Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 7:10-17; Psalm 24; Matthew 1:18-25; Romans 1:1-7
A Sign From God?
People are all the time asking for a “sign from God”!
Should I do this? Should I do that?
But as we see the life of Gideon in Judges 6 ff, we find that when God speaks, we aren’t always so willing to listen. We ask for “proof” that we heard correctly… that something is really true!
We MINIMIZE what God can do… but when God moves, as Ephesians 3:20-21 reminds us, God demonstrates that He is able to do things FAR BEYOND what we can ask or think!
So God, when He works to deliver His people, does more than we ask or thing even possible when we see Isaiah 7 and Matthew 1 and Romans 1!
Beyond What We Can Ask Or Imagine
King Ahaz was surrounded… Northern Israel had sided with Syria in order to surround, siege, and destroy Judah and place their own king on David’s throne.
The hearts of the people were tempted to melt in fear.
God’s promise to David to never let David’s line die out seemed distant and, at the moment, untrue. Had God failed?
In the midst of the Bad News, God tells His prophet Isaiah to take his son and promise Ahaz that God will be with him. He even offers Ahaz the opportunity to ask for a sign.
Instead of the would-be conqueror’s plans coming true, Northern Israel would completely disappear. This alliance will come to nothing the prophet promises – only trust!
To strengthen Ahaz’ faith, God told him to ask for any sign he wanted.
But Ahaz tries to hide his unbelief by acting spiritual – he says he doesn’t want to try the Lord’s patience.
So to the unbelieving Ahaz, God says I will do more for the House of David than you can ask or imagine in your unbelief!
God says he will send a sign that Jewish and secular interpreters have puzzled over but which has a fulfillment that has never successfully been identified – until the coming of our Lord!
But God says before He accomplishes His sign for the House of David, the troublemakers Israel worries about will be history.
But before the promise is fulfilled, God will also bring judgment on all the land of Israel and bring judgment on Israel’s and Ahaz’ unbelief.
Though Ahaz will not ask for a sign great enough to reach from the depths of Sheol (death) to the heights of heaven, God will give such a sign!
God will do more to secure the salvation of His people than they can ask or imagine – reaching from the depths of death (Sheol) to the heights of heaven.
This prophecy does come literally true with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to secure our salvation.
Matthew tells us, in fact, the only time in recorded history when Isaiah’s prophecy did come true – when a virgin did conceive and her child was known throughout the world as the one who is Immanuel – God with us!
In the coming of Jesus we see the profoundness of God’s love. The Almighty Lord comes into His Temple, not only to the Temple of Jerusalem to cleanse it, but to the Temple of His body through His mother Mary. We sing about the Lord of heaven’s armies coming to His Temple in Psalm 24.
He comes as Jesus which is the Greek version of Joshua – the one who replaces Moses as Moses prophesied in Dt 18. The name Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior”. Joshua in the Old Testament brought God’s Ancient People into an earthly Promised Land.
This New Joshua – Jesus – will bring His people to the New Promised Land, the New Heavens and the New Earth characterized by righteousness. It is the world where sin has been removed. God’s people first enter it through the Blood of Jesus Christ who cleanses from sin and unites us to Himself through the Holy Spirit.
The immortal God becomes man and His path will go to the depths of Sheol where he is held under the power of death until He burst forth and broke the chains of death and 40 days later ascended to the highest heaven. We confess this in the Apostles’ Creed where we recall that our Lord “descended into Hell … and ascended to the Right Hand of God the Father”. Our Lord’s descent to “Hell” (alternatively “Hades” or “the Dead”) refers to the time He remained for three days under the power of death as He secured our salvation.
Just as Joshua conquered the evil cities but delivered those like Rahab and her household who trusted in the Lord, our Christ through the Holy Spirit assails the strongholds of sin even today and rescues those who call out to Him. Rahab, who became the ancestor of our Lord through grace, reminds us how concrete the salvation of God is. He transfers us concretely and literally from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.
The Good Shepherd still performs His wonders and gathers those who crave His help and healing. The Holy Spirit whose resurrecting power declared Jesus to be the Son of God in Power is at work sending forth apostles to call all people to the obedience of faith. The Holy Spirit likewise calls us together as His people to live lives of witness and praise and service even if we are not “apostles” or ministers per se.
These great things are what the Virgin Birth signals and the Resurrection seals: the salvation of Christ’s people from their sins.
Lest we overlook this point, Jesus saves us from our sin. Sin isn’t just something outside us though sin does exist in the sin of others. Jesus stands prophetically against such sin but He also stands prophetically against the sin in our own hearts.
Sadler writes in his commentary on Matthew: And in the matter of sin, let us not hide ourselves in generalities. Sin is not a formula, a word, an abstract thing. It is always an act, a very secret act of the soul it may be, but always an act. “Sin is the transgression of the law;” so that, if Jesus saves us from sin, He saves us from both loving and doing this, that, or the other evil thing. He saves the hateful man from his malice, the quarrelsome man from his strife and bitterness. He saves the dishonest man from his fraud, the covetous man from his evil desire. He saves the godless man from his forgetfulness of God, the proud man from his self-sufficiency, the impure man from his uncleanness; and if there be any other form of evil which separates the soul from God, in virtue of His Name, He saves us from it.
Jesus has come, in other words, to save us from ourselves and He works through Word, Sacrament, Preaching, Godly Counsel and the Holy Spirit, and Prayer to root out what pollutes us as well we covering our sin with His Sacrifice.
Incomprehensible Love
It’s hard to understand the love of Jesus that would prompt Him to lay aside His glory and seek out sinners like us to forgive, transform, and deliver us. We find it so hard to lay aside our favorite TV shows. Unless God impoverishes us through trials and strips us of everything, we usually find impossible to strip ourselves of any worldly comfort. How can we show such love? We are so attached to loving ourselves and the things of the world aren’t we?
So when we find people who will risk their lives to demonstrate the love of Jesus, we get a small glimpse of the divine mercy that came to call us. And we realize why, with the power of God at work in us, we too might be able to demonstrate such love.
The book Streets Paved With Gold which tells the history of the London City Mission opens with a story about the times in old London when cholera struck and 10,000 people died. They began their work as Charles Dickens was writing about the horrors of poverty in London.
Little was known about cholera then. Cholera is an infection that is carried in polluted water that kills through dysentery – the body losing all its vital fluids through the bowel.
Back in the 1800’s the only remedy was some form of opium to stop the bowel from functioning. It might, if given early enough, ward off the worst effects of the disease. Opium then – like all drugs – was available without prescription, but it still took someone to purchase it and deliver it to those on the verge of dying in their own filth.
Who would go to these places that were so destitute, filthy and which might even be deadly?
Who were these people who might offer such help?
They were the missionaries of the London City Mission each assumed the spiritual responsibility for some territory and they spent their days befriending and bringing the word of God to these poor. And during this time of great disruption and death they would try to aid as best they could with their simple medicines as they prayed for people and sought to bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
They saw the souls of the poor dying without Christ as precious and worthy of their labors for their salvation.
What love!
But it is only a fraction of a fraction of an atom of the love of Christ displayed in His coming at Christmas!
Still it reminds us of what our love ought to look like.
Do You Display Such Love?
Could you go back day by day to see not only the squalor of the poor, but seem them dying?
Could you take a position where your work was to stake out a territory and aim to win those people for Christ through your love, service, words and deeds?
Guess what?
That IS your call and mine!
God has assigned us a territory… a family, a set of friends, a place, a circumstance, and He calls us first to LIVE DAILY IN UNION AND COMMUNION WITH CHRIST and know what it means to be people being saved from our sins.
God then calls us to BE these “missionaries” who through our love, service, words and deeds identify our personal mission field and then pursue them for the Glory of God and for their eternal blessing.
Then there’s one more thing. Let’s make this year a year of PRAYER not to a God who is frustrated by sinners, a God unable to hear, but instead, let’s recognize that we pray to a God who has demonstrated in the coming of Christ that he is able and willing to do far more than we can ask or think!
Let’s pray to this amazing and loving Father with renewed confidence!
Will we marvel at the depth of Christ’s love and then display it ourselves?
How will YOU respond to the God who does more than we can ask or think to save us?
