For scripture reading this evening, we turn to Isaiah chapter seven. Isaiah chapter seven. And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz. Thou and she are Jashub thy son. At the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the Fuller's Field. and say unto him, take heed and be quiet. Fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of reason was Syria and of the son of Ramaliah, because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Ramaliah have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tobail. Thus saith the Lord God, it shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezan. And within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Ramaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. Moreover, the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, hear ye now, O house of David. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings. The Lord shall bring upon thee and upon thy people and upon thy father's house Days that have not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, even the king of Assyria. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys and in the holes of the rocks and upon all thorns and upon all bushes. "'In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor "'that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, "'by the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet, "'and it shall also consume the beard. "'And it shall come to pass in that day "'that a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep. "'And it shall come to pass for the abundance of milk "'that they shall give, he shall eat butter, For butter and honey shall everyone eat that is left in the land. And it shall come to pass in that day that every place shall be where there were a thousand vines and a thousand silverlings. It shall be even for briars and thorns. With arrows and with bows shall men come thither. because all the land shall become briars and thorns. And on all hills that shall be digged with a mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briars and thorns, but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen and for the treading of lesser cattle. We consider this evening verse 14. Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, for this Advent season, we have been looking at prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah. And you will see that these prophecies build upon one another. There are common themes, of course, about the Messiah and his identity. But there is also a development in, for example, who he shall be and where he shall be born. You will notice also that these prophecies have in common, too, that in prophesying about the Messiah, that they all speak of him as to his origins, that he comes out of, is a repeated refrain. that he is a star out of Judah, a root out of Jesse. And that theme also is part of this prophecy. when we read that the Messiah shall be conceived and born of a virgin. The idea is the Messiah comes out of her, just like he comes out of Judah, and he comes out of the line of Jesse. This gives us opportunity to examine not only a further revelation about the coming of Messiah, but to see more clearly what really is going on. The people of God, the Christian faith, and in particular the Reformed branch of the faith, has a very rich understanding of the Holy Scriptures, and does not see the prophecies of the Messiah simply as God foretelling of his advent or birth. And I want to set the table, as it were, by having us consider by way of introduction how we are to view not only this prophecy, but all the prophecies that we have considered according to the Word of God. And there are two texts that have significance and bearing upon this particular text and also the others we considered. The first is Genesis 3.15. Genesis 3.15 rightly is known among us as the protovangel. That is the very first and basic pronouncement of the gospel in the Holy Scriptures. The first pronouncement of the Messiah. And you may remember that pronouncement, which importantly was given, not directly to Eve, but spoken to the devil. In that prophecy, God promises something with his word, that there will be enmity between two seeds. The seed of the serpent, the devil, and the seed of the woman. Significantly, not Adam, but the woman. And seed, as the apostle shows in the New Testament, doesn't refer to all of her physical children, but to Christ. Christ. Even as there is a seed of the serpent that may be seen as his spiritual descendants, mankind, his seed also can be seen as one. We haven't seen the incarnation of the devil as it were yet, but he will be the Antichrist. Even so, there will be out of the seed of the woman one who is the Christ. In that prophecy, there is a promise, a promise of the Messiah. And the way to see that is that it's not isolated from everything else. The Old Testament doesn't contain a series of somewhat disconnected, almost random prophecies that add particular parts. But the idea of what's going on is that God is producing the Messiah through that Word. The idea is the prophetic word, the word of God's promise, comes with power. It's the power of God's grace, and it actually produces the Messiah. So that what we must see is that in the Old Testament, Christ is coming. The idea isn't simply that he's out there in heaven somewhere, and at the right time, all of a sudden, he just shows up. The idea is that there's a woman. This woman is God's church, and this woman is bearing a baby. That's what's going on in the Old Testament. And the Word of God in these successive promises is, as it were, pushing the baby out of the womb. She's in travail. She's giving birth. And there's pains, and there's distresses, and there's trouble. But there's a woman giving birth. Christ is coming. The conception of Him is all through the Old Testament, as it were. But then also exactly because the word is the way it is, there's a focus. At first it's broad, a woman, a seed. Now there's more there than we realize. This will be a seed that crushes the head of the serpent. He's not an ordinary man. But this is what he will do. And then it's narrowed. He will be a star from Judah. He will be this, he will be that. And it's this text that takes that promise of God and focuses the entrance of Christ into the world to a single womb of a single woman, as God promised in Genesis 3.15. Now, I'm not making this up. This is exactly the New Testament's commentary on the Old Testament in Revelation 12. In Revelation 12, God makes clear that that woman, Eve, is the church. And out of the church comes the Messiah. Our text tonight now brings us to the Messiah coming out of the womb of the Virgin. And again, it makes clear, as others we have looked at, that this is no ordinary man. But God, God is going to come out of a virgin, for he is called Immanuel. Consider with me that tonight. God out of a virgin. First of all, the miraculous child. Secondly, the irresistible grace. And three, the wonderful sign. The sermon tonight intends to expand on the concept and the idea of God's salvation of His people by the Word tonight. I don't want to simply look at the text and point out the obvious. You're all aware of the text. You know its essential meaning, and we intend to go over that. But overall, what's important for us to hear tonight is that this text is about God's Word. The very Word that we identify with the Messiah Himself. We saw that this morning when we read John 1. Jesus is known as the Word of God. Important, then, that we connect the coming of the Messiah to the Word of God. And that Word of God about the Messiah is brought in all sorts of ways in the Old Testament, but nothing more clear than the prophecies and the promises such as we have considered, like Genesis 3.15. Certainly, all of the Word of God bears on the coming of the Messiah. But nowhere do we see Him more clearly and is His coming brought about than by such prophecies. What we must see is that there's power in these words. God doesn't just talk like we talk. And when he promises something, he's just not giving something that he hopes happens. Nor is God simply predicting the future that he can see ahead. That's not the idea. The idea is the word itself causes the event to happen. The devil knew that. He knew that likely even more than Adam and Eve did when God first spoke in the garden. And Revelation 12 makes that clear. Because it makes clear that the enmity is the hatred of the devil for this Messiah. The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is essentially his hatred of God and of his Christ that Psalm 2 speaks about. And knowing that promise, he spends his time in the Old Testament doing all that he can to prevent the birth of the Messiah. He knows the Word of God. He knows those Scriptures. And he knows them because while Genesis 3.15 was spoken to him, he heard it. The prophecy of a star comes from one of Satan's own seed. Comes from Balaam, the son of Beor, that greedy, wicked man, who even though he prophesied for money, could not be prevented from cursing Israel by God. God made him bless Israel. And so it is here. Now we're going to see also, especially in our second point, that this power of the Word is the power of God's grace. The power of God's Word is the power of His grace for His people. And that's why the picture that's presented in Scripture of the advent of Christ is so graphic and so apt. A woman in travail. Is that how we see the Old Testament? Is that how we read this history? There's a woman, a human being. She has had imputed to her her sin and iniquity. The sin of Adam and Eve in the garden. Born dead in trespasses, in sins. guilty of the sin of Adam. Without hope, without any strength or desire, without any ability to save herself, God promises that yet out of her will come her Savior. She will give birth to her Savior. And at the same time, God makes crystal clear that this is all His doing, His grace. Now let's look at the passage a little bit closer. One of the remarkable characteristics of the Word of God and the prophecies of the Messiah, the promise, is that they come as light. Did we not read that this morning? That the Word is light. Light in whom there is no darkness at all. And one of the amazing things that condemns mankind is the light shown in the darkness, shown in the world that he made, and the very creatures he made rejected the light, ran from the light, hid from the light. Now one of the things about the gospel is that especially when it's dark, and even the darker it is, as we're familiar with from earthly experience, the brighter is the light. And that's true. When Jesus comes, it is remarkable how many prophecies remind us that when Christ comes, it will be exceedingly dark. Even when one looks back at the history of Israel and looks at the woman, one sees darkness of all kinds. But the darkness when Christ comes exceeds them all. We tend to forget that, but we've seen it. When Christ comes, the line of David is cut down to the ground. These are some of the things that the Prophet himself is pointing out in the passage. There will be a deliverance that he brings to Ahaz here, and he gives him a sign. And he shows exactly what's going to happen, that the enemies that threaten Israel or Judah right now are themselves actually going to be destroyed, but also presents the fact that Judah herself is going to come to a time of great darkness and misery and trouble, and then the Messiah will come. So it's true when Jesus Himself comes, and therefore it's also true, often, when the prophecies come. Now that's not true of all prophecies, but it is amazing, one of the shocking aspects of the prophecy of Jesus as this great and shining star born in Judah is that it's given by a wicked man who's been hired by an extremely powerful nation that is intent on wiping Israel off the face of the earth, only a short while after having been delivered from the bondage of Egypt, where times were also dark. And such is the case with this particular prophecy. It's amazing how this prophecy, which is one of the clearest prophecies of the Messiah, being born the way that he is, so clear that it is continually attacked, it comes at a time of great darkness. Let me explain. So we're about 70 years, as we read in the passage, from the utter destruction of the ten tribes. We're not far away from when the Tan tribes, who broke away from Judah and established their own kingdom and their own form of worship, have become so corrupt, so wicked, so apostate, God sends the nation of Assyria to wipe them off the face of the earth. They're scattered never to be a nation again. It's at about this time, however, that the ten tribes, under their king Pekah, unite with the nation of Syria, also a perennial enemy, under their king Rezan. And they threaten the very existence of the nation of Judah. Now we know from the Holy Scriptures, you can look this up in 2 Chronicles 28, They had attacked Judah. And they had attacked under the reign of their rather young but wicked king Ahaz. He's a young but very wicked king. They had had a successive number of good kings recently, but now this man is on the throne. And they go to battle. In this battle, 120,000 soldiers of Judah are killed. Imagine that kind of battle. And not only that, but 200,000 of the members of Judah are taken captive. Now, it's at these times when they are going to make a league, and Ahaz is afraid. And in fact, he's thinking about forming a league with Assyria, this wicked nation. That's where his trust is. That's where his hope lies. That's where he hopes salvation comes from. that God comes to Isaiah and says, grab your son Shear-Jeshub and go see this man and give him a promise. This prophecy, this promise has two astounding components to it. The first is that the nation of Judah is not going to be overthrown and destroyed by this League of Nations. A League of Nations, which you understand, represents the aligning of the wicked world with the apostate church. That's what the ten tribes represent at this time, the apostate or false church. As will be the case many times in subsequent history, if one knows their history, the wicked ungodly world joins with that which calls itself church and attempts to destroy the people of God. This was a particular threat for another reason, because as we read, these two nations intended to wipe out the royal line of David and install this man called the son of Tabeel. They wanted to put him on the throne. In other words, they threatened the very fact that the Messiah would come from the royal line of David, if they had their way. I hope you see here, Psalm 2. I hope you see here Psalm 2 being fulfilled right during these times. And so Isaiah prophesies that's not going to happen. In fact, what's going to happen is that These two men are going to be destroyed. In fact, in 70 years, Israel is going to be no more. Syria is going to come under the denomination of Syria itself, Assyria. And the king will continue to reign on the throne. The second promise really comes in the form of a sign. And the sign is, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Now, that prophecy, just on the face of it, that promise teaches, number one, there shall be a child born and it should have been evident to even the king himself, a child born of the royal line who is different than anyone else, a child of wonder, a child of miracle, a miraculous child who will display amazing power and amazing grace of God. Not only that, But if anyone has any sense at all in their head, would see that there's a promise here of a child who is so miraculous that we may see the fulfillment of this promise as the fulfillment of all promises. That when this happens, it is the sum and substance, it is the source, it is the goal, it is the purpose of every other miracle in Scripture. that all other miracles find their fulfillment right then and there. In other words, to put it another way, if one would stagger at other signs, think of all the other signs, and the signs are miracles, stagger at those one will not and cannot believe this one. What makes that so clear is the fact that this miraculous child will indeed be just that because he is born of a virgin. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, which means exactly what it says, which is this child shall not be gotten by an earthly father. In his conception and in his birth, no human male man will be involved at all. He shall be a child that's conceived within the womb of a woman who has had no sexual relations with a man, to put it bluntly. And the importance of this is recognized by all the enemies of the church. This happened in Jesus' own day with the unbelieving Jews. The unbelieving Jews insisted his father was Joseph. He had to be Joseph. There could be no other way. Why was that? They knew this prophecy. They knew it just like they knew the one about him being born in Bethlehem. And that continues today. Understand that. One way the apostate church identifies itself is that it refuses to believe the miracles of the Holy Scriptures. And the greatest miracle of them all is this one. And they consistently say that word virgin can mean a young, unmarried woman. So it simply is saying that there will be a child born of a young unmarried woman. It doesn't say that he'll be born without a man. That's not true. Now, that's demonstrated by an important fact. It is possible that that word used means young unmarried woman. It does have that meaning, but it never means that in the Holy Scripture. In fact, Martin Luther one time is reported to have, because it was disputed in his day, issued a reward of a hundred gold pieces to anyone who could prove that that word was used in Scripture in such a way to mean a young unmarried woman and not actually a virgin. And to date, no one's ever collected that reward. The fact is, the word means exactly what it's intended to mean here, which is, the miracle is that this child shall be born of a woman without the aid or help of a man, without conception the usual, normal way. And that's plain from the fact that this is a sign. This child is a sign. Behold, the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, take look, take notice. A virgin shall conceive. A virgin shall conceive. Now, what's a sign? Well, a sign is an actual historical earthly event that occurs, but one so unusual, so never heard of, so rare, so impossible according to earthly physical laws of physics and science that it just stands out so that you take notice like signs are meant to be. Even in our day, we have signs and they're painted red. They're coated with neon. They have reflective tape so that you take notice And that's not even close to what the biblical idea of a sign is. The idea is that when the walls of the Red Sea go straight up and there's a path of dry ground, that don't happen. That doesn't happen. And so when it happens, one takes notice and realizes there's a sign here. And as we read in the baptism form, that was a sign of baptism. The Belgic Confession calls, did you ever look at that phrase? It calls the Red Sea Christ. Christ is our Red Sea. But you never thought of that before. But that miracle of the whole walls of water, and then the walls crashing down upon the enemy and destroying them, that was a sign back then of Christ. Christ was coming. He was being born. He was working and laboring. He was already in effect then. That a young unmarried woman would have a baby is no sign. That's not unusual. That happens all the time. but that a virgin would conceive has never happened. This is also playing from the New Testament-inspired Word. The New Testament comments on this. To reject this passage in Isaiah 7, verse 14, one has to also reject the New Testament as the Word of God. And what does the New Testament say? Well, when the angel comes to Mary, comes to this young maiden, this virgin, and announces that she will conceive and bear a great son who will be the Christ, she immediately asks, how's that possible? Since I know not a man, And she's told not, oh, well, you're going to know a man. You're going to have sexual relations with your spouse, husband, Joseph. That's how it's going to happen. That's what she's told. She's told the Spirit of God would come upon her so that the holy thing born from her would be the son, not of Joseph, but the son of God. She, a virgin. would conceive and bear a son, which fulfills this very prophecy. That's the Word of God in Matthew. That's the Word of God in Luke. And that's even demonstrated and proven by Joseph's reaction. So there's even further proof. When the man to whom she has engaged finds out she's pregnant, he does what most men would do in a similar situation, figure out, This is not good. And he was going to privily put her away for being unfaithful. He was going to call off the marriage until an angel again stopped him, appears to him in a dream, and tells him, you take her for a wife because that which is conceived in her is not of man, but of the Holy Spirit. Now that's not the only miracle that's being promised here. That all by itself would be astounding. But there's a whole other side to it, which is that the child born of her is God. Now, that could be inferred from the fact that, as we know now, the Father is the Holy Spirit. The Father is God. That's why He's called the Son of God. This is why you can read, this day have I begotten thee. God begets Him. God conceives Him. God brings Him forth. And that means He must be God. We're children of God, but God don't beget us like that. But what's conclusive is when we read His name, Immanuel. Immanuel. I think even the children here know what that name means. It means literally, with us, God. The L is the word God. With us, God. God with us. And that name indicates who and what this child will be. The child is God. As to His person and being, He is God, the infinite, transcendent, glorious God. He bears the name of God. Immanuel simply refers to Him as El or God. But we're later going to find out His name is Jesus, Jehovah God. Jehovah salvation, the I Am. He is the one who possesses all the perfections of God, all the wonder of God, all the holiness and wisdom and power of God, the love of God. He performs the works of God. He does what only God can do. He's due the worship of God. To Him we bow down. We mentioned that before, when the wise men come, partly because of a previous prophecy, when they come, They don't simply bow down to Him as King, but they bow down to Him as God. It's amazing how often that happens in the Scriptures when Christ comes. He reveals God because He is God. But there's more than that. He's God with us. And that has a couple of ideas behind it. The first is that He's God who lives locally with us, who lives in our environment, who's near us, who's one with us in the sense that He's among us, a part of us. It won't be simply God conceived of as God in heaven. but God who's intimately joined with us and lives with us in our own life. That's astounding. God's so great that even the heavens of heavens that can't contain Him, who lives in heaven because He's a heavenly being, He's spirit, invisible, the God unknowable, eternal in the heavens, is going to be so with us that he's going to come out of a virgin's womb, be held in a mother's arms, and be raised and reared. That's how with us. And that word with us also has this idea. He lives with us and is joined to us for our benefit. With us means for us, for our benefit. He will be God who shares in our trouble and our misery, our sorrow. And he doesn't just simply observe it from afar, look at it as a disinterested person, but he enters into it. He will be like us in everything, including temptation. That's the remarkable thing here. That God enters into the life of man so closely that he is with us, joined to us, so that he experiences everything that we experience. That's what's being prophesied here. And you say, how much? Next time you fathers and mothers who go through birth, and next time you mothers are having birth, remember God went through that. God went through the womb and was received on the other end, and had to be cleaned off with a towel, had to have an umbilical cord cut, cried, had to nurse at his mother's breast and then grow up just like any other child. No doubt endured his share of bullying and hatred and ridicule and was teased. That's what it means when it says, God with us. And not only that, but God with us, the idea is permanently. God will become one with us in such a way that He will never, ever be separated from us. Ever. Again. This is what we're going to see when we go later this week to the manger and look. Now about this prophecy, there's another thing, which is the irresistible grace that is found here in this promise and this prophecy. It's a wonderful display of God's power. Everyone, I hopefully, can see that. Obviously, that's the case because it couldn't happen otherwise. This is beyond the understanding of man. This is beyond the human experience. This is beyond what can be done. This can't be done according to the physical laws of nature, according to science, according to anything man can possibly come up with. If it's left up to man, there is no Savior. There is no Messiah. This is God and God's power. God accomplishes it. That's why I started out this morning. When we go to the manger and we look at Christ, it's very important that we not see Him born simply at that moment. One of the things our creeds and one of the things that's brought out in the prophecies we considered is Jesus is his mother's child. He is conceived and born of Mary. That means that seed, the seed that becomes Christ, the seed that grows into a child that was in Mary can be traced all the way back through the millennia through the flood, through all the period before the flood, to Eve. You have to see that in the eyes of God and in the work of God, there's really no difference between Eve and Mary. And we know about things like DNA now. It means that the one who becomes Christ, God governed everything. We sometimes, when we look at a passage like this, and we see how the royal line was threatened, We sometimes can grasp that if the wicked world had had its way, and the apostate church had had its way, Christ could not have come. If they had wiped out the line of David, there's no Mary and Joseph, there is no Christ the King. And we can sense that. Do you understand that Christ is not just a product of David? He doesn't run simply through that line. But everything that God has to bring apart to make Him exactly who He is. He's a descendant of Rahab the harlot. Did you think that when Israel, after it's threatened by Balaam and Balak. And we have that one prophecy. Do you ever connect that to the fact that not long thereafter they go and they march around Jericho and these impregnable walls all just fall down, and there's one piece of wall left, which is the house of Rahab the harlot, who just happened to be the one who took the spies in and hid them. An accident, right? Or do you see God's power God's power through all of it. We're supposed to see that. We're supposed to see that when God says, I will put enmity, and the seed of the woman shall crush the seed of the serpent. That that Word goes out with power, and it accomplishes all this, so that finally, he's born of a virgin. And being born of a virgin is a time when we're supposed to stop and say, well, hold on a minute. There's a lot more here. Do you recognize that power? The power of God to actually conceive and bear a son of a virgin, who is fully God and fully human being, and a particular certain human being. Now, if we don't recognize that, then we can't go on to the next amazing thing, which is to see that this is God's grace. This is the power of God's grace. This is the strength of His grace. We think of grace. We talk about grace, but we don't understand its character. This is what we mean by irresistible grace. There were no amount of Egyptians and no amount of apostate Israel. No amount of Syrians and Assyrians and Babylonians. No amount of men. Not even the whole human race, if it had decided to rise up against God, could have prevented Christ from being born of a virgin. And it's not simply because of the power of God's Word, which is an almighty power, but that's the power of His grace. He spoke those words to Eve in His love. He spoke those words to Adam because of the favor He had for him. And this is how you even have to see Mary. It's amazing how the angel comes and tells her she's highly favored. That means highly graced. That woman found grace in the eyes of God. God loved her from eternity and chose her to give birth to the Messiah. That's an amazing, amazing thing, which highlights now, if we can connect the fact, this isn't the power of an almighty God who can do all kinds of things, make walls fall down and the seas go up. This is the power that God exercises for the church, for the men with whom He is now one. Hopefully we can see that's a particular grace. Hopefully you can see that's not a grace for all men. It's not a grace for Ahaz, even who he's speaking to. It's kind of interesting. Even in the original, that's brought out. When he talks about you in the original, it shows he's not talking to Ahaz, because it's in a plural. He's talking about much more. And there's a reason why God says when you go see him, take Shear-Jeshub with you. Shear-Jeshub means the remnant shall return. The remnant is always code word for the elect. This is God's Messiah for the true seed of the woman, which is Christ and those in Christ. But that's the power of God's grace. The power of God's grace is the power to destroy all their enemies, whether it be Egypt and all of Pharaoh's mighty hosts in the bottom of the Red Sea, under this Messiah, or it's gonna be all the hosts of sin and iniquity. And it's irresistible. It cannot be stopped. Again, the idea of a birth is so apt here. There's so much here. One thing we need to see is, look what's highlighted here. If this is traced back to the mother promise, it's the mother promise not simply because it's the thing which begets them all. That's what our fathers meant. But it's a promise about the woman. Where's the man? Where's the man? God is indicating already there. He's going to save his people without the help of man. Adam, you sit by the sidelines. You're not needed. You're not needed. You're not wanted. I will work this through the woman. And then notice the woman. You women, when you read the Apostle Paul and he says, it's the woman who sinned and was in the transgression, don't forget that. You bristle at that a little bit. Okay, understandable. But Eve is the one who sinned and notice the promise comes to her. And then notice the Savior's born. Where's the man? It's just Mary. Look at the high place that God's grace accords to women. So we see here once again how grace works. God chooses the lowly. God chooses the poor. God chooses those things that seem to be nothing in everyone's eyes. That's Mary. That's who Mary represents. And then God works that grace as a birth. Can you stop a birth once it starts? Can you stop the labor pains from increasing and growing, and then think of all the sorrow and everything involved with it? And there it is. That's how the Messiah comes into the world. There's so much here in this sign. And that's what we're going to look at next, the fact that it's a sign. And it's a sign for two reasons. Number one, it's a sign to Ahaz. It is a sign of warning to Ahaz. This is so clear, such an amazing display of God's grace and His mercy, that he becomes absolutely inexcusable for refusing to receive that sign. That's why he didn't want to ask for one. He puts on an air of piety, but God calls him out on it. God calls him out on it, and then goes on and says, I'm going to give you a sign anyway. I will give a sign. There again, there's the power of God's grace. This child is mine. I will see to it that he's born. He is me. And so I shall give you a sign. And Ahaz, unbelieving world, false church that rejects this sign, does so to its own hurt and sorrow, its own destruction. And that happens and continues to happen. But mainly it's a sign, of course, to God's people. A sign for faith. It's a promise. And faith receives the promise. It's a sign. And faith receives the sign. And faith looks at it and says, it doesn't matter how dark it seems. It doesn't matter whether reason and Pekah are aligned against me. It doesn't matter the victories they might have. God will save me. God will save me through His Messiah. God will make sure that all things work out for my good and for my benefit. And how do I know that? Well, look at the sign. Does that sign have anything to do with you whatsoever? Does man have anything to do with the coming of that sign, the producing of that sign, the conception and birth of that child? No. It's entirely dependent upon God's love and God's grace and his favor. And it's all focused upon Christ, born of that Virgin Mary. And so the sign screams out and says to us, believe. Believe in him for all your salvation. Amen, let us pray. Father which art in heaven, O Lord, we thank Thee for Thy Son, Thy Son born of a virgin. And we celebrate and we give praise to Thee for Thy grace and the irresistible power of Thy grace and Thy love for Thy people. Give us faith, O Lord, to believe in Him and only in Him. In Jesus' name, amen.