The Divine Messiah
Romans 9:3-5
Tonight we’re
going to focus a little bit on the fact we do have freedom because it is
Independence Day. We’re celebrating the fact we still have a large degree of
freedom, although it is being attacked and assaulted. If the truth were known,
most of us are not old enough to remember when there was a great deal of
freedom and liberty in this country. It has so gradually eroded that it’s sad
to recognize how much we have actually lost. Things are going on today in the
courts, and things are going on today in our nation that our grandparents would
have never, ever expected, much less approved of. So we’re going to spend a
little bit of time this evening just celebrating the fact that this is our
nation’s birthday and then we’ll focus on Romans, going back into our passage.
To start, we’ll
have prayer and then I’m going to have four people form the congregation come
up and read the Declaration of Independence. Think about the words. Think about
what they went through. Think about the situation. One thing we should realize
is that two months prior to their signing the declaration there was no sense at
all in the Continental Congress that they were going to separate from England.
They were loyalists. Think about that in terms of today’s situation. They were
still loyal to the Crown, loyal to the King, but things were coming quickly to
a head, as we know from history. So here is the Declaration of Independence in
full:
IN CONGRESS,
July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen
United States of America,
When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government laying the foundation on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such form as to them seem most likely to affect their Safety and
Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
have become accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present
King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all
having in direct object the same establishment of an absolute Tyranny over
these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused to Assent to Laws,
the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his
Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended
in their operation till his Assent should be obtained, and when so suspended,
he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws
for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would
relinquish the right Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to
them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies
at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their
public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with the
measures. He has dissolved representative Houses repeatedly for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a
long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected whereby the
Legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the People at
large for their exercise, the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all
the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within. He has
endeavoured to prevent the population of these States for that purpose
obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners, refusing to pass others
to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new
Approbations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by
refusing his Assent to Laws to establishing judiciary powers. He has made
Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the
amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices
and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their
substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the
Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent
of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us
to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws,
giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed
troops among us, For protecting them by a mock trial, from punishment for any
Murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States. For
cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world. For imposing Taxes on us
without our Consent. For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by
Jury. For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. For
abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province,
establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging the boundaries so
as to render it at once an example and its instrument for introducing the same
absolute rule into these Colonies. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our
most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments.
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government
here by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has
plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives
of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign
Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already
begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has
constrained our fellow Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms
against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren
or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections
amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers,
the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions
We have petitioned for Redress in the most horrible terms. Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character
is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler
of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in
attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of
attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement
here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity and we have
conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations
which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too
have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must therefore
acquiesce in the necessity Which denounces our Separation and hold them as we
hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives
of the united States of America, in general Congress, Assembled, appealing to
the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do,
in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these colonies,
solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies, are, and of Right
ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all
Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them
and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that
as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude
Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and
Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Actually
Independence Day is not today. How many of y’all knew that? The actual signing
and approval of the Declaration was on July 2 and John Adams made a very famous
statement about that, that this day “will live on in celebration.” He said that
in a letter to his wife, Abigail, the next day. It’s a little ambiguous as to
which day he is describing whether it is the 2nd or the 3rd.
It wasn’t the 4th. They were still doing minor revisions to the
final form of the Declaration and on the 4th of July, the earliest
draft of the Declaration was signed by only two individuals: John Hancock who
was the President of the Continental Congress, and Charles Thompson, who was a
secretary of the Congress.
Four days later
on July 8 several members of Congress took the document, read it aloud from
Independence Hall, proclaiming Liberty to the city of Philadelphia, after which
the Liberty Bell was rung. The inscription on the Liberty Bell came right out
of the Scripture. It came from Leviticus 25:10, “Proclaim liberty throughout
the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.” The colonists were deeply
immersed in Christian theology, and there were just a few Jews in the colonies
at the time but they played a significant role during the War for Independence,
some of whom raised significant amounts of money for the support of the Continental
Army. Most, if not all Americans, were influenced by some form of Christianity;
all were influenced by a Judeo-Christian worldview. Often today people
overstate the case in trying to claim too many of the Founding Fathers as
Christians. I’m not sure how many were actually born again. But it doesn’t
matter whether they were actually regenerate or had a clear understanding of
the gospel. What matters is that they thought in terms of a Biblical worldview.
That’s how the
culture trained them, that’s how they grew, that’s how they were educated.
There have been a number of statements made, some of which you’ve heard
recently, I’m sure, that some very large percentage of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence were ministers of the gospel. I think that’s
stretching the meaning of the term. Many of the schools in America at that time
were founded in order to train men for the gospel ministry. Harvard. Yale.
Princeton. Dartmouth. Columbia. Many others were also founded for that very
purpose although by the time of the American War for Independence they had
expanded their curriculum quite a bit. Nevertheless, if anyone attended those
universities they were well trained in the Scripture.
Men such as
James Madison studied under John Winthrop, a Presbyterian minister who was very
much a part of the signing of the Constitution and was influential in the
thinking of James Madison. That doesn’t mean all of these men were orthodox,
Bible-believing Christians. They were not. Jefferson, notably, was not. Madison
had some issues. John Adams was a borderline Unitarian. In fact, if you listen
to David Barton, he will often recite a number of pastors in the 18th
century who were influential in the development of the understanding of the
concept of liberty. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the pastors he mentions
were some of the leading thinkers in the very early formative stage of the
Unitarian Church. Barton doesn’t do a great job of distinguishing between
different theologies. He uses the term Christian in a very broad sense.
It would do all
of us much better if he would use the term Judeo-Christian as a worldview
rather than trying to go so far as to make it sound like many of these Founders
were orthodox, Bible-believing Christians. This is my point having studied this
quite a bit since seminary, and after doing my doctoral work at Dallas Seminary
in church history and having read quite a bit on both sides. There’s also
another movement trying to minimize the influence of Christianity. The analogy
I use is that the Founding Fathers were products of a Judeo-Christian culture
and they thought Biblically whether they wanted to or not, just like too many
of us think too much like a post-modern relativist because that’s the culture
in which we grew up. We were infected by those ideas in ways we are not always
willing to recognize.
The Continental
Congress first met on September 5, 1774 in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. It
met for quite a while, at least for the next couple of years. Eventually it
appointed a committee of five to write the Declaration. At late as April of
1776, a year after the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, there
was a vast majority of the Continental Congress who were loyalists.
I think that’s
really important because if you are at all like I am, and like many
conservatives today, you’re becoming more and more conflicted, more and more
concerned about the direction of our nation. As we watch what has happened in
the courts and in the culture over the past fifty years, we see the beliefs
that we held near and dear and were considered mainstream American values and
ideals, are now being declared over and over again as being unconstitutional.
Just this last
week the verdict handed down by the Supreme Court related to the Defense of
Marriage Act showed that there’s a lack of understanding in the courts that
marriage is between a man and a woman. Whatever issues may come up, you can’t
go back and undo something that has been a standard since the creation. As far
back as human civilization goes, no matter what your beliefs are, marriage has
been between one man and one woman. No empire, no civilization, no culture has
ever legitimized any form of homosexual marriage. It’s never been done. There
is a reason for that. This is because we understand this is the essence of
marriage.
Now there may
be culture issues, business issues, legal issues related to same-sex partners,
things like that, but you can’t call it marriage. These terms are not fluid,
they’re not flexible, and they’re not up for grabs. That’s what happens when
you come out of a post-modern environment. Words don’t mean anything anymore.
You’re free to redefine your meanings however you see fit. Once you start
changing things it has a domino effect and hundreds, if not thousands of
unintended consequences ensue. Words don’t mean what they mean anymore. Once
you start changing the meaning of words, you can’t count on anything. There’s
no stability. It erodes the very foundation of law. What has happened that we
have witnessed in our lifetime is such a degradation of vocabulary and meaning
that we who are Christians, who believe in the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence as it was intended by the founders, we are being declared
unconstitutional in our beliefs. So this puts us in a difficult situation.
One of the
things we need to come to understand is that there really is a difference
between being a patriot and being a loyal citizen. I think this is one of
things we need to think about. In my thinking, a patriot is one who is a
gung-ho advocate of their nation. They’re willing to go into the military.
They’re willing to give their life for the freedom, for the policies, for the
positions of their national government. I’m not willing to die for this nation
anymore because of what they are espousing. I’m not sure I can encourage others
to do that. If I were called upon to go fight in the military, I would. That’s
the difference between being a gunRomans-107.htmg-ho patriot and being a loyal
citizen. I see that as a distinction. A loyal citizen is someone who follows
the principles of Romans, chapter 13. We’re obedient to our government but that
doesn’t mean I’m a full-bore advocate of this government as it is being and has
been redefined over the last twenty years.
I feel like I
have been declared unconstitutional by the courts over the last thirty or forty
years. My opinions and my beliefs are not wanted. Basically, it’s “Christians,
keep off the grass.” That’s the mentality. Does that mean we should just fold
our hands and fold up our tents and go home? No, it doesn’t. We have
responsibilities as citizens of this nation to be involved. That’s what it
means to be a Christian.
Whether you’re
a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, or any other religion, if you were born in this
country as a citizen, you have a responsibility to be educated on the history
of this nation, to be educated on the issues that face Congress, on the issues
that face our state legislatures, on the issues that face our local
governments. We have to be educated so that we can vote in an informed manner,
to carry out our duties as citizens, and get in touch with political leaders to
let them know what our views are. This is our responsibility as citizens. It’s
not activism. It’s action. It’s responsibility. When you get in engaged in
illegitimate action, where you’re involved in illegal action, that’s when it
crosses the line.
I think there’s
a comparison here with the Founding Fathers in that they were still loyal to
England while they were at war with England and unwilling to separate. I’m not
advocating war or any kind of rebellion or anything like that. I’m simply
making the point that because of the actions of our government, we have been
put at odds with the government. Without Christianity we would not have had the
freedoms that we have so this is still our country. But as Christians we need
to wake up. This isn’t the country of the 1920s. It’s not the nation of the
1940s or 1950s. It is a whole new world and we can’t have the same attitudes
and values and blind patriotism we once had because it’s been redefined right
out from under us. We need to be loyal, though. We need to continue to take a
stand for our nation. There’s a certain dichotomy there.
Liberty and
freedom come only from God but it can be taken from us because of our
irresponsibility and our lack of positive volition. [Congregation sings “Our
Country Tis of Thee”]
There are many
enemies to freedom and liberty in our country today. There are enemies of
Christianity as well and if these enemies had their way they would completely
remove all Christians and influence of Christianity from every aspect of our
culture. This is the furthest thing from the mind of our Founding Fathers. John
Adams believed that the Fourth of July should become a religious holiday,
remembering that God had a hand in our deliverance and that it should be a day
filled with celebration of our freedom and also religious activities whereby
citizens of the United States would give thanks to God and honor him because he
is the author of liberty as we just sang.
His son, John
Quincy Adams, later a president of the United States, was also very much
involved in the activities of the American War for Independence. In 1837, when
he was 69 years old, he was asked to give a speech about the founding of our
nation and the Declaration of Independence at Newburyport, Massachusetts. He
began that address with a question. He said, “Why is it friends and fellow
citizens that you’re here assembled? Why is it that entering into the 62nd
year of our national existence you’ve honored me with an invitation to address
you?” Well the answer was obvious because he was one of the few left who was a
witness to the events surrounding the birth of our nation.
He went on to
say, “Why is it that next to the birthday of the Savior of the world your most
joyous and venerated festival returns on this day?” So in the early decades of
our nation, the Fourth of July, Independence Day, was venerated second only to
when we celebrate the birth of our Savior. This shows that in the thinking of
the Founding Fathers Christianity played a very large role in the recognition
of freedom. Our Founding Fathers realized that freedom was built on individuals
taking responsibilities for their lives and their actions. It wasn’t the
government’s responsibility to take care of them or to give them a security
blanket from cradle to grave. It was the responsibility of the government to
make sure they were free and that their rights were recognized as we read in the
opening of the declaration.
It states the
rights were given by their Creator, which is a phrase that our President
usually drops when he quotes from the opening of the Declaration of
Independence. I’ve heard him several times when he ignores the fact that the
Declaration says we were “endowed by our Creator” with these rights: the right
to life, the right to liberty and the right to happiness. No, it doesn’t say
that, does it? It says the right to the pursuit of happiness. The government’s
job isn’t to make you happy. It is stay out of our way so we can pursue
happiness. My favorite tee shirt is one I picked up at a gun show several years
ago. On the back of it, it says, “Liberals evolve from monkeys.
Constitutionalists were endowed by their Creator.” That says it all.
The Declaration
is embedded within our Judeo-Christian worldview. The language that’s used
there, even though it’s not the language that we read in theology books, it is
a language which in their generation resonated with a belief in a creator God
and a belief that our rights as human beings emanated from that God, were given
by that God, because we were created in His image and likeness. This is one
reason why there’s such a debate over creation versus evolution. If evolution
wins as a worldview, which it is doing, then it eviscerates the meaning of the
opening of the Declaration of Independence because there’s no creator to endow
us with rights. All of these things are working together as an assault upon the
nation.
According to John
Quincy Adams, Christmas and the Fourth of July were intrinsically connected.
The Founders understood that because they took the precepts of Jesus Christ who
came into the world as a result of His incarnation and they incorporated those
principles. These are principles from the Old Testament, from the Torah, like
the passage I cited earlier that was written on the Liberty Bell from Leviticus
25:10. They understood that liberty was ultimately founded in a recognition of
the individual’s responsibility to God. If that were lost, they reasoned, then
the nation would become immoral. A nation cannot preserve its liberty on the
foundation of immorality.
Yet that is
part of what we have seen over the last fifty years with the various court
ruling that have taken any kind of influence of Christianity out of the schools
with the removal of prayer. There are a lot of different things you can say
about that court decision, which was that the prayer in question was actually
written by the New York School Board so it wasn’t really the most orthodox
prayer but there was a principle behind it. The principle was that God was at
least recognized by the action mandating that all school children pray and that
as creatures under the authority of God we were dependent upon God for
everything. Now we are independent of God and everything is falling apart.
We find
ourselves today under assault by the federal government. Our e-mails and
everything we are doing on line is being observed by the National Security
Agency. The IRS is targeting conservative groups who seek non-profit status and they’re
not targeting liberal groups. It is clearly an invasion of our rights, an
invasion of our privacy, and an assault on the First Amendment. We have a
government that seems to no longer care about the Bill of Rights with assaults
on almost every amendment going on today. So we need to really think about our
role as believers in a culture that has written God out of their thinking. And
that’s what they want to do.
We have to
stand firm. We have to function in grace. We have to be even more devoted in
prayer than we have ever been for this nation and we need to also be as
involved as we possibly can in every level of government to the degree that we
can so that our voice is heard. This is how we function as salt and light in
the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. Now the reason we do that is
because we worship a living God. Again and again in our study of Acts on
Tuesday nights we’ve seen this emphasis on worshiping a living God. We worship
a Savior who is not only a human being but is also Eternal God.
In our study of
Romans on Thursday nights in Romans 9:3-5, we’ve been emphasizing God’s plan
and purpose for the Jewish nation, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, and to whom we’re told in Romans 9:4, “belong the adoption as sons, and
the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the temple service
of God, and the promises whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ
[the Messiah] according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.
Amen.” So this tells us here He is the eternally blessed God.
Last time I
pointed out in the Old Testament you have two strains of prophecy, one
indicating the Messiah would be God, the other pointing out that the Messiah
would be human. Now if you’re talking with someone who is Jewish, they don’t
believe that the Messiah was supposed to be God. It’s very easy to demonstrate
this from the Old Testament and as I pointed out, we should all have three or
four Old Testament verses, and three or four New Testament verses that we can
go cite to demonstrate that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, that it was
understood from Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would be both human and
divine. We started last time looking at one of my favorite passages, Isaiah
7:14. Turn there and we’ll finish up. This passage takes place in a time of
tremendous turmoil in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. King Ahaz—not one of
the better kings, but neither was he one of the worst—is under assault by
an alliance of the Northern Kingdom, which is ruled by Pekah, the son of
Remaliah, and Rezin the King of Syria. King Ahaz is under assault from them
because he is of the house of David. The physical, on-the-ground warfare was a
result of the angelic conflict. What goes on on the ground, whether we see it
or not, is real.
Today we don’t
have a divine interpreter. We don’t have a prophet to tell us what’s going on
in terms of the Middle East. Look at the changes. A few days ago we would never
have anticipated that Morsi, the leader of Egypt, would be taken out by the
military and that the Muslim Brotherhood would be under assault. The Egyptian
military is sending out teams to arrest the more radical members of the Muslim
Brotherhood. It’s in tremendous turmoil. The whole Middle East is under
tremendous turmoil.
When I go on
these various trips I’ve gone on the last several years, sponsored by different
groups, going over to Israel, we’re given one lecture after another by
different Middle East experts. Even from day to day on these trips the
situation on the ground changes. It’s extremely fluid in Syria. Nobody knows
what’s going on. Our government, to its eternal shame, is making available
weapons to the rebels in Syria who are allied with Al Qaeda. Now remember we’re
the country that was attacked by Al Qaeda on 9/11, just 12 years ago and now
we’re giving weapons to an Al Qaeda alliance in Syria. We don’t have any
business getting involved at all. It’s their problem. It’s a Syrian problem.
There are no U.S. interests there. We have a president who backed Morsi and now
he should be radically embarrassed because of the opposition of the Egyptian
people.
I’ve seen
various articles and pictures related to actions in Egypt where many Egyptians
blame Obama and the United States. We have to take that with a grain of salt.
Whenever anything happens, they’re going to blame the United States no matter
what. They’re going to blame Bush, Obama, doesn’t matter who is in the White
House. They’re going to blame the United States. Part of that is because we get
involved in places where we shouldn’t. We’re trying to manipulate events and
control events in places where we have no vested interest there. We’re too busy
trying to pick a winner. We picked Morsi, and what a loser! Now he’s gone and
we’re embarrassed. This is what happens when governments operate on the basis
of arrogance.
At the time of
Ahaz he has a problem because he is outnumbered and overwhelmed by this
alliance between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Syrians. So there’re
going to attack but the real issue, as I pointed out last time, is that they’re
making an assault on the house of David. Remember the background here is that
God has made a covenant with David that there will be a king that will sit
forever on the throne of David. The house of David will not be taken away from
Judah. So this is a direct assault.
We see this in
verse 6 where Isaiah reveals the conversation between the king of Syria and the
king of Israel. What they’re saying is, “Let us go up against Judah, and
terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in the walls and set up the son
of Tabeel as king in the midst of it.” They want to replace the house of David
with someone they can control, someone not loyal to God. But God says in verse
7, “It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass.” This is a promise to Ahaz.
He is under threat. He may lose his country and lose his throne. He would be
something like Morsi but he’s not going to be. God tells him he’s not going to
lose his throne, not going to lose the country. In fact, this is the beginning
of the end for both Damascus and the Northern Kingdom. Within 65 years the
Northern Kingdom will be destroyed by another country, as prophesied in verse
8.
So then we come
down to the core prophecy starting in verse 10. “Then the Lord spoke again to
Ahaz, saying, “As a sign for yourself from the Lord your God, make it deep as
Sheol to high as heaven.” Now Ahaz is operating on arrogance. This is a case of
a person who is probably a believer but one who is ignorant of doctrine and in
rebellion against God. He’s filled with arrogance and pride. So when God gives
him a direct order to do something, he says, “No, Lord, I’m not going to do
that. I’m too humble.” He says, “I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord.”
God had just
said to do it so now Ahaz gets a reprimand in verse 13, where Isaiah says to
him, “Listen now, O house of David.” This is very important to recognize what’s
going on here as I pointed out. It’s significant because in the English you
don’t get this. This is one of few times when it’s really necessary in an
extremely important way to know Hebrew grammar. I try to not to make a point
out of the fact you can’t understand Scripture unless you know the original
languages. The original languages usually are necessary in order to expand and
refine and tighten our understanding. But in passages like this, you don’t even
get it in the English when translators could have handled it. We do have a
plural second person pronoun. It is a very good word, y’all, use it every day.
But they don’t use it in the translation of the Scripture. That’s the word
‘y’all’, of course.
It would make
it very clear because in verse 13, Isaiah begins to address the house of David,
not Ahaz personally but the house of David. He says, “Is it a small thing for
y’all [plural] to try the patience of men that y’all will try the patience of
my God as well?” He’s addressing the house of David as a plural entity. We got
about that far last time and then I didn’t have time to complete it.
The prophecy
says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.” Now I want you to
notice something here. The Lord is going to give them a sign. Two things there.
This is coming from the Lord. It’s not just something that’s just going to
happen culturally. It’s not something that’s going to happen down the street.
It’s not something that’s going to happen to your neighbors or to somebody you
know in college. This is a God-given sign.
Second, it’s a
sign. That means it’s miraculous. That’s the idea behind a sign. It’s not just
a coincidence that this occurs. It’s not just something that going to be a
natural, normal course of events. It’s miraculous. The reason I say this is
because we have to remember that God causes it to happen on the one hand, and
it’s a miracle on the other hand. There’s a debate over the meaning of the key
word here, the word “virgin.” “Therefore the Lord, Himself will give y’all a
sign.” It’s not “you” for Ahaz but will give y’all, the house of David, a sign.
The reason this is important is because we’re going to switch back to the
singular later on and there’s something that’s going to be there as sort of a
guarantee of this prophecy for Ahaz, in terms of what’s going to happen in his
generation. But the sign is not going to happen in his generation.
It’s going to
happen several hundred years later when it’s fulfilled in the birth of the Lord
Jesus Christ so it’s not a dual-fulfillment. This used to really confuse me
when I was in seminary because I just wasn’t clued in on this issue at that
time. There are some people who talk about a dual-fulfillment, that a prophecy
like this is fulfilled twice. They say it has a near-fulfillment in the birth
of a child to Isaiah’s wife that is a sign to Ahaz. Then they say there’s a
far-fulfillment and that would be the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the
immediate prophecy is what matters, they believe. This is where you get people
who say that there’s no Messianic prophecy because they would interpret this to
be a near-fulfillment. It’s just an application sort of, they say, to Jesus.
But they haven’t executed it fully.
“Therefore the
Lord Himself will give y’all a sign, Behold the virgin will conceive.” This is
why I emphasize that it’s a miracle. The virgin will conceive. There are a
couple of things we have to note here. First of all, it’s not a virgin, not
a generic virgin with an indefinite noun here. It is the virgin. There is an assumption in
Jewish thought that they were tracking a specific promise, a promise going back
to Genesis 3:15 that the “seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of
the serpent.” So there is an understanding already that they’re looking for a
particular woman. Now this is indicated by the use of the definite article here
in the Hebrew, “Behold the virgin will conceive.”
The Hebrew word
here is almah.
There’s a certain amount of debate over this particular word. In the Revised
Standard Version, which came out in the early 1950s they translated it “the
young woman”. Now that’s a problem because the traditional way to translate
this is as a virgin. The ancient Jewish rabbis who translated the Hebrew Old
Testament into Greek some two hundred years before the birth of Christ
translated it with the Greek word parthenos,
which means a virgin so they understood that’s what almah meant. Now almah is a word that refers to a young,
unmarried woman but in their culture a young, unmarried woman was assumed to be
a virgin. It was not the kind of promiscuous culture that we have today. So a
young unmarried woman of just barely marriageable age was understood to be a
virgin.
Now another
word that is used is the Hebrew word betulah. Betulah can refer to a virgin of any age
whether she’s an older woman or a young woman barely of marriageable age. In
Joel 1:8 betulah
refers to a young widow, obviously not a virgin so the word has a broader
meaning than almah
does. A third word that is used in Hebrew of a young woman is na’ardh. It
refers to a young woman who is a virgin in 1 Kings 1:2 and a young woman who is
not a virgin in Ruth 2:6 so the word almah is the word that is used here and it is
used in six other passages in the Old Testament. In Genesis 24:43, Exodus 2:8,
Psalm 68:25, Song of Solomon 1:3 and 6:8 and in Proverbs 30:18-19 it is used.
In these passages it is not used of a married woman. It is always used of an
unmarried woman and it was understood to refer to a virgin.
When it comes
to the word almah,
if you think about it logically it could refer to an unmarried woman who wasn’t
a virgin. But then it’s nothing miraculous and it’s not a sign for an unmarried
woman to become pregnant. Remember the whole idea here is that this is
something that is a sign, a miracle. It’s not a miracle for an unmarried woman
who is not a virgin to become pregnant. That happens every day. But it is a
sign if the young, unmarried woman does become pregnant and she has not had any
sexual intercourse. That’s what makes it a sign. We’re talking about something
that is going to come to pass to confirm to the house of David that God has not
forsaken His promise that there will be a descendant of the house of David upon
the throne of Judah.
So what we see
here, in summary, is that this prophecy relates to the house of David, not just
to Ahaz personally. If you look at verse 15 and 16, you read, “He will eat
curds and honey at the time he knows enough to refuse evil and choose good
[physical maturation of this child]. For before the boy will know enough to
refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you [singular] dread will
be forsaken.” Remember Isaiah was told to bring his son with him so in verse 16
this shift refers to Isaiah’s son that he has with him. Verse 17, “The Lord
will bring on you [singular] and your people such days as have never come since
the day that Ephraim separated from Judah.”
So you see you
have two prophecies here. One: to guarantee the security of the house of David,
which is indicated by the plural pronoun in verses 13 and 14. Then you have
another prophecy relating to Ahaz and giving him a sign and that’s indicated by
the singular pronouns in verses 16 and 17. So the context indicating this will
be a sign requires it to be a miracle so it can’t refer to an illegitimate child
so it must refer to the child of a miraculous virgin conception and virgin
birth.
Then we
understand from the last part of verse 14, “And she will call His name
Immanuel.” Immanuel is a Hebrew name. The last syllable el means what? God. Im is the Hebrew preposition “with” and anu is the
suffix or prefix to indicate a first person plural ending, so it means, “God
with us.” This verse tells us first of all, this is going to be a human being
born of a virgin, a human mother, but He’s going to be God because His name
will be “God with us.” We see a very strong passage here indicating the deity
of the Messiah.
Later on when
Christianity developed through the Middle Ages by approximately 1000 A.D. you had the rise of a very well-known rabbi named
Rashi who redefined it to refer only to Isaiah’s son and to have an immediate
historical fulfillment and to take away from it any sense of a future Messianic
fulfillment. Up until that time the interpretation I’ve given you was pretty
much understood by rabbis. Sadly one of the things that happened in the history
of Christianity is that early reformers under John Calvin, Luther, and others
went to Jewish rabbis to learn Hebrew and a number of them picked up some of
the non-Messianic interpretations and they entered into the flow of thought
within a Protestant theology.
Throughout much
of Protestant theology these passages are understood to be clearly Messianic
with a singular fulfillment in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, but in
recent decades this course has been reversed and we find that a number of
evangelical scholars don’t really hold to Messianic interpretation but you’ve
been taught better. This is a great passage for you to have under your belt so
if you’re ever engaged in a conversation where someone says Jesus never claimed
to be God you can always say that the Old Testament expectation was that the
Messiah would be God. Next time we’ll look at several of these verses.