Isaiah 7:10-16

Advent 4 | 18.12.2022 | Isaiah 7:10-16 | Samuel Zumwalt |

Isaiah 7:10-16 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles

¹⁰ Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ¹¹ “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” ¹² But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” ¹³ And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? 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. ¹⁵ He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. ¹⁶ For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.

HOLY COMMUNION: HOLY GOD

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Eighth Century B.C.

Mel Brooks notwithstanding, it’s not always good to be the king. Ahaz, who is not favorably remembered among Judah’s kings descended from David, was frightened. His neighbors to the north, Israel and Syria, wanted him to join them in a fight against the looming Assyrian Empire. When he refused, they attacked Judah. To get the picture, for those of us who are older, it would be as if Estonia and Latvia said to Lithuania, “Join us in standing up to the Soviet Union.” Mercifully, in our day, NATO now stands with these small Baltic countries against Vladimir Putin’s megalomaniacal quest for a new Russian Empire. In those days, Ahaz did not even want to trust God. How was that working out? The more things change. The more they stay the same.

God says to Ahaz: “Trust me. Ask for as big a sign as you can imagine, and I will give it.” But Ahaz refuses. Either Ahaz’s God is too small, or Ahaz has an exaggerated opinion of himself and his own abilities. You pick. Ahaz is all into handling everything on his own. Have you ever been so afraid and hopeless, or so clueless, that you thought you didn’t need God or anyone’s help?

The Lord God speaks to Ahaz as the face of the house of David to whom He promised an everlasting dynasty (2 Samuel 7): “Your unbelief is already a burden to your people. Must you trouble me with your unbelief, O king from David’s family? So, I will give you a sign, and not because you deserve it. I will give you a sign you cannot fail to understand, because I am God and you are not. See that virgin there? By the time she bears a son, whose name means ‘God with us,’ and he is weaned and knows the difference between good and evil, I will have already emptied out the lands of Syria and Israel. That’s the sign. The ones you’re afraid of will be gone by My Hand.” Immanuel (God with us) will be a sign both of God’s judgment and His grace.

First Century A.D.

The last king from David’s family had died during the Babylonian exile in the 6^th century B.C. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem in the 520s B.C., they were first under Persian rule, then Greek rule, briefly under Maccabean rule, and then under Roman rule. It had been more than six centuries since the Jewish people had actually lived under the rule of a king from David’s family. So, the yearning for the Messiah, the anointed one, the king from David’s family was very strong among some of the Jewish people. The political and religious leaders had made a devil’s bargain with the Romans and were afraid that the appearance of a king from David’s family would result in a crushing defeat at the hand of the Romans. Once, again, their magnificent Temple would be destroyed. Once, again, the political and religious leaders would be forced from their homeland.

Famous psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl once wrote that anxious people often cause the very thing they don’t want to happen. Their anxiety actually brings to fruition their greatest fears (Man’s Search for Meaning). So it was with the Jewish political and religious leaders, who saw the Temple and Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Like Ahaz, they did not trust God. Like Ahaz, they overlooked the sign of Immanuel (God with us).

The contrast between the high and mighty and the pious of low degree appears most obvious in Matthew’s brief infancy narrative. Joseph, a descendent of David, is engaged to Mary, a virgin. And yet, she tells him she is both a virgin and pregnant. Who can believe such a thing? A godly man, Joseph, goes to sleep troubled. If he marries a woman pregnant with another man’s child, that will make him unclean, an adulterer. If he breaks the engagement publicly, then Mary could be subject to stoning as an adulterer. What’s this good man to do? Fightings and fears within without. Joseph must be comforted by the Word of God. First, the angel tells Joseph in a dream not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, for the child within is conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is asexual reproduction. Then, Matthew quotes from Isaiah 7 to explain that Jesus really is Immanuel (God with us). Mary really is a virgin. Joseph can claim Jesus as his legal son, and, in so doing, Jesus will be legally descended from David. The long-expected Messiah will be born. His name, Yeshua, rendered in Greek and Latin “Iesous” (or Jesus), means “God saves.”

Twenty-First Century A.D.

One of my professors used to say that while the cultural gap between then and now may be huge, the faith gap is the same. Our root sin, says Martin Luther, is Unglaube (unbelief, unfaith). We do not fear, love, and trust God above all else. The clever lie of today is to hide behind a rational excuse for our unbelief, which is nothing more than a self-serving justification for narcissism.

How many times have you heard someone protesting that they believe in science rather than God? Yet, when you strip away layers of high sounding rhetoric, you discover a different kind of faith not based in observable, measurable proofs for the non-existence of God. Each fall when our parish gives silent, prayerful witness to the value of life during the Local Life Chain, some foul-mouthed person will scream obscenities, make obscene gestures, and invariably yell, “It’s not a baby.” Funny, how an ultrasound will demonstrate it is a baby. Funny, how at ten weeks every finger and every toe is perfectly formed; it most certainly is a baby. Funny, how the DNA and the sex of the baby growing in his mother’s womb prove it’s not the mother’s body. That’s science, but amazingly, in the name of personal autonomy and irresponsibility, people say not so.

Our culture is so narcissistic; virginity is not valued. The notion of waiting for marriage. The notion that one is not able to control biological urges. The notion that virginity could be viewed as virtuous. These notions are so foreign, because there seems to be no higher authority than the self. Regardless of biology, today, the autonomous self can insist she or he is not what she or he is by birth. Regardless of biology, today, the autonomous self can insist that he or she can pick pronouns that have no basis in reality. Our culture is acting out the ancient fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where no one but a little child will dare to say the emperor is naked.

When we Christians live by a story that is based in reality, in natural law, we are assailed as haters, as rightwing extremists. And that comes directly from the mouth of the press secretary of the President of the United States. That is the modus operandi of pathological liars who insist false is true despite all evidence to the contrary. Personal attacks are not rational arguments.

In the eighth century BC, Ahaz did not want God to be God. In the first century AD, the Jewish religious and political leaders did not want God to be God. In our day, the story is the same. The many, even the many wearing clerical collars or polo shirts or sitting in Sunday pews, do not want God to be God. For when God is God, we cannot pretend to be in charge for long or at all.

So, God had to do the seemingly impossible. God had to become incarnate in the Virgin Mary’s womb. “How can that be?” She asked Gabriel in Luke 1. “How can that be?” Joseph wondered before closing his eyes in restless sleep. Always, if we begin with ourselves, we exclude all things that seem unreasonable, even impossible, to us. If we begin with the God, who is a community within Himself, and the Maker and Owner of all things, then He defines reality and is able to do as He wills quite apart from our understanding or acquiescence. Yes, the signs and miracles that the incarnate Son of God will do in His earthly ministry are simply His bonafides. Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God is with you. He has come down to save and deliver you from those ancient enemies, the unholy trio of sin, death, and the devil. And He has come to save not by the sword but by His innocent suffering and death, yes, by His holy, precious Blood!

The LORD God is Holy. There is none like Him. There is none that can compare. We confessed that as we made confession of our sins as worship began today. We have sinned against Him in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and left undone. We will bow in awe as this Holy God comes down to us today in the Host and the Cup to give His eternal life and love, yes, His forgiveness to empty-handed sinners who have confessed, “Lamb of God, have mercy.”

God will be God, and He is here by His Word of Promise. If neither the pastor nor the people believe He is here, that does not change Him in the slightest. The Holy God is in our midst. Yes, the One who became incarnate in the Virgin Mary’s womb, is here in the Bread and in the Wine, in the Host and in the Cup. Let us, then, humbly bow before the Holy God, who is with us. He is Immanuel. Give yourself to the Holy God. Yes, yield your life to Him as did Joseph and Mary.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

©Samuel David Zumwalt, STS

   szumwalt@bellsouth.net

   St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

   Wilmington, North Carolina USA