Pay attention to the very Word of God. Moreover, the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord. Then he said, Here now, O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Curds and honey he shall eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings. May God add his blessing to the reading and the hearing of his perfect word. We read this passage in Isaiah 714, and here we're given the sign that there is an evil king, this evil king Ahaz, and Ahaz is bad to the bone. I mean, he is bad. He's the king that set up Baal and offered children. Baal was a big brass statue of a demon, of like a wolf head and stuff. and it had a hole in its belly and they would put firewood in this belly and they would heat it up and the bronze would become blazing hot. And then in order to worship their God, their God who is a God of death and alive from the beginning, they would take their children and they would put them on the arms and they would hear the sizzle of the flesh and the screams of the children. And it even became horrifying to these evil people so much so that they would surround Baal with drums, like kettle drums, and they would bang them and bang them and bang them so that the cries and the screams could be drowned out. But here, King Ahaz is facing God. He's in opposition to God. God has told him to look for a sign and he refuses to look for a sign because, you see, there are people in this world who do not want to believe in Jesus. They want their own way. They want their own heart, their own heart is, as Calvin says, it's a perpetual idol factory. Well, Ahaz's heart was a perpetual idol factory, but he was dealing with God and God is not going to lose this fight. And here we have the passages of Scripture that actually stand at the crossroads of the promise of covenant history, the messianic promise about Jesus Christ and the triumph of Christ's kingdom. Jesus did not come to lose, he came to win. And this is what Isaiah 7, 14 through 16 is about. And these verses are often remembered as the prophecy of the virgin birth, and rightly so, because that's what it is. But they're also the promise, the prophecy of God's promise of definite victory of Christ. And I want you to think about it, that that includes you. You're in that victory. This is the prophecy of the perpetuation of God's covenant people. And I want you to understand that that is you, that you are the true Jews. You are true Jews because you are by faith, children of Abraham. Not by blood, but by faith, children of Abraham in his faith. And you, here we find the victory in history of the kingdom of God. But this passage is not only the promise of a child, it is the promise of a kingdom ruled by God. It's not only a prophecy of a birth in Bethlehem, which it was, but it's the promise of God's dominion over the whole earth, in fact, over the whole universe. And we're going to learn in other places that this victory and this knowledge of this God is going to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. So the sign of Emmanuel is the sign of Christ's coming. It's the sign of, and the word coming means advent, so it's the sign of Christ's advent. And not just to come and be here, but to come and to accomplish victory, victory over all, victory over sin, victory over death, victory over the devil, victory over rebellious hearts, victory over everything that is in opposition to him. And this verse, Isaiah 714 is the cornerstone of Advent and it's actually the foundation of the gospel of our salvation. So what is the sign? The sign of God's remedy to our plight is the virgin-born king, verse 14. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. But we think, wait a minute, people doubt that. I mean, how can a virgin have a baby? There's absolutely no scientific way. All the scientists in the world together can't make a virgin have a baby. It's contrary to biology, and therefore, it must mean something else, or it must somehow not mean what it's actually saying here. It must not mean a woman who has not been with a man, it must mean something else. And the skeptics and the liberal theologians, they're full of, they're full of this kind of stuff. So are we sure that the one that is to give birth, was giving birth as a virgin, and that this is God's plan. Well, first of all, we know that the whole idea is a supernatural idea, and it was considered supernatural when it happened. A virgin conceiving? Can you imagine the mother Mary going to her daddy, or before she was the mother Mary, but she was the pregnant woman Mary, going to her daddy and saying, Got news for you some angels came to me and they talked to me in the middle of the night and they Announced to me that I'm going to be the one who delivers the promise of Isaiah 714 to the world and daddy. I promise you I have not been a fornicator I have not fornicated What do you think her daddy's gonna say Well, see, here's the great thing, is that when God sets a plan in motion and puts the details in motion, I absolutely am certain that God had not only, as we know, Joseph believed her story, But her family would believe her story. And others, like me, believe her story. And another detail that God took care of was, instead of Israel and Bethlehem being under Jewish rule, where Mary, being pregnant without being married, would have been put to death, Bethlehem was under Roman rule and therefore the Jews were not allowed to carry out their own law to put her to death. So God is working his purpose out in the affairs of men to have his way. It's really exciting to think that you're sitting in the seat right here today because God in eternity past decided that you would be there in that seat listening to these words. Good or bad these words are but that you'd be here that you'd be with these people That you'd be here in order to worship him because in his he is working He is weaving this tapestry of life for all of us all of us We are all threads in that tapestry and we all have our place and we all fit where he wants us to fit And he is the weaver. We are not the weavers even if we audaciously think that we are even if we audaciously think we are So, this word in the Hebrew is the word almah for virgin. And it's true, the liberals will point this out, that it's true that it can mean young woman, but it usually means virgin or a young woman of marriable age or virgin. But Matthew 123 settles the issue for all time. Behold the virgin, and in the Greek we go from Hebrew to Greek, we go from Alma to Parthonesis. You heard of the Parthenon, the temple to the virgin? It's where the word, it's the same use of the word. Behold the virgin shall be with child. This is no ordinary birth. Only God can make this happen. Only God can rule and only God can overrule. God can overrule nature. He can overrule the way things normally are. And here, I mean, we think about God could calm a storm. Who else could calm a storm and make it peace be still? Who else could take a piece of bread and turn it into you know, could feed 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread. Only God. Then we also have Luke 1 27 where Mary explicitly was called a virgin, a parthenosos, a virgin, engaged to a man whose name was Joseph. In Luke 134, Mary confirms her virginity by responding to God's angels who, when they told her she was pregnant, she says, but how can this be? Because I do not know a man. And then we have the strongest, the absolute strongest testimony in scripture to the virgin birth. In Luke 135, Gabriel explains the mechanism where he says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. Therefore also, that holy one who is to be born will be called the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is the father of the one who made Mary pregnant in her womb. So we've got to admit, all of us, that this is a big deal. And we've got to admit that we're either the dumbest people in the world, the stupidest people in the world, we're the most gullible people in the world, to believe something like this unless, unless it's actually true. You're a bunch of fools, unless this is true. But we know we're not fools because this is God, God who said this. And going further with this point, the child is divine. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Now, the name Emmanuel is not just a call sign. It's not just where, you know, Jerry's got a name and I call Jerry and that's his name and there he is. It's not just a call sign to get somebody's attention. His name is a declaration of God's truth. His name is a theological statement. It's a theological term. And when we break this word down into its components, we learn something very special. When we see the word Emmanuel, it's transliterated in your Bibles, and we say it in its translated form. In English, we read from left to right. The Jewish read from right to left. And we see this four-syllable word, and we can see it more precisely because on the right, to you it looks like it's at the end, but on the right, you're actually reading the root the root of this word, which is El. What does Emanu-El? It's a compound word. What does El mean? God. It means God. God in person. God in power. It means God. And when we add the prefixes to El, we get the with us is God, Emmanuel. With us is, that's the prefixes, and then God. So this person born as a human is also God, and he is rightly named with us is God. And I say, look over there, there's with us is God, he's talking to the rabbis. And look over there, there's with us is God, teaching the Bible. I'm gonna go over and listen to what God says about the Bible. It can't get better than that, can't get more accurate than that. So Emmanuel is God Himself in person in all of His greatness and all of His power, all of His attributes, and He has come to be with us God, or as we would say, God with us. And it's essential to Him being able to save us that He is man, but it's also essential for Him being to save us that He is God. I think you probably remember a while ago you read from the Heidelberg Catechism and we drew these truths. Can another creature, any at all, pay this debt? Remember, Jesus is not a creature. He is God who took on flesh. No creature at all can pay this debt. To begin with, God will not punish another creature for what a human is guilty of. So Jesus had to take on the human flesh in order to pay the price that we would have to pay. What kind of mediator deliverer then should we look for? We should look for the mediator and deliverer who is truly human and truly righteous, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also truly God, that truly God with us. Why must he be truly human and truly righteous? The mediator must be truly human and truly divine because God's justice demands that human nature, which has sinned, must pay for the sin. But a sinner is disqualified and unable to meet God's standard of perfection, and therefore can never pay the infinite debt for others. And then, why must he also be true God? Our mediator must be truly God, that by the power of His divinity, by the power of His divinity, He might bear the weight of God's punishment in His humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life. No one has ever been God and man at the same time. No one but Jesus is divinity and humanity at the same time, and it is essential for him to save us that he be this person of God and man. So how essential is it, this third part? So he's man, he's God, and he's man, he's taken on flesh. But what about this thing that we probably skip over sometimes? What about him being with us? Well, the very heart of the biblical name Emmanuel, Emmanuel is with us, is that he is with us, that he is present, that God exists, that God saves, but he does this by coming to be with his people in covenant fellowship and for salvation, that he might pay the price as our substitute. 1 Peter 3, 18, for Christ also has once suffered for sins. They're just for the unjust that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. So this phrase, with us, is not optional or ornamental in this word. It is a theological essential of this prophecy. Without Him being with us, the name Emmanuel collapses into something that's different than the gospel. It collapses into a false gospel. It is no longer able to be part of redemptive history. Because, you see, from Eden to the incarnation to the judgment to the new creation, all of this hinges on God being with his people. Adam and Eve was the essence of paradise in Genesis 1 through 3. In Genesis 3, their exile was the loss of that fellowship. all nature now groans, longing for God's presence to be restored, restoration to full fellowship. So the promise of Emmanuel is more than a future Messiah, somebody who would just come and capture us and take us off to heaven when we die. It's much more than that. It's actually Him coming and removing all of the barriers so that He could be with us and we could be with Him, we could be in His presence. The presence of God is the covenant promise. Listen to 2 Corinthians 6, 16. For you are the temple of the living God. Isn't that just magnificent? To think that you can be, and if you're a believer, you are the temple of the living God. For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, this is not man saying this, this is God saying this, I will dwell in them. I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people." In essence, he's saying, I will be their owner, I will be their possessor, and I have adopted them so that I can take care of them and I can be in fellowship with them. And Paul didn't just come up with this on his own idea, but Paul, he actually learned this somewhere else. He learned this in the book of Leviticus. In the book of Leviticus 26, it says, I will set my tabernacle among you. What is a tabernacle? It's a place of dwelling, a place where you live. And my soul shall not abhor you. Think about that. Normally, God would have to hate us. He would have to abhor us because of our sin. In fact, in Psalm chapter five, God says that my soul loathes the wicked. Do you know anybody in this world that loathes you? I do. I know somebody that loathes me. They wouldn't spit on me if I were on fire. They loathe me. And you know what? That matters to me. But it doesn't matter nearly as much as if I thought that God had said that He loathes me. This man loathes me and I'm not in trouble. What can man do to me? But if God loathed me, I'm in trouble. I'm in the deepest trouble. I'm in the darkest trouble. I'm in a trouble that I cannot get myself out of. In fact, this is so interesting is because God, the one who says, I loathe the wicked, and then on the other hand, he says, and you're wicked. You're wicked, Jerry, you're wicked. You're wicked, Carl, you're wicked, Joanne. Mike is wicked too. And yet, I'm going to do something that's going to turn that loathing into love. I'm going to turn that loathing into a blessing. I'm going to do something for myself to satisfy my own justice that you can't do yourself and that you don't even want to do until I make you want it. "'cause you're dead in your trespasses and sins. "'You can't want it, you can't do it, "'you can't accomplish it, but I can,' God says. "'And even though I want you to know how bad "'and how low you are, "'because with how dark things are this way, I'm going to show you the light of Jesus. I'm going to show you the light of truth. I'm going to show you the light of reality with me. And it's going to transform your entire eternity. that isn't from being loathed to being loved. That's what is going on here. So the name Immanuel is God declaring that He's going to do away with all of the things that ended the fellowship with Adam, the first Adam, in Eden through the second Adam that we read about in Romans chapter 5. So with us is a covenantal promise, and reduced to its basic form, it announces that God has not abandoned His people, in fact, He's come for His people, that God is working in human history, and that God Himself will be the guarantee of His own promises, and God Himself will solve His own problem with having to be separated from us. So with us, becomes literally the incarnation. Isaiah 7, 14, they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us, which is also Matthew 1, 23. So I want you to be glad not only that God is for us and that God is above us, but that God is with us. John 1, 14. Let me cite John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So, Scripture's identifying the Word with God. And in John 1.14, it says, And the Word, God, became flesh, Jesus, and dwelt among us, that's His presence, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And why did God do this? He did this because that's His way of victory. That's His way of salvation for all who will believe in Him and trust Him alone for their salvation. You can't trust Him and you can't trust a little of you and a lot of Him or a little of Him and a lot of you. Any of you messes the whole thing up. You pollute the entire thing. That's the result. And without us, without the with us, there is no true mediation. There's no substitution, and there is no atonement. A Christ who is not with us is a Christ who cannot save us. In fact, in 296, Athanasius said, what he has not assumed, he has not healed. And if he is not with us, in the same flesh, we are still without Him and in our sins. It's just essential. It's just essential. And we think, do we want to trade this Bible religion and this old-time religion for this snooty, I'm-wiser-than-God religion? I don't. I know this is, these are amazing things that we're called to believe. I mean, the very fact that you're called to believe that God is going to cause you to live forever. You have a soul that cannot die. You have a soul that cannot die because God says it cannot die. He created your soul so that it cannot die. And you're going to live forever. Isn't that astounding? Forever? When I sing Amazing Grace in the week to the last stanza, when we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as it, I don't sing 10,000 years, I sing 10 trillion years, and that's not enough. Why do I sing 10 trillion years? Because now I can think of a bigger number. That's a big number, 10 trillion. But 10 trillion is not even enough, but it's as far as I can get in rhyme with the hymn. We need to be thinking how magnificent these promises are, but we need to think even more how magnificent is this God who can make these promises and make these declarations and actually accomplish them in reality, in time and space, and in our presence. He's great. He's magnificent. I love the old time religion, not because it's old. I love the old time religion because it's true, because it's true, because it's real, because that's what Jesus has said. Well, in fact, this God with us is the beginning of the gospel, Matthew 1, 23, and it's also the end of the gospel. I am with you always. Matthew 28 20. Well, with us is essential because God's salvation is both legal and relational. And I think this is magnificent. Biblical theology affirms that you need a legal forgiveness. You need a judicial forgiveness. You need justice. But you can't meet justice for yourself, so Jesus came and met justice for you. He paid the penalty. He met justice. He is the one who accomplished this for you. Christ stands with us as our representative head and he stands in our place. But it's also relational. Christ brings us to God and us, he brings God to us and us to God. So the ultimate goal of redemption is stated in Revelation 21.3. Listen to this. Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them. So notice, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people." Amazing. He's with us. And if Jesus is not with us, even for a moment, then we perish. If Christ is not with us in obedience, then we have no righteousness, Romans 519. If Christ is not with us in death, we have no atonement. Hebrews 2.14, if Christ is not with us in resurrection, then we have no life. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 22. If Christ is not with us in our intercession when we're praying, then we are not heard by the Father. Hebrews 7, 25. If Christ is not with us by His Spirit, then we have no truth and therefore we cannot grow in the truth, sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. John 17, 17 and Romans 8, 9 through 11. So every part of our lives, every part of salvation from beginning to end depends on the fact that Emmanuel is God with us. God with us. So how essential is it that God is with us? Absolute. It's absolute. So we cannot just dismiss any of these statements and any of these truths because they all hang or fall together. God sent His Son into the world to save sinners like us, and He saved sinners like us, His way for His glory forever. Amen? Amen. In your bulletin,