Well, grab your copy of God's Word and let's go to the old part of the book, and let's go to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah the prophet, and I will read Isaiah 7 14, and then purpose to unpack the entire chapter as we talk about Emmanuel. God is with us. Trust him in the crisis.
That's in today's installment. Trust him in the crisis. Isaiah chapter 7. Of course, this is a powerful prefiguring type, if you will, prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah 7, verse 14. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Emmanuel. In your trial, in your crisis, what is giving you anxiety today? What seems to come into your life and give you fear, trepidation? We all have different things.
They come and go. Maybe some of you seem gripped in hurt, despair, fear, anxiety, even as I speak. But above all things, all things that can help us, that can support us, that can keep us in the, broadly speaking, crisis of our life, what do we need to know the most? Or compared to other things, what is the only thing that really matters? Let me give it to you.
Here it is. And, because God is in hell, you understand. You don't get away from God if you die without Jesus. You don't get to go to hell and say, well, I'll just be away.
No, no. God's in hell. He's just there in his wrath. God is with us, and he's with us in divine favor. That's something. God's with us, and he's not with me to judge me.
He's with me because he's chosen me to be the object of his divine blessing and favor. If you know that, that's something you can rest on. That's something you can go to sleep on at night.
That's something that can banish the fear and anxieties and trepidation. And I want you to understand that tiny Judah, the southern kingdom, it's the time of the divided kingdom. Ten tribes have gone to the north, make up what's called Israel at this point, the northern kingdom. And Judah and some of the tribe of Benjamin are down to the south, and that makes up Judah, the southern kingdom.
And that's part of what we have in our text. Let's just give an overview of what we have before us. First of all, we do have the nation of Judah here, the southern kingdom. It's headed by a king named Ahaz. Ahaz is the king of this elect remnant, if you will, Judah. And unfortunately, like many of the people in Judah, Ahaz has become unfaithful.
He's lost his faith and rest and confidence in God. The major city of Judah, of course, is Jerusalem. And again, they are the godly remnant that God's covenant promises reside on. And then we have not just Judah, but we have Israel mentioned here, or the northern kingdom. Kind of represents Christendom in our day.
It's a broad swath of everything under the sun that's not really sound and true concerning Christianity. But they call themselves Christians. Well, the northern kingdom called themselves Israel. They were made up of the ten tribes that separated from Benjamin and Judah some years ago. And their king is a guy by the name of Pekah, the son of Remaliah. Again, Ephraim is the most prominent of the tribes. So sometimes Israel is called Ephraim, just to refer to, you might call America, you might use New York as an example for America in some situations. It's really challenging in the text because the prophet gives a lot of different names and designations for the same entity.
And you've got to know what he's talking about. He might say Ephraim one time. He might say the son of Remaliah one time. He might say Israel one time, but he means the same people.
I'll try to keep that straight as if I can keep it straight in my mind as we go through it. Then we have Aram, or Syria it's also called. These are simply idol-worshipping pagans. The king of Aram is Rezin, R-E-Z-I-N. The people who constituted this region or this nation were the ancient Syrians.
And the major city is Damascus. And you might also add in Egypt and Assyria are mentioned here, but they're not the primary players, so he's not at this point. So in 734 BC, King Ahaz of the tiny southern kingdom, Judah, supposed to be the godly remnant, the elect remnant, he's scared to death. He's trembling, the Bible says, because Pekah, king of the split off northern kingdom, has made an alliance with a reason, the king of Syria or Aram, that they would come together, march south, conquer tiny Judah, and set up a puppet king in the place of king Ahaz of Judah. So here the king of Judah, Ahaz, is shaking in his boots.
His people are terrified. And God sends a message to king Ahaz of Judah that king Ahaz of Judah needs to trust in the Lord. God's message is the two nations and the two kings who are planning to invade you and conquer you and remove you and put a puppet named Tabel in your place are not going to be able to do it. I'm going to destroy them before they get a chance to do it. God says, I'm with you.
Trust me. Well, Ahaz of Judah does not trust the Lord. He does not believe in God's word.
He does not rest on God's promise. So Ahaz, in his fear, does a worldly, fleshly, foolish thing as we all do if we function in fear. He looks around and says, what, humanly speaking, might protect me from Pekah of northern kingdom of Israel and from reason, the king of Syria or Aram, sometimes even they call it Damascus, the major city. The way I know king Ahaz is reasoning to keep myself safe is I'll be really smart. I'll discount what God's told me to do and I'll go make an alliance with the mightiest, meanest, most fierce nation on earth, Assyria. And I'll make an alliance with Assyria to protect me from northern Israel and from the Arameans. Well, God saw all of this happening and so God sent the prophet Isaiah to Ahaz, king of Judah, and Isaiah has a sign for king Ahaz, a sign, if you will, to shock him maybe out of his unbelief and his carnal wisdom of trusting in Assyria, a sign to maybe prod Ahaz back to just trusting the Lord's promise, the Lord's word.
And this sign was a baby, a child. A child by the name of shear, Jacob, which in Hebrew means a remnant shall return. Point being, God is not going to allow anyone anywhere at any time to destroy his remnant people of Judah. And you can just see Isaiah running up to king Ahaz and says, hey, king, have you seen my boy? Hey, you don't know what his name is? His name is shear, Jacob, a remnant shall return.
And I can see king Ahaz going, oh, don't tell me that. Don't tell me that. I've got another approach rather than trusting God.
I don't need to hear about it. That's why some of y'all come to church. Don't tell me that, preacher. I done made alliance out there with Assyria and you want me to trust God. So God then tells Ahaz, or rather Isaiah, I should say, to challenge him. He said, okay, you didn't look at shear, Jacob, the sign, my child who was the sign, that a remnant shall return. Don't fear these kings to destroy.
You didn't trust that. So here, here's what God wants you to do, king Ahaz. This is what Isaiah is saying to him, the prophet. You just come up with the sign. You come up with the sign. Anything as high as heaven, low as earth, anything you want, and God will provide you a sign to prove that you can trust him. No, king Ahaz, the phony hypocrite that he is, he puts on an outward camouflage veneer of spirituality and basically says, oh, I wouldn't test God like that.
And he refuses to even ask for a sign. Well, God said, okay then, then I'll give you a sign myself. There's going to be another baby born, and this baby's very name is Emmanuel. God is with us. So now again, Ahaz has to fret and worry that, my goodness, I'm terrified of these kingdoms to the north. I've made an alliance with Assyria to defend me, and now I've offended God too.
And he's with preciousness and patience and goodness pledged to be with us for security and for protection. Well, Ahaz, of course, he made that alliance with the Assyrians to protect him. And Assyria, sure enough, marched in and destroyed the northern kingdom and Aram, which, by the way, was God's plan from the beginning. But then, just as Ahaz and the people of Judah were congratulating themselves on the wisdom of looking to Assyria to protect them, Assyria wasn't just satisfied with conquering Judah's enemies. Assyria turned and marched south and said, now we're going to take Judah also. Isn't it interesting in life that when we trust in something other than the Lord, it ends up turning on us. And the very thing we put our hope in other than God begins to be the entity that devours us.
Ahaz and Judah trusted in the Assyrians, and the Assyrians turned and gobbled them up. You remember that illustration of the little girl that was on a mountain passage, and a harsh cold front was coming in, and she was on her way to her house. And coming around that passage, she looks on the ground, and there's a snake on the ground. And the snake looks up at the little girl, and says, little girl, I'm about to die in this cold. It's coming so quickly. No, I'm warm-blooded.
I can't live in this. Little girl, if you would just put me under your cloak and let me warm up, that's all I want. Then when I get warm, you can put me down, and I can find a place to burrow under the soil, and it'll save my life. And the little girl said, okay, that sounds reasonable. And she picked the snake up, and she put it under her cloak. And about five minutes later, she felt the piercing of those fangs into her side as the poisonous snake had bitten her. And she yanks that snake out and throws it on the ground and said, you promised me you would not harm me if I would just help you.
And the snake looks at the little girl and said, little girl, you knew what I was when you picked me up. Ahaz and Judah knew what Assyria was when they made the alliance to protect them. Roman numeral one, that's just the introduction.
Roman numeral one, notice the terrified king and the terrified people. Look, if you would, at Isaiah chapter seven, verse one. Now it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, and Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel.
Say you're already mixed up. But what he's saying is, here we have Ahaz, king of Judah, Pekah, king of the northern kingdom, and then Rezin, the king of Aram. And here's what's happening. Those two, northern kingdom and Aram, come together, last part of verse one, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but they could not conquer it. So this is the first time they tried to conquer Judah, and it's failed, but they'll certainly try again. And here we have the northern kingdom, Israel, which in our minds should represent the flesh, the compromise, the unbeliever, the apostate. Aram represents just the world.
It's just the devil and the world. Judah represents the elect faithful, who aren't as faithful as they ought to be. Verse two, if you will, when it was reported to the house of David, saying the Arameans have camped in Ephraim, Ephraim is the northern kingdom's major tribe, and when the Arameans camped there, it means they joined with the northern kingdom to come against Ahaz and Judah. Here's Ahaz's heart, middle of verse two, and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake in the wind. So they're scared to death.
They are trembling in fear. That's interesting, the phrase the prophet uses here, he uses, instead of saying Judah, instead of saying King Ahaz's kingdom, he uses the phrase the house of David, because they all knew well the fame of David. David was a mighty and successful and conquering warrior for Israel. In David's day, practically all the other nations were in submission to Israel, and particularly Syria was kept under submission to Israel. So the point is, instead of being like David, even though you're of the lineage of David, you're trembling in your boots at the very ones that David would keep in submission. So here Judah is trembling before a relatively small Syria and the northern kingdom Israel, and they are the lineage of David. My how the house of David is now diminished, my how the mighty have fallen, a terrified king and his people. Romans 2, if you will, God's assurance of protection.
As we said earlier, God sends the sign, sub point one would be A, a child is the sign of God's protection and assurance. Look at there, if you will, in verse three. Then the Lord said to Isaiah, go out now to meet Ahaz, that's King of Judah now, you and your son, don't forget to take your little boy with you. Now you and I would have sent some mighty commander of the military, perhaps, to encourage the king, but not God, not God.
God says, Isaiah, take your little boy, sheer Jeship, at the end of the conduit of the upper field on the highway to the fuller's field. So here what's happening is Ahaz is going out to check on the water conduits. In this day, water was everything in an invasion. You had to cut off the water from the enemy and keep them from coming, cutting off your water supply, because if you cut off the water supply, you could conquer an enemy quickly. That's one of the first things the king did when the enemies were threatening is go out and check the conduits in the water, the aqueducts, et cetera. And God said, Isaiah, I want you to go out there and meet Ahaz, as he's making all of his plans and preparations.
There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. Isaiah walks up to King Ahaz. King Ahaz, have you met my boy?
His name is Shear Jeship. A remnant shall return. Isaiah says, Ahaz, now God is going to protect us. God's going to keep us secure. And he's sending us this little boy, this child, to let us know he's with us. And he will protect us. Now, of course, Ahaz has already been intending to make an alliance with godless Assyria, instead of just trusting the Lord.
So he's in a dilemma. Now, not only is a child the son, but notice, secondly, the prophet points out to him that Ahaz, the enemies that we face, that you face, are mere men. Just mere men. Notice, if you will, look at it in verse 4. He says, and say to him, notice the redundancy here for emphasis, take care and be calm and have no fear and do not be faint-hearted. I didn't look those Hebrew words up, but that's a lot of encouragement.
Let's look at it again. Take care, be calm, have no fear, don't be faint-hearted because of these, here's what he calls those two kings that are coming against Judah, two stubs of smoldering firebrands. That means these two guys who are threatening you, that you and all your people are terrified of, they're nothing but a couple of blackened logs that have been on the fire all night long and all that's left of them is a little gray smoke.
There's no heat or fire left. They're nothing. They are, if you will, mere men. Now, this is the same kind of encouragement God gave Joshua before he went into the Promised Land. Don't fear these people. They're nothing to God.
He can handle them. So we need to remember that man makes our plans for the future. Listen now, secondly, God plans the future.
Now, we've got to make our plans. We need to keep in mind, but God plans the future. And then when God reveals what he's going to do, then you cancel everything you thought you were going to do and you get in line with God.
That's the message here. King Ahaz, you had this idea and that idea. He didn't say it verbally, but you've got your plan about Assyria and alliance with Assyria and these pagan godless Assyrians are going to protect you and it's all going to work. You've got all your plans, but God has the plan. God himself is going to protect us. God himself is with us.
God himself is our security. And he's given us a little child as a sign of that, that God's with us and the rest of these guys are mere men. As a matter of fact, in verse five, he says, because of Aram with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah has planned evil against you. That phrase, the son of Remaliah, actually is used four times in the text. He wants you to know that Pekah, the king of the northern kingdom, is just a son of a wicked, vile man of disrepute named Remaliah. In other words, this guy that you're afraid of is just the descendants of bad blood and he's nothing to us and he's nothing to God.
Mere men. Verses six and seven. Here's what these two kings to the north are saying. Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabel as king in the midst of it. We're not going to go terrorize tiny Judah.
We're going to remove Ahaz as king and we're going to set us up Tabel, a perfect king, in his place. This is a strong declaration God makes in verse seven, if you will. Thus says the Lord God.
Bet I want to stomp my feet and run around and shout right now. It shall not stand. It shall not come to pass. You listen to me, child of God. I don't care what Satan comes against you with.
I don't care in the natural eye and in the natural understanding how clearly it looks like the end is coming. I'm telling you, it will not stand. And it will not come to pass. God will preserve his elect child against all on-comers and all enemies. There's been times in my ministry where I prayed and I believed, God, if these people in opposition to my leadership, if they can take me out, let them take me out.
But if you have established me, they can't do it. And that's basically the message here. Isaiah says to Ahaz, do you understand God's with us?
He sent you a child as the sign of that sheer Jason, for a remnant shall remain or shall return. These men are just mere men that are just burnout nothings before God. What's troubling you today? Why are you so terrified and fearful and frustrated, anxiety-ridden, over a bunch of stubs of burnout wood? Why would I be that way? Well, we're prone that way, aren't we? We're prone that way. You see, that's why the Word of God never gets old.
It's never dated. We face the same type things. So here's a strong declaration. God's wisdom and God's strength has come before you in the sign of a child. He's going to save you. He's going to protect you.
What those enemies are planning will not stand and it will not come to pass. And I'm sure Ahaz is pacing around the aqueduct up there. Here I am. Who knows, tomorrow morning I might be executed and some guy named Thabil be placed as king over Judah, and my place is just a puppet to the Arameans in the northern kingdom. Here I am needing a word from God and God's prophet shows up with a baby.
Doesn't look right, does it? At least give me the captain of the Lord's host like Joshua had. You remember the guy standing before Joshua? Captain of the Lord's host to tell him, we're going to be all right. Not here.
Just a baby. You see, God's wisdom and God's strength is not like our wisdom and our strength. No wonder Isaiah later in his writings said in Isaiah 55, 9, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
You would think to do it this way, God says, no, I'll do it this way. No wonder Paul in light spirit in 1 Corinthians 1 25 wrote, Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Ahaz, you see this weak boy, my boy, sheer Jason? Well, he represents that God in his quote, metaphorically speaking, his weakness is more powerful than all the kings of all the earth of all the times.
Well, thirdly, he says, A child is the sign of our protection and security. The men who are scaring you to death, these two kings of the northern kingdom and of their men, they're just nothing to God, they're mere men. And then thirdly, Isaiah says to King Ahaz, last part of verse 9, Faith is the victory. King Ahaz, faith is the victory.
Look at it there, verse 9, If you will not believe, you surely shall not last or be established. King Ahaz, it's not your creativity, it's not your military savvy, it's not your diplomatic abilities to form some sort of contractual alliance with mighty Assyria, it's your faith in God that matters here. So Ahaz is bumping into prophet Isaiah and the prophet Isaiah I think keeps saying, Hey Ahaz, have you seen my boy, sheer Jason?
A remnant shall return, that's what God sent me to tell you. And so Isaiah is running around the country of his sheer Jason, running into the king, reminding the king to look to God. And so Isaiah is singing the old hymn, Faith is the victory, faith is the victory, all glorious victory that overcomes the northern kingdom and the Arabians. And King Ahaz, when he's not trembling, he sings that old Frank Sinatra Elvis Presley song, I did it my way, yet you're gonna get crushed. It's a great song, it's just full of lies.
It's not true. We don't do it our way, we do it God's way. Roman 3, a compromising and conniving king. Boy, the stripes, the colors of Ahaz really come out in this section. We see this in verses 10 through 12. Here we have King Ahaz pursuing a faithless sinful course, trying to protect his people. And he just compounds his guilt by hiding his carnal faithless course under the veil of spirituality. He's gonna try to paint this like I'm just being godly and pious.
When really he's being sinful and full of unbelief. So we come to verses 10 and 11, then the Lord spoke again to Ahaz saying, and I'm sure that's through the prophet Isaiah, ask a sign for yourself, Ahaz, from the Lord your God, make it as deep as Sheol or as high as the heavens. So here we have Ahaz is being asked by God through the prophet Isaiah to just ask God for a sign.
He's really here with us, he's really gonna protect us. Well, Ahaz being the vintage hypocrite that he is says in verse 12, I will not ask nor will I test the Lord. Don't you know how spiritual I am?
Don't you know how godly I am? I would never try to test the Lord. Well, the Lord just told you to test him. Look, if God tells you to do something, you do it. So he puts on the veneer of trusting God by saying, I'll not ask for a sign because he knows at this point, the only thing a sign can do is expose him. And reveal that he's not looking to God at all anyway. He's already got his plans through the flesh to trust Assyria.
So this is the trust test. God brings the trust test to King Ahaz of Judah. But here's what Ahaz has already done. First Kings 16, seven through nine. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son.
What a blasphemous, wicked thing to say. For the king of godly remnant Judah to look to godless, wicked, pagan Tiglath-Pileser and say, I'm your servant. Son of God, don't run out there to Assyria and bow down and say, I'll serve you.
Don't do it. I'm your servant and your son. Come up and deliver me from the hand of the king of Aram and from the hand of the king of Israel who are rising up against me. Ahaz took the silver and gold found in the house of the Lord.
And by the way, it was a great amount because God insisted on excellence, even if you would in the Old Testament, extravagance in his temple. He took the silver and gold found in the house of the Lord and the treasury to the king's house and sent a present to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria listened to him and the king of Assyria went up against Damascus. That's the Arameans, that's Syria, and captured it and carried the people of it away into exile to Ker and put reason to death.
Looks like he did the right thing at this point. So King Ahaz plays the role of the God-fearer by telling Isaiah, I'll not test the Lord and ask for a sign proving he's going to be with us and protect us when all the while he knows I've already made an alliance with a godless king to protect us. So I don't need God to protect me. You know what old age does? It points out to you with vivid clarity whether you spent your life in wisdom or as a fool. That's what old age does. Because given in time, it's going to be exposed just how foolish Ahaz has been.
Looked great for a while. Remember me telling you over and over again when we talked about apostates and false teachers in the professing church? Because Paul talks about it over and over and over again in 1 Timothy and Titus. And they're hard to discern. You hear these guys on the internet and their podcasts and everything and they sound godly. But how do you know if they're the real deal? I-M-E. At the last, it will be clearly seen.
Well, it hadn't been clearly seen yet, but it's going to be. King Ahaz tries to avoid the dilemma of being exposed by putting on this veneer of spirituality saying, I'll not ask, but hold out this God, makes you think, why would Ahaz reject God? And why would he put his trust in a godless enemy like Assyria? Because Ahaz had long ago abandoned the conviction that God is with me and God is here for my favor and good.
He had abandoned that. And by consequence of that, he's abandoned God's perspective and now he only has a man's perspective. And the human perspective at this point meant an alliance with godless Assyria.
It's the only way to be protected. When a person sinks this low in unbelief, it makes sense to them to trust in Assyria. And now Isaiah, of course, here when he told Ahaz, now test the Lord and see, he's not asking Ahaz to test the Lord in a sinful way. He's showing Ahaz, if you'll take the smallest step of faith, then God will give you support. He'll give you a sign to encourage that faith. By the way, as a side note, signs and wonders never establish faith.
They might encourage it, but they never establish it. These people who have ministries that have more to do with signs and wonders and miracles than preaching the gospel are upside down. Verse 13, we have a stern rebuke after Ahaz says, I'll not test the Lord, acting spiritual. Then he said, well, listen now, O house of David. That phrase again, O house of David. In other words, well, you don't look like the house of David. You don't sound like the house of David. You don't have the faith and the strength of the house of David.
Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men that you'll try the patience of God as well? So here we have this stern rebuke of the faithless, conniving, compromising King Ahaz. Roman numeral four, the Immanuel child. Let's say this before I go any further.
Scholars are all over the place at this point. You have one child already presented, shear Jacob. Some will say kind of that points to the Immanuel child. We have a future child. Remember him?
May her shout out, hash pass, which means swift to the plunder, speedy to the spoil. We'll talk about him next time, Lord willing. They'll say, well, that's the Immanuel child. We have other scholars that just wax eloquent and say it's just this statement of a child that would have made no sense to the people of this era.
Let me tell you something. When you have a Christological type, when you have someone in the Old Testament that's a type of Christ that points to Christ, it must have made some sense to the people of that day, even though the ultimate fulfillment is in Christ and in the New Testament era. Are you hearing me? Had to have made sense to both, and I'm convinced that's what happens here. So both of Isaiah's children, we're going to learn about in this section, were in one sense Immanuels in that they were the sign that God was with them. But then right in the middle of those two boys, we have this mention of a child that is the Immanuel child. So I think the two boys of Isaiah are Immanuel signs, but then there is the Immanuel child that can only point to Jesus Christ.
Well, let's talk about this for a moment. So God says, okay, if you're not going to ask for a sign, verse 14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bare a son, and she will call his name Immanuel. The word virgin here literally could be translated young maiden. It has the idea of a woman of maturity, but likely yet still unmarried. It's used in various ways in the Old Testament.
That's probably the prominent picture. It's the Hebrew word Alma that's translated virgin here. But strictly speaking, it's just honest scholarship. It does not absolutely mean a virgin. That would be the Hebrew word Betulah. Betulah meant a small girl still under the protection of her father and kept a virgin. That's not Betulah, that's the Hebrew word here, it's Alma.
So here we have Alma, which means a young woman of mature age, probably waiting for marriage, but it can be and sometimes is used of a literal virgin, but not every single time. Which leads me to how this expresses the wisdom and perfections of God's word. Because Betulah could not be true for this day, even though it could point to Jesus, but Alma could be pure and true for this day, a literal child being born, of a natural, typical mom and dad, but also have the ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
I just think that's a beautiful thing that God does. So Alma can refer to Isaiah's young wife who will bear a child signifying that God is with them. And it can, and as it actually does, point to not an Immanuel child, but the Immanuel child, the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ himself. And the New Testament bears this out clearly. Matthew chapter 1, verses 22 and 23. Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Verse 23, behold the virgin.
Now that means actual, literal, no question about it, virgin. Shall be with child and shall bear son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. So here in the wisdom and perfections of God's word, we have a clear message for King Ahaz and Judah of this day with this Immanuel child as the promise God's with us, but also the prophetic type of Christ that can only be fulfilled in the coming of the perfect God-man, Jesus Christ.
So, verses 15 and 16. He will eat curds and honey. Now they knew what that meant, butter and honey.
Can I be light for a moment? You throw a hot biscuit in there and I'm in. Butter, honey, and a hot biscuit, that's good stuff, but this wasn't good stuff for them. Curds and honey meant this highly structured agricultural people is going to see their land destroyed. And in the place of these organized successful farms will be briars and vines and bramble. The only thing it'll be good for is livestock. Bees will swarm around all of it. So in the devastation, they've got plenty of milk and butter because all they can raise now is livestock. Their land's been too devastated to grow crops. And the bee population's gone crazy because of the wild vines and flowers and bramble, so the bees are in abundance.
So they have a lot of honey, a lot of butter, and a lot of milk. But for them, that was a message of desolation and want and destruction. Now, if you will, go to Roman 5 and we're done. The divine discipline for God's elect remnant. God's going to discipline. And really, when you come down to Judah, you've got the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom is the apostate group. The southern kingdom, Judah, is supposed to be the godly remnant, but they're not acting very godly. Sometimes a true child of God can get in the flesh, amen? And so what you have is elect Israel, Judah the elect out of the elect. The remaining remnant within Judah is the elect out of the elect out of the elect. Not even all that claim to be Judah is Judah.
What a parallel. What a truth this is for the professing church today. Not all who claim to be of Christ who belong to a Baptist church are of Christ.
There's an elect among the so-called elect, a true elect, if you will. So God's going to purge and discipline this group. Look at verse 17. He talks about how severe this purge is going to be on Judah for not trusting the Lord, not believing his word, not trusting in the little child. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your father's house such days as have never come since that day that Ephraim separated from Judah. Now that isn't how painful that was when Ephraim and the other nine tribes separated off in apostasy. How terrible and difficult that was. Well, what can be worse than that day when Ephraim and the other nine tribes separated from Judah and Benjamin and left them destitute and tiny as the remnant of God called the kingdom of Judah.
What could be worse than that? Last phrase, verse 17. The king of Assyria. He's going to be the agent that God uses to bring discipline on his elect remnant. Verse 18.
I love the imagery here. And that day the Lord will whistle. You ever whistled for a dog? That's what this is talking about.
Hey. So God will have to say, hey, when God whistles, the one he's whistling to looks straight in his eyes. Oh, who's he whistling to? That day the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt. And the Nile River flows through Egypt, and the Nile River is hundreds of miles of low, swampy, foul waters.
And it is full of unbelievable numbers of swarms, of slimy, swarming insects. So God uses that, the prophet uses that figure of speech. God's going to whistle for the fly in Egypt.
Not just the fly, but untold trillions of them. Going on in verse 18. And for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. Assyria was a more hilly, rugged country. Wild bees populated it greatly, and they could come in swarms, and they got on you in a swarm, they could cause a lot of pain.
Egypt, Assyria. I need my flies, need my insects, need my bees. Kind of like Donald Trump, God can use a crooked instrument.
God can use an ungodly instrument, if he chooses to. They will come and settle on the steep ravines, on the ledges of the cliffs, and on all the thorn bushes, and all the watering places. In other words, they're going to come in on you, Judah.
It didn't have to be this way, you could have believed me. You like Assyria? Well, I'm going to give you a full dose of Assyria. You want to look to Assyria? You want to alliance with Assyria instead of me? Well, I'm going to give you a full dose of it.
They're going to come in and conquer every area. Verse 20, in that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired from the regions beyond the Euphrates, that is, the king of Assyria. The head and the hair of the legs, and also remove the beard.
That was a shame and a deep humiliation for the men to be made effeminate by the removal and shaving of their hair. Verse 21, down that day a man may keep alive a heifer or a pair of sheep. Some livestock will do okay in this devastated land, but not much more. Where I deer hunt most of the land up in that area, they might put some goats on it or some cattle on it, but you can't grow any agricultural products on it. It's just too rough.
It's too rocky. Verse 22, because of the abundance of the milk produced, he will eat curds or butter. Everyone that is left within the land will eat curds and honey. So they're kind of a desolated, nomadic kind of people just living in the rugged, grown-up bushlands at this point. Verse 23, it will come about in that day that every place where there used to be a thousand vines valued at a thousand shekels of silver will become briars and thorns. People will come there with their bows and arrows because all the land will be briars and thorns. And as for all the hills which used to be cultivated with the hoe, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns. It's just too overgrown and too abandoned and too desolate now. They will become rather a place for pastoring options and for sheep to trample.
Utter devastation, purging and disciplining of God on the elect remnant of God for not trusting God. That's the Christmas story. I'm God. You're my chosen elect people. I've come to be with you. And I come as a child. Trust me for your crisis.
Seven quick statements and we're done. We trust the Lord in our crisis because God's way always works regardless of the circumstances. Well, I can't submit to my parents, pastor. I can't honor the Lord's word there because...
I can't work for my employer like working under the Lord, like the word of God should be. And on and on we could go. We're always doing that kind of stuff. God's way works regardless of the circumstances. Number two, God loves us. He's with us and is intimately involved in our daily lives. He said, by the way, every hair of your head is numbered.
That's how much I'm into you. Number three, trust him in the crisis because if you do not trust him, that's idolatry. You made an idol out of your Assyria. Whatever it is you're looking to instead of God in your crisis is your Assyria. Now listen to me.
It will work for a season. Then it will devour you. And God will send Egypt to join them.
Number four, because fear does not function on fact. I mean, King Ahaz said, well, it's a fact. The Northern Kingdom and the Arameans are coming to destroy me. And it's a fact. Nobody can stand against the Assyrians. So if I get the Assyrians to make an alliance with me, it's a fact.
I can be protected. But see, that's not the real facts. The facts is, in Becket of all is an almighty, all wise, sovereign God.
He could move the king's hearts like rivers of water. The real fact is, no matter what you see are not the facts, what you believe by faith in God's revealed word is the facts. That's the true facts. So if you're going on human facts instead of the word of God, you're not on the facts. And when you get into fear, what you do is you abandon God and you go with what you think are the facts and they're not the facts. Number five, trust God in the crisis because every way except God's way will be utterly and completely destroyed. And even when he comes into our lives with Assyria and Egypt and disciplines us and purges us, he does it out of love for us.
He removes from us that which is hurting us because we're too foolish and too weak to do it ourselves. Number six, because when you are saved, you are programmed to prosper by following the principles of God's word. I said seven, didn't I? And I only have six.
So you're only getting six. And all this is true because we are God's elect remnant. We are God's true church. And he is our Emmanuel. He is with us. And he's with you. Trust him in your Christness.
Now for some of you this morning, your crisis is this. You've never started to trust him. You've walked down a church aisle somewhere, you raised a hand in Vacation Bible School somewhere, you've gone through the motions somewhere, but you haven't from your heart put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And you look around and say, I think I've got it figured out. No, you think those are not the facts.
The fact is you're a sinner and God says, and love I've come to you and I can forgive your sin and remove the breach between you and God and you'll know cleansing and forgiveness and be born again. He's here. He's with us. Would you trust him?
