Christ Church

Psalm 143: When Sinners Withstand the Wicked

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INTRODUCTION

This psalm is offered up to God in a time of great distress. We do not know if it is from the time of Saul’s persecution, or from Absalom’s rebellion, or from some other time. Regardless, the need is pressing and great, and David is presenting his prayers to God with great urgency.

THE TEXT

“A Psalm of David. Hear my prayer, O Lord, Give ear to my supplications: In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. And enter not into judgment with thy servant: For in thy sight shall no man living be justified. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; He hath smitten my life down to the ground; He hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; My heart within me is desolate. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah. Hear me speedily, O Lord: my spirit faileth: Hide not thy face from me, Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; For in thee do I trust: Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; For I lift up my soul unto thee. Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me. Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: Thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. Quicken me, O Lord, for thy name’s sake: For thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble. And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, And destroy all them that afflict my soul: For I am thy servant” (Psalm 143). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The psalm is from the pen of David. He begins with the plea that his prayers and supplications be heard (v. 1). He makes the request on the strength of God’s faithfulness, God’s righteousness (v. 1). David is taking a stand against his persecuting enemies, but he well knows that if God wanted to get him, he could not be justified (v. 2). The enemy is persecuting his soul, and has struck his life to the ground. He has been made to dwell in darkness, like a long-dead carcass (v. 3). David’s spirit is overwhelmed; his heart is desolate (v. 4). It was not always this way. David remembers when times were better. He thinks about that. Why could not God do that again? (v. 5). So he stretches out his hands to God, pleading with Him (v. 6). His soul is like cracked earth, parched and dry (v. 6). Pause and reflect. Selah. David urges God to hurry up because he can feel his spirit failing. He does not want to go down to the pit (v. 7). He prays for a hesed-deliverance, and wants to walk uprightly (v. 8). He hides in God, seeking deliverance from God (v. 9). He prays that God teach him to do God’s will, which is distinct from merely knowing it (v. 10). That will is necessarily good because God’s Spirit is good (v. 10). He prays that God would enliven him. And the basis of the prayer to deliver his soul from trouble is for the Lord’s name’s sake (v. 11), for His righteousness’ sake (v. 11). He concludes the prayer with the desire that God (in His mercy) cut off David’s enemies, destroying all those who afflict his soul (v. 12). For David is His servant (v. 12). 

MY SERVANT DAVID

This psalm concludes with David entering his final plea—“for I am thy servant.” To be a servant of God is a great honor, and like all such honors, it is not one for us to take upon ourselves. We do not get to appoint ourselves to this station, even if outsiders consider it to be a lowly station. And David certainly does not take such an honor upon himself.

When David wanted to build the Temple, and Nathan the prophet comes back to countermand what he had earlier approved, this is how that passage begins. “And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto Nathan, saying, Go and tell my servant David, thus saith the Lord, shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in?” (2 Samuel 7:4–5, cf. 8). The Lord tells David no regarding the Temple, but then gives him a staggering promise instead. Someone descended from David will reign on the throne of David forever (v. 13). It is after this that David dares to call himself God’s servant (vv. 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29), and he does so again and again.

BEFORE MAN, BEFORE GOD

The basic plea of this psalm is for God to defend. But there is an interesting comment made right near the beginning. “And enter not into judgment with thy servant: For in thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalm 143:2). He is asking God to defend, and here he asks that God not attack.

There is righteousness before men, and there is righteousness before God. It is possible for a man to claim righteousness over against other men. The charges and accusations they make are false. They are liars. “False witnesses did rise up; They laid to my charge things that I knew not” (Psalm 35:11). At the same time, in a different respect, what would happen if God took over the prosecution? “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Psalm 130:3). 

This is the set up when sinners are used by God to withstand the wicked. Those of us who are involved in the controversies of the day should recognize that if our enemies knew just a fraction of what God knows about us, it would be all over. But they don’t, and He’s not telling. 

RIGHTEOUS FORGIVENESS

Why is He not telling? There is something very strange in this psalm. David is praying for deliverance here, and in the first verse, he is asking for it on the basis of God’s faithfulness, God’s righteousness. He is not asking for mercy, but rather righteousness. How can a sinner ask for anything remotely connected with righteousness? And he does it again in v. 11—“for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.”

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This is a great mystery, and the only possible solution to it is found in the blood of Christ’s cross. That is the only place where you could ever find a righteous forgiveness. God intends to be just and the one who justifies (Rom. 3:26).  

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State of the Church 2024

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INTRODUCTION

As you might know by now, the tone coming out of Moscow has gained a little bit of notoriety. For good or ill, this reputation shows no signs of going away, and because you are likely to be fielding questions about it, I thought that it would be good to use our annual “state of the church” message to help you sort through the relevant issues. 

THE TEXTS

“And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village” (Luke 9:52–56). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXTS

The basic lesson we should take from our text is this. Just because it is biblical . . . doesn’t make it biblical. As I learned from my father, there is always a deeper right than being right. James and John were nicknamed “sons of thunder” by the Lord (Mark 3:17), meaning that they were almost certainly hot-blooded. When a Samaritan village denied lodging because they were Jews on the way to Jerusalem, the two brothers appealed to the example of Elijah. When he had sent a message to King Ahaziah that he was not going to recover from a fall, the king sent an armed guard of fifty men to arrest Elijah, and Elijah called down fire from heaven and consumed them all (2 Kings 1:10). The king dispatched a second troop, and the same thing happened (2 Kings 1:12). The third captain was a great deal more polite—having seen what happened to the first two bands. This is the same Elijah who had summoned fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial altar on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:38), followed up by executing all the priests of Baal. So the prophet Elijah was no buttercup, and James and John had a biblical example to point to. But Jesus said that they had wildly misjudged the two circumstances—and they had particularly misjudged the nature of the mission that Christ was on. Christ had come to save, not destroy. It is not enough to “have a verse.” 

THIS KNIFE CUTS BOTH WAYS

If there is always a deeper right than being right, then this must apply to every kind of “right.” Not just the right that has hard lines and straight edges. This also applies to the right of being kind, or generous, or sacrificial. C.S. Lewis once commented on a woman who was the sort of woman who lived for others, and you could tell the others by their hunted expression. Maybe he was afflicted by this sort of thing himself because he even wrote a poem in the form of an epitaph about it:

Erected by her sorrowing brothers

In memory of Martha Clay.

Here lies one who lived for others;

Now she has peace. And so have they.

Is it possible to bestow all your worldly goods to feed the poor, and have no love, no charity (1 Cor. 13:3)? It certainly is, and that profits nothing. Was Judas concerned about the poor when Mary anointed the Lord’s feet with spikenard? Judas was the treasurer, and was concerned about the extravagance (John 13:29). And he said that it was for the poor (John 12:5), but his motives were clearly mixed (John 12:6). It is the White Witch who is concerned about conspicuous consumption, remember. “What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence? Where did you get all these things?”

And there have eras when the saints were prone to miss the deeper right through a zeal to be hard line. That really is true. But to assume that this is the error of our age is to waver on the threshold of a serious delusion.

BUT WE MUST RESIST OUR OWN TEMPTATIONS, NOT THOSE OF OTHERS

Godly satire should come from within a worshiping community of orthodox and faithful Christians, only some of whom are called to it (Eph. 5:21). The satire should arise from the language and categories of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Those exercising these gifts should warm and affectionate relationships with family. No close member of his family should flinch when he walks into the room (Col. 3:19, 21). The practice should continue a long and worthy tradition, and there should be broad acquaintance with that literature. There needs to be an instinctive knowledge of the quantitative difference between satire and scurrility. There may not seem to be a logical difference between 37 lashes and 42 lashes, but Scriptures say there is (Dt. 25:1-3).

There is a qualitative difference between the two also. This is a matter of timbre and tone. No mechanical rules can be set down for it, but it is a very important distinction to make (Heb. 5:14). These weapons should not be entrusted to anyone too young (1 Tim. 3:6). The whole point is to target lack of proportion, not to exhibit lack of proportion (Matt. 23:24). What effect is all of this having on those who aspire to fighting Amalekites with a chain saw (2 Cor. 11:1)? Is the satire coming from a community that has long experience in letting love cover a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8). 

This requires a courageous disposition, not a bullying one. Lawful satire is leveled at targets that know how to defend themselves, and that will defend themselves. As King Lune of Archenland put it, “Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please.” And if a man is too proud to humble himself when he has sinned (Jas. 5:16), then he is too proud for this calling. Man’s anger does not advance God’s righteousness (Jas. 1:20). Anger, even when it is righteous (Eph. 4:26), is like manna and goes bad overnight (Eph. 4:27). This should never proceed from “little man syndrome,” where a man has something deep inside to prove, usually to his father. We must be free, completely free, of envy (Jas. 4:1-6). Envious satire is brittle satire, and not very effective.

The target should always be arrogance, not weakness, and, as far as possible, reserve his arrows for the former. There must be a general knowledge of church history, which will dislodge the very provincial notion that the current rules of academic etiquette are somehow binding on all generations of the Church. Scripture is the norm, not our current traditions. We must love to sing all the psalms that God has given us (Eph. 5:19). Nothing serves like the psalms if the goal is to nurture and restore a vertebrate church. We must never get stuck on one speed (Ecc. 3:1-8). All satire, all the time, would be tolerable for about forty-five minutes. We must learn as a community to really hate what is evil. The fear of God is not only the beginning of knowledge, but it is also defined as the hatred of evil. “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8:14). And last, we must all grow in our love for what is good (Tit. 2:14), motivated by a love that yearns to defend what is noble and right, or weak and defenseless, and never be motivated by a bitterness that seeks to bite and tear (Gal. 5:13-15).

A BODY LIFE THING

Some people assume that if you move to Moscow, you are committing yourself to making fun of everybody, all the time. Not a bit of it. We are the body of Christ, and here, as with everything, each part of the body does what it was fashioned to do. So the eye doesn’t have to do what the ear does. But the eye needs to be committed to the ear, and should expect the ear to have a completely different outlook. But the whole body is Christ.

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Have Yourself a Merry Little Postmill – Christmas Eve Service (Doug Wilson)

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The point this evening is not to load your Christmas down with any exegetical postmill work, which has been done elsewhere. This is just intended as a simple word of Christmas encouragement—I do not seek to persuade you in these few minutes, but rather to embolden you.

It may well be that you even call yourself postmill and are happy to say that it is your doctrinal stance. You certainly live in a community that is characterized by postmill teaching and expectations. Well and good, but it may still be possible that this goon show of a century has gotten you down a time or two.

Your eschatology may say that the name of the Lord will be great among the Gentiles, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same (Mal. 1:11). Your doctrinal commitments may well affirm that the earth is going to be filled up with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). The books on your shelf may well argue that the root of Jesse will be raised up as a standard, and all the Gentiles shall seek Him (Is. 11:10). Yes, certainly.

But the last time you checked, dudes could marry dudes, teens were being legally mutilated in the name of pronoun madness, and half the population believes that if we raise our taxes and give more power to the EPA, the government promises to fix the weather.

It is easy, in other words, to come to feel like a thick fog can somehow erase the sun, moon and stars. This is a possible discouragement even in our postmill circles. And so this message of Christmas grace is that our sovereign God has stooped down to us in order to remind us how transient evil is, and how permanent His goodness is. Christmas is a stiff breeze that demonstrates that a fog is a lot easier to scrub than the sun, moon and stars are.

But when you look for God to move, remember that He doesn’t do things the way we would have predicted. Take, for example, how He established the first beachhead of His everlasting kingdom in an animal’s food trough. Who among us would have called that move beforehand?

“Of the increase of his government there will be no end.” But we should know by now that we do not define increase the same way that He does. John the Baptist said that he was going to decrease, while the Lord was going to increase. But then what did that increase look like? It looked like agony in the Garden, and a flogging, and spittle in the face, and a crown of thorns. He will increase, but you must read all the way through to the end.

After God had spoken all His raw materials into existence, speaking to a darkness that was nothing at all, that created matter was still shrouded in darkness. And so at that point, what was the first thing God ever said in this world? “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). He simply said light, and there it was. And so when the earth was an inchoate and shapeless mass of dark matter, when darkness was over the face of the deep (Gen. 1:2), all He did was simply speak.

This created darkness was His raw material, and it provided the apostle Paul with a marvelous illustration for God’s power over a different sort of darkness—the darkness of our rebellious iniquity.

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”

2 Corinthians 4:6–7 (KJV)

The created darkness of the shapeless void and the rebellious darkness of mankind’s sin and rebellion have this one thing in common. Neither one can resist the voice of God’s authority when that authority says anything like, “Let there be light.”

Tiglath-pileser, Caesar Augustus, Herod, Pilate, Sanballat, Shalmaneser, Pharaoh, Bismarck, Napoleon, Attila the Hun, Woodrow Wilson, Genghis Khan, what are they? They are all of them principalities and powers who breath through the nose. Let there be light.

Pornography, propaganda, pandemics, police states, what are they? Let there be light.

Darwinism, socialism, feminism, egalitarianism, fascism, environmentalism, mysticism, what are they? Let there be light.

The God who spoke the cosmos out of nothing is certainly capable of speaking a new cosmos out of the old one. He can make sons of Abraham out of rocks, remember.

So when you look around at all the black rock of man’s iniquitous folly, you should certainly look straight at it without flinching. You should confess that it is in fact an enormous amount of iniquitous folly, all of it dark, bent, and twisted rock. But never forget that you are also looking at God’s own quarry, from which He is going to speak into existence a cathedral of light, built entirely out of living stones, and the pavers all made from transparent gold.

So the Christmas message is much more than the fact that God conquers and overcomes evil. He does do that, but there is a greater mystery involved. The Christmas message is that God is in the process of creating something marvelous, using evil as His raw material. All the laws, and conspiracies, and plans, and movements, and resolutions, and plots . . . all the things that have us so worried . . . are nothing but scraps on His workshop floor.

“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Luke 12:32 (KJV)

And what a glorious kingdom that will be. That kingdom of light, inhabited by children of light (Eph. 5:8) . . . where did it start? That kingdom of light began in those pitch-black nights that enveloped Bethlehem, and the shepherds, and the sheep, and the wise men.

It was truly dark. But the star wasn’t.

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Gold In the Genealogies (By Prophet Bards Foretold #3)

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INTRODUCTION

The texts we are going to look at today are the genealogies of Christ, and other passages related to them, but the theme of this message will be on the promises of God. The fact of genealogies in Scripture are often nothing more than an obstacle to Christians in their Bible reading, but this is not the way to think of them. The genealogies are vast and intimidating mountain ranges, but what we need to realize is that there are actually rich veins of gold there. Like the land of Havilah, the gold is good there (Gen. 2:12). 

THE TEXT

“THE book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren . . .” (Matthew 1:1–2). 

“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli . . .” (Luke 3:23). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

One of the more obvious facts about the genealogies of Matthew and Luke is that they are different. A common solution is to say that one of them is the line of Joseph, and the other the line of Mary. But this doesn’t really solve the problem because the lines are not entirely different. And besides, both claim to be the line of Joseph (Matt. 1:16; Luke 3:23). And because we don’t examine the problem closely, what God gave as a testimony to the fact that He is a covenant-keeping God is used by us as a way of rattling our faith instead of establishing it.

A genealogical line is called a stirp. Luke traces the Lord’s descent all the way back to Adam. Matthew gives us His line from the time of Abraham. We know that Matthew relied on a written account because in verse 1 he mentions the book. Luke follows Genesis 5 and 10, including Canaan between Arphaxad and Shelah, in line with the Septuagint. The stirps in Luke and Matthew run basically the same from Abraham to David. They then diverge from David to the Exile. Matthew goes through Solomon, and Luke goes through someone named Nathan (1 Chron. 3:5). They join up again in Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, before splitting up again. Then they both arrive at Joseph of Nazareth. So that is our central problem. There are some other very minor glitches which can be easily resolved, and so we won’t bother with those here.

But we should face the problem. It is not normal for the patrilineal lines of two brothers, Solomon and Nathan, to land on one individual, Joseph, a millennium later. Still less can distinct stirps converge, diverge, and then converge again. And if we try to solve the problem with a Joseph/Mary division, we just flip the problem over to the other side. Do we want to explain the divergences or the convergences? We have to explain either way.    

EXCOMMUNICATED FROM THE LINE

Matthew omits four ancestors of Christ from his account—Ahaziah, Jehoash, Amaziah, and Jehoiakim. This is not arbitrary or capricious. The first three of these were removed because of the curse pronounced by Elijah. Ahab’s line, to the fourth generation, were expunged, as Moses said. (Ex. 20:3-6).

“‘Behold, I will bring calamity on you. I will take away your posterity, and will cut off from Ahab every male in Israel, both bond and free” (1 Kings 21:21, NKJV).

And Jehoiakim was a really bad actor, and he fell under Jeremiah’s curse:

“Therefore thus saith the LORD of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost” (Jeremiah 36:30).

So Matthew excludes illegitimate kings or kings who disqualified themselves and were cursed.   

THE VARIABLE OF ADOPTION

According to Matthew, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel. According to Luke, Neri was the father of Shealtiel. Which was it? Again, a prophetic curse pronounced on Jeconiah helps us out. 

“Thus saith the LORD, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah” (Jeremiah 22:30). 

We are told in 1 Chron. 3:16 that Jeconiah had a son, Zedekiah (likely named after his great-uncle). But the very next verse (1 Chron. 3:17) lists seven sons of Jeconiah, none of whom were Zedekiah. While captive in Babylon, according to an ancient source, Jeconiah had married a woman named Tamar, and their son Zedekiah died young and without issue. Jeconiah then adopted her sons by a previous marriage, from the time when she was married to Neri, and Shealtiel becomes the crown prince. Neri was descended from Nathan, that mysterious son of David. Thus Jeremiah’s curse is fulfilled, and Matthew and Luke are both right. 

JOSEPH’S FATHER?

Was Joseph’s father Jacob or Heli? The best explanation comes from a second century source (Sextus Julius Africanus) who knew descendants of the Lord’s brother James. He said that the discrepancy was the result of a levirate marriage. Heli had died without issue, and so his brother Jacob raised up seed for him—by law a child of Heli, and biologically a son of Jacob.

HOW TO MINE FOR GOLD

At the risk of causing your eyes to glaze over a little bit more, I will conclude with just a little bit more. For the ancients, they used to keep careful track of the genealogies. They did this because they were looking intently for the way in which God would fulfill His promises. At the end of Ruth, this blessing is pronounced by the elders of Bethlehem.

“And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.” (Ruth 4:12, 18-22).

Pharez had a twin, Zarah, who was the first born twin who came out second. He was marked by a scarlet thread around his wrist. Generations later, Zarah had a descendent, a man named Achan, who stole some things in the battle of Jericho. He and his whole royal line were wiped out as a result. Rahab, who had marked her house with a scarlet rope, came out into Israel, and married a man named Salmon. Their son was Boaz, who later married Ruth. The thing that this illustrates is that these men and women of faith were tracking with the genealogies carefully. They were looking for the Christ. 

“And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matthew 1:16).

“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,” (Luke 3:23).

So always look for the Christ. Always look to the Christ. He is the desire of nations. He is risen with healing in His wings. He is the gold in the land of Havilah.

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By Prophet Bards Foretold 2: Virgin Born

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INTRODUCTION

Scripture is quite clear that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. But what was the point? Why is this important?

THE TEXT

“Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matthew 1:22–23). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We learn from the scriptural narrative in several places that our Lord’s mother was a true virgin. In the gospel of Luke, we are told that the angel Gabriel was sent with a message to a virgin named Mary (Luke 1:27). She is called a virgin twice in that one verse (parthenos). When the angel tells her that she will conceive a child who will have a never-ending kingdom, she asks a most reasonable question. How can she conceive when she does not know a man (Luke 1:34)? In short, how can she become a mother as she is a virgin? Gabriel replies that the thing will happen as the result of a miracle wrought by the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35).

In our text, when Joseph found out that Mary was “with child,” he drew the natural and obvious conclusion, which was that Mary must not be a virgin. But because he was a righteous man, resolved to put her away quietly. But an angel appeared to him in a dream and told him not to be afraid to marry her because her pregnancy was the result of a miracle. The name to be given to the child was Jesus, because He was going to save His people from their sins. Remember this. And then the thing is summed up by our text. The prophet Isaiah had predicted this when he prophesied that a virgin would conceive a child, and bear a son, and that son would be called Emmanuel. Matthew adds the gloss that Emmanuel means “God with us.”  

YOUNG WOMAN OR VIRGIN?

The prophecy is found in Isaiah 7, and the context is this. In the days of Ahaz, the king of Syria and the king of the northern kingdom of Israel came up against Jerusalem. They could not prevail against the city (Is. 7:1), but the heart of the king was still badly shaken, along with the hearts of the people (Is. 7: 2). They trembled like trees in a stiff wind. But God in His kindness sent the prophet Isaiah to give a word of encouragement to the king (Is. 7:3-9). Within one lifetime, the powers that the king was so worried about would be out of the picture. Don’t worry about them. Ahaz—not a man of faith—was apparently still troubled, and so God graciously tells him to ask for a sign (Is. 7:10-11). But Ahaz still holds back (Is 7:12), although he made it sound pious. And so Isaiah insists upon giving him a sign anyway, and the words of our prophecy are taken from that sign (Is. 7:14-16).

There are two layers to this sign. In the Hebrew, the word for virgin here is almah, which can mean virgin, but it can also mean young woman. The meaning is not exclusively virgin. A young woman will conceive and bear a son, and before that son has grown to the maturity that can refuse evil and choose evil—within just a few years—the kings that Ahaz was so worried about would no longer a threat. That was the sign. The young woman concerned was herself a prophetess (Is. 8:3), and she was married to Isaiah. And the prophet went to the prophetess, and she conceived a son. His name was Mahershalalhashbaz, and the prophecy of the previous chapter was in the first instance fulfilled in him (Is. 8:4). Damascus and Samaria would be a spent force before young Maher (let us call him) could say mama or papa.

PROPHECY & TYPE

So this was an explicit prophecy, for the benefit of Ahaz, but it was also a type . . . for the benefit of all the sons of men. Let us not be like Ahaz, and disbelieve the sign. In addition to being the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prediction, the prophetess was also a type. She was a type of Mary, and Mary was the antitype. And here is where it gets interesting.

Isaiah’s ministry was around 700 B.C. The Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, was translated several centuries before Christ. And in the LXX, the word almah in Isaiah 7:14 is rendered as parthenos, and parthenos means virgin, only virgin, and nothing but virgin. There was therefore a widespread expectation among the Jews that there was an aspect of this prophecy that was yet to be fulfilled, and that expectation was not the result of interactions with Christians—because they would not arrive for a century or two more. 

WHY HIS NAME WAS EMMANUEL

Everything in the gospel comes down to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who was this Jesus, and what did this Jesus do? He was God in the flesh, and He died on the cross as a perfect atoning sacrifice for the sins of all His people. The person and work of Christ. 

The virgin birth is important to the identity of Jesus. Our text in Matthew links the virgin birth to the fact that the one so born was going to be called Emmanuel. The sacrificial body of Christ had to be spotless in order for it to be any good as a sacrifice, as we shall see in a moment. But it also had to be spotless in order for the most holy Word of God to be united to it. How can a holy God become a true man without also becoming a false and sinful man. Because sin is passed down covenantally through the fathers, the problem was solved through the virgin birth.     

WHY HIS NAME WAS JESUS

The angel of the Lord told Joseph in his dream that the baby was to be named Jesus. The reason for this is that He was going to save His people from their sins. Jesus means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation.” But in order to accomplish that salvation, He had to be a sacrifice, He had to be a spotless sacrifice, and He had to be a representative sacrifice. 

A sacrifice: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

A spotless sacrifice: “But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19).

A representative sacrifice: “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (Romans 5:15).

The birth of the baby Jesus was truly remarkable. In that day, on that day, your salvation and mine was born into the world.

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