Isaiah 7:10-16
There’s an old
joke about a man whose house is flooding. The man climbs up on the roof and
prays, “God, I love you! I believe in you! I know that you will save me!”
The water rises higher,
and neighbors row up in their rowboat. They call to the man to let them help
him into the boat and carry him to safety. He refuses, telling them that God
will rescue him. The boat leaves.
The flood waters
are lapping ever closer, and the man prays again. “God, I love you! I believe
in you! I know that you will save me!”
Rescue workers in
a powerboat arrive, and they urge the man to get into their boat with them and
let them carry him to safety. The man refuses their help too, saying that God
will rescue him. He is waiting for God. The rescuers speed away.
The waters have
almost reached the man, and he prays earnestly, “God, I love you! I believe in
you! I know that you will save me!” He has just finished his prayer when a
helicopter flies overhead. Rescuers have a ladder they can send down, and they
plead with the man to let them pull him up to safety. The man refuses, assuring
them that God will rescue him. The pilot and the rescuers in the helicopter
reluctantly fly away to save other stranded folks.
The waters
overcome the man and he drowns. He gets to heaven, and when he meets God
face-to-face, he says, “God, I love you and believe in you. Why didn’t you save
me?”
God looks at the
man and says, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What were you waiting
for?”
Whenever I have
ever heard this story told, it has been used as an example of how God works.
This is how God answers prayers. This is how God helps. This is how God sends
signs. God works through other people. God sends uses ordinary means. Obviously
the man in the story expected something far more dramatic. Perhaps he was
waiting for the hand of God to reach down through the storm and lift him up and
set him on dry land. That may be how we want God to save us, but that isn’t how
God works. So, if you’re stranded on top of your house, with the flood waters
rising, and you pray for help, and a boat comes by – get in the boat! That’s
God at work.
God uses ordinary
means to do extraordinary things.
I would hope that
I would have enough sense to see God’s hand in an offer of rescue. Just like I
hope that if God actually offered to give me a sign, so that I would trust him,
I would accept that sign. Most of the time, signs from God are not always
easily recognizable. Often, signs from God are ambiguous at best. I’ve had to
make many leaps of faith in trusting that I had recognized a sign from God. How
wonderful it would be if God would just offer me a sign, any sign. Surely, I
would never ever be foolish enough to refuse that offer.
But that is just
what Ahaz did in our verses from Isaiah. The Lord offered a sign and Ahaz
refused. The Lord didn’t just offer a sign, the Lord told Ahaz to ask for a
sign, any sign.
“Again the Lord
spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol
or high as heaven.”
There were no
limits to the sign that the Lord would give Ahaz. All Ahaz had to do was ask.
Yet Ahaz did not respond in the way we might think.
“Ahaz said, I will
not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.”
At first, this
sounds like an acceptable response. Ahaz knew the Law and followed the Law. It
would also seem that Ahaz was not greedy about signs. He was modest. He was not
going to push the Lord or test the Lord, even if God opened the door for it. Surely
to our ears, this would have been the correct answer, because these are the
same words Jesus spoke to Satan when he was tempted by him in the wilderness.
However,
as one commentator pointed out, Jesus spoke these words to Satan. Ahaz
spoke them to God. God offered to give Ahaz any sign he asked for, no
matter how big or small. God wanted Ahaz to trust him, so God was willing to
give him a sign if that would ensure Ahaz’ trust. Yet Ahaz’ excuse was that he
did not want to test God. Responding to God’s invitation is not testing God. If
anything God was testing Ahaz. God wanted Ahaz to trust, so if a sign was
necessary for that trust to flourish, then God would give Ahaz a sign.
This
is actually the second sign God gave Ahaz. To fully understand the context of our
verses, we need to look back the first verses of this chapter. Ahaz is the king
of Judah , the
southern kingdom, the land of Jerusalem Israel
and Syria , had
formed an alliance against Judah .
They wanted to overthrow Ahaz, capture Jerusalem
and set their own “puppet king” on the throne. Knowing this, Ahaz and the
people of Judah
were terrifed.
God
sends Isaiah and Isaiah’s son to reassure Ahaz that all would be well. The
powers of the two nations threatening him and his people would not stand. A
child was a symbol of hope and promise, and the presence of Isaiah’s son would
have pointed to that.
I don’t know if
Ahaz didn’t seem assured enough with this first sign, because immediately God
made the offer we read about this morning. A sign, any sign, just trust God. Ahaz’
refusal tested God’s patience. Ahaz may not have wanted a sign of God with him,
but he was going to get one.
“Look, the young
woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name Immanuel.”
Immanuel – God
with us. When we read this passage from Isaiah and our passage from Matthew
together, it seems logical that this sign for Ahaz pointed to Jesus. Perhaps it
did, but Ahaz would have heard that prophecy in his own time and context. While
we might immediately conclude that these were happy words to hear; in reality
they are ambiguous. Not only would there be a child born named Immanuel, God
with us, by the time that child was old enough to know good from evil, the
nations that Ahaz feared so much would be as nothing, deserted.
“The Lord will
bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have
not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah .”
Were those good
days or bad days? What would it mean for God to be with them? Perhaps Ahaz
refused God’s offer of a sign because he didn’t really want to know what God
had in store. Perhaps Ahaz wasn’t so sure that God with him would be a good
thing. Ahaz was faced with military and political disaster, and in that moment
trusting that God would be with him may not have seemed as certain as trusting
in another leader, another nation. Other sources reveal that’s what Ahaz did.
He put his trust in the ruler of the Assyrians. It didn’t end well.
What does it mean
for God to be with us? I suspect that many of us hear this as comfort. God is
with us, all shall be well. God became like us because God was and is Immanuel
because God wants to be with us. God loves us. God pursues us. God wants to be
with us. Yet God with us is not just about sweetness and happiness. God with us
brings light; light that invades even the darkest corners and chases away every
shadow. God with us means that we are brought into the light, and the light
reveals everything about us. God with me means that God sees me – all of me, everything
that is good and everything that is bad. God with me means that the parts of my
life that I have shoved into the deepest, darkest recesses are exposed and
uncovered. God with me makes me vulnerable. Being vulnerable can feel
frightening.
Yet isn’t the
incarnation about God entering into our vulnerability? Wasn’t Jesus as helpless
and vulnerable as any newborn baby? Wasn’t he as dependent on the care of
others as any infant? It seems to me that God with us is somewhat of a
double-edged sword. God with us makes us vulnerable. God with us shows us the
truth about ourselves. God with us brings us into the light, whether we want to
go or not. But God does not choose to be with us out of some need for vengeance
or spite. God chooses to be with us out of God’s infinite grace and mercy. God
chooses to be with us out of a place of relationship. God chooses to be with us
because of love.
God with us is a
present reality and a future promise. God with us does not give us security or
safety. God with us gives us hope.
Let all of God’s
children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.
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