Please remain standing for our New Testament lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, beginning in verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. While he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated God with us. Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. You may be seated as we turn to our Old Testament lesson, which is lengthier than that of the New Testament. We find the very passage that Matthew quotes. I fear, however, that all too often we read Isaiah 7.14 in a kind of splendid isolation. And it's helpful to see that it comes in the flow of a chapter and beyond. We will read Isaiah 7 through Isaiah 8, verse 10. These are the words of the Lord. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezan, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramalia, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told to the house of David, saying, Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim. So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind. And the Lord said to Isaiah, go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Sher Jashub, your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway of the fuller's field. And say to him, take heed and be quiet. Do not fear or be fainthearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of resin in Syria and the son of Remilia, because Syria, Ephraim and the son of Remilia, have plotted evil against you, saying, let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its walls for ourselves, and set a king over them, the son of Tebel. Thus says the Lord God. It shall not stand. Nor shall it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezem. Within 65 years, Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remilia's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. 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's. Then he said, hear 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 Immanuel, curds and honey he shall 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 you dread will be forsaken by both her kings. The Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. They will come, and all of them will rest in the desolate valleys and in the clefts of the rocks, and on all thorns, and in all pastures. In the same day, the Lord will shave with a hired razor, with those from beyond the river, with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the legs, and will also remove the beard. It shall be in that day that a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep. So it shall be from the abundance of milk they give that he will eat curds. For curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land. It shall happen in that day that wherever there could be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver, it will be for briars and thorns. With arrows and bows, men will come there, because all the land will become briars and thorns. And to any hill which could be dug with a hoe, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns, but it will become a range for oxen and a place for sheep to roam. Moreover, the Lord said to me, take a large scroll and write on it with a man's pen concerning Macher, Shalal, Hashbaz. And I will take for myself faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeroboam, then I went to the prophetess and she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said to me, call his name Maher Shalal Hashbaz, for before the child shall have knowledge to cry, my father and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria. May the Lord bless the reading and proclamation of his word. Amen. As I said before, a number of you were not here last year when we began this series, so I want to begin with a refresher and review from last December. The reason that I'm continuing this series on texts used in Handel's Messiah has to do in part with the relationship between George Friedrich Handel and John Newton. Now, you might wonder what a German Baroque composer has to do with an English slave ship captain turned pastor. First, let's talk about Handel. Whether it's on the radio or on iTunes, many of you are listening to Handel's Messiah this time of the year. Well, Handel had a friend named Charles Jennings who wrote a libretto and asked Handel to set it to music. Jennings was an English landowner and patron of the arts. He was also a devout Anglican who saw his work as a challenge to deism. The view that God is merely an impersonal clockmaker who winds up the world and lets it go. absentee landlords. Many deists in Jennings' day denied the deity of Jesus Christ. And this devout Anglican man, Charles Jennings, wanted to emphasize in his libretto the reality of fulfilled prophecy, divine intervention in history, and the incarnation of the Son of God. He drew primarily from the authorized or King James version of the Bible, as well as the Psalms found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, with one exception, Psalm 2-9, which comes from the King James Bible. If you go to Handel's Messiah, there are 81 verses. from 14 different books of the Bible. 21 verses from Isaiah, 15 from the Psalms, 10 from 1 Corinthians, 7 from Revelation, 6 from Luke, 5 from Romans, 4 from Matthew, 3 from Malachi, 2 from Haggai, 2 from Job, 2 from Zechariah, 2 from Hebrews, and 1 from Lamentations, and then 1 from 1 John. That's a lot of biblical material. There's three sections broadly to Handel's Messiah. The first is about the prophecy of the birth of Christ, then his sacrifice, and finally his resurrection. You might not realize this, but Handel did not write the music for this libretto with Christmas in mind. He actually wrote it with Easter in mind, April, 1742 in Dublin, but historically, it's become indelibly associated with Christmas. Handel composed the music for Messiah in 24 days of frenetic activity. I don't know a lot about Handel's faith. He appears to have been a devout Lutheran, but it's said that while he was writing the Hallelujah Chorus, which we'll eventually get to, one of Handel's servants discovered him with tears in his eyes. Later, he is said to have claimed, I did think, I did see all heaven before me. and the great God himself seated on his throne with his company of angels. So think about that perspective the next time you listen to the Hallelujah Chorus. Like Bach, another Lutheran, Handel wrote SDG at the end, soli deo gloria, to the glory of God alone. Now, what does that have to do with John Newton? Well, over 40 years after the debut of Handel's Messiah in the year 1785, there were several performances scheduled in London. And John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace, was pastoring in London at the time. And although he appreciated Handel's work, he was worried that a lot of his people were going to go to these performances just to hear the music. without really listening to the biblical, scriptural words. To quote T.S. Eliot, he was worried they would have the experience but miss the meaning. Isn't that always a danger, to have the experience of worship but miss the meaning of the gospel? In response, Newton preached a sermon series on the texts used in Handel's Messiah. He did 50 sermons in all. And so with his venerable precedent in mind, last year we started working our way through these texts. And tonight we pick up where we left off for a couple of reasons. So that like Newton, when you hear the music, you don't miss the words. And then second, because I think it will help us frame our thoughts to celebrate the incarnation of Jesus in the month of December. The first seven movements of the Messiah primarily involved texts from Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3, with a little bit of Haggai 2. The eighth movement, which is where we are tonight, is a recitative confluence of two verses, Isaiah 7.14 and Matthew 1.23. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel, God with us. While keeping in mind the larger context of Isaiah 7 and 8, our goal tonight is to consider the miracle of the virgin birth and really the miracle of the virgin conception in addition to the mystery of the incarnation. This sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive. Isaiah refers to this as a sign. So we'll look at this in three parts. The sign, its fulfillment, and its significance. First, the sign. I had us read the earlier part to get the flow of the narrative because what's going on in the dust and blood of Palestine in real time history is that Syria and Israel had come together to form a political military alliance to attack Judah, probably to set up a puppet king in the place of Ahaz. And King Ahaz was understandably shaken He was shaken, as the text says, like trees of the woods are moved with the wind. And he was tempted to look to the rising power of Assyria for help. He's got Syria in the north, allied with Israel in the north, coming down to attack him, and he thinks, maybe I could get help from Assyria. And in this tense, Context, Isaiah with his son, Sher Jashub, whose name means a remnant shall return, comes with a message to the king as he overlooks the aqueducts, a comforting and challenging message. His message really can be boiled down to this, O king, don't be afraid because there's nothing to be afraid of. Don't be afraid because there's nothing to be afraid of. Syria and Israel are two stubs of smoking firebrands. Their campaign will come to nothing. He mentions a timeframe of 65 years and then Ephraim is going to be totally wiped off the face of the map. And in this message, there is an emphasis on faith. A message to be believed. If you look at verses 7 to 9, it says, Thus says the Lord God, it shall not stand, nor shall it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus, the head of Damascus is Rezan. Within 65 years, Ephraim will be broken, so that it will not be a people. The head of Ephraim is Samaria, the head of Samaria is Remilia's son. And here's the money phrase, if you will not believe. Surely you shall not be established. Verse nine is a backdoor call to faith. The flip side is also true. King Ahaz, if you believe, you will surely be established. So trust me. Trust the Lord. Trust his words. Don't trust in Assyria. Don't trust in a foreign prince. Rather trust in the Lord of hosts, in God himself. And that's the drama of the passage. With Israel and Syria at the gates of the southern kingdom of Judah, is King Ahaz going to trust in princes, or is he going to trust in the Lord? Is he going to run to Assyria and call him father as his suzerain, or is he going to call God his father as his true suzerain? Well, knowing Ahaz's weaknesses and doubts, he is shaken with the wind, Isaiah sought to authenticate his message with a sign. In the Bible, signs are attached, appended to the word to confirm, to authenticate the message. You can think of a royal document, and then the king takes out his wax, and then a seal with a signet ring, a stamp of approval, this is surely a word from my court. And we find that in verses 10 through 11. 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. Ask me. Ask me for a sign, and I'll give it to you. And how did Ahaz respond? Well, with false piety, Ahaz did not take God up on his offer. I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord. It sounds so pious. Far be it from me to test the Lord. Far be it from me to ask for a sign. But it's actually false piety. It's an expression of unbelief. God had told him to do this. God had demanded him to do this. He'd invited him to do this, and God doesn't play games with us, and yet Ahaz, in unbelief, refuses to ask. And yet the Lord, rich in mercy and patience, was not finished with Ahaz. If Ahaz would not ask for a sign, then God himself would give him one. If Israel will not be a light to the nations, then God will send his son to be the light of the world. God himself will give a sign. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Curds and honey he shall 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 you dread will be forsaken by both her kings. Now we often stop with verse 14, but there's more to the sign. There's more to the story. I want you to know just a few details about this sign. of confirmation, of authentication from God. Consider the mother. The text says, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. This is the Hebrew word nyalma, which can refer to a literal virgin or simply to a young maiden. In the Septuagint translation of this text, the Greek word is parthenos, which you might be familiar with because of the Parthenon, a temple to the virgin Athena. Well, that's the word. Again, can either mean a literal virgin or merely a young maiden. Consider the male child, a son whose name, Emmanuel, means God with us. Somehow, part of this sign is that the transcendent God of heaven is going to be present in this child, God with us. Now, how does the birth of this child relate to Ahaz's problem? Again, this sign doesn't just drop out of heaven. It's in a very specific historical context. Israel and Syria are at the gates, and Ahaz needs a sign to push him towards faith. The key is found in verse 15, which we just read, that before certain maturity markers are reached, Ahaz's enemies will be defeated. This child who's going to be born is going to reach a certain stage of development physically, an ability to eat certain food products, curds and honey, uncultivated foods of the land. And this is linked to a growing moral discernment that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Here we have, again, two sets of maturity markers, one physical, one moral. I'm reminded once again that grace is not against nature. Grace perfects nature. These go together. At least the NIV study notes suggest 12 or 13 as the age of moral determination and responsibility under the law. I'm not exactly sure what age, but some sort of age of physical maturity linked to a growing moral discernment. By the time this child reaches this point, your two enemies be wiped off the face of the map. But I think the language is even more than that. This language of refusing the evil and choosing the good is theologically freighted, it's loaded. It really goes all the way back to the garden, talked about this morning. the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Throughout the Bible, the knowledge of good and evil is associated with angelic knowledge and kingly judgment. King David is said to be one who judges and rules with the knowledge of good and evil. When a king knows the difference between good and evil, he can pass judgments. He can rule with wisdom. Before this child reaches a certain stage of development, Syria and Israel will no longer be a threat. But that's not the end of the sign. There's not only a promise, there's also a warning. Verse 17, the Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father's house, days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah. And note the sad irony. The power that Ahaz is tempted to appeal to is Assyria, the very empire that God has prophesied is going to come and attack him and overthrow him in due season. And so it ends on a bleak note, but if you read the broader context, there's still a glimmer of hope. The language of curds and honey spoken of in the sign pops up again as a token of the remnant who will be preserved in verses 21 to 22. It shall be in that day that a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep. So it shall be from the abundance of milk they give that he will eat curds. For curds and honey, everyone will eat who is left in the land. That's the sign. The sign is a virgin or a young maiden is going to give birth to a child, name Immanuel, God with us, and before he reaches a certain age or perhaps before he exceeds to the throne, your enemies are going to be wiped out. Nevertheless, Assyria is still going to come and take you out, but a remnant will be preserved. All of that is tied into this sign of the virgin conceiving. That leads us, second of all, to the fulfillments. This sign, as all of God's words do, surely comes to pass one way or another. Now, at this point, some expositors call this a double or dual fulfillment prophecy. One prophecy with near and distant horizons. A kind of telescoping effect where there is an immediate fulfillment that then prefigures a longer term fulfillment. Another way to think about Isaiah 7 is it's a kind of typological pattern of a mother giving birth to a special child and then that pattern has multiple iterations throughout history culminating in Jesus Christ. It is fulfilled. It is filled full with meaning and significance. First of all, note the near or partial fulfillment of this prophecy. Again, if this is going to have significance for Ahaz, something needs to happen in his lifetime for it to have any significance for him, at least in the short term. He's waiting for a child to be born who's gonna reach a certain age of maturity, and before that happens, his enemies are gonna be dealt with. Well, look at the text. I will say that some theologians point to Hezekiah and his reign as a kind of partial fulfillment of this text, and there is something there, but in the immediate context, there is remarkable parallels. Look at Isaiah chapter eight. Verses three to four. Again, right after the sign is given. Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, call his name Maher Shalal Hashbaz, for before the child shall have knowledge to cry my father and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria. Note the parallels. He goes in to the prophetess, she conceives, she bears a son. The son is given a name. Before he knows to cry mother or father, Damascus, Samaria are taken away. Remarkable parallels. The name Maher Shalal Hashbaz means speed the spoil, hasten the booty. It has to do with the plunders of war. And clearly, this birth by Isaiah's wife confirmed the word of the Lord to Ahaz in his own lifetime. Sadly, Ahaz did not heed the words of the prophet, the trust in the Lord. We know historically from Kings and Chronicles that instead of trusting in the Lord, even with this sign of a son who's been born, He turned away from the Lord and turned his sights to Tiglath-Pileser III, the emperor of the Assyrian Empire, and he rejected God's sign and brought judgment upon Judah. And all of that hangs together. And we often don't talk about the immediate, partial, near-fulfillment of this prophecy just within one more chapter of the verse. But even within this chapter, There are textual clues that this sign goes far beyond the timeframe of Ahaz or Hezekiah or Meher, Shelal, Hashbaz. It explodes the Old Testament time horizon. It prefigures another birth to come. And this is evident because this child, spoken of in chapter 8, is not named Emmanuel. Also, The mother is said to be a nyalma, a parthenos. And if this refers to an actual virgin, then that would not apply to Isaiah's wife. She clearly was not. There are indications that though this is a partial, near fulfillment, it actually goes beyond to a distant, complete fulfillment. E.J. Young, the masterful commentator on Isaiah, says this, that there's not only a formal relationship between the two prophecies of Isaiah's son and Mary's son, but an even deeper relationship. Men could verify the prophecy concerning Isaiah's son. They could witness its fulfillments. It would thus become, as it were, a pledge or earnest of the prophecy of the virgin's son. There's a relationship that with the birth of Maher Shalal Hashbaz, it's like an earnest, it's a pledge, it's a first fruits, it's a first installment of things to come. It's a preview. It's the trailer of a much greater film. It's a foretaste of a much greater reality. a truly supernatural sign of even greater confirmation for an even greater deliverance, pointing ahead not merely to a deliverance from political and military foes, but a deliverance from sin, from Satan, from hell, from death itself. And that's why in the fullness of time, Matthew chapter one, the first gospel account reads this way. So all this was done that it might be fulfilled, filled full to the brim, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated, God with us. Matthew loves fulfillment formula. He uses that language over and over again throughout his gospel, so all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets. One commentator says this, it is as though Matthew is producing an annotated study Bible. providing notes and references that will give the uninitiated reader enough information to perform the necessary act of scriptural interpretation, a kind of training manual for prophets. He's teaching us how to read the Old Testament. He's telling us that back in Isaiah 7 and 8, this prophecy of a son, it did not terminate on the prophetess's seed, on Isaiah's child. No, Isaiah's child was meant to point us beyond to a messianic child, to the seed of the woman. In Luke's account, it's very clear that this Mary, who bears the Christ child, is indeed a true nyalma, a true parthenos, a true virgin. Then Mary said to the angel, how can this be, since I do not know a man? And the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you, therefore also, but the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. I love how one commentator describes this passage. He says, in the delicacy and sobriety of the Bible story, no unnecessary details are given. Thus the fact and the moment of the conception itself are not narrated. The veil over the miraculous is not lifted. Unlike the prophetess, the wife of Isaiah, Mary was an actual virgin. She had not known a man. Joseph did not know her until after the Christ child was born. Unlike Hezekiah or Meher, Shalal, Hashbaz, Jesus is truly, fully God with us. Not just in promissory form, but in reality, the incarnate Son of God, the Word made flesh. He is the yes and the amen to all of God's promises and all of God's prophecies, including Isaiah 7.14. We've seen the sign. We've seen the two-stage fulfillment of the prophecy. Let's close by talking a little bit about the significance of this fact, the significance. The significance of this passage is that it points us to the miracle of the virgin conception and the mystery of the incarnation. The miracle and the mystery not only authenticate the word of God, but they are part and parcel of the gospel. If you remove the virgin birth, if you remove the incarnation, you lose the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, some people try to look for examples of parthenogenesis in nature or mythology and then try to reduce this story simply to that. They look at plants and invertebrate organisms or zebra shark and try to make a parallel with some kind of... Freak of nature, but congregation, clearly what's being recorded here is not a freak of nature. Others, in terms of the history comparison of different religions, go to mythology and look at Hera, who produced Hephaestus, or Vulcan. They look at Zeus in mythology, who produced Heracles. But according to the Bible, this is not a made-up story. It's not a freak of nature. It's not a made-up story. What this is, is a doctrinal truth. and an historical fact. It's the miracle of the virgin conception, the mystery of the incarnation. I've quoted this recently. I'm going to quote it again from J. Gresham Machen. These two elements are always combined in the Christian message. The narration of the facts is history. The narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. And that's what we have here, both the history and the doctrine of the virgin conception and the incarnation. And this is significant for us today because we are battling uphill against enlightenment skepticism and rationalism of people who deny the supernatural in principle. According to Machen, naturalism may be defined as the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature in connection with the origin of Christianity. The denial of any entrance of the creative power of God, where in principle, they are not willing to acknowledge even the possibility that this occurred. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, It's not really a problem with this or that miracle, but with the miraculous as a category. Is the miraculous possible at all? Because if one miraculous thing happened, if a man walked on water, if an ax head floated, if five loaves and two fishes fed 5,000, if a prophet raised a widow's son from the dead, if a virgin conceived and bore a son, If one miraculous thing happened, then any miracle could happen in principle. What's really going on is that liberals refuse to allow for any sort of supernatural intervention in the world. Their worldview cancels out such interpretations. You'll often hear people say that facts are stubborn things, and they are, but you also have to interpret facts. And when unbelieving scientists look at nature, They read it through the grid of evolutionary science. When they look at accounts of the virgin birth, they read it through the grid of anti-supernatural bias and prejudice. And congregation, this is nothing new. Charles Jennings, living. centuries ago was battling a deistic skepticism about the miracle of the incarnation in his own day, in his own generation. And that's the same thing that we're facing right now. And his response was sort of like a libretto For George Friedrich Handel, including the words of Isaiah 714, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel, God with us. That's the whole point. If God exists, then of course the supernatural is possible. And as our confession says, God in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free. to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure. Such is the case with the miracle of the virgin conception and the mystery of the incarnation. And I really only have one application to hit home tonight. And it's the application that is stressed in this passage, in the original context. And it is the same for Ahaz as it was for Jesus' contemporaries, so it is for you. This sign is a call to faith. If you reject this sign, if you reject the virgin conception slash virgin birth, if you reject the incarnation of the Son of God, then you will be rejected and come into judgment. Verse nine still holds true. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. I set before you death. I set before you warning. But I also set before you life. and promise because the flip side is also true. If by faith you embrace this sign, if you receive and rest upon Jesus Christ alone as he's offered to you in the gospel, then you will be saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Look unto him, all ye the ends of the earth. Call upon the Lord. Call upon the Lord while he is near. Call upon the Lord while it is day. This is the acceptable year of the Lord's. Call upon him now before it is too late. Don't trust in Assyria. And I tell you, there's gonna be temptations to look to Assyria, to look to big governments, to look to big tech, big business, big science. There's gonna be all sorts of temptations to look to the powers and the movers and shakers of this age. But our help is in the name of the Lord. Don't look to Assyria, but rather look to the Lord of hosts. His word is utterly trustworthy. This Christmas and throughout the year, let us confess our belief, our conviction in the miracle of the virgin conception and the mystery of the incarnation. These truths not only authenticate the word, they are part and parcel of the gospel. Amen. Let us pray.