The Greatest Sign of All

The Gospel According to Isaiah: Discovering the Blessed Hope of the Evangelist-Prophet

Part Two: “The Greatest Sign of All”

1. When crisis comes to the people of God (vss. 1-2)

Last week, we spent some time unpacking Isaiah’s central message that, although difficult days are ahead, there is a greater salvation coming for the people of God – God’s own purpose and promise guarantee it, and he will not let his glory be stained by failing to accomplish his plan of redemption in Christ. This is an immensely comforting message; but when those promised difficulties arrive, will the promise of salvation yet to come be enough to sustain our faith? In some measure, that is the question, not just of the faithful in Isaiah’s day, but of the faithful in every age. We are promised eternal joy in the presence of Christ and a home in the New Jerusalem; but also affliction, persecution, and the loving but faithful chastisement of God’s own hand in this life. What will happen to us when those afflictions spring up all around us? Will they choke out the fruits of our faith, like thorns? Or will we rejoice even in our diverse tribulations, knowing that God has designed them for a greater good?

This is the question that confronted King Ahaz and the House of David, in chapter seven of Isaiah. A formidable alliance had arisen between Syria and the northern Kingdom of Israel, and David’s heir seemed doomed. But if David’s line were utterly cut off, then how would God fulfill his promise to raise up a Seed to David, who would reign over his people forever? The attack on the faith of Ahaz and the people was very real, and they were accordingly overcome with dismay; but in grace, God once again stooped down to strengthen and succor their trembling hearts with a message of salvation, confirmed with the offer of great signs and seals. Would the people trust in this gospel message or look elsewhere for deliverance? This is the same question that confronts us whenever we meet with a crisis that is beyond our ability to deal with. Will we scheme and strive for resources in which we can place our hopes for deliverance, or will we trust in the gospel-promises of God, which assure us that even trials and deprivations will work for our eternal good?

2. God’s message of salvation: you will be made firm by faith (vss. 3-9)

God had already spoken his message of eternal salvation to all who trust in him; but we see him, in this crisis, as a God full of patience and mercy, who never tires of speaking the same promises to his trembling people. We may rejoice that even as our faith is assaulted week after week, so we may gather together to hear the same word of hope week after week. Let us note a few of the ways in which Isaiah’s message was designed to bolster faith:

Shear-Jashub – “A Remnant will Return”

It is no mere happenstance that God told Isaiah to bring his son, Shear-Jashub, whose name means, “A Remnant will Return,” when he went to meet with Ahab. It was a reminder that no threat in all creation can finally keep God’s elect from their inheritance in the city where God’s Name dwells.

The pool at the Washer’s Field: cleansing, life-giving waters

It is also significant that he was told to go to the pool in the Washer’s Field; God was thereby declaring that, even if these firebrands smoked and smoldered in wrath toward the people, they would not lack for life-giving water. Also, that the pool was at the “Washer’s Field” hints at the waters of purification that God so often provided his people with throughout their history, and would one day provide fully in Christ, whose pierced side flowed with blood and water.

Smoking firebrands

It was unreasonable that Ahaz and the people would tremble as trees in the forest at these two threats. In the previous chapter, God had just said that the people would be as a tree which he would cut down to the stump, and then burn over with his fierce wrath – and yet, for all that, he would cause them to spring up again from the roots. If the fires of God’s wrath could not destroy this tree, why would they tremble at two smoking firebrands, that have been burned down to the stump already and can now only smolder and set nothing ablaze?

A threat is only as good as its head

These two nations thought they could overwhelm God’s people by their confederation; but God says, “Not so;” for the heads of these peoples are only Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Samaria; and when the heads are cut off, the whole body will be broken into pieces. But God has promised of Judah that he would raise up the Christ to be her Head, so no confederation could possibly stand against her.

Faith alone!

God concludes his message of comfort with a direct proclamation of faith alone: if you are not made firm by faith, you will not be made firm at all. While some who have not submitted to the gospel still try to deny the Reformation principle of faith alone, and reject that it is taught in the scriptures, it is at once evident that Isaiah taught it most directly here, positively excluding any other means to being made firm in God’s grace and salvation, but faith alone. What Isaiah says here, that apart from faith there is no being made firm, may be coupled with what he says elsewhere, that no one who trusts in the Lord will be confounded (Isaiah 28:16; Rom. 10:11), to make the conclusion beyond objection that all who have faith in God’s promises and only those who have faith in God’s promises will certainly be saved.

3. Signs to strengthen feeble faith (vss. 10-11)

Because we are by nature so weak and trembling, and because God’s mercy is so great that he is eager to condescend to us in our timidity, he is often pleased to add signs and confirmations to his promises of grace, that we might the more readily believe him. Thus he graciously condescends to fearful Ahaz, offering him any sign in heaven above or the earth beneath. We may be certain that, if we doubt God’s good promises, it is never because he has not given us every possible inducement to believe in him, but only because our innate, deep-seated stubbornness and willful blindness of heart. All throughout history God has been pleased to signify his gracious purposes to us with many signs; a listing of but a few will be sufficient to illustrate our point:

The skin coat in the Garden (Gen. 3:21)
The rainbow after the flood (Gen. 9:13-17)
The Temple and all its worship rituals (Leviticus, etc.)
Gideon’s fleece (Judges 6:36-40)
Seed taking root and becoming fruitful for three years (Isaiah 37:30-32)
The coal from the altar that touched Isaiah’s lips (Isaiah 6:6-7)
The two sacraments Christ has given his Church

In all these instances, and many more we could adduce, God has ever been gracious to confirm his promises with amazing and miraculous signs and seals of his eternal good pleasure toward us. And just as with every aspect of his goodness to us, he has greatly advanced this condescension since the coming of Christ; for whereas the signs given to the fathers were often more shadowy, or else occasional and infrequent, the signs we have today, namely baptism and the Lord’s supper, are simpler and more direct and understandable promises that we most certainly share in everything that Christ is and has done; and we may receive this renewed confirmation week after week when we gather together to worship. Furthermore, those signs of grace that God has woven into creation all around us, such as the new life and fruitfulness attending the death and burial of a seed, have been made more clear in their significatory aspects by the death and resurrection of Christ; so that, everywhere we look all around us, we are confronted with immense and manifold confirmations of God’s eternal favor toward his saints, and the resurrection life awaiting them all. Every Spring, when new life springs from the ground, we are assured, as if from God’s own mouth, that we will live forever in his presence, through the resurrection power of Christ. There is not a blade of grass that is not designed to bolster our faith in God’s promise to us of eternal life in Christ.

4. The greatest sign of all: Immanuel (vss. 14-16)

We may learn from this paragraph that the egregious faithlessness of hypocrites cannot hinder God’s plan of salvation for his people; for when this insolent impostor rejected God’s mercy with false, pious pretenses, God then determined to give his people a sign indeed, of his own choosing; and this would be the greatest sign of all: the virgin-birth of Immanuel.

This sign is the final and unshakeable confirmation of God’s favor toward his people. Because their calamity was so great, only the almighty power of God could deliver them: but because God is holy and just, how could he come close enough to them to save them indeed without rather overwhelming and destroying them? If there could be a way for God to be present among his people in all his power and glory, then their salvation would be assured. But the Temple was filled with inscrutable smoke, so that only the High Priest could enter, and that but once a year, with trembling and blood, to meet with God; and even Moses, that first and greatest of the prophets, was only granted a glimpse of God’s back parts. Who could ever make it possible for God to dwell in all his glory in the presence of all the people, for all time? How could the so-high God ever stoop so low?

But in this amazing prophecy, God promises that he will stoop unimaginably low: the almighty God will not just take on the form of an angel, or a pillar of fire, or a cloud of smoke full of terror and thunder and lightning – even though that alone were a great condescension. No, God would take on the very form of a man. In fact, he would not only take on the form of a man, but he would truly become man and the seed of man. He would grant to be born of a virgin woman, a daughter of Eve, in order to fulfill the promise first granted her in Genesis 3:15.

We may see how God takes occasion by man’s insolence to grant an even greater blessing: for who would be wise enough, even when granted any boon at all from all heaven and earth beside, to ask for so marvelous a gift – that the almighty God would become man, and make for himself a dwelling place in a virgin womb, to accomplish our salvation? Often, we think that we are wise enough to know what would be a good gift to ask for; but God is always wiser, and has been pleased to give us gifts that are so much more precious than we could ever devise or think to ask. His purpose to do good for us is never constrained by our own limited perspective of what is good.

The incarnation is a central mystery of the Christian faith. It is an amazing and marvelous truth that all the religions in the world beside were never wise enough to devise; and it contains within itself the certainty of all future blessing and salvation. If God did not spare his own Son, but sent him to the womb of a virgin to become a man, that he might save us, then what will he spare in his quest to bring us back to himself?

We may see in this blessed prophecy at least three things: he is fully and perfectly God, as his name, God With Us, teaches, and as later passages, such as 9:6-7, will more definitely confirm. Second, he is perfectly man, as his birth of a true woman, and his name, God With Us, teaches. This is further corroborated by his diet of milk and honey, and his normal human growth in wisdom. Christ later ate fish to confirm that his body was really human (Luke 24:36-43); and he grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man as a true human (Luke 2:40, 52). This is of utmost importance, for if God did not stoop down utterly to our level, he could not have reached us in the pit where we are, and lifted us up to the eternal blessedness of himself. The truth of the incarnation is absolutely necessary to our salvation: for the apostle has said, “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,” but every spirit that does not so confess is antichrist (1 John 4:2-3).

So, we may see in this prophecy those two necessary truths, that the coming Christ would be fully God and fully man; but furthermore, we may glean from this passage that he would be the true representative of all the people of God, the true Israel sent to bring back all of us wayward children to become the true people of Israel by reason of our corporate inclusion in himself (cf. Isaiah 49:3-6). The prophet here says that Immanuel will eat butter and honey. The promise to the nation of Israel, that they would be given as their inheritance a renewed paradise, where God would dwell with them, was sealed with this description, that it would be a land flowing with milk and honey (Ex. 3:7-8); but the message of Isaiah is that, for their covenant failures, the present nation would be driven from that land, and that it would become a desert land of briars. But when the Christ comes to be born among the people, he would eat butter and honey; that is, he would fully know all the promised blessings of the people of God. He would come as true Israel and win the blessings promised to Israel. But he would not win them for himself alone; he would win them so that, when the remnant returned, they too would eat butter and honey (vs. 22). Christ would become our righteousness from God, and would win all the blessings of a perfect righteousness; but he would win them for his people, so that they might be co-heirs, and enjoy those same rewards, and live forever in the land where God dwells with his people.

5. God’s Word and Sign are always effective – to save or to damn (vss. 12-13; 7:17 – 8:10)

Ahaz’s treachery and rebellion did not hinder the redemptive purposes of God; but it did seal him as an apostate, cut off from all those certain blessings. We may learn from this example that the words and signs of God are always effective, either to preserve or to destroy, to save or to damn. Ahaz hid his unbelief behind a pious sentiment; but there is no fooling God, who looks on the heart. Let us remember that it is no presumption to trust fully in God’s promises to us! The devil would have us believe that if we rejoice confidently and hope firmly in those riches that God has sealed to us in the Beloved, then we must be proud and presumptuous. But on the contrary, it is a vexation and wearisome affront to God to ask him for his blessings while fearing that he is not well-pleased to give them to us, but would rather curse us instead. Do we think that God is not powerful enough to save, when he has shown his power over the devil in Christ? Do you think he is not compassionate enough to save, when he gave up his Son to torment for no other reason than our salvation? Then it is not humility, but intolerable provocation to pray for God’s salvation while secretly doubting that he will give it, and looking to other sources of security, such as our own good works, the way that Ahaz looked to the nation of Assyria while paying lip service to God. Do not say, “I am not arrogant enough to presume that I will be delivered in the judgment; I will just do the best I can and hope that I am finally saved, but I will not tempt the Lord by asking for a sign of certain salvation.” No, but we have already been granted a certain sign; and let us make good and joyful use of it week by week, and be firmly confident of God’s everlasting grace toward us in Christ.

Because of Ahaz’s lack of faith, God’s promise that he would not be made firm at all came to pass. Ahaz thought that he could triumph over the threat of Syria and Ephraim in his own way, by hiring Assyria, instead of by God’s promise of grace; so God responds by saying, “Yes, this confederation will fail, just as I said: but that same Assyria in whom you trusted will utterly destroy you, and so become a worse threat than the confederation you fear right now.” In the same way, we who know the gospel and despise it will find our latter end worse than if we had never known it at all. If we are not eating and drinking salvation by faith, we will be eating and drinking judgment to ourselves. Because of their faithlessness, Ahaz and his people would be destroyed more thoroughly, by Assyria, than if they had succumbed merely to Syria and Ephraim; and yet, for the remnant of grace, there would still be the full signified blessing – for even though the land would be devastated, and only a few young cows and sheep would be left, yet those few would still produce enough to give lavish fare, even the curds and honey of Paradise, to the remnant of grace.

The Lord grants a final illustration of this to Isaiah: he was offering life and salvation, even the gently-flowing waters of Christ, the Shiloh to come; but since they refused these waters, he would instead cause the turbulent waters of Assyria to overflow the whole land, up to the very neck. However, even in this, his purpose of grace would not be withheld – for this is Immanuel’s land, and he will certainly have it for an inheritance (vs. 8). All those whose waters overflowed Immanuel’s land will be shattered, and the final verdict, after all is said and done, will be the true reality that God’s sign promised: in Christ, God is forever with us (vs. 10).

6. Conclusion: is Christ your sanctuary or stumbling stone? (8:11-17)

The message that Isaiah brings to us is this: God’s waters will certainly come to us. But will we bring up waters with joy from the well of salvation (12:3)? Will we rejoice in him whose word and Spirit becomes a fountain springing up into everlasting life (cf. John 4:13-14)? Or will we refuse him and look instead to broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13), to other kings and sources of security? If so, then God will still pour out water upon us; but as in the days of Noah, it will not give life, but will utterly destroy.

The final image of this prophetic master of metaphors is that of a stone. When the Christ comes – and he certainly shall – will he be a firm cornerstone upon which we will be built up as a habitation of God for all eternity? Or will he be a stumbling stone, against whom we will be shattered and destroyed? Make no mistake: the testimony is bound up and sealed, and cannot be revoked: he will be one or the other to every person on earth. Therefore, even if he seems to be hiding his face from us for a time, let us hope in him (vss. 16-17), for his salvation is certain for all who trust in him.

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