God’s Promise to Isaiah

In the context of Matthew's account of the birth of Christ, he sees this birth in Bethlehem as a fulfillment of a promise that was given prophetically by the prophet Isaiah about a future virgin who would conceive and bring forth a child. And yet the fulfillment of that detailed prophecy is the subject of skepticism. A baby born of a virgin?

How can that be? Today on Renewing Your Mind, we continue Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Promises. And in our lesson today, he tackles those skeptical questions to show us that God not only predicted a baby born to a virgin, He fulfilled it.

Here's Dr. Sproul. In this Advent season, we have been considering the promises of the Old Testament that are fulfilled with the coming of Christ. We talked about the earliest promise of the gospel that is found in the third chapter of Genesis, verse 15, that we call the protoevangel, the first gospel. And then we looked at the promises that God made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, the patriarchal blessings that were transferred from generation to generation. Now today we're going to look at a promise of the Old Testament that in its content is more specific than these general, broad promises of a coming Redeemer. We think back to the ancient world, for example, to the oracle of Delphi, and that oracle was famous for giving his predictions of the future.

But if you look carefully at the oracles that were given there at Delphi, they were always shrouded in a certain ambiguity. It's as if the oracle was making sure that he was hedging his bets. The story is of a king or a general who was also a king who was about to engage in a great battle inquired of the oracle of Delphi of the outcome of this battle. And the oracle said to the king, O king, this will be a day of great and mighty victory. And the king went back to his troops, all enthusiastic about this prediction that he had received, marched into battle and was roundly and soundly defeated.

His armies were routed, and the oracle of Delphi proved to be true because indeed it was a great day of victory for the other side. And that sort of prophecy is a prophecy that can't lose. That's exactly the opposite of the kind of prophecy and promise that we get from God in the pages of the Old Testament, where there the prophecies have specific and often detailed outcomes. And of course, one of the most noteworthy promises of the Old Testament with respect to the Messiah who is to be born at some future date specifies where He will be born, for example, where the prophet Micah designates this tiny little village of Bethlehem as the place where the Messiah will be born. But another Old Testament prophecy that has received quite a bit of attention and no small amount of controversy is the one that is cited in the in the gospel of Matthew in his account of the birth of Jesus. We read in verse 18 of chapter 1 of Matthew's gospel, Matthew's account of the advent of Christ. He says this, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.

And then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a son, and you will call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. Now immediately after this record, Matthew adds sort of a postscript to the announcement, calling our attention back to the promises of the Old Testament. In verse 22, he writes these words, So all this was done, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, quote, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated God with us.

So, we see that in the context of Matthew's account of the birth of Christ, that he sees this birth in Bethlehem as a fulfillment of a promise that was given prophetically by the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament about a future virgin who would conceive and bring forth a child. Now, I doubt if there's any of the events of the New Testament that has provoked more discussion and more controversy in the 20th century than this whole question of the virgin birth of Jesus. And I find it somewhat remarkable that I meet people frequently who say to me that they believe in the historical resurrection of Christ. They believe that Jesus performed miracles such as the calming of the sea and the changing of water into wine and so on. They believe that his death was an atonement of cosmic proportions, but they just can't believe in the historical reality of the virgin birth. Somehow the virgin birth is extrapolated from the whole body of New Testament teaching about Jesus and put in a separate category being assigned to the genre of mythology or fable or legend. And I just wonder about the consistency of this. Of course, 19th century liberal theology saw a wholesale rejection of anything in the New Testament that smacked of the miraculous or of the supernatural.

That I can understand. That is, if a person said, I don't believe in miracles, I don't believe in virgin births, I don't believe in resurrections, I don't believe in changing water into wine, raising people from the dead, that sort of thing, and say in that context, therefore I reject the virgin birth. But what is so strange to me is that group of people who isolate this particular teaching of the New Testament for special treatment of skepticism. Now also we notice that in the controversy that came about in the 19th century with the advent of 19th century religious historical school, which is often called the school of liberalism, that assigned so much of the material of the New Testament to the realm of mythology, that as is normally the case when a theologian or a school of theology departs from orthodox belief, from classical or traditional theology, inevitably the first appeal is an appeal by which the person who is departing from orthodoxy or the heretic, if you will, if you want me to speak plainly and without horns, the first attempt is to say that the Scriptures don't really teach the traditional view. Or conversely, the Scripture really teaches their novel view. This is a traditional approach of all heretics. And once then you examine their argument and show that their exegesis or their interpretation of the Scriptures is an act of despair, then they'll usually say, well, I don't believe what the Scriptures are writing. But it is fascinating to me that so much of this controversy about the virgin birth is defended by those who reject the virgin birth on the grounds that the Bible really doesn't teach a virgin birth of Jesus.

Now, keep your thinking caps on here for a second. At this point, it's not a dispute of whether the virgin birth actually happened. The dispute is, does the Bible claim that it happened?

Do you see the difference? It's one thing to say I don't believe it because I don't believe the Bible teaches it. It's another thing to say, well, I grant that the Bible teaches it. But that's just one example of the fallibility and the arrancy of sacred Scripture. Now, this approach to the question of the birth of Jesus prompted a technical theological controversy that I think most of us have never heard of. It's called the Alma Betula Controversy. That's not a controversy that everybody in the pew speaks about and discusses with daily regularity. In fact, I'm saying if I would take a poll in the church today, I would be willing to guess that ninety-nine point something of the people have never heard of this controversy.

It's one of those pedantic controversies that theologians engage in, like arguing over whether Adam had a navel when he was created. But the Alma Betula Controversy focuses on the Old Testament text that Matthew quotes in his gospel when he says that the birth of Jesus fulfills the Scripture that a virgin will conceive and bring forth a child. The technical argument, as I say, calls our attention back to the prophecy of Isaiah that we find in the seventh chapter of the book that bears his name. Let's take a few moments and look at Isaiah chapter 7, beginning at verse 13. Then he said, "'Hear now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.

The Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.

And the Lord will bring the kings of the land to kings, and the Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you,' and so on." Now, the focal point of the controversy is on the word that is translated in our English Bible by the English word virgin. In the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the word that appears there is the word alma. And those who are technicians of the Hebrew language have indicated and noticed that the technical term for a virgin in Hebrew is the word betula.

And they look at this text, and they say, wait a minute. Isaiah doesn't say that a betula will conceive and bring forth a child. It says simply that an alma will conceive and bring forth a child. And that's why some translators prefer to translate Isaiah chapter 7 not by using the English word virgin, but rather they render the text this way. Behold, a young woman will conceive and bear a child. Now, I have to say that technically speaking, there is a Hebrew word that has more specific references to the concept of virginity than the word alma does, though I have been told recently by contemporary Hebrew scholars that the word alma may even be more specific than the word betula.

But I'm granting for the sake of argument the older view that betula is the more specific term and alma the more general term. And so the skeptic comes to this text and says, see, Isaiah didn't even prophesy that there would be a virgin birth. He had no view towards a biological miracle of this magnitude, and obviously the New Testament, when it looks back to this fulfillment, is also not trying to communicate the idea of virgin birth. This is one of those disputes of interpreting the Bible that I have to be candid with you, that I have to say boggles my mind of people having such a blind vision of the perfectly obvious.

Because in the first instance, if we read the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus, let me suggest to you that the word that the word virgin in Hebrew or in Greek, alma or betula, is utterly unnecessary to the concept that is being communicated. If we look at the context of the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus, the whole discussion of the miraculous circumstances of it marries utter bewilderment at the announcement that the angel makes to her and her protest by saying, how can this be since I've never been with a man? And then the angel's response, you know, with God all things are possible.

Here's how it will happen. The Holy Ghost will come upon you and overshadow you so that the thing that is conceived within you will be called the child of the Most High God. Do you see that in that narrative you don't even have to refer to virginity specifically to hear loudly and clearly the concept coming through? The second point I would say is that even in the Old Testament when Isaiah speaks about this alma that is coming, he prefaces that prediction by saying that the Lord God is going to give the people a sign, a supernatural sign, which is the biblical word primarily for what we call a miracle. And there is nothing significant and nothing miraculous or supernatural that is supernatural about a young woman's having a baby.

So that in the context of Isaiah, as well as in the context of Matthew, in both cases the event that is being described, never mind which word is being used to describe the girl in view, the concept in both texts clearly refers to a supernatural act wrought by God that is extraordinary, that is what we would say contra naturum, against the laws of nature. Finally, let me suggest this, that even though it's true that the word alma, or though it may be true that the word alma is less specific than the word betula, to translate it merely by the words in English, young woman, fails to do justice to it. At the very least, the text would be saying, behold, I will give you a sign, a maiden will conceive and bring forth a child, and that which is born shall be called the Son of God, and his name shall be Immanuel. Now, if I use that word, maiden, instead of young woman, there would be a subtle difference, wouldn't there? We hardly ever use the word maiden in our vocabulary anymore. It's somewhat archaic.

It's Elizabethan in its orientation and so on. But the word maiden does not necessitate the concept of virginity, but it strongly suggests it. In other words, the term young woman is far too broad to do justice to even the Hebrew concept alma. The idea of alma is a girl who is young, who is chaste, who is not experienced with men, not simply a reference to her sex or to her age. And if we look at it again in the context in which it is seen, we see that centuries before the birth of Jesus, God promised that a young maiden would conceive a child who would be Immanuel, and that the birth of this baby would be a supernatural sign from heaven.

It would be a flesh and blood fulfillment, not of an earthly prognostication or human prediction, but the fulfillment of a supernatural and divine promise. Let me ask you if you've ever struggled with the story of the virgin birth. I remember when I was teaching philosophy in a college in Pennsylvania that the professor in the English department was teaching Ovid's Metamorphosis, this ancient Greek poetic work, and he was trying to show his students in the class all of the points of parallel between ancient Greek mythology and Christian and Jewish religion. The Greeks had their myths of dying and rising gods, of virgin-born deities like Athena who sprung de nova from the head of Zeus, and the professor was sort of teasing his students saying, do you see this is no different from the New Testament teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus? And we were having coffee one day in the coffee shop afterwards, and I said, it's neat how you show these similarities between Greek mythology and the New Testament, but are you quick to also show the differences? He said, what differences? I said, well, for starters, how about the difference between the Hebrew view of history and the Greek view?

And as that discussion went on, he began to see that the difference is that the Greeks never thought for a second that their story of the birth of Athena really happened in space and time, whereas in Judaism, their faith depended upon it. And I say to you in this Advent season that when we come to celebrate the birth of Christ, we are not there to be engaged in an exercise of mythology, but a celebration of real time, of real space, and of real history. WEBB On this Christmas Eve, that's a great reminder, isn't it? We're glad you've joined us for Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. The series we're featuring this week is called Promises, and in it Dr. R.C. Sproul shows us God's promise-keeping character through several Old Testament saints, including Eve, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. We'd like to provide you with a digital download of this five-part series for your donation of any amount today to Ligonier Ministries. We will add all five messages to your learning library online, allowing you to stream them right away. We'll also send you the two-DVD set of R.C.

's series, The Promise-Keeper, God of the Covenants. Request both resources when you contact us today. Our offices are closed for the Christmas holiday, but you can make your request and give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org.

Chris Larson, our president and CEO, has stopped by the studio. Chris, I know that you and I are so encouraged to hear from young people who are connecting to the resources that we provide here at Ligonier Ministries. We have a wide-ranging outreach, of course, through this broadcast, Renewing Your Mind, that goes out on podcasts, but also through our YouTube outreach and on our website as well. And so reaching the next generation, it's a mandate for all of us as we're running this race. We have to pass that baton to the next generation so that they can stand firm in their faith and know that there is a historic grounding for what they believe and knowing why they believe it and how they're going to live it, and then how they're going to share it with others. Our listeners are really going to be encouraged to hear this testimony from this young lady.

So it was during quarantine about a year ago in March, I found Ligonier Online. It was always in my algorithm, like RC, like the Q&As, but I never pressed on it. And then one day I saw Pleasing God series online, and I fell in love with RC's charisma. And then the whole teaching series happened to be free, so I would binge watch that after school. I listened to what is Reformed Theology series and then the Doctrines of Grace and the Book of John by Stephen Lawson. And then I found myself to believe in predestination and Calvinism. I knew that I was a believer, that I didn't understand God's grace that much, that I cannot lose my salvation, that I cannot add to my justification with my sanctification.

It's done in there. So when I got introduced to Reformed Theology and actually understood the gospel through RC's messages, I felt like this burden got lifted up off of my back. And I was just really joyful and really thankful. I felt like I was born again, again, like I really understood the faith now. As I hear her say that, I'm reminded of what RC always said, that theology always leads to doxology.

It does, because I know that this person is now worshiping in a faithful gospel preaching church there in Manhattan. And she brought in others in her community to that church as well. And so this is the beauty of God's Word at work in the lives of His people. It can't help but bear fruit. And you're hearing that in this testimony. And we're grateful for it. Thank you, Chris. And there's no more fitting time to hear this testimony than on this Christmas Eve as we celebrate the coming of the Savior, the Messiah. On behalf of all of us here at Ligonier Ministries, Merry Christmas.