The Sign of His Mother

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Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 7. We’re starting a new series this morning, a new series of messages that will actually take us through, not all the way to Christmas, but to the Christmas season, and I think will prepare us for the Christmas season and to be thinking about that. This series is called Signs of His Coming, Signs of His Coming, and I talked to you last Sunday night, I may have even talked some last Sunday morning, about the second coming and the hope that we have in knowing that Jesus is coming back one day.

And I do believe in the second coming, even if the world doesn’t believe it today. People doubted in the early days that it was true. People doubt it today.

I don’t know if more people doubt it today than ever have. But the fact is our dominant culture doubts the fact that Jesus is coming back. They doubt that Jesus was who He said He was.

They doubt that He is who He said He was. They doubt that He’s coming back. And if there’s ever a reference to it, I told you last week, it’s a joke.

I even heard on the TV just last night, we were watching a show, and this man tells somebody else good night, and in the case of an apocalypse, good luck, and walks out the door. And everybody in the studio audience laughed, and I thought, that’s not funny. One of these days, it’s really going to happen.

One of these days, Jesus is going to come back. One of these days, the events that the Bible describes as the end times will take place, and it won’t be a laughing matter. It is a hopeful thing for those of us who know Christ, but it’s not a laughing matter for the lost world.

It’s a matter that should drive us to be concerned about their salvation. But the world thinks it’s a joke. The world doubts it.

Had a philosophy professor in college, probably wouldn’t have agreed with each other if one said good morning. We were that polar opposite. And he asked in class one day, it was always one of his goals was to undermine Christianity as much as anything else.

Asked in class one day how many of us actually believed that Jesus was coming back one day. Kind of laughed it off. And so the rest of the class and I and maybe one or two other people raised our hands.

And he and I got to talking later, you really believe Jesus is coming back? I said, yeah, I really believe that. He said, you realize you people have been saying for 2,000 years he’s coming back and he’s coming back soon?

I said, yeah, so it’s even truer today than it was then, isn’t it? Well, that little one-liner failed to convince him. But the point is, Jesus is coming back soon.

And when He said He was coming back soon, He didn’t say on our timetable, soon to us and soon to God are two different things. But the world doubts He’s coming back. And why should we believe He’s coming back?

And it may be a little misleading to call this series Signs of His Coming because I’m not talking about His. . .

I’m talking now about His second coming, but through the series I’m not talking about His second coming. Why should we believe He’s coming back when the Bible says He’s coming back? is because the Bible was correct when it said He was coming the first time.

And between now and the beginning of the Christmas season, I want to look at 12. I’ve got 12 planned out, 12 signs of His coming the first time. 12 signs that the Old Testament said this is what the Messiah is going to look like, this is what He’s going to do, this is where He’s coming from.

Signs that so many people at that time missed that we look back and say that cannot have been fulfilled by anybody other than Jesus Christ. And there are multitudes of other signs, other Old Testament prophecies of His first coming that we could talk about, but I picked 12 that I thought were especially significant. And we’re going to talk about those. Now, if the Holy Spirit leads me to preach on something else in the middle of this, we’ll take a break and come back to it.

But as we get ready for Christmas and talk about Him coming the first time, I want us to look over these next several weeks at the fact that this wasn’t just an accident of history that, oh, Jesus was born, but this is something that God was talking about 400, 700, 1,000 years before it happened, and even before that. And we look at these prophecies, and I’ve not been through all of them. I’m not as much of a prophecy expert as I probably should be.

But people far more intelligent than I am who’ve looked into all the various prophecies in the Old Testament that point to Jesus Christ. I’ve heard one or two people say that the odds, and I don’t have the number, It’s a number too big for me to remember. But the odds of all the prophecies that there are being fulfilled in two people, let alone one, is the same as a stack of silver dollars a foot high covering the entire state of Texas, one of them being marked on the back with a red X, and somebody being parachute dropped into the state of Texas and picking up that one with the red X on the first try. That the odds are astronomical that anybody else could have ever fulfilled.

For there to be somebody else who could have fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s coming, it would have taken more people than ever have lived on earth and ever will live on earth times huge numbers. I mean, it’s just not plausible. And there’s nobody else, there’s never been anybody else with a credible claim to be the Messiah.

And Jesus Christ fulfilled all of these prophecies. And some have argued, well, some of these are what they call self-fulfilling prophecies. He could have made some of these happen.

Well, some of the things that the Old Testament talks about are things that, yes, during his life he could have caused to happen. He could have gone and deliberately fulfilled prophecies. And there were some that he deliberately fulfilled, and I think some that we’re going to talk about.

For example, when his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he deliberately makes them go out and get a colt of a donkey because that’s what the Old Testament said that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on. And so he said, go get me one of those. But there are also prophecies like what we’re going to talk about this morning regarding his birth.

Folks, he wasn’t born yet. If we’re just looking at this from the world’s perspective, Jesus was any other man, Jesus was just a human being, it doesn’t hold water because Jesus couldn’t have fulfilled this before he was born. He couldn’t have made this happen.

There were things during his life that he couldn’t have made other people do. He could not have made his enemies fulfill the prophecies that would prove he was the Messiah. So beginning today and over these next few weeks, I want to talk about signs that point to Jesus being the Messiah.

It should take us up to Christmas time when we talk about the birth of this Messiah into the world. But I want to start this morning at Isaiah chapter 7, and we’re going to look at verses 1 through 14 of Isaiah chapter 7. And this first sign of His coming was the sign of His mother, the sign of His mother.

Isaiah chapter 7, verse 1 says, And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Razin, the king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. We’ll stop there for a second. This is the time period, if you remember, that I’ve mentioned before that after the death of Solomon, Israel split into two warring kingdoms. Sometimes they were friends, sometimes they were enemies.

They were always rivals, but there were these two kingdoms that existed for about 300 years. And this is in the time of those two kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Israel had teamed up with Syria, and they were now coming to threaten the southern kingdom of Judah. It says they went toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail.

They could not win. Verse 2, and it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. Syria was working with one of the northern tribes.

And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Isaiah being one of the prophets, go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shear-Jashub. I have no idea if I pronounced that right.

Shear-Jashub, that was the son of Isaiah, thy son at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field. Tells Isaiah, take your son and go meet Ahaz. Ahaz is the king of Judah.

Go meet with him at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field. This is outside Jerusalem. And say unto him, take heed and be quiet.

Fear not, neither be faint-hearted, for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Raisin with Syria, the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have taken evil counsel against thee, saying, Let us go up against 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 Tabeel. Thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass, for the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Raisin, and within three score and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people.

And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. So, a lot of names, a lot of places mentioned in there.

What God is telling Isaiah is to take his son and go find King Ahaz, not Ahab, but Ahaz, find King Ahaz and tell him that this is what they’re plotting, this evil scheme between Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel is not going to come to pass. It’s not going to stand. I will not let this happen.

They’re going to throw everything they have at you, and it’s not going to work. And he says, three score and five years, and they’re going to be ended anyway. Sixty-five years, and they’re going to come to ruin anyway.

And he says, if you will not believe, surely you shall not be established. You’re not going to be strengthened in any of this, though, if you don’t believe what I have to say. Verse 10, Verse 14, the one that’s probably familiar to us.

Emmanuel. We hear Isaiah chapter 17 quoted, Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, quoted a lot when we talk about the virgin birth as being a prophecy of Mary as a virgin giving birth to the Lord Jesus. And it is a prophecy of that.

I have never, for all of my insistence on looking at context, that somebody comes in with an idea about the Bible, you’ve got to look at the context around it. For all of my insistence that we can’t take one verse out of context and just look at it by itself. For all my insistence on that, this is one I’ve got to say I’ve never looked at in context before this week, that I’ve always just taken Isaiah 7, 14 and said, oh, it’s a prophecy of the virgin birth.

God’s going to give us a sign, da-da-da, and that’s it, and never looked at the context around it. And so I learned something. I always like it when, as I’m preparing to teach y’all, I can learn something in the process.

And God’s incredible that there’s always something more to find out in His Word, if we’ll just look. But I looked at that in context that, okay, it says here in verse 14, therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign, and the sign is, behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Emmanuel. But it never occurred to me to ask the question, what was that supposed to be a sign of?

And it goes back to the fact that Isaiah here is speaking, not just to Ahaz, but to all of Judah, about God’s deliverance. And this was to be a sign to them of God’s deliverance. He tells Ahaz, God himself through Isaiah tells Ahaz in the preceding verses, ask a sign of God.

Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. And we get this idea sometimes that it’s never appropriate to ask God to prove himself. Never appropriate to ask God for confirmation.

I shouldn’t say ask God to prove himself, but to ask God for confirmation about what he said. And if we do it, you know, if we do it in an unbelieving spirit, it’s wrong. The Bible talks about wicked, perverse generation seeking after a sign of what God’s already said he would do.

But here God himself, for whatever reason, is telling Ahaz, go ahead, test me. Isaiah tells him because God tells him, ask a sign of the Lord thy God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.

He was willing to, God was willing to do a miracle on earth or in heaven to demonstrate to Ahaz the fact that he could do what he said he would do, that he could deliver the people of Judah. Because at this time, King Ahaz is not just worried about the threat coming from Israel and Syria. Ahaz is going to do something about it.

Ahaz is planning to make an alliance with a pagan tribe around him, that he’s going to get help because this pagan king is going to come in and, yeah, he’s planning to wipe out the Israelites and planning to wipe out the Syrians, but in the process, he gets stronger and then he’ll be a threat to God’s people. And God didn’t want Ahaz relying on some pagan king. He wanted them to rely on the king of kings.

And he said, I am enough to deliver you. If you don’t believe me, ask for a sign here on earth or in the heavens and I’ll do it. He could give him a sign like Gideon putting out the fleece.

Or he could give him a sign like with Joshua turning back the sun. God could control any of these things and was willing to give Ahaz a sign. Ahaz was a wicked king.

It sounds here, verse 12, where he says, But Ahaz said, But I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. It sounds like he’s a very devout man. He’s a good man here that says, I’m not going to tempt God.

I’m not going to put God to the test. Sounds like he’s a righteous man. But Ahaz was a wicked, wicked king. And the reason he says, I will not put God to the test, is not because he had a problem with asking God for confirmation, that he felt like it was a lack of faith in God to ask for confirmation.

The reason he didn’t want to ask God for a sign of God’s deliverance is because he didn’t want the answer. He knew that if God said, ask me for a sign, and he asked for it, that God would give him the sign and confirm his intent to deliver Judah. But he wanted to do what he wanted to do.

He had his plan already, that he was going to approach this other king and ask for an alliance. And that’s what he wanted to do, because Ahaz was not a man who feared God. And so he says, I will not tempt the Lord by God.

He talks to Isaiah trying to throw up this facade, this mask of religiousness, of devoutness, that God sees through it, as God does always with the masks that we put on. He said, Hear ye now, O house of David. He’s not just talking to Ahaz now, but to the entire royal family and the entire kingdom that have supported Ahaz, the house of David.

Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? It’s a small thing for you to stand here and lie to and argue with the prophet, but will you also argue with and lie to God himself is the question that is asked of Ahaz. Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also?

And in verse 14, he says, God’s going to give you a sign whether you want one or not. Israel, Judah, God’s chosen people here, I will give you a sign whether you want it or not. and it was not going to come in Ahaz’s lifetime because now he’s talking about the full deliverance of his people, not just from Rezin and Remaliah, but from their sin, from everything that binds them, everything that holds them captive.

He’s talking about his ability to deliver them. And so he says of this deliverance, remember we’ve got to tie verse 14 into everything we’ve read up to this point and the fact that he’s talking about his ability to deliver Judah. Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a son.

People of Judah, you think God is not able to deliver you. He’s going to give you a sign whether you want it or not. And the sign is this.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Such a simple, simple sign. Not simple to make happen, not for us anyway, but a simple sign.

Something that was miraculous but also easily missed if they weren’t paying attention. And so many people were not paying attention. But Jesus’ birth to Mary, and the gospel accounts do identify Mary as being a virgin who gave birth.

Excuse me. Jesus being born of a virgin was not just a sign that God is all-powerful and God can do anything. It was not just a sign of that, but it was a sign of God’s deliverance going back 700 years, that God had foretold 700 years before.

People will say, how do we know that that wasn’t just added in? people think Isaiah was added to later on and Isaiah was changed and some of the things that are written in there, he didn’t really say it wasn’t a prophecy, it was something they added in later. We know that’s not true because as early as about 200 or 300 B.

C. , that’s 200 or 300 years before the birth of Christ, the rabbis in Alexandria had gotten together and translated the Old Testament into Greek. And that Greek Old Testament, 200 or 300 years before Jesus, contained the prophecy too, contain this too.

This wasn’t something that was added in by early Christians. This is something that was prophesied hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born. And Jesus was the fulfillment of this, that he was not just unusual. Well, we’re going to talk about this.

Verse 14, the beginning of it, it says, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. His birth to Mary showed that he was no ordinary man. If Jesus had been born the conventional way we’re all born, people might never have taken notice of him.

It would be so much easier to say, oh, he’s just an average person. He could have come and done all these miracles, and it would be easy to write him off as a magician or a sorcerer. But the fact that he was born in such a miraculous way that we do not see happen otherwise proves that God was involved here, and this was no just ordinary man when he says, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.

People say, well, how can God do that? There’s no scientific explanation. Well, that’s what makes it a miracle.

People question that. God is not limited by science. God invented science.

God wrote the laws of science and of physics and chemistry and biology. God wrote these things. God controls them.

And if you believe in an omnipotent, all-powerful God, as we do, as the Bible teaches, then why is it out of the realm of possibility to believe that a virgin could conceive and bear a son? And just for the sake of scientific argument, it does happen in lower species. It’s such a scientific concept, they even have a term for it called parthenogenesis.

Parthenos from the Greek Parthenos meaning virgin and genesis meaning birth. You see lower organisms all the time that reproduce without any help from any other organism, but it’s not something that happens in mankind. See, it’s not outside of the laws of science, it’s within the laws that God wrote.

It’s not God’s fault that it’s beyond our ability to comprehend how He did it, but that’s what miracles are about. when God does something that we can’t explain. And we still can’t explain everything.

Science still does not know all the answers. We still can’t explain everything we want to know about the universe. But I have no reason to doubt that this happened because I do believe in an all-powerful God.

And it showed that He was no ordinary man. It’s an incredible thing because it doesn’t happen every day and it almost seems to be an understatement to say this will be a sign that a virgin will conceive and bear a son. Because a sign is just supposed to be something that you notice, something pointing to something else.

A virgin birth is not just a sign. It’s a neon banner 300 feet high pointing, look here, this is what God can do. God was involved here.

Like I said, a 300-foot flashing neon sign saying God was here. It’s an amazing thing. And when God chose Mary to bear Jesus Christ, it was proof that Jesus was the one he was talking about 700 years earlier through Isaiah, that He was the promised Messiah.

The virgin birth proves that Jesus Christ was no ordinary man because it was no ordinary birth. And as we talk through these signs the next few weeks, I don’t want to just tell you what the signs were. I want to tell you how they point to Christ, why they matter, the implications of it.

As much as I can, study these things out for yourself because there’s a richness to God’s Word that I can’t explain in a 30 or 40-minute message. So check it out for yourself. but I want to point you to some of the things that these mean.

And the first thing it meant was that he’s no ordinary man because it was no ordinary birth. And people that want to disbelieve the Bible, people that want to disbelieve the Bible will tell you that, oh, the Bible, Isaiah chapter 7, does not prophesy a virgin birth. They’ll say it doesn’t talk about a virgin birth.

And I say people who want to disbelieve the Bible because the people that I’ve read and people that I’ve talked to that come up with reasons to doubt the Bible and about this and about other things that come up with reasons to doubt the Bible. Well, you can answer their objection and you can give them a response that takes that objection away. There’s always another one waiting there to take its place.

And I think a lot of the reason people don’t believe the Bible is just because they flat out don’t want to. Just as much as I’m willing to admit that sometimes the reason I believe the Bible is because I want to. But on top of that, I’ve found evidence that’s out there if we’re just willing to look.

But they’ll say, well, Jesus couldn’t have been born of a virgin. That doesn’t make sense. Liberal Protestants will tell us that.

The translators of the Revised Standard Version will tell us that, that Jesus couldn’t have been born of a virgin. It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not there in Isaiah chapter 7. Because the Hebrew word almah, that is translated virgin here, can also mean young girl, they’ll tell us.

Well, that’s true. We have words in English that have different meanings based on how you use them in context and connotation. Greek is that way.

Hebrew is that way. There are different implications depending on context. That’s why context is so important.

It’s true. The word Alma can mean virgin or young girl. But tell me this, how often does it happen that a young girl gives birth?

Most of the people who give birth are young. And all of the people who give birth are girls. Not really a sign, is it?

If we want to look at context, if we want to know what the word really means, look at the context, and he says, this will be a sign to you. Therefore, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, an almah shall conceive and bear a son.

It’s not much of a sign at all if a young girl, and I’m not talking about an eight-year-old, young girl, teen years, about the time they married and had kids in this day, it was not a sign for somebody Mary’s age to have a child. That would be like saying, I can predict to you who the President of the United States will be in 40 years. There will be a sign.

A lady will have a child, and you’ll know. Really? That’s about as vague as the horoscopes.

You ever look at those? I hope you don’t. But if you’ve ever looked at them, they apply to everything that happens in your life every day.

They’re not psychic. You believe it again if you want to believe it, based on your desire to believe it. Anyway, it’s vague.

It’s not a sign to say a young woman would give birth. That doesn’t narrow it down. That only applies to, oh, say, the six billion people that are alive today.

Any one of us in this room, under the liberal interpretation of this verse, could be the Messiah. Think about it in that context, because I know I’m not. I know I’m not qualified.

None of the rest of you are either. It’s not a sign to say a young woman would give birth, but it is absolutely a sign to say that a virgin would conceive and give birth because that does not happen every day. As a matter of fact, that doesn’t happen any day unless God is involved, and yet it happened that day about 2,000 years ago.

We have credible eyewitness, second-hand eyewitness testimony in the Gospels, people that talked to the people who were there telling us it happened, that he was born of a virgin. And so if we want to be intellectual and pick apart the pieces of the Bible and try to support our pet doctrines, we’ve got to be consistent and look at the whole thing. Because we can’t just take that one word out of context and say, see, there’s no virgin birth.

We’ve got to look at the whole verse. Really, how is that a sign? It’s only a sign if there was a virgin birth.

And that’s exactly what it points to. Jesus Christ was no ordinary man. That’s why it’s important that he was born of a virgin.

The second thing is not just that Jesus’ birth to Mary showed he was no ordinary man, but Jesus’ birth to Mary showed that he came to be a deliverer. See, this is the part that I missed out on up until this week. I always knew that, yes, Jesus came to deliver his people from our sins, not his sins.

He had no sins. I always knew that Jesus came to deliver his people from their sins. The Bible says that in other places.

But in this passage, I missed that. I’d always looked at it as, yes, God will send us a sign. This will happen.

I never, up until this week, thought to ask, well, what’s it a sign of? You look in the previous verses, and he was talking about his deliverance of his people, that he would set them free, he would rescue them, he would redeem them. So many of the things that we talked about in the last series about God’s sovereignty, the things that he’s working towards, were involved even here, that God was working to deliver his people.

So God said, whether you believe it or not, whether you’re willing to rely on me or not, I can and I will deliver the people of Judah. And whether you want it or not, I’m going to send you a sign, and this is the sign. So the importance of Jesus being this one who was conceived of a virgin and born is the fact that that one that Isaiah talks about didn’t just come to be unusual, but he came to be a deliverer.

And so when Jesus is that one who’s born of a virgin, it shows he’s the deliverer that Isaiah was talking about 700 years ago. That when this wicked king says, I would rather rely on the other wicked kings around me than rely on God, than to fear God. God told him there was no deliverance in these wicked kings.

He told him he would not be established if he didn’t believe. And God foretold where deliverance would come from in that case. It wasn’t going to come through their military solutions.

It wasn’t going to come through political alliances and all these things. Deliverance was going to come through the one who was born of a virgin. And that’s where deliverance came from.

The fact that He was born of Mary proves that He came to be, or points to the fact that He came to be a deliverer of His people, that He came to be the very Messiah that God promised. He would be the means by which it would happen. So when we talk about the virgin birth, it doesn’t just show us that Jesus Christ was extraordinary, that God was involved here, but it shows us that God sent Him for a purpose, and that purpose was to be a deliverer.

And so often we focus on the manger to the exclusion of the cross. We treat the manger and the cross like they’re two different people involved. And we talk about the baby Jesus as though that’s all he ever was.

Not realizing, or I think we do realize it, but we need to point it out to people. We need to teach people the true meaning of Christmas, which is not just that Jesus came and was born and he was God in the flesh as a little baby, but that he came for a purpose. Christmas needs to point to Easter.

And when we talk about Jesus being born of a virgin, he came as a deliverer, And we need to point out the fact that God didn’t just send him. God sent him for a purpose, which was to come and to save his people from their sins. And even in the virgin birth, God is pointing out the fact that he would be a deliverer.

Folks, he wasn’t just, like I said, he’s not an ordinary man. He wasn’t even just an extraordinary man and a deliverer. This passage indicates that he was even so much more than that.

Jesus’ birth to Mary showed that he was God in the flesh. See, God could have raised up any extraordinary man to be a human Messiah and be a deliverer, and that’s what the people were expecting. But God said, I’m sending you so much more than that.

He says here 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. Immanuel in Hebrew means what?

God with us. God with us. It’s not talking about Jesus’ literal name.

I’ve heard people say, well, see, it wasn’t a prophecy about Jesus. They said his name would be Immanuel. Okay, that’s a flimsy argument.

Name and title are often used interchangeably. It’s talking about His name as in His title, what they would call Him, what His attribute would be. He would be named Jesus, yes, but He would be called Emmanuel, God with us.

And He would be called that because He is God with us. John chapter 1 goes into a long discourse about in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the same was in the beginning with God. And on down into John 1, verse 14, where it says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And the Word that he’s talking about was Jesus Christ, the second person in the Trinity, the Son of God, who stepped out of eternity into time and into our space and put on our flesh and became one of us. The virgin birth isn’t just talking about the circumstances of his birth, but talks about really who he was here to be and who he was from eternity past and into eternity present. Jesus is not just a human being, great teacher, not even extraordinary man and deliverer.

He was God in the flesh. And it points us to the incredible sacrifice that He made, the incredible sacrifice that the Father made in sending His Son to be that deliverer.

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