Miracles, they don't need us to push them up hills. When the Bible says Jesus walked on water, you don't have to try to make that, you know, insist that we accept it, we understand it, we have no problem with it. When someone were to say to you, what's the first miracle of the Bible? In the beginning, God. That's first contact with humanity. And even before humans were, but that's where He takes us.
He gives us the origins of our beginnings. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his message called, A Determined Unbeliever, in Isaiah chapter 7. Verse 10, Moreover, Yahweh spoke again to Ahaz, saying, verse 11 now, ask a sign for yourself from Yahweh your God, ask it, either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, nor will I test Yahweh.
Ah, liar. Well, let's kind of open this up a little bit. Isaiah is saying, there is no other God. Whether you receive Yahweh as your God or not, He's your God. He ain't your father, but He's your God.
No other creator. And so he gets that little one in, and he says, well, just ask. God is reaching out to you. He's going to work with your doubts. He's giving you another chance. Now, of course, God knew Ahaz was going to say no, but God also wanted it on record.
Again, for other generations, for other people. You can't blame God. The people in hell will never have, God did this to me.
Well, it was your fault. Well, verse 12, Ahaz said, I will not seek, nor will I test Yahweh. This is mock modesty. Oh, I'm not going to tempt the Lord thy God.
Give me a bit of a fake-o. He wasn't asked to test God. God is telling him right out, ask for a sign. Hezekiah will ask for a sign, and God will give it to him. And here his father, Ahaz, he refuses to permit God a chance because he doesn't want God to be real.
I've met people like this. You say to them, look, just, you know, go to the Bible, read it, and we'll talk. I don't want to read it. I don't want to hear about it. What about prophecy? I don't want to hear about your prophecies.
You know, they just shut down. They're determined because they prefer their life without God, without the God of the Bible. Because again, Ahaz has gods, but they're fake gods. Faith played no part in his religion and his cruel life or his politics. And anyway, he doesn't mean this, I will not test the Lord. He's just trying to act like he's a religious Jewish person, and he is not. You come across Christians like that, do you not?
They act like, you know, they're Christians and really nothing Christ-like about them. Verse 13, then he said, here now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? So Isaiah, Isaiah's enjoying this. He said, I don't like this guy anyway. So he's saying, you know what, it's bad enough you trouble people, but now you want to mess with God.
Here he is giving you an opportunity, you're playing these little games with him, and you're just being a rebel. I'm going to give you a sign anyway, God speaking through the prophet. You're going to get the sign of the virgin birth, because it's not all about you, Ahaz.
As much of a troublesome person as you are, it's not all about you. You are being protected because of the Davidic line, not because there's something special about you. And it is good for us to remember when God uses us, it is because of God's great mercy. Take mercy away from the character of God, and you're left with God, but no people, because who can survive?
In other words, mercy is one of the greatest attributes of God. Verse 14, therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Well, we have Matthew 23. Matthew has already given commentary on it. Matthew said, well, this is what this means. But that's not the whole story, and Matthew's not trying to say this is the whole story. He's properly applying it to the birth of Jesus Christ. But what about Isaiah? For this sign to work, there had to have been a fulfillment in the days of Ahaz.
There had to be, and I'll get to why in a moment. Again, the New Testament remains clear that there is a latter fulfillment, but that there is also an earlier fulfillment. There's two parts to this unusual sign.
It has to be unusual. One to those in Isaiah's day, and one to those in the day of Mary and Joseph, the virgin birth as we know it. The Hebrew word here for virgin has a broad meaning. It means any young woman who is marriageable. She's of age. She can marry. That's what the word virgin means there, as it's used as maiden.
Some of the translators will choose, no problem with that. It just doesn't, allows us to understand, okay, this is a little bit broader meaning. But when you get to the New Testament, the Greek locks it in.
It's a virgin. And that is the Holy Spirit teaching us from the Old Testament into the New. Well, here's part one.
I said there's two parts. This sign had an immediate significance to Ahaz and the people around, or else why even give it? I mean, we're 700 years from the virgin birth. Some virgin, some definite known virgin to Isaiah and Ahaz and some of the hearers lived there, perhaps in the palace. She was of age to marry. She is not expected to marry. She conceives. She marries, conceives, and bears a son whose name would be Immanuel, just as the prophet says it would be.
And when this happens, again, it's out of the ordinary. People are going to say the prophet called this. Now her birth is not the virgin birth.
She was a virgin entering into conception through natural intercourse. The son, his name, God with us, would be a reminder that God was still with his people. Even though the Assyrians and all this stuff was happening, God is preaching to the nation, I am still with my people in spite of the Assyrian threat, in spite of the Assyrian and Northern Kingdom threat. Had this only to do with the virgin birth, then Ahaz would have missed the point. And not only that, because he died 700 years before Mary, virgin birth, so he would have said like, well, what are you talking about? But the greater part, had there not been some realization at this time, what would they have said about Isaiah? You're a false prophet.
You're coming here talking about this maiden having a child naming him Immanuel. We don't see anything like that. But they did see something like that.
And the idea behind the whole thing is to say, a virgin is going to marry, have a child, name the child Immanuel, by the time that child is weaned from nursing, the threat will be gone. And that will validate the prophet's prophecy. And that's why he stuck around to give us more prophecies.
But had it failed, they would have been quick to stone Isaiah for being a false prophet. So that's the first part of this. And this is not uncommon in scripture.
I'll give you another one in a minute. The second part is the full realization that a virgin would give birth. A woman who had not been with a man would conceive, and that is the virgin birth. And of course, Jesus existed before his mother. He's eternal, self-existent.
He's always been having no birthday, as we understand, coming into existence. Anyway, having no human father is a big part of the virgin birth doctrine. He came down from heaven as the Son of God, God the Son with us. We understand that, but it's the easiest part about chapter 7, is connecting it to Matthew chapter 1. It says here, and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Well, another symbolic name, but this time it's not one of the prophet's children. It's someone else that Isaiah didn't feel he had the name because his audience knew it, and it was probably because the Holy Spirit is saying, yeah, well, I'm going to make the center of attention from this verse, my son, and edit it out.
We didn't have to have any distractions attached to it. Anyway, the symbolic name. God is in touch with people, and therefore people can be in touch with God. That's what it comes down to mean, and these people are sinners, and that's why it's such a big deal.
When we come to the New Testament, we read about Immanuel. God is with us. Why? Why would he be with us? We can't even stand with being with us. After a while, I need a break, and so I mean, there are various levels of that.
I like a break until we get to heaven, from some people, and others, you know, you just have a short break. But anyhow, a little levity there. Chuckle, chuckle. Back to this.
I have to insert the chuckles because you guys just aren't helping out anyway. So the prophetic name fulfilled, literally fulfilled, centuries later by Jesus Messiah. Part one, just to review, part one, the people in Isaiah's day are assured that God will continue being with them, and he will give a sign through this child. Part two, the people in Jesus' day are informed that the virgin-born child is divine and Messiah. Now this is critical because when the ultimate fulfillment of this sign in the days of Mary and Joseph, pointing to God's relationship with sinners by this miraculous birth of God in human form, we pick it up Matthew chapter 1, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
God is with us, in touch with us, and we can have contact with God. When the time came for Messiah to enter the human race, those familiar with this scripture verse, in a flash they got it. They made the connection.
It was right there in front of them, and they took hold of it. Joseph was the first. Joseph's response was one of implicit faith and obedience. He didn't ask for confirmation, even though he got two dreams.
He didn't ask for an explanation. He accepted Isaiah's prophecy, which the angel recited to him. He accepted that this is the fulfillment, the fullest application of the prophecy of Isaiah.
Yeah, it had its fulfillment, in Ahaziah's that was a lesser fulfillment, or the near fulfillment, a near prophecy. This is the far and the full fulfillment of explaining Mary's pregnancy and the virgin birth. And so we pick it up again in Matthew to see Joseph, what he does. After the angel says, she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins, verse 24 now. Then Joseph being aroused from his sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took to him his wife. He acts instantly. He breaks up. He says, this is the Lord.
In a flash, he got it. So God loses nothing in this, nor does his prophet Isaiah, nor do his people, and nor do we, because we have to have an objective approach to scripture and not some superstitious, you know, we don't need to do that. Miracles, they don't need us to push them up hills. When the Bible says Jesus walked on water, you don't have to try to make that, you know, insist that we accept it, we understand it, we have no problem with it. Well, when someone were to say to you, what's the first miracle of the Bible? In the beginning, God. That's first contact with humanity. And even before humans were, but that's where he takes us. He gives us the origins of our beginnings. So many prophetic verses in scripture have these multiple fulfillments, not just this one.
There are quite a few. Daniel's prophecy regarding Antiochus Epiphanes is an example, Daniel 8 and Daniel 11. That devil, one of the greatest human devils in scripture, that Syrian king's evil and his savagery against the Jews was a near fulfillment of Daniel 8 and Daniel 11. But there was one coming who he was only a type of that would exceed his evil and we know him as the Antichrist. And so when you read Daniel 8 and 11, you said, boy, these things are historically fulfilled in Antiochus.
But then it goes off the chart. There are other things about this king that is satisfied and from other prophecies in the Antichrist. So you have a near fulfillment in Antiochus or Antiochus. And then you have the far fulfillment of Antichrist. So it's not like, oh, this is the one exception. Pastor, you're taking some liberties here.
No, I'm not. It's consistent. Other places Elijah, the type of John the Baptist, a near and a far. So this is a great part of Bible prophecy. It involves weaving in and out of the immediate and the ultimate.
And when you become knowledgeable of scripture, you see it. So this fits perfectly. So anyway, I hope that does not confuse you. I hope that you're not. No, it's just a virgin birth. That's it. If you are, that's OK.
I'm not going to argue it. But you just you then leave Isaiah unguarded in his day because, you know, someone's going to say, well, where's this prophecy prophet? Anyway, verse 15, courage and honey. So he's continuing the prophecy.
He's not finished. He says, you know, this maiden is going to have a child and you're going to name him Emmanuel. And he, courage and honey, verse 15, he shall eat that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.
So in other words, before God gets rid of the Assyrian threat, this child will be able to understand. And I don't like that. And I do like this. He likes honey. And let's go hot on the butter or the cottage cheese or whatever, whatever the courage. It's some dairy concoction that he will not be fond of. It looks like verse 16 for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Now, let me ask you. Which would you choose, courage or honey?
It would be no brainer for me. I'll take the honey. Anyway, before verse 16, 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. Well, that's the northern kingdom and that's Syria.
There won't be a problem to you. So the prophet is trying to tell Ahaz, God has got this in about two, three years. Well, more like three years. And that's exactly, precisely how it unfolded. Syria went right to work on Damascus and got rid of them in two years, then went right to work on the northern kingdom.
And the threat was gone. So just to review it, marriageable maiden, her conception once married, her term of pregnancy, her delivery, the weaning of the child, the Syria-Israel alliance against Judah, past. Ultimately, this prophecy is the virgin birth because the Bible tells us. If we didn't have Matthew come along and say this is what Isaiah was really talking about, then we couldn't connect that. But we do have it. And that's why we love our scripture so much. As Peter said, we have the more sure word of prophecy. You don't believe our logic. You don't believe our morals. How about our prophecies? What are you going to do with them?
Because nobody's got them. One of the greatest time or one of the greatest proofs of Bible prophecy is we have it on a map to scale Israel. I hear a comedian once say, I have a map of the United States to scale.
One mile equals one mile. I thought it was hysterical. You should too. But I can understand.
It's not my joke, so you're not going to laugh. Anyway, verse 17. So we've pretty much got through the heavy stuff.
This is now going to should be a breeze for us. And I don't think I've explained it so well. You shouldn't have any questions. Look, it takes a lot of study. It takes this one thing to read someone saying these things. It's another thing to go back and find it and validate it.
So it does take a lot of work. And that's why we give you scripture verses across references to say, well, this is how we arrived at these conclusions. Anyway, verse 17. Yahweh will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. So the Assyrians are going to stab him in the back. It's going to backfire his plan to trust the Assyrians. Isaiah is telling him right out and giving him again the chance to believe. But he's determined to be an unbeliever.
He's determined to make his own gods and not submit to the true God. In chapter 10, Isaiah will lay out what's going to happen to the Assyrians for us prophetically, and then that will happen. And if it didn't happen, they would have killed us.
He would have lost his credibility. Anyway, before Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the single most tragic thing for the Jewish people was the split of the nation. That was just such a heavy blow. And that's why he says here in verse 17, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. So he's saying trouble is coming, and it's going to be on the same scale as when the nation was split.
It's going to be that heart-wrenching. But once Nebuchadnezzar wiped out Jerusalem, that then became the next benchmark for catastrophe. Verse 18, and it shall come to pass in that day that Yahweh will whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
Verse 19, they will come and all of them will rest in the desolate valleys and in the clefts of the rocks and on the thorns and in all the pastures. And so the Egyptians are the fly, and Egypt known for her flies in those days. Ethiopia, the land of buzzing wings. The Assyrians is the bee, but they were known as beekeepers, the people of Assyria in those days. Anyway, these two nations are going to devastate Judah. The land is going to be crawling with them as they just take whatever they can take because Judah became that bone of contention. They both, Egypt and Assyria, wanted to take that. It's a bridge. It's actually a land bridge.
Israel is between the east and the west. Anyway, verse 20, in the same day the Lord will shave with a hired razor with those from beyond the river with the king of Assyria and the head and the hair of the legs and will also remove the beard. So he's giving them word pictures. He's saying you guys, you're going to be humiliated, shamed and looted.
You will be left with nothing. Verse 21, and it shall be in that day, and these things happened incidentally, it shall be in that day that a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep. Now he's giving us detail that's far from us but was near to the people who went through this.
When they experienced these things, they can say the prophet called it and the righteous would have been that remnant of faithful believers. Verse 22, so it shall be from the abundance of milk they gave that he will eat curds. For curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land. Well, it's the land of milk and honey. I mean, it's a side note to that, but the life has changed for these folks.
Their diet has changed because the resources have been just stripped from them and the workers. Anyway, verse 23, it shall happen in that day that wherever there could be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver, it will be for briars and thorns. What a heartbreaking, like man, you know, I worked in a part of Brooklyn where they had these nice Victorian houses that were just shooting galleries for heroin addicts. They just would strip out the wood. I mean, they're just some of the wood was woodwork was left. He said, well, where do you find carpenters that could do that anymore?
I'm sure they must be out there, just not as many. And it was just heartbreaking, like, man, I would like that house just not in this neighborhood. So anyway, that's going to be one of those, well, man, what a shame. Verse 24, with arrows and bows, men will come there because all the land will become briars and thorns. And to, verse 25 now, and to any hill which could be dug with a hoe, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns, but it will become a range for oxen and a place for sheep to roam.
So the foreign invasion would cause a change in the land from an agricultural base economy to a pastoral one, where they're not growing, you know, wheat and barley and things like that, but they've got cattle and the milk from the livestock. Anyway, the lack of men to care for the land. Thank you, Ahaz, and a cast of multitude of dark-minded governors and advocates of evil. Thank you for this history of failure.
And it's the same throughout. I mean, thank you, Joseph Stalin, for what you did to your own people. Paul Pott, you know, just on the list goes, and you say, where did these people come from? Well, Satan, they come out of hell. The God haters brought darkness, and the lovers of God are to bring light. Let's pray.
That wasn't so bad, right? Oh, Father, Lord, thank you. Your words, so thorough. Sometimes it becomes a little difficult for us, even boring, but as we begin to peel back the layers, we find that there's a lot of spiritual detail here, real people and real events and a real God sovereign over it all. We thank you for this. May we be encouraged to understand that you are indeed in control. You love us and we love you. And may you get us all home safely. We ask you in Jesus' name.
Amen. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.
