Main Street Church Sermon (17.48 - )

Well, we started out last week on their own picture at the beginning. This is another old picture. I just received this week. It actually has a connection to what we're going to talk about, really. Uh This is me, this is me doing youth group over 25 years ago.

And that's me on the bottom right. Oh, I knew that. And but the other ones you may not recognize, except for the one who's held high up in the air, that's Bob and Karen's son, Joel.

So when he was in my youth group in 1997, Mm. Yeah. And And this guy on the bottom left here, he's the one that just sent this picture. I haven't seen this picture myself for 25 years. It's kind of funny.

But during youth group, you know, you do things that are fun to kind of highlight what scriptures are all about.

So I wanted to tell you what I did years ago, in that year actually in 1997, to introduce the whole topic of Christmas at Youth Group. And so, so, you know, we talked about, you know, everyone knows this scene. You got this scene, you know, with the shepherds and Joseph and Mary and all that kind of stuff. I mean, everyone knows the story really well.

So, what do you have to introduce about it?

So, what I told the youth group is I said, well, you know, we have four gospels, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so, what we're going to do is a little independent kind of contrast about this story.

So, I'm going to split the youth group up tonight in the youth room into four groups and push you into different corners of this. And so, here's the youth group room, theoretically speaking. And what I'm going to do is take this quarter of you. I want you to take Matthew, go into that corner of the room, and read the story about Christmas. And we were going to compare notes.

We're going to come back in the center and compare notes because I said the Gospels all have these wonderfully complementary views about what the Christmas stories are about.

So, you guys, you go in that corner, and then I told another group, the Mark folks, you go in that corner, and then the Luke folks, you go down in that corner, and then finally, the John folks, you go down there, and you, and And you just silently work together for a while, and then we're going to bring together, and we're going to make the entire Christmas story by what you bring from the different viewpoints of the Gospels.

So the Gospels don't conflict on the Christmas story, but they do provide different viewpoints and more details.

So we did that for a while. They split up, they went in their corners, I'm watching them. And then suddenly the Mark people start to get this kind of funny thing, and the John people get this funny thing, and they're scratching their heads and they're looking really apologetic, and they're looking really confused, really confused.

So almost simultaneously, they send an emissary to the center of the room where I was. And they said, I know the Christmas story is probably in the beginning of the Gospel. But we can't find it. I said, you can't find the gris. It's in the beginning of the Gospels.

Yeah, but you know, we're looking really hard. We've gone from the front and we just can't find him. And I said, okay, time out, everybody. This is kind of a little trick. There is no gospel story in Mark and John.

Oh, really? Yeah. The entire gospel story comes from two gospels, the Christmas stories, from Matthew and from Luke. And so they go. Oh, so we actually have two perspectives on it.

That was just one way of letting you know. But they asked and they said, well, if the beginning of the story of Jesus is not in those two Gospels, what is the beginning of the story of Jesus in those two Gospels? That was the question I was hoping they'd ask. And I'd say, right, we don't start with the manger scene in Mark and John. We start somewhere else.

So let's go look and see where John starts, the gospel message. And they said, well, if you don't start in the manger, I don't understand where you'd start. And I said, how about in the beginning of the creation of the universe? What? And that got us going that night.

So this is the first Sunday of Advent. We are going to look at Advent, but we're going to look at some untraveled paths when we talk about Christmas, because like with youth group, we know the story really well. And so we can investigate that every year. And there's a great wonder in the story. I'm not saying you don't want to reread it.

But there's some places that most of us have never gone before. In the Advent story, Advent means coming up to Christmas, not the actual Christmas day, but coming up to it.

So today is the first Sunday in Advent, and we're going to look at something that we always hear, a passage we always hear, and just never connect where it came from.

So let me, what we'll do is we're going to take a look at Matthew today. And when you look at Matthew, Matthew 1-1 starts out like this: the book of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And then it goes on and actually talks about that genealogy. And he says, well, you know, Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac was the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah was the father of Perez and Zara and Tamar, and Perez the father, and it goes on and on. Actually, it's a very useful genealogy, so I'm not putting it down.

But this is where Matthew starts. He doesn't start with the Christmas story in the manger. He starts with the genealogy all the way back to Abraham and the son of David.

Son of David, everyone knew that the Messiah had to come from David's line, so that's what son of David is. You know, he's qualified, bloodline-wise, to be the Messiah. And the son of Abraham, so we're going all the way back to the beginning of the entire nation.

So that's where he starts. He does the genealogy. And then, after you get through that, and again, I commend it to your study. It's a fascinating genealogy for a lot of reasons. Just look who's in it.

Then, I'm going to jump down to verse 18. And here's Matthew's take on the Christmas story.

Okay, finally, we're at the manger.

Now, the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, that is kind of engaged, but More than engaged. It was actually considered a legal semi-marriage at that point, a legal commitment that needed divorce.

So it would be in our age if someone got engaged. And they had second thoughts and said, well, no, we're not going to go through with the whole wedding and stuff like that. You would have to get a divorce during Jesus' time to stop the engagement. To stop the engagement.

So that's where they were. They were betrothed. And uh and before they came together You know what I mean, intimacy. Before they came together, she was found to be with a child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

So see, he needed to divorce her if she was shamefully pregnant with some other guy. And so Joseph, being a nice guy, decides we need to do this quietly. We don't know exactly what the quietly was. Maybe you know, ship her off to another village for a while until the baby's born or something. We just don't know.

But he was a nice guy. and understanding and decided, well, you know, we just gotta get divorced 'cause, you know, we haven't been intimate so. It's it's your problem. We'll we'll just kind of get divorced. That was his intention, and to do it as kindly as he knew how to do that.

Then Matthew goes on, verse 20: But as he considered these things, as he's thinking through this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, And by the way, track Joseph's communications with God throughout the entire birth of Jesus story, and you'll find out. that Joseph always got his his orders through dreams. Three dreams. Mary got her marching orders with stellar Gabriel visits and stuff. Angels, woo-hoo, big time stuff.

But Joseph, no, he had to have a dream. And I always thought it was because Kind of emotionally, the guy's in trauma and turmoil when he finds out that this woman that he loves has been sleeping with some other guy. And so he can't even think straight.

So his head's just swirling during the daytime, wondering what I'm gonna do with my future and how do I lovingly divorce her, all this kind of stuff. And it's not until he finally goes, and puts his head on his pillow. and he calms down. And in a way, God says, Okay, finally. He can hear me.

So, I'm going to speak to him in dreams.

So, Joseph is always directed through dreams.

So, here's one of those dreams saying, Joseph, son of David, don't 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. Jesus, Yeshua, means God saves. Which, by the way, was a semi-common name at the time.

It's actually the first-century equivalent of Joshua, Yeshua. God saves.

So this is his marching orders. And in all those discussions about how he's going to kindly and gently divorce her, he changes gears right here. And all this took place, as Matthew summarizes, to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. And this next thing he's going to quote as the fulfillment of this thing is what we're going to look at today that we get so easily on Christmas and don't think about too much. It was to fulfill this.

Old Testament, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. And thank you, Matthew, which means God with us.

So he translates that for us if we don't know Hebrew, because that's literally a transliterated Hebrew word, Emmanuel. In fact, the word im, im, means with. In Hebrew, em, and you use it in different inflections. Em, and el means God.

So with God. God is with us is what it means. Emmanuel.

So God with us.

Well, okay.

So when Joseph woke from the sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife. but knew her not they weren't intimate until she had given birth to a son and he called his name yeshua jesus And there you go. End of story. Wasn't that fun?

Let's go home. No, let's go back to this. Because this is the curious thing. We see this phrase all the time. It's in Handel's Messiah.

It's part and parcel of the entire Christmas story. But almost nobody knows where this prophecy came from and what its context and its background is. And that's one of the greatest curiosities of the entire Christmas story.

So we're going to look into that a little bit today, because it's. It's odd. And it has been a talking point in the Jewish community. since Isaiah wrote it down. Where does it come from?

It comes from Isaiah. And Isaiah, he was active in his ministry for God around 740 to 701 BC. He was in Jerusalem. He was in the southern kingdom. And remember, after David's king and his son Solomon is king, and then there's a dispute about who should be king after Solomon.

The dispute turns into a civil war in Israel, a civil war. And the southern half and the northern half is how we refer to them after that point, because you sort of draw a line between Judah and the south. And the tribes of the north. And so there was this, it was a civil war. It was a bad deal.

So they separated. The guys in the north said, Well, you know, we're Jews and we're supposed to worship at the temple, but the temple's down there in the bad guys' Judah area, so we're not going down there, so we have to come up with some replacement ways to do sacrifices.

So they sacrificed in the north in ways that God said you shouldn't do.

So they drifted away from God once this separation happened.

So now we're a couple hundred years, almost two centuries after that, and we're in Israel when this thing comes out in Isaiah.

Now, Isaiah, he's a guy that God has placed deliberately in the southern kingdom. to advise from God's perspective what God wanted for the southern kingdom.

So he's in the south. The northern guys have actually turned into sworn enemies in some places against the southern. I mean, the north and the south hate each other. They just hate each other. It's almost as though here in the United States, if we had the civil war back in the 1860s and it never got resolved and we turned into two nations, we split in half at that time rather than resolve it through a civil war, if you want to call that resolution.

But instead of that, we just kind of drew a line across the middle of the country and you'd have the southern people and you'd have the northern people. And from that point on, the separation, even ideologically, between the north and the south would gain and gain and gain until the people in the south felt like they were a completely different country from the people in the north. And then that persists for 200 years, which is kind of where we're at right now. It would be like that for us at this point right here.

So Isaiah is trying to advise the king of the south. How to walk in a godly kind of way, even though the people in the north have really faded from God tremendously bad. I mean, they're just really off the deep end.

So that's Isaiah's role. That's his role, is to advise the South.

So there's a rest of the story to this whole thing, so that's what we're going to do. The rest of the story.

Okay, so here we go. I need to give you some context so you see where this prophecy came out of. We're going back to the time when Ahaz is king of the southern kingdom. Ahaz. Not Ahab like Moby Dick, but Ahaz.

He's the king of the south at this particular time. He's really only famous in the annals of the Old Testament because his son was a great king, and his son was Hezekiah. Hezekiah did some just awesome things.

So when they talk about Ahaz, people go, eh, go ahead. But he's the father of Hezekiah. There you go. But Ahaz not walked with the Lord great. But Ahaz is the king of the southern kingdom.

And he is currently in the storyline in the book of Isaiah. He's experiencing two local threats. Two local threats. That is, not within his kingdom, but outside. And the threats are coming from: number one, the northern kingdom.

They hate his guts. They want to invade the south. They want to take it over. They realize that they don't quite have the oomph to do that. By the way, a nickname for the northern kingdom is Ephraim, because that was the dominantly large tribe of the ten.

Tribes that were in the north.

So sometimes when you read the Old Testament, it'll refer to the northern separated kingdom as Ephraim. Because that's just the dominant tribe. In the same way, the southern kingdom was dominated by the tribe of. Judah, so you'd call it Judah.

So many times the two nations were called Judah and Ephraim, sometimes Judah and Manasseh, also very large, or the southern and northern kingdoms. That's how you do it.

Well, not only is the northern kingdom a threat, they want to come in and just wipe out the southern kingdom, but Syria wants to come and ally with the northern folks and come in and just take over the south. It would be like in our civil war. if the Canadians allied with the Northern people. Which is kind of crazy. It's a completely different country.

So, this is the situation. Syria is allied with the Northern Kingdom. They want to go and take over the Southern Kingdom and they want to establish their own government there. It shows this in Isaiah 7. They want to establish their own government and wipe the guys in the south off the map.

Ahaz, who is the king of the southern kingdom, Ahaz is totally freaked out. He doesn't know what to do. He's outmanned. He actually, in the story, toys with the idea. of allying with the current superpower of the world.

which turns out to be Assyria. These are the guys that live in the Fertile Crescent. They live in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley. They are currently the kings of the world, Assyria.

So he's thinking of, maybe I need to send an emissary to the Assyrians and say, help me, please, help me. You're a lonely hope because the kings of the north and the Assyrians are coming to take me over.

Now, you know, if he was going to do that ally with the superpower of the world. he would become a vassal state of the superpower. And Assyria from the Fertile Crescent. They had always had eyes on Israel, the current land of the northern, southern. They always had had their eyes on that, wanted to take it over.

So they're thinking, huh, you know. Ahaz is probably right. If he allied with the Assyrians, they would probably team up to take over the northern kingdom and all of Syria.

So we got some geopolitics going right now. But he's got a choice to make. If these guys are a real threat, what do I do?

So Isaiah, remember, he's God's advisor to Ahaz. Isaiah steps in with revelation and says, look, God will not allow their victory over you. You can take it to the bank. They're not going to allow it. God's not going to allow it.

Even though they look horrible. And he also advises him and says, you need to trust God. God told me to tell you, trust God, everything will be fine. Right? And then finally, he says, What you need to do is be firm in your faith.

And you thought faith was a New Testament word? There it is. It's actually right there. And this is all in Isaiah 7.

So he says to the king, here's your choice.

Now, you know, there's a line drawn here. You can either ally yourself with Assyria, who has always been your enemy, and who will turn you into a vassal state, he'll probably let you stay as kind of a king. kings you know so maybe but not really a king because you'll serve the king of assyria Or Or your option is You can trust God. What do you say? And this is what Isaiah is saying.

And Isaiah gives him assurances and says, look. This God is going to, He's trustable. He's trustable.

Well Uh Ahaz has a crisis of fate. And this is a big deal. This is a big deal. If your country is being threatened by people who you know will win the war, and a lot of innocent people will die. And you're the king, and you got to figure out what to do, and you know you're overmatched by these other guys.

What do you do realistically to preserve life? Trust God? Is God trustable? And actually, the bigger question which they had asked during the Civil War here of Lincoln was: which side is God on? And Lincoln came back snappily saying, Well, we hope we're on his side.

But this is the actual thing that Ahaz is dealing with. Is God on our side? Is God even here? Is God with us? Is he with us?

Does he care? Does he see what's going on? Do I have any assurances? Do I have anything coming from God that tells me I should take this risky step and actually trust God and say, God will take care of us? Should I do that or should I look for more?

reasonable approaches to protecting our people.

So that's that's his that's his conflict of faith. And then A has toys with actually calling Assyria and asking them to ally with him. At least the people won't be killed in the southern kingdom if you ally with Assyria. But by allying with Assyria, you've probably made the northern kingdom and Syria itself, both of them, slaves of Assyria. Do I do that?

There's family connections between the northern and southern kingdoms.

So, should I do that? My people are in the north as well as in the south.

So this point in Isaiah's narrative, Ahaz, he's right on this knife edge of trying to decide, what do I do? I need an assurance. I need an assurance. So, this is where we pick up the narrative. I summarized a ton of Isaiah 6 and 7 just in that little narrative.

So the Lord says to Isaiah, now this is to tell Ahaz. The Lord says to Ahaz, to Isaiah, go out to meet Ahaz, Isaiah, talk to the king, and say to him, Be careful. Be quiet, Which means he probably was running around with his hair on fire this whole time. Be quiet. Do not fear and don't let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands.

These two superpower people who are going to come in and take over the southern kingdom that are, I mean, it's causing Ahaz to lose sleep big time. And you know how he characterizes these military mightes that are coming and take over? God looks up and he calls them smoldering stumps of firebrands.

Okay. What a great put-down. God's very good on his put-downs. Smoldering stumps. Is a smoldering stump really a threat to a fire?

No, it's just sitting there smoking. It doesn't really have any fire to it. That's what God's saying. They're like smoldering stumps, man. It's like taking your firebrand and branding your cattle and laying the firebrand down on a stump so it doesn't burn anybody.

And it's just going to makes a little dark line in. You go, is that a danger to anybody? No. Is it going to start a fire? No.

It's all smoke, no fire. Smoldering stumps. I like that because when I see threats to my life that look, I mean, look really big and dangerous and full of fire. I can say, well, God looks at them. From God's perspective, He doesn't see them as threats, He sees them as smoldering stumps.

So I write that down somewhere. It's a great put-down. You can just stick in your mind and go, well, from God's perspective, smoldering stumps. Yeah. But But Don't let your heart be faint.

Because these guys are just this, from God's perspective.

So here's what he's. This is what there's a great picture of Ahaz, not really, but. It's actually a picture of Hezekiah, what people think he looked like.

So since I figured the father and son look alike, I'm going to stick a picture of Hezekiah up there. We don't even know what Hezekiah looks like. Don't look at me like that. It's like, gosh.

Okay, so he's dealing with, God, are you with us really? I mean, are you with us really? I know God from your perspective because you're almighty and you're powerful. You look down on Syria, you look down on the northern kingdom, and you look at them and go, smoldering stones. But hey, from my perspective, this is bad.

So I don't really care what your perspective is. Unless you're going to engage in our behalf.

So are you really with us? See, this is what he's dealing with. Are you really with us? And so, thus says the Lord God. Isaiah brings another word.

Look, it shall not stand. This victory, it won't stand and it shall not come to pass. Verse 8. And w anyway, in 65 years, Ephraim, northern kingdom, Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.

Yeah. So these are part of his assurances coming from God through Isaiah to the king. Look, here's the deal. Those guys in the northern kingdom who are such a threat to you, you know, in 65 years from now, they're not even going to exist. What?

Yes, because I said that the time of Isaiah is around the early 700s BC. Around the 720s BC, Assyria, the guy that he was toying with, actually allying with, Assyria comes down from the Fertile Crescent and comes into the northern kingdom and conquers it and sucks it up and takes them back into slavery and they're gone. And not only that, not only that, this is in the 720s, not only that, But Assyria has this fascinating strategy when they capture people and turn them into slaves. They don't want the slaves to be longing to go back home.

So you know what they did? They would get other slaves they'd taken from other countries around the world. I mean, Assyria was the... They were the kings of the world. They'd take people that were non-Hebrews and say, we want you guys to go down and go live in the place that we just took the Hebrews out of.

So they would take people that they took slavery and said, we're nice guys. We're good, Assyria. We're giving you some houses that you never built and some vineyards that you never planted. And just go down to this northern part of Israel and have at it and good luck and hope you have a happy life. And in doing so, The northern kingdom got populated by people who were not Hebrew.

At all. And some of them intermarried with the remnant of Jews that were still there. That's why to the time of Jesus the Samaritans were despised. The Samaritans were the mixed breed. They were the outsiders.

They occupied the northern kingdom. Everything in the north during the first century was Samaritan. They were the result of the Assyrian kind of demographic tampering to make sure that Israel never came back to the north. Really? Yeah.

Now there was some Jewish blood up there because they did intermarry with some of the remnant that was left behind. But by and large when those tribes got taken away, they were kept by Assyria and Assyria displaced them by putting foreigners in the north.

So God's saying right here, these guys in the north who you think are threatened look In in a couple of decades, they're not even gonna be there anymore.

So smoldering stump, I'm not overestimating it. They're not even going to be there. I can see the future. They're not there. They're not a threat.

I'll take care of you.

So that's assurance number one from God. you you're you're kind of overestimating who these guys in the north are. It's not as bad as you think it is. Uh But he says right here, here's the alternative, trusting God. Look, if you're not firm in faith.

You won't be firm at all.

Now this is This is a spine tingler. Because what he's saying, if you won't be firm in your faith in me and you think you've got the guts to be firm to handle this on your own, you're not. You don't have the firmness to handle this on your own. I think Ahaz already knew that. That's why he was freaking out.

But God says you really only have one choice. And if you want the firm choice, Be firm in your faith. but not firm in yourself, 'cause you don't got it. You don't have what it takes.

So in the first part he says, the northern kingdom, psh. Smoldering stumps, psh, not even going to be here in a couple decades. Psh, they're nothings, don't worry about it. I see them who they really are. And oh, by the way, the only firm path you have is faith.

Now, you know, I'll just stop and say, isn't that kind of the opposite? that we take when we see something threatening us. We usually go to faith as the last resort, not the first resort. And what God is saying to Ahaz right here is: your first resort, your real resort, your firm resort is faith. That's your first tech, not your.

You know, when everything else fails, well, when everything else fails, I guess I'll pray and have faith. But, you know, if I could do it without having to do that, that's what we're saying, we do that.

So he's making a recommendation to A has, you need to take the best approach. Faith is not your last approach. Faith is your first approach. And it's your best approach. And it's your firm approach.

And I like the fact he uses the word firm. Because again, with our application, we look at faith as being a very unfirm path. It's kind of like wishful thinking. And that's a poor understanding of faith. I mean for us, you know, well, I guess I'll just pray and I guess I'll have faith and, well, we'll see what happens, you know.

That's wishful thinking, that's not faith. Faith in a biblical sense is to put your trust and your confidence in a God who has stated to you over and over: He loves you and He has enough power to create the universe, and He'll intercede on your behalf. That's a firm approach. That's not a, I don't know. See, that's a different kind of faith.

It's not just wishful thinking, that's the firm approach. Especially when God is being so assertive up to this point to give assurances to Ahaz that things will work out okay. Trust me, trust me, He's saying, trust me, that's your firm approach, trust me.

Now, we can go through so many stories in the Old Testament where it actually proved outright. And the first one is when they leave the Exodus story, they leave Egypt, right? And they get pushed up against this body of water. They can't cross the Red Sea. And they're going, Great, great.

We just burned all our bridges behind us.

Now we're facing the water and the Phara Pharaoh and his guys are coming up behind us and we're we're locked and we can't get out. We're trapped. We're trapped. We're trapped. What is God doing?

And so they murmur on the shores there. And then God says to Moses, No, no, no, just do this thing. And so the waters part and they cross across it. They go, Whoa, whoa, whoa. And then the waters go back on top of Egyptians, remember that story?

And then from that point on in the life of Israel, when they were challenged with different faith crises, you know what God always said? I was the guy that got you out of Egypt. I have a reputation. That's who I am. Trust me, that's your first and firm path.

You got any proof of that? Egypt. And God would wait for a response. It's fascinating, and all the times Israel has a problem following God. God always brings up.

brings up his red sea card. I'm the one that got you out of Egypt. Yeah. Hello? That's what he does.

And so, you know, he's saying this is the best approach.

So Isaiah, the prophet who hears from God, is advising Ahaz. And in the story here in Isaiah 7, the story peaks with Ahaz. Again the LORD says to Ahaz, Look. Oh, here you go. Ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it be deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.

That is, look. This is what he's saying. Look, I'll give you a sign to make it easier for you to trust me. Just name it. I mean, name a big one.

Name a big one.

Something as big as heaven or as low as Sheol. That's kind of the idea of hell. I mean, name something that's spectacularly huge. Don't go little. Don't go little.

Go big. Don't go little like Gideon. Gideon made a fleece from a sheep get wet. No, don't do that. Do a big thing.

Do a big thing. And this is God saying to him, look, I want you to trust me. Ask for a sign.

Now at this point, this reminds me of kind of like the genie in the bottle kind of idea. I'm thinking, wow, oh okay, let's uh Let's think of a good one. Let's do something really big. And something so impossible that all of the universe couldn't do this unless God did this. Let's do something.

Huge. Let's oh, I know let's do something you know my my imagination goes at this point what I would have asked Because God's saying something as big as heaven or as low as you I mean this Let's wind this baby up and do one for the centuries here. Here we go. I would I would do something like Oh, what if a sun came up one morning and then went back and forth across the sky in about two minutes and then it went over the, something like that, you know? Or what if I got up at night and I'm looking up at the heavens and I see the moon and the moons were exactly where I would expect it to be and then I saw it kind of doing circles around the North Star.

Wouldn't that be cool? Let's make it 15 times, you know? And it would do some something crazy. That's all God's saying. I want you to trust me And I'll even do a sign for you.

even though Egypt's not enough. I'll do a sign for you. Name it. That's what he's saying. Name it.

Gosh, what a great story this could have been could have been You mean he doesn't do it? He doesn't do it. Ah So Ahaz is thinking, hmm, hmm, hmm. But Ahaz said I will not ask. And I will not put the Lord to the test.

Oh boy a great opportunity. And you know what this says? This says that he doesn't want to trust God. Not that he's having problems from a faith perspective having enough basis for it, because he's going to get enough basis if he just asks for a sign. But he's saying, I don't want to sign No, no, I don't want to bother God.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I won't put the Lord to the test. I won't test him.

Now, Gideon. Gideon, remember that story? Gideon did test him. And Gideon's a little hesitant because he says, okay, God, here's my fleece. Don't burn me.

Don't make me toast. But I'd like you to just make this dry fleece wet overnight. Let's do that. Boom. And it's wet and nothing around it is wet.

And he says, okay, now don't burn me this time, but can we do the opposite? Because if you do the opposite, next morning then I'll trust you.

So let's just put a lot of dew around the outside, but make it dry in the middle of the fleece. What do you say? And then God does that too. And then Gideon goes, Well, okay.

Well, okay.

Gideon wanted to be convinced of the power and the dependability of God. Ahas does not want to be convinced of it. He doesn't want to.

So he doesn't ask God to do a sign. I think that's fascinating.

However, Again, that's not unlike us at certain times in our thinking. We don't want to be reminded of the greatness of who God is in certain circumstances.

Sometimes we would rather just suffer in silence. Rather than trust God. I don't want to be coerced by knowing that God can do this. I'd rather sit here and have my little pity party. We do that.

There are a whole bunch of emotional reasons why we don't want to be reminded of the might and power of God. Because we have other kind of Simple reasons emotionally, and we don't need to. But in this particular case, God's saying, Look, Ahaz, you're in charge of my people. I want you to trust me. I'll give you the opportunity to name any sign you want to.

And I'll bolster your faith, bolster your confidence, bolster your sense of firmness in a way that I really don't have to. But I want you to be convinced that I'm on your side. And then Ahaz says, Mm I don't think so. And Isaiah says.

Now he's speaking for God. Hear then, O house of David, Is it too little for you to worry men that you have to worry God also? Like, it's not enough for you to bug people with your half-heartedness in all this. But you gotta bug God too. I mean, really?

Really? Is that what this is? Is that you know, if you just slightly say it differently, you hear it in his voice. Hear then, O house of David, it's not enough for you to be a pain to men, but now you have to be a pain to God too? That's exactly what he's saying.

What what's your motivation here? To kinda be an irritant to God today? Like you're not being an irritant to the rest of us? Because at that moment, I'm sure Ahaz has his general saying, What should we do? What should we do?

What should we do? These guys are coming. You know, all these guys have come out. The scouts have come back and they told us where they are. What should we do?

What should we do? And Ahaz is going, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And his indecisiveness causes them to be crazy.

It's not enough for you to be a pain to the people who are relying on you to make the decision. But now you got to be a pain to God as well. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Okay. So the Lord himself will give you a sign.

Okay, you didn't make one up. I'm going to give you a sign. And let's see how this goes.

So God decides instead of letting Ahaz make something up spectacular, which I would have loved to have the opportunity to do. He says, I'll give you a sign. You ready for it? This is the sign God gives him in order to assure him that God is with him. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.

Wait, that's a Christmas thing. No, that was assigned to Ahaz. about the fact that God is with him. God's on his side. Even in the midst of floundering faith, God's with him.

Now this has caused a lot of debate. Especially the sixth or seven centuries coming up to the first century when Jesus is there, and up until this very day, you ask a Jew what this means in the context of Ahaz, they'll go, Well, we've got some theories going, but we're really not sure yet. And I'll cover those in just a second. But for you and I, we recognize this so much, we go, wait a second. That's a horrible sign.

How is that going to convince Ahaz to trust God in this battle? Because after all, this is not going to happen for seven more centuries.

So how is this going to work? And this is the conundrum that everyone has had because you look at that and go, if you're from our perspective, you know the birth of Jesus, you know the connection with the Christmas story. But but the context is all wrong. How can this be a persuasive sign for Ahaz in his moment of need? We'll talk about that a little bit because that's what's really strange.

This is where that sign comes from. is the conundrum conflict of faith that Ahaz has. He's not willing to trust God. This word virgin right here has also been kind of the center of the debate. And that word virgin, there it is in Hebrew.

You can say it together, Ama. Amazing. Alma, Alma.

So Alma is actually the same as if you know someone today named Alma. Alma is Alma. It's a. That's what it is. Alma, Ama is is where it comes from.

But it means, in a generic sense, a young woman of marriageable age. And presumably, then a virgin.

So those kind of go hand in hand, although the word is used sometimes for not a virgin, but a woman of eligible age to get married.

Sometimes it's used exclusively for a virgin, not often.

So that's the ambiguity that's come up over the centuries: the fact that, well, it says. A virgin will conceive and bear a son. And so people will say, well, it just means, you know, a young woman who's of marriageable age will have a baby. But that's not really much of a sign, is it?

So, the thrust of this is that something miraculous is going to happen here. A woman of marriageable age, who's a virgin, is going to actually, and this is interesting, doesn't say he's just going to have a baby, is going to conceive. The issue is that conceiving is Miraculous. That's why he puts the word conceive in there, rather than saying, I'm going to have a baby. You know, when someone announces that they're pregnant...

They almost never talking about the conception part of it. Because that's just a little awkward. Right. Say, oh, yeah, I'm going to have a baby. You know, six months from now, yeah, a baby.

Oh, he's going to be one. Oh, was that before you was your? Yeah, yeah, well, you know, a while ago, my husband and I conceived a baby. Oh, that's like, oh, that's weird. That's just weird.

And it is weird here, too, as well.

So, what he's saying is that the baby is not the miraculous part, the conception is. The conception is.

So it doesn't make sense that this is just a young woman. It makes sense in terms of the miraculous part of the conception that this is a virgin. I mean that virgins don't get pregnant. But in this case this virgin will get pregnant. and bear a son and amazingly amazingly he's going to have this name emmanuel Emmanuel.

Im el, God with us. Im el.

Now, this name, you know, if you're a Bible student, your curiosity at this point is. Gosh, I wonder how many other times Emmanuel comes up in the Bible. Because, you know, at Christmas, it's everywhere. Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel and ransom here. It's everywhere.

So, where is Emmanuel in the rest of the Bible? In the next chapter of Isaiah, chapter 8, And that's it. That's it. Until you get to the New Testament. That's it.

So in this particular case, God through Isaiah is announcing the fact that this miraculous baby, through miraculous conception, Is going to be born and miraculously will have a unique name in the entire history of the Bible, and that unique name is God with us.

So this phrase all by itself, I mean, we look at that and we square it up with the Christmas story and we get it. The connections make sense. But you have to understand in the terseness of this phrase, this thing says everything about the Christmas story in one fell swoop. And it was meant to be a sign for Ahaz. That just wrecks the story for me.

I would rather if I was writing the Bible and I haven't, and that's good because. We'd all be toast. But if I was writing the Bible, I would say, you know, Isaiah came out of his tent one day and said, I had this dream, and God told me that he's going to come in person. God's going to come in person into the stream of human history. He's going to come in person in a man, in the flesh, incarnate.

He's going to come and he's going to be God Himself with us, God with us. We're going to give Him a special name that has never been used anywhere in the Old Testament. We're going to call Him Immanuel. And then those of us who know the Christmas story would say, yeah, that's what happened. No, no, this was a sign.

For A hats.

So how do you square that?

Well, you square it pretty simply, actually, because of the fact that I said before. Ahaz already did not want to be convinced. that God was on the side. Or you would ask for a sign. He went to.

His heart was already set against that.

So what God is saying here is that not just Ahaz has a problem with faith. But the nation of Israel has a problem with faith. Is God with us? And if you look at the history of Israel from this point up to the coming of Jesus, It's a horrible chaotic time. I mean, I said the Northern Kingdom, who's threatening right now, in about...

A decade or two, less than that, they get hauled away by the superpower of Syria. They're gone. They're gone. Foreigners get placed there instead. And 135 years after that, Assyria does it again.

But now under new leadership. Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar. They take over the Assyrian kingdom and they come in again. They don't really sweep the north, they sweep the south, they finally take the southern kingdom as well. And all of a sudden, you know, it's horrible.

Now, eventually, the southern kingdom comes back. from the Persian captivity, and we read that when we read some stories about Ezra and Nehemiah, and we saw that, and they do come back into the south, they reconstitute in the south. But still, from that point in history, up the time Jesus comes, things in Israel are so caddywampus. I mean, they're just upside down.

So what God decides to do in the middle of that cattywampusness Cattywampusness. Is that a word cattywampus? It sounds good.

Okay, you know what I'm talking about. In the middle of all that confusion, God says, I'm going to give you an indelible sign that God is still with you. Ahaz asked, Is God with me? God says, I'm going to tell all of Israel God is with you. How?

by doing a cameo appearance of a God Creator in the flesh. on earth. You wonder if God's with you? Yeah. Watch this.

And for you to be sure about the fact that this is God making a personal appearance, I'm with you, a personal appearance, so that you'll really know. you're going to find out that this child will be the result of a miraculous conception. A miraculous birth. And then you'll know. God with us, e man, you will.

God is still with us. That was really a question of a lot of the Jews coming up to the time of Jesus. Because there was like four centuries of silence in terms of the Old Testament writings. The Old Testament writings, you have the minor prophets. And then after the minor prophets about four centuries before Jesus?

Shit. Nothing. for four centuries. And then you go to the first century.

So everyone is asking. Is God with us anymore? Is he with us? And what they could do if they were smart, and some were smart enough, is they could say during that time of darkness, well. God gave Ahaz a sign.

And and it looks like it's more Supernatural and more how do you put it? It's a chronological weirdness.

So, if a time comes in these four centuries of science, up to the first century, that we hear tales. Even if it's a legend of someone being born miraculously without having a father? That might be the guy. Because this was the sign that was given to Ahaz, which he denied. And no one understood it.

And it caused a lot of confusion in the Jews.

So you would think that when you get to the first century, And all of a sudden, the birth of Jesus comes, and it's told how it comes. Everyone should have gone. God with us. This is this baby, Jesus. Two and two together.

But God left them kind of hanging from about 700 BC up until the first century, hanging about what this sign meant. But they knew it meant something bigger than just the local conflict, the local time. There was something bigger going on here.

Something much bigger than that. It's a sign to bolster our faith in who God is. God himself will be with us. Not just figuratively speaking, but he will be with us. It strongly implies incarnation, that there's a body involved.

Not just, you know. God will be with us. Or the closing scenes on E.T. Remember. Gosh, where do these things come from?

At the end of, and E.T. is there and he's separating from Elliot. And remember he puts his little glowing finger on his chest and says, I'll be right here. Remember that?

Well that's kind of a figurative thing. This is not a figurative thing. This is written literally. God with us. It strongly suggests the body.

Well, let's go on and just do a little bit more of the story, because you're probably wondering how this works out.

Now, he says something fascinating right here about this sign. He shall eat curds. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and the good, well, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.

So what is this?

Well, this is the time this child this child will be born because it says it's a child, right? And he'll grow up, he'll get to the age of accountability, and so he shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. When he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, that means he's become accountable as a Jew. 13, if you're in the Jewish society right now, 12 or 13 boys and girls.

So they understand the difference between good and evil.

So it says, when he gets to be kind of that age, right, when he gets to be that age, he'll be eating curds and honey.

Now, what in the world does that mean? Curds and honey sounds nice. But actually, it's strongly apocalyptic. What? Uh yeah, well uh Eating curds and honey is apocalyptic.

It's people living off of unworked fields. There is no wheat, there is no barley, there are no grapes. worked fields have been destroyed. The only thing left to eat Is what few cows or goats remain that you can milk? And honey that comes from bees.

This is actually finger food in the apocalypse. Finger food in the apocalypse. is milk products, curds and honey.

So although it sounds wonderful Like you go to a restaurant that you love, and you come back from the restaurant, and someone asks you, How was it? Oh, we had the best curds, the best honey. No, actually, This is apocalyptic literature right here.

So he's saying that by the time this child, by the time this child gets to the age of accountability, knows the difference between good and bad. Um He he'll Everyone will be eating curds and honey. Everyone will be eating apocalyptic food. Like something tremendously bad has gone down. What?

Now, remember, the promise of this one, this child, came to the southern kingdom, to Ahaz, the Judah.

So Judah goes into captivity around the 5th century BC, and after that point, the only thing you could eat in Israel... Because no one would work in fields. was curds and honey.

So what he's saying here from a calendar perspective is that this child who will come, by the time he gains the age of accountability, You know, the place that we're promising him to will be devastated and apocalyptic. And in fact, that's exactly what happens after they get taken to captivity. It's apocalyptic.

So he's giving us a little timeline clue, is what he's giving us right here. And then the second half says, for before the boy knows how to refuse the evil, so this is before the age of accountability, say less than 12 or 13.

Well, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.

Well, we know that's true, because Syria and the northern kingdom will be taken away by Assyria, and there'll be wastelands by the time Jesus comes.

So he's making some Crazy. poetic like Statements about the timeline of this one who's coming, this miraculous child. It's post-apocalyptic, and if you don't believe me, read the end of this chapter of Isaiah 7. You'll see it right there. That's the b best place to look at it.

By the way, when Israel was promised a land of milk and honey, was that apocalyptic? Yes, it was, but in a different kind of way. What God was saying to them was, you're going to go into a land. and you're going to be able to eat what's there even though you have not tilled the fields. You haven't pruned the vines and the grapes.

You haven't planted the barley or the wheat. You haven't done any of that stuff. You're going to be able to walk in. To the land, and because of the previous occupants, you'll be able to take over their houses, and you'll have houses you didn't build, you'll have. But you'll be able to go in instantly.

and find lush finger food that you do not deserve and you just take it.

So it was the idea of the fact that, you know, you're coming into a land and it's free food. It's free food. It's finger food when you come in the land. And good finger food, not nasty finger food.

So it's not really apocalyptic. It's the fact that there will be food for you there that actually is rich and wonderful that'll just be waiting for you. Food will be waiting for you. That's milk and honey.

Okay, well this goes on.

So the Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. That was the Civil War when the North left the South. He's saying at this point: bad things are going to happen in this land, in both Judah in the South and Ephraim in the North. Bad things are going to happen by the time this child comes. By the time this child comes, the Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Egypt.

You're going to have horrible times here in the south as well as the north. That's going to rival the days of the Civil War back after Solomon died. It's going to be nasty. He's pointing way off into the future, a couple hundred years for Judah. And it's going to be the king of Assyria.

So he's saying, before this promised miraculous conception child comes. Assyria is going to come in and wipe out everything in the south. And sure enough, Assyria takes the northern kingdom in 720 BC. Assyria taken over by the Babylonians, the Babylonians come down to do the same thing, the southern kingdom in 586 BC, and everyone's gone. and what's going to be the horrible time you're going to experience before this promised child comes?

The horrible time is the king of Assyria. And it was. You wise.

So this isn't just a sign to Ahaz. This is a sign to the nation of Israel. Is God with us? God is with you. He'll bring this promised Messiah, this Mashiach, this God in the flesh, this Immanuel.

He will come here. but not until after the nation goes through the worst, the worst stuff it's ever gone through. And in their angst and in their anxiety in those 400 years where God seems to not be speaking to us, they'll ask themselves, God has done these horrible things to us. He's judged us because of our unfaithfulness to him. And that's been our case.

And now he won't speak to us. He hasn't spoken to us for four centuries. Maybe God isn't with us anymore. Maybe we blew the entire contract, the whole thing about the Jews coming out of Egypt, coming in the promised land. Maybe it's all done.

Maybe we've done so much, we've chased God away.

So by the time you get to the first century of Jesus, they're all saying, is God with us? And then the sign will happen. He's with us. See? That's the context.

of this prophecy. Behold, the virgin shall conceive.

Now, let me just give you a couple ideas about how people have debated this. Who are they talking about?

Well, the Jews today, their favorite theory about who this one is in this prophecy. Is that it's King Ahaz's son, the very famous King Hezekiah? I mean, you read through the kings and the chronicles, and you read about Isaiah, and you read about Hezekiah, whew, what a great guy.

So the Jews will say, This miraculously conceived child It's got to be Hezekiah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. However, Uh it doesn't work. And why doesn't it work?

Well, it doesn't work because Uh well for one thing Um the guy in 400 AD, Jerome, who a polyglot, fantastically smart guy who translates the Old Testament into Latin. He does a little bit of math based on the ages of people and figures out that Hezekiah was already born at the time of this prophecy. What? Yeah, so it turns out Hezekiah was already born when Jerome in 400 AD just did the math. He says, well, this prophecy can't be talking about Hezekiah, because Hezekiah was already born.

There's not going to be a miraculous conception.

So that that doesn't make a lot of sense. There's also a couple other reasons why it doesn't make sense. But to this very day, the Jewish community clings to this as the theory. It's not Jesus, this is Hezekiah. But a whole lot of things don't work about that.

So, and that's just the principal one.

So we're going to cross that off the list. That's not a great explanation. Another explanation, this comes from a lot of people, is that maybe we're talking about Isaiah's son, Isaiah's son. And his name, who is not yet born, but he's going to be born pretty soon in the narrative, his name is Mahar Shalal Hashbaz, one of my favorite names in the entire Old Testament. Maher shall hashbats.

Yeah. But it means the spoil speeds and the prey hastens. It's a prophetic name about bad stuff is coming. You would expect the son of Isaiah who's saying, you need to trust God because bad stuff is coming.

So when his child is born, his name is bad stuff is coming.

So it just makes a whole lot of sense. It could it be Mahir Shalal Hashbaz? I just wanted to say it one more time.

Well, it's a At first it's kind of a this kind of a a meaning conflict here because isn't he supposed to be recognized as Emmanuel?

So God with us? Does this mean that Maharshal Hashbaz, the bad things are coming? Does it mean, and he's also Manuel, that God is coming and everything is going to go bad? Yeah, well. It doesn't make a lot of sense because originally the sign was placed with the intention of giving you confidence that God is with us.

Not that God's coming to take us all down. You know, which was the original fear of Hahaz from his enemies.

So that doesn't make sense. Also, another part of this is interesting is that Isaiah's wife is already a mother at this time. There is a first son of Isaiah who exists at this point.

So you would not describe Isaiah's wife as an alma. She's not an eligible young woman. She's already a mother.

So that doesn't make any sense either. There's a couple other reasons why that just doesn't work.

So when you cross those off the list, Um really the only and best option you have left over after that is that this is someone who comes post-apocalyptic to Judah, and Judah went apocalyptic in 586 BC.

So it's someone after the southern kingdom is taken away. Which qualifies Jesus. And if someone during that dark period from 586 to the first century is wondering, Did we do so much that we offended God that He's left us? Is he still with us? then by the time you get to Jesus, the time that's perfectly appointed by God, God says I'm still here.

and I'm here in the flesh. And by the way, if there's any doubt about who I am Remember what I told Ahaz? there will be a miraculous conception. from a virgin. From a virgin.

and shall give birth. And he'll be recognized as God with us. And that's what they should have clung to in the first century. That's what they should have clung to. They should have been waiting all this time.

When is that miraculous conception of a virgin going to happen? When does it happen? And you know the news of Jesus' miraculous conception. Was sort of well known because remember, at one point in Jesus' ministry, he gets this criticism for being. Yeah, born out of wedlock.

Remember that?

So it was pretty well known that he was born without a human father.

So if they were putting two and two together and they wanted to be convinced that Jesus was God with us, Emmanuel, They would use that common knowledge they knew about Jesus' conception and say, well, maybe this is the kid. Maybe this is the one. Because everyone knows. He was born out of wedlock. But maybe he wasn't born out of wedlock.

Maybe he was. A la Isaiah 7. Born to a virgin miraculously, because Isaiah said God would make this sign clear to you. That's what should have been operating in the first century. Only a few people caught it.

Only a few people caught it. He's the Messiah.

So, in all this time, when you look at Isaiah 7, you go deep into the history of the 7th century BC, about. Israel that's fighting with their neighbors, that are dealing with faith. Should I trust God? Should I not trust God? He gives a sign that will come 700 years later.

But it's a sign that tells the entirety of Israel. God has not forgotten you and has come in your midst.

Now The sad thing is, is when you read the first opening lines to John's Gospel, and we talked about John's Gospel starts off with the universe. Not with the major. He says this one line that, in light of all the stuff that now you know about, about the doubts in those last four centuries of Israel. How we chase God away would have been so bad. In the first lines in John's Gospel, he says, He came to his own.

And his own didn't recognize him. He was doing Isaiah 7. And he didn't see him. He came to his own and they didn't recognize him. I every time I read that phrase it just chokes me up.

Here God has gone through all this work to preface the coming. Of His presence to reassure them that God is still with you, so much so He's coming in the flesh. You can relate to them. You can talk to them. You can ask them questions.

You can have a face-to-face conversation with God without dying. which is always the problem in the Old Testament. What incredible thing. And God goes through all this stuff and gives you a sign that is indelible and easily to see. And he came to his own and they missed him.

Your heart just breaks. Your heart just breaks. So, in final. Don't be an Ahaz. I know what you're thinking.

Don't be an AHS.

So if you're in a crisis... and you're feeling like God is not with you anymore because by the way, the majority of your crises happen because you're an idiot. And at the time you're in the crisis, You realize it's my own dumb fault.

So why would I ever expect God to come to my rescue when it's my own dumb fault? Right. Okay, maybe most of your crises are not when you're an idiot. Maybe it's just me. But, you know, it is in those times when you realize that you've put yourself in this hole.

You really don't feel warranted to ask God to help you. Because God's just going to say, you did this to yourself. That's what you're thinking. But God continually says, nope, you didn't chase me away. You didn't chase me away.

I'm with you. I'm still with you.

So when you feel like God's not with you anymore, Are you tempted to trust something else, which is always our case? We look around at what we can do to bring in power outside of our own ability in order to shore up our defenses so we don't die in what's coming. You figure a way to do that, right?

Someone forecloses on like your car and you don't have the money to keep your car and so you go to Uncle Bill and you ask Uncle Bill, can you give me like $5,000? You look for other places to find ways to solve the problem, right?

Well, when you're tempted to trust something else. Remember, he's with us. He's with us. That's what this sign, that's what this prophecy was meant to say in big letters: Emmanuel, God with us. And He's still with us.

He's still with us. The eternal sign of his nearness is Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus. And so the coming of Jesus and that miraculous conception of a virgin who has a baby, who is God with us, Emmanuel, is meant to be a mark. A mark on the timeline of all history to say, regardless of where you are, whether it was pre-Jesus' coming, the time of Ahaz, or the time after that, or even to our time right now. He's with us.

And he did it so much so in the first century. that he did a I call it a cameo appearance in the flesh. He came so you could talk to him.

So if he did that Is he not going to be accessible right now to you and I? No, he's accessible. He he hasn't left you. He's with you. God with us.

So just two verses to close with. This has always been God's intention, by the way, from cover to cover in the Bible, is to be with His creation and mankind. And here in Ezekiel 37, my dwelling place, God's speaking in the first person, my dwelling place shall be with them. and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. That is actually the theme verse of the Bible.

Garden of Eden. God's walking in the cool of the day. He wants to have fellowship with this creation of Adam and Eve. And then they trash it. And then at the end of all history, when you come back to the end of Revelation.

God's back living with man. God's intention has always been to live with man. It's been our problem that we stiff-arm God and we push him away. But the theme of the entire Bible is a Creator God who made the creation of mankind, loves them tremendously, wants to be with them, and even though they shoot themselves in the foot, even though humanity shoots itself in the foot with sin and evil, God says I'm still here. I still want to fulfill this promise.

I still want to be with you. That's why the whole Exodus story coming out of Egypt is such a great. Kind of metaphorical thing for all mankind. We were in slavery, we didn't have freedom. And yet God says, I'm going to draw you around and bring you into my house.

You know when someone invites you to their house, that kind of hospitality? I'm going to invite you to my house. And I want you to live in my place. and I want us to be together. And I want myself to be the center of that community and you be the ones who love me and we're just going to have a great time there.

This is always the picture for God's plan with all of mankind.

Now even Israel blew that as well.

So mankind continues to blow this, but God does not stop his resolve or his purpose. And I'll say this is his purpose in creating the universe and mankind, is to dwell with man. That's been his heart's desire. Which is why now in evangelical circles we talk about it's not a matter of joining a church. It's a matter of a personal relationship with a God who always has wanted to be with us.

Always wanted to be with us. And then I'll close with this other kind of bone-chilling quote we just read from Isaiah 7. If you're not firm in faith, You won't be firm at all. That's tattooable. I think.

If you're not firm of faith, you just won't be firm at all. There is only one unshakable foundation, and that's God himself. Don't make 'em your second options and everything. Make him your first option and everything. Because that's the firm, that's the founded position.

And that's the God who wants to be near you and wants to love you and wants to provide for you. That's the whole story. of the entire Christmas story as well. In its in its lowest and worst time, mankind has God visiting them. and saying I've got a plan.

to get you out of this mess that you created. I got a plan. and the plan results in us living together. That's the whole point.

Okay, let's quit.