Advent 4A, 2025

4th Sunday of Advent, Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today is the last Sunday in the season of Advent. This is the time right before the light comes into the world....it’s coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet. The people were desperate, miserable, but still a little hopeful. They knew that God had promised to send a Messiah, but had no idea when. Can you relate to that? Well...at least the idea of not knowing when God would make good on His promises?

I’m intrigued by the lesson from Isaiah this morning. Ahaz was not a good king. His misdeeds are described in 2 Kings 16. “He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” He was following the example of the wicked kings of Israel who had come before him. “He even burned his son as an offering....” Not a righteous king by any measure.

And yet, God comes to him with a proposal. Isaiah 7:11 “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” Usually, we would hear something like “do not put the Lord your God to the test”, referencing Deuteronomy 6:16 “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” But here, God is inviting it. “When God proposes a sign, man is not putting God to the test.” [Leupold, 154] What we haven’t seen this morning is what was said in the verse before this: Isaiah 7:9 “...If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.” And Ahaz was decidedly *not* firm in his faith.

When God invites him to request a sign, Ahaz seems to take the advice of former prophets: “I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.” As though he was being suddenly obedient to God’s Law. He’s most certainly not. You see, like former wicked kings, Ahaz thinks he’s in charge. He has his own plan, his own agenda, based on his own authority. Now, confronted by the prophet of the Creator of the World, Ahaz would *have* to believe in God if this sign comes true...and Ahaz definitely does not want that to happen. If this sign happens, Ahaz’s plans must be abandoned. So this reverent-sounding response is actually a mask to cover up his stubborn unbelief. [ibid.]

It’s easy for us to dismiss Ahaz as a bad king from many centuries ago. But many people avoid the reality of Jesus Christ… and this has been happening for a very long time. Many theologians, most famously CS Lewis, have addressed this. It’s often called the “Lunatic, liar, or Lord” question. Here’s how Lewis describes it: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

If Jesus was just a teacher, then following Him, listening to Him, obeying Him is optional. But if He is Who He says He is… if He really is God, and we are to call Him “Lord”, then that comes with an authority that can’t be denied. That comes with the highest authority in the universe. That comes with an authority that no one would dare deny or rebel against. But we do, don’t we? We still sin. We still rebel. We still have our own agendas. We still have our own plans and our own way of doing things. Even those of us who call ourselves Christians do this. Why? Because even though the war is already won and Christ is the victor, the wicked foe never stops working against Him...and us. He wants to destroy our faith whenever and wherever he can, and he’ll try and keep trying, even when he knows he’s lost. So we will face temptation every day. We will face doubt every day. And we will sometimes stumble and give in. We will sometimes be just like Ahaz.

That’s where this prophecy from Isaiah is worth its weight in gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even when Ahaz didn’t WANT a sign, God still gave him one. And God picked the sign that we all recognize. The sign that was made even more famous in Handel’s Messiah: Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” God is with us.

After more than 1,000 years of conquest, oppression, hopelessness, and despair, God’s people were finally going to receive a sign of their salvation. The prophet’s words were about to come true. And it would be a miracle in itself - a virgin woman was going to have a baby. Miraculous from the very start. But not everything about this sign was a miracle. “A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes” isn’t particularly miraculous. Nor is a couple having their baby born among farm animals instead of in a proper inn. But it does set that baby apart and make him easier to identify as the one they’re looking for.

God has done many truly miraculous things throughout the history of His people. But this particular miracle was the greatest of all - sending His Son to be with us… to take on our mortal flesh. Yes, he would later be a great teacher, but that is perhaps the least important of his duties on earth. The most important, of course, is to die for our sins. Remember: that could NOT happen if he had not taken on flesh. His birth was necessary in order for our redemption to happen. And if we were not redeemed by his death, we would not be saved for eternity. His birth is absolutely vital to God’s plan to save us.

Shortly, when we come to receive the Sacrament of the Altar, we will hear the words “this is the body of Christ, given for you”. This is a reminder that in the sign Isaiah prophesied, the baby would be born, and in that moment God took on flesh. God now had a human body. And that body was given up to be beaten, whipped, and crucified for all of us. That oh-so-important moment began with the birth of the baby.

“Two women who were having lunch in an elegant hotel were approached by a mutual friend who asked the occasion for the meal. One lady replied, ‘We are celebrating the birth of my baby boy.’ ‘But where is he?’ inquired the friend. ‘Oh,’ said the mother, ‘you didn't think I'd bring him, did you?’ What a picture of the way the world treats Jesus at Christmas.”

Let us all remember as we look forward to the birth of that child, what it truly means for him to be born and to come among us. Let’s not be like Ahaz and reject the sign - knowingly or unknowingly. Let’s welcome that sign with gratitude and humility. And let’s absolutely bring Jesus into everything we do and say about this coming season that celebrates his birth, the season of Christ-mas.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.