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Welcome to Jubilee Life Coaches Daily Bible Meditations. Today we're taking a look at Isaiah chapter 7, verses 1 through 25. Now in this passage, two hostile kings are marching on Jerusalem, Aram to the north, and Israel, here also called Ephraim. Now they have joined forces to pull down Ahaz and set a puppet, the son of Tabil on the throne of David, verses one through six. Now when the news reaches the palace, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shake like trees in a storm. Into that fear God sends Isaiah with a steady word, keep calm, do not be afraid. This plot will not stand. The threat that looks like a raging fire is really only two smoldering stubs of firewood. Then God does something remarkable. He invites Ahaz to ask for a sign, any sign, as deep as the grave or as high as heaven, verses ten and eleven. So Ahaz refuses, hiding his unbelief behind pious words. So the Lord himself gives a sign no king could possibly invent. A virgin will conceive and bear a son. And his name will be will be will be Emmanuel, God with us, verse fourteen. Now this chapter then turns dark. The very empire Ahaz is quietly trusting, which is Assyria, will become the razor God uses to strip the land bare. Now, because we read Scripture as one unfolding story of redemption, we cannot stop at Ahaz. In the New Testament, Matthew tells us plainly that this Emmanuel sign finds its true fulfillment in the birth of Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 1 verses 22 to 23. Now history has a name for this crisis. Around 735 BC in the reign of Ahaz, the Syro Ephraimite war broke out. Aram under Rezin and the Northern Kingdom under Pekah allied against Judah. And behind their threat loomed the rising power of Assyria. Now to escape one fear, it has reached for another. He sent envoys to Tiglath Pelezer, king of Assyria, with silver and gold taken from the peat from the temple, trying to buy protection instead of trusting God. So this chapter is a crossroads where the unbelief of Judah and the saving promise of God meet in the same hour. Now, who is God in this passage? God is the sovereign Lord who rules over raging nations. Verse 7. Two kings have laid their plans, but God simply says, It will not take place. It will not happen. The alliance that looks like looks to Ahaz like a wall of fire is in God's word only two smoldering stubs of firewood. They're weak, not in themselves, but because God is strong. Nations rise and fall at his word, and an alliance that he does not favor is never real strength, but only collusion. God is also the keeper of the house of David. Now he speaks tenderly to a king who does not deserve it, still calling him to trust, still holding open his covenant promise. And at the center of the chapter he reveals his deepest name for a frightened people, Emmanuel, God with us. He's not a distant ruler who watches a crisis from far away, he is the God who draws near. And in the days of Ahaz the sign already carried real comfort, a promise that God had not abandoned his people, but the full weight of the name waited seven centuries for the manger in Bethlehem. The one Isaiah announced to a shaking king is the same Lord who took on our flesh, so that God with us would no longer be only a name, but an actual face that we could see and a hand that we could hold. Now what is our guilt? Well fear is not necessarily the sin in this chapter. Everyone in the place felt it. It's not the fear, but what we do with it. God does not scold them for trembling. The sin is letting fear take the seat that belongs to faith. A sober look at the armies was not wrong, but any reckoning that leaves God out of the count is not truly realistic. That is where Ahaz falls. His sin is unbelief, dressed as reverence. God offers him a free sign, and Ahaz answers with words that sound holy. I will not put the Lord to the test, he says. Now it looks humble, it is not. He has already made up his mind to trust the empire of Assyria rather than the promise of God. And scripture shows this plainly elsewhere, where he strips the temple and sends its treasure to buy Assyrian protection. Second Kings chapter sixteen. It is a decision to trust what he can see instead of the God that he cannot control and see. Now this exposes a guilt that is easy to hide and common to us all. We can use spiritual language to cover a heart that has quietly chosen another security. We say that we do not want to presume on God or test him, when in truth we have already put our confidence in our savings, our plans, our alliances, or our own competence. The word that God spoke to Ahaz still stands over every such heart. If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. Faith is not one option among many. It is the only ground on which anyone stands. And the sober end of this chapter, where the th where the hired razor of Assyria shaves the land bare twenty, warns us that the false security we choose will one day turn against us. So this chapter follows this choice to its bitter end. The power Ahaz leans on will not save him. In that day, God says he will whistle for the fly from the streams of Egypt and the bee from the land of Assyria, and they will settle over the whole land. Verses eighteen through nineteen. The help he purchased becomes a swarm that he cannot send away. A little relief gives way to tribute and tribute to shame. The blessed land is stripped bare until vineyards once worth a thousand pieces of silver are choked with briars and thorns. And a man must carry bow and arrow to walk his own fields. And this is a sober lesson beneath the whole passage. Where Emmanuel is refused, there is no blessing. And yet this passage shines with the grace of God. How? Here is the wonder of this chapter. It has refuses the sign, and yet God gives one anyway. Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Grace is not drawn out of us by our faith. It flows from God's own faithfulness to his covenant. The house of David has a faithless king, yet God will not let the promise die, because the promise was never resting on Ahaz in the first place. Even the son's name given earlier, Shir Jeshu means a remnant shall return. In the middle of a warning God plants a word of hope. Grace is greater still, because our refusal cannot cancel God's purpose. Ahaz says no, yet the sign is given. The Lord's will is done, whether or not a faithless king will have it. God keeps loving Judah for reasons that were never found in Ahaz, even while he judges unbelief of the Lord. Now this is our only hope as well. The Messiah did not come because we were ready for him. He came because the time appointed by the Father had fully fully come. He is the gift of God who keeps his word when we cannot keep ours. The greatest grace is where the sign finally lands. In the New Testament, Matthew opens his gospel by taking this very verse and setting it over the birth of Jesus. The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, God with us. Where Ahes would not trust, Jesus trusted his father perfectly all the way to the cross. The king who once shook like a tree in the w oh in the wind is answered by a king who could not be shaken. And the good news is better than a rescue from Aram and Ephraim. In Christ, God comes to be with sinners to take their guilt and to stand for them where they could never stand for themselves. Our God is Emmanuel, and he does not leave. Well, thanks for joining us once again. You will find reflection question with prayer on my homepage, jubileecoach.com under the life blog section. Godspeed.