(Based on and edited from a message preached at FBC Chamois, MO on 12-04-2022. This is not an exact transcription)
Introduction: Last week we lit the Hope candle and this week, we have two. In addition to the hope candle, this week is the prophecy candle, following one of the patterns I found on the Internet. There are several of these patterns, by the way!
Now, not long ago, I saw a message on a certain church’s outdoor sign. The text, so to speak, was the sermon series and the theme or topic, I guess, for that particular week was “Are There Prophets Still Today?” or something along those lines.(A discussion about prophets in the message omitted here to save space) There was any number of true prophets but also a lot more false prophets. Isaiah was one of God’s true prophets and the text covers one of his best known prophecies. We’ll look at this one plus a few more. Now here’s the text:
1 The prophecy: Who is the Messiah?
Text: Isaiah 7:1-16, NASB:1 Now it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Aram and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not conquer it. 2 When it was reported to the house of David, saying, “The Arameans have camped in Ephraim,” his heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake with the wind. 3 Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller’s field, 4 and say to him, ‘Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aramand the son of Remaliah. 5 Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying, 6 ‘Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,” 7 thus says the Lord GOD,: “It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass. 8 For the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people), 9 and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.”’”
10 Then the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 11 “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORDt!” 13 Then he said, “Listen now, O house of David! Is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men, that you will try the patience of my God as well? 14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. 15 He will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good. 16 For before the boy knows enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken”.
Some of us may remember an old ditty about “the five w’s and the h”, and it goes something like this: “I have six helping friends who taught me all I know; their names are What and Where and When and How and Why and Who!” Now, that isn’t the best rhyme, and honest, I don’t remember when I first heard this jingle, but it’s a good one! It’s good for figuring out just about anything you read or hear. Well, sometimes, anyway.
As mentioned, this is the week for looking at the prophecies about Jesus and His first coming. We can only look at a few because there are so many, we’d be here till Tuesday if we wanted to cover them in any kind of depth! So then, let’s look at the Who in these prophecies of the Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord.
It’s worth noting that nowhere in the Old Testament is Jesus called “Jesus” or “Joshua (the Hebrew form of Jesus). Mary and Joseph may have had any number of names for the Baby until an angel told Joseph to name this Baby “Jesus (Matthew 1:21-25)” but there was one Name that He never applied to Himself. That name was Immanuel, and we read about it in the text.
Now to give a little background for the text; and I owe some of this to a message preached by Dr, Timothy Faber, DOM of the association around Eldon, some years back. He gave some details, comparing the text here in Isaiah with current events which had affected King Ahaz personally as well as the kingdom of Judah.
The main thing is that Ahaz, being a wicked and ungodly king, was trying nearly everything, accomplishing little, and truly in a bad, very bad situation, when Isaiah and his son come to meet him outside the city. The word ‘conduit” here refers to a tunnel so water could be channeled or directed into the city and the bad guys couldn’t get it.
While Isaiah, his son Shear-jashub, and King Ahaz were together, the LORD Himself asked Ahaz to ask for any kind of sign he wanted. Ahaz, for whatever reason—and only he knows why—sniffed and said, “I’m not asking Him for anything!” Isaiah relayed the LORD’s message to Ahaz , saying, “All right, the LORD Himself will give _you_ a sign!” The balance or rest of the message was that a virgin would have a child and within a certain period of time, certain things would happen. It’s all there in the text.
Now here’s where the law of double fulfillment of prophecy comes into view. Please hear me carefully: there was a fulfillment of this prophecy within a brief period of time after Isaiah spoke these words. The word “virgin” here means a young woman of marital age. She may have been a true or genuine virgin, never having “known” a man, at the time but soon she would have a child, son, and would name him Immanuel meaning “God with us.”
That this happened is borne out by the test of a prophet in Deuteronomy 18. There God said if a “prophet” makes a prediction, and it doesn’t happen, that prophet isn’t one of My prophets and you don’t need to listen to anything else he has to say. If that particular virgin hadn’t borne a son and named him Immanuel, then nothing else Isaiah had to say would be worth listening to.
But there was another fulfillment of that prophecy about 700 years later! There was a virgin, named Mary, and her fiancé,’ Joseph, who were “betrothed”—beyond engaged but not yet legally married. And Mary was the one virgin, the one woman, whom God chose to be the mother of His Son, Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give more information about the first Christmas story. And what a story it was—and still is, even today.
2 The prophecy: When will Messiah come?
Text, Daniel 9:24-27, NASB: 24 “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. So you are to know and understand that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. 26 Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. 27 And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
Well, now we’ve talked about the “Who” of the Prophecy Candle. But we’re not done yet. The next thing to look at is the “when”. Remember, some prophecies had specific details and some were rather general. This prophecy, in Daniel 9, is about as specific as any prophecy could be. Daniel quoted the angel who gave him these words that seventy “weeks” were going to happen. There were three periods of these, a seven-week period, followed by a 62-weeek period and a 70th week to happen later. I won’t go into the arithmetic here, but there’s a book called “The Coming Prince,” written by Sir Robert Anderson, which proves this prophecy was fulfilled to the very day.
All right, we’ve looked at Who the Messiah was going to be and When He was coming. But there’s another question: just where was He going to be born? Here’s another prophecy that tells us exactly where this was going to happen.
3 The prophecy: Where will Messiah be born?
Text, Micah 5:2, NASB: 2 But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will come forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His times of coming forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.”
There are a lot of people who seem to hold to statements or maxims like this: “It’s not where you’ve been that counts—it’s where you’re going.” In some cases, sure, that’s true but that’s not even close when it comes to the Messiah, Jesus. Think about it: if the LORD had not given a specific location where the Messiah was to be born, anybody with any delusions of thinking “I’m the Messiah!’ could say that, regardless of where he was born, and nobody could hold him accountable for it. In fact, until the days of Micah (about the same time as Isaiah), there was no specific location mentioned for Messiah’s place of birth.
My guess is that during much of the Old Testament era, there were about as many guesses as guessers where that location would be! There’s no proof for any of this, but some could have said Bethel, as that was where Abram built his first altar to the LORD. Others could say Messiah would have been born in Hebron, where Abraham eventually settled. No doubt, others would lay claim to Jerusalem; after all, that was the site of Israel’s capitol and later, the Temple. But to settle the issue once and for all, God spoke through Micah that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem Ephrathah, near Jerusalem. Now, if anyone claimed to be Messiah but wasn’t born in Bethlehem Ephrathah, that person would easily be proved a fraud.
But it seems people forgot about this prophecy! When the Magi or Wise Men came to Jerusalem, they didn’t know where Jesus was to be born, either! Matthew’s gospel records how they asked Herod about it, but Herod didn’t know, and he would up asking the chief priests and scribes about it. They replied, “Bethlehem”, and quoted this prophecy as proof.
All right, we’ve looked at the Who, the When, and the Where of the Messiah’s birth but there’s one very important question we haven’t explored yet. And that question is, Why? Let’s take a brief look at this question.
Now, there are many Scriptures which describe why Jesus did come. In fact, the Thompson Chain Reference Bible has a neat drawing showing the two streams of prophecy, those of a suffering Messiah and a kingly Messiah. He, Jesus, came to fulfill all of them.
Let’s wrap it up here and close for now with one illustration. My parents were divorced in 1978 when my youngest sister was 8 years of age. She and my other sister, a few years older, went to an after-school daycare until Mom got off work. During that Christmas season, the center had a performance, recital, whatever you want to call it, and each of the kids took part. What I’ll never forget is this: there was a little girl, maybe two years of age, just old enough to hold up a small cardboard sign with the letter “C” for the first letter of Christmas. In that sweet, innocent, voice she said “C—Jesus came!” That moment has stayed with me from that day to this and each one of us can have the peace only Jesus gives, plus salvation and so much more, all because He, Jesus, came exactly as the prophecies said He would: plus when, where, and why.
Merry Christmas, everybody! I hope it’s the best one ever for you!
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Version of the Bible (NASB).
