks:He's got no He's got no apparent faith, at least. If he has faith, it's so slight, it's unrecognizable as any kind of faith. Because Ahaz, when you read through the Bible, you find Ahaz is one of the most wicked kings, if not the most wicked king that ever existed in Israel's history. Let me read to you from 2nd kings, actually 1st Kings 16. Says, Ahaz was 20 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. King Ahaz, he wasn't just a bad king, he was a wicked king. The man sacrificed his own son.
Joel Brooks:He burned his own son at the altar. Alright. Alright. We're all sinners here. Okay?
Joel Brooks:How many of you have ever lied besides now? Alright. How many of you have ever lied? Alright. How many have ever been unkind?
Joel Brooks:Alright. Some of you are not liking the way this is going. I'll stop at the end. We're not going to go into embarrassing sins here. How many of you have ever sacrificed one of your children, burned them to a foreign idol?
Joel Brooks:Anybody? So every one of you are better than Ahaz. Alright? The guy is wicked, evil. He's also desperate.
Joel Brooks:He likely sacrificed his son as as some even desperate measure to to seek help from whatever gods might listen. He is desperate for deliverance, but he doesn't turn to the Lord. Instead, he gets deeper and deeper into sin. King says that he makes sacrifices on the high places, on the hills. It says, under every green tree, meaning pretty much wherever you looked, Ahaz had set up an altar to make sacrifices to some pagan god.
Joel Brooks:He is calling out to any or every God that might possibly be out there pleading for help. He's not calling out to the Lord. In addition to like calling out to all these foreign gods, he's also making all of these political alliances. He's actually goes to Assyria for crying out loud. One of the most wicked countries, and he makes an alliance with them asking for their help.
Joel Brooks:He's desperate and he is a horrible wicked man. And yet Isaiah comes to this man who just sacrificed his own son and says, stand firm in your faith. And what I think he's doing here is he's saying, hey, Your grandfather worshiped the Lord. Your father worshiped the Lord. Do do you remember that?
Joel Brooks:And how the Lord took care of them, is is there is there any ember there that I can fan into flame? Anything. And AHAS is likely thinking, old man, this is the real world with real problems. You and your archaic religion doesn't matter anymore. You you know what matters?
Joel Brooks:Military might matters. Making alliances matters. Political astuteness matters. Not you telling me I'm supposed to do nothing but trust this God I cannot see. I do not know.
Joel Brooks:What fantasy world are you living in? And when you really when you read this story, this this story is about, It's really what the story is unpacking. Let me just stop right here. How many of you all okay, does this feel like a Christmas story yet? Does this feel like we're in Advent?
Joel Brooks:You know, Christmas away in a manger, silent night, hark the herald? Does that really feel like where we're going now? You know, a few years ago, we did an advent devotional. Actually, we didn't do an advent devotional. We just did advent readings.
Joel Brooks:We printed them up in a bookmark, and we gave them to the people of the church. And it was readings like this in Isaiah 7. And, so as the weeks went on, Jeff and I would get all of these emails, which essentially was I mean, did did you get a monkey with a typewriter just typing up random verses? Because what do these things have to do with Christmas? Because you come through text like this, and you're like, where's the Christmas story in all this?
Joel Brooks:I mean, round young version. That's that's where we want to go here, or we just want to see sweet little baby Jesus. But the Christmas story is rooted in stories like this. Real people, evil people on the verge of being annihilated and are desperate, and yet God comes to them. Well, let's get back to the more Christmassy part of this text.
Joel Brooks:Isaiah tells Ahaz, trust or bust. He then tells Ahaz that the Lord wants him to ask of him a sign. Look at verse 10. Says, again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ask a sign of the Lord your God. Let it be as deep as shield or as high as heaven.
Joel Brooks:Now, this is extraordinary. The the Lord never does this. Look through all scripture. Go looking throughout and see if you could find any time in which the Lord ever tells anybody, says, ask of me a sign. The Lord never does this because to ask him for a sign is sin.
Joel Brooks:It's to put him to the test. It's showing a lack of trust. God never tells people ask me for a sign. You know, if if you're married and your wife says, I love you, and you say prove it. Give me a sign.
Joel Brooks:Tell me how that goes. It's a slap in the face. Yet, God here says, ask of me a sign. And it doesn't matter how great of a sign you ask. I'm going to give it to you.
Joel Brooks:Of Ahaz. It's actually quite pompous. If the Lord asks you to ask him a sign, and you say, no. I'm not gonna do what you ask. And and Ahaz is not being righteous here because he never listened to the Lord before, and he doesn't listen to the Lord afterwards.
Joel Brooks:He could care less about Isaiah or his God. And then God does something extraordinary. He gives Ahaz a sign anyway. He goes, fine. You won't ask for 1.
Joel Brooks:I will give you a sign anyway. And he gives more than just a sign. He, God steps back, if you will, and he addresses the entire house of Israel. And he gives them a sign that's gonna be for the entire royal line of David. And so God is bending over backwards here, reaching down to Ahaz.
Joel Brooks:And he says this in verse 13, hear then, oh, house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. So there it is. It's the most famous Christmas verse in the Bible and what leads up to it.
Joel Brooks:And when Ahaz hears these words from Isaiah, he's gotta be thinking, what? What? I mean, that's it? That's the sign? My Isaiah, I'm I'm I'm a I'm a busy man here.
Joel Brooks:I don't have time for that for this. You you call that a sign? Fire coming down from heaven, burning my enemies, that's a sign. Raising somebody from the dead, that's a sign. Even go go back to your religion.
Joel Brooks:Turn turn water into blood. That's a pretty good sign. But telling me some woman's gonna have a baby, how does that help me? It's probably wondering also how you spell Immanuel. Is it an I?
Joel Brooks:Is it an e? The debate rages on. But at this point, Ahaz is probably wishing Isaiah would go away, at least wishing he had come up with some better sign, but there it is. Now, the question for us is, why did God give us the sign of Immanuel here? I mean, why this place?
Joel Brooks:Why this situation? Why to this king? And and this is why I think it's here, Because it's here that you find man and his most desperate need. I mean, Israel is surrounded by evil outside their walls, and they are consumed by evil inside their hearts. Evil is everywhere.
Joel Brooks:Sin is everywhere. They have turned to every other God asking for help, and they have received none. They are turning to every other nation asking for help. These are a wicked people in need of judgment, and they have no faith. And it's to such people that God says, I am with you.
Joel Brooks:I'm with you. I mean, just just let that sink in. And he says, I am with you. I'm not going anywhere. This is good, good news.
Joel Brooks:This promise of Emmanuel is made to people like us. Now, grace is hard to accept because you have to admit you have a need. Actually, when when Lauren and I, when we started this church, and a lot of you probably don't know this, we used to meet at our house. There's a really there's an unusual storm and it came and it destroyed a lot of our house. Did about $90,000 worth of damage at that time.
Joel Brooks:And, so we don't it didn't demolish my truck. I mean, there was just it was this crazy storm that just hit our house. And Lauren and I, I had left my other job, just started Redeemer, and now, you know, you don't really have a place where you can even have an office or a meet. I don't have transportation. I don't have all of this.
Joel Brooks:I I became in desperate need, And the people in our community, a lot of our neighbors who do not know the Lord, actually, were the first ones to write checks for redeemer. It was so hard to accept, because, It was so hard to accept because Lauren and I are like, oh, we appreciate that, but we're starting this dang church to help you. Alright? We wanna give you grace. And God's like, no.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna put you in a need. I'm gonna humble you to where you have to receive help from people who don't even know me. And it just humbled us. Receiving grace is hard to do because you have to admit you need it. Receiving God's grace is hard to do because you have to admit you sinned.
Joel Brooks:You've wronged him. You have failed. You know, I've I've got 3 little girls, age 6, 9, 12, and they get along remarkably well. They all share a room together. And because they all share a room together, there's some occasional squabbles, some fighting that goes on.
Joel Brooks:And and and when they do this, I'm downstairs, and I can hear them kind of arguing and fighting, and, Lauren and I, at those points, we kind of become deaf. We try to see who could hold out the longest without acknowledging our kids are fighting, because neither one of us want to deal with And so we're just really actively reading, doing whatever. But finally, it reaches a point you gotta do something. So I'll walk to the edge of the steps, and I'll kinda yell up the steps. Hey, kids quit it.
Joel Brooks:And I sit down, pat myself on the back. I'm like, no, that's parenting. I mean, I mean, I got this thing down. And then if if they if they don't quit, and they're they're still squabbling at one another, Alright. Alright.
Joel Brooks:I'll go. So I I go to the edge of steps, and I I yell up there again. I'm like, whatever toy you're playing with or fighting over, you can't play with it. Put it aside. Alright?
Joel Brooks:Get along. Sit back down, pat myself on the back. I'm like, yes. I should teach classes on this. And if they are still fighting, well then it's time for me to go up there.
Joel Brooks:It's time for me to go up there and let my words become flesh before them for me to physically come and bring peace to the situation. My words were not enough. My presence had to be there in order for them to listen. Otherwise, they would just keep fighting. This is what you see here.
Joel Brooks:God, time and time again, has been sending prophets after prophets after prophets with his word, Over and over, they would reject God. And and they they couldn't work things out amongst themselves because they were internally broken. Their their hearts were broken. They were never gonna be at peace. So finally God says, well, I'm going to have to come myself.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna have to make my words flesh. And I'm gonna come and bring peace to the situation because you cannot achieve it on your own. So when we call Jesus Emmanuel, God with us, we're not just simply making a declaration of who he is. When we call him Emmanuel, we are acknowledging who we are. We are the people who have failed.
Joel Brooks:We are the people always in conflict who have no peace, and we needed God's word to come and be flesh among us to sort things out. So calling him Emmanuel declares who he is, and it declares who we are. We have heard his word and we have disobeyed it. And so we need him to come and be with us. Now, in this story here, Ahaz, he does not listen to Isaiah.
Joel Brooks:He he doesn't believe. He doesn't have faith. Instead he becomes a very practical man and he goes and he makes an Alliance with Assyria to bail him out. And just like any sin, it feels really good at first. The Assyrians actually come and help him out.
Joel Brooks:He's like, made the right decision. And then the Assyrians turned on him and conquered Jerusalem, and they just made him a puppet king. They didn't remove him, but he was a puppet king for the end of his days. And then many generations later, Jerusalem would be destroyed and the royal line, the royal line of David would be all but forgotten. 600 years go by.
Joel Brooks:The sign of Emmanuel, this sign God with us is is completely forgotten. I mean, God with us. Yeah. Right. We don't we don't have kings anymore.
Joel Brooks:And the people 600 years later had forgotten so much about it that when Jesus is born, when this King comes, when the King of all Kings, Emmanuel, God with us does come, they don't greet him, but he's actually born in a stable. This long awaited King, this fulfillment of this prophecy, the one who could deliver Israel from their enemies, bring peace. No one there to greet them. Born in a manger. And when this child is born, God, the father tells Joseph what to name the boy.
Joel Brooks:He used to name the boy Jesus, to name him Yeshua, which means the Lord saves. And his name is to be Emmanuel, God with us. That's what this Christmas season is about. It's about God coming to us in our darkest hour to save a people who have sinned against him, rebelled against him, and forgotten about him. And he comes to us in the flesh.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Jesus, we declare that you are Emmanuel. You are God with us. And when we declare that to you, we also acknowledge who we are, the people who have forsaken your word. And so we need you to come and to be flesh among us.
Joel Brooks:We need you to come and bring peace. If anybody here does not know you, Jesus, I'm not talking about know about you, but doesn't know you. I pray that they would hear your still small voice speaking to them in this moment. It doesn't matter the sin. It doesn't matter how dark of a life that we live.
Joel Brooks:God, you reach down to us, and you're waiting. So I pray in this moment now, we would all come and we would adore Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.
