Turn with me to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 7 will be our text. And I thought about saying turn with me to the gospel of Isaiah because some commentators actually call Isaiah the fifth gospel because of its messianic themes and its gospel themes. And a lot of it, the story tracks the story of Jesus's own life as a suffering servant. And so I thought it was fitting, especially as our church goes through the gospel of Mark, I kept coming back in my sermon study to the prophet Isaiah. Mark uses so many themes throughout Isaiah. And so I thought it would be a great time to preach from the prophet Isaiah. If you're like me, sometimes as you're doing your Bible reading, you'll read these prophets, and you'll go through, and all of a sudden, there'll be a bunch of funny names, and a bunch of funny countries, and a bunch of historical contexts that can be a little bit confusing. And that's what we have here in this passage. It comes, it's almost sandwiched in between Isaiah 6, where you have Isaiah getting his marching orders, and it's one of the most often quoted chapters of scripture and then we have it also sandwiched in between Isaiah 7 14 which is one of the most famous and most quoted messianic promises and messianic illusions and yet in the middle we have this again a lot of funny names and funny people and yet all scripture is useful for teaching and so let us do that this morning as we study Isaiah 7 and hear what the Lord has to say to us today through the prophet Isaiah. So read with me from God's word, Isaiah chapter seven. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jochem, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. And the Lord said to Isaiah, go out and meet Ahaz, you and Sher Josh of your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field. And say to him, be careful, be quiet, do not fear. And do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezan in Syria and the son of Ramaliah. Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tbil as king in the midst of it. Thus says the Lord God, it shall not stand. It shall not come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within 65 years, Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Ramaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. Again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz, ask a sign of the Lord your God. Let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test. And he said, hear then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgins shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. He shall eat curds and honey, and when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father's house such days as have not come since the day of Ephraim departed from Judah, the king of Assyria. In that day, the Lord will whistle for the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt and for the bee that is at the land of Assyria. And they will all come and settle in the steep ravines and in the clefts of the rocks and all the thorn bushes and all the pastures. In that day, the Lord will shave with a razor that is higher beyond the river with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away the beard also. In that day, a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep. And because of the abundance of milk that they give, he will eat curds. For everyone who is left in the land will eat curds and honey. In that day, every place where there used to be 1,000 vines worth 1,000 shekels of silver will become briars and thorns. With bow and arrows, a man will come there, for the land will be briars and thorns. And as for the hills that used to be hoed with a hoe, you will not come there for fear of briars and thorns, but they will become a place where cattle are let loose and where sheep tread. It's the word of the Lord. Let's go before him in prayer. Father, thank you for giving us such clear glimpses of your gospel and your plan for us and salvation all the way back thousands of years ago to your prophet Isaiah and also to King Ahaz and the people that you had chosen. Lord, we pray that this morning that as Like Isaiah, that your word is proclaimed, that your word is preached, that it would convict hearts, that it would build up strength and faith in those who believe and have repented. And Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit might accompany my preaching this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'm guessing that many of you have heard of the phrase doom scrolling. Doom scrolling, and I know already some of the teenagers in the congregation might be like, uh-oh, is this a sermon for me, the screen-agers, right? No, we can all be susceptible to doom scrolling. Doom scrolling is essentially this activity that is made possible in a lot of ways by our technology, by our phones that are in our pockets, of just scrolling through the news on end. or scrolling through social media on it. And it's usually associated with very negative content, content that is just depressing, world events that don't really matter to us or don't really affect us, and yet we're like, whoa, that is crazy, that's horrible. Recent research suggests that even if you're not scrolling social media all the time, even if you aren't on social media, if you simply pick up the newspaper and read about three minutes of negative news, the percentage of having your day affected by that, of having a negative perspective on your day, is over 50%. And it goes the other way as well. If you read positive news in the morning, even just as little as three minutes of it, your day and the perspective on your day has a likelihood of 88% better than if you read negative news. News and media, and we might say that activity of doom scrolling, it forms us, it shapes us. And again, mostly negative. Our news cycle, it's constantly negative. You don't get good ratings if everything is good. My wife and I were watching the Titan documentary on the sub that went missing in the middle of the ocean. And when the news was going on about the sub being missing, they had a little timer on the bottom of the screen that said how much oxygen is left. And of course, the ratings were massive. Everybody was tuned in. And it was negative coverage, right? If everything is good in the world, no one wants to watch the news. And I say all this because our individual that Isaiah is speaking to, King Ahaz, I think is a doom-scroller. I think he wasn't on Twitter, he wasn't on Instagram, but his eyes were constantly facing downward. Downwards at his life situation, he was preoccupied with what was in his control and what he could do. He looked outwards to other countries and other men to save him, and he didn't look up to God. He was consumed with this existential dread that his desire was to just be free of Assyria, or free of Israel to the north, or Syria to the north. Ultimately, Ahaz focused on his own and man's own power to manage his affairs. And so as we encounter Ahaz and his crisis of faith and his spirit of fear, I think this passage is appropriate to our times. This passage is meant to ground us in everlasting and eternal hope, even when life's circumstances and the new cycle is unpredictable and fearful. This passage, it calls our eyes upwards when our circumstances are not good. It shows us that our Heavenly Father's unwavering faithfulness and provision towards his people and calls us to rest our faith in Christ alone. So first, let us notice this initial crisis of faith. That's our first point today, a crisis of faith. To give a little bit of historical context of what's going on in this passage, Israel is in a really tough time right now. The whole nation of Israel has been split. Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Ten tribes up in the north and two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, down in the south. And there's a rising power in the area. It's Assyria. It's all over the northeast. The pagans are looming large and they're afraid that this Assyrian empire is going to come in and take over. Judah is being threatened on all sides. They've actually already tried once. Israel and Syria to the north have unified and made a pact. And then they've tried to actually take out Judah in order to set up a puppet king and then use that as more power against the threat of Assyria. And that one try has failed. But this first attack has scared Ahaz. He's worried. He thinks it's going to happen again. The nation, it's in panic. It's in turmoil. They're expecting attack and a siege at any moment. The whole Middle East could be at war at any moment. By the way, I'm talking about 8th century BC, all right? I realized as I was preparing the sermon, wow, talk about doom scrolling with the current news going on in the Middle East. And yet I think that just makes this passage even more appropriate. The Jews in Israel, they're shaken in their hearts, as the scripture says. Their hearts shake as the trees of the forest shake before the wind, in verse two. And Ahaz is fearful. As we say often, right, as the king goes, so goes the kingdom. And so because of Ahaz's fear and his worry and his dread, the whole hearts of his people are in fear as well. And so when Isaiah is told to go out to speak to Ahaz, he's told to meet him by the end of the conduit of the upper pool. So this pool is the water supply to the whole city of Jerusalem. So Ahaz is checking to make sure, hey, is our water supply a very important supply in a time of siege? Is it secure? Is it good if we're about to be under attack? Notice how Ahaz doesn't first consult God's prophet that was in his midst. He doesn't go before the Lord in prayer as we see some of the faithful kings do. But he focuses on what's under his control, on his circumstances. It's not wrong to check the water supply if you think you're going to be attacked. But that is the first thing Isaiah does, and you can tell he's consumed by it. Isaiah has to go out to meet him there. And it's not surprising given what we learn about Ahaz in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Ahaz, he was a wicked ruler. He despised God. He despised God's public and private worship. As we were studying in Sunday school this morning what Jacob Hooker taught about, a brief survey of why we worship the way we do and the pattern to our worship, it was so fitting to this passage because Ahaz broke all the rules. He went against everything that we do as a church every morning. He got rid of the public worship of God when he plundered the gold and silver from the house of the Lord. He shut the doors of the temple, so we would think, hey, maybe he didn't want anybody else going and worshiping in the temple. And then he gave all that gold and silver and plunder from the Lord's house to the king of Assyria to appease him. Ahaz was seeking an arrangement with Assyria, which is in the east. He was seeking their help against Syria and Israel to the north. And what's striking about this is we might say, well, what's wrong with having an alliance with a neighboring country? Well, in order for Ahaz to make an agreement with Assyria, he would have had to enter into a covenantal relationship with them. Assyria would have been that suzerain, or we should say the king or the ruler of that covenant. They would have been the power. And Israel, or Judah, would have been the vassal. And so he was, Ahaz was going so far as to say, I will not even make a covenant relationship with my God, with our father who has just kept us this whole time and been faithful to us, but I'm going to make it with the pagan nation off to the east. He sacrificed and he made idols in the high places that were reserved for the offerings to God. He got rid of a special covered way from the temple to the palace because he was afraid that the king of Assyria might be offended by that. He even went so far as to sacrifice his own son as an offering. So the public worship of God was not openly practiced in Judah. In fact, it was despised. It was despised to the umpteenth degree. Ahaz did not trust God. He did not love him. He did not respect God's past provision of God's people because he was focused on his own present circumstances. And of course, we are all susceptible to this same crisis of faith that haunted Ahaz. We can quickly lose sight of the multitude of ways that God has provided for us, that he has sustained us, that he has blessed us. How quickly we forget as humans. Forgetfulness could be the greatest reason for unfaithfulness. The Israelites could certainly attest to that. We talked about it this morning as well, the golden calf. Time and time again they kept blaming God for sending them into the wilderness to die. And so they turned to something like the golden calf and called it Yahweh. Time and time again, God had to consistently remind them, I am caring for you. I am the one that you ought to have faith and trust in. So brothers and sisters, let us this morning then foster hearts of thankfulness. This should show us that every time we come and worship on the Lord's day, that we are being reminded about what God has done for us through his son, Jesus Christ. This is what keeps our eyes upward on our father and not downward on our own circumstances and our own shortcomings and failures. Well, secondly, we see a call to faith, and we'll start in verse four. A call to faith. We've had a crisis of faith, and then the Lord calls his people to faith. After Ahaz's crisis of faith, God does not immediately pronounce judgment on him. He could have. He would have had every right to do so. And yet, he gracefully and mercifully condescends to Ahaz and speaks through his prophet Isaiah. The same thing that he's doing this morning, right? Every single Lord's Day, God speaks to us. He comforts us. So the first call to faith we notice is in verse three, actually. And it's the name of Isaiah's son. Shir Yashuv, all right? We don't have a child named Shir Yashuv in our congregation yet. We might soon, who knows? But Shir Yashuv means a remnant will remain. a remnant will remain. And we know throughout the whole Old Testament there's this constant promise of God saying, I know it looks bleak, and I know you're in exile, and I know you might be in the wilderness right now, but I will preserve a remnant of faithful Jews, of faithful people that will carry on my promises. And so even before Isaiah opens his mouth, You might say that Ahaz should have known, hey, his son literally means a remnant will be saved. And that reminds me, everything's going to be all right. Syria and Israel making an alliance together is not going to wipe us out. Isaiah, actually his name means salvation is from the Lord. So you had two names that should have reminded him that things were going to be all right, that the Lord was in control. This should have been a comfort to him But of course, he did not grasp it. As we'll see throughout this whole chapter, Ahaz was blind. Again, he had his eyes focused, zeroed in on what was in front of him. And he continued to scroll and scroll through all of those possibilities and circumstances. And he did not lift his eyes to see what was clearly in front of him. So God speaks to Isaiah, he says in verse four, be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands at the fierce anger of Rezan and Syria and the son of Ramaliah. Because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah has devised evil against you. What does he do, our faithful Lord and Father, what does he say initially to Ahaz? It's not, I don't think be careful, be quiet, do not fear is necessarily a rebuke. I think it's just a reminder, almost a gentle reminder, right? We could think if the Lord, our Father, spoke to us that vividly through a prophet, you know, we would be like, whoa, wait a minute, you know, let me recenter. This is the Lord being faithful to Ahaz. And he says here, and he prophesies here, that these two powers, Israel and Syria, who are making an alliance against Judah, are two smoldering stumps of firebrands. They are essentially two sticks that you pull from the fire, and they smoke for a little bit, but they always go out. I mean, you can barely start another fire with that. And so there's gonna be a lot of smoke, but no fire. And we think of this, we talked about it this morning, right? This is the creator-creature distinction. God is making it clear that These two nations in alliance are run, and their kings are two men. They don't have God behind them. They're two men. Rezin, and then he doesn't even name the king of Israel. He says the son of Remeliah. And one commentator said, that's just a classic put down, right? I'm not even going to name this individual. He's so insignificant. And so, again, the faithfulness of God to tell Ahaz, this siege that you're worried about and this attack, it's gonna come to nothing. It's just gonna smoke for a little bit and then it's gonna burn out. God makes it clear that whether someone is a president, a king, a chancellor, a supreme leader, whatever they are called, whatever worldly power they might seem to have, They will never be more than men. They will never be more than a creature. And God is their creator. We see this in Psalm 2. God laughs and he scoffs at worldly leaders that conspire, that plot in vain. Because he knows that ultimately those worldly leaders will do his will alone. God alone is our fortress. He is our rock. We think about chapter six, one chapter before this, where Isaiah stood before the throne of God. And he didn't suddenly start asking questions of, hey, what's gonna happen? He didn't even stand before God. He fell down and he was undone, the scripture says, before the throne of God. Because he knew that God was decreeing everything that would come to pass. and his will was not gonna be thwarted by man's desires. And so the last verse of this poetic stanza, again, there's so much we could get into here as far as the prophecy, as far as the names and everything. We just don't have time. But I do think I wanna pay close attention to verse nine. It says, if you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. Now, the Hebrew, I'm not a Hebrew scholar or anything, but in studying the commentators on the Hebrew of this passage, it really doesn't capture the poeticness, right? God is trying to give Ahaz and the people of God and us today something to remember. You might say, in English, this would be something like, hold God in doubt, or you will not hold out, or unsure, Insecure. Something that would bring to mind really quickly, oh, yeah, I remember that. I mean, it was poetic. It was like a poem or maybe in our day, a rap song or something like that. So God graciously gives Ahaz something to remember. And he reminds him that if you are not firm in faith, and he means firm in faith in God alone, then you won't stand. And clearly that was the case with Israel and with Syria. They had rejected the promises of God. They had a ton of unfaithful kings, and they weren't gonna stand. They were gonna get snuffed out, as we see in verse eight. Within 65 years, Ephraim, which means Israel, will be shattered from being a people. And so unfaithfulness, Lack of faith always leads to being completely undone and destroyed. Only God's people, only those who trust in God are going to remain faithful. As John Calvin says, ungodliness is never at rest, but where faith exists, there the mind is composed and does not tremble to an immoderate degree. These words very fitly express the power of faith. I think, of course, this morning, it's Father's Day, and what father would not want to be known as a man who was firm in faith and could not be quickly pushed over or quickly moved, right? So this morning, if you want to be described as that man or woman, if you don't want to be someone who trembles at the faintest bad news that you see on your phone in the morning, when you want to be composed in trials, then you must put your faith in God. That's what God wanted Ahaz to do, and Ahaz didn't do it, but he wanted Isaiah to do it as well, and he wanted the whole house of David, the whole people of Israel to do that as well, to put our faith and our hope and our trust in God, our Father. Well, lastly, we have a crisis of faith, we have a call to faith, and lastly, we have a sign for faith, a sign to build and strengthen the faith of God's people. God, he shows his immense patience, he shows his long-suffering to Ahaz and to Israel, but he doesn't stop there, right? We might say, this would be enough for any king if he truly believed it. Okay, I can rest assured God is in control and he's gonna get rid of my enemies. But God doesn't stop there. He asks Ahaz to ask of him a sign. And I was thinking even, I think it was two weeks ago, Pastor Kim preached through the text in Mark, I believe Mark chapter six, where Herodias, the daughter of Herod, asked Herod, or Herod grants to Herodias any wish or any desire, right? And he says, as much as you want, up to half of my kingdom. And it's rhetorical advice. And in the same way, God does that. He says in verse 11, ask a sign of the Lord your God. Let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. This is essentially a blank check from God saying, ask whatever you want. If my prophecy that your enemies will be shattered is not enough, ask whatever you want. What do you need? to have faith. And yet we see in verse 12, Ahaz blindly, stupidly refuses it. He says, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Now, of course, we know from scripture that there are texts that say in Deuteronomy, right, do not put the Lord your God to the test. But for Ahaz, this is false piety, right? That is if you don't trust God, if you don't have faith in God, and so you just ask him, hey, give me a sign. Maybe if you raise a dead man, maybe then I'll believe. And obviously, we see scripture puts that down and says, no, if you have unbelief, it doesn't even matter if I raise someone from the dead. And yet Ahaz, this situation is different. God has mercifully, gracefully granted to Ahaz and said, ask of me a sign. He's giving a command. And Ahaz refuses that. That's how much unbelief he has. We think of those who do live in unbelief, right? And we say, well, if only the Lord showed them something miraculous. Well, he has, time and time again. And Ahaz had been witness to that as king of Israel, as king of Judah. And yet, he still refuses a sign. So this is no pious move on Ahaz's part. This is false piety. This is a false piety of unbelief. And even if Ahaz had received a sign, he wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter because he had no faith. We think of this in our context. We talked about it this morning as well. The sign of the Lord's Supper that we'll have after the sermon, or the sign of baptism, right? The gospel is all you need to be saved. Repent and believe in the gospel. And yet, we wouldn't say, oh, God has instituted these signs of the Lord's Supper and baptism. Those don't really matter. If we do that, we've lost the plot. we shouldn't refuse the Lord's gracious sign when he gives them to us. And so we should trust that the Lord instituted this sign for our good. Well, thankfully, the Lord goes ahead and gives the sign. But he gives it to the whole house of David. Notice how he says, here then, O house of David. So he addresses everyone in the plural. Is it too little for you to weary men, that 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. Well, again, time restricts us from diving as deep as we could into this verse. This is one of the most clear, the most clearly quoted passages that's quoted in the New Testament of a messianic promise. It clearly is speaking to Jesus. The Jews understood that later. The Christians in the early church understood that this passage was talking about Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary. The name Emmanuel, again, we've looked at the importance of names in the prophet Isaiah. The name Emmanuel means God with us, or God dwells with us, which was this constant promise throughout the Old Testament that God would ultimately come back and dwell in the same way that he had dwelled with Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall. It's safe to say that Ahaz missed this sign as well, but we know that God, he sustains a remnant, he sustains that little family of Joseph and Mary and Jesus in that insignificant town of Nazareth, and he brings up Jesus, the Son of God, the God-man, the incarnate Son of God, and he is that one who is Emmanuel and fulfills his prophecy. And so this prophecy really is for us today, but it was to those who see with eyes of faith, right? Ahaz, looking at his own circumstances, would be like, why would a child born of a virgin, why would that help me against my enemies? And yet when we see with eyes of faith, we say, this is the ultimate salvation for the Lord's people, for those who trust in him. So God, he ultimately does punish Ahaz, and he does ultimately punish the kingdom of Judah for their unbelief. These next seven verses, 15 through, or I should say 16 through 25, talk about the judgment of Judah. Israel will be destroyed in 65 years. Judah would last about 150 years, but ultimately they would also be destroyed, and God's people would be in exile. Verse 16, it shows that Israel and Syria would be destroyed in a matter of a few years. Before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. Now you might say, well hold up, if verse 14 is talking about Jesus, then how do we understand verse 16? Jesus came hundreds of years later. This says before the boy really has grown up, that the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. Well, in the Old Testament and in prophecies, there's always this theme of double fulfillment or even triple fulfillment, right? God will make a prophecy and we will see it being partially fulfilled in one moment and then later fulfilled hundreds of years later. And this is a classic case. Later in chapter eight, if you look with me at verse three, He says that one of Isaiah's sons, called Maher Shalal Hashbaz, I don't think we will have a child named that in our congregation at any point. I'm just gonna go on the record with that. But for before the boy knows how to cry, my father and my mother, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria. So we see that one child will be born to the prophet Isaiah, and he will, through that child, he is showing the people of Judah that judgment is coming upon them. And then he is also making that, and here's the double fulfillment in verse 14, that there will be that other child, and that will be Jesus Christ, who will save his people ultimately. And even in chapter eight, if you go down, let me find it real quick. Diverse. I'm missing it here. You guys want to tell me out here. Can't find it right now, but later in chapter eight, it says that the land will be inherited by Immanuel. And that's your homework. You can tell me after the sermon, hey, I found it. Here it is, Chris. The land will ultimately be judged and destroyed by pagan neighbors, and then it will become the Immanuel's land. And so that is that near fulfillment, and then the far fulfillment, that sort of double fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. Well, the reason why the prophet Isaiah and God speaks through him and he tells Ahaz about this child, this child born of a virgin, conceived and named Emmanuel, is because he knows that ultimately the Jews' faith and our faith today must be anchored in Jesus Christ. the baby born of a virgin, fully God, fully man, God dwelling with us. As John 1 says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Nothing can bolster our faith and comfort us more than if we hear the word of God focusing on our salvation from sin. Sin is our greatest threat. Repentance and forgiveness are our greatest needs, not what's going out there in the world, not the constant news cycle, Not all the media that we consume on a daily basis, right? Jesus is that, he's that immovable king that will bring his people to the eternal promised land. We won't just go back to the land of milk and honey to Canaan, we will go to a new creation, a new promised land. And therefore, the one who has faith in God, that is what he should rest and trust in. As we sang earlier, on Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand. Well, being Father's Day, how timely it is to focus this morning on the good care and the good promises of our Heavenly Father. Our Heavenly Father, He meets us in our weakness of faith. Perhaps you feel like you might be more like Ahaz this morning. You might be saying, I need a little bit more, God. I need a little bit more of a special sign. I need some trial in my life taken away. I need some world news to go away and be off my feet. I don't want to worry about it anymore. You might be more like Ahaz in that regard. You might have your eyes facing downward. And yet God meets us in that weakness of faith, in our doubtings, in our failings, in our present trials, in our circumstances, in our sufferings, and he upholds us through the gift of his word through the scriptures. Through the Holy Spirit he sends us, he strengthens us, and he equips us to be his people, to have faith that is immovable, that is unshakable, People unlike Ahaz, whose faith and identity is not shaken by worldly circumstances, because it rests in King Jesus, who sits on his throne. Of course, our Heavenly Father, he sent his own son to die on the cross for our sins, so that the dividing wall of sin and hostility might be broken for those who put their faith in Jesus. What better thing to celebrate on Father's Day? In fact, every Lord's Day is Father's Day in some respect. As Galatians 4 says, but when the fullness of time has come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. So they might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of a son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. And so every Lord's Day worship, through every Lord's Supper, the sign and the seal, through every conversation and prayer and encouragement from a fellow church member, God enables us, he preserves us, he sustains us to persevere in faith, no matter our circumstances. So let us be people unlike Ahaz, let us learn from King Ahaz, and let us look upward, let us look heavenward, to God in our trials. Let us have our thoughts looking backwards at all the ways that God has provided for us and sustained us. And let us have our hope rest in the future, the future promised land of heaven that Jesus is preparing for us now. So again, eyes upward, not downward at our circumstances, because Christ is a faithful savior. Our God is a faithful father, and he will sustain us and strengthen our faith. Let's go before the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for the encouragement of your prophecies as we see in through your prophet Isaiah that you have granted to us a look of how you have decreed and sovereignly ordained history 2,800 years ago to bring about something and a message of the gospel that encourages us and gives us hope this morning. And not only that, but that message of the gospel, the wonderful work of your son, Jesus, who died for our sins, that is what saves us. That is what gives us a hope that is unshakable, so that we might say, in Christ alone, our hope is found. All other ground is sinking sand, Lord. Lord, I pray that this truth would just enter our hearts, that it would pierce our hearts, that it would change our minds and conform us even more to the image of your son and his example, Lord. Pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.