GOD DID THAT

Isaiah 7:10-14 (KJV)

Moreover the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying,

Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the LORD.

And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Christmas, we might think, is a distinctly “New Testament Christian” event.

·   Because of the nature of Christmas

·   Because of the culture of our generation and

·   Because of the “good news” that Christmas brings

It would not be difficult for us to see it as uniquely New Testament.

I do not mean to imply that Old Testament saints:

·   Set up Christmas trees

·   Decorated their houses and

·   Shopped for their loved ones at the mall

every December.

I know that did not happen and I do not mean to make it sound like it might have.

Truth is, the traditions that we have surrounding Christmas these days are all very modern installations.

Christians never celebrated Christmas at all for a good number of centuries, when it did become a tradition, it wasn’t celebrated the way we do until very recently.

That said, the spiritual truths upon which our traditions of Christmas is founded date back thousands of years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

One of the reasons why I do not see it as a problem to celebrate Christmas differently than Christians did two hundred years or more ago, is because, even in the Old Testament, the story of Christmas was one that took on new dimensions as God gave further revelation to His people.

We aren’t going to go back to the very first Old Testament Christmas story – there are just too many of them to cover in four weeks.

I want to begin by taking us back just about seven hundred years before Christ.

The same prophet, Isaiah, gave two of the most well known Old Testament Christmas stories to us.

I want to begin our Old Testament Christmas celebrations with Isaiah’s first mention.

Like almost all Old Testament prophecies, this one has an application that is specific to the time when it was written, and a more eternal application.

In Isaiah’s time, the King on the throne in Judah was Ahaz, one of the worst kings the southern kingdom of Judah had ever had.

Israel was facing a difficult future; their sin had brought them to the place of chastening from God.

Judah had already been attacked by Israel, the northern kingdom of Jews, and Assyria.

Under the leadership of Ahaz, they had repulsed that attack but another one was imminent.

In an act of great mercy, God offered Ahaz a way of escape.

For David’s sake, to whom God had made unconditional promises, He would protect Judah – all they needed to do was trust the Lord.

God encouraged Ahaz with these words

Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.[1]

But the Bible says Ahaz would not do it.

Essentially, he refused to trust God.

·   God spoke to him personally

·   God offered to protect and bless him unconditionally and

·   God gave him the opportunity to prove God in any way he chose

Ahaz wouldn’t do it.

He would not place his faith in God under any circumstances.

I think we live in a day just like that, and in a country very similar to this.

·   We are a nation established under the principles of God’s Word but

·   We have turned away from those principles to the place of where we have experienced the hand of God’s judgment and yet

·   We still refuse to put our faith in the Lord

Our country is filled with people who would turn their back on Jesus Christ if He returned to this earth and walked across Lake Washington.

But God’s promise was not for Ahaz sake or Judah’s sake, it was an unconditional promise made to David for the Lord’s own sake.

“Therefore” God said, “the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Allow me to present three considerations from this promise:

I. GOD INITIATED IT

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign….

Perhaps the most gracious thing about Christmas was that this was a plan that came entirely from the mind of God.

·   Before anyone had ever asked for their sins to be forgiven

·   Before anyone had ever sinned in the first place yea even

·   Before there ever was an “anyone”

God had already planned for the coming of Jesus Christ

1 Peter 1:18-20 (KJV)

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

That tells me,

A. God was not pressured into Christmas

Sometimes people might think of prayer as a spiritual means of “twisting God’s arm.”

God encourages us to pray without ceasing:

·   To pray until we get our answer

·   To pray and to not take no for an answer

·   To pray until it repents God that He hasn’t answered

We have the illustrations of:

1. Jacob wrestling with the angel of God and saying, I will not let thee go until thou bless me.

2. Elijah telling King Ahab it was going to rain and then praying for rain again and again and again until it rained

3. Jesus gave the illustration of the neighbor who had a friend come late at night.

·   He goes to his neighbor’s house and begged bread but his neighbor said no.

·   Jesus said he kept on begging until his neighbor finally gave in, got up and got him bread.

We can and, I believe, should pray this way.

But no such prayer was called for concerning Christmas.

God had it planned before there was anyone alive to pray.

B. God wasn’t faced with no other options than Christmas

The sin of Adam and Eve did not catch God by surprise.

At not point did God think to Himself,

·   “I should not have created that forbidden fruit.” Or even,

·   “I should not have let the serpent lose in the Garden.”

The introduction of sin into the world did not leave God scrambling for solutions and finally concluding He had no alternative than to send His only begotten Son in heaven to the earth.

Christmas was God’s plan:

·   Self conceived

·   Self designed and

·   Self motivated

Notice secondly,

II. GOD ACHIEVED IT

…Behold, a virgin shall conceive

The virgin birth of Christ has historically been one of the most attacked doctrines of the Bible.

The higher critics have nearly all challenged the word virgin, replacing it with words such as:

·   Lass

·   maiden or

·   damsel

All terms referring to a young unmarried female.

The trouble with those words is that:

·   They ignore the historical interpretation, two thousand years of Christians have taught the virgin birth

·   They fail to recognize the consistency between Old and New Testament teaching that Mary[2] was a virgin and

·   They remove from this text and the others like it, the supernatural element

Which is, of course, what they are trying to do.

Almost any lass, damsel or young maiden can conceive and bring forth a son.

But that a virgin should conceive having never intimately known a man – now this is supernatural.

A. No one could have imagined it

One of the characteristics of God is that he,

Ephesians 3:20 (KJV)

… is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, …

The birth of Christ came

·   At a time when no one would have imagined

·   In a place where no one would have imagined and

·   In a manner that no one would have imagined

B. No one could have reproduced it

When Moses performed his miracles before the Pharaoh, Pharaoh called for his own magicians to see if they could reproduce them.

With a few important exceptions they were at least able to perform the illusion of reproducing them.

But no magician can make up a trick to duplicate conception without both the egg and the seed.

The fact is

C. No on else but God could have done it

Which was exactly the point.

Luke 1:26-35 (KJV)

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

When the angel told Mary that she was going to bring forth a son, she was, of course, confused.

While Mary was espoused to be married, her own testimony before God was that she had not known a man.

God’s answer to her concerns was very simple; God would himself do it.

And with God, nothing is impossible.

God initiated Christmas and

God achieved Christmas so that the final outcome was

III. GOD WITH US

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Matthews gospel reaffirms this passage and says,

Matthew 1:23 (KJV)

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.

And that is what the story of Christmas is all about; God with us.

As John 1:14 (KJV) puts it,

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Paul’s epistle to the church in Philippi takes this bit of truth and expands it for us,

Philippians 2:5-11 (KJV)

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Conclusion

I want to end the message by returning to Isaiah’s day and his original audience.

Ahaz was offered grace and peace and reconciliation with God.

But he refused to trust God.

I want to urge you to do differently.

God offers to every human being, unconditional favor with Him for the sake of Jesus Christ.

All he asks is that we place our faith in Jesus Christ.

Don’t reject that offer.

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[1] Isaiah 7:11

[2] Mary herself confessed that she had not known a man. Luke 1:34