Isaiah 7:10-17; Revelation 12:1-10a

I.        After all the introductory conversation, what do you think might be the first question our pulpit committee asks each candidate they interview? ([pause] I have never forgotten the first question I was asked by the pulpit committee that  interviewed me for my first call.

A.       I had been carefully counseled about how to have a successful interview, my attitude, what to wear, by both the president of my seminary, also by a minister who had been the missionary pastor in Tabriz, Iran, many years ago where my siblings and I had grown up. He was now pastor of the church just 3 miles from where I was interviewing.

1.       I was not prepared for that first question: “Do you believe in the virgin birth?”

2.       I also remember how I answered after thinking it over for about 30 seconds and probably taking a deep breath.

3.       “Yes, I believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth.” Then I asked them a question,  “But what does that mean in the life of the church; how does belief in the virgin birth make a difference in what we do as Christians?” 

4.       I do not recall the rest of the interview. It must have gone OK, because I did receive my first call to that church, the Nottingham Greenstone Church in the very Southeast corner of conservative, traditional, rural Pennsylvania. I treasure deeply the relationships, memories of both good and bad experiences there. Your first church is always very special.

 

II.       This morning we begin an advent series of sermons in which you and I will learn about the history and proclamation of 5 series of titles for the Messiah, 3 of them from the early part of Isaiah’s prophecy, and 2 from the latter days of Isaiah–which came years later during their Babylonian exile.

A.       Isaiah knew nothing about Jesus as a future person of history. Yet he believed God would send a Messiah who would change history. 

1.       For Jesus, Isaiah was the most important prophet when it came to understanding his own call...

a.       as the suffering servant,

b.       as the one whom the Spirit of the LORD God “has anointed to bring good tidings to the afflicted, “...to proclaim liberty to the captives.”

2.       Jesus quoted Isaiah more than any other Old Testament book, with the possible exception of the Psalms.

3.       Today we take up the first title given to the Messiah, “ Immanu El, God with us,” a passage in Isaiah 7, which some have called the most controversial text in all of Christian Scripture.

 

III.      Some background to this passage in Isaiah 7 will be helpful to us.

A.       Gene M Tucker, from the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, a United Methodist School, reminds us that southern Irsrael, or Judah, is facing some desperate days ahead.

1.       Ahaz, who became king in Jerusalem in 734 BCE,  is worried about his perennial enemy, the powerful Assyrians who are getting ready for war. Other nations, particularly Egypt,  are likewise threatening.

a.       The images of “the fly” and “the bee” are mentioned.

b.       Egypt is the annoying fly, and Assyria is the more dangerous bee.

2.       Isaiah further describes it this way, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest before the wind.

3.       So Ahaz summons his cabinet or his ministry of defense, which includes  Isaiah.  What is the word or sign from God?

4.       Earlier Ahaz and Jerusalem had survived a seige by a coalition made up of Israel in the north and another nation. At that time he had a confrontation with Isaiah, who warned him against appealing for help from Tiglath-Pileser, ruler of Assyria. Thus Ahaz became a vassal of Assyria.

5.       This second encounter with Isaiah continues the earlier conversation.

a.       “Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, ‘Ask YAHWEH the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights.’”

6.       God says to Isaiah, Go, say to Ahaz, “‘be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint.’”

a.       God will take care of you, and the Assyrians preparing for battle could be a good thing, for Assyria is to deal with Judah’s enemies.

b.       Look for the sign God will send.

7.       But Ahaz will not accept the good news, will not accept any sign that is not a powerful image.  It is too ordinary, not acceptable on the brink of a terrible war.

 

B.       And what is this ordinary sign?  “‘a young women shall conceive and bear a son, and (she) shall call his name, Immanu El.’”

1.       Three other images are forecast in this sign from God:

a.       First: “He shall eat curds and honey,”

b.       Second, he has to grow up so that “ he will know how to refuse the evil and choose the good..”

c.       Third, before that may happen, “the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”

2.       Several comments here: First, notice that each time God sends a sign to the people in Luke around the Nativity, people react in fear. The first part of God’s message then is, “do not be afraid.”  Calm down, you are to be filled with joy at this sign, at whatever new thing God has to give you.

3.       No. 2, while the young woman is pregnant now, all of this will not play out right away, but in fact, 65 years must first pass, and those two kings you are afraid of will be dead and gone before your land is attacked.

a.       Remember, with the flight into Egypt, there the holy family waited until the king was dead before returning to Judah (Matthew 2).

4.       No. 3, a sign in the Old Testament may a great stupendous event, like the great flood in Noah’s time, or the parting of the Sea, but it might also be some every date run of the mill event. At any rate, a great sign always is born out of the ordinary,

a.       as the birth of Jesus to a blue collar carpenter and a peasant girl.

5.       Ahaz was not patient enough, nor did he believe God’s promise. He wanted action now!         

6.       Says Dr. Tucker, “Something is at the same time common and wonderful, as the birth of a baby (in Isaiah’s day), the revelation of a new future, embodied God’s promise of his saving presence”;    

a.       which becomes fulfilled 750 years later in Jesus’ promise, that “where 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name, there I am in the  midst of them.’”

b.       or in his departing blessing,  “‘Lo, I am with you always.’”

c.       The promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit is a further sign of that enduring presence of Immanu El, the God who is with us and will not abandon us;

d.       along with the church as the continuing living presence of a risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  (page 2)

 

IV.      For a number of centuries the Christian Church focused only on one aspect of this great prophecy: the “virgin Birth.”   

A.       We know that right after the second destruction of Jerusalem around the turn of the first century, the Christians were banned from Jerusalem.

1.       So they no longer had their Hebrew texts of the Jewish TANAKH or Holy writings; they had no more contact with Jewish centers of learning.

a.       What they did have was their Greek translation of Jewish Scripture, the Septuagint.

b.       For all New Testament writings, the basis of quotations from the Old Testament was the Greek translation.

2.       Thus, the Greek text of Isaiah 7:14, says “Behold, a VIRGIN (“parthenos”) shall conceive and bear a son...”

a.       The Hebrew text identifies the mother only as “a young woman.”

3.       But the early Church focused only on one aspect of the sign, the virgin birth....which is to say, they, or we forgot the second part, equally as important–and for the Jewish faith–more critical, the name of that child, “Immanu El,”

a.       a God who shall continue on with us in our most desperate times.

 

B.       In Revelation 12, it is interesting that when the “great portent” appears in the heavens, where “a woman” is about to give birth, the focus is two-fold. (Revelation was written at the time the Christians were kicked out of Jerusalem.)

1.       First, on the miraculous birth of her child, as she cries out in anguish for delivery, and a red dragon stands before the woman in labor;

2.       Secondly, it goes into detail to describe what happens afterwards, as war arises in heaven between the angels and the great dragon.         

3.       For the Jewish faith, the interest of Isaiah 7:14,  is not the woman, but the naming of the son, as in Luke 1, when Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son is born, the naming is what it is all about, not Elizabeth’s advanced age.

4.       Here in Isaiah 7, his name in Hebrew is two words, not one as in our NRSV Scripture: “IMMANU EL”

a.       In Isaiah the woman names the child,

b.       In Matthew 1, the virgin mother is told by the angel to name the child EMMANUEL (spelled with an “E” as one word).

c.       In the pages of the Old Testament, everyone who is named with that two letter word for God, “El,” that person’s name is one word,  combined word, such as Samuel or Ezekiel.

5.       Surprisingly, throughout the Judaic tradition, “Immanu El,” is never used as a messianic title.

                                                                                                         

C.       When Christians began to go back and take a look at original Hebrew texts for Scripture, and what Jewish scholarship said, they discovered this disparity in emphasis on this 14^th verse of Isaiah 7.   

1.       They started asking, what is Isaiah saying here? Is it significant?

a.       Is there something more here than the recycling of the amazing story of Sarah and Rachel, Hannah, or Elizabeth, childless women to whom God’s promise of new life comes in a first born son.

b.       In one sense every child’s birth in the Old Testament is a miraculous birth, for no woman gets pregnant except by the will and impantation of God’s Spirit in that woman.

One of our members here at Central offered me the analogy of a delightful movie from the 80's, “Jewel of the Nile,” starring Michael Douglas as the swashbuckling Jack Colton, Kathleen Turner as the romance story writer Joan Wilder, and Danny DeVito as the unscrupulous villain. What is the “Jewel of the Nile”? everyone is competing to find and to kill for. It is NOT a piece of glass out of a hidden mine!  No, the Jewel of the Nile is a non-violent Arab, an unassuming man who wears eyeglasses, in a palace jail, Al Julharah, a holy man, who alone may bring peace to the land.                                                                                               

 

D.       Isaiah is directing you and me just as he was Ahaz and those quaking in the wind like shivering aspen; he points us ahead in history to God’s amazing promise of a new day when our God will be with us absolutely!

1.       The promise of his saving presence embodied for the people threatened with annihilation and unbelievable suffering that “a remnant shall return.”

a.       For Isaiah that was sufficient, so much so he named one of his children Shear Jashub, “A remnant shall return,” “.”

b.       We have no evidence Isaiah’s vision of a Messiah goes beyond that.

 

E.       For us, Jesus Christ extended that saving promise not just in this life, but in death and after death in resurrection!

1.       So that Immanu El now has a new and unbelievable meaning, A God who is with us absolutely and always!

2.       Jesus quoted Psalm 22 on the cross, especially that equally troublesome verse, “‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’”

a.       I had one member who refused to believe that God could have abandoned Jesus on the Cross, and that member would not recite that part of the Creed about Jesus descending into hell.

b.       But is not that abandonment by God, that judgment on my sin, necessary for Jesus alone to bear for me? Otherwise I would have to suffer that same cruel abandonment.

3.       And God’s fulfillment does not always happen in our day, our scheme of things. It could be 65 years from now, or in another time and place, in God’s own time.  We need to always be open to his presence startling and surprising us, calling us into a new tomorrow, especially when there seems to be no hope, nothing to hold on for.

 

F.       In Revelation 12, we are invited to join in the celebration of that outbreak between Michael’s angels and the red dragon, the Beast, Satan.  But you ask, why be joyful about the prospect of war? 

1.       Because, “‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come!’”                                                                                                                                                                                                               

2.       Belief in the Virgin Birth as a necessary part of your faith may be a critical belief for you; and that is good. Hold on to it.

3.       But the second part–the naming of the miracle child as Immanu El, the God who is always with us– think what that promise means to a soldier on patrol in Afghanistan, a couple that have lost their home or their jobs, a member of your family diagnosed with stage 4 cancer...

a.       and you are given the eyes of fearless, patient, calming faith to  see God’s abiding presence in this birth of a baby to an ordinary young couple in no place important or memorable.

4.       I remember the story of Robert of Bruce in Scotland. He succeeded William Wallace, after defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. Bruce took refuge in a cave after suffering a humiliating defeat himself. As he lay there feeling sorry for himself, he watched a spider try to weave her web on the ceiling. The spider failed many times but she never gave up. Finally she completed her web. Robert Bruce saw that as a sign from God. He got up and led what was left of his troops into victory against the British enemy.