Intro
Isaiah’s prophecy of the Virgin giving birth was a sign against King Ahaz. It’s also a sign against us, all fallen humanity. Ahaz was a young Israelite man gone bad. He was of David’s line, but not of David’s faith. And he had become king of the Southern kingdom of Israel, Judah.
Ahaz had plummeted into the darkness of sin and even slaughtered one of his sons to the pagan god, Moloch. He had a pagan altar built in the Temple, the Temple meant only for worshiping the one, true God: Yahweh. As king, Ahaz looked around and saw two looming threats to his nation of Judah: Aram and, would you believe it?, the northern Kingdom of Israel. In the thick of such threats, Isaiah told Ahaz to trust the LORD. “Ask God for a sign,” he said, “no matter how remarkable it may be.” But faithless King Ahaz looked elsewhere for his help and refused such an usual request from God.
Main Body
Isaiah’s prophecy was a Word, a sign, against Ahaz’s false, do-it-yourself religion. It is a Word, a sign, against our natural idea that we have to do something to please God, to make Him smile on us. We don’t normally hear the words, “a Virgin will conceive” that way, do we? Yet it’s true: Jesus taking on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin is a sign against our impotence, our absolute helplessness, when it comes to our salvation.
Like Ahaz before us, we don’t want a sign from God--at least a sign that leaves God running the show, leaving us sidelined and powerless. What Ahaz did on the outside, we do on the inside. We like things just the way they are, if it leaves us in charge and in control.
Who wants to give up his power and hand it over to God--especially to a God that often looks weak and powerless in our eyes? Ahaz saw the army of Aram chalking up the victories. We also see those who mock God winning victories in this fallen world every day. So signs from God can stay where they are: safe and far away. We secretly say, “God, don’t give me a sign if it means that I have to step out in faith. Don’t give me a sign if it means going against everything that my senses and experiences are telling me.”
Ahaz had his plans. He was afraid for his life and for his country--but he also had a strategy. He would play off his enemies, one against the other, and outfox them. Ahaz presumed he needed something practical, a real and pragmatic plan, not some sign from a prophet’s mouth, from a loser of a God, as he saw it.
The sharpness of steel and the clash of armor were not imaginary--they were real! And so Ahaz rejected God’s Word and sign. He lived in the real world after all, just like us. Besides, he already had everything figured out, thank you. He didn’t want God interfering with his best-laid plans.
Turn from such wanton foolishness, for we are the same as Ahaz. Like Ahaz, we think that we have everything under control--or that we can if we try hard enough. God is weary of us standing on our own strength and our well-worn rationalizations to explain away our lack of faith in the hidden corners of our hearts. God is weary of us twisting His Word into what we want it to say.
Yes, the spirit of Ahaz is strong and alive with us, strong like a malignant cancer, taking no prisoners. Like Ahaz, the problem with us is us--not God. Like Ahaz, we don’t trust God’s Word to do its work, and so we look elsewhere. We don’t trust God’s timing and His ways. Like Ahaz, we throw ourselves into flimsy ventures, because deep down it feels like God has abandoned us.
You fear. You worry. You live amid the most prosperous earthly blessings ever enjoyed by man, and yet you are afraid. You worry that God won’t take care of you, your family, or this church. And so you scheme, plot, plan, and manipulate to make sure everything will be all right, that things will go just as you design. Do you realize what your actions are saying? They say you don’t trust God.
You allow your troubles to preach false doctrine and theology into your heart. We listen to our aches and our sorrows, thinking that we hear the heart of God toward us in such troubles, and not as sufferings needed for our eternal good. Sometimes, we only have an abstract, head faith, and fear, worry, and despair stir within our anxious hearts. Like Ahaz, we also don’t trust God.
As unbelief always does, it causes us to sin. We secretly think God and His Word are defenseless against the onslaught of this world and its ways. And so like Ahaz, we seek out the successful-looking false gods of this world. In the fissures and recesses of our hearts, we doubt God will take care of us. In the nighttime of our hearts, we doubt God will work good and blessing in every situation. So like Ahaz, we yank control away from God, wanting to be God in place of God.
We stupidly try to do for ourselves what God wants do for us. We try to get through the day without God’s Word. We try to get through the week without the Word and the Sacrament. Some of us are so distracted that we go for weeks, months, without a morsel of the Bread of Life come down from heaven, or sometimes even hungering for Him. And then we wonder why we sit at home, spiritually spent, drained, and exhausted. It isn’t God’s fault; it’s our own.
So what Ahaz wouldn’t ask for, God gave him anyway. What we don’t ask for, God gives to us in His mercy. The Virgin’s Son is born; the Word becomes flesh to rescue us--not merely from some pagan oppressor--but from the beast, the father of lies, Satan himself. Despite our rebellion and our false and fallen thinking, Immanuel, God is with us. God loves us. He has taken up our flesh and made His dwelling among us.
He wears our skin, joined to the flesh of the Virgin’s womb. Immanuel moves about with muscles, flesh, and sinew. He has a soul like ours, but pure, without sin. He has a body so He could be bruised and crucified for us. He has a soul so He could be separated from His body, so that He could endure physical death. He is one of us; He is with us. He is God with Us, Immanuel. And He dies our death in our place.
Immanuel, God with Us, has come into this world. Although He formed the world from the chaos of nothingness, the world did not welcome Him. He has come into our prison of death to die for us and to rise again, giving life to the world. All this He did to make us His own, to make us one with Him. Why did Jesus do this? Not because we asked, not because we prayed, not because we believed--but because He is good and His mercy endures forever!
Jesus is still and forever God, and He is now and forever man. And forever, He is with us, Immanuel! Jesus comes to us, is with us, even today. In baptism, God the Father accepts the sacrifice of God the Son--the water being God’s sign for you. In holy baptism, God the Holy Spirit creates faith that latches onto the promises of God. In the life-giving water of baptism, salvation takes place. There, you first heard the proclamation of God’s true Word toward you: “I forgive you all your sins.” Your Baptism has separated you from the land of the dead and brought you into the land of the living.
In baptism, God crucifies our old sinful nature and causes us to die to sin, baptizing us into Christ’s death on the cross. As we heard in the epistle reading, “Having been buried with Christ in baptism, you were also raised with Him through the faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead. And when you were dead in the trespasses . . . of the flesh . . . God made you alive together with Him. He has forgiven us all of our trespasses . . . having nailed it to the cross.”
For on the cross, Christ Himself trampled the tyranny of Satan. On the cross, Christ deceived the Deceiver and destroyed the Destroyer. As it was at the cross, so it is at the baptismal font. That promise is for you. It is God’s pledge, sign, and Word to you. God has dealt with your sins and sent them forever away.
Immanuel, God with Us. Yes, He still enters His Father’s house on earth in Water and Word, and in bread and wine. He carries Good News from God: That God the Father loves us, has adopted us, and is eternally faithful. He lifts up our prayers to His Father and joins them to the prayers of the saints in heaven. He speaks us righteous. He even makes us holy through the Spirit He has sent. For He is God with us, Immanuel.
Conclusion
O dear child of God, your life in the faith was not born of human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God. You were reborn in water and in Word, born from above, and by His grace. And you will follow Jesus where He as gone: into the eternal, glorious presence of the Father.
All this is so because Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. He is with you always. Amen.
