Can God Be Trusted?

Isaiah 7:1–8:8

We are pretty good at keeping our minds off of the bigger questions most of the time, or at least I am. Cereal companies put games and fun things to read on the back of the box so you don’t have to sit with your own thoughts while you eat breakfast. We drive to work in the morning and always make sure to have radio or podcasts, or music coming from the speakers so we don’t have to hear the dreaded silence.

Usually in those times we aren’t considering what life is all about, and where our hopes are placed. But even in those moments, life is about something nevertheless, and our hopes are placed in something.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with these things, unless you put them in place because you don’t want to face the bigger questions of life.

One of the main overall questions of Isaiah is: Do you trust God or something else?

That seems like a pretty easy question to answer for a Christian, if we’re talking in the majors. Speaking in general terms we can give a perfectly satisfying answer to this questions can’t we? Do you trust God to be good toward you? Well of course. Do you trust God to be your help? Sure.

It’s the more precise questions that can be harder to answer, and get down closer to our hearts. Do you trust God will give you the words to say as you confront your friend about his sin? Do you trust God will sustain you as you watch a loved one suffering? Is God able to soften my heart toward people who have hurt me?

Sometimes God brings trials into our lives that shake us up from these distractions. Sometimes he brings heavy trials to force us to lean on him.

Our text today brings us about 5 years forward from chapter 6. Uzziah is dead, Jotham, the next king, is gone. Now Ahaz sits on the throne.

There’s a war that’s been going on for a little while. Israel to the north has now joined forces with Syria. They do this because Assyria is circling, Israel and Syria need allies against this major world super power threatening to eliminate them.

The northern Israel had abandoned God and his program a while ago, for the most part. God had promised that his man from the house of David would sit on the throne forever. Well that throne was in Jerusalem in what was now called Judah. That man now was Ahaz. Ahaz was not a good man.

Well Israel and Syria had decided they needed more allies, and Judah fit the bill, so they planned to attack Judah and set their man on the throne in place of the son of David.

Ahaz hears of this alliance and is described as shaking as a tree of the forest before the wind. Have you ever been that scared?

I don’t want to downplay the threat, on a human level the threat was real. Ahaz had reason to be terrified… if God had never made a promise to his people.

Threats are real aren’t they? Cancer, loss of a job, relationship issues in your marriage or just in your relationships with your friends. It does us know help to downplay the significance of real threats.

So God sends Isaiah to Ahaz with Isaiah’s son named, Shear-Jashub “A remnant shall return,” to a specific place. Ahaz is out there checking the water supply to the city. He’s shoring up defenses. He’s checking the storehouses. Practical things you would do.

And Isaiah commands him to stop, listen, and don’t be afraid. Rezin and Pekah, Isaiah says, talk like blowtorches, but are spent cigarette butts.

Why were they unable to mount an attack? Because Judah was protected by God. Hasn’t God made promises to you? Do you ever fear when God has promised? God has not said “you’ll never lose your job.” But God has said he will provide. God has not said “you’ll never get sick.” But he has said that though you die you will live because he is the resurrection and the life.

In the quiet of the night when you are wondering if you are being a good enough christian, has he promised that he will hold you steadfastly because of what you’ve done or because of what Jesus has done?

Ahaz gets some hardcore tangible information that we are rarely privy to in our trials here. He says, Rezin is going to remain over Syria—in other words… not over Judah. And Ephraim (Israel), first they’re going to be wiped off the map in 65 years, but in that time, they aren’t going to be over Judah. Ahaz you have zero to fear.

We learn from 2 Kings 16 that Ahaz was planning on calling Assyria to come help him. This was his grand plan. Israel and Syria are afraid of Assyria, i’ll give Tiglath-Pilesar (king) a call before they can get here and pledge my allegiance to him. Do you ever choose one sin to try to take care of another sin?

Verse 9 Isaiah get’s down to the heart of this passage for Ahaz and us. “If you are not firm in faith you will not be firm at all.” Essentially this means if you try to lean on anyone but me for support you’re going to fall. And he uses the word faith here. If I am not your only source of hope, you’re dead.

God is good to us isn’t he? He has no need to give us signs to bolster our faith, but he does. He has no need to give us baptism and the Lord’s supper as means of grace to demonstrate his goodness to us, but he does.

He tells Ahaz, ask me anything, whatever you need to prove that I can be trusted and I’ll do it. Ahaz refuses and makes it sound so religious.

This is what rotten unbelief looks like. Ahaz knows as soon as God demonstrates exactly what Ahaz knows he can do, he’s just given his heart over to the Lord. By following God’s command to ask him, he’s put God in the driver’s seat of Judah. So he refuses. Some of you would rather rely on your own abilities than hand your trust over to God. You know who he is and that he will fully accomplish what he sets out to do, but the cost is too high for you. Ahaz loses his soul because of it. Ultimately Ahaz loses the nation.

Ahaz’s choice sets in motion everything we see today in the middle east.

God is good though. Very good. He gives a sign anyway. But this sign is for “you” in the plural. Not just Ahaz, but the whole nation. “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and she shall call his name Immanuel.”

This prophecy had a local fulfillment and a fuller fulfillment in the birth of Jesus. Prophecy often works this way. There is a type and then there is a greater fulfillment. A baby is born to a young woman and he is the sign that God is with the people. This is the same baby born in the next chapter Mahar-shalal-hashbaz. His name means “The spoil speeds, the prey hastens.”

He stood as a sign that Assyria would swifty conquer Ahaz’s two enemies. God with his people. And this would happen soon. Isaiah 7 says by the time he could choose good from evil, Isaiah 8 says by the time he can say “mama” and “dada.”

But there is a greater fulfillment to this prophecy which was to come. Jesus was born, himself Immanuel, God with us. His birth was the sign that none of God’s enemies would stand. But his birth wasn’t simply a picture that God’s enemies wouldn’t stand, he is actually God with his people. God came to his own.

He defeated his enemies by the death of himself, standing as God’s enemy himself in our place.

Isaiah explains the judgment that will fall on the nation because of Ahaz’s refusal to obey God. In that day is used 4 times in 7, and it is pictured as a coming flood in chapter 8.

See God pictures himself as the life giving slow trickle of water that quenches the thirst of his people in 8:5. This is Jesus isn’t it? The water of life. He quenches our thirst on his terms. It’s always satisfying if you’ll drink from his well. It is perfectly life giving, exactly what God’s people need.

Ahaz isn’t happy with it, so God says, i’m going to give you water, Assyria will be like the Euphrates River flooding Judah. The waters will sweep over her and come all the way up to your neck.

O Immanuel’s land is where this takes place.

Sin constantly offers us solutions to problems. Problems that were created by sin. They often may even seem logical and right. And yet when compared to Christ and his glory we find they always fall short. Isaiah had seen this glory. He wasn’t afraid of Assyria, he wasn’t afraid even of Ahaz. His hope rested solely on the coming messiah who would save his people from their sins.

Where is your hope today?