Now at 5 p.m., we have our evening service. If you can make it, that'd be wonderful. We'd be thrilled to have you. Many do attend. But if you're not able to, I hope that you'll at least watch it online. Now, if Grandview Baptist Church is on your Facebook, it's on Facebook Live, so you'll be able to see it right at five and follow it along. If not, you can download the Grandview Baptist Church app And on that app, you can watch it on your computer, on your iPad, on your iPhone or Android or anything like that. So you'll be able to watch it live or watch it recorded. And you'll get the second half, but this morning you'll get the introduction and we're in Isaiah chapter seven. We're gonna start reading a verse one and read down through verse 14. Now, normally our custom here is that we stand to read God's word except that this morning as I read I'll also be making comments so I would have you be standing for a while and in kindness I'm gonna let you remain seated so you won't be standing up for a long time but I want us to follow along and we're gonna be looking at some of the background for the verse Our key verse is found in 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. Now I've been pastoring since I was 21 years of age, right out of Bible college. I was 21 for three weeks and then I turn 22, and every Christmas since then, I imagine in the two or three weeks around Christmas as I preach about different messages concerning the birth of our Savior, there's never been a year that's gone by, but what I've used Isaiah 7, verse 14, one of the first prophecies concerning the birth of the Messiah, which you and I know is Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the Messiah of the Jews, the Savior of all humanity. But never before have I looked at the context and the history of why this prophecy was given to Ahaz, King of Judah, 742 years before Jesus was born. But this week I've studied that out and God showed me some things and I hope to share some of those things with you this morning and then the rest of it this evening as we look at the other verses in the book of Isaiah that give us the prophecies concerning the birth of our Savior, which I love these verses in Isaiah. So we start in verse one of chapter seven, and the Bible says, and it came to pass in the day of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, that Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail. Now in that passage, verse one, we find three kingdoms. You're gonna find the king of Judah, his name is Ahaz. You're gonna find the king of Syria, his name is Rezan. And you're gonna find the king of Judah, of Israel, and his name is Pekah. And interesting enough, all three of them are ungodly kings. Ahaz is the king of Judah, but he is not a godly king, he is a godless king. The Bible tells us that his grandfather was Uzziah. Uzziah had the longest reign of any king of Judah and indeed was a godly man. But the Bible also tells us in his old age, he thought he was more powerful than he was. In his old age, he wanted to offer incense in the temple. And he went to the temple and the high priest and the priests were preoccupied and they were not in the temple. And so he took it on himself to go into the temple and do the office of a priest. Well, the high priest and the rest of the priests came back and lo and behold, they find the king in the temple offering incense to God, which only the priest had that opportunity. And so they say to the king, get out. You got authority in this kingdom, but not in this place, not in this church, not in this temple. And while he argues with them just a little bit, the Bible says that on his forehead, it turned white with leprosy. And then the leprosy started spreading. And now when they say get out, he obeys and he leaves. And the Bible says for the rest of his life, he lived in a several house. Now several house means a house set apart because the lepers had to set apart from the common people because leprosy was very contagious. I've been to leper colonies in the Philippines and I've shaken hands with lepers or what was left of their arm or wrist or whatever. And you know, I've seen them without noses, without ears, without hands, without feet. Leprosy is a disease that kills your nervous system. And so when the nerves die, what happens in the process of time, you lose circulation. So your fingers turn black. And the only cure is of course to cut them off. or else gangrene sets in and it kills you. So leprosy was a disease that progressively meant you cut back more and more and more of your body until eventually you're dead. So of course you can see why everyone was afraid to be around a leper and there was no cure. Now, I did not know this until I was in the Philippines that leprosy is such a deadly disease and a communicating disease. But the thing about leprosy is this, I was looking for y'all during greeting time, you're on the left side, right side instead of left side, God bless you. And so just another family I was wanting to shake hands with. Now, may I digress? The terrible thing about leprosy is this, you can have it for two years before it manifests outwardly. And while you have it those two years, it's still contagious. So almost every leper has contaminated his own family and leprosy runs in families. And so if a parent gets it, chances are the children gets it and chances are the children they play with will gets it and it just goes on. So because of that, if there's any sign of leprosy, immediately you're quarantined and you're like that the rest of your life. Uzziah was the king of Judah, but he lived in a several house the rest of his years and died alienated as a leper. His son was Jotham. Now Jotham was a good man according to the word of God. He did that which was right according to the Lord, but he never went to the house of God because his father Uzziah had a bad day at church. And by the way, you go to church long enough, you're gonna have a bad day at church. Some Christian's gonna give you a piece of their mind and they don't have that piece to lose, but they're gonna do it anyway. Some Christian's gonna get carnal and you took their space or you didn't shake my hand or something. And because Uzziah had a bad day at church, and by the way, if you get leprosy, that's a bad day at church, right? And so because he had a bad day, his son didn't go to church. And Ahaz was Jotham's son, and not only did he not go to church, but he locked up the temple so no one else could. And then he started worshiping all the idols of the land and all the heathen deities. So much so that the Bible says he caused his children to pass through the fire. And so that only means two things according to commentators. One's more closely agreed with the other's alternative. One says it is actually taking your children and casting them into a fire to burn as an offering to a false deity. In the Old Testament, you'll have, you'll mention the God Molech, and that is a bronze statue with arms like this. It has a hollowed back. They light a fire in it until the bronze turns red. Then they take their babies and place them in the arms and let them be burned alive. How many think that's godless? Yeah, but that's what he did. The second thing is, The second interpretation is there's two fires on both sides and they have their children pass through the fire as a ritual of committing them to the false gods and false deities. Almost everyone holds that it's number one. They are literally burning their children. Now they do that right outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem, right out of the walls of David's Jerusalem, right out the walls is the Valley of Hinnom, and right in that valley is where they made their children pass through the fires, or literally burned their children alive. Right within sight of the Temple Mount, the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom. It's from that that we get the root. It's the root of the word Gehenna. And Gehenna is the everlasting, and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death, the lake of fire. That's the way it says in Greek, lake of fire twice. But that lake of fire is the Greek word Gehenna, which it gets its root from the Valley of Hinnon, where they burn their children. Now that word Hinnon, isn't referring to the fire, it's referring to loud noise, loud noise. And the reason is they played loud noise in the valley so they couldn't hear the screaming of the children when they burned them alive. Ahaz was not a good man, but it all started because his grandfather, had a bad day at church. When I started Grandview Baptist Church 34 years ago, I knocked on a thousand doors a week for four weeks and then we had our grand opening service. After that, for several years, I would knock on three or four hundred doors a week, meeting people, trying to build our church, you know, we met in Carpenter's Hall, we're starting from nothing, I have 50 songbooks, We're just trying to meet people and greet people and hopefully somebody will come to our church. One day I knocked on a door and there was a couple and they were in their probably early 80s and seemed so nice and friendly and nice couple. And so I talked to them a little while and told them what I was doing and why I'd come here. And then I said, do you have a church you go anywhere? And they, the gentleman said, we don't go to church. All of a sudden his disposition said, we don't go to church. I said, oh, I'm sorry. I always hate it when someone's near the end of their life and they say, I don't wanna go to church. Like I don't have time for God. Hey, listen, you better make time for God. Your time isn't long. Better make time for God. Well, I got arthritis. Well, go to church anyway. You're gonna have it at home. You're gonna have it at church. You're gonna have it anywhere. Hey, listen, it's just a little while you're gonna meet Jesus. I'd want to be faithful to the end. I said, we don't go to church. I said, why? I said, well, we haven't gone to church since that church split. Now I'm new to the Oregon city area, but I, you know, I researched the area before I moved here. I got the papers for six months and read them every day, the Oregonian. And I knew a little bit about the city and I studied the geography of it and the street maps of it and the yellow pages of it and the white pages of it. And I researched that thing and I did not know of any church that split. I said, well, excuse me, I'm new to the area, but I don't know any church that split. And he said, well, it's that First Baptist Church. He was talking about the first Baptist church in Oregon city, which is the oldest Baptist church in this whole city. And I knew a little bit about that because I'd already talked to him and they were gonna let us use their Baptistry to do our baptizing in. And so I thought, well, you may be mistaken. That church hasn't split that I know of. He said, yeah, 52 years ago. I'm sorry, I don't know history that far back, but 52 years ago. Now here's the sad thing. So they stopped going to church, which means their kids didn't go to church, which means their grandkids didn't go to church, which probably means their great grandkids don't go to church. Let me just say, if you have a bad day at church, keep going to church. Just keep going. You'll get over it. but you gotta get over it for the sake of your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren. Uzziah had a bad day, and here's Ahaz, he grows up godless, and worse than godless, he is a devil worshiper, burning his own children right outside the very walls of the city of David. The next guy we have is Rezan, who's king of Syria. And then we have Pekah, who's the son of Remaliah, who's the king of Israel. Now, Pekah, he came to power 17 years earlier than this date that's mentioned here, which is 742 BC. And he came to power because Pecaliah was the king of Israel and Pekah was one of the, and he went in and he killed, murdered the king of Israel and then assumed the throne. So nobody voted him in, he just went in and killed the king and took over the throne. And he's been ruling now for 17 years, he'll rule for 20 in all. A wicked man himself. And Syria, a wicked kingdom itself. And then it goes on and it says in verse two, 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. In other word, when Ahaz heard that Israel, Pekah is coming against him with Rezan, the king of Syria, they've made a confederacy, they're coming against Judah. The Bible says his heart moved like the wind blows the tops of the trees. And it says all the people of Judah, their heart was moved just like the wind blowing through the trees. And in verse three, it says, the Lord then said the Lord unto Isaiah, go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Jared's Ashab. By the way, that was the name of Isaiah's son. I don't know why he didn't like him and gave him that name, but sheer jazz hub. They probably just call him hub for short. Thy son at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the Fuller's field. In other words, he said, I want you to have a talk with Ahab, but Ahab meets them at the end of the conduit of the upper pool. Now, about three, four weeks ago, we just got back from Israel and 25 of our people went there. And if you were of that party that went there, you remember we took a tunnel and there was two parts of it. There was called the wet tunnel and then the dry tunnel. The dry tunnel is where all the smart people walked. the wet tunnels where half of our crowd walked and you're getting up a little above your knee and you're walking downhill in the tunnel and it's full of water. Well, this upper pool and this lower pool that's mentioned here, the tunnel is what allowed the inhabitants of Jerusalem, if under a siege, to be able to get into the tunnel and get to the source of water undetected. And so half of us walked underground for about a football field length out of solid rock called the dry tunnel and the other did the same distance but in a wet tunnel. And the Bible says Ahaz will meet at the bottom of this conduit of the upper, the conduit was simply carved out of rock. And Ahaz met Isaiah there because He did not want to meet him publicly in the kingdom. He did not want to meet him in the city of David. So he met outside the walls and he met Ahaz because Ahaz was so ungodly, he did not want to meet a godly man inside the city. And it just shows that he had no, concern for God or God's men or anything to do with God. He said, I'll meet you out of curiosity, hear what you have to say, but I'm really not even interested. He didn't bring him inside the kingdom, he met him outside the walls. And the Bible says, and saying to him, take heed and be quiet, fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands talking about Israel and Syria who have joined together. For the fierce anger of risen with Syria and the son of Ramaliah, who is Pekah, king of Israel. Because Syria Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah have taken evil counsel against these saying. Let me mention when it says Ephraim, it's referring to the nation of Israel with the divided kingdom. You have Judah on the Southern kingdom, which was two tribes. but it wasn't named after the two tribes. It was named after the strongest of the two tribes, and it was called Judah. In the North, that was the kingdom of Israel, the northern 10 tribes, but it was named after the strongest. Often you'll find that it's interspersed with Israel or Ephraim because Ephraim was the strongest tribe of the northern 10 tribes. And so when it refers to Ephraim, it's talking about all of Israel, the 10 northern tribes. Verse six, let us go up to 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 Tabeal. Thus saith the Lord God, it shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. Isaiah says to Ahaz, that's not gonna happen. This is what they plan, but it's not gonna happen. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah. If ye will believe, surely, ye shall not be established. And I skipped over verse eight, but let's get to verse 10. Moreover, the Lord spake unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God, ask it either in the depths or in the heights 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 you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Immanuel. Now what I want to do is this time, I want us to have a word of prayer and I'm going to give you a little history lesson. And for those who love history, you'll like this. For those who don't love history, it might sound boring to you, but it is laying the foundation upon which this verse comes into the, why did God, Choose 742 years before the birth of his son in Bethlehem. Why did he use that time to give a major prophecy? A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shall call his name Emmanuel. I hope to show you that after a word of prayer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, speak to our hearts. Give us the truth that we need. I pray that you'll help with this application, dear Lord. Help me put all the pieces of the puzzle together and let it be a blessing to these dear people. Dear Lord, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, in order for us to better understand, we've gotta give a historical background in the context of which this verse is found. And to do that, you're gonna have to study Isaiah chapter seven, but you also have to go to 2 Kings chapter 16 and read about the reign of Ahaz. And you'll also have to go to 2 Chronicles chapter 28 where again you'll read about the reign of Ahaz. And you put all three piece of these passages together and you'll find that there's a puzzle that starts fitting together. And you start beginning to see why God gave this prophecy at this given time. Ahaz, as I mentioned, was the wicked king of Judah. Pekah, as I mentioned, King of Israel. He's sometimes called King of Ephraim. It's the main tribe of the 10 northern kingdoms. Pekah is wicked and teams up with the King of Syria. And his name is Rezan. And Syria is a big power. Keep in mind at this time, it's been a divided kingdom for a while. So the nation of Judah and the nation of Israel have all diminished in power. You see, when you stray from God, you don't get stronger, you get weaker. And both of these kingdoms had gotten weaker and weaker and weaker. Now, Syria was far more powerful than Israel and Judah combined. And the King of Israel, which is the Northern kingdom, had a treaty with the King of Syria, which is right above Israel, the Northern kingdom over here. And right below is the southern kingdom of Judah. And Ahaz, though he's an ungodly king, he is very nervous about this. And Isaiah is sent by the Lord to say that these two kingdoms coming against you will not prevail. Now, if you read in the passages in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, you're gonna find that the fourth kingdom mentioned in this passage comes to play. and his name is Till Gath. Perneser, Tilgath Perneser. He is the king of Assyria. Assyria is a world power. It's far more powerful than Syria is. So what you have is Jerusalem right here, or the tribes of Judah, the two tribes of Judah. Then you have right above it, you have Israel, the 10 tribes, 10 northern tribes. Then right above it, you'll have Syria. And then over here to the west of it, excuse me, the east of it, you're gonna have the kingdom of Assyria. Now, Assyria takes in the Euphrates River, the Tigris River, it's what you and I would know as the modern day Iraq and all that area in there. Their capital city today, which is called modern day Mosul, which you might've heard a lot in the news, is the ancient city of Nineveh, Nineveh. which 140 years earlier, Jonah was there and preached to them and they had revival. Well, the King Ahaz sends a messenger to the King of Assyria, Tilgath-Peneser, says to him I need your help and in order to buy his help he goes into the temple which he's locked up nobody's been in but he goes into the temple and he tears apart all the gold and all the silver he can find and he bundles that together and he has to get that to the king of Assyria and buy his services to come and help him defeat the king of Israel and the king of Syria. And this is Assyria, not Syria. But the challenge is, in order to get there, the trade routes, you have to go through Israel and through Syria to get to Assyria. That's the way you have to go. And the trade routes always follow a source of water. If you follow the trade routes, it's 710 miles one way, walking to get there, which would take you almost two months to get there. And then you gotta come back with the message. And then the king of Assyria has to come. So in other words, there's no getting your cell phone and call him, hey king, I need your help right now. And then he gets in his plane, flies there and helps you and paratroops all the people. No, no, it takes a long time. but he can't go through Israel or he'll be killed. He can't send his messengers through Syria or they'll be killed. And the only other avenue is to cross the river Jordan right at the top of the Dead Sea and go immediately east. And then you have a clear straight run to Assyria. But the challenge of that is if you take that clear run to Assyria, you're going through the desert and you're going through an area 600 miles without water. That's pretty difficult. There's no tankers to carry with you, they're not driving it through. 600 miles with no water. So even to get to the King of Assyria would be quite a chore, much less to carry gold and silver there, which gold and silver are very heavy metals. And you have to buy his help. So God brings them together. It's probably about 900 miles of which he has to go. There's so many things that take place in this, 742 years before the birth of our Savior, but let me wrap up some things here and say this. King Ahaz was a wicked king who worshiped devils and offered his children to the fire. The king of Israel was a very wicked man. His name's Pekah. He got on the throne by murdering the king before him. Rezan, the king of Syria, is a very ungodly man. So you have three ungodly men, and then you have the king of Assyria, and Assyria is not a God-fearing country. Nineveh is their capital. And Nineveh is known for such savage destruction. In fact, modern day museums talk about the city of Nineveh. And one of the reasons why Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh is because they decorate the walls of their city with the skulls of their victims. When they conquer a land, they take the heads of their captives, bring them home, set them on their walls, they skin their enemies and hang the skins of their enemies on the walls of Nineveh. That's why Jonah didn't wanna go there. That's why Jonah set sail 2,200 miles to the west. Instead of going 600 miles to the east to Nineveh like God told him to, he went as far as you could to the tip of Spain, Tarshish. That was his goal. The very furthest place in the ancient world, that's where he wanted to go rather than go these headhunters. These wicked people of Nineveh. The Syrians, they were a fearsome people. Godless. And in the midst of all, you have a prophecy that's given in chapter seven, verse 14. And a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel. Notice that this was not given to Ahaz. This prophecy was given to the house of David. Notice what it says. in verse 13, and he said, hear ye now, O house of David. See, a lot of people have a problem with this prophecy given to Ahaz because they're thinking Ahaz has to see a virgin conceive and bear a son. But no, no, no, that's not what it's saying. The prophecy is not to Ahaz, the prophecy is to the kingdom of David. Remember David was promised that on his throne, there will be a king that will set forever. And he was not talking about a son of his lineage, he was talking about a son of his faith, the Messiah. The Messiah would come and sit on the throne of David, the lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ himself. So let me wrap it all up here in about two minutes. Why did God choose the darkest time in history to present the Messiah? In the midst of all these ungodly kingdoms, being as ungodly as they could, God puts a spotlight on a prophecy that 742 years later would be fulfilled, and it's the birth of Messiah. You see, the darker the night, the brighter the light. And so God, he chose the darkest point in human history to show the most glorious point of human history. He chose a time in the world where everything was evil, evil, evil, everywhere you turn, to show someone who's holy, holy, holy, holy, everywhere you turn. He used the backdrop of the worst to bring forth the best. And he brings forth Jesus, the light of the world. Jesus Christ. Now let me make this application and we're done. In every life, in every life, there's dark days. But Jesus still shines just as bright. He shines just as bright. You know, in heaven, there's no need of the sun or the moon because Jesus is the light of it. And in the darkest point of humanity, when everything's going south, Here's the sign, God says to the seed of David, I'm gonna give you a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel. He's saying, hey, it looks bad, but there's hope. Because Jesus is the light. And let me just say, if you're worrying about world's conditions right now, Jesus is still that light. He's still the light of the world.